The Lone Sysadmin

I hope everybody has had a good Thanksgiving, if you’re in the U.S.A., or at least just a good weekend all around. Where I live Mother Nature didn’t waste much time getting winter under way, as captured while I was messing with my new lens. I should go find my shovel before the other 5.75″ of snow falls.

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• Microsoft: We Promise Not To Kill McAfee, Symantec (MSFT)
  You know what? Just let McAfee & Symantec figure it out. You have a gaping hole in your products, MS, and you need to fix it. Everybody has known that someday you were going integrate antivirus software. Today is that day. DO IT.

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Mr. Epping over at Yellow Bricks (which looks nice, BTW) has broken the news this morning that Symantec has clarified their stance on VMotion, and it’s not explicitly unsupported now.

This is good. I suspect that folks at VMware had some role in Symantec’s change of course, partner relationships, etc. Whoever was part of this, thank you. And thank you Symantec for not being a typical corporation and staying the course because you don’t want to look foolish. Personally, I always say that I reserve the right to change my mind when I get new information. I’m glad to see others doing the same.

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Does anybody else think we’re living in Atlas Shrugged?

When can I get bailed out?  I’ve made several bad decisions in my life and I’d like to be compensated for them. And by “compensated” I mean “massively compensated, like dump trucks full of cash.” After all, why should I be responsible for my own actions and decisions?

If I were Honda or Toyota I’d be getting my lawyers ready to sue a lot of people.

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• jwz – Apple 0wns j00
  This HDCP crap on laptops sucks. Nice job, Apple, making it impossible to play video on nearly every projector on Earth.
• Foreclosure | Stuck In Customs
  Great shot.
• The Risks Digest Volume 25: Issue 44
  "In the November 2008 issue of *BoatU.S.* magazine, there's a reference to a new GPS satellite being switched on. It uses the identifier "PRN 32", which causes some [...] Northstar GPS units to become confused and shut down." This smells like a fixed-sized, 32-element array. Dear programmers, stop doing that.

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Update: Symantec has altered their support documentation so that VMotion isn’t unsupported anymore. That’s a good move. As you read the rest of this post keep that in mind.

I second the vinternals commentary on Symantec. The security software vendor joins the ranks of the clueless with their wonderful support document:

Question/Issue:
Is ESX server VMotion supported with SAV and SEP?

Solution:
Symantec does not support ESX server VMotion at this time.

Vendors are shameless. They charge you a ton for support, then they’ll do whatever they can to point the finger at somebody else when you call.  It’s one thing to put a disclaimer in for performance issues. Virtualization sometimes exposes weird performance issues, and if it’s a performance issue you’re having you might need to do some work to troubleshoot it on your own if it isn’t a blatant, completely reproduceable problem with the vendor’s software (like CPU-sucking spin locks).

It’s another thing to say that their software isn’t supported at all, or to say that a problem must be reproduced on physical hardware. Most of the problems I’ve ever called a vendor about are explicit functionality problems (bugs).  Physical hardware, virtual hardware, it doesn’t matter: their software just doesn’t do what it’s supposed to.  A vendor’s support staff should be competent enough, and professional enough, to sort out a bug report from a performance problem and act accordingly.

Oracle doesn’t support anything in VMs (as per an Oracle employee last week to me). Lyris doesn’t support anything in VMs (last time I checked, a few months ago). Symantec doesn’t support anything in VMs (technically they said VMotion, but for an enterprise VMotion goes hand in hand with VMs). What other vendors are as clueless as these three? I think I’m going to start making a list.

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• ATT-ab9791303777839bd9f2b524bc8e98b8.jpg – (37signals)
  "All I want in life sometimes is for AT&T to say, 'Sarah, you have accumulated so many unused minutes and texts that your next bill is free, since we realize ‘rollover’ means nothing to you. Have a nice day.' Me, too. My phone bill looks surprisingly like hers. I hate talking on the phone.
• jwz – parking haiku
  LOL.
• Fire hydrant – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  "Class AA hydrants (>1500gpm) should have their nozzle caps and bonnet colored light blue." I knew the new paint on the hydrant outside my house was related to flow, but I didn't realize how much. 1500 GPM is a lot.
• Modeling Compound | Play-Doh | Walgreens
  "Molded results vary depending on child's age and level of skill." DUH. (hat tip to Raymond Chen & his blog, Old New Thing)
• Food: Your TiVo Now Places Orders for Domino's Pizza On-Demand
  "You got 30 minutes" — nice English, Dominos marketing idiots. If only my most favorite pizza place in the world, Mama's Pizza in St. Paul, could deliver to Madison…
• Second Life affair ends in divorce – CNN.com
  "Taylor is now in a new relationship with a man she met in the online roleplaying game World of Warcraft." So many comments, so little time.

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• Give Up and Use Tables
  Nice. I use tables for the limited web design I still do. CSS is nice in a lot of ways but simple is good, and tables are certainly simple.

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