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UNIGROUP OF NEW YORK MAY 2001 ANNOUNCEMENTS
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1. UNIGROUP'S MAY 2001 GENERAL MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT
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When: Thursday, May 17, 2001
Where: The Chase Manhattan Bank
55 Water Street (enter at Old Slip)
South Tower
13th Floor, Conference Room C
Time: 6:15 PM - 6:30 PM Registration
6:30 PM - 6:40 PM Ask the Wizard,
Questions, Answers and Current Events
6:40 PM - 6:50 PM Unigroup Business
6:50 PM - 9:30 PM Main Presentation
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Topic: Linux Clustering: Fault Tolerant High Availability Clusters
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Speaker: Nick Carr, Director of Professional Services
Mission Critical Linux
Meeting Introduction:
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We have a couple of things planned for this month's meeting:
- Unigroup Board of Director Elections
- Discussion/War Stories concerning the Northpoint DSL Collapse
- Part 2 of a series of meetings on Linux Clustering
Unigroup Board of Director Elections:
Unigroup Members are welcome to volunteer to be on the Board of
Directors of Unigroup of New York, Inc. Please Email the board at
uniboard@unigroup.org if you are interested in getting on the ballot.
The Unigroup Board holds a board meeting typically once per month in
Downtown NYC and performs other correspondence via Email and Telephone.
The Board plans, prepares for, and runs the meetings, finds speakers
and giveaways for the meetings, and performs other tasks which keep
the group alive. Unigroup is a volunteer organization and we need
your help!
DSL War Stories:
Did your Northpoint DSL go down in April? Did your DSL circuit remain
up but there simply was no Internet on it? Did you have a backup plan
for Internet Connectivity such as dial backup? Did you know your DSL
Router probably has built-in automatic dial backup and you could have
been prepared? If you had automatic dial-backup fully tested and
working prior to the DSL going down, when it did go down, and the
router automatically switched to backup, did you find that you now had
new routing problems preventing Internet connectivity? Are you dealing
with an ISP who offers dial-backup service? Did your provider drop the
Reverse DNS for the IP range configured in your dial-backup router and
firewall (without notice) such that sendmail took a full 60 seconds to
start up? Did you deal with a provider who's idea of dial-backup is a
single-user windows-style pop account which uses a single pop box to
route in-bound mail to hundreds of people spread across the country in a
handful remote offices? Did that same provider refuse to accept your
out-bound SMTP traffic even though you were using one of their dial-up
connections (login/password/their dynamic IP range), because they
simply did not believe that you were you and that you were one of their
customers? Did they force a dynamic IP range on you such that you
could no longer transmit SMTP to various sites such as AOL due to the
DUL? Did the entire Northpoint mess occupy so much of your time that
you simply didn't have time to put together a special April Unigroup
meeting (sorry about that)?
...can you tell? ...it wasn't fun! I have a couple of personal
of war stories to relate. I hope some Unigroup members have a
few of their own to discuss too. The main goal of the discussion
is what to have in place, what can and will go wrong, and what
to watch out for.
The Main Presentation:
The March 2001 Unigroup meeting was on Linux Beowulf Clustering. The
May 2001 Unigroup meeting will be a followup meeting which will detail
another aspect of Linux Clustering Technology: Fault Tolerant Highly
Available Clusters. Our speaker, Nick Carr of Mission Critical Linux,
will discuss aspects of High Availability and how this type of
clustering may be used on Beowulf Clusters to build a robust and fault
tolerant clustering environment. Mission Critical Linux's Convolo
Cluster software is a high-availability cluster product for Linux which
is based on the Open Source Kimberlite clustering technology.
Web Resources:
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1. Kimberlite http://oss.missioncriticallinux.com/projects/kimberlite/
2. Convolo Cluster http://www.missioncriticallinux.com/products/convolo/
3. Mission Critical Linux http://www.missioncriticallinux.com
4. The Beowulf Project http://www.beowulf.org
5. High Availability Cluster Checklist
http://www2.linuxjournal.com/cgi-bin/frames.pl/lj-issues/issue80/4344.html
Description of Talk:
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This talk follows on from earlier presentations on Linux high performance,
Beowulf-style clusters. It describes recent advances in the area of Linux
high availability clusters. Designed for deployment in commercial
environments using standard, unmodified applications these clusters have,
in most respects, achieved parity with traditional Unix commercial-market
clusters.
The presentation will include a mid-level technical overview of high
availability cluster technologies, describing the fundamental properties
of these systems - including configuration details, primary algorithms,
shared storage subsystems, and application implications. The presentation
will also cover clustering technologies that are actively being worked on
by the Linux community - including distributed lock managers and cluster
file systems. The presentation is intended to be highly interactive,
allowing attendees the maximum opportunity to learn about these
interesting systems.
** Mission Critical Linux will be sponsoring the food service at
** this month's Unigroup meeting! Thanks MCL!
Speaker Biography:
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Nick Carr has 25 years experience in the IT industry in a career
spanning multiple disciplines, including business development and
product management, operating system engineering, technical training,
pre-sales support, and customer hardware and software services.
Company Biography:
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Mission Critical Linux Inc. offers enterprise-ready Linux professional
services to help plan and deploy efficient and highly available Linux
systems; custom engineering for specific development needs; and 24/7
support to ensure maximum systems availability and performance. By
combining these services with ground-breaking Linux technologies such
as Convolo Cluster Software and Secure Service Technology, the Company
provides commercial Linux users with the tools needed to maximize the
performance of their IT infrastructure. Headquartered in Lowell,
Massachusetts, with offices in Santa Clara, California,
Washington D.C., and Europe, Mission Critical Linux, Inc. can be
reached at www.missioncriticallinux.com.
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Complimentary Food and Refreshments will be served. This now includes
salads and sandwiches (eg. turkey, roast beef, chicken, tuna, grilled
eggplant, pasta salad, Caesar salad)!
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Directions:
55 Water Street is between Water Street & Front Streets at Old Slip...
about 7 blocks south of Fulton St. and the South Street Seaport.
Take 4 train to Bowling Green & Walk Due East;
Take 2/3 trains to Wall Street, Walk East to Water St.
then walk South 5 blocks;
Take M/J trains to Broad St., Walk East to Water St.;
Take N/R trains to Whitehall St., Walk North East to Water St.
There is parking on the street (after 6:30-7pm) and there is a lot
right in the building, entrance on Old Slip.
Walking from Wall St., follow William St. south which bends around
and leads you to Hanover Sq. and Old Slip is across Water Street.
Room Location Specifics:
Enter the building at Old Slip. To get to the South Tower of the
complex, you enter the building at Old Slip at the "North Tower"
doors. This entrance is is immediately to the right of the main
entrance, towards Water Street... ie. Use the right-most side doors
rather than walking straight ahead at the Old Slip entrance.
Go past the guard's desk (mentioning you are heading for Unigroup,
sometimes there is a sign-in) to the elevator bank and go to the 13th
floor. When you get to the 13th floor, follow the signs leading you
to the meeting room.
The signs will lead you from the elevator, through a set of doors
(soda machine will be on your left), then past the cafeteria. After
the cafeteria, you see another "lobby" area. Walk past the cash
machines, make a left and look for a sign marking the meeting room.
Conference Room C will be on your left.
If you come very early, we may not have the signs in place yet, but
hopefully these directions will get you to the meeting room.
If you arrive before Unigroup Board Members, please be patient and
wait for us to arrive.
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Fee Schedule:
Yearly Membership (includes all meetings): $ 50.00
* Non-Member Single Meeting: $ 20.00
Student Yearly Membership: $ 20.00
Non-Member Student Single Meeting (with ID): $ 5.00
Cash, Check, American Express.
* Employees of Chase (with ID) can attend general meetings at no charge.
==> Unigroup is the Greater NYC Regional Area Affiliate
of UniForum - an International Unix Users Group.
Our Joint Membership Program with UniForum is currently
on hold due to circumstances at UniForum.
For information about UniForum visit http://www.uniforum.org.
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Please mark this meeting on your calendar and join us!
Please tell your friends about Unigroup!
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2. UPCOMING MEETINGS
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We have a series of meetings in the works.
- Linux Clustering Part 3: Beowulf version 2
- NetBSD (and IPv6)
- Building a Firewall using FreeBSD and Linux
- Unix Office Tools: Word Processors, Spreadsheets, Accounting Packages.
- Emacs
- PKI
- GNU Development Environments
- Meetings on a variety of Sun/Solaris/Java topics
Please let us know about any other meeting topics that you may be
interested in. Potential speakers on Unix releated technology topics
should contact the Unigroup board at uniboard@unigroup.org.
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3. PRIOR MEETING
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Our thanks go to Jozef Skvarcek, Ph.D,, who gave us a great
How-To presentation on Linux Beowulf Clustering.
We learned about general clustering concepts, Beowulf specifics and
related standards and programming APIs through the use of real life
examples.
Our thanks also go to Andrew Flesch from TurboLinux who briefly
spoke about TurboLinux EnFuzion. TurboLinux provided various
giveaways including EnFuzion CD-ROMs and T-Shirts. We hope to
have TurboLinux come back for a more formal presentation some time
in the future.
We also gave out our remaining copies of OpenLinux that we received
from Caldera. I think just about everyone at the meeting walked
away with something nice!
Speaking of prior meetings, we recently had a talk from Jeff Altman
of the Kermit Project at Columbia University. The Kermit Project Site
http://www.kermit-project.org has announced that we've just past
the 20th Anniversary of the first Kermit file transfer. Its nice
to see that some good things have made it for the long haul.
The site also has announced new releases of Kermit-95 and C-Kermit.
Do you realize that Unix is about 30 now (possibly 31+)? The Unix
time_t was based on 01-JAN-1971 (later changed to 01-JAN-1970).
See the Dennis Ritchie Home Page for some great history:
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/1stEdman.html
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4. TRADE SHOW ANNOUNCEMENTS
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PC Expo, now part of TECHXNY, is coming to town at the Javits Center
in NYC from June 25 through June 28, 2001.
Show hours are:
Tue, June 26 10am-5pm
Wed, June 27 10am-5pm
Thu, June 28 10am-4pm
Visit www.pcexpo.com for more information and for free expo hall
admission.
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5. UNIGROUP INFORMATION
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Unigroup is one of the oldest and largest Unix User's Groups serving the
Greater New York City Regional Area since the early 1980s. Unigroup is a
not-for-profit, vendor-neutral and member funded volunteer organization.
Unigroup holds regular and special event meetings throughout the year on
technical topics relating to Unix and the Unix User Community. Unigroup
is also the Greater NYC Regional Area Affiliate of UniForum - an
International Unix Users Group.
Thanks to Chase, Unigroup holds regular meetings planned for the Third
THURSDAY of Odd Months at The Chase Manhattan Bank, 55 Water Street, NYC.
Chase has been a long time sponsor of Unigroup, allowing us the use of a
meeting room and presentation equipment.
Planned meeting dates are: 5/17/01, 7/19/01, 9/20/01, 11/15/01...
Watch for our Special Event meetings at the various trade shows in NYC
as well as "field trips" to the facilities of local hardware and
software vendors.
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= For Unigroup Information, Events and Meeting Announcements be sure to =
= visit our World Wide Web Home Page: =
= http://www.unigroup.org =
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For further information or to get on the Unigroup Electronic Mail Mailing
List send an EMail message to:
unilist@unigroup.org
To contact the Board of Directors of Unigroup, send an EMail message to:
uniboard@unigroup.org
To contact the Newsletter Editor, send an EMail message to:
editor@unigroup.org
If you have recently attended a meeting and you are not receiving
Email announcements, please send us an Email and we will make
corrections to our lists.
Please Email the Board with any suggestions, especially potential meeting
topics and speakers. Unigroup welcomes contributions and content
suggestions for our newsletter. Unigroup is a volunteer organization and
we need your assistance! Please let us know if you can help!
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I hope to see you all at our next meeting!
-Rob Weiner
Unigroup Executive Director
unilist@unigroup.org
http://www.unigroup.org
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