kodiak

The Joy of Systems

There is something pleasing about systems integration- at least when things go right. I got the first end to end prototype working today of our latest project, and I have to say I love watching a SATA drive scream for mercy while you stream data off it as fast as the platters can spin. Of course it goes without saying that seeing the all CPU’s of a couple dozen blade centers start to smoke because of the load you just shoved on them is also a beautiful sight. Unfortunately, I am in New York and the blades are in California, so I have to imagine the fact that the temperature machine room is rising ever so slowly and that the majority of the racks resemble a Christmas Tree, but I can picture it. I am also pleasantly awaiting the deluge of email from the network administrators at Almaden and Hawthorne wonder why there is so much traffic heading to Almaden and so little coming back.

Distributed Systems are non-trivial, and getting everything working together is a chore sometimes. WF really sticks to the idea of design by contact with its service interfaces and that is one of the reasons that we can throw stuff together quickly. Also having a ton of hardware doesn’t hurt, but we can always use more. I have to admit that I am annoyed at having to ask for permission to use the larger hardware systems from time to time, but the alternative is that I have run my *own* clusters, not fun either. I have always said that when I had the headcount the first person I would hire would be a personal assistant, but now I am thinking it might be a personal sysadmin. Do they have those?

Job Description: Personal Systems Administrator

Administrate and maintain small-ish cluster (100+ nodes) of Linux and FreeBSD machines for young researcher who doesn’t play nice with others and has no common sense about “unsolvable” problems. Cluster is fault tolerant, but please note it is expected to have 90% of resource available at anytime, the other 10% is yours to play with. Experiments are run at odd hours of the day and on weekends. Must be flexible with regard to hours worked and be willing to write software that makes your life easier rather than repeat menial tasks. Expert Quake skills, Knowledge of python and use of Emacs are a plus. Vi is acceptable, but expect abuse.