Building a customized infrastructure with Gentoo
*Excerpt
Gentoo is an excellent meta-distribution which offers you complete control over how you can build your infrastructure. However in this raw form managing such an infrastructure can be cumbersome if not time consuming. Customizations can run from building an entirely hardened system from the kernel up to the user space applications, to building a minimal system for your needs. Gentoo goes beyond compiler and use flags and takes your infrastructure to the next level.
Description
Why run a source based distribution when Debian and CentOS exist and work for most of the world? System administrators are always stuck with having to build their own versions of software because of requirements that are placed on them. Most binary based distributions give you little flexibility in how you can actually build and setup your system. With Gentoo, it gives you the most flexibility while keeping it simple. Several prominent companies and organizations such as the OSL, EngineYard, and E*Trade are running Gentoo in their infrastructure.
This talk will cover try to cover all of the important issues for running a Gentoo based system for a server. Discussing the pros and cons, when you should consider running it, some advice and tips for setting up a sane environment, and tools to help you manage the systems.
Tags
gentoo, installation, distribution, infrastructure
Speaking experience
Speaker
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Lance Albertson
OSU Open Source Lab- Website: http://www.lancealbertson.com/
- Blog: http://www.lancealbertson.com/
- Twitter: ramereth
- Identi.ca: ramereth
- Favorites: View Lance's favorites
Biography
Lance is the Lead Systems Administrator/Architect for the Oregon State University Open Source Lab (OSL) and a Gentoo Linux Developer. He joined the Gentoo Linux project in 2003 and have been involved in managing their infrastructure and maintaining about a dozen or so packages in portage. Lance manages all of the hosting activities that the OSL provides for the open source community including projects such as Kernel.org, Drupal, Apache Software Foundation, and many many more. Lance has been at the OSL since 2007.
Previously Lance was a UNIX Administrator for the Enterprise Server Technologies group at Kansas State University helping maintain campus email along with other various tasks. Previous to that, he worked with his dad near Hiawatha, Kansas on the family farm growing corn and soybeans.
In his free time he helps organize the Corvallis Beer and Blog and plays trumpet in a local jazz group The Infallible Collective. He holds a B.A. in Agriculture Technology Management from Kansas State University, where he minored in Agronomy and Computer Science.
Sessions
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- Title: Layers of Caching: Key to scaling your website
- Track: Chemistry
- Room: Hawthorne
- Time: 1:45 – 2:30pm
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Excerpt:
Caching is essential to ensuring that your website will survive a large spike in traffic. With so many different forms of caching, how are you supposed to know what works and why you should use it? The key is layering your site with several forms of caching.
- Speakers: Lance Albertson, Narayan Newton