NCSA Meeting and Elections Tonight

[James Brigman]

The next meeting of the North Carolina System Administrators
organization (NC*SA) is TONIGHT. Details about the meeting are provided
in this note.  We hope to see you there!

                    NC*SA General Meeting
               6:00 pm Monday, December 8, 2003
                     Dreyfus Laboratory
                 Research Triangle Institute
                  Research Triangle Park, NC

        Topic: Automating System Administration
	Speaker: Mr. Stephen Schaefer, RF Micro Devices

	Sponsors: Duke University CS Lab
	Found At: http://www.cs.duke.edu/
	
	ALSO: Steering Committee Elections
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Abstract:  

Far too often, system administrators build their infrastructures the way
cars were built in 1910: one at a time, by hand. 

For the December 8 NC*SA program, Stephen will be reviewing the
framework of an infrastructure, as described in Steve Traugott's 1998
paper:
(http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa98/full_papers/traugott/traugott.pdf)

"Bootstrapping an Infrastructure".  During the course of the program,
Stephen will provide thumbnail sketches of several tools and techniques
drawn from LISA papers and the 2003 LISA Infrastructures Workshop held
Oct. 20th this year.

Attendees should come away with the fundamental concepts in
infrastructure architecture and some idea of the variety of approaches
currently being pursued in research and practice.

Bio: Stephen Schaefer is an expert system administrator distinguished by
over 10 years of highly technical UNIX system administration and
creative implementation of complex software systems for solving
complicated business requirements. Stephen is an alumnus of several
noted technology companies in the triangle, such as Imonics Corporation
and eMIS. He is currently employed by (http://rfmd.com) RF Micro
Devices, 
in Greensboro, NC. For his company, Stephen heads up a four person team
responsible for a growing infrastructure of 250 systems: there is no
chance of keeping these systems working properly without automation
strategy and tools. Hence, he presents this report from the LISA
Infrastructures Workshop. 

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Our meetings are free and open to anyone with an interest in the topic
of the evening and/or system administration.  We will be providing food
and drink for the evening. If you have any questions please contact the
Steering Committee at:

  ncsa-steer at ncsysadmin.org

==============================

For information about the NC System Administrators group, please see our
web site at http://www.ncsysadmin.org/

(Please note, if you are a member of sage-members at usenix.org, you will
also get a copy of these announcements.  We cannot unsubscribe you from
that list.)

==============================

A map of RTI is available at http://www.rti.org/images/campus.gif

Enter through the glass doors at the front; all of the doors except one
will be locked, but one will be open for our access.  Walk through the
lobby, go straight out the glass doors, across the patio, and straight
into Dreyfus Auditorium.

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