We had a few things to discuss at the last meeting, but no serious technical talk. I promised to post a couple of links so here we go…

First item on the table was anyone who has tried to get the email server running and failed AND still wants to get it working, send me an email off-list and I’ll get together with you to get it done. Serious requests only :)

Next item, the impending end of IPv4. As we are all aware (we keep being told by the PTBs), IPv4 address space is rapidly running out. You can check the IPcalypse via Twitter or many other countdown clocks. In keeping with the desire to spread panic knowledge, I mentioned two items of interest.

The first being that Hurricane Electric (an ISP/colo/etc.) out of California is offering an IPv6 certification. While it’s a little lighthearted, it does cover all of the bits of information you would need to know and it’s free.

The second item is that a conference/information event is being organized here in Ottawa for either spring or fall of 2011. I have volunteered to be on the planning committee, so as details are made available, I’ll keep you up to date.

I brought up the topic of system monitoring, specifically with Zenoss. I’ve been playing with it and will be deploying it at $DAYJOB for North American monitoring. The project has become a little higher profile than I’d want for an initial cut, but that’s the way this stuff goes. From what I can see, it handles pretty much anything I want to monitor. The real strength comes from the customizations and third-party addons. Once I get it all set up, I’ll do a demo and we may want to make it another technical project or an ongoing one where we can look at specific things or extracting useful information. The bottom line is that people want to see what their systems are doing and this provides a nice visual without being too overwhelming. It even does windows.

I think I left out VOIP. I’ve finally gotten around to replacing my aging Norstar system with a VOIP server. I don’t have it fully integrated yet, but I do have a business line on it and that seems to be working really well. My next integration will be Google Voice (free calling across North America and an inbound  dial-up number). Currently only available in the US, but if you have a US gateway, you can figure it all out. I think I can manage a few presentations on that, VOIP setup, adding analog services, adding SIP/IAX services, including third-party services, etc. For those who are interested, system requirements are very light unless you want to run a 50 person business, where a cheap modern machine can easily handle it - say $300.

We also covered the ASA with SSO. This is not a modern cisco security appliance with single sign on, but rather the annual social affair with spouses/significant others. This year, we are looking at one of the pubs downtown. I’ll post details hopefully at the end of the week. Next week worst case.