My blog has certainly suffered a slow down in the last 2 years… I thought I’d provide a little insight as to why, give you a little insight into where I’m at these days, and ask for your suggestions on the future.
Once upon a time, my blog was a predominately Solaris blog. In fact it became over time the most read Solaris blog. Thanks to Google it actually still is, because I have verify few active readers, the vast majority come to the blog via some Google search for this problem or that and find what they are looking for. As a result, many people don’t even realize I stopped blogging about Solaris some time ago, which I find a bit funny. At Velocity this year several people came up to me and thanked me for the blog, whom I then would ask “Does it bother you that I’m talking about DevOps now instead of Solaris?” Each of them gave me a blank look and said “You stopped blogging about Solaris?” 
I stopped writing about Solaris for several reasons. The first was that I’d covered so much ground that I would start to write about something and realize I’d already done so a year before. Another was that some of the things I wanted to write about where simply too large or complex for a blog, but not quite enough for a book. Yet another is that sometimes, as a writer, you can start to take yourself too seriously and give too much thought to critics and thus feel that many things you want to write about are “too basic” or “too dumb” to write about.
Another big reason was of course Oracle taking over Sun and there being a very unclear future for the community at large. The Illumos project brought OpenSolaris back to life, but given that so many people in the Solaris community are from the enterprise space (directly or indirectly) it was unclear whether Illumos would truly provide an alternative to Oracle Solaris. And besides that, I had become far too involved in Sun and OpenSolaris internal politics and governance and other non technical crap which I feared becoming involved with again under Illumos… thankfully the Illumos community actively stamped out any of the old politics before it took root again, but I was happy to provide a wide birth while it sorted out.
Yet another reason was that for a long long time I’ve wanted to change formats. For at least 6 years now I’ve wanted to move from “blogging” to producing screen casts. For many topics there is only so much you can digest from a written entry, at some point its easier to just show you. I’ve started down that road many times but never gotten it off the ground. Maybe one day it will.
However the largest reason was that about the time OpenSolaris imploded I was pretty well burned out on the whole thing anyway. Using Solaris was far less a challenge than managing and operating a large environment. I became obsessed with the question “How do you run a cloud?” That’s the question that drove me into learning all sorts of strange things. I blogged about some of them in the last 2 years, but held back quite a bit because it was unusual fare for my Solaris audience. I could write about Deming and Ackoff and Ford and Ohno all day long… but who would want to read it? Lucky for me, DevOps came along about the same time and a community of like minded individuals formed around these same ideas. I’ve been thankful for that community and how its brought so many of us together who were each on our own individual journeys.
And so, there are my excuses for being a bad blogger… not that I actually consider myself a blogger in the first place. I just like to help people and this is the best vehicle to do so.
Now for how you can help. What would you like me write about? Should I go back to writing about Solaris features? Should I write about all the new Solaris variants (SmartOS, OmniOS, etc)? Should I write more DevOps nuggets? Are there “old” topics that still should be discussed that no one is talking about anymore? At the end of the day, I still fundamentally believe in SA’s helping SA’s. How can this SA help you? Its time for me to get back in the game.
Just write about what interests you. If you find something interesting / hard or worth repeating to others then your heart will be in it. That passion is what comes through in your blogs. Technologies and interests change, but a good SA with good insights are what make the difference in quality of a blog. As you said yourself most people come across your blog from a google search. I suspect that they come back or subscribe based on the quality of the content and not just the content itself.
I don’t understand why you have to restrict yourself to a single thing? Solaris (and variants), DevOps, hardware, “cloud” (hate that word). It is all good. It sounds like limiting yourself is what brought your blog to a halt in the first place. Write about the things that you want to write about. Otherwise it will become a chore.
what do you mean you stopped writing about Solaris!!???
But seriously, what makes your writing so good is that it doesn’t really matter what the topic happens to be, you engage the reader with your enthusiasm and the way you explain the concepts and your thoughts. I’ve enjoyed all of it, from your excitement at ZFS to the analogy of road markings being one of the most effective ‘policies’…
Seriously, you were missed, but don’t feel any pressure to make frequent posts… with you it is very much quality over quantity.
I personally would love to hear about the new Solaris variants; although I left systems adminstration behind around the time of the OpenSolaris implosion, I do still have a soft spot for Solaris and would love to see those technologies liberated in a usable form.
In my humble opinion, since this is your blog, you should write about what you like! Nothing more.
Obviously, sometimes, you have written about topics in which I’m not interested at all. But, that’s good. Because your articles are always very clear and detailed, and you are able to involve me in new topics. That’s the important thing.
Then, of course, I miss your posts on Solaris and Unix variants and features…
Write about whatever interests you — that’s the only way it’ll keep being interesting!
I do hope you’d write about Solaris and variants though. There’s not a lot of people keeping up on the community and actually spreading this information. I know I’d love to read about developments in the area, the various distributions, and so forth.
Yes, write about what interests you. The web is a big place, and this is your little slice of it: don’t feel you need to bend to the will of an anonymous audience.
That being said …
I’d like to hear why you think the Solaris variants keep soldiering on. What would you tell a RedHat/CentOS admin that would give them an idea of why the “open” Solaris community keeps pushing for some flavor of that OS to survive? The way it manages services makes the system a bit more durable? Robust and easy handling of large quantities of fast storage? Lightweight and extremely scalable virtualization? Resource controls that actually work? Logical networking that makes playing “what if” in a lab setting something you can fit on a single box?
I’ve used Solaris at work, and OI at home, so you can tell I have my own ideas
. But even if you’re not really focused on Solaris anymore… if you still feel the need to give the OI/SmartOS/* community a helping hand, I think you may have a unique perspective from stewing in DevOps for awhile. Don’t tell the Linux world about the technical awesomeness of some Solaris features: that has been done. Tell them about how these things may let them knock off early on a Friday because something complex took less time. Tell them how these things mean they won’t get as many calls at 1am because something fell over that in Solaris-land would have repaired itself.
That’s a story that will get a Linux admins attention.
Hi!
I found and started following your blog because of Solaris/ZFS stuff.
I’m most interested in OpenIndiana, illumos, ZFS, smf, ips and stuff like that, but also *bsd, Linux stuff (like systemd) and general SA stuff.
As ling as it interests you, it might be interesting …
–
Phil
I happened across your blog as a student working a university jr admin job, as a linux user looking to up his Solaris ante, and as a loon trying to get Enlightenment up and running on a SunBlade 100
I stayed because it’s a pleasure to read. So I say: write about what interests you and what you’re thinking about.
Things I’m interested in reading? DevOps, any ruminations on the current Illumos variants and community, funny anecdotes. Did someone say screencasts?
You must be learning so much everyday at your company, both devops and director-ops, and sharing your insights with us each day would be greatly appreciated.
Write about installing and managing SmartOS in a large enterprise.
How would one mass-install it?
Scale it?
Cluster it?
pkgsrc is the new mantra for SmartOS. How about writing how to make pkgsrc binary packages?
How would one customize SmartOS for one’s own large deployment?
How about describing the SmartOS contribution process? How does one intergrate a piece of code into Illumos?
There is plenty to write about where Illumos, SmartOS and engineering of large scale systems intersect. You most likely won’t run out of topics for quite a while. Bring it all together.
Personally I appreciate how you seem to simply cut through the crap – Ie. concisely conveying whatever point it is you are blogging about.
Even your ‘old’ blogs quite evidently still contain good value (in fact I often use them for reference) from Solaris to DevOps (including nuggets like ‘the last shall be first’).
Please do continue with your Solaris feature/innovations content, it’ll simply appeal to the like minded (as you and others have noted).
It often seems many provide a solution before they’ve identified the problem being solved. Being unaware of the challenges can too easily result in setting off on a course much more difficult to deviate from.once awareness of the challenges dawn.
You would probably significantly influence the Solaris adoption (or the appropriate fork) by emphasizing the enterprise features which just don’t seem to be in other variants at this time .. after all OEL is now OL (probably in recognition of this).
I for one did notice you weren’t blogging about Solaris, I kind of guessed the second reason of why you stopped. But I still enjoyed all of the devops subjects anyway. The only thing I really missed was the Joyent ps pipe grep podcasts.
But I would like to see your opinions on the new Solaris variants as part of your blog.
I would like to see your thoughts on the current state of the Solaris community and the various open distros. I subscribed to your blog many years ago primarily for your Solaris posts. As an admin who has been responsible for Solaris systems for the last 15 years, I’ve been a bit disheartened by what happened to Sun and Solaris since the Oracle takeover. The license and support cost of running Solaris on 3rd-party x64 machines has increased by such an astronomical amount that I’ve been contemplating a migration to Ubuntu or some other Linux distro. I took a look at Illumos-based Solaris alternatives about a year ago and felt that they weren’t quite baked enough for production server use. I’m curious about what others are using in production these days…
For me the best thing from you was a simple idea: learn from developers. Observe and learn.
Sysadmins get really weak tools. I remember what a c# teacher spoke about powershell, I could feel his confused attitude at some language simplifications. Complex things and bash don’t go together.
To modify last sentence, sysadmins cant do more complex things than bash allows. Sorry, not fair. But C itself is quite an old language. Back from times without version control.
It takes time to acquire the understanding that sysv startup script + a cron job to restart a bad app is just silly. Sure it works.
In a way your blog has helped my dreams to another level. Your blog created that bash comparison.
For me the most valuable are the things that get some excitement into eyes besides daily job. Those that give me something to think about.
I almost dropped off from your blog after all that xSolaris projects political development.
Write about innovations that excite you.
I do not use Solaris anymore, just enjoy the parts that are a lot more advanced than linux or the users are more serious.
You know, there is a wide world out there besides our daily job direct requirements
Allow you readers to change and smile with you.
I do not have an answer, only fragments.
Blog about whatever currently interests you.
I found your blog less than a year ago when I became a Solaris admin. I ended up installing e17 on my personal workstation because I saw you writing about it. I saw the transition to DevOps topics in the blog, and was disappointed when you seemed to stop posting just as I was starting to really get interested in the ideas you were talking about.
In short, I subscribed because you have proven yourself to be knowledgeable and to have interesting insights. I don’t see that changing just because you start talking about DevOps instead of Solaris.
Good to see you coming back to blogging, Ben. I’ll echo what a couple of others have stated—write about what interests you. If it doesn’t interest you, the passion won’t be there, and if the passion about the topic isn’t there, readers won’t come (in my opinion). While I’d personally love to hear about the up-and-coming Solaris/OpenSolaris variants, I’m also equally interested in DevOps and other topics.
I have been reading your stuff, for so long (although some time periods I missed) you only had 1 child.
I’m SA (among other..) for quite some time, my career was most Solaris or FLOSS stuff in SA enviroments.
Solaris is good, Solaris is very good, but then it came Oracle.
Now Solaris is good, very good, as good as Oracle RAC… expensive, not on Oracle interest to spread the OS with a wider purpose, they’re in the license business, the hard core money making and they are good at it, no doubt about it.
I had an interview in Oracle about 1 year ago after the acquisition, and I sucked to them so much as they sucked to me it wouldn’t work I’m glad it was clear for both parts.
I’s very good company, but at this moment at least (everything changes) they just don’t have the charisma I saw in Sun offices.
What about the rest? I live in a very sunny, very beautiful, very recessed country called Portugal…
Oracle boxes and software aren’t for everybody, I have customers that have it, still use it, but what about the others? What about the community?
We need alternatives, I second UX-admin comment, we need to hear about SmartOS and other technology that we can use in the enterprise apart from early adopter companies. And we need trust, trust to implement, trust to advocate…
An example: I’ve been playing with Centos/Ubuntu and they work very well, but sometimes you stumble uppon stuff like… If I had zones in here and ZFS, all this chroot service pain would be much more easier (just to give an example).
And Virtualization? RHEVM for my isn’t an alternative, Vmware is by far the best in Enterprise enviroments but is skyrocket expensive. What to use? How to use?
Makes sense to you?
Hope my 5 cents are helpfully..
Either way, “restart” writing you are a very good “blogger”
Cheers
Nuno.
From one perspective, it doesn’t matter what you blog about, because whatever it will be, it will be brilliant! From my selfish perspective, SmartOS… please… and thank you for the expectation of the upcoming brilliance!
First, thank you for all you have written and blogged in this space. I’ll echo the comments of the rest of the community here — please just write what interests you and what problems you’ve solved recently. I’d love to hear about your scaling issues at Joyent, perhaps how you’ve helped customers move into a DevOps & cloud world, anything related to your operations research.
And if you’d rather present it in audio or screencast form, just please link it here and/or on the SmartOS blog so we can find it.
Dude, tell us about Deming and Akoff and Ford and Ohno and all that systems stuff…
The SA profession is changing, so we change with it. Just write about what’s hot for you right now.
We’ll probably need to follow you sooner or later, lest we be replaced by a very small shell script.
Feel free to write on every subjet that you like.
Of course, I would love you to write on illumos / openindiana / smartos / illumian / … and get / share some sysadmin tips.
And also how to make a nice NAS box with let say openindiana as a base OS for example.
Hello Ben,
I guess I am one of the few people coming to your site on a regular basis.
Personally I would like you to come back to writing things about Solaris derivatives (Omni, Smart, etc.), and maybe some “fringy” topics that come across your way.
Regards,
Arne
While I’m not a fan of me-too comments, you want some data to back up whatever blogging direction to take, so here’s my $0.02: Keep blogging. I’m not a “regular” – I drop by the blog every couple/few weeks, because that’s often when I see something new. For a while, there seemed to be months between posts, then about 12 in a row and I’d have to catch up all at once. Then I come back every few days, watch the crickets chirping, and go away for a while.
Ben, you express yourself well, and write about things I care about, on Solaris and derivatives, on the profession of System Administration, on DevOps … SO – my vote is Life, Work, Blogging, in that order. If you can squeeze a little more blogging in, on whatever topic(s) you choose, I’m definitely in favor.
best,
.brian
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I read and enjoyed your blog despite rarely having to touch Solaris and never enjoying it… in my current job I never have to touch it. I’d write about whatever you enjoy. The aspect of your writing that really appealed to me was the rigour of your approach to problem solving. The DevOps stuff would be relevant to my current occupation but I’d still come and read if you wrote 100% Solaris once again.
As a Sun/Oracle programmer, I enjoy your posting about Solaris. Why do you stop writing about Solaris or limit yourself in Solaris? I just hope you write anything you think deserve and feel good.
SmartOS is the most innovative thing I’ve seen in the OS space in years. I’d love to hear an inside perspective on it.
Re: change formats and screen casting
Remember that some of your intended audience will only *hear* (and will basically filter-out the visuals), whilst others only *see* (and will filter-out much of the audio)… ie: don’t go completely visual, it may be a good idea to make the content identifiable and (if possible) make at least some sense when consumed audio-only, visual-only, and in-between.
Thanks for sharing your opinions and wisdoms over the years; it has made a difference!
Hi Ben,
I learnt a lot from your site, and I keep coming back to the blog, to see if anything new is written. I passed my SCSA about 8 years ago, with you help via email or on IRC.
To be honest, in my opinion the Solaris space has gone very quiet since the Oracle take over. It would be good to know what is happening in the opensource space for Solaris.
Also, it would be good to take your view on the private/public cloud?
Also keep blogging about devops
Cool!…
What are your thoughts on the general direction of System Administration? Where do you see the computing industry going? Your perspective on Virtualization technologies, VMware in particular, SmartOS, and Puppet …would all be interesting … just to name a few topics.
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New Solaris variants please
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Wow, so many before me have already said some great things, but I’ll reiterate.
Write what you feel like writing about. All the topics you suggest are of interest to many people, some won’t like some articles but that doesn’t matter.
Go for it, and write what makes you happy. I’ll keep reading. (have been for so long now, I forget, but probably around 2000 is when I started…)
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The Solaris Community has gone very silent, even more so the SPARC community. The Solaris variants in conjunction with the hardware that runs Solaris are the things left, which have little shown for them.
Someone talking about these things would help to bring light.
thx for clarification and thx for coming back. first of all I like to reiterate what others already have said: post what you feel good about.
that said I think even though solaris kinda imploded its far from dead and currently in an process of re-focusing and prioritization.
the small post-solaris ecosystem sees a lot of innovation and is the only os outside of linux that attracts smart people doing interesting and important things. without these developments we would truly face a sort of a linux monoculture in the enterprise space. there is just not much going on outside of torvalds reach; hp-ux future is uncertain (good riddance) and aix is well aix.
I believe these are interesting times for the ‘solaris-community’ and I believe you could provide valuable contributions to the debate and shape the future of post-solaris ecosystems. so please spend at least a share of your blog-time with solaris and derivatives.
Hi Ben,
First things first – thanks for all your toughts and insights in the past – what ever topic it was, it was filled with passion. You could probably write about “How to drive a bicycle” and it would be interessting, because you mention things others wouldn’t care or even realise it exists. Perhaps you just have a differnt point of view and inspire others.
Another thing is, that you write simple (KISS) and reduced to what’s important.
Since the sun doesn’t shine anymore, it became dark for a while. Enterprises initiated “Off Solaris” projects and migrated to linux. With Oracle there was no expectation that solaris would be cheaper than their Linux. Business have to be cheap and words like “Low cost” and “cloud” still are overused by managers these days.
For me, there is 1 major thing why solaris > opensolaris > openIndiana > smartOS get out of Business: Lack of Hardware Support / Drivers
Slogans like “Linux is the better Unix” depends on the usability. Like on the tablets (“there is an app for…”) the applications connect to the consumer. The Consumer would be hunted by the corporations. And the corporations produce the hardware and support their prefered OS.
The OS is still the layer where you can keep your competitors away (apple)… and Larry know this as well: Software, Hardware – Complete!
He is now able like apple on the client/mobile side to do the same on the Server Side.
So back to the Lack of Client-Device-Drivers… would illumos/smartOS be able to push the developement of state of the art client/mobile device drivers? NO?
Then it never become popular and without popularity there is no/small business.
Otherway.. just drop us your different point of view!