Deven Kampenhout's Tech Blog

I find it both amusing and interesting how eventually the major "free" linux distributions had to turn to a service based licensing model. It only makes sense, as the axiom my mother taught me when I was young still holds true: "There ain't no free lunch." With Enterprise level support requirements, comes Enterprise level licening fees. New studies now show that licensing and support costs do not significantly differ between Windows Server 2003, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, or Novell/SUSE Linux 8...

What do you think? Should I wear the RedHat cap to MMS 2005? Let me know and post comments to my blog. Your voice will determine whether I wear the cap or not....

I found a fun article called " True Stories of Knoppix Rescues ". My first experience with Knoppix was when a co-worker of mine pulled a business-card sized CD out of his wallet during a server emergency. It sure does come in handy to carry around one...

With this post, a new blog is born. Keep reading, as this isn't your typical blog by your typical Microsoft employee. My name is Deven Kampenhout. I'm not new to blogging, but you probably won't find my name on other blogs, as I've posted as an anonymous alias in the past. My blog wasn't only technically oriented, but was more of a creative expression of whatever was on my mind. This blog will be focused primarily on technology, especially about the battle between Microsoft and Open Source i...

I've spent some time checking out Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 (MOM) over the two weeks. If you don't know what it is, it's a solution designed to manage the operations of servers and data center infrastructure. I'm extremely impressed by MOM 2005. Let me give you more background as to why. This is of particular interest to me specifically because of my experience with web hosting. In my early days of hosting, we built our own custom operations monitoring software/solution. It was very ba...

This idea isn't new, but the fact that Bill is driving focus towards software interoperability is very encouraging. I remember the first time I heard of XML, thinking how it was a nice idea, but that it was a bit "overbilled" and "overhyped". However, I have to admit that using XML as a common interoperability mechanism is a great idea. It allows you to publicize your communication / interoperability schemas without requiring interfacing programs/programmers to understand all of the details abou...

Peter Gulutzan wrote an interesting article describing his Mysql Triggers Tryout with the latest Alpha build of MySQL 5. I've been a long-time fan of MySQL. I first started using it in 1998, and have watched with great interest as it has matured. It seems that it is working very hard to match the features of the "enterprise" level SQL databases such as Oracle and MS SQL. For quite some time, many enterprise database (MS SQL, Oracle, etc.) advocates have pointed out the lack of features such as t...

In my prior life before coming to Microsoft, I didn't use Windows as a server but rarely and as a workstation very little. My main workstation was running on RedHat (or Fedora from time to time), and I managed mostly Unix and Linux servers, only managing...

… Continued from part one : In the beginning of 1999, the small hosting company I worked for (Virtual Servers, LLC.) realized that they were loosing business because they didn’t have a Windows based hosting product offering. By this time we were using...

Today when reading slashdot , I was referenced to an article that so eloquently states what I've been thinking for some time now: You can quit proclaiming Linux the Windows killer. Linux is established and has a niche that, as various pendulums...

Even though I didn't get as many comments as I'd hoped , the few that I received convinced me to commence wearing my RedHat cap at the Microsoft Management Summit 2005 in Las Vegas. I wore it on Thursday. It was a good day to wear it, as just the day...

This is funny. If you do a search for "search" on Google, MSN will show up higher than google: Wait, now wipe that smirk off your face! Do the same search on MSN and you find that Google shows up well before MSN search: Go figure!

At the Microsoft PDC today, I attended a talk entitled, "Web Application Packaging and Deployment". It went into detail about how the Microsoft Web Deployment Tool can significantly ease deployment for ASP.net applications onto a supporting Windows platform...

According to an article posted at thewhir.com , Nearly the entire staff for European Web hosting provider Amen ( amenworld.com ) has been on strike since its parent company Via Net.Works announced early last week that it had been acquired by Claranet...

Google has entered the web hosting space. <gasp!> Well, it was bound to happen. People have been speculating about this for a long time. They have a site-builder application that you can access via your gmail account at http://pages.google.com...

Yesterday I finally made the plunge and installed both Windows Vista RC1 and Microsoft Office Beta on my primary work laptop. I've been dabbling with Windows Vista for over a year now, and have even played with the Microsoft Office Beta on my home system...

We're on the threshold of a concept called the "Third Wave of Computing". This term was one I first heard coined about 4 years ago, which describes the state of computing power. I first heard this when the CEO of the hosting company which employed me...

Wired.com has an article reporting about Web Hoster Zipa , who is still keeping their servers up despite being smack in the middle of one of the greatest natural disasters in US history. Apparently there is an employee who is keeping a blog hosted there...

Come on people! I need more of you saying that I should wear my cap if I'm going to do it. So far, there are only two comments on my post asking whether I should wear my RedHat cap to MMS 2005 to draw attention to the fact that for companies like Web...

As we last left my chronicle of my experiences in Web Hosting, I was the sole systems administrator at Virtual Servers. The systems were running high on load average, which isn't surprising given what we were running on the hardware that was available back then. I quickly realized that the only way to begin to address the problems in any meaningful way was to automate fixes and avoid short-term "band-aid" fixes....

Here is an interesting article on the history of linux: http://www.linuxgazette.com/node/9721

Blog Rules 1/10/2005 One of the reasons I love to blog is how it enables intelligent discussion. The blogger throws out some ideas, and if the post gets enough attention, the post will have some discussions generated in the form of "comments". Sometimes...

I talked with the CTO of Jalasoft yesterday at MMS 2005. They build connectors and management packs for MOM. The interesting thing about their product is that they also support linux monitoring. They do this via an agent that is installed on the managed...

Last week I was in Atlanta to pack up my families stuff and close on my house. Everything went relatively smooth, but I'll hold my breath until everything is delivered out of storage. The good news is that my house closed, so I'm officially homeless now...

TheWhir is reporting on a press release by Google that they will release their web analytics engine (which they acquired from Urchin) for free. The service will generate revenue via their adwords service. I wonder what kind of effect this will have...