This talk is comprised of several lightning talks. Each geared to help educate and inform on who and what you are really defending from, who you can ask for help, and basic operational security techniques via story time that can help tighten your defenses.

Bio:
Rob has been consulting businesses and consumers alike, with his security focused IT knowledge, for close to 20 years. His expertise with outside and inside plant infrastructure, hardware and software, administration, application and database development, and customer oriented service has led him on a journey of observing such mighty wins and fails. You can follow him on Twitter at @colosauce .

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As always, there will be dinner sponsored by Silicon Mechanics. Check them out at http://www.siliconmechanics.com/

There will also be several CACert assurers present.

The meeting will be at the Electrical Engineering building on the University of Washington Campus, aka EE1. Directions are linked to the EE Department’s web site above. Parking is $5 after 5pm.

Cloud Computing has redefined what we call “infrastructure”. What used to be the hardware and other components that resided within the confines of our own buildings, now lives out in the cloud effectively turning infrastructure into a service (IaaS). Windows Azure Infrastructure as a Service is Microsoft’s new service targeted at businesses that wish to extend or migrate their existing infrastructure into the cloud. We will spend time in this session discussing the new services, demoing features, and speaking about some of the possibilities the Cloud based IaaS extends to administrators.

Bio:
Chris started his career at Microsoft in 1994 as a contract customer service representative during the Windows 95 launch. At the time, he did not know who Bill Gates was or what Microsoft did prior to applying with the company. Why? He was a hard core Apple user and had been since the late 70′s. Chris left the company as a contractor in 1996 and returned 1 year later as a full time employee supporting networking technologies for Windows NT 4.0 Server and client connectivity. Shortly afterwards, he started supporting the Small Business Server product. In 2002, Chris took on the role of IT Evangelist and speaking to IT Professionals about the great products and technologies Microsoft had to offer. Since then Chris has embraced live events and social media (Twitter – @chrisavis, blog – http://chrisavis.com) as a way to get the word out to IT Professional in the US and around the world. When not geeking out on technology, Chris enjoys camping, hiking and traveling. He is also an avid Guitar Hero player and karaoke singer. If you ever want to go do some karaoke, let me know!

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As always, there will be dinner sponsored by Silicon Mechanics. Check them out at http://www.siliconmechanics.com/

There will also be several CACert assurers present.

The meeting will be at the Electrical Engineering building on the University of Washington Campus, aka EE1. Directions are linked to the EE Department’s web site above. Parking is $5 after 5pm.

As a society, we have come to rely upon a diverse assortment of computer systems to carry out essential tasks ranging from stock market transactions to Internet searches to FaceBook updates. Such systems are often expected to stay operational 24×7, come hell or high water. At the same time, software and systems have become increasingly large and complex, and therefore prone to failure. The task of debugging and diagnosing these failures can be as intricate as needlework and as Herculean as wrangling an angry rhinoceros. In this talk, I will give an overview of recent research projects that try to tame the systems beast using tools from machine learning and statistics. These methods analyze and mine the data contained in large volumes of automatically generated system logs, looking for clues as to why the system is failing. The results are meant to aid human operators in honing in on parts of the system that may require attention. I will describe successes and failures in this domain, and give some ideas of where we might go next.

Bio:
Alice Zheng is a researcher in the Machine Learning Group at Microsoft Research, Redmond. She spent her formative graduate student years at UC Berkeley, working on using statistical methods to automatically diagnose software failures. She spent two years at Carnegie Mellon University as a postdoc, working on analyzing social networks and diagnosing file systems. Since joining Microsoft, she has worked on lock contention problems in the Windows operating system. More recently, she is working on building tools that automate machine learning to enable easier and wider applications.
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As always, there will be dinner sponsored by Silicon Mechanics. Check them out at http://www.siliconmechanics.com/

There will also be several CACert assurers present.

The meeting will be at the Electrical Engineering building on the University of Washington Campus, aka EE1. Directions are linked to the EE Department’s web site above. Parking is $5 after 5pm.

“Thursday night the Seattle Area System Administrators Guild (SASAG) is hosting a welcome reception sponsored by Silicon Mechanics in the Governors Room at the Hotel Deca. There will be light refreshments and lots of people to connect with. The Governor’s Room is conveniently located next to the District Lounge, purveyors of stronger libations. The reception is from 7pm to 9pm but the doors won’t shut until much later for those who want to keep going.”

It officially goes from 7pm to 9pm but we expect the doors to stay open later for anyone who wants to keep talking.

If you’re visiting Seattle from out of town, don’t forget to make your hotel reservations by phone and be sure to mention the conference to receive a discounted room rate and parking.

We also hope you’ll join us Thursday, March 14th as the Seattle Area System Administrators Guild (SASAG) hosts a welcome reception sponsored by Silicon Mechanics in the Governors Room at the Hotel Deca. There will be light refreshments and lots of people to connect with. The Governor’s Room is conveniently located next to the District Lounge, purveyors of stronger libations. The reception is from 7pm to 9pm but the doors won’t shut until much later.

Now is an excellent time do do so!

Every hype cycle has to have it’s buzz word and this year it is Software Defined Networking (SDN). In fact, if you follow the IT press, it’s all becoming software defined: data center, storage, networking … everything. So, what is real about SDN, where did it come from, and why now. Most importantly though, is it really going to change anything?

Bio:
Tom has over 25-years of experience in IT leadership positions and possesses a variety of experience across a broad spectrum of industries including software development, social media, e-commerce, mobile, finance, and IT Services. Tom was a founder and CEO of Lacuna Systems, building software to leverage predictive analytics in the Application Performance Management market. Prior to Lacuna, Tom held senior management positions delivering scalable and reliable networks for Internet leaders including Microsoft, Demand Media, and Infospace.

Tom holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of North Texas. He is inspired by great art, great food, and the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest.

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As always, there will be dinner sponsored by Silicon Mechanics. Check them out at http://www.siliconmechanics.com/

There will also be several CACert assurers present.

The meeting will be at the Electrical Engineering building on the University of Washington Campus, aka EE1. Directions are linked to the EE Department’s web site above. Parking is $5 after 5pm.

The schedules for tutorials and technical sessions are posted. Full descriptions of all the tech talks will be posted in the next few days. Please share the news with anyone you think might be interested.

The tutorial slate has been announced. Technical presentations have been selected (and submitters notified). Registration will be opening and full schedule will be posted in the next few days.

This presentation will describe the history of ZFS, its differences from other file systems, various solutions built on ZFS, and tips on how to deploy ZFS.

Bio:
Tommy Scherer is a graduate of Portland State University and currently is a Product Engineer with Silicon Mechanics. From the SMB to large organizations, Tommy designs and architects storage, cloud and virtualization solutions. To adapt to the evolving software defined storage market, Tommy embraced open-source technologies as a cost-effective alternative to proprietary hardware and software stacks. With over 5 years of successful ZFS deployments, he is a recognized Subject Matter Expert and has been awarded the prestigious title of “Nexenta Fellow” by Nexenta System, Inc.

In his spare time, for which he has little, Tommy enjoys road racing his Suzuki GSXR 600 and is an avid skier and cycl

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As always, there will be dinner sponsored by Silicon Mechanics. Check them out at http://www.siliconmechanics.com/

There will also be several CACert assurers present.

The meeting will be at the Electrical Engineering building on the University of Washington Campus, aka EE1. Directions are linked to the EE Department’s web site above. Parking is $5 after 5pm.