Live and die by certificates (December 13th, 2016 Regular MUG Meeting)

December 13th, 2016 - MUG Meeting

Regular MUG Meeting

We meet at 6:30pm on the second Tuesday of each month at the Farmington Community Library.

Topics Include:

Lie & Die by Certificates 

Certificates are a fundamental component of identity and network security in companies of any size. You're likely already using Certificates even if you didn't know it. Learn about PKI & Certificates, how Certificates can be used, why they are important, their security benefits, and how you can implement them. This mini introduction to PKI & Certificates is ideal for IT Sys Admins, DevOps Engineers, and Developers. 

Mike Cooper is Founder & CEO of Revocent Inc. based in San Jose, California. He has 30+ years of development, IT, and management experience in small startups to Fortune 500. He has founded more than 5 technology and consumer companies, and was head of IT at another 3 startups. Mike started as a UNIX developer and System Admin more than 30 years ago. 

Random Access Memories

For the second part of the December Meeting we've devised a "Random Access Memories" panel discussion. This is a chance for folks to relate some of the things that we ran into as developers and systems administrators that didn't go quite according to plan:

  •  The series of drives that you thought were a RAID 1, but were actually RAID 0.
  • The Watchmouse node that was located in a far-away region that would constantly trigger a pager warning for ping timeouts.
  • The time you thought DAT tape was a reliable backup medium.


We've all had stories that have happened to us or our companies over the years and we'd like to take the latter-part of the December meeting to share these memories.

As with any discussion, there are a few ground-rules we'd like to follow:

1) We'll hand around an item of some form (old hard disk, or something that folks can pass around). The person that has it can tell their tale.

2) Whomever has the item is the only one that can tell the tale. If
someone else wants to interrupt with their variant they need to wait
until they get the item in order to tell their version.

3) Tales must be something the person experienced themselves. First-hand
accounts are preferred, though the person doesn't have to be the one who
initiated the problem, nor the one who fixed the problem.

4) Hopefully the tale will have a satisfying solution, but tales where
the solution was "we decommissioned it" are welcome.

5) After the tale is complete there will be a brief period where we
discuss the problem and the solution.

6) The discussion should be constructive: telling people what they did
was wrong and that "you should have" is not productive. We've all been
in situations where things were obvious outside of the crisis period.

7) This is intended to be a fun sharing time with some "lessons
learned". Berating people for what they or their organizations  did in
the past helps no-one.

8) The moderator will interrupt conversations that violate these rules.
Again, this is a place of sharing, not a place where we criticize the
past.

Hoping this gets you excited to share some of your tales.

(Oh, and by the way? Those examples at the top? Those were all from Craig Maloney's own experience. )

Plus we'll have our regular features: Jobs Looking for People, People Looking for Jobs, and much more! We'll also be meeting for dinner at Red Lobster in Novi after the meeting. 

When
December 13th, 2016 from  6:30 PM to  8:45 PM
Location
32737 W 12 Mile Rd
Farmington Hills, MI 48334
United States
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