Up for July is:  FMYi

An Interview With Eric Rath, Director of Technology

Contegix: Why was FMYI started?

Eric:

Justin Yuen founded FMYI in 2004 after a successful career at Nike, where he managed innovative organizational change programs, designed collaboration tools, built the business case for sustainability, and managed global employee training. Justin conceived FMYI due to his passion for sustainability and an interest in how advances in technology can help lessen our impact on the planet while positively affecting society. Over the last six years, he and the FMYI team have built a million-dollar collaboration software company of 15 employees with headquarters in Portland, Oregon.

Contegix: What are some of the challenges that FMYI faced while growing?

Eric:

We face the same challenges as many other companies. Solving these challenges has involved developing relationships with customers, understanding their needs, improving our products with an eye toward those needs, and controlling our costs.
Contegix: How has technology played a role in the success of FMYI?

Eric:

We sell software as a service (SAAS), so technology has always been the means to that end. In addition to the software we’ve developed, several open-source projects form the basis for our service. Spring framework, Hibernate, and Lucene are some of the more significant pieces.

Contegix: What made FMYI decide to go with Contegix?

Eric:

We built our software on the Spring framework, and first became aware of Contegix through its hosting of springframework.org.  Our key criteria for selecting a vendor were competence, security, professionalism, and cost. We had several conversations with the Contegix technical staff before committing, and were impressed with the breadth and depth of their knowledge of technology we already used or planned to use.  It was also clear that Contegix would be able to meet our needs as we grew.  Shortly after switching, we added several new customers with extensive security requirements. Contegix met all the requirements relevant to their operations, and were able to work with our customers to demonstrate this compliance. Over the last few years, they’ve certainly earned our trust in their competence and professionalism.  Although Contegix’s prices are not the lowest, the quality of both the service and technical counsel makes them a better value.

Contegix: How do you see us fitting into your technology strategy now and in the future?

Eric:

Someone described Contegix as assuming the role of your systems and network administration departments; and in our experience, that description is pretty accurate.  In some cases, we know exactly what we need them to do, and how; they make it happen.  In other cases, we describe to them what we need; they describe the options, and implement our choice.  They’re also proactive in all the areas you’d expect.  Contegix is our most significant technology vendor, and will continue to be.

Contegix: What other companies in the tech field (and beyond) do you admire, and why?
Eric:

Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood have done a great job with the StackOverflow site (and the StackExchange platform).  It’s a well-implemented Web application, and they achieved their goal of creating a rich resource of accurate, peer-reviewed technical information.  The Yahoo Developer Network and the YSlow plug-in have helped us identify and fix issues with our own Web application.  Outside the technical sector, I admire the Vanguard Group (the mutual fund company) for the degree to which they’ve aligned their business interests with those of their clients/customers, and Nike for their focus on innovation and performance.

Contegix: Fair Game: Ask us a question, serious or silly. And we’ll answer. What would you like to know about us? (Question will go to a tech person or management member for answer.)

Eric:

I have three:

Contegix necessarily uses a significant amount of electricity in providing service to its customers.  Can you explain how the cost of electricity and the environmental impact of its generation affect your future plans?

Matthew and Craig, what aspects of starting Contegix and helping it grow have been most rewarding?  How does your answer differ from your expectations when starting out?

Finally, will Albert Pujols finish his career in St. Louis?  There’s always room for him in the Bronx…

Answered by: Matthew Porter, CEO & Co-Founder and Craig McElroy, CTO & Co-Founder

Craig:

For the past few years we have focused on utilizing servers with energy efficient processors wherever possible, and will continue to do so in the future.  For our current and future expansion plans, the greenness of the datacenter is a strong factor in our decision making process.  In addition to all efforts to conserve power, we also take steps to recycle wherever possible.

Matthew:

The most rewarding thing has been positively impacting our employees’ (and even our customers’) livelihoods.  I remember the first time an employee purchased a house.  It happened to be the first house for him and his family.  That was absolutely one of my proudest moments and, thus, most rewarding.  He trusted us to respect his livelihood and ensure the company was stable.

When we started, I thought it would be winning the big customer.  It was obviously still exciting to win our biggest customer, but nothing compared to the employee’s first home.

And to answer your last question – I firmly believe that Saint Louis will not have a Lebron James-style situation!

We have been fortunate to find two such exceptional people and recent additions —Tim Boehmer (pictured at left), our Backup and Recovery Specialist, and Zack Georgeoff (picture at right), our Technical Engineer. Both gentlemen have extensive backgrounds in IT and come from very impressive backgrounds.

So next time you get logged in and see that all your data is safe and sound, be thinking of Tim —it’s his job to make sure your critical data is backed up around the clock for complete redundancy. And when you pick up that phone for support or shoot that email, you very well might get Zack, ready to help you get your support issue solved fast. They have both been great additions to our cast and crew of Contegians. If you are in need of additional backup (and want to keep Tim on his toes!) send your request to sales@contegix.com.

Programmers, You Need the Sysadmin. And Vice Versa.

In honor of System Administrator Appreciation Day, I decided to revisit an article from last year regarding the role of system administrators in the world of cloud computing.  At Contegix, system administrators (our engineers) make up the overwhelming majority of our staff.  Employing a significant engineering staff is a necessity as a provider.  They are responsible for delivering hosting and cloud solutions to our customers.  The article addresses the question of whether system administrators are needed when there is no physical or network infrastructure.

In October 2009, George Reese wrote an article for O’Reilly Community titled “Your Cloud Needs a Sys Admin”.  The article discusses how and why system administrators are still needed, even in the age of cloud computing.  George breaks it down to a simple point—divide responsibilities based upon skill sets and knowledge.

System administrators have had the role of hardware procurement removed in the world of cloud computing.  This is a huge benefit as it is often (but not always) mind numbing work for most administrators.  They are now allowed to focus on where they can deliver the highest value — the development and long term maintenance of the application infrastructure.  (No one buys a dedicated or cloud server to receive pings back.  It’s always been about the applications!)  Specifically, this represents the planning of application infrastructure, reducing risks and liability in it, and managing infrastructure across the ever changing landscape of application, user, and environment requirements.

If George is right, as we believe he is, I think we could see the overall evolution and expansion of what defines cloud computing.  In reality, cloud computing is outsourcing at its core definition.  A company outsources a portion or all of their Internet infrastructure requirements to another company specializing specifically in it.  The system administrator outsources the procurement of infrastructure to a company specializing in its delivery.  This is a physical outsourcing.  Yet, what is the next step?

Our belief is that the outsourcing will extend beyond just the infrastructure into the system administration of the infrastructure and application stack.  For Contegix, this represents the promise of our managed services — delivered for dedicated infrastructure as Beyond Managed Hosting and for cloud infrastructure as Cloud Cover.  We often see this as a blend of our customers’ system administration team and our system administrators.  We work together to supplement and compliment the other party, and both parties dive deeper and take responsibility for the application stack.  It also allows our customers to focus on their core business.

I think there is also another important, overlooked point in the article.  System administrators need developers.  System administrators are great at writing scripts and programs to make their lives easier.  Yet, system administrators are not specialists at building the applications.  At Contegix, we follow the same principle in often using outsourced development blended with some internal development.

At the time the article was published, we had just launched our public cloud offering.  This represented our first step into a platform that allowed customers to decide whether they wanted unmanaged or managed.  I remember reading the article and wondering how this would be reflected in our cloud.  Today, cloud computing with our Cloud Cover represents a double digit percentage of our cloud offering.

At Contegix, one of our core values is to respect people, data and time. While all three of these are absolutely critical, whether dealing internally with coworkers or externally with customers, failure to respect data carries the most potential for detrimental impact.

We realize that data is the lifeblood of our customers, so this core value pertains to taking measures to ensure data is saved and preventing that data from inadvertently falling into the wrong hands. One of our steps for handling data remaining on drives as part of the server decommissioning procedures is to wipe that drive using a United States Department of Defense 5220.22-M compliant process.

Our utility of choice is the open source Darik’s Boot and Nuke (DBAN) (http://www.dban.org), which includes a number of data clearing options as well as the full DoD 5220.22-M method. This does a seven-pass wipe using random characters, complements of those characters, and random data streams. In 2004, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA Advisory LAA-006-2004) found that even a single overwrite using the above method is sufficient to render electronic files unrecoverable. Furthermore, when recently meeting with a consultant from a major information security company specializing in computer forensics, he told us quite plainly that once you get past three passes of random writes, recovery is not possible.

While this data clearing approach accommodates the vast majority of data security needs we encounter, there are always going to be exceptions. The Defense Security Service, an agency of the DoD, provides a Clearing and Sanitization Matrix (C&SM), which specifies methods for sanitization of data. As of the June 2007 edition of the DSS C&SM, overwriting is no longer acceptable for sanitization of magnetic media, with only degaussing or physical destruction being acceptable. For cases of extreme data sanitization requirements where these guidelines must be met by our customers, we will provide arrangements whereby drives from that customer’s servers will be physically destroyed by a trusted
electronics recycling and media destruction firm.

While this approach clearly isn’t as green as a multi-pass wipe and repurposing of a drive, the logic board that contains no data is first removed from the drive and appropriately recycled before shredding takes place. Take a look at the included video to witness the gruesome fate that awaited some of the drives we recently took there for destruction.

For your own data protection concerns for all electronic devices capable of storing data, not just hard drives, review the NIST Special Publication 800-88, Guidelines for Media Sanitization (http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-88/NISTSP800-88_rev1.pdf).
Its recommendations can be applied to all types of organizations and are helpful in devising an appropriate policy based on the confidentiality level of your information.

For those of us that work regularly in Atlassian’s full portfolio of products, we know that we are, in fact, a unique bunch unto ourselves who use software and supporting tools that not just any Joe or Jill Schmoe uses. Atlassian’s products are all built on open-source, and coming across others who use their products is becoming common, thanks to the products being such solid software. Plug: If you don’t use Atlassian’s stuff, try it! Some licenses for the software start at just $10~with proceeds going to charity!

In an effort to unite locals with the same passion for good software and to share tips and tricks about how to best utilize these tools, Contegix has partnered with Atlassian to set up a St. Louis Atlassian User Group. You can find our group on Meetup.com here: http://www.meetup.com/St-Louis-Atlassian/. Our first meeting is scheduled for Thursday, August 19 at 6 p.m. at Hatch, which is located in Maplewood at 7305 Marietta, St. Louis MO 63143. We welcome you to join the group, and of course, forward the information to those you know who use any of Atlassian’s products. Together we hope to share insight and information and perhaps learn a trick or two ourselves in addition to general good times and fun that comes with meeting people.

When working with an open source library, sometimes the best documentation is the source code itself. Here’s a quick shell function for finding the code you’re looking for in the Python scripting language. Simply add these three lines to your .bash_profile or .bashrc file.

**

function pycd () {

cd `python -c “import os.path, $1; print os.path.dirname($1.__file__)”`

}

**

Now you can you use the ‘pycd’ command to change to the directory the module lives inside. Simply specify the module you’re looking for as an argument. Here is an example using the popular “lxml” module.

**

contegix@AJW-Contegix-MBP:~$ pycd lxml

contegix@AJW-Contegix-MBP:lxml$ pwd

/Library/Python/2.6/site-packages/lxml-2.2.6-py2.6-macosx-10.6-universal.egg/lxml

andrew@andrew-mbp:lxml$ ls

ElementInclude.py  _elementpath.py    cssselect.py       etree.py           objectify.py       pyclasslookup.pyc  usedoctest.pyc

ElementInclude.pyc _elementpath.pyc   cssselect.pyc      etree.pyc          objectify.pyc      sax.py

__init__.py        builder.py         doctestcompare.py  etree.so           objectify.so       sax.pyc

__init__.pyc       builder.pyc        doctestcompare.pyc html               pyclasslookup.py   usedoctest.py

**

The Python one-liner is pretty simple. It first imports the ‘os.path’ module and then the module that you specified on the command line (We’ll call this the “example” module). It then finds the parent directory of the example module by using the built-in attribute ‘__file__’. This special attribute is a string of the pathname of the file from which the module was loaded. The example module’s parent directory is then written to standard out where the shell expands it for use with the ‘cd’ command.

This command works with both modules in the standard library and with third party libraries. The only caveat is that this will not work with code that is still contained inside a “.egg” package as it’s not actually a directory on the file system.

SAINT LOUIS, Missouri (July, 2010) – Contegix, a privately held technology firm specializing in Internet infrastructure and hosting services, announced their agreement to provide sponsorship to Clojure development language project.

“At Contegix, we have a history that runs deep in the open source community, and look for ways to give back in any way that we can to help support efforts which push this technology forward. Clojure represents the next wave of languages that are designed to take advantage of the features of today’s computers, especially multi-core processors.  We saw this as an opportunity to provide our expertise in managed service to allow the Clojure community to focus on development rather than infrastructure management,” said Matthew Porter, CEO and Co-Founder of Contegix.

Clojure is a dynamic programming language that targets the Java™ Virtual Machine (and the CLR). It is designed to be a general-purpose language, combining the approachability and interactive development of a scripting language with an efficient and robust infrastructure for multithreaded programming. Clojure is a compiled language – it compiles directly to JVM bytecode, yet remains completely dynamic. Every feature supported by Clojure is supported at runtime.

“The Clojure development team is delighted to be sponsored by Contegix. Contegix has a long history of supporting quality open source projects. We now have build.clojure.org and dev.clojure.org on Contegix managed cloud hosting, and will be working in the coming months to make access to Clojure resources more simple and reliable than ever before. The entire Clojure community thanks Contegix for their support,” remarked Stu Halloway, a Clojure Committer

ABOUT CONTEGIX

Contegix holds expertise in high security managed hosting, cloud computing, applications management, colocation and Internet infrastructure intelligence. Their award-winning service is delivered by a staff of Tier-3 engineers from their global headquarters in St. Louis, MO. To find out more, please visit www.contegix.com.

ABOUT CLOJURE

Clojure is a dialect of Lisp, and shares with Lisp the code-as-data philosophy and a powerful macro system. Clojure is predominantly a functional programming language, and features a rich set of immutable, persistent data structures. When mutable state is needed, Clojure offers a software transactional memory system and reactive Agent system that ensure clean, correct, multithreaded designs. To learn more about Clojure please visit www. clojure.org

We’ll be celebrating each day with food, fun, and giveaways.

We feel this is the perfect time to celebrate our engineering staff and give them kudos for all the work they do for Contegix and all of our customers each and every day.  As part of the week long celebration we will be giving away a PlayStation 3 to one lucky member of our staff.  We want our clients to help us decide who that lucky individual should be.  Please take a moment to nominate your favorite Contegix engineer and provide them some kudos for excellent assistance they have provided you.  You can nominate the engineer(s) of your choice here.  You can nominate as many different engineers as you wish and nominate the same engineer(s) more than once as long as a valid reason for nomination is provided.  Polls will be open until 9:00am CST on July 30th.

Thank you for helping us to celebrate SysAdmin Week!

The script below provides bash tab-complete functionality for users of the
Hyperic HQApi utilities. Users will be able to use bash and tab to view
a list of possible options to complete the command they’re typing out.

Enjoy!

Click here to download the code

So far this year, we’ve had the distinct honor of sponsoring the GR8 (Groovy/Grails/Griffon) in the US conference this past April in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This is the FIRST conference of its kind being held in the US and it was a smashing success.

In addition, this year we’ve also sponsored the NFJS (No Fluff Just Stuff) technical conference as it makes its way across the US. This coming October, we’ll be a key sponsor of the Strange Loop technical conference being held in St. Louis, Missouri.

It doesn’t stop there. We recently heard about a terrific organization based on the East Coast called Jasig, which is a consortium of educational institutions and commercial affiliates who work together enabling the funding of open source software projects for higher education.

If you are part of a company that can assist any of these great organizations, we are sure they would appreciate the help. And all of us pitching in and supporting them together will only enable those who work in open source to benefit and move our technology forward.