DevCentral Top 5 3/20/2009

With the Real IT series in full swing, the team got together this week to hash out plans for the coming months. It's always productive and exciting when we get the team together in one room, and this was no exception. I'm eager to share with everyone all the things that are coming your way, but for now a recap of the last weeks of DevCentral's best will have to do. There has been some great content in the last couple weeks, so enjoy.

 

TFTP Server via iRules

http://devcentral.f5.com/s/Default.aspx?tabid=63&articleType=ArticleView&articleId=343

This example iRule that spawned out of a forums discussion is absolutely fantastic. It's a killer example of community collaboration, the different ways that information gets spread across DevCentral, and it's also just a darn cool solution. A client wanted to serve a file via TFTP out of an iRule. Many people would have been daunted, but Jason was able to craft a very cool solution that shows off just how powerful iRules can be. Having chatted with Jason about this a bit while he was building it I was excited to see it wrapped up as a doc, and I definitely think it's worth a read.

Intro to Load Balancing for Developers - How they work

http://devcentral.f5.com/s/weblogs/dmacvittie/archive/2009/03/17/intro-to-load-balancing-for-developers-ndash-how-they-work.aspx

It's funny that with all the talk of trying to get developers and application engineers/architects to utilize the application extension features in the LTM more often that this kind of thing hasn't been done before. In the second installation of this series Don gives a good, straight-forward look at how Load Balancing and Load Balancers work, but with a mind towards the development savvy. It's something that will hopefully help bridge the gap in mindsets and experience and I think it's a good read regardless of your level of dev geekery. Be sure to check this one out and look out for future updates to the series. This one promises to be a good one.

Real IT Episode 4, Colos and Testing

http://devcentral.f5.com/s/weblogs/realit/archive/2009/03/18/real-it-episode-4-colos-and-testing.aspx

The Real IT series is well under way and continues to deliver every week with this fourth episode now live on DevCentral. You can follow along as we work through the questions, problems and discovery surrounding getting some accelerated, localized content delivered to our China team and their local users. It was a great ride and I definitely learned a lot, as did the whole team. I'm very much hoping that some of that is passed on through the video series. We're all hoping that we can shed some light on what went into making this happen, and possibly answer some questions others might have in similar situations. Maybe we can even convince some people that it can be done when they thought it'd be too complicated, who knows.

Control, choice, and cost: The Conflict in the Cloud

http://devcentral.f5.com/s/weblogs/macvittie/archive/2009/03/18/control-choice-and-cost-the-conflict-in-the-cloud.aspx

In yet another great blog post, Lori digs into some of the issues facing the proliferation of cloud infrastructures. Enterprises wrestle with the perceived lack of control brought on by some cloud providers lack of attention to the details of the infrastructure needed to support a flourishing application deployment. Turning a blind eye to things such as Security, Authentication, Rate Shaping and Compression across a deployment is a narrow view of reality and causes trepidation amongst those that require such control, limiting their choices. Lori explains it in much more detail with a great explanation of some of the problems and solutions currently faced. Take a look for yourself.

iRules 101 - #15 TCL List Handling Commands

http://devcentral.f5.com/s/Default.aspx?tabid=63&articleType=ArticleView&articleId=342

Keeping the iRules 101 series alive, Jason put out another great tip last week that didn't get highlighted, so I wanted to take a moment to do so here. Lists inside of TCL are a powerful and often used feature in the iRules toolbox. This is a great look at some of the options you have to work with them and what can be done. Digging into a few of the most popular of these commands Jason gives usable examples that show how they work and what you might do with them. I'm always a fan of iRules articles with code-based examples and Jason doesn't disappoint on this one.

 

There's your Top 5 for the week. If you have any feedback or suggestions please don't hesitate to drop me a line.

#Colin