ILUG 2008 Day 2: Thursday

My presentation was on at 9:00 AM. I didn't sleep much. I did one run-through last night and managed to complete in under an hour, but I have a few things I need to make sure I don't forget. I got up at 7:00 AM to make sure I had enough time to get those last things wrapped up and get over to the Conference Center.

I dragged Myron along and we arrived at about 8:00. The usual suspects were already there: Duffbert, Eileen (with "The" notebook attached), Mooney, Mr. & Mrs. Elsmore, Coatsie, Buchan, Matt, and probably a few others I'm missing. Eileen opened the door to Room 3 for me and I went in to set up.

I wasn't nervous as much as I was anxious to get it done in the time allotted. I got my laptop setup and started going through my notes from the night before, getting all my VM's ready. For those who don't know, here is how it was set up:

• I started with a single Windows Domino 8.0.1 mail server, running in a VM. I also had the Notes client 8.0.1 in this same VM.
  
• I pre-installed Ubuntu Hardy Heron and CentOS 5.1 with Domino 8.0.1 in two more VM's, but had not configured them yet
• During the demo I registered the new servers to create their server docs and id's, configured all the records for them, then brought the new servers online
• I clustered Windows and Ubuntu
• I took Windows down and moved it over to CentOS

It was a lot to get done in an hour. So much, in fact, that I don't think I'll attempt it ever again. :-P

I kicked off the session a couple of minutes after 9, and and after a few initial jitters I think it went very well. I only made a couple of slip-ups, such as not checking to see if AdminP had created some replicas before I ended the server, and not updating my hosts files with the new IP after I moved the server over. I recovered from those, though, and managed to barely finish in an hour.


Myron took this while I was getting ready. Yes, I'm reading the help on decommissioning a server and I'm wearing a really loud shirt with macaws all over it.

After my session was over things were a bit of a blur. I got some good feedback, but I'm worried that I covered so much at such a high level that it wasn't as useful as it could have been. I want to thank Gabriella Davis for agreeing to sit in the front row to coach me when I really messed up. I joked that I was going to introduce her, then say she was there in case I fainted, vomited, or started crying. Which I actually did say, so I made good on that. But I didn't do any of the other things.

So at the end of the day I accomplished everything in my agenda, all in an hour. I'm just questioning whether it was really worthwhile. It would be a slick demo from a marketing perspective, but I'm not so sure it's really effective as a session at a conference.