2015-10-25

Hello SUSE!

Today I logged on to SUSE Linux for the first time!
First I had to install a vnc server. I logged on with the help of putty and fired up yast in tty mode.
I installed tigerVnc, with yast it was a breeze.


Then I ‘vnc logged into’ SUSE, since it has a KDE gui I felt at home right away.

Now I ‘only’ have to create an ETL server for the Data Warehouse, this will take some time, since I have to do this in my spare time, it is sort of a hobby to me, I do IT architecture during work hours. I will blog about my progress.

2015-10-22

Data Warehouse upgrade

After procrastinated a general upgrade of the Data Warehouse for a long time we now have gone from Ubuntu 12.04 to 14.04. To my great surprise this upgrade seems to have worked well. We also painlessly upgraded MySql from version 5.5 to 5.6. We tried MySql 5.7 but found a number of incompatibilities, so we decided to wait with MySql 5.7 until we have ironed out any problem. We had a moment when we thought we had kissed the japanese DW satellite goodbye, after upgrading the server we restarted the server but it didn’t came up again. We had to wait for the guys in Japan to push the power button. But on the whole it was a smooth transition, about ten or so upgraded servers without any major issues.
After the upgraded Data Warehouse landscape have stabilized, we will also try to move our ETL server from Mageia to SUSE Linux. The Data Warehouse started on Mandrake Linux 2001 and continued on Mandriva and lately on Mageia. These Linux distros have served us well but now we will try SUSE not only for the hell of it, SUSE has a partnership with SAP and that might make the Data Warehouse more acceptable in the company. The sad story is nobody in the company knows what Mageia Linux is which makes the Data Warehouse kind of an oddball. SUSE Linux is more digestible for the IT community in the company. But we will try openSUSE not SUSE Linux Enterprise, after all the Data Warehouse was not formed after the  standard enterprise model.