Once a year, we honor the person who keeps the mail server running, restores the file you accidentally deleted and makes sure you can watch funny videos of cats. This person is the SysAdmin, the unsung hero of every great company. Ours is George. George makes sure that the right wires are connected to the right routers to the right switches to the right servers, which are connected to the right databases so that you get the best DNS service in the world.

At OpenDNS, we make the SysAdmin’s life easier every day by giving you all those green checkmarks signifying day after day of zero downtime along with the features to help make doing your job easier. SysAdmins are so important, we think it’s lame they only get one day of honor. It’s no secret that most times the SysAdmin only gets recognized when things go wrong. So this year, OpenDNS is celebrating SysAdmin Day throughout the month of July, not just on July 27th.

Every Monday in July we’ll deliver you a challenge, and every Friday we’ll announce the winner on our blog. Only SysAdmins are welcome to participate. Prizes will surely be something you consider a gift. (Hint: It won’t be more DNS uptime. You’re using OpenDNS, so you get that anyway. Hint 2: It includes the words “Gift” and “Certificate.”)

The guys at AdminSpotting sum it up so well, so we thank them for the below poem. There were a few bad words we left out of our version, read theirs for the original, in all its SysAdmin-y glory.

Read and enjoy, SysAdmins. It’s not just your day, it’s your month.

Choose no life. Choose no career. Choose no family. Choose a big computer, choose hard disks the size of washing machines, old cars, CD ROM writers and electrical coffee makers. Choose no sleep, high caffeine and mental insurance. Choose fixed interest car loans. Choose a rented shoebox. Choose no friends. Choose black jeans and matching combat boots. Choose a swivel chair for your office in a range of fabrics. Choose NNTP and wondering why you’re logged on on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting in that chair looking at mind-numbing, spirit-crushing web sites, stuffing junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last on some miserable newsgroup, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, [omitted] up lusers Gates spawned to replace the computer-literate. Choose your future. Choose sysadmining.

John and Allison
(picture by David)

LaunchPad area
for first-time exhibitors

Kiosk O
for OpenDNS

For three days this week, three members of the OpenDNS team were in Santa Clara, California at ISPCON, sharing OpenDNS with a bustling group of ISPs and infrastructure vendors of all sizes.

The show operated smoothly, and we got the chance to tell lots of new folks about why OpenDNS can deliver great DNS for ISPs and their customers. Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty busy. Thursday morning was quiet, but by that time, so were we!

Launching Accounts for the conference was useful, mostly because there are some great features for ISPs and others running large networks that will be built on top of Accounts.

Many thanks to Denise Miller and the rest of the ISPCON team (The Golden Group) for running a good show and helping us out with some special requests.

We’ve reached a (late) decision, but the verdict is in: we’ll be exhibiting at ISPCON in San Jose, CA, USA on November 7 - 9. As of now, the team in attendance will be David Ulevitch, John Roberts and myself (Allison Rhodes). Why will we be at a conference for ISPs? Visit our Web site on November 7 to find out.

We’d love to meet all of you, so please don’t be shy. If you’re going to the show, drop by kiosk “O” (remember O for OpenDNS) and say hello. We’ll be in the LaunchPad area [PDF of floorplan] next to the Segway Raceway (No, that’s not a typo). We have a few extra Exhibit and Events passes for those of you not planning to go now, but would if the entrance fee were waived. Let us know if you’re interested.

And if you work for an ISP, or are a member of the press (that includes you, bloggers) we’d really love to set up a meeting time in advance - time flies at conferences and we want to make sure we don’t miss each other. Please e-mail contact at opendns dot com and let us know when you have time to chat.

I’ll be in St. Louis, MO for the beginning of next week and would love to meet up with some of you.

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday I will be attending NANOG 38. NANOG is the North American Network Operators Group and is a great place to stay current with cool stuff in the systems, networking and operations fields. The meeting also coincides with ARIN’s meeting. ARIN, if you don’t already know, is the group that manages IP address allocations and assignments for North America. It manages the policy that its members (ISPs and networks mostly) fall under when requesting and managing IP space. It’s a great group that masterfully handles what seems like an easy task but is actually quite complicated.

If you want to try and meet while I’m in town just shoot me an email or reply below. I’ll be staying at the Knight Center at my Alma Mater, Washington University in St. Louis (also a NANOG sponsor). It’s not far from where the conference is and it keeps me near Clayton and University City, two of my favorite St. Louis neighborhoods.

David Ulevitch will be presenting OpenDNS as part of STIRR 1.5 on Wednesday, August 9. He has 60 seconds to describe what we do. If there’s a recording/podcast, we’ll link to it.

Sorry… the event is invitation only, in Palo Alto, California, USA. But if you want to attend, drop us a note and we’ll see what we can do about an intro to the STIRR folks.

Update: Here’s a short (four minute) interview with David from HotFromSiliconValley.com, recorded after the presentation.