Special Speaker, Dave McAllister, May 21 and 22.

[Kara Pritchard <kara@luci.org>]

Hey everyone, we've got a special speaker, Dave McAllister coming to the
area the week of May 21, sponsored by SILUG.

On Monday May 21 at 7:00pm, Dave will be giving a presentation on Linux
clusters at the normal meeting place of the St Louis Linux Users Group at
Indian Trails Library.

		St. Louis County Library, Indian Trails Branch
                   8400 Delport Drive (at Midland)
                   St. Louis, MO 63114-5904
                   314.428.5424

You can find directions and such at stllinux.org. This is a special
meeting event, not a regular LUG meeting, and it is being sponsored by
SILUG, so I would like as many SILUG members present as possible.

Let's organize a carpool/caravan. Harry Treece (sorry to point you out),
but if you will attend (PLEASE!) can you be lead contact on a caravan or
carpool from Carbondale? If so, post so that Carbondale members can
contact you for arrangements. I'm going to have my hands full by
chauferring Dave, so who in Fairview Heights will coordinate the local
caravan? Last time we attempted this, it fell apart, so let's try again :P

------

On Tuesday, May 22 at 7:00pm Dave will be speaking at the Linux Users of
Central Illinois (LUCI) regular LUG meeting at 7:00pm in Springfield,
Illinois. It is approximately 1.5 hours from Fairview Heights to the
Springfield location, if you opt to travel there. For meeting location and
directions, visit http://www.luci.org/.

------

On Wednesday, May 23 I am planning another informal dinner for SILUG
members at Emporer's Wok as we did with Peter Salus' visit. With dinner
finishing up early, we can retire to my home for a quieter chat session
with Dave, as well as a SILUG social. Egenera has agreed to sponsor the
buffet dinner, and as soon as I get a firm budget from them, I will know
how many 'freebies' we'll have available. For afterward, I wouldn't mind
having a finger foods, desserts, beer and soda social, open to everyone,
including those unable to attend dinner. If I can get volunteers for
carry-in, that'd be extremely helpful. Please, please be rude and
volunteer your spouses if nothing else ;)

-------

Okay, that's the general schedule for the week. If you think your company
or work group would be interested in a special visit or meeting with Dave,
please let me know. Dave is also meeting with large technical groups and
with business people that week to discuss large data center solutions
using Linux clusters and mass storage networks as well.

Below is Dave's BIO and his presentation abstract.

Look forward to seeing you at the events that week :)

-------

About Dave:

Currently Director of Strategic Technologies for Egenera, Dave McAllister is
best known in open source circles for bringing Linux into SGI as a main
product line, McAllister has presented on several Linux tours and keynotes,
both in the U.S and internationally. A respected figure in the Open Source
world, Dave is active in Linux International, and the Linux Professional
Institute. He holds degrees in mathematics and chemistry from Old Dominion
University and has done graduate work in computer science.

About the presentation:

Clustering in the Enterprise: What works, What we need.

As Linux and Open source have taken the internet world, several attempts to
bridge high availability and clusters to the needs of commercial concerns
have arisen. These attempts run the gamut from Load Balancing to Failover,
and in fact may be the best way to build such systems. However, each
available solution has both strengths and weaknesses; depending on your
business needs, will influence your choice of a viable solution. This
discussion will cover the highlights of each approach, and look at the
idealized hardware concept.


Please make every attempt to make this meeting, so we can justify making
more arrangements with special event speakers. I've known Dave for a few
years now, and is a very interesting individual in the Linux community.
Definitely worth your time!

--
Kara Pritchard                          Phone: 618-398-7360
Author, RHCE Exam Cram
Director of Exam Development            http://www.lpi.org/
Site Manager                            http://www.LinuxUsersGroups.org/
--



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