Tutorial:   Introduction to Massive Upgrades and Changes
Format: 1/2 day
Presentors: Christine Hogan and Tom Limoncelli

Updated for 2003!

Imagine a project that involves renumbering the IP address on
thousands of hosts, none of which see more than one interruption.
Imagine upgrading a large server that provides dozens of critical
services with confidence that it will be done on time and with all
services working.  Imagine performing one or more changes on 1,000
individual hosts without fear that you've installed the same typo
on each.  Imagine a tutorial that teaches the disciplines involved
in making those things happen.

Who should attend: Sysadmins from environments where upgrading a
single large server, or hundreds of individual hosts, is common.
While focused on UNIX and IP networks, all sysadmins will benefit
from this tutorial.  Examples include situations found both in
small and large sites.

This tutorial will include a mix of theory along with case-studies
of real events.  Case studies will include success stories as well
as disasters so that students can learn from both.

Topics include:

o A sample "change management" policy you can start using right away
o The Network Life-cycle: birth, certification, decomission
o Case Study: Network Change Management (avoiding outages & managing risk)
o The project everyone hates: Moving your data-center
o Doing major (weekend-long) maintenance windows without major problems
o The Secret to Sucessful Server Upgrades
o Case Study: Upgrading a major application server
o Case Study: Upgrading a multi-purpose server
o Service Conversions (its more than just upgrading the software)
o Case Study: IP Renumbering and reorganization

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Tom Limoncelli, co-author of "The Practice of System and Network
Administration" from Addison-Wesley, is Director of Operations at
Lumeta Corporation where he is responsible for building and scaling the
deployment systems.  A sysadmin and network wonk since 1987, he has
worked at Bell Labs / Lucent, Mentor Graphics, and Drew University.  He
is a frequent presenter at Usenix LISA.

Christine Hogan, co-author of "The Practice of System and Network
Administration" from Addison-Wesley, is an independent consultant,
currently studying for a PhD at Imperial College, London.  Previously
employed by Synopsys, Global Networking and Computing (GNAC, Inc.) and
consultant to start-ups, e-commerce sites, bio-tech companies and large
multi-national hardware and software companies.  Her system
administration career began at the Department of Mathematics in Trinity
College Dublin.

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