Tristan Findley » Sys-Admin

New VOME Website goes live

Tristan — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 13:23:49 +0000

For the past several months, the VOME website has been undergoing a radicle redevelopment. The project was managed by Lizzie Coles-Kemp of the Information Security Group, and undertaken by Yee-Lin Lai and myself.

The original site (designed by Consult Hyperion, and hosted by Royal Holloway's Information Security Group) served as the first web-presence of the VOME Group since 2008. Over the last year, we have seen VOME mentioned in various Identity Management blogs. With the launch of the new website, we hope to reach more people interested in the field of Identity Management, as well as improve the visibility of the VOME Group, and those who participate in the project.

Visit the VOME Project website here.

Click here to view my involvement with the VOME Project.

Services restored

Tristan — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 11:00:11 +0000

After the scheduled power-down on August 2nd, services have finally been restored. There was a small issue with the boarder firewall not booting one of the ethernet cards when the power was restored, and thus the site was offline until 1030 today.

The server power-down worked flawlessly, and the server backups were not needed. I will start scheduling regular downtime for server and OS maintenance, which will help keep the OS Kernel up-to-date, as well as allow for hardware upgrades.

Scheduled Server downtime – August 2nd

Tristan — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:00:09 +0000

This site will be offline between 0600 and 2000 on August 2nd, 2009. This is due to power-maintenance at the hosting location. Prior to the power-down, backups will be taken of all crucial domains & subdomains, as well as all running configuration files.

This downtime will mark the loss of 390 days of uptime. Equinox (the hosting server) has been running non-stop ever since it was reinstalled in mid 2008.

The first post

Tristan — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 16:39:43 +0000

Well, I suppose I should make a start on my 'blog'.

Unlike previous blogs, I don't plan on this one being a report on my day-to-day activities. I'll publish website updates, major events in my life, and professional content.

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Over the last week, we've been running the KPMG course for the students. This has involved setting up an entirely new streamlined lab environment for the students use. After a few small technical issues with the VM deployment system on the first day, I devised a new way of pre-loading the VM's to the machines. We plan to use this method to deploy the Foundstone lab next week (Thursday / Friday). I will need to secure the OS further for use with new lab sessions. I also plan on offering this system to the staff, so they can create VM appliances for student use, then they are able to run fully customized lab sessions.

I finished my first VOME contact, which included setup and deployment of three desktops and three laptops to the new VOME staff, and also the setup of their Moodle E-Learning space. The next piece of work I do for them will hopefully be website design. I plan to use WordPress for this due to its simplicity and multi-user capability. It will be perfectly suited to their needs.