Juan TraversoFeb 11, 2024

One thing many attendees at #euskalencounter asks is how much work it takes to make each edition. When it comes to my area (named CORE, we do the systems and networks), I can say we already started early January.

We are three people volunteering our time, so the sooner we start the better. This year's challenge is changing the switching layer at the servers rack, and probably a reinstall of them that is long overdue.

I'm thinking of doing a thread about the work we do, that will span for months as we keep building stuff for the event, just to bring light into how we design, build and support the network and services for the Euskal. It will be random and far from constant or periodic, but I feel like writing about it.

Show threadJuan Traverso

This past weekend can probably be considered the start of real work for us. I met with more staff from #euskalencounter and we spend some days at the storage place for our gear.

Our main goal was to reinstall the server stack. Up until now we were using Gentoo, and we have decided to migrate to Fedora. These servers spend most of the time offline between Euskal editions, and the effort of upgrading Gentoo after months was too high (for those familiar with Gentoo, think of almost every update becoming a walk down the "upgrading a very old system" path). Nothing guarantees that we won't run with a similar problem with Fedora, but I expect our journey to be a bit smoother.

The other important part: we have upgraded the networking layer on ours server cabinet, adding two Dell SP4810 sfp+ and qsfp+ switches. Thanks to this we have been able to multiply our network capacity on the server stack for the event, which will allow us to implement some improvements related to video streaming.

Overall a very fun weekend on which we also planned a lot of stuff for this year's edition :) Looking forward to it!

May 13, 2024 at 12:03pmWeb
Show threadJuan TraversoJul 13, 2024

Welcome to another issue of the disjointed thread about #euskalencounter build and upcoming 32nd edition!

This past week has been exciting! We got our stuff delivered into the venue and the awesome folks from Logistics put them on their spot and plugged-in the power and the bare basics of network links between them.

Our mobile link came live and we were able to login remotely, tell the IPMIs to power up the servers, and jump from our bastion host into the network core equipment. This is important since we (networks and systems people) won't be at the venue until 2 or 3 days before the event starts.

The excellent news is that all the work we did last May reinstalling our baremetal servers has paid off, everything is working flawlessly so far.

And on even better news, we also have internet connectivity already!! Probably the earliest we have been able to setup core network and systems ever.

Now it's time for us to finish migrating most of the VMs to Fedora, tweak network configurations as we get more clients on the network (so far only organisation staff that is working there) ahead of the big opening day in just 11 days.

And in non-technical area stuff, the Free-Sofware content area is also full speed ahead working. We are mostly now focused on preparing our ctf competition (known at the event as 'Hack-It/Solve-It'), and the other activities are ready to go.

Can't wait to travel and be there!

Show threadstage7 Jul 13, 2024

@imobilis Expect my usual visits from time to time with the traditional treats (and also be welcome to kick me out when needed  ).

See you there  .

Show threadJuan TraversoJul 13, 2024
@stage7 I expect no less!! Looking forward to see you 😊
Show threadstage7 May 13, 2024
@imobilis Most things sound like Greek to me but thanks for the effort!