Dear CEO, CTO, CIO, and other Company Leaders,

Consider this letter a wake-up call.

As an individual responsible for setting the vision of your company, please be aware that the people who work for you now, those smart, intelligent, high-tech individuals who believe in your vision, who are extremely proud of serving you, do not want to let you down.

Every day, these individuals work hard for you and you pay them well for their services. They are system and network administrators, security analysts, application developers, infrastructure architects, QA testers, and various other IT consultants.

As these individuals attempt to move your company forward towards explosive growth and expansion, incredible innovation, and unbounded profitability, you are either not aware of or not focusing enough on “how” they are striving to realize your vision and make it a reality.

Of course, you are probably thinking it’s not your job as a company leader to worry about “how” things are done so much as “why” or “when“. After all, that’s what being a company leader is all about, right?

Indeed, this may be true, but the reality is you need to be aware of the “how” more now than ever.

…actually a couple ideas for songs about Splunk have made their way into my geeky little brain since my last blog post. Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re saying…”Hey Maverick, the world doesn’t need another nerdy song about an IT Search Platform.” My natural response is, you’re probably right, but I can’t help myself. I’m a nerd, a songwriter, I love Splunk: I have no choice!

So where’s the mp3, dude?!

Truth is, I am just too damn busy these days to spend time on it. That is one of the reasons why I haven’t posted a new blog entry since September of last year. Turns out the demand for Splunk has increased significantly since then, which means I am traveling more now, giving more Splunk demos and presentations, and assisting more companies with their Splunk evaluations than ever before. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing songs, but nothing is more satisfying than traveling across Midwest America to show off a product as cool as Splunk.

And when I say “travel”, boy do I mean “TRAVEL”!

The following is a short interview I conducted with an IT event that I discovered last week while investigating an issue within my data center.

Maverick
Hello and thank you for taking time to participate in this interview.
IT Event
No problem. Thanks for having me, Mav.

Maverick
So tell us a little bit about yourself. What kind of event are you? Syslog? Web App? Proxy Log?
IT Event
Sure. I’m a syslog event.

Maverick
I see. Any particular kind?
IT Event
Well, I’m NOT a syslog-NG event, if that’s what you mean. Just plain standard syslog.

Maverick
No. I mean, what type? User event? SNMP trap? Something like that?
IT Event
Oh, yeah, I’m an sshd “session opened” event.

Maverick
As in reporting USER activity?
IT Event
Precisely.

Maverick
That makes sense. So when were you written out to the log file, exactly?
IT Event
A couple weeks ago. My timestamp is Sep 7 10:36:17, assuming you are interested in my details.

Maverick
Of course. Why would you think I’m not interested in your details?
IT Event
Well, most of the time we go unnoticed, is all. Most of the time me and all my fellow events just sit in our log file until it gets rotated out and eventually written over.

Well? nominate them now for the sysadmin of the year 2007 contest!!!

Also, if YOU are a muscial sysadmin rockstar, check out our sysadmin rockstar song contest allows you (when you are not fixing servers) to share your rockin’ voice with the rest of the IT world out there and win some prizes too. Use your best Getty Lee, Brian Johnson, Bon Scott, Ian Gillan, Dio, Sammy Hager vocals on the song I wrote and you could win $500. I’ve provided all the the instrumental tracks, including the cowbell track, which you are free delete and add even more cowbell, if you want..use garage band (or similar app) to mix, master and submit, have fun, enjoy it. Let’s here what you got!

Sysadmin Rockstar Song Contest

As we say here in Dallas, TX, YEEEEEEEEEE-HAW!!!1!11!!

Splunk 3.0 is GA now!!!!

In celebration of this wonderful day, I would like to redirect you to a previous blog article regarding a song I wrote about being a Splunk user. It’s real geeky, I admit, but hey, if you use Splunk or are thinking about it, I’m am sure you can relate to it. And if you are a long-time customer already, well, then,…you know doing geeky stuff like this is part of being a Splunkhead.

Check out my rap song called “Splunk IT”

Also, if you have a sysadmin that is an absolute rockstar where you work, please go and nominate them for Sysadmin of the Year. Let us know what makes them a rockstar in your eyes and they might win some fabulous prizes, like a new guitar, laptop, a case of redbull, etc. Do it now!

Recently, I received an email from a client that was struggling with a Splunk configuration issue. He was a sysadmin trying to figure out how to setup Splunk-2-Splunk within his private testing environment. The specific issue he was encountering was not so much related to the Splunk software not working or throwing an exception, etc. But rather, it was more about him trying to understand the “how to” part of Splunk-2-Splunk.

I think anytime you have a technical IT tool like Splunk combined with the ability for a technical person to download, install, and evaluate it for FREE, you will also have plenty of “how to” questions that will naturally accompany those evaluation efforts.

With this said, I want to remind all you technical folks, especially those of you who may still be struggling with the HowTos of Splunk, that as Sales Engineers, it’s our job to provide you with the HowTo support you need during your evaluation of Splunk. In a way, you can think of us as Splunk’s HowTo Team, always willing and able to discuss and recommend the best ways to configure and test out Splunk. It’s our job to make sure you understand all of the technical features and how best to leverage them for your specific needs. And, it’s also our job to help you develop a strong business case for purchasing a Splunk license based on the technical benefits. That way, your manager or director can more easily justify the purchase of that license for you. And, if you are like me, more often than not you need all the justification you can get.