The Many Levels of Geek-dom

Jul 23, 2007 · 1 minute read

For instance: given the arrival of a super-fast, shiny new Dell PowerEdge server:

• The basic geek will slap Windows 2003 Server on there and put it on the network as the new fileserver.
• The more advanced geek will instead install Linux and use it as a Samba server, possibly reserving the possibility for more fun things down the line.
• The Insanely Geeky will decide that what they really need is to set up a Xen hypervisor and a series of Linux machine images so that the file-serving is handled by one virtual machine, another machine handles the web filtering for the student network, another does some web serving, and another just sits around inactive, but ready to be brought to live at a whim for testing purposes. These images can be moved around between different machines running Xen almost transparently to end-users, in case future demands mean that new machines are needed...

I leave it as an exercise to work out which one I am…