I submit to you my second attempt at this week's Top5 after a vile BSoD swooped down and smote my first attempt into a pile of fiery ash. There were a couple announcements this week on DevCentral along with the expected awesome technical content. I'll try to touch on those as well as a couple other things that you should definitely check out in this week's DevCentral Top5:

Announcing F5 Management Pack 1.4 for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007

http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/sfisher/archive/2009/08/25/announcing-f5-management-pack-1.4-for-microsoft-system-center-operations.aspx

The hard-working, quick-moving management pack team here at F5 brings you the newest version of the Management Pack for SCOM. This version includes increased platform support, auth roles integration, built-in discovery, device config and more. If you haven't looked into what the Management Pack can do for you, I highly suggest you take a look. You can check out all sorts of things that the package can be used for in the frequently updated tutorials on DevCentral. If you're using SCOM and have F5 devices, this is definitely something you should look into.

DevCentral Weekly Roundup Episode 100 - The Century Mark

http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/dcpodcast/archive/2009/08/27/devcentral-weekly-roundup-episode-100-the-century-mark.aspx

The weekly podcast is not new to the Top5, but this week's is particularly special. This week we crossed the century mark with our 100^th podcast. It took us longer than 100 weeks, but we made it. We've grown immensely as a community and as a team in that time and it was fun to take a few minutes to reminisce on our favorite moments in time with DC. Listen to Jeff talk about electrical storms in Malaysia, Joe talk about sumo wrestling in Japan, and other things that are at least somewhat related to DC and the technology, I promise. Whether you've been with us for years or you're new to DevCentral, this one's a fun look at where we've been and perhaps some hints at where we're going.

Survey iPod Touch Winners + Thanks for the Fantastic Response

http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/JeffB/archive/2009/08/27/6076.aspx

Jeff extended a hearty thank you to all of the respondents to the most recent DevCentral survey, and I wanted to point it out and extend mine as well. We got some absolutely fantastic results, with over 500 people responding with some very interesting and useful information. This kind of thing is amazingly useful to driving the DevCentral community forward and making sure we're doing so in a direction that makes the most sense for the members. This one isn't a super deep technical post but it's noteworthy just the same and I wanted to call it out. I'm sure you'll be seeing some snippets of this info as we absorb it and choose bits to share, so keep an eye out and thank you again for your involvement.

The End of DNS As We Know It

http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/macvittie/archive/2009/08/28/the-end-of-dns-as-we-know-it.aspx

Lori talks about the imminent death of DNS as we know it, foretelling the rise of GSLB in its place. Given the up and coming infrastructures that seemingly all rely on multiple points of data storage/processing interacting together to deliver a given application, I can see where she'd get that impression. While I'm not quite ready to get the nails out for the coffin, and to be fair that's not what Lori is saying either, I do completely agree with her in that DNS was not designed to handle the demands of the distributed architectures of today and certainly not those of tomorrow. As such it's going to have to be replaced sooner or later. There are already serious pain points when dealing with DNS for applications that demand more of it than it is prepared to deliver, and those issues are only going to continue getting worse, not better. GSLB seems to be the natural successor, with many people already well on-board. Are you ready for the change? If not, it might be time to start thinking about it.

The Importance Of Integration In The Future Of The Cloud With BlueLock

http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/interviews/archive/2009/08/25/the_future_of_the_cloud_with_bluelock.aspx

Tune in as Ken Salchow talks with Pat O'Day from BlueLock about cloud computing, F5's role in making some of the features BlueLock offers possible, and how important integrating that technology with server virtualization technology is to them. If you're looking for an inside scoop on what at least one cloud provider is up to, what they're thinking and how they're doing what they do, this is a pretty cool look at just that. It also provides some solid insight into how virtualization of both the hardware and network resources is vital to making the scaling that clouds are so famous for possible. I enjoyed getting to hear from the horse's mouth how these technologies are being put to use today to produce a robust platform for your application.

That's the Top5 for this week. If you've got questions, comments or otherwise, don't hesitate to drop me a line. You can always check out previous editions of the Top5 here - http://devcentral.f5.com/Default.aspx?tabid=101

#Colin

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