I’ve recently read 3 new books on leadership. One of these books was given to me as part of leadership training at work and the other two I ordered. I wish I could read more and am going to try to make an effort to read more frequently.
Anyways it was good to read these books because they confirmed some concepts I believe in and naturally try to exercise, they shed light on new leadership traits I should probably try to implement, and best of all they made me think. So what am I talking about here… let’s look into it.
I saw someone retweet a tweet by a guy named Jon Gordon @JonGordon11. I liked the tweet and looked at his website and shortly thereafter I ordered this book “Training Camp” of his on Amazon.When I received the book I started reading it that day and also finished it in the same day. It is a good read, told in a story fashion, with short chapters that will keep you engaged the entire time. In the competitive world we live in everyone wants to know what the best do to separate themselves from the rest.
The setting of the story in this book is with a football player trying to make it into the big leagues. As a former football player myself I really identified with the stories, struggles, emotions, and feelings of the story. In case you read the book I won’t ruin the story for you, but along the way of trying to make the team the player finds out all the things that the best do better than the rest. What some may be surprised with is that the recipe for success is not some magic formula, it’s more about doing the simple things well, consistently, and with great focus and pride.
If you are looking for a good read that will help you get a recipe for hopefully becoming better than the rest I would recommend this book. One thing I also admire about Jon Gordon is that he lets his faith shine through his in his writing. In one of the chapters he speaks about how the best draw from a higher power, in this case, the Lord. Jon’s spiritual beliefs tie into his recipe for greatness and it all makes sense.
Buy Training Camp on Amazon
We are reading this book as part of leadership training at work and this read is somewhat longer than the other two books mentioned in this review. Though, while it is longer it is jam packed with great insights on leadership for leaders in the middle of organizations. John C. Maxwell is a popular author and he’s been studying leadership for some time. Reading this book was like reading several books at once due to Maxwell’s thoroughness and how he cites and quotes other books. The author, John. C. Maxwell, is obviously well read, informed, and experienced on leadership.
This book was awesome and made sense in all directions (leading up, across, and down) of the 360 degree leadership model. One thing I really liked is that the author does a great job of giving a real life example with nearly every point made in the book. The examples really drive the points home and makes the concepts easy to comprehend.
As a leader in the middle of an organization I can identify with several concepts conveyed in this book. Another thing I liked was that not only did the author describe a leadership challenge, but he would also follow it up with proposed solution steps or ways to work through the challenges as well. This book provided tremendous insight into leading up, down, and across the spectrum of an organization. I may re-read this book in a few years… it’s got that much helpful info.
If you are the top leader of your organization and you’re reading this there is a chapter for you as well. At the very end of the book there is a chapter directly speaking to top leaders that offers insight into how you can better manage organizations and leverage your 360 degree leaders.
Buy 360 Degree Leader on Amazon
After reading the Training Camp book by Jon Gordon I saw some other books that he wrote. It seemed there was a lot of positivity around his book “The Energy Bus” so I ordered in on Amazon as well. Following suit of the Training Camp book I found this to be a very engaging and easy read. I read it within one day as well! Jon Gordon’s writing style makes his books easy to follow because he’s telling a story and because the chapters are short so you feel like you’re making constant progress.
I liked this book and would recommend it as well. The concepts in this book all speak to going after your work with passion and, yes, energy! Being motivated and passionate about your work makes a big difference. The book also talks about getting the right people on your bus, not letting people drain the energy out of your team, leading with your heart, and loving your passengers. If you lead a team and you (or your team) needs an energy injection then you should give this book a read! Get on the bus!
Buy The Energy Bus on Amazon
I hope this brief review has helped you out in some way. If you read any of these books I’d be interested to hear your take on them. Tweet to me @CBPSC and let me know your thoughts or post here in the comment section
As you may be aware we’ve been helping local South Carolina farmers with hog problems in recent weeks. We continue hunting hogs in hopes of reducing the crop and land devastation they cause which can literally put a financial hurting on farmers and business owners… but more on that in a future blog!
We learn more and more about hog hunting with each week, each hunt, and each track of land we pick up. Hogs are some tough animals and they’ll eat just about anything. As we learn we’ve also been adjusting and updating our strategy. One of the updates we’ve made has been to the firearm of choice.
From 223, to 300 Blackout, to 308 One thing it didn’t take us long to figure out was that our night-vision setup for coyotes was too small for some of the larger hogs we were chasing. The setup was an AR-15 shooting a 223. Yes, you can take a hog with a 223, but at the distances we found ourselves shooting from and with some larger hogs we were encountering the decision to upgrade wasn’t a hard one
The first move was to change out the upper on the AR-15 in order to shoot the 300 Blackout. We, again, reached out to the team at Reel Determined Outdoors to get exactly what we needed. The team at RDO had the new upper overnighted and in our hands by week’s end. Talk about turn-around time! We were excited to move up in bullet size and went back to the range to ensure we had it zero’d in. It only took 2 shots to confirm. The Pulsar thermal scope proved its accuracy quickly and easily.
At the end of that week we had some hogs coming in on a pattern and we setup on them. Sure enough they came out right when expected and at a pretty close distance the 300 blackout put a hurting on one of them. However, we ended up trailing the hog for 2 hours when the blood trail just ended. Now I know you may be reading this and saying “Ya’ll just can’t shoot!”. I’m not going to argue with anyone… a 300 blackout can definitely get the job done on a hog and we even got one with it, but we were tired of shooting hogs and having to trail them forever.
Perhaps I could have made a better shot and not been in that scenario, but the repeated long nights of trailing hogs forever was getting frustrating. In the midst of frustration, being soaked in sweat, having mosquitoes wearing me out, and walking in woods trailing the hog for 2 hours I told Gavin that I’d had enough and that I was to upgrade (yet again) so that we wouldn’t end up that situation anymore. In that moment, it was a done deal.
The next day we contacted Reel Determined Outdoors again to confirm that they would work with us on a gun exchange. Upon confirmation, the new Anderson Arms 308 "Hunter" was ordered. Of course, we stayed with the Anderson Arms RF-85 setup too! In a matter of days, the new gun arrived and we were on our way.
In just holding the AM-10 308 one can instantly tell its heavier than the AR-15 platform. We found that the heavier weight makes it easier to steady the gun when shooting. The AM-10 was also a few inches longer than the AR-15. We figured that out because it wouldn’t fit in the same pelican case as the AR!
To give you an example of the difference in power from the AR-15 to the AM-10 models we can reflect on the sighting in of all these models. With the 223 and 300 Blackout when we shot the hot-hands or ice packs we had to then go down and look for the hole where we hit the target. With the 308 on the first shot the bag of ice exploded, the flat wood holding the target fell off the stake, and the stake had a huge hole in it. After that first trigger pull we knew we were dealing with a much more powerful weapon.
Back to Hunting… On the next two hog hunts we didn’t see anything. Temperatures have recently been warming up and it seems the hogs are still in the area, but their pattern is changing. They are coming in at various times throughout the night (per what the game cam is showing us). We stayed out late one evening in the drizzling rain waiting on them and never saw anything. On a different occasion, we woke up at 4am - all trying to cross paths with a specific set of hogs, but no luck yet. It has been frustrating recently, but we’re staying after it!
When Coyotes Crash the Hog Hunt That leads us to this past weekend. One area we hog hunt also has a bad coyote problem. We frequently see and/or hear coyotes when hog hunting this location. We are intently focused on getting some hog meat in the freezer, but whenever a coyote comes on the scene the hunt instantly turns into a coyote hunt! This often happens during deer season as well. It was Saturday night, hog bait was out, hogs had been frequenting the area, and over 40 lbs of corn had been eaten the night before. It was a good scenario and it we hoped it was just a matter of time. The waiting game had begun.
Early in the hunt some deer worked the edge of the field to the right. They were in no hurry and it was neat to see them there. Their presence signaled a quiet entry and setup. If the deer weren’t spooked neither would be the hogs.
I was scanning the field when I picked up some heat at the back-left corner of the field. I could tell from the length of the tail, size of the animal, and the way it trotted that it was a coyote. The area has some hills in it and the coyote was showing in and out of the hills. I probably watched the first coyote for 10 minutes before the 2nd one showed up. The first coyote was pawing at the dirt… it was neat to watch. The 2nd coyote was seemingly smaller in size, but it wasn’t interested in whatever the initial coyote was messing around with. In a way, I was hoping they would leave the field and I could focus on getting a hog, but when I saw them heading into the clear area of the field I knew I had to handle business.
The two coyotes then turned and started coming towards my direction. It was intense to have them closing that much space and being up close and personal with me. Since they were coming my way I just let them continue to see how close they would get. Then the lead coyote started bending toward my left and was in some brush. I looked back to the right and the larger coyote was following suit. I was getting ready to drop the hammer. All I needed was for the coyote to pause. Well in an odd occurrence of events one of the deer that were working up the edge of the field just started blowing like they do. I guess they smelled me or something they didn’t like, but whatever it was I was glad because at the sound of the blow the coyote paused and turned his head quickly toward the sound. That pause was all I needed and I pulled the trigger.
The coyote instantly dropped and to my surprise the lead coyote then turned and ran back across me heading to the far corner of the field. I started yelling and barking at the coyote to make it stop. However, the coyote wasn’t stopping so I squeezed off a second shot on a prayer hoping I could connect, but was unable to.
For now, I can say that a 308 is nothing but lights out for a coyote! I’m sure it will handle business on a hog too, but that’s for a future blog entry so stay tuned...
Here’s the video of the hunt…
As an open source enthusiast and a .NET developer I’ve been watching the transformation of Microsoft happen and it has been great to watch. You see I’m an avid user of DotNetNuke and if you know anything about DNN’s history you know that DNN was one of the earliest, if not the earliest, open source project in the .NET Ecosystem. From 2003 on DNN has been a pioneer in the .NET open source world.
A lot has happened and several trends have come and gone in the Microsoft world since 2003. As an open source project built on Microsoft technology the notion of being open source wasn’t always a popular conversation topic. Being open source wasn’t “cool” and sometimes negative perceptions about open source solutions were visible.
Boy have times changed!
Microsoft is Serious About Open Source… and It’s Not Just Lip Service One of my college football coaches always said “Your words don’t mean anything, but your actions mean everything.” Actions are a really good sign of what someone really believes. Microsoft’s strategic shift to embracing and focusing on open source over the past few years has been such a refreshing transition to see, feel, and experience for me and my fellow DNN’ers because of the actions we are seeing.
If we look at the recent and strategic moves Microsoft has made it’s easy to see that Microsoft is indeed serious about open source. If you aren’t convinced that Microsoft is serious about open source or if you are not keeping up, let’s look at some of the actions Microsoft has taken related to open source. And these are just the ones I have observed… I’m sure there is even more evidence out there.
Why It’s a Great Time to Be a .NET Developer There has never been a better time to be a .NET Developer. Literally everything you need to get started building is online and free to use and even better it’s likely open source. Anybody, anywhere can download code, look at it, enhance it, modify it, and submit it back to the projects if desired. If you can dream it, you can build it and you may build an online team of users and contributors to assist you in the process. Microsoft is literally making it easy to build open source projects via the technologies and resources they are providing. They are removing roadblocks for developers and being 100% transparent.
Consider the following capabilities anybody, anywhere has...
In Conclusion I referenced one of my college football coaches earlier, but he wasn’t the only one to to impart wisdom during my athletic days. My high school coaches had more one-liners than anyone could remember. One line that stuck with me was “If you do the little things, the big things will take care of themselves.” Microsoft is not only doing the big things, but they are also doing the little things that continue to reinforce their seriousness about open source.
We are watching a culture and paradigm shift occur in real-time and it’s awesome. By going “all in” on open source Microsoft is not only winning the hearts of developers, but they are making it easy for developers to get started with their technologies! I think the strategic decision to embrace open source will have a big impact for Microsoft in the long term.
Last week I attended Microsoft’s Build Conference in Seattle. I was helping at the .NET Open Source booth which promoted the .NET Foundation and all things open source. The conference was very nice, and the energy level was high. I had conversations with a wide variety of people during the conference and it is obvious that Microsoft’s strategy of embracing open source is welcomed by developers.
During one of my discussions a gentleman told me that his organization uses open source software (OSS) and he wants to allow his developers to contribute to OSS, but he needed to be able to justify it to his corporate leadership. His organization is a large, global organization so he needed solid and clear reasoning for why contributing to OSS is something his company should support.
He asked me if I knew of any blogs or resources that could provide insight into this topic. I thought about it and while I’m sure there is info somewhere, I wasn’t aware of any specific blogs or content about this subject. I am obviously biased about this topic, but let’s consider some reasons why a business should support OSS… especially if their organization is using OSS-based products.
Before we list out reasons we should first define what “support” means. When business people hear the term “support” they generally think about money, cost, or financial implications. Though, in the open source world it’s not necessarily about money as support can come in many different forms. Of course, the obvious need for any OSS project is code contribution, but there are more ways to contribute than one may initially think. As examples outside of the code, organizations could allow their developers to assist in marketing and promotions of sub-projects, conferences, user groups, GitHub repos, project documentation etc. Developers could also volunteer in any area of the OSS project as well as exchange knowledge online via forums, blogs, StackOverflow, and others. Organizations could also open up their offices for user group meetings, donate swag & door prizes, or sponsor the food at meetings. Any step taken to help move the the OSS project forward is a form of support.
Now that we know that support can come in forms outside of financial contributions let’s get back to the subject. If you are faced with the need to justify supporting open source software to your business leadership here are some thoughts and ideas to consider:
In this blog I’ve summarized my thoughts around why it’s important for organizations to give back, be active in, and support OSS projects and communities. As one considers justifying OSS participation to the business side of an organization much of the conversation will center around educating the business-side on how OSS ecosystems function. Communicating the potential positive benefits will be what’s needed to help bring on a change in perspective or cultural shift within the organization.
In my mind there are only positives to gain from contributing to OSS projects. Your developers will learn more, be empowered, meet new developers of all ages and skillsets, and your organization will be more efficient, and will likely be viewed as a great organization to work for.
If you don’t want to jump in head first then just try this one small thing to get your feet wet - if your developers have “down time” then simply encourage them focus their energies and time to assisting with the OSS project in any area they choose and watch what happens to your company in the months ahead. Be sure to pay attention to job satisfaction levels, quality of incoming new hires, general passion for work, and the perception of your organization among developers in your space.
After all, have you noticed that OSS projects that thrive are the ones with active community support? Who doesn’t want the project they use to not thrive? From my perspective the benefits of contributing to open source software far outweigh the drawbacks of not contributing.
We were recently approached for assistance by a South Carolina farmer with hog problems. He’d heard we had a night vision setup and that we could potentially help him with hog control. It took us a while to get a hog on the ground and this blog is the lead up to accomplishing the goal.
Hunting Coyotes Leads to Hunting Hogs If you’ve been keeping up with the blog here then you’ll know that we recently upgraded to a night vision setup to better hunt coyotes. One of the locations where we hunt coyotes is near a farm and recently the farmer told us that hogs were really giving him problems. They were rooting up his land so much that he’s also hired a guy to trap the hog. Nobody on our team is a hog expert but we wanted to do our best to help and we were up for learning!
The trapper was regularly catching hogs in the pen and we figured we’d put out a game camera to get a feel for what was going on. In 3 days we had 600 pictures and there was a large pack of hogs that were coming in all throughout the night starting shortly after sundown. It was hard to tell exactly how many, but we guessed 10-15. We got a pattern for when they were coming and we threw out a little corn and planned a date to try out first hog hunt.
The First Hunt Gavin and I were excited to try and get a hog. Neither of us had shot a hog before because we don’t have them around our hunting leases. It would be a first for us and that helped make it a good challenge. I guess I should also add here that our first hog hunt also occurred during the same time frame where we were having issues sighting in the thermal scope!
On our way to the farm we talked about waiting until the whole group got there so we could have better chances for multiple hogs and we could pick out the biggest one. They were coming out in groups, per the recon from the game camera. We had a plan and were ready to rock.
We arrived to the farm around 9 and got setup. We’d been there about 35 minutes when we started to see some heat signatures coming through the woods. At first it was one big hog, walking solo and I was whispering to Gavin “Shoot that big rascal!” but Gavin held off. I was all excited and Gavin was actually doing what we’d discussed on the way over there… and I was glad he did. Just a few minutes later the woods lit up. It was a sight to see. 12 hogs all came from the same direction and headed out to the corn. Having never seen a hog before I didn’t really know what to expect. The first thing I noticed was how quickly they moved around. I figured they’d be slow, sluggish, and hold still for long periods of time, but that was not the case. They can move pretty quickly. Once the whole group got out there Gavin picked one out and shot. The whole group scattered and he shot again. We went down and walked and looked for blood… nothing anywhere to be found. We’d missed. Another trip to the shooting range was to come.
More Trips to the Farm After missing the hog we were again frustrated. We re-sighted the gun in and waited until the next weekend. All the while we’re putting out corn and the farmer is filling us in on when the hogs are back. On the next weekend that we could line things up we headed back. This time as we approached the field we saw the hogs entering the field from a different location. It was about to be the quickest hunt ever. Just when we started looking in the scope we heard coyotes howling very close to us. We stood there trying to figure out what to do. As we watched the hogs in the monocular the coyotes continued to howl and to our amazement the hogs turned around and exited the field. Looking back on it we think the hogs left to protect their young ones. They had 3 little hogs with them and leaving was probably the best bet for them with the coyotes howling like crazy on the edge of the field. After this happened we stayed there for a while and waited. We felt sure the hogs would return. They didn’t. So, we broke out the coyote call and stared calling coyotes. That’s the night I shot 2 coyotes on video as seen in this video.
Shooting the coyotes proved that the scope was indeed zero’d in and we had more confidence. The next weekend came around and we returned yet again. This time the hogs were there when we arrived! We got into position and it was Gavin’s turn on the gun again. He put the dot on the hog and let the hammer drop. We both could see in the monocular and scope that when he shot the hog he was aiming at jumped up in the air. We knew he’d hit it! We went down and found blood. We trailed blood for 2 hours through some very thick briars and ultimately the blood trail stopped and we never found the hog. Frustrating again, but we were inching closer.
Going From 223 to 300 Black Out We reviewed the footage and it was evident that Gavin made a good shot. With this we discussed and researched and decided to make some changes. We worked with the team at Reel Determined Outdoors to change out the upper on the Anderson Rifles AR=15 from a 223 to a 300 black out. This is a unique capability of the AR that gives hunters flexibility. In this scenario, it allowed us to shoot a bigger bullet, one that most hog hunters use.
The next weekend we went back and stayed out there for 3 hours and never saw a hog, but did hear a bunch of coyotes and I missed a coyote! This time we knew the scope was dialed in, I’d just made a bad shot.
Interested in our setup? We shoot an Anderson Arms AR-15 with RF-85 technology. (You never have to oil the gun). On top of the gun we have a Pulsar Thermal Scope + video recorder. Any Anderson gun and any Pulsar Thermal Scope will be great setup for you too!
The Hunt We Finally Got It Done You may be reading and wondering “How many weekend is it going to take for things to line up for these guys?” … and that’s exactly what we were wondering too. Our luck would be changing soon though.
The farmer reached out to us about mid-week and said “The hogs are back big time”. He’d seen more and more evidence of the hogs rooting and they had wiped out all the corn that we had out. (Side note: trying to keep a pack of hogs fed with corn gets expensive quickly!) So we planned our hunt.
Again this time the hogs were out in the field as soon as we got to the field. Gavin and I quietly got into position. The whole time we could hear the hogs grunting and snorting down near the pen. From the look of the monocular it seemed like one hog was actually trapped in the pen, but we’d later see that it wasn’t.
It was Gavin’s “redemption hog” turn on the gun. I’ve got him trained not to be shooting anything until I’ve got video rolling too 😉 Anyways, we were in position, gun was sighted in very nicely, video was rolling and I gave Gavin the greenlight. We were whispering to each other about which one he was going to shoot. I was watching in the monocular while Gavin was in the scope. Gavin asked me if I was ready and I said yes… then there was a long pause. Gavin giggled… he said “I didn’t take the safety off!” Yes it sounds crazy, but we were so worked up and ready to get it done that our hearts were beating and we were both breathing heavy! Then he said “Aight, I’m shooting the big one” and moments later the first shot rang out. As they ran off Gavin continued to unload on the big boy, which we’d also discussed on the way to the farm. At the shot there was no sign of hitting the hog. It did not jump, flinch, or move awkwardly. With the 223 we tried for head shots, but with the 300 black out we put it on the shoulder. Gavin and I talked as we tried to calm down. He said he felt he made a good shot.
Minutes later we went down to the area where the hogs were. No blood. What! He made a good shoot, the gun was sighted in, we’d upgraded to a bigger bullet… why did it not work out! We were already making plans to go back, yet again, to the shooting range. We decided to walk over in the direction where the hogs ran. There was no blood anywhere to be found. We scanned in the thermal looking for heat signatures in the field and didn’t see anything. The only thing we saw were a few wet spots that looks like slobber or something in the dirt, but it definitely wasn’t blood. We were growing frustrated as you can imagine.
This farm is in an area with lots of hills. As you can see in the video the hogs were just behind a small hill when we shot. As we talked and walked the edge of the field you could just tell there was a vibe of frustration, an energy of we-didn’t-get-it-done-yet-again going on. Then Gavin said “What is that?” And I said “What?” He pulled out the thermal scope and said “That’s the freaking hog right there!” and I looked and man it was huge laying right there on the edge of the field. What happened was the hog did not bleed at all and ran about 60 yards around a corner and laid down on the edge of the woods just behind a hill of dirt. This is why we could not see it in the thermal. Instantly we got all excited and the vibe changed from one of dejection and frustration to one of celebration and excitement! We’d finally accomplished the goal and got a hog on the ground. And yes the 300 blackout really put it on the hog. We high-fived and drug the hog out to take some pics. When we grabbed the hog to drag it and take pics we had to re-grip the legs because it was so big. I’ve drug a lot of deer in my life and this thing was heavier than any deer I’ve ever drug. I’m guessing it went around 220 lbs. It was a healthy female hog and yes it stunk!
After multiple attempts at getting a hog we finally succeeded and it felt good to get in the end zone for once! We finally had proof to the farmer that we could help him out. We’ve finally got things dialed in and set up and guess what… the farmer has already let us know that the hogs are back again so we will be heading back out sooner than later.
Do you have problems with hogs or know a farmer who does? We are now ready to help! Just reach out to us here on the website via the Contact Us form or contact Gavin Jackson at 843.517.9920.
I’ve recently been researching Splunk and have been impressed with its power, flexibility, and ease of use. This blog is not intended to be a step-by-step tutorial, but rather is aimed to show some initial findings, overview one way to integrate Splunk with DNN, and paint the picture of some potential use cases.
So What is Splunk? If you don’t already know what Splunk is, Splunk is a software company based in San Francisco that produces software for searching, monitoring, and analyzing machine generated big data via a web style interface. Splunk’s software helps organizations with operational intelligence, log management, application management, enterprise security and compliance.
Installing Splunk was simple and after clicking around a little while it was evident that Splunk is an intuitive software. From a UI standpoint, it makes logical sense and the flow is easy to understand. And it didn’t take long to see and understand how powerful it is.
As you may imagine, I began to wonder if and how I could integrate Splunk with DNN.
DNN + Splunk: One Way to Connect the Two One of Splunk’s powerful features is that it can literally suck in all types, styles, and formats of data. This data can be machine data, log files, or even data from a REST API. There are several mechanisms for getting data into Splunk, but for this scenario, DNN’s web API implementation makes this an easy fit. On the DNN side, a developer can easily create a custom module using web services to expose any DNN data on an endpoint, which Splunk can then access. If you’d like to go the custom module route, check out my other blog series on module development. However, I did not write a custom module to test the integration.
For my initial investigation into Splunk I chose to use DNN Sharp’s API Endpoint module as it allows easy configuration of end points. Splunk is architected to consume any type of data and then it makes that data extremely easy to search, create visualizations and/or alerts with. These searches, visualizations, and alerts can be very basic or very complex in nature.
Another thing to note is that Splunk is architected to do this at scale and can easily parse enormous amounts of data. For example, every time you drink from a Coca-Cola “Freestyle” machine at a fast food restaurant, the data from your drink selection is logged and Splunk helps analyze the data, denote trends, and sends alerts. So yes, those Coke machines (all across the world) are connected IOT devices and Coke is a Splunk customer. See how Coke is using Splunk in the Splunk Conf 2014 Keynote replay session. Imagine how much data that is on a global scaled --> Splunk is helping Coke make sense of it.
Side note: Check out the blog I wrote on using Particle & Splunk to monitor temperature
So, my first goal was simple: see if I could get data from DNN into Splunk.
Sticking along the thought process of “data logs” I figured why not expose the DNN event log on an endpoint and see what I could make happen. Obviously, the event log may not be the best use case as site administrators can clear logs or processes to automatically clear logs sometimes exist. However, for this initial test it is a good candidate. To get the event log data on an end point I used the DNN Sharp API Endpoint module to make a SQL query on the event log view and return it as JSON.
With the event log now sitting out there as JSON on a DNN end point now all I needed to do was get it into Splunk…
Getting REST Data Into Splunk The Splunk side of this configuration only took a few minutes to configure and keep in mind I’m no Splunk guru (read, it’s easy!). Splunk is similar to DNN in that it’s extensible. Splunk extensions can be found on the Apps and Ad-Ons sections of the Splunk website. I tell you this because ultimately, I followed a blog by Damien Dallimore on getting REST data into Splunk which used a modular input extension and that was all it took. I simply completed the required fields in the Splunk REST Modular Input as shown below.
I chose to poll the data every 60 seconds. With this information inputted I clicked save and returned to the Data Inputs screen of Splunk and chose my newly created data source.
BOOM! I was seeing DNN event log info in Splunk!
Searching, Visualizations, & Alerts in Splunk With data in Splunk now I needed to proceed to using Splunk to make sense of the data. Splunk’s searching functionality makes it very easy to search for, well... anything you'd like. I’m not yet knowledgeable enough to fully explain all the capabilities, but what I can easily see is that you can select your data source, click on keywords, add them to the source's search criteria and set your desired timeframe for the search. It’s feels as if you have a Google search bar and all your searches are performed on your data source and intellisense & syntax highlighting for your search are provided too!
Once you have a search returning data you can then create visualizations or alerts. And yes, there are tons of visualizations provided by Splunk. These visualizations can be saved as reports or live as “panels” that reside on dashboards. Dashboards can have as many panels as you want and you can have multiple dashboards if you like. Also, you can easily embed these panels into DNN or any other location by clicking the “convert to HTML” link that each panel has. Being able to display this info anywhere you like is a neat feature. Are your mental light bulbs turning on yet?
So, I created a few visualizations based on event log data that was available. I created a number-based-visualization to show a large number that represented a count of 404 errors, a line graph showing the number of failed logins, and a chart showing the 404’s over time. So, in just minutes Splunk was already helping me understand that I have some issues going on with one of my sites. I believe one reason for the 404's is that I've renamed some pages that I think bots are targeting trying to register. Anyways, I've got work to do... don't judge!
Opening Up Possibilities Now you may be looking at this and thinking to yourself, yeah this is neat, but I could create a custom module to make something similar to this happen. And you would be correct, but keep in mind the potential use cases, flexibility, and scalability of Splunk in comparison to a custom module. You could easily have all your customers as data sources and create dashboards to help you (and your customers) quickly understand what’s going on with your customer's applications. You could also do data mashups of data from a DNN website/web app, some IOT device out in space, and any other data source you can think of to provide valuable insight. And again, Splunk has no problem doing this with massive amounts of data.
With just a little research into Splunk it didn’t take long to get my mind spinning with all the possibilities within DNN and beyond. Think about your current DNN use cases, requirements of your customers, and the exploding IOT market and you’ll soon see the light.
Here are some ideas I had right off the bat:
Splunk FTW! As you can see the power and flexibility Splunk provides is really nice. I believe Splunk could be a game-changer especially for those with large amounts of data to parse, anybody in the IOT space, and much more. I hope this blog has provided you with an introductory glimpse into some of the capabilities of Splunk and even got you thinking of potential ways to integrate Splunk into your applications or customer's environments. I am still learning about it and hope you will too. I know that I'm just scratching the surface here in my initial findings.
Find out more about Splunk at http://www.Splunk.com
In the past few years I’ve been getting into IOT. You may have seen tweets or blog about the Tech-Turkey project I’ve been working on or flame throwing pumpkins at Halloween. I’ve learned and used Arduinos, Raspberry Pi’s, and Particle Photons and Electrons. It has been fun to learn more and get into the connected world… the internet of things!
I’ve been keeping ServoCity in business and even recently worked to get a custom PCB created. Every step of the way I’ve been learning different things and realizing just how much more there is to learn. Recently I’ve started learning more about Splunk.
What is Splunk If you don’t already know what Splunk is, Splunk is a software company based in San Francisco that produces software for searching, monitoring, and analyzing machine generated big data via a web style interface. Splunk’s software helps organizations with operational intelligence, log management, application management, enterprise security and compliance.
Side note: In my first exploration into Splunk I wrote a blog about using Splunk with DNN that may interest you.
Particle & SplunkDNN is a web application, but what if I wanted to get data from an IOT device? That’s when we call on Particle. If you’re not familiar with Particle, it makes it really easy to bring real world objects online. Particle is one of my favorite IOT platforms. It makes awesome microcontrollers, provides a nice IDE, has awesome documentation, and a great community. Connecting to Particle’s cloud is straight forward and even southerners can do it! See my presentation at our user group on DNN & Particle.
If you’re not familiar with Splunk, it makes it really easy to pull in data (machine data) and make sense of it. I’m talking about parsing vast amounts of data, creating visualizations and/or alerts and making it simple to understand. Even southerners can use it too!
Both Particle and Splunk are industry leaders and have some really big names behind their companies and as clients of their companies.
So why not bring Particle & Splunk together?
Reading Temperature with ParticleTo use the awesomeness that both solutions bring us we’ll first need to read the temperature and post it to a webservice. Here again, Particle makes this easy. I used a basic temperature reader in a bread board layout for this experiment.
Then, in Particle’s IDE I used the basic tutorial level code to read an analog value and post it to a Particle cloud variable. Cloud variables are accessible via web services. That is, I can make a GET request and parse the JSON object to get the data. Epic.
Now we were cooking with oil! The next step was to get this data into Splunk.
Getting Particle’s RESTful Data Into SplunkGetting RESTful data into Splunk is really straightforward thanks to Splunk’s extensibility. Splunk has an extensions gallery that can be found on the Apps and Ad-Ons sections of the Splunk website. I tell you this because ultimately, I followed a blog by Damien Dallimore on getting REST data into Splunk which used a modular input extension and that was all it took. I simply completed the required fields in the Splunk REST Modular Input as shown below.
After clicking save, the data from my Particle temperature reader was showing up in Splunk!
Creating Dashboards from the Particle DataOnce data shows up in Splunk you can literally perform any search query you want on the data and create/configure dashboards, panels, reports, alerts and more. Splunk is very powerful in this regard and scale to infinity. However, for this scenario I just wanted log the temperature over time from one device, as well as the temperature’s highest, lowest, and average. Splunk, again, made this very simple.
After clicking on the “result” field I created some visualizations and voila! Out popped some neat dashboards showing all my data in a way that’s easy to understand.
If you are like me, you kind of want to see things in action. So for those of you like me who are visual learners, here’s a quick video of the solution in action.
An IOT Combination That’s Hard to Beat!As you can see, both solutions are awesome and the opportunities are endless. Consider the possibilities here… Particle is easy to deploy and post data to the net and Splunk can easily connect, suck in data, and bring instant insights. The more data you give to Splunk the more knowledge you’re going to have. Splunk can handle this at scale too… I mean massive scale. Why not connect thousands of devices and pump all the data into Splunk and tune it to your liking! I believe that’s what they refer to as operational intelligence 😊 Now my mind is spinning with possibilities. Is yours?