Technology

Project And Other Servers

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Gus is getting me to start using project server. I got my account today, and I hope to add my quarterly project plan in a few days. it looks cool, but we need to get everyone to use it.

I got the RAID card in for the new machine we will build Subversion on. lets hope that Promise didn’t lie when they said this card supports Suse 9.0. I need to build that with Danny sometime in the next week or so. I then need a new box for Nagios. Danny (who is now our resident Linux expert besides Gus) is saying that Subversion and Nagios may be too CPU intensive to put on the same low end box. We will evaluate the situation and make a decision. We are using a Penguin Computing 1U server we picked up last September. They make decent low end box’s for linux. We are modifying the one of the 2 we have for use with this app.

Missing Sync Is Out

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OK, I am not going to bash Mark / Space or their product the Missing Sync. I actually like the product. I bought it for the Palm and Pocket PC. I am just having issues with limitations the mac has on PIM software. What I mean is that I like outlook. I really do. I use the catigories in the address book, tasks, and calender allot. The problem with that is the Mac equivelant software Address book, and ical does not do cagitories or does not do them in a way they are compatible with what I do in Outlook.

I use outlook at work. I go home to my mac and would like the work to carry over. Instead I get all my categories I do at work getting erased when I go home and sync with my mac. I had to spend 2 hours redoing all the categories on all my address book contacts on Saturday because of this.

For this reason I am on hold with using my mac as a PIM again. I still use the Missing Sync to update Avantogo on my iPaq, but that is it for now. Hopefully Markspace and apple inprove their products to allow me to do this. I don’t think it is a limitation on Mark Space’s side, but on the Apple PIM side. Either way I am not able to do what I want.

To me this is one of the last hurdles for me to get rid of my PC at home for all day to day tasks. The other things I need the PC for are all work related. Come on Apple, make a better PIM, that is compatible with it’s PC cousin’s!!!

User Quota’s

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As I have mentioned in previous posts we are bringing down a file server at work. We need to wipe the OS and do some firmware updates on it and then we will bring it back online. Since we ran out of space on it, we needed a replacement box. We got that machine and have already deployed it. Now what we will do is spread out the corporate data onto two machines as soon as the old one is rebuilt.

Once this is done I have decided to impose disk quota’s to users. We are having issues where everyone is using tons of space, and not caring. If I keep my user and group data on different file servers I can quota the user data server. That way I can force people to consolidate their outlook files. I have over a dozen people who are hitting the 2gig limit on outlook pst files. No one knows how to delete stuff.

Right before we put out the new server we will instruct everyone how to compact their outlook files. That way they can compact them on their own.

This will be a very unpopular policy, but I haven’t found a policy we have that users do like.

Office 2004 For the Mac

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I have actually done it. I went out and bought Office for the Mac. Usually I refuse to buy Office unless it comes with a computer or unless work puts it on a machine. I wanted it for my mac though. That presented a problem since this version of office just came out, and I wanted it. It isn’t a work expense, so I had to shell out the $$$. I await going home to install it. Reviews to follow. It better have been worth the money.

Remote Agents And Terminal Server

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While I was awake and not sleeping last night, I thought about my remote agent design issues. Currently we have schematics of different electronic and home appliance parts on CD’s we use to look up stuff. The problem is they take up a huge amount of drive space. We get updates every month that need to be added to the existing data. This is fine when a computer is on our network, we just run the update from our file server. What do you do when you have remote computers over a VPN WAN link trying to get the same update? Pushing out 500 megs to 2 users is possible, but what about 20, or 200? It becomes unfeasible due to bandwidth limitations.

One option is to not give the remote agents this software, but they rely on it. My thoughts then turned to Terminal Services. What if all the updates are on the central server, and users just connected to the server via terminal services. That way I don’t have to worry about anything on the local machine except for an IP address and terminal client working.

This is contingent on our phone control software working with Terminal Services. I believe it does, but an answer to that question is easy enough to get.

The next problem is cisco soft phone. I doubt it would work through terminal services. We may need to go with a physical cisco IP phone at a person’s house. It adds cost per user, but it may be necessary. Also going with a hardware VPN solution is looking better than a software solution. If anything goes wrong with the remote computer we would be responsible to manage it. We cannot troubleshoot software issues like vpn over the phone, and we are not equipped to send someone onsite to fix problems like that.

A hardware VPN device that we can remote into and verify it is working, along with terminal services is looking like a good solution. it is not the cheapest but maybe the most feasible. We would require someone to have their own computer, and all they would need to put on it is terminal client. That takes 5 minutes to setup. Wire up a VPN router from cisco or linksys plug in a phone and they are up and running.

Now all I have to do is sell everyone on the solution and make sure it works from a technical standpoint.

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Allot Of Treo’s

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For a device that has only sold a few hundred thousand units, I have seen many Treo 600’s today. I saw 3 different people besides myself on the subway with them today. They are popular but not ubiquitous yet. It is funny to see so many people with them.

One lady saw mine and was asking me if I liked it. it was funny to be approached about tech like that on the NYC subway.

Maybe one day they will be as common as the iPod is today? Well, maybe not.

iMac Or Powerbook, Or Both

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I am getting pressure to get rid of my iMac. I love it. it has a huge screen and it is pretty fast, but do I really need two Mac’s? I have my 12″ Powerbook. I like it allot. I also use it allot. When I am home I use the iMac, but I think I over my Powerbook just because I have it. All the reasons why I bought the imac are still valid, but the question remains do I really need it?

I can always sell it on ebay. It would be difficult since it is heavy and would be a pain to ship, but it is in mint condition so I could get decent cash for it.

On the other I loose nothing by keeping it. granted I can make some cash by selling it, but I already bought and paid for it last year. I still use it, so why get rid of it? These are the things I am thinking about with regards to my computers recently.

This blog entry was written while listening to Hysteria from the album “Hysteria” by Def Leppard

Remote Power Control

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I think we designed our Data Center pretty well. Keith and I spent hours toiling over different ways we can make it better over the past 2 years. One area that I think we need improvement is the ability to power cycle a server remotely. We can view what is on our KVM remotely. I can go into the bios or configure a network card even if the computer is not on the internet. This is thanks to a backup dial up connection, and an IP KVM. the only thing I cannot do is hit the power button on a computer if it crash’s. That would be the ultimate ability. Besides changing tapes, I would have no other reason to goto our data center on a daily basis.

This would also save us money. We pay to have someone go to our cage and do what is called “remote hands”.

Virus’s At Work

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If you read the news you must hear about all the worms and other “bad things” spreading through the internet. My company has been diligent in attempting to prevent these things from infecting our computers. We have not been 100% protected, but from what I have seen we are way ahead of the curve in protecting ourselves.

I have seen lots of virus alerts from our virus scanning system. Thankfully, it is able to deal with whatever comes up. Also important is the Windows Update server. That thing is a life saver. I don’t know if we would have been able to install all these updates on all of our desktops without it. We need to goto the next level and get an SMS or ZEN type system next.

I have never been a huge fan of Novel, but they have caught my curiosity. What they are doing with Suse keeps me interested. Also that their directory services work on Windows is also cool. All that and ZEN Works is much better than SMS, or that has been my practical experience. I don’t know how SMS 2004 holds up. I keep telling myself that my company is a windows shop, we don’t want Novell. The other side of my brain is saying “you know Novell is better, give it a try”. For now I am ignoring that side of the brain. I would like to get a demo of Novell and give it a test drive. When (if) things ever settle down enough that I can try that, I will. Novell NDS, running on Suse linux. Now that would be really nice, if it worked as easy as the old novell used to!!!

3TB, Still Building

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Jayson started building a 3.x terrabyte disk array friday afternoon. It began to initilize friday. As of last night it was only at 53% complete. I will give it a few more days before I get worried. 3 terrabytes is allot of drive space. We currently buy Promise SATA and IDE RAID array’s. For the money, they are awsome. You get an unbelievable amount of storage space for so little, and the speed is not far off its more expensive SCSI disk cousin’s. These array’s actually use a SCSI backplane back to the servers they connect to.

In the past year I have gone from technology snop only wanting nice SCSI disk array’s from the likes of HP & Dell, to a huge proponent of Serial ATA. I have to say Promise makes a good product. The only downside may be we go through drives quckly. Not sure if it is coincidence or what we do, but I have had 4 drives go bad over the past year on a total of 5 disk array’s. Now when you add up that each array has 15 drives, it may not seem like allot. I may be over-reacting. In fact I think I am, but I have other SCSI arrays with no problems. It isn’t an issue yet, but I am keeping my eye on the situation.

All in all, SATA, or IDE RAID is solid and more than half the cost of it’s SCSI equivalent.