Technically Speaking

It all started with an idea during a panel session at the Microsoft MVP Summit earlier this year.  Simply stated, my thought was that sessions in or near the bar are almost always full.  Why don’t we do some sessions locally for all different types of technologists and geeks at brewpubs.  This way we can all network around beer and the technology du jour.

When I got home, I talked with Jes Borland (@grrl_geek) about the idea and if I remember she was on board from the word beer.  We did some brainstorming and came up with a few ideas to help determine if this was feasible or not.  Amazingly, it was very feasible.

After some discussion we enlisted another person to help out.  Mark Cyrulik (@mcyrulik) came on board almost as fast as Jes did, although I think that discussion was a few tweets.

Then came some paperwork and more brainstorming and as of this week, Tech on Tap spun up and we are racing toward our first event.

What is the idea?

Brewpubs are great places to network and socialize and technology is fun. Bring the two together and who knows what kind of learning might happen.

For more details about the organization and upcoming events visit Tech on Tap.

Our first session on Virtualization is Saturday November 12th 2011 at the Stone Cellar Brew Pub in Appleton.  We have an attendance limit for this event of 50 people.  If we get more signups than we can accommodate, that will help us work toward the next Tech On Tap Session.

Where are the details?

The details of the specific events, especially the first one are still being finalized and are coming soon.  Because this is our first event, it will likely take a little longer than we’d like, but should make going forward that much easier.

Thank you for all your help

Working on this project has been exciting and sometimes a bit scary, but Jes and Mark have been great partners in getting this rolling.  Without their help, and form filling skills, I do not think this would have been more than an idea.  You guys Rock!

My wife Laura is also at the top of my thank you list because she believed my idea was worth a shot and that I wasn’t crazy for going after it.  Sure I’m busy and have a lot on my plate, but what’s one more thing?  Thanks Honey.

We hope that others in the Fox Valley will find these sessions useful and share them with those they know.

The past few weeks have been more than a bit nuts. Trying to keep my writing calendar up to date and get things moving is proving to be quite the challenge. One of these days, there will be time for all of it I hope.

In addition, the beginnings of an infrastructure refresh are afoot at my company. We are going to go virtual in the coming months and up first is out with the old and configure some new. Adding another 12 disk shelf to the storage array and working to get the most disk for our buck and replacing upses is the first thing on the list. Should make fo an interesting Friday night. Depending on your definition of interesting.

I am looking forward to the huge project, but am a bit nervous as well. The sheer size and scope of the thing is pretty wild. If you have done something like this before, what would you do differently if you could do it over again?

The fact that this will lead to a huge footprint reduction and cut down my departments power use is awesome, although I do not know by how much as it currently is not measured. If the temp in the room comes down 5 to 10 degrees on average I will call it successful based on the “green” metric. I think the virtualization and new methods of backup will take some getting used to, but once I have a handle on them they should work out well.

In addition, figuring out a way to vlan my backup traffic to a nas device is on my almost short list. If anyone has s suggestions there feel free to email me or comment here. I am looking for ideas here yet, so any info I can collect is good by me,

On September 11 2001 I was far away from the Big Apple.  Having just graduated from college the previous May, I had started working full time at the local ISP doing tech support for those who needed it.

Since I was working the close shift and didnt need to go to work until noon, I got to sleep in a bit, however the alarm was still set for 7 or so in the morning.  Normally if I was allowed to ignore the alarm I would hear it come on and barely move.  When the alarm went off (or when I noticed it) I heard then President Bush addressing the nation (or a clip thereof).

Let me tell you, hearing the President on the radio where there would normally be music or mindless banter is like hearing the Emergency Alert Signal, which in a way, I guess they are very similar.  I do not have stories to tell of colleagues or co-workers in New York but just seeing the events unfold on the news was mind boggling.

Having been in the IT industry for my entire career I have had some amazing opportunities and met some truly amazing people.  Some of them did have first hand experience with the events of 9.11 – and I am very grateful that I have gotten the chance to know these individuals. For one such account, click here.  The events of the day seem like they happened only yesterday even though I wasnt involved directly and the horrors of what happened stick out just as clearly.

For all the complaining many do about what is going on in the US today from the economy to the elections and the job market, we as a nation made it through 9.11. The events of today seem small in many ways compared to the events 10 years ago and maybe they aren’t, but if we can get through that we can surely get through this.

To those who lost loved ones on 9.11, my prayers go out to you still.  And to those serving to defend the freedoms we have, Thank You.  You deserve all the thanks and respect in the world and you certainly have mine.

Recently I have been looking for tools to better help manage the many things that are going on in my organization.  Mainly storage and devices attached to my network to help me keep tabs on just what is going on.  During a recent trip to Austin Tx for TechFieldDay I got another opportunity to hear from SolarWinds about some of the products they have been working on.

Storage Manager

This application is designed to provide insight into things going on with monitored servers and storage in a given environment.  When I got back from Austin, I was hoping to spend some time with this (and other) SolarWinds applications, and recently started down that path.  Because I just got things going, I cannot give a full and in depth review just yet, but will do so in the future.

The idea behind storage manager is a single pane of glass view into storage arrays and backup instances within your environment.  Initially I expected to see something that looks just at a select list of storage arrays and provides data via SNMP or access to the array.  Storage Manager does this, but it also allows me to configure agents on my Windows servers and monitor disk space and memory usage for each.

In addition to the overall storage monitoring, backups can also be watched and monitored from here.  This is something I discovered somewhat haphazardly in the initial tinkering phase.  It was quite a pleasant surprise, but will need further investigation.

In the initial demo of the product, I was rather blown away by all of the knobs available to look at an environment.  Now that I have gotten the ball rolling on testing and using SolarWinds in my environment, there is much to learn and lots to try.

The session in Austin where SolarWinds provided demos and information was very interesting and there was lots to see.  Of course getting it moving in my own environment will take some time and patience, but I’ll get there soon. Hopefully in time for next year’s budget cycle.

First impressions

The first thing I noticed when I started putting together the pieces of the SolarWinds puzzle is how well they work together.  Because of scheduling and issues with some of my test VMs I previously had trouble getting some other products from SolarWinds running correctly.  This time around, I started from scratch and all of the applications I am going to be testing installed easily and seem to work without errors.  Keep in mind, many of the tools and things are as yet untouched, but as I get more time to dig into them I am excited to see where they take me.

What am I hoping for?

Time to learn new ways to get swamped by data I think is first on my list.  Then a good opportunity to work with both the application(s) and the people behind them to really get good at understanding what they are exposing and how I can use that information to make decisions about technology going forward.

I realize I am not yet reviewing the application, and that’s OK.  It has been a long time coming and I am looking forward to getting my hands dirty soon.

Based on what I have seen so far I cannot wait to dig in further.

Fabio Rapposelli has a great post about SolarWinds and their presentation at TechFieldDay

Disclaimer: SolarWinds was a presenting sponsor at TechFieldDay, while they did host part of the event and help make it possible for me to attend, the reviews and posts here are my own.  

Because of the decision by HP to discontinue development on any WebOS hardware, I was able to get an HP TouchPad tablet for $99.  Because I went to Best Buy, I managed to use Reward Zone points to get the tablet and a sleeve for about $32.

Why buy a discontinued tablet?

I was a Pre user when Palm first released it, by this I mean I was in line super early at the Sprint store to get it right away.  The Pre was a great device and made WebOS something new.  The new method of use in WebOS was interesting for sure.  However when Palm would fix one feature or speed up the device, something else would be left performing worse.

I was excited overall when HP purchased Palm even though I had given up on the Pre by then for an Android device.

On to the TouchPad.  I thought WebOS was perfect for a tablet with true multitasking and other features and that so far seems to be the case in the first day or so of use.

The fire sale price was just the motivation needed to take a crack at it.

What’s the Good?

There are many things I found on the TouchPad that I like a lot and surely there will be more as I dig further into the device.

Multitasking – WebOS allows the TouchPad to truly multitask and run multiple apps together.  The iPad pauses applications when switched to give the appearance of multi-tasking.

Mail – This is one of the apps I found on the Pre to be really easy to use, and the TouchPad continues this.  Combining accounts and simple folder selection with the ability to select favorite folders for even faster access

Search – the “Just Type” feature built in to WebOS where I could type and search across applications, the web, and other web services.  In addition, when visiting a site with a search capability, the tablet prompts you to add the site to the on board search.

Dictionary – being able to edit and customize a dictionary to add commonly used words wasn’t something I expected or thought I would use, but it is really handy.

What’s not so good?

The first thing is a lack of apps.  Sure the support for WebOS and its community will continue, but Im not sure if developers will stick with the OS with no hardware support at present.  Maybe a hardware manufacturer will get behind WebOS and create some future devices, because of the possibilities by both submitted apps and the homebrew community, it would be a shame to see that get abandoned.

Netflix needs a WebOS app.  Being a streaming customer of Netflix I like watching TV shows and movies and have been a bit spoiled by the Netflix app on the iPad.  With the support for flash and the solid video/audio quality on the TouchPad, this would be a very wise move.

Pleasant Surprises

Skype integration out of the box is a great feature.  I also found the fact that I was able to restore settings and features from prior backups of my Palm Pre.  This pulled my email and some other settings in without any work for me.

Add a search was an interesting find.  When you visit a site with a search, it prompts to be added to the search on the device.  For sites used a lot, this is awesome.

Overall I think the TouchPad is a solid device.  Sure the iPad has more apps, but the mail application and true multi-tasking are things the iPad at present does not offer.  Sure I can get mail on both, but the application on the touch pad is just better in my opinion.

There has also been rumor floating around the Internet about Android coming to the TouchPad as a port.  I am not sure I would do it, but the option might be nice.

I feel that HP made a bad decision after just a few months to kill the hardware behind WebOS.  They spent a lot of money on Palm last year and the Pre was a solid phone that just needed some support.  Killing off the hardware and keeping the IP of the OS to support or sell to the highest bidder just seems like a waste of time/money.  Having control of the hardware could have been the best thing going, look at Apple and the iPad, those are selling like hotcakes and have set the bar for tablets.  I wonder what the recent fire sale will do to the cost of tablets by other manufacturers.

As I find other features I like or dislike I will point them out here.  I am curious to see where HP and the community at large take WebOS and hopefully there will be good things yet to come for the operating system, I choose to remain positive at this point.

Because backing up data is something that goes without question. Sure care should be taken to select the right software and media to ensure your (or your organization’s) data is regularly backed up.  Imagine if there was a single solution allowing easy management and usage.

Symantec Backup Exec Appliance

Symantec Backup Exec is coming to a new single U / single SKU appliance that will manage your backups and restores.

The Symantec Backup Exec v3600 is designed to take the management pain out of backing up data.  By including all of the agent licenses for Windows and Exchange and SQL (among others) there is no guessing and ordering to ensure that the correct licensing exists.  The goal of the device is to simply do backups and restores after a little configuration.

Configuration

Getting the appliance up and running requires knowledge of your network and an available IP address for the device.  It does need to be on the same subnet as the other devices (the remote agents) that you will be backing up.  Once this is configured, build your backup jobs and get them scheduled.

Storage

This appliance will manage 5.5 TB of backup deduplicated data, which for many SMB organizations is plenty of storage space. Because the data is deduped the storage space is increased even further. The disk based nature of the appliance makes for improved backup and recovery speed. But be aware that in the first implementation there is no tape support. Backup data can be migrated to a USB drive or replicated to other Symantec Backup Exec appliances, the cloud through a few different hosts, or a USB drive.

The backup data will be deduplicated before it heads off to the cloud, based on the cost of bandwidth to get data onto a cloud service, this is kind of a big deal.  For an extremely small organization the cloud might be a good off-site option, but for many I feel that even deduped data will be to expensive to send there.  The inclusion of a cloud option may be a great decision going forward when cloud services get cheap enough to allow this type of thing.

Simple and all inclusive backup and easy restores appears to be the goal, but there are some caveats there as well.

Also, you cannot use SAN storage for backups from the device.  Once the internal storage is full, that’s all she wrote.  Adding the ability to use existing SAN storage once the internal storage gets to a certain percentage (say 80%) would be a huge step forward.  Personally, I think that the backup jobs should be flushed to an archive regularly enough where rolling over-writes (similar to recycling tapes) can happen to reuse space for more recent backup data.  If it is important for posterity, archiving is the way to go.

Not expandable

The v3600 is not expandable.  The out-of-box configuration is as good as it gets, which is a little dissapointing given that the appliance is so straightforward.  While looking at the demo of this applicance, I also came across a Dell offering powered by Backup Exec that seemed a bit larger than the v3600.

Tape Support

I know that many organizations are moving (or have moved) away from tape and even many who attended Tech Field Day with me were quite vocal about getting away from tape, but what about as an archival solution?

While I also know that backup is not a legitimate archival solution, bringing some archival to the appliance, to allow for backups to have a scheduled archival from the v3600 to a tape library or drive for easy off site archival of data would be a great addition to this already interesting appliance.

Central Administration… not included

For those of you using many Symantec Backup Exec media servers and central administration to manage all of these, this license is not included with the v3600 and will need to be purchased separately.  Might still be worth considering if there are going to be other media servers within your environment.

I would like to see a slimmed down version of the CA server on the appliance so that it can be the one stop shop and manage all of your other media servers (if any).  Maybe the device detects other Symantec Backup Exec servers in an environment and prompts to enable the central administration features if needed.

How does dedupe happen?

Looking back at deduplication which is a nice feature given the finite amount of storage included, the process for dedupe is to point the backup jobs needing to be deduplicated at a predetermined folder on the device.  When jobs use this folder, the data will be deduplicated.  Thats a pretty cool idea.  The use case I can think of for this would be an mailbox backup job.  Duplicate messages would be taken care of automatically.  Hopefully when used with email or other common sources of duplicate files, the rehydration of restored data is optional or at least configurable to allow dupes to be skipped going back to Exchange.

Support and Maintenance

There will be 1 year and 3 year options for support available as a separate purchase.  At first I wasn’t sure this would work, having the support separate, but thinking about it further it makes sense to allow support to be optional.  This way it can be used when needed.  Suppose you have the appliance for a few years with a support contract, if other things come up and the solution no longer fits or will be used only for a certain situation, the support can be changed to a lesser plan (if you have the 3 year option) or discontinued as needed.

Final Thoughts

I am definitely interested in seeing pricing and a bit more about the Symantec Backup Exec appliance.  When that happens I will consider it to possibly become a part of disaster recovery planning.  I do not think at this time it will completely replace the media server we have today, but when my organization goes virtual the data portion, file servers and things that users cannot live without might be great candidates for an all in one appliance.  I will definitely keep it in mind.

Recently I was working on a project to get an application prepared for rollout. When I received the initial email about the process that needed to be followed, I called the vendor to find out if our usual server configuration would work or if different considerations would be needed. Specifically we are considering virtualization in the future using Windows Server 2008 R2 guest machines.

The response I received was that this application would support Windows Server 2008 but not Windows Server 2008 R2. I asked about plans to support R2 and was told that the application would not support Server 2008 R2 for some time. In other words they have no plans right now to support it.

My first thought was that this was a bit of an odd practice since Windows Server 2008 R2 is the current version of Server OS from Microsoft. Then I got to thinking about some of the considerations I might need to make to work this application. The only testing to be done is to ensure that the application, once installed, communicates to its supported devices over our network.

My plan is to set the application up using a Windows Server 2008 R2 Virtual Machine just to see if it will even run. If it doesn’t work, a 2008 VM will be tested, but since the functionality of the application is very limited in scope, I thought it was worth a shot. My goal is to spin up a 2008 R2 guest for this testing very soon (next week sometime).

I also started thinking about the difference between “not supported” and does not work. There are many applications that vendors no longer support and configurations they choose not to support that work just fine. Case in point, Windows 2000. Microsoft doesn’t support Windows 2000 anymore. But if I install it, it will run just like it was 1999.

If an application can run on an operating system one step (or half step) prior to current, there are few things that would make it unusable on the current OS. This to me, warrants giving it a shot. I believe that the requirements I got didn’t rule out x64 architecture, thus making it likely to work just fine on the current version of Windows Server. This way all of the servers in our upcoming environment will be consistent on the same OS (for a little while anyway). I also have to admit there are times when I like a challenge… and this is one of those times.

When considering supported applications, it is generally good to follow supported guidelines given by the manufacturer. When the application or vendor provides no technical reasoning or explanation for this choice, it might be worth a try. It comes down to the cost of your time and availability of your resources. If you have the time and resources to test, go for it. If not, well, convenience (and downgrade rights) say that following the stated guidelines is the easiest course.

Applications like VMware do not work on things outside their stated hardware compatibility list. Sure there are some who might be able to work on the edges of that list, but mostly it is definitely easier to work amongst the guidelines of the HCL. Being someone new to VMware, I am following the HCL for sure.

My advice here is dependent on your time and interest. If you are curious and have the resources, test it. If not, do not bother testing it. Being a bit of a geek, I rather enjoy the idea of testing things just for the sake of trying them out. It has helped me learn many different ways to do things as well as just learning about technology. Which I certainly encourage.

I head to Austin Tx for Tech Field Day 7 on Wednesday morning. Should be a good couple days of sessions and overall discussion. I am not sure at the moment who I am most looking forward to. I think all of the presenters have things that interest me.

The Presenters are:

Dell (Dell | @Dell_Storage)

SolarWinds (SolarWinds | @SolarWinds_Inc)

Symantec (Symantec | @Symantec)

Veeam (Veeam | @Veeam)

Some of them I have seen before, but there are new product releases since then and probably some new faces as well. I think the networking opportunity is what I like the best about Tech Field Day. In my neck of the weeds… er woods there aren’t many user groups so these events and the online stuff that tends to go with them are high on my list. Although the local tech stuff may be changing soon, but I cannot divulge that just yet.

I am looking forward to seeing some old friends again and definitely making some new ones. These events are busy, but in my past experiences they are enjoyable.

A bit of a thank you in advance to Stephen, Matt, and the rest of the TechFieldDay crew, without them, we wouldn’t be doing this. Oh and for the links above, I apologize as the editor I can access right now doesn’t seem to HTML friendly – will fix those soon. Update: Links Fixed… much better.

So it is 2011 and Windows 7 has been out for just about two years… wow. 2 years already, who can imagine? I have noticed that even though Windows 8 (or whatever it ends up being called) is likely just a few months away that there are still some great features in Windows 7 that may have gone uncovered by many. And if not, I am going to look at one of them here anyway.

This feature primarily applies to laptops and mobile computing, but it is still pretty sweet.

Cool Feature: Location Aware Printing
I carry my laptop with me most places and especially to work. Sure there is a PC under my desk, but sometimes the applications I own are just handy. When I brought my laptop to work after getting Windows 7 I added a default printer just the same as I might on an XP machine. Intending it to be for use in the office, and just complain that it wasn’t available when I was at home or on another network. No big deal.

The printer was named Office Printer so I would remember where the printer existed. After adding the printer, I left work for the day and went about my normal routine. When I got out my computer to check mail later that evening on my home network, the Office Printer, was nowhere to be found.

Maybe I deleted it before leaving so it wouldn’t just hang out unusable later. The next day, at the office, the Office Printer was right back where I had put it the day before.

A bit more research lead me to the feature explanation of Location Aware Printing. The printer is added dependent of the network you are connected to. Windows then hides the printer when you are connected to another network where this printer does not exist. Being someone who uses printers sparingly and does his best to name printers in a memorable fashion, I was quite pleased that Windows took care of visibility for these items without my help.

This printer feature is enabled by default but can be managed from the Devices and Printers window.

Managing Location Aware Printers

From the Device and Printers window, select a printer and click the manage default printers toolbar button.

Figure A

Location Aware Printers - image by Microsoft

Then select the option to change my default printer when I change networks.

In the select network list, choose the network you wish to manage the printer for

In the select printer list, choose the printer you want to set as the default, then click Add.

This printer added will be set as the default printer for the selected network.

To add default printers for other networks, repeat the steps above.

Note: The Location Aware Printers feature is only available in the Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate Editions of Windows 7.

For anyone who frequents multiple networks and needs printing capabilities, this feature could be just what the doctor ordered.

If you wish to disable this feature, select always use the same default printer in the Manage Default Printers dialog box.

Recently I was working on a project to get an application prepared for rollout. When I received the initial email about the process that needed to be followed, I called the vendor to find out if our usual server configuration would work or if different considerations would be needed. Specifically we are considering virtualization in the future using Windows Server 2008 R2 guest machines.

The response I received was that this application would support Windows Server 2008 but not Windows Server 2008 R2. I asked about plans to support R2 and was told that the application would not support Server 2008 R2 for some time. In other words they have no plans right now to support it.

My first thought was that this was a bit of an odd practice since Windows Server 2008 R2 is the current version of Server OS from Microsoft. Then I got to thinking about some of the considerations I might need to make to work this application. The only testing to be done is to ensure that the application, once installed, communicates to its supported devices over our network.

My plan is to set the application up using a Windows Server 2008 R2 Virtual Machine just to see if it will even run. If it doesn’t work, a 2008 VM will be tested, but since the functionality of the application is very limited in scope, I thought it was worth a shot. My goal is to spin up a 2008 R2 guest for this testing very soon (next week sometime).

I also started thinking about the difference between “not supported” and does not work. There are many applications that vendors no longer support and configurations they choose not to support that work just fine. Case in point, Windows 2000. Microsoft doesn’t support Windows 2000 anymore. But if I install it, it will run just like it was 1999.

If an application can run on an operating system one step (or half step) prior to current, there are few things that would make it unusable on the current OS. This to me, warrants giving it a shot. I believe that the requirements I got didn’t rule out x64 architecture, thus making it likely to work just fine on the current version of Windows Server. This way all of the servers in our upcoming environment will be consistent on the same OS (for a little while anyway). I also have to admit there are times when I like a challenge… and this is one of those times.

When considering supported applications, it is generally good to follow supported guidelines given by the manufacturer. When the application or vendor provides no technical reasoning or explanation for this choice, it might be worth a try. It comes down to the cost of your time and availability of your resources. If you have the time and resources to test, go for it. If not, well, convenience (and downgrade rights) say that following the stated guidelines is the easiest course.

Applications like VMware do not work on things outside their stated hardware compatibility list. Sure there are some who might be able to work on the edges of that list, but mostly it is definitely easier to work amongst the guidelines of the HCL. Being someone new to VMware, I am following the HCL for sure.

My advice here is dependent on your time and interest. If you are curious and have the resources, test it. If not, do not bother testing it. Being a bit of a geek, I rather enjoy the idea of testing things just for the sake of trying them out. It has helped me learn many different ways to do things as well as just learning about technology. Which I certainly encourage.