Technically Speaking

All people who use a computer have some contact with storage.  From the disk inside your PC to the flash drive that stores all of the photos of your kids, we all get to interact with storage.  Over the past two years I have been a Microsoft MVP in the File System Storage area and it has provided a great opportunity to see that there is more to storage than the disk(s) that hold the data.

Working with enterprise class storage, using SANs or direct attached storage in file servers, is an interesting role.  My organization uses a network attached storage box running Windows Storage Server 2003 with a very small amount of disk space.  Certainly not the piles of disks used by large companies, but still a good amount of storage to manage.

Finding out more

Last week I was in Redmond learning about storage and the ways it works within Windows Server (and client) as well as storage (or file system) related features in Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2.  The opportunity to interact with other MVPs and the product groups based around storage was amazing and I am hoping to really begin digging into storage more.  My first goal is to rebuild my Windows Server 2008 R2 box to look more at iSCSI and Storage Server.

My goal isn’t to build Peta-bytes of storage, but to look at smaller storage possibilities for mid-sized businesses.  Companies similar in size to my employer who might not have the resources for huge amounts of storage, but might want to create a very efficient storage platform perhaps using Windows based iSCSI and a reasonable amount of physical disks.

Storage is all about disk isn’t it?

For a good portion of my career I thought that disk was the only component of storage, after all to store the data, there has to be some where to put it.  However, another factor is the method by which the data gets to the disk and its availability.  Other things that influence storage (or certainly could in the future) are items like Virtualization.  Being able to captialize on the mobility of virtualized servers and the reduced hardware overhead they provide seems to bring a better storage utilization.

Many opportunities but just getting going

With the MVP Summit 2010 behind me, I am very interested in what I learned and the relationships I have formed.  Getting the opportunity to work with those at Microsoft, like Suzanne Morgan, who works with the storage initiatives in and around Windows Server is amazing. In the next few months I am sure I will have a few questions, both of Microsoft and of other Storage MVPs as my learning about enterprise storage is just getting started.

So this week the G Drive became available from Google, allowing users of Google Docs to store up to 1Gb worth of data in the Google cloud.  The files can be any variety of files and are not limited to the Google Docs suite of applications.  This is a good thing because it allows users or even organizations to store files in the cloud realatively easily.

Microsoft allows up to 25Gb of storage in its Sky Drive cloud application which to me seems the better deal.  Sure there are reasons to use both, depending on how the service is used and what applications it will be used with.  If you are a Docs user, the Google solution makes sense as long as you can keep within the 1Gb limit.

So where does this stack up for organizations?

I have accounts with both Google and Microsoft and have looked at both services briefly, each one coming in quite handy on days when for whatever reason, I forget my flash drive(s) at home.  But I am a bit curious as to the concept of organizational cloud storage and how this might start to change the game for companies.

Sure many companies still use on premise storage, either on a SAN or NAS with disk or tape backup to keep things recoverable, but would it make sense for an organization to push backups and even file storage into the cloud?  In coming years I think the answer will be a very loud yes.  Google and Microsoft can get server and disk space very cheaply per Gigabyte because they buy so much disk space all at once.  My organization can get the disk space to meet its needs in an on premise solution fairly cheap because we aren’t talking tons of storage, but for a larger organization, the need for storage space is likely to become much greater than today.  Allowing someone else to purchase, maintain, and handle the disks in your storage solutions might make the most sense.  This requires companies to have less IT staff and less server room overhead.

Pushing the stores to the cloud could cut into the overall energy utilization of a company quite quickly given the reduction in back office servers and tape drives that must be run to ensure business continuance.

What about today?

I am not sure the cloud is ready to take over entirely for on premise storage and backup but it is growing a bit more everyday.  In the future I have a feeling that storage other than an external hard disk for ITunes or other entertainment and a few files will be done in the cloud.  Maybe the disks in workstations will be large enough to foot the bill and a synchronization of the data to the organizations slice of the cloud will ensure backup all the way to the desktop.  Sure the bandwidth to the Internet would need to increase, but with fiber coming along and broadband being a mainstay already, this seems like the natural progression of things to me.

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For about a month now Microsoft’s new foray into search has been popping up all over. The service, Bing, is dubbed a decision engine, in that it will help users find the most relevant content closer to the top of the returned results. In this article, I plan to do some binging and put this new engine to the test and offer a few first impressions after using the service for a few weeks.

Note: I have not been exclusive to Bing since its release as I find myself visiting Google out of habit.

Search throughout the Microsoft.com properties has been replaced by Bing. The old live search is gone and Bing is the wave of the future, and with good reason. The idea is that the queries entered by users need to bring back quality information before worrying about the quantity of links returned.

This gets done reasonably well; when I search for Ice Cream Sandwiches in Google I get a result of 17,700,000. The same search at bing.com returns 10,700,000 records, many of which are the same.

Figure A below shows the result count at Google and Bing.

Figure A

17 million and 10 million results for ice cream sandwiches

The results, while still massive are more focused when relevant queries are entered, the ice cream sandwiches search was to show the sheer number of results returned. For example, suppose I am going to visit Oshkosh Wisconsin for the EAA this summer.

When I enter Oshkosh WI into Yahoo I get a link to the city website and a few other links at the top of the results. I also get a pane of sponsored links that organizations pay to have show up first. While these might be quite helpful, I would rather see things relevant to visiting the city like the weather and things in the area than just the businesses who pay the most money,

Entering the same Oshkosh WI into Bing produces a different experience. Sure I still see search results and the city of Oshkosh website and a few sponsored links on the right (albeit far fewer links), but there are also related links in the left hand pane as well as links to list restaurants, businesses, the newspaper, maps, and other things that might make my trip to Oshkosh more pleasant. Figure B shows the Yahoo and Bing results for Oshkosh WI.

Figure B

The Yahoo and Bing search results for Oshkosh WI

Big deal so the search works, what makes Bing better or at least different from other sites

From using Bing I have come to notice the little things that just appear on their own. For example, recently I was traveling to a major city, when I connected to the Internet to look for someplace to have lunch and read the news; I noticed that the news page on Bing had the local news pulled off to the top right. The significance of that, for me, was that I did not need to tell the site any information about where I was located. Using my IP address (or the public IP address of where I happened to be connecting) it added local news. Finding a restaurant was also quite nice as Bing returned several results based on where I was located.

Using my Oshkosh WI search from above, I clicked the link for restaurants, and a list of local places with their phone numbers is displayed at the top of the screen. Figure C shows the restaurant results for Oshkosh WI.

Figure C

Places to eat in and around Oshkosh Wi

What else is there… search and?

Bing also allows a user to preview video from any sites if the video is returned as a result. The easiest way to show this would be on the news site. When a video appears in the list of results, clicking the window for the video will play the video right from the search results.

Bing also has a travel section which can help travelers find affordable fares when flying around the world. Using technology from farecast.com and MSN travel, Microsoft has created Bing Travel. This site will help users find the best prices for moving around the world that are available on the web. Figure D shows the opening screen for Bing Travel.

Figure D

Traveling with Bing

Even though the name of the site sounds like a startup created by characters in a 90’s sitcom, the search decision engine created by Microsoft really does get quality results. I encourage all of you to put Bing! Through its paces today.

With new technology rolling out all the time and changes to hardware becoming faster and more frequent it seems as though companies can quickly fall behind in the race to be leading edge.

Using programs like Microsoft Software Assurance and Open Value can help your organization stay up front with both applications and their licensing which is so important for IT administrators to consider.

I am not a licensing expert – yet.  Hopefully in the near future I will get started down that path, simply to help my organization and others better understand the lengthy and very snooze worthy EULA.

Licensing seems to be the glue that either holds the IT organization together or the frustration that causes early baldness in IT pros all over.  I am not sure why the documents are so hard to comprehend (and yes I know that they really aren’t that bad, but you have to read them).

It seems to me that Microsoft (and other organizations) want to get all the possible scenarios into the license so they do not miss anything or leave any loopholes, which is understandable, but the efforts to do so seem to pull all of the trustworthy out of computing.  If you cannot trust your users and have to put huge license agreements out for all products except Bob (surely all of you have seen MS Bob), most aren’t going to read the EULA anyway.  This does two things:

1. gets the user to agree blindly to the terms laid out in the EULA

2. gets the vendor nowhere in terms of its customers understanding the agreements they put out.

One thing I would like to know is where can one go to find materials to learn about how licensing works not to mention get the EULA for a product before purchasing it?  Sure there are sites and books and blogs about licensing, but what training material is out there for the beast?

I do not have a huge issue with licensing other than trying to learn it.  Really it is there to protect the manufacturer and the user and should be followed, but when I saw the Windows Server 2008 Licensing for Dummies hand out at Tech Ed, it made me wonder why would they need to even joke about a Dummies manual for licensing?

Hopefully licensing gets more user friendly in the future, after all the word user is even in the title of the document.  They aren’t called the IT Professional License Agreement.

Have any of you found a good tactic for learning more about licensing or a way to gain from reading product EULAs?  If so, post in the comments or contact me, I would be interested in finding out how others handle it.

Update: Poll added below

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I know that there are still many IT Pros out there looking for work, or things to keep them up to date on the latest features, and even though the previous give away has ended, the Thrive Site is still going strong. It is packed with information to help you advance both your skills and your career.

The site contains webcasts of sessions to build your knowledge as well as links to valuable blogs and other sites that might be of value to you or those in your communities that are trying to grow in the Information Technology field.

Many statistics today focus on those who have been displaced from a career and are looking for work and thrive is moving this way at the present time as well, hopefully in the future some material or webcasts involving educational institutions and career offices to help those coming out of college find things in the IT field that will better their careers or skill sets.

I strongly encourage you to check out Thrive if you haven’t already. If you have been there, there are new links and resources coming every day to help broaden your skills and increase your career opportunities.

If anyone has any suggestions for things that might help improve the site or increase the resources available please post them in the comments and I will make sure to pass them along.

The last few days have been insanely busy and updates have not been very top of mind.  Preparing for my first trip to Tech Ed and to participate there, help make the experience as good as possible for the attendees, has been fun and a bit draining all at once.

The overall experience of Tech Ed has been wonderful.  Lots of sessions (too many to get to everything) but a little of something for everyone.

Unable to attend Tech Ed this year?  Never fear, the majority of sessions and content are being made available as a subscription at Tech Ed Online.

There have been some great sessions about Windows 7, specifically for me App-Locker and Bit Locker to go.  New features of Windows 2008 R2 have been introduced, File Classification Infrastructure (more on that soon).

The sessions have been great.

So why attend Tech Ed or get access to Tech Ed online?

Tech Ed allows learning from SMEs and the ability to meet with both Microsoft employees and third party experts who can help you solve issues that you are having.  Because the content from sessions is downloadable making it tangible and available whenever you need it.

Sure, it is only Tuesday and there are three days left of Tech Ed, but there are lots of reasons to make the investment in Microsoft Tech Ed.  The sessions will teach you technical and functionality, but they can also help you deal with Business Decision Makers and getting them on board.

I will be looking at Virtualization in my organization using some of the things I learned and worked with TechEd.  Thanks Microsoft, the opportunity was amazing.

I participated in a round table discussion about Virtualization this afternoon with Kevin Remde and others from Microsoft.  The goal was to discuss virtualization and look at how Microsoft technologies can help IT departments make the move to virtualization.

Virtualization is on of the hottest buzz-words around right now but for very good reason.  Reducing physical servers in your data center will redcue power consumtion costs and resource usage overall.  This leads to better performance on the backend, lower maintenance costs (in both time and tools needed), and greater server availability (more on that in a bit).

One of the tools that was discussed today was the Microsoft Assessment and Planning toolkit or MAP for short.  This tool can be run by any IT staff member (with appropriate permissions) and will examine your environment and determine where your servers are under utilized and how much you could benefit from using virtual servers.

The tool produces a report that will outline for IT Management and C-Level management the findings and benefits of taking your organization away from physical servers and into the virtual world.

The tool can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/map

It may be the best thing available to aid in determining just how your company will benefit from Hyper-V and Virtualization.

One more tidbit of useful information, the MAP utility is a free download.

Working on meetings and ensuring all of the parties and details are captured can be very tedious process.  Just arranging a time that works for everyone and getting into Outlook can be a hassle.

There are ways to take these meetings online, Microsoft’s Live Meeting, Citrix Goto Meeting, or Webex are three that spring to mind.

Note: Because these applications can be quite pricey, it is not my goal with this post to sell software for any of the vendors listed.

I wanted to look at the Microsoft solution, Live Meeting, not to try and get more shops to adopt the technology, although it is a great tool, but to suggest that IT staff take the time to attend some webinars sorry Live Meetings and get to know the application.

Meeting with vendors, customers, co-workers, and other groups or individuals via the web can save time for all involved.  It might even allow for IT Managers to send their staff to seminars, using web technology, to help them grow their skills.

If you go so far as to demo the technology to co-workers and management outside of IT, you may find savings in all kinds of places that might justify the cost of the application.

Note: I do not plan to review Live Meeting in this post, though I am considering doing so in the future. I wanted to get you thinking about meetings and how web technologies might remove the need for meetings or enable better use of meetings and the time spent in them.

Microsoft has tons of Live Meeting events, some public, some not, but they host tons of Live Meetings.  I would recommend looking around TechNet for a live meeting that might cover a topic that you or your staff struggle with or have questions about.  Or attend one of the IT Manager chats coming up as those will be done with Live Meeting.

Live Meeting has helped me tremendously in allowing travel to be reduced while keeping PowerPoint on the table.  It will not always replace a face to face meeting for many organizations, but in some it could as web cams can provide a visual experience.

From where I sit, Live Meeting makes conference calls more robust and more useful.  Making them a true alternative to face to face meetings.

So I encourage you to participate in the web chats for IT Managers or at least look into what Live Meeting might be able to offer your company, you might be surprised at the adoption and possibilities it brings.  I know I do.