Friday's Executive Technology Exchange

Well, I've been invited to tag along with my buddies from IE in this Friday's golf get together. I'm excited as this will be the first golf outing I will ever be attending! I'm also excited to spend some time learning about CA's I.R.O.D offering as well as XOsoft. Hope to see you all there!

~Matt S.

Saving the environment

I like to think that we're all doing our part to save the environment. The idea of Green IT has only been in the mainstream for a few years but, due to companies' tightening budgets, has recently been gaining traction.

I am proud to work for a company like TNS as we represent all the technologies that you can use to successfully create a greener network environment. You can buy one or two beefy servers, load them up with VMware and you could load upwards of 20 production servers on one box. By adding VMotion you can ensure fault tolerance for those servers. You can use Citrix to set up successful telecommuting within your company. If you were to partner that with RSA and Fortinet, you could really secure that telecommuting. VoIP allows for further extension of that telecommuting with follow me and other virtual extension features.

To use a phrase that makes perfect sense here: The possibilities are endless...
Using all the technologies above and more, you can actively reduce your carbon footprint, decrease power consumption, save the planet one server at a time, and at the same time improve the TCO of your equipment as well as increase the utilization of servers within your environment. VMware estimates that, at peak performance, the average server is only 20%utilized.

The possibilities are endless...

~Matt S.

Sent from my Windows Mobile® phone.

Just getting back from a full weekend in NYC!

Hey all!

I just wanted to share my adventures this weekend in regard to IT and the environment. I know, I know… it’s not that often that we hear about “Green IT” but it’s becoming more and more prevalent in the world as we strive to be more power conscious, reduce carbon emissions, and get the full bang for our buck from servers.

My wife and I ventured to the Hilton hotel in uptown NYC to check out the Go Green Expo. You can check it out here: http://www.gogreenexpo.com/

We both do what we can in terms of using CFLs for our home lighting and unplugging our cell phone chargers/laptop cords when not charging anything (they do draw a significant amount of watts if you leave them plugged in) but we wanted to see all the splendor that is an environmentally friendly world. She was there mainly to check out environmentally friendly clothing companies (she’s in fashion) but I wanted to see Dr. Albert Esser of DELL and his “Revealing your Hidden Data Center” presentation.

Well, let me tell you… it was very impressive. Not so much about DELL, but more about being environmentally conscious in the purchase of our own systems and knowing where the carbon is coming from. In reality, we are our own CIOs (I can’t take credit for that little bit of literary genius, thanks Dr. Esser!) and every time we make purchasing decisions, it is our responsibility to be as environmentally conscious as possible.

Oh, and the next time you see a tree… give it a hug!

~Matt S.

P Please consider the environment before printing this blog J

Ubuntu Dual Boot...

So I'm trying to wrap my head around OSes that aren't Windows...

In order to crack WPA security (in order to show network vulnerability) and other cool little apps, they need to be Linux based (M$ hasn't figured that one out yet.) I've gone through the process of creating a dual botting laptop with both Vista on it (it came with the laptop) and Ubuntu. I tried the KDE flavor of Ubuntu (Kubuntu) but I wasn't happy with the flakiness of video that I got and a few crashes of the software. I know that's not usually enough to switch gears for most but I'm just playing around with it.

There are so many things that you can do once you're finally in the OS. The command line is way more powerful than the GUI, but I need some time to adjust.

I also just realized there's a 64 bit version so I'll be downloading that and flattening the install just one more time to get it right.

It's never too late to teach an aging dog new tricks!

~Matt S.

Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, etc. improves productivity

Hey guys and gals,

As a part of my daily update, I would like to share the following articles:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/faffing-about-on-facebook-good-work-1660409.html

http://www.news.com.au/business/story/0,27753,25295998-5012426,00.html?referrer=email&source=eDM_sense

The basic gist is… people that use Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing (WILB) are likely to be more productive than those that do not. In other words… keep blogging people!

~Matt S.

Windows 2008 Clustering using imaged OSes

So I’m all for the convenience of imaging operating systems, but from time to time there’s a price to pay for that convenience.

For example: I’m using an imaged version of Windows 2008 Enterprise X64 on two blade servers to create a two-node cluster. I built these images so I know they’re solid. The problem is that when running the validation tests, it fails telling me I have a duplicate MAC address and IP (in this case “Local Area Connection* 11”).

After some snooping in the registry, I learned that this particular Local Area Connection was cluster related. How can that be? I didn’t create a cluster yet! Well, in my infinite wisdom, I pre-installed the cluster feature on my master Windows 2008 image. Apparently, this creates a hidden cluster adapter with a unique MAC address. If you deploy another server using this image, that MAC address is no longer unique!

After removing the cluster feature and re-installing it on one of the nodes, the validation report ran without a hitch.

Even when little “annoyances” crop up like this one, in my opinion imaging operating systems still outweighs the price.

-Jeff K.

Pulling Fiber

I’m off to Lowe’s to go get some flexible conduit – 80 feet should suffice. Plan is to uplink some new HP switches to the existing Cisco Infrastructure.