Tales of the IT Helpdesk

Microsoft IT Camp

2011-12-13T00:14:00.000-08:00

I was invited to attend a Microsoft test event on Monday 12th December. The Technet staff were trialling a new format of training session and wanted to get some feedback on the format from people within IT, and how people felt it would work if rolled out as part of Microsoft's normal training material. The session was held at Cardinal Place in London; a great venue, very modern with superb facilities but as I’m based down in the South West, this was a long way to travel.

The event was opened by a rather hoarse Simon May who left a lot of the talking to Andrew Fryer. The basic idea was to showcase the updated versions of the System Center products, with a specific emphasis on Virtualisation, making use of Hyper-V. However, they also wanted to focus particularly on the setting up of clusters. I’d seen some previous material on the earlier versions of these products, but was keen to see the 2012 versions due out next year.

For those that don't already know, there has been a move towards much more integration of the various products within the System Center range. Each product is now seen more as an integral part of the overall suite, rather than as a separate product that just happens to work with the others. This seems to a sensible move and it means that sysadmins should have access to all of the tools they need to manage their data centres.

Rather than use high specification equipment, Andrew wanted to demonstrate that it was possible to set-up a test lab using older machines; the sort that can be obtained using ebay or that might be sold off after an equipment refresh. He had several laptops; 2 acting as the Hyper-V hosts and one that was acting as a type of SAN unit. He proposed to join the 2 hyper-V hosts as clusters on a single node.

The presentation did not go quite as planned! He actually ran into several key issues during the set-up, but as many of the people present were very familiar with the product, they were able to highlight a number of the factors that had caused the hiccups. What was interesting was that even with these technical issues, the whole process didn’t actually take that long.

During the day, and also at the end, the staff asked for feedback on the event which it has to be said was generally positive. However, quite a few people (myself included) felt that they had missed a trick; many of us had our laptops with us, and it would have been a really impressive feat to have got these working as part of the set-up as well. There was a general feeling that most delegates would have been more than willing to bring their own equipment, possibly even downloading and installing some items in advance in order to make this more effective.

Having said, they were more than willing to consider this and a couple of other ideas that might allow those present to take a slightly more active and positive role. I’ve seen a couple of VDI infrastructure plans, and I feel that they would easily be able to set-up something that could be used for attendees to connect to and work with VMs in order that they could get a real “hands on” experience.

The plans are for the new format to be modified, based partly on experience but also on the feedback from those that were there. They also hope to develop it further to encompass more topics, and the organisers were keen to get feedback on which ones were of the most interest. Some comments were made about making sure that any future events would be held in other locations; the Microsoft offices are great, but not everyone can get there easily. Although there were no commitments, it seems that they intend to try to cover more of the major population centres than before; and that can’t be a bad thing!

I have to be honest I do enjoy these sorts of events. I feel quite strongly that those of us that work in IT can all too easily develop a “silo mentality”. We get so wound up with day to day problems, and all too often work in small groups, and it’s far too easy to forget about the bigger picture. This can also make the job less enjoyable; it’s just too easy to find the passion for the work drifting away. By going along to the various sessions, it’s possible to see new ways of working that might otherwise pass us by, to meet with other professionals and hear what problems they face. I find that it can help generate a new enthusiasm for the work that can all too easily be lost when you are dealing with very basic problems most of the time.

All in all, I found it to be an interesting, useful, enjoyable day. I suspect that future events will be along the same lines, but will benefit from the comments of those that have taken part so far. If you see one in your area, I would urge you to go along; it will most definitely be worth the time and effort.

Jeux sans Frontiere

2011-12-05T07:53:00.000-08:00

Back in the 1970s & 1980s, there was a TV programme called “It’s a Knockout”. This featured teams of people from across the UK competing in a series of increasingly silly games. These programmes were presented by the wonderful Eddie Waring and Stuart Hall; and anyone who watched, will remember the way that Stuart used to collapse in fits of uncontrolled laughter at the various antics.

The format was so successful that it spawned an international contest “Jeux San Frontieres” (Games without Frontiers), and towns from across Western Europe would take part, host these crazy contests. It was a lot of fun, and sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be a good idea to resurrect the concept.

I mention this because it’s clear that there are a lot of companies in the SME market that are now having to deal with cross border relationships; even quite small businesses like ours are able to sell to other countries thanks to the power of the Internet. In our case, we have offices in other countries, and there is a need for our IT staff to support users in those countries as well as in the UK.

This is not easy. I now have an enormous respect for those support people in call centres that provide facilities for multi-language telephone support. Bearing in mind that my French was learned in school some 40 years ago, and was of the “Ou est la plume de ma Tante?” method of teaching, I was quite nervous to have to try and deal with potentially complex technical issues in another language.

Part of the problem is having the confidence to try to speak in another language, particularly if you don’t do this regularly. If you mutter something in an embarrassed way, and the other person then responds with an impatient “Quoi?”, then it’s easy to get nervous and that just makes things harder. However, it’s surprising just how much you can communicate with a relatively small vocabulary and if you speak confidently.

Try this; think of a phrase or sentence at least a couple of dozen words long. Now write out every third word on a piece of paper and give that to someone to read. The chances are that they will still understand what you mean with only the few words selected. There have been numerous studies and this has been proven to work in almost all cases (and not just in English), even when using complex phrases. It’s not necessary to get grammar or syntax absolutely correct, as long as you use the appropriate words. We just had to learn the right phrases, and be able to use them appropriately.

About a year ago, I bought an older server specifically to support a virtual platform. Then I used the Technet site to obtain copies of Operating Systems in the relevant languages we have to support. Although the configuration process and screens will be the same, it’s helpful to know some of the differences in technical names; for example, in French “Computer” is "Ordinateur", but “My Computer” is "Poste de Travail";. Getting the correct phrase is not just a case of a direct translation!

This has helped enormously, and I can confidently tell people on the phone to “Clicquez-vous en Demarrer", "Aide et Support", "Assistance a Distance"…” etc. etc. It’s also allowed us to take screen shots of the various windows with the appropriate language text in French, German and Hungarian, and these are used to create user documentation for inclusion in a FAQ section of our help desk software.

The end result is a better service for the end users. It makes them feel more confident in the support that we provide, and we have had some really good feedback from their staff. It also means that our support staff (i.e. me!) can feel a bit more comfortable when the dreaded “34” country code appears on the CLI of the incoming call.

Video Conferencing

2011-11-17T02:30:00.000-08:00

This is a topic that crops up from time to time; and it’s one that I have some experience with.

A decade or so ago, people were selling Video Conference (VC) equipment for use with ISDN lines; these were OK, but there were technical issues with the data stream bandwidth and Quality of Service, and the user experience could be less than satisfactory. Pictures would be blocky or pixelated and even audio could be a bit of an issue, especially with multi way calling.

But the benefits to the business were really valuable, so people tolerated poor quality. Even if we only had a couple of VC meetings every week, the cost savings were very significant to the company that I worked for. At that time (2000 – 2004), we had calculated that we were saving around £25k to £35K per year. This was based wholly upon petrol / mileage costs saved with the sites about 200 miles apart.

When it became possible to use IP based systems, the quality of both audio and video improved quite considerably as the compression ratios were better and bandwidth higher and more consistent; and the user experience was such that people actually wanted to use the facility. I put this in at my current employer at all company sites, and I’ve estimated that we have saved around £450k to £500k over the last 6 years (for a capex of £25k and very little opex). This is based upon petrol / mileage / flights, hotel accommodation and subsistence allowances that would otherwise have had to be paid for.

This of course does not take into account the less tangible benefits; work / life balance (less travelling, fewer later nights), carbon footprint / environmental costs, user interaction. We found that most staff were able to collaborate better with VC meetings, and this generated some useful ideas which lead to key improvements in many areas. This also helps staff (and even some managers) feel more engaged within the activities of the business.

It’s become so valuable that we are now seeing senior managers wanting access to a VC function on their desks. We provide this capability through units which look like PC monitors, but can be switched to VC screens. We have experimented with smaller products; Skype, OCS / Lync and others, but the managers do like the larger viewing screen and it’s difficult to persuade them to use smaller viewing windows.

I think that almost inevitably, we will be moving to Tele Presence at some stage; once they see the improved quality of the product, I suspect they will be demanding it instantly. I’ve seen and think that it is pretty awesome; if you haven’t had the chance, then call your regional supplier, as they will be delighted to demonstrate their offering. Our current equipment is still functioning well, but has more than paid for its installation so replacing it would not be too much of an issue. The costs for purchasing the new hardware are a bit higher, but considering the cost savings, it would be well worth it.

A-PDF Watermark Service is one of the best tools I have come across ..

2011-11-04T07:54:00.000-07:00

For some time now, we have had a bit of a technical challenge within our Technical Drawing office. These guys produce about 2,000 to 3,000 different engineering drawings a week, all of which have to be saved and then accessed by a large number of people within the factory as well as others throughout the different sites belonging to the business.

We have a Document Management System that allows us to link the drawings to various modules within our ERP software; this is really useful as part of a drive towards using less paper throughout the business. This can be useful, but only if the file is attached to the right item straight away; and often that isn’t possible for a number of technical reasons.

The problem is that when you get that number of files, there is a key issue. How do you identify the right drawing and associate this to the file? We have tried a number of different methods with file names etc. but this doesn’t always help. Imagine that you have the printed drawing; it says that it is a left handed swivel arm, but how do you know what file that drawing came from if you want a second copy?

After some discussion, we decided that what we needed was a simple tool to allow us to imprint a modified file name onto the drawings which included works order number, quantity, and required date of the component. This would then allow anyone looking at the drawing to identify exactly what file the drawing came from and they could then quickly locate the relevant file and the also know where to look within the ERP system.

After some considerable research we found A-PDF Watermark Service from A-PDF. This useful little tool allows us to add those details of the drawing’s file name onto a designated place on each drawing; and it does so automatically.

http://www.a-pdf.com/watermark-service/download.htm

Using this product meant that we saved the time in hand writing (or typing) the information onto the drawings and it also removes the element of human error. It’s installed on the relevant file server and runs as a background service that processes the files automatically; and seems to easily handle the work load that we are throwing at it.

We highly recommend this product as a simple but effective solution.

Office365 (part 2)

2011-06-27T08:19:00.000-07:00

After my last post about Office365, I thought that I would write a bit more about why I think it would be such a good product for us; the rationale behind the thinking.

Some 10 years ago, less than half of the office staff had PCs, and there were perhaps 2 PCs in the factory area. Now, everyone in the offices has a PC (some have more than one) and in the factory areas, there are just over 2 PCs for every 5 staff. (These are shared by people and used as required to access relevant data.) As you can see, there has been a significant growth in the use of IT systems in the last decade.

About 6 years ago, some people start working with laptops and they were able to use VPN connections to get access to systems in the office, primarily for email when they were off site. To start with these were senior managers, IT staff and some sales people, but over the last couple of years, the number has increased to include many others. We even have a couple of ladies from our customer support team that regularly go out to visit partner companies that they work with, and they take a ?pool? laptop with them.

As you?ll realise, having access to email, CRM & ERP systems along with data files is pretty important for many of these staff and it helps them do their job far more efficiently. However, although the process to connect the VPN is really easy, some of them still occasionally have difficulties in making the VPN connections and we have been looking to see if there is a way to make their life easier.

One thing that was discussed in the Microsoft ?Jump Start? sessions a few weeks ago was the concept of a ?Hybrid? cloud; one that used both public and private cloud options linked together. In the session, there was a discussion about linking Office365 using LDAP to connect to an existing Exchange Server inside of a company?s LAN. Effectively, this would extend the mail function to allow Active Directory designated people when outside of the network to use Office365, and staff inside to use the normal Exchange Server; but the two linked together effectively as a single system and without the need for VPN connections.

I think that this could be a major benefit for us; it would make life easier for all staff that travel, as they would have access to their email without having to worry about running VPN connections. They could use their laptops, their smart phones, tablets or even a PC from the people that they are visiting to get access to their mail and other material.

As for staff inside of the business, they would continue to use the existing Exchange mailboxes; but they would still see the travelling staff as being on the same system. It might even be an option for some of the staff internally to use a tablet moving around inside of the factory; although I?m not sure that these devices are quite robust enough for some of the heavy handed individuals we employ!

Of course, there are security issues, but that is for a discussion another time. I feel that the hybrid option would make a lot of sense for us; it would provide a sensible and elegant solution to a problem that has caused a few issues and will only get more serious as time goes by. I think that Office365 is a product that deserves some serious consideration and could provide a real option for our travelling staff; and it might be a real advantage to the business.

Office365

2011-06-13T04:26:00.000-07:00

As promised in my last post, I’m going to write about the new Office365 product for which I have been testing the beta version. If you want to take a look at the beta for yourselves, then sign up here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/office365/enterprise/hosted-software.aspx?CR_CC=200038628&WT.srch=1&CR_SCC=200038628

Essentially, the concept is simple; this is an online product that provides the functionality of the normal Microsoft Office package. It’s run through a browser window, and the key thing is that it can be accessed from any device at anytime. All you need is a standard Windows Live ID in order to get access to the relevant portal.

The front page is quite straight forward and very “clean” and uncluttered; it gives a brief overview of what tasks need to be done and how to access the key components. There is also a link to support, the community forum, and information on how to perform key tasks.

The Outlook function is accessed from a menu item and is based upon Outlook 2010; even if you are using an earlier version, you will probably be able to work out how to do things. I tried this on an iPhone and there is a slight difference in the appearance as it uses the Outlook Web App (OWA). For those advanced Outlook users, there are a couple of functions missing; the public folders option is one item. However, I found it really easy to use, and I suspect that most others would have no trouble switching to this product from an existing version of Outlook.

There is also the calendar, contact list and tasks list functions as well. We use this on our normal Outlook function, so it might be something that we could use to good effect. For the contacts, we would need to find a way to separate out some of the entries as otherwise we would end up with massive longs lists making it harder for people to find what they need.

The Office365 product includes SharePoint Online; which is exactly what it sounds like. It seems to be based upon the SharePoint Foundation product, and offers the same kind of functionality. Although I had a few issues with the provisioning at first, an email to the Support Centre fixed that. I then found it really simple to set-up and use.

I’m actually a great believer in SharePoint; I think that it has a lot of functionality that would help fix a lot of business issues and provide a mechanism for resolving several key communication problems. The only downside is that it sometimes seems very difficult to get the users to understand that they can take control of many of their tasks; they seem to have a very fixed view that only IT staff can do these things.

Office365 also offers Lync which is the new instant messaging client; I thought it looked very slick and had a number of very useful additions compared to earlier products. Again this is something that I think we don’t make enough use of, and following a couple of tests, there are some key users that really like the product, but unfortunately there are many more that simply do not want to even try to use it.

Lync can also be used for audio or video conferencing; I did one very quick test and it worked well, but that was only between 2 users within our network. It would have been useful to test it against a couple more users for a slightly larger conference call; we may still do that another time as we still have over 140 days left on our 6 month beta licence.

The other main feature are the Web Apps for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote; very similar to the 2010 versions of the software and most people will pick them up very quickly. I’m not a great fan of the ribbon interface, but I suppose that I’ve become used to using it; and the Web Apps use the same feature, so it make sense to get used to it now.

There are a number of arguments about the use of cloud computing; that’s going to be a topic for another day. Suffice it to say that having tested Office 365, I really like it and most other users seem to find it very straight forward. We don’t know the price yet, but I have seen a couple of suggestions for the cost, and I think that it could be very affordable.

Office 365 is a really good product even though it is just the beta version so far; it’s one that I’ll be keeping an eye on over the next few months for sure.

Office 365 Jump start sessions

2011-05-31T08:47:00.000-07:00

Last week, I had the opportunity to take part in 3 training events organised around the new Microsoft Office365 product; the replacement for BPOS. These sessions were all online, run using MS Live meeting, with a mixture of PowerPoint slides and some actual demos of the product in use.

The sessions were started at 10.00 am Pacific Daylight time (18.00 BST) as they were being hosted from the West Coast of the USA. They ran until 4.00 pm PDT which meant staying up until midnight, very much a long evening, particularly as I usually get up at 6.30 in the morning. However as the event was so worthwhile, I don’t feel too put out by that.

(http://blogs.technet.com/b/uktechnet/archive/2011/05/11/register-now-for-the-office-365-jump-start-for-it-pros.aspx)

On the first day, they had a few technical issues with the audio at the very beginning of the session; for some reason, they kept losing the sound from the presenters. However, once that little hiccup was out of the way, the sessions picked up pace quite rapidly and they went through a great deal of information.

The moderator was Adam Carter who kept things moving along really nicely; he was joined by a number of people that had specific knowledge of key components of the package and these went into the various parts in some detail. At the same time, the online participants were invited to ask any questions; there were some really great issues raised and for the most part, the moderators were able to deal with these or to pass them on to the specialists for them to elaborate further.

I’ll write up a bit more about the actual product itself in a later blog post; suffice to say that the various components were explained and demonstrated very well. I would suggest most people had a really good opportunity to see them in action, learn a bit more about some of the basic administrative tasks required, and how to make use of the new product.

Of particular note was the session on using PowerShell to do some of the admin tasks; for those that are not so confident in using this utility or still working out if they need to use it, the demonstration showed just how flexible and easy to use it is, and I’m sure that many would have gone away determined to learn more about working with the commandlets.

For me the best demonstration was by Mark Kashman who gave a superb presentation on the use of SharePoint Online. He had created a demonstration site using the “Fabrikam” company name, and it was quite astonishing; simply one of the best SharePoint sites I’ve seen. A number of people asked if it would be made publically accessible as a reference site, and he has said they will look at this, but he felt that the site was still unfinished and that the team would want to do more work on it before releasing it into the wild.

All in all, this was a really great opportunity to learn more about the new Office365 product. It was very well put together and I think pitched at just the right level for most of the people involved. The slides are now available online to download –

http://borntolearn.mslearn.net/office365/m/officecrapril/default.aspx

They did suggest that the videos will also be available in a couple of weeks’ time, and if I get the details, I’ll add them on as well. They also promoted the Microsoft Virtual Academy, another really great free resource; if you haven’t heard about this, check it out at

http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/Home.aspx

I hope that Microsoft put out a few more sessions like the jumpstart session; I would suggest that if they do, you would be well advised to sign up as it is a great training resource for IT sysadmins, to make that they stay on top of the latest products and developments.

DPM across Domains

2011-04-25T02:35:00.001-07:00

I've been using the Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager product for just under 4 years; and I really like the product. As far as I am concerned, it ticks a load of the relevant boxes; easy to install, easy to use and manage, and most importantly, it works really well. It backs up to disk, then from disk to tape. It uses a relatively small amount of bandwidth and data recovery is quick and easy. It is simply one of the best backup products that I have come across, far easier to use than many of the more well known software packages.

A while ago, the company bought out a partner organisation. This left us a sales office based in Paris; they are a separate entity, but as they are quite small, they don't have their own IT staff. They have been using the services of another business, but it was decided a while ago that we would take on that responsibility. We needed to provide a backup function to preserve their data, and set about putting this into place.

One of the key issues was that they did not have an Active Directory domain on site. Everything was set-up as a workgroup only, and this causes a lot of issues. So one of the first things to do was set-up a suitable domain structure. Hopefully, this will reduce the amount of admin work that is required; previously, it was necessary to create a local user account on every single piece of kit, which required a lot of work. The new domain was created a couple of weeks ago, and we've now also created a two trust between the two AD domains.

The next step was to set-up the remote site to be backed up by our DPM server, but this was where we hit a snag. Each time we tried to install the agent, it responded with messages that the remote site was not available. I could prove that this was false; I could ping the remote server and even RDP to it from the DPM server. I checked all sorts of things, and each showed that the remote site was fully operational and accesible.

So I decided to do a manual install of the agent on the remote site. The first step was to RDP to the remote server, then create a mapped drive back to the DPM server. Having done that, I then opened the folder where the DPMAgentInstaller.exe file was found - that's at \Program Files\Microsoft DPM\DPM\Agents\RA\\i386 and there are also options for AMD & 64 bit installs.

This actually went through OK, and having installed the agent, it's necessary to define which is the correct DPM server. This is done using \Program Files\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\DPM\bin\SetDpmServer.exe – dpmServerName . Again this went through OK, but it still produced an error message that there were insufficient permissions to complete the process.

After having checked the event log, I was able to see a number of LsaSrv Event ID: 6033 errors. This showed that I should modify the registry key \Program Files\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\DPM\bin\SetDpmServer.exe – dpmServerName to disable the anonymous logon block. Having done this, it then showed another set of errors taht indicated that there was still a problem with permissions.

Having checked these yet again, I could see that the DPM server was in the correct groups etc. but I also thought to put the DPM administrator account into the administrators group account. Having done this, the error went away, but the agent still wouldn't connect to the DPM server. However, I ran the SetDPMServer.exe utiltiy again, and this time, it completed correctly. When I went back to the DPM console, it showed the agent as installed and connecting to the remote server.

So now we are in the position where we can actually backup that remote site. It will be a bit of an issue to begin with as there is a lot of data on site. I'll probably go over again, to do a manual copy of the data to a portable hard drive. This can then be manually copied to the DPM server to get the initial data load, and then the synchronisation process will only work on the data that has changed from that copy; a great deal less than the full synch process.

This is going to make a huge difference to the people on the remote site; they won't have to worry about tapes etc. or what to do if someone goes on holiday. The data is being backed up off site, so is more secure. The recovery process is really simple and we can give them the confidence that we can deal with it really quickly if needed.

Transformational Security

2011-03-02T03:11:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, I attended an event hosted by Computer Weekly, SC Magazine and a couple of others. “Information Security Leaders 2011: Transformational Security” - as you might gather form the title it was a look at how and why things are changing and how to provide security in the newer IT landscapes.

Although a lot of people think that these are just junkets, with a chance to pick up some SWAG and eat and drink at someone elses' expense, I actually find these events very useful. Working within IT can have its problems; all too often, we work in small groups, and it's very easy to become isolated. This means that we develop set habits, and forget that there may be other ways of doing things.

Getting out to events like this can be really useful in many ways. It's interesting to talk to others in the industry and see just what kinds of problems they are facing. All too often, we might think that we are the only ones with a particular issue, only to find many other people with exactly the same problem. I really like to share advice and information on how we approach some of these and how and why we go down the route that we do.

This particular event was very useful. There were some keynote speakers that offered a real insight into just how things are changing and why; and they offered some considered advice on how to look at this as an opportunity. In particular, the concept of "consumerisation" was raised - people wanting to use their own equipment that they use for home based email, social networks etc, then wanting to use the same items for work use. (That's not just the same make or model, but the actual device).

At first, I thought that this was not an issue that we would face; but then I realised that it has already happened. We have a number of staff that have their own mobile phone (smartphone device) that are then trying to connect up so that they can get their email on the device. It's not been a major issue so far; but what would we do if one of those people then left the company? (OK, cancel their email account is a start, but what if they had access to someone else's account as well?)

Or how would you react if they lost their mobile device and someone else found it and then could use this to get access to company systems. The answers may seem simple, but as the speakers pointed out, this is the thin end of the wedge, and it's going to start happening a lot more often and involve a lot more devices and people.

All in all, the event was a good day (and yes the food was good!); it was also very useful from the point of view of getting people to think slightly outside of their comfort zone. If there are any more events of this type, either this year or in the future, I would strongly recommend thaking the opportunity to get along. You won't regret it!

Email signatures

2011-02-02T01:37:00.000-08:00

Some time ago, it was suggested that we should have an agreed format for Email signatures across the company. Unfortunately, it took some time to get agreement on what format we should use. I could go into the details of this, but it's pretty boring; for example, the discussions on the font to be used seemed to take forever. Suffice to say that there were numerous discussions and it has taken quite a while for the final decision.

There are numerous sample VB scripts out on the Internet for producing an email signature, but none seemed to achieve what we wanted. I did think about trying PowerShell, but I don't yet know enough to be able to do the work using that. As I've used VB script on and off for a few years, it made sense to try and use that, at least for the time being.

The script has taken a little while to put together to make sure that it meets the needs of the business. It takes data from the Active Directory, formats it and places it in the required location. It also inserts a company logo, and there is a bit of conditional text to insert other logos; this is because we attend a number of trade shows, and like to promote these on our emails.

There is one slight issue; the email has to go out in Rich Text Format. If it goes as .HTML, the lines get double spaced. This is just because of the way that it gets rendered and I haven't found a way around this. Also if it goes out as plain text, the logo doesn't get inserted. It works by using Word - it extracts the AD data and sets the sig in Word before saving it in Outlook.

I'm putting the script below as I am quite pleased with it and the results; if it would be of any help, please feel free to make use of it. Just copy the text, place in a text file, save it and then change the extension to .vbs - I haven't tested it with all versions of software, but I have tried with Outlook 2003 / 2007 / 2010 on Exchange 2003 (on Server 2003), on PCs running Windows XP and Windows 7 and it worked in each case.

(Note that I have removed the specific details of our company so that it is a generic script; you would then have to modify it to show your own details.)

Enjoy!

====================

On Error Resume Next

Set objSysInfo = CreateObject("ADSystemInfo")

strUser = objSysInfo.UserName
Set objUser = GetObject("LDAP://" & strUser)

strName = objUser.FullName
strTitle = objUser.Title
strDepartment = objUser.Department
strCompany = objUser.Company
strOffice = objUser.physicalDeliveryOfficeName
strPhone = objUser.telephoneNumber
strFax = objUser.faxNumber
strMob = objUser.Mobile
strAddrs1 = "Site 1 Address"
strAddrs2 = "Site 2 Address"
strAddrs3 = "Site 3 Address"
strWeb = "www.domain.net"
Logo = "\\server\share\logo.jpg"
ShowLogo = "\\server\share\show1.jpg"

Set objWord = CreateObject("Word.Application")

Set objDoc = objWord.Documents.Add()
Set objSelection = objWord.Selection

Set objEmailOptions = objWord.EmailOptions
Set objSignatureObject = objEmailOptions.EmailSignature

Set objSignatureEntries = objSignatureObject.EmailSignatureEntries

objSelection.Font.Name = "Arial"
objSelection.Font.Size = "10"

objSelection.InlineShapes.AddPicture(Logo)
objSelection.TypeParagraph()
objSelection.TypeParagraph()

objSelection.TypeText strName & ", " & strTitle & Chr(10)
objSelection.TypeText strDepartment & ", " & strCompany & ", " & strOffice & Chr(10)
if strOffice = "Site1" then
objSelection.TypeText strAddrs1
end if
if strOffice = "Site2" then
objSelection.TypeText strAddrs2
end if
if strOffice = "Site3" then
objSelection.TypeText strAddrs3
end if
objSelection.TypeText strOffAddrs & Chr(10)
objSelection.TypeText "Tel:" & " " & strPhone & Chr(10)
objSelection.TypeText "Fax:" & " " & strFax & Chr(10)

if strMob <> "" then
objSelection.TypeText "Mob:" & " " & strMob
end if

objSelection.TypeParagraph()
objSelection.TypeText strWeb & Chr(13)
objSelection.TypeParagraph()
objSelection.TypeParagraph()

if strOffice = "Site1" then

end if
if strOffice = "Site2" then
objSelection.InlineShapes.AddPicture(ShowLogo)
end if
if strOffice = "Site3" then

end if

Set objSelection = objDoc.Range()

objSignatureEntries.Add "AD Signature", objSelection
objSignatureObject.NewMessageSignature = "AD Signature"

objDoc.Saved = True
objWord.Quit

A third slice of V

2011-01-04T07:57:00.000-08:00

Happy new year to one and all!

This post follows on from a previous item on virtualisation. We had installed the hardware, then the ESXi software - now to start getting serious.

ESXi does have a console to set-up certain key items, but these are very limited. Essentially, it allows you to change hostname, set IP addressing and some security, not much else. To manage the host machines, you have to use another piece of software; the VSphere Client which runs from a PC. I already had a copy of this installed on my laptop, from the tests that I had run earlier in the year. However, I decided to get the latest version so that we could start as we mean to continue.

The update went through quite quickly and after about 15 minutes, I had the logon dialog box. Put in the correct IP address and logon to the host; except that it came up with an "invalid user name or password" message. I checked the details and they were correct. I double checked the details; domain, username, password. They were definitely all correct. After having stared at this for a few minutes, I then realised that the host installation had used a US keyboard layout and I was inputting the details using a UK layout keyboard. When I re-entered the same details using the US layout, it let me access the host. And it appears that there is no UK layout option available on the host installation routine.

Looking at the details of the host, I could creat VMs and allocate resources; but this wouldn't allow me to manage the other hosts. To do this, I had to install the VCenter Server product and use to do all the management. The idea was that this would be installed on the first VM, but when I tried to install the software, it produced an error stating that it was not possible to install the server software on a VM. This made no sense; the material that I had received all indicated that the best practice would be to install the VCenter Server on a VM.

After some analysis, the solution became obvious; I had the wrong version of VCenter Server. I had downloaded it from the VMWare web site; once you get used to the site, it is quite sensibly laid out, but to start with, it can be a bit overwhelming. When I checked, there is a particular set of downloads to match the version of VMWare that we had purchased, and this was where I should have got the software from. So I downloaded that version; and yes, it installed straightaway.

So far, so good; I had the hosts running, the SAN was available and with the VCenter Server software installed, I could see all of the hosts and start to do some more detailed work. Unfortunately, we have a number of projects on the go at the moment, so I was involved in another one for a few days before I could get back to playing with the VMs.

When I did get back to the virtual platform, I wanted to make the storage on the SAN unit available. I was able to initiate the iSCSI connectors and these showed the disk allocation on the SAN unit. However, these were not available to the VMs; it needs a check box to be ticked for this to happen.

Later on, I realised that we still had an issue; although the storage area was available to VMs on the one host, it wasn't available to the others. Further checking revealed yet another setting (this time on the SAN itself) that needed to be checked, and as soon as this was done, each of the hosts could see all of the storage areas.

Unfortunately, I got this resolved after I had created the first VM and installed the VCenter Server. This means that the image and the virtual disk are actually stored in a local drive on the host server, which is not quite what was planned. It appears that this can't be moved using the VMotion process; but I may be able to get around this by using the P2V function at a later stage. If this works I'll write another piece about that later.

So at this point we had all of the hardware installed, all of the software licensed and running, our first VM created and some templates ready for future use. We can now manage the systems and have experiemented with copying, snapshotting, moving using the VMotion process, modifying resource allocation on VMs and deleting the various unwanted bits. It has taken a bit of time, but now there is a good level of confidence in the product and we are comfortable that we can move to the next level. And there will be more on that next time.

BCS - Retro computing

2010-12-15T23:46:00.000-08:00

Most IT staff work in fairly small groups; even in the larger companies, teams break down into groups of just a few people. As a result, it's easy for people to develop a "silo" mentality, and forget that there is a larger world out there.

For that reason, I like to try to get to various events where there is an opportunity to speak to others within the profession. It's really useful to be able to share ideas, talk about common problems, to know that there are other people that have exactly the same pressures on them and all too often, the same feeling that their work is not appreciated.

The BCS in the South West organise a number of events throughout the year, although there tend to be more during the Winter and Spring terms. During the Summer months, most of the organisers are busy with educational exam systems as they tend to be in academia.

The latest event at the University of Plymouth was a talk on "Retro computing"; a look back at some of the hardware and software systems of the last half century. It was quite amazing to recall the changes that have occurred over that time, to see once again the boxes that seemed so modern and powerful at the time.

They had an amount of older equipment on display, items that have been picked up over the years and kept to be part of a "museum of computing". People had the opportunity to use a few of these old devices; it was quite interesting to be able to once again play a game of Lemmings on the old Amiga.

However, it wasn't just about games; they had some emulation software there that showed how some of the older systems used to run and what kind of business systems were running on them. As someone who had once had the opportunity to create a program from scratch, by designing the flow chart then creating the commands on a series of large punch cards to be processed on the main frame at County Hall, I had a strange sense of nostalgia.

For some of those there, most of the hardware was beyond their recall; several students were actually younger than some of the exhibits, which is quite a scary thought! It just makes me wonder if my nice new shiny HP laptop will seem as ancient and irrelevant in another 20 years.

The BCS South West are also starting a new web site to act as a repository for some information on older computing. The site is there but nothing is available just yet (http://retrocomputing.org). I'm told that they intend to slowly build this up with the help of a few volunteers in the months to come.

In all, it was a really interesting evening, with a lot to see and do. It was also amusing to see who were the highest scorers in "Crazy Taxi"! Clearly there were a lot of the people with grey in their hair that had spent just as much time playing games as some of the younger generation.

Sec-1 Penetration Workshop

2010-12-11T08:46:00.000-08:00

On Friday 10th I went to a workshop event held in Bristol. It was organised by Sec-1 a specialist security firm http://www.sec-1.com/ - note the correct address, if you get it wrong you end up at a completely different type of business!

Obviously, these events are to promote the company and their services; however, it wasn't just a massive sales pitch. The main purpose was to offer people advice about maintaining good security practice by illustrating just how easy it is to break into systems and highlighting the reasons why.

The speaker was Gary O'Leary-Steele and he spoke with passion, conviction and great deal of knowledge. He indicated that they have carried out many investigation tests over the years, and in most cases they could use the same report over and again, but just change the name of the organisation. This is particularly the case in the 150 NHS trusts they have investigated, but is also often true of many private sector businesses.

He stated that in many cases, people have failed to adequately install patches which have been issued for specific problems, often long after the issue has been identified. As it happens, I did a quick search on MS06-040 & MS08-067, the two main culprits and the autocomplete worked in each case after just the first 4 characters, the problem is so well known.

He went on to discuss some of the most common problems and illustrated how they could be used to access systems. He also went on to demonstrate how easy it can be to identify vulnerable systems, get access to accounts with innappropriate levels of security permission, crack passwords and elevate permissions. In most cases, the team of testers expect to get access within 30 mins - if they take longer than an hour, the others tease them unmercifully!

Most of the tools that they use are available quite freely on the Internet. In some cases, they do use items that have been commercially written and there is a small charge, but generally those ones are for the real high end stuff. Each has their own favourites in much the way that people do with most other kinds of software.

Whilst going through the potential problems, Gary also indicated some of the possible solutions, often by using the software tools to confirm the problem, then implementing suitable practice or policy to ensure that something is done to minimise the problem or reduce the impact.

It should also be identified that many of the exploits that were identified were in Microsoft OS or software; but the speaker also very carefully highlighted that issues are just as prevalent in other software products. Mac, Linux, Adobe etc, were all shown to be just as insecure. In many cases, this was due to installation or configuration, but equally there were many flaws straight out of the box.

I'm not a security specialist, although I have had some training in this area. I also enjoy some of the work involved, although it has to be said I don't think that I have the necessary skills to make this my specialism. However, I think that I know enough to be able to state that there are a lot of people that suffer with "delusions of adequacy"; they think that because they use a particular product, or do a specific thing, that makes them invulnerable. Often, they are so wrong that it is difficult to know how to take them seriously in anything.

I'm going to say that it was a great day, a really useful workshop and I was very impressed by the whole event. If they organise any more (and I'm told they certainly hope to) I would very strongly suggest that you grab the opportunity to get along and take advantage of the information and advice that they are willing to hand out free of charge.

V Two

2010-12-05T10:33:00.000-08:00

Following on from last week's blog.

So we bought the hardware, and after it had been delivered, installed everything in the rack, and sat back to start planning the installation. I started up one of the host machines to get a look at the POST and boot processes. To my surprise, an operating system had already been installed - and it was Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter. We had purchased the licences for this, but hadn't expected that they would pre-install it.

Well no problem, just have to install the VMWare ESXi. I had a version of the ESXi software, but it was an older version, so first I had to download an updated version of the software which was an .iso image, then create an install disk. Having created the disk, I was then able to do the install. I was really quite surprised; it went through very quickly. Very little to see, just a few linux type screens showing the progress of the install. But after just under 15 minutes, it was all done.

So obviously, it also made sense to do the other two hosts at the same time. Away I went and the second machine was done in much the same time, everything complete with no issues. I then started the third machine, and decided to go for a quick cup of tea as there seemd to be no point in me hanging around watching a series of dots advancing across the screen.

But when I got back, I had a bit of a shock; the process had stalled part way through. The equipment didn't seem to respond to any keystrokes, so I took the disk out to check if there was a fault, but it didn't seem so. I tried to start the install again, and unfortunately, once again it stalled. A third attempt fared no better, so I decided to take a break and look at the vSphere client install whilst I thought about what could be the issue.

I already had installed a copy of the latest version of vSphere client on my laptop for our test a short while ago, and just had to change the logon details. It connected to the host machines without any issues and I could play around with the various bits. I even did a quick install of a guest Operating System to create my first Virtual Machine. Everything looked really good.

However, I then noticed that there seemed to be something odd about the disk allocation on the datastore on the server. There were several partitions, none of which I had created. Worse, it seemed that several of these were unusable by either the VMware or by the guest OS. Having given it some thought, it seemed to me that when the ESXi software was installed, it didn't re-partition the disk in the way that might be expected, and part of the disk would never be available for use, which might be an issue.

At that point, it seemed appropriate that I should go back over the ESXi software install. I did this, checking the process, and at no point did it actually indicate that there was an option to manage the partition. In the end, I simply put the Windows disk in, then used the install routine to start up, and delete all existing partitions. After that, I ran through the ESXi install, and this time, it made all of the disk available for use. I then decided that I would do the same on the others, and the second machine completed without any issues.

The third machine also allowed me to delete the partitions OK and there seemed to be be no reason why the ESXi software shouldn't install. But still it would only go so far, then it stalled everytime. I went through this a couple of times, before going back to my desk to give it some more thought. And at that point, I discovered the reason why, and it was so frustratingly simple, I am almost embarassed to tell you what it was.

We use a very clearly structured IP address range within our network; servers get a static address in one subnet, and all addresses assigned via DHCP are in a slight different subnet. The address that I had input as part of the install routine was an address within the server range and one that had been specifically reserved for the virtualised platform.

But somehow, the address allocated for the third machine had also been given to a secondary network card on an old server. Someone had added a cable to the NIC and then plugged it into a network point. The install routine had failed because it detected that the address I tried to give it was already in use! Once I sorted out the superfluous NIC, the install routine went through without any more issues.

At this point I had 3 host machines, all installed and a connection to each tested with the vSphere client software. A good start and I felt that I was starting to understand VMware. I still had a few other things to go over, but I was feeling really quite positive about the various processes and was looking forward to getting on with it.

But the next step will have to wait for another day 8-)

V for Virtual

2010-11-26T11:25:00.000-08:00

For some time now, we have been looking at a project to implement virtualisation. I decided that this would make for some interesting blog entries, and I thought that I might focus on this for a while.

First of all, I suppose that I should go right back to the beginning to explain some of the reasons behind the decision. When I first joined the company, the servers were mostly tower models, that were stood on a table in a small room. These devices had limited processing power, low memory and disk storage even by the standards of the day, and were not really up to the task required of them. It should be said that they were most definitely not cheap, but certainly could not be described as being good value for money.

It was identified that we needed to buy some newer machines to replace this old equipment and as a matter of some priority in order to provide urgently needed resources. As part of the project, it was agreed that we would move to rack mounted equipment; this made far better use of the available floor space, we could get a lot more in the same area. The equipment was not totally top of the range, but was very good quality, a good specification and thanks to some quite keen negotiation (though I say it myself) was pretty good value for the money.

This made a huge difference to operations. Within a short time, staff could see significant improvements in speed of operation, we had much better storage facilities, and it was all much more flexible. This all helped demonstrate that the investment was appropriate; and I was also able to confirm some of the benefits using some standard metrics.

But that was some 5 years ago. That same equipment is still functioning, and thanks to some upgrades is still providing a good level of service. However, it has been identified that across the estate, much of the processing power is underutilised. Although some machines made full use of their memory, more than half do not. We have a couple of servers with disks getting quite full, but the rest are using less than a quarter of the available space. The most obvious excess is in the network cards; generally, they are using less than 5% of the available capacity.

It was also identified that the specific servers were manufactured before the newer energy saving devices now available; they use quite a lot of electric power, both to operate and to cool. We ran some tests and found that they would operate just as well at a warmer temperature than had previously been used, and this helped to reduce the need for cooling, so it did save some electricity, but we felt that it should be possible to do better.

Of course, it was also identified that with equipment getting 5 years old, there was an increasing chance that we would see some hardware failure. This was the main concern for me; it seems foolish to be miserly with spending on hardware, when a failure could cause huge losses to the business due to loss of data or operational capacity.

After identifying the need for replacement equipment, we started to look at newer versions of the same hardware; this had a number of green options for power saving, but I was still concerned that we would be paying for extra capacity that never got used, even allowing for growth within the business.

Like a lot of people, I'd heard about virtualisation, but wasn't sure if it would really work for us. I was offered the chance to see some Dell kit in action, along with the Equalogic SAN units. These were really impressive, and gave a lot of options. I also compared these to some HP hardware with StorageWorks; these looked a little better if also a bit more expensive.

The next step was to consider what virtualisation software to use. I had some spare hardware and installed evaluation copies of both Hyper-V and VMWare. I also took the opportunity to see some Citrix systems in action. It wasn't really possible to do as a full a test as I would have liked due to pressure of work, but it soon became clear that the decision would come down between Hyper-V and VMware. I liked both and felt that either could do a really good job; it was just a case of which we felt we would be happier with in the long run.

At this stage, I managed to get some basic technical books for the two software products; I had hoped that this would help to make the decision a bit easier, but unfortunately, it didn't really help at all. In the end, I decided that we would go with VMWare; the product looked a bit more polished, it's been around longer and is more mature.

So at that point, I started to do some negotiation with the suppliers. This went on for a while, and yes, I played them off against each other. But ultimately, I managed to get a deal that I thought was worthwhile, that the supplier was happy with and that I could sell to the senior managers. There was a slight delay getting the stuff onsite, but it's all here now, and we are starting to install it; but that's going to be the topic for another occasion.

Bookworm part 2

2010-11-18T05:48:00.000-08:00

Just a (fairly) brief addendum to my previous post about the Amazon Kindle. I've taken a weeks holiday (I had a very nice time, thank you) and I made realy good use of the Kindle whilst I was away.

I'd ordered and downloaded a number of books beforehand; a bit of a mixture, some thriller, some technical stuff, some historical and some classics. I should note that all of these were free!

I'm not a sunbathing freak; I will do a bit of lying around, but generally get pretty bored after a while. I mostly used the Kindle in the evenings, after supper and just before going off to bed. However, there were a couple of occasions when I sat out on the balcony to catch some rays and used the Kindle to occupy my mind.

The screen is really easy to read even in bright sunlight (and it was bright) and the text is really clear. Changing pages is really simple; the buttons are on each side and have a nice solid feel to them. Changing books is not too difficult; but I do feel that the square button with ring for the selection and entry functions is a bit less solid.

If I had tried to take the same books with me in paper format, I would have required a much larger suitcase; stood on top of one another, they would have been at least 35-40 centimetres in height (14-15 inches in old money).

There is no doubt in my mind, the Kindle is a great little toy. If I didn't have one, I would say that it would be top of my wish list. I would say thought that I would advise getting a proper cover for it; I got a rather nice black leather one, but there are others in different colours and patterns. But each to his (or her) own.

I haven't seen the Sony e-reader, so can't compare it; but I have shown my device to some others who seem to think that they prefer the Kindle. (But that's just their opinion.)

At some stage, I think that I will subscribe to a magazine as well, and I'll do a write up to confirm how I get on.

Springboard Tour 2010

2010-11-02T05:08:00.000-07:00

It's been a pretty busy weekend. I went up to Wembley to watch the NFL and stayed overnight so that I could get to Reading early on Monday morning to visit the Microsoft campus for the UK leg of the Technet Springboard Tour. This event was the only one in this country; the others are in major cities across Europe.

http://springboardseriestour.com/

The Springboard tour is about promoting the latest technology and providing opportunities for people to see the products in use. They also covered some of the reasons for migrating to the latest versions and highlighted tools and resources that can be used to make the process a lot easier.

I really like visiting the Microsoft Campus; there is always an energy and a buzz about the place that just makes you feel that it is great to work in technology. I believe that all too often, those of us at the sharp end get very isolated and develop a silo mentality to the work we do. It's important to take the chance to get out to see other people and understand that we are all part of a much larger community, that there are others that have exactly the same kind of problems and that there is more than one way of tackling the issues that we face.

The presentations were introduced by Stephen Rose - and I have a link to a video that he made a while ago. He says that he had drunk about 2 gallons of coffee before the filming and I can believe it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2ewOGNGmZY

During the presentations, they made really good use of the demos to show just how you might improve the rollout and migration process. The tools provided are all available through the Technet site and many are improved versions of things that are already in use. There was someone with a video camera filming the event, so some of these may be added to the main site (link above) in addition to the preprepared videos.

Unfortunately, the sessions slightly overran - and there were a number of people that had to leave early, missing the final demo. This was of the Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset (DART). I'd very briefly heard of this before, but hadn't really had the chance to work with it. It looks like a really valuable asset for anyone providing any level of support to end users, and in particular anyone providing support for fatal errors. We will definitely be downloading it to give it a try in the next few weeks.

There was a bonus for those that attended; a free copy of Office 2010! There were also a few other little giveaways and prizes just to say thanks for being there. If you missed it, then you would have to go to one of the events on the continent, as there won't be another one in the UK. However, the presentations and information on the resources are on the Springboard site and I would recommend that you take the time to check it out.

As you may gather, I found the whole day a very good use of my time and really enjoyed the chance to talk to the various people. I am sure that I will be making really good use of the information that I picked up there in my daily work over the next few weeks.

Bookworm

2010-10-28T08:41:00.000-07:00

I've always been a bookworm. As a child, I was one of those that used to take a torch to bed so I could read under sheets. I used to go to the library and draw out a couple of books and read through them in a matter of hours.

Even now, I have large personal store of books. At the last count well over 700; a mixture of hard back and paper back. About 150 of these are technical reference books for various things or books for my studies.

When the concept of the ebook reader was first publicised, I was quite keen to see one. I thought that the concept was good and could see real value in it; but I wasn't quite so sure about the price. I've been hoping that some kind person would buy me one for a present (yeah right!) or that I might win one in some prize draw. But sadly, no such luck.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I decided that it was time for me to get one for myself. I had a number of Amazon vouchers which were from various sources, and I decided that I could trade these in as part payment on a Kindle. I bought one and a small leather wallet to keep it in. I also downloaded the software and got a number of free ebooks from the Amazon site.

The Kindle turned up just over a week ago, and I've been playing with it ever since. It is so good! The text is really easy to read even in strong light; I don't need to change the font size although that is an option. I had a couple of issues getting in synched through the wireless, but that was down to me typing the encryption key in wrong. Once I got correct, the device connected and updated everything straight away.

I've already gone through a number of books, and really enjoyed using the device. I don't think that I'm going to have a problem as it is supposed to hold about 3500 titles. At the moment, I've got some 2 dozen books stored; that should be enough for me to take on holiday in a couple of weeks.

The alpha numeric buttons are a bit on the small size, but as I don't use them that much, I don't see that as an issue. There are a couple of big buttons on the side to change pages and they are quite firm to use. The only real criticism is the silly button with the tiny square around it for the selection / entry; I'm sure that they could have designed something a bit more solid.

The Kindle also gives the option to have newspaper and magazine on the device; as you have to pay for those, I'm not so keen on the idea. But there is a particular magazine which I might sign up for, just to try it out. At 99p per month, I think that I can afford it. It's also supposed to allow you to read certain other types of files, but I haven't tried that yet.

As you can tell, I think that this is a great little device. I'm really pleased that I bought it, and I think it's well worth the money.

SharePoint Saturday 2010 UK

2010-10-04T03:51:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago, I first heard about the SharePoint Saturday UK event – not sure if it was through a tweet or an email. There have been a number of similar events around the world before, but this was the first in the UK.

http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/uk/default.aspx

I’m always interested in these types of events as they offer you the chance to learn new things, brush up on existing skills, and reinforce knowledge. It also offers the chance to network with other people in the industry, which I consider is always a useful exercise. On top of that, you often get the opportunity to speak with people that have highly specific knowledge of their topic.

SharePoint is a product that I have experimented with but purely for evaluation purposes. I believe that collaboration between staff is going to become a major initiative, and SharePoint is a tool that can really help bring people together and allow them to work more sensibly. I hoped that the event would enable to learn more about the latest iteration of the product and understand more about what it can do and what limitations it has.

The event was held at the Birmingham Hilton Metropole hotel at the NEC. This is a very nice location, quite central for most people (although a bit of a journey for me). The hotel had a lot of suitable resources and I think that it was a great location for the event. I should also add that the event was free to attend!

There were a really good mix of topics – some were quite technical, some were a bit more of a high level overview, so there was plenty for most people to get involved in. A couple even involved some demos of various issues which were really helpful. I particularly enjoyed the PowerShell administration demo by Penny Coventry; as I have been recently doing some work in this area, I was able to relate it to the stuff that I had been looking at, and had the chance to clarify a couple of small issues.

What was quite amazing was that the individuals organising and speaking at the event were doing so on their own time, and travelling to the event at their own expense. When you consider that a couple of them had travelled from the States, South Africa and further afield, this shows a particular level of dedication to the concept of passing on knowledge. Many other people have expressed their gratitude, and I think that I have to add my thanks as well; they certainly deserve high praise.

I also have to say that the buffet lunch provided was really excellent. I have to get the recipe for the Blue cheese, mascarpone and red onion quiche tartlets - they were really delicious and I must admit that I ate more than a few of them! Not good for the waistline, but for a one day event, very enjoyable indeed. My compliments to the chef!

Another big thank you has to go to the event sponsors; apart from paying for the whole day, they provided a large number of valuable prizes which were awarded at the end of the day. Among these were a Kindle, an iPad, an Xbox, about 70-80 books, t-shirts as well as some really valuable licences and training offers. There was almost enough on offer for most people to walk away with at least one bit of swag.

The day finished with SharePoint Saturday 2010 UK turning into SharePint; the chance for everyone to head for the bar. I carried out a completely unscientific study amongst a number of those present, and it was clear that everyone had had a great day; learned a lot, had the opportunity to see some really valuable demos and network with other like minded people.

If you missed the event and want the chance to see another, I would bookmark their web page and watch out for next year. I get the feeling that they hope that this can become an annual event. Certainly I wish them well; the work that was put in to organising it deserves the recognition, and I think that it could become a very valuable resource for anyone interested in learning more about an under rated piece of software.

The birth of a Third Platform

2010-09-29T08:51:00.000-07:00

The BCS South West region hosts a number of events; I like to go along to these as they usually include some very interesting topics, but it’s also quite useful to network with other IT pros from different backgrounds.

At a recent event, there was a guest speaker from Apple; Lawrence Stephenson talking about “The Birth of a Third Platform”. He was discussing the rise in use of iPhones and iPads, particularly by students at schools or in University / Colleges and proposed that this is a new form of computing. Although primarily about higher education, much of what he discussed was also relevant to business.

The basic argument was that the mainframe systems were the first generation of computing, and the standard client / server technology that we have become used to, is the second generation. The third generation is therefore the use of mobile computing devices as access points to process or make use of data; hence the “third platform”.

He illustrated his talk with some interesting facts about the growth in the numbers of smartphones and tablet devices particularly among students. He also compared how these are used; to access email, social networking sites, general web browsing etc. He also identified that there were some were using their devices to access relevant items related to the student courses, but this was still a relatively small amount and that there was potential for growth in this area.

He demonstrated by showing some apps that had been developed for a university in the States; and these were clearly items that a student would find tremendously helpful, particularly for those new to university life, such as campus maps etc. All in all, a really good demonstration of just what can be done.

There was one very interesting comment though; he showed some statistics that could be used to suggest that most people actually use their device more for accessing data than they do for making phone calls. As such, there could be an argument for saying that it is quite possible than some future device might not actually have a phone capability as such; you would be more likely to contact people using IM or calls would be routed through an IP based utility such as Skype.

Of course, these types of devices are not new; tablets have been around for some 10 years. However, the advent of the smartphone has encouraged the development of small apps that allow people to do specific tasks really quickly and easily, and that has made a huge difference in the take up of people using mobile computing. As people have found new uses, it encourages more people to make use of them, and more developers to consider writing apps for specific requirements.

Most companies have “road maps” that give a structure to their research and development process and show the customer what they are working on for future products. Apple are a bit tight lipped about their vision for the future, so it is difficult to be certain about what they have in the pipeline. However, I would suggest that they (and many others) are working on the basis that there will be more people wanting to make use of mobile devices.

Who knows; maybe in the not too distant future, we won’t be using PCs any more, but will just do all of the work using a mobile device.

Watch the pennies

2010-09-13T01:28:00.001-07:00

..and the pounds look after themselves. So the old saying goes.

Yes it’s that time of year again; time to think about next year’s budget. Our company financial year runs from 1st Jan to 31st Dec. The FD needs to check it over and approve it and he needs some time to cook the books (sorry, prepare the COA), so we need to get budget plans drawn up a few months before December.

I tend to start by writing a list of the specific jobs that we intend to do, plans to replace major hardware such as UPS or servers, major software upgrades like the move to Windows XP a few years ago. It can also include work that we think we will be required to do; currently we are waiting for the go ahead on new offices and they will have to be cabled up. I try to get a quote so that we have a fair estimate of the cost.

We have a lot of specialist software for CAD drawings etc. and these have quite expensive support costs. Added to that is the support costs for CRM, ERP and so on. In some cases, I think that it would be useful if these were in a separate budget, but they are not so I just have to get on and deal with it. I also add in an amount for other software upgrades.

The next step is to think about smaller hardware purchases; monitors, disks, cables, replacement printers etc. I also consider consumables; toner cartridges, disks and batteries. I try to work out what we have bought / used in these areas, then use that as a benchmark for the next year.

We also need to plan for Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery. This requires that we keep some spare equipment, pay towards a BC / DR partner and take appropriate actions to make sure that we can be flexible enough (and secure enough) to put things into place at short notice to allow the company to deal with sudden problems.

Once all of these items have been assessed, I put them into a spreadsheet. I tend to leave details on the form so that the FD can verify it; the more detail the better as it saves him pestering me. It also means that he sees part of the justification for the spending which gives him confidence that I have thought things through.

In our case, I also try work out roughly what we are likely to spend on travelling to work at our other sites; hotel, mileage allowance, flights as appropriate. In addition, I also added an allowance for some training costs as we have had to learn a lot of new skills around our ERP system and the training is absolutely essential. As it happens, the FD generally accepts my figures (although he does occasionally make some changes to match his numbers).

After all that however, the big thing is to try to stick to the budget. Sometimes this is easier said than done. Generally, the smaller amounts are easier to offset within a budget. For example, someone managed to destroy a laptop a few years (he ran over it; he forgot to put it in the boot of his car!) and we needed to replace this at short notice. We could just put that down as a replacement and not worry about it.

However, it is also possible to get a requirement for much larger items – we had to buy an add on disk unit for a server which had not been budgeted for – not the end of the world, but it meant we had to be a bit careful about some other spending.

But all in all, it seems to work for us. The FD is happy, the MD is happy, the staff are generally supplied with what they need, when they need it. We get to manage things ourselves, which is a lot better than having to justify every single item of expenditure. I’ve seen places where this happens, and I would not like to have to be working under those conditions.

New Skillz

2010-09-03T06:09:00.001-07:00

Occasionally, I think back to when I first started working with PCs in the late 80s.

At that stage, there were relatively few companies made use of these and it was very much a hobby, although one that I enjoyed. I managed to get hold of some second hand equipment and by trial and error, worked out what everything was and how it worked.

In the mid 90s, I had the chance to work with computers as a job; primarily in a customer support capacity, but I also looked after the company hardware, network and server (yes we only had the one). In those days, it was considered normal that someone working in IT would have a broad range of skills and be able to turn their hand to whatever task was needed.

But in the last 10 years, we have seen a major change in the way that things work. There has been a considerable need for people to become more focussed in a specific area, whether that be database administration, programming, networking, telecoms etc. In the very big companies, they even have teams of people within these disciplines.

For the smaller shops like ours, this makes life a bit harder. We only have a couple of staff, but we still need to provide the same level of support on the newer systems. There is still an expectation that each of the IT staff has all of the relevant knowledge to instantly know how a product works, what is causing a problem, and with a wave of the magic wand, can fix it.

In the real world of course, it is completely different. In most cases we have some good general knowledge of hardware and some good experience of using a couple of products. We’ve then developed particular skills in specific areas. For example, I have had to do a lot of work with SQL server over the last couple of years, and although I wouldn’t describe myself as a DBA, I have a pretty good understanding of it. I also have had advanced networking and routing training, as well as some extra work in security.

Among the staff, we have each developed key specific skills; and we can share the work out in a way that allows us to be most effective. As a small team, we work quite closely, so still get the opportunity to broaden our skills base, probably far more than those in larger teams would be able to do. But we still have to learn those new skills and there is no question that even within a team the size of ours, there is a definite division of labour based upon speciality.

There are of course many companies that suggest we should outsource some of the work: and I can see a certain value in that. But I have not yet seen any outsourcing operation that will provide the level of support at an acceptable price that meets what we currently provide. It’s also likely that if we did outsource part of the work we do all that would then happen is that the users / management would still insist that we try to fix things for them anyway, defeating the purpose of outsourcing.

So for the moment, we just have to try to learn as much as we can, as quickly as we can (and probably as cheaply as we can). I’m looking forward to the day when we can get the plug in brain nodes that allow us to download information directly into our brains, without the pain of going through the learning process!

Cool!

2010-08-26T02:03:00.000-07:00

Some years ago, we undertook a small experiment with our server room. We had heard that other people were reducing the amount of A/C cooling they used and we wanted to see if it was appropriate for us.

Like a lot of other places, our small server room was kept cool to keep the servers cool; if we were to spend any length of time in there, we would need to put on a jumper or even a fleece to stay warm, as the room was around 10 degrees centigrade. The A/C units were running non stop, and we wanted to see if we could reduce the electric we used.

Essentially, we made a load of measurements to get a base line. These included the core temperature of the UPS, some measurements of the servers and various places within the server room. We were fortunate that our engineering manager had a device that we could borrow for this as he was conducting a number of tests to help the company work towards ISO14001.

He also had a device that allowed us to measure the amount of power drawn by various devices – we seemed to get a couple of slightly odd readings, but when we discounted those, the average values appeared to match what would be expected. We therefore assumed that the errors we had were down to incorrect use.

Having got our base line values, we then started to increase the ambient temperature of the room, and examine what affect this had. Each time, we would leave the changed settings for a couple of weeks to see what would happen; in each case, there was no sign of distress on the servers, so we were able to increase the temperature again.

After some time, we found that the “sweet spot” was between 20 and 24 degrees centigrade. Above 24 degrees, we would see the fans in the servers starting to work much harder and draw more power. Below 20 degrees, the A/C was still running almost all the time. However, in that range, we found that we had the A/C unit running at its least power draw whilst the servers ran at a comfortable level.

We found that in the racks, we had a few “hot spots”; places where the temperature was quite a bit higher than the ambient temperature of the room. We were told that this is normal and generally considered a good thing; these create a thermal current that allows the cooling to happen naturally. The interesting thing was that although the ambient temperature increased by 12 degrees, the hot spots only increased by 3-4 degrees.

Part of the work meant that we had to make sure that the racks were properly positioned in the room to allow for adequate air flow, and the direction of air from the A/C also had to be optimised to prevent “air curtains” forming at various places. We also had to make sure that things such as blanking plates were used to ensure a properly controlled air current within the racks.

Although this all sounds very grand, the room is quite small and most of the work was done in between our normal activities. We were able to make use of some additional advice from the A/C supplier, but that was relatively minor. The total amount of work required was actually quite small, but the results have been very good. We have seen a reduction in power consumption of just under 50% for the server room as a whole – which translates into significant cost savings.

I’ve added a link to a resource that I would recommend to anyone wanting to do work on their server room facilities. It is primarily aimed at North America, but there are some bits that are specifically for the European market. It will take some time to go through all of it, but I consider that it would be time well spent.

http://www.schneider-electric.com/sites/corporate/en/products-services/training/energy-university/energy-university.page?tsk=77518T&pc=26947T&keycode=77518T&promocode=26947T&promo_key=26947T

The really good thing - we now have a server room that we can work in, in reasonable comfort all the time!

I'm back!

2010-08-24T08:09:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted anything; 6 months in fact. It's not a case of having nothing to write about, far from it. I've just been very busy, plus I've been a bit more active in other areas.

One thing that I thought would be appropriate to point out is a Microsoft resource at: http://www.microsoft.com/uk/business/peopleready/technology/ioassessment/osyci/survey.mspx
This allows you to take a "survey" that can give you an indication of the status of your IT provision. I first came across this a while back and I found it very useful as part of the planning process. In order for you to reach a particular destination, it helps to know where you are starting from, so you can use the right directions.

Essentially, Microsoft suggest that IT departments can be classified into one of 4 levels based upon standard practice. Five years ago, we would have definitely been classed as being at the lowest level, "reactive". The IT provision was based around fixing problems after they occurred and very little thought went into planning or preparation.

We've slowly moved through the various stages, going from "standardised" to "rationalised", and are now pretty much at the top level, "strategic". There are still a few areas that we could improve upon, but that will always be the case. However, the IT is now a solid platform that people can use. We don't get the network failures, system crashes, or data losses that used to occur. Resources are there and available 24 x 365 for people to use, and generally they can access them using whatever device is appropriate.

Now although this all sounds great, there is unfortunately a fly in the ointment. The biggest problem is still the unit that is positioned between the chair and keyboard! It has been identified that we need to get people better trained, but somehow that never seems to get translated into action. Once of the worst instances was of a person that had been with the company for some 8 years. Unable to logon, the person phoned the helpdesk to ask what her user name was! (She normally didn't have to type that in, as it just appeared in the login box.)

I would encourage everyone to take a look at the Microsoft Core Infrastructure Optimisation resource. I think that you'll find it of significant value and help.

BCS - Computer Forensics

2010-02-12T00:45:00.000-08:00

For some time, I've been working towards a post graduate degree through the Open University. It's hard work, particular after a long day when all you want to do is switch off and relax. However, I find the courses fascinating and of help to me in my daily work, so I keep on working on it.

The last course I did was particularly interesting - Computer Forensics and Digital Examinations. This is a very technical issue, but it also requires an understanding of legal procedures. It isn't enough to say "I found so and so", you have to demonstrate that the evidence is relevant, accurate, consistent and to present it in a way that non-technical people can understand it. I found it all really interesting, if not totally linked to my daily job.

So when the BCS South West indicated that they were holding an evening event and the topic was Computer Forensics, I jumped at the chance to attend. It was at the University of Plymouth, which is a really nice venue, if a little bit of a trek to get to from where I live. The speaker was a visiting professor, John Haggerty from Manchester and the presentation was lively and informative. The actual notes should be available at this link. http://www.bcssouthwest.org.uk/server.asp?page=pastevents

For me, the presentation covered most of the items that I has previously studied and it was really good to refresh my memory. It was also interesting to see that after such a short time since I did my course, there are a number of changes that have occured and the discussion after the talk highlighted some of the issues facing practitioners in that field.

One thing that is of interest - Digital Forensics is a field that is wide open for people to move into. However, there are a lot of people that think just because they have a small amount of experience in running a computer, they think they know what to do to examine it. Professor Haggerty referred to this as the "CSI" affect - people see the TV shows where someone drives an expensive car, goes to a pristine work space and in half an hour recovers all the require information to solve the case (and the impossibly attractive woman is suitably impressed by the display of brain power!).

In reality, Forensics is a long tedious job. Everything has to be documented, step by step and assumptions made have to be justified. There are a number of practioners that have had their reputations destroyed by a simple mistake, and once that happens, they are unlikely to be able to work in the field again.

As the technology moves on, the process of the examination gets harder - I can remember when I bought my first hard drive of 20 MB and I wondered how I would ever fill it up. I now regularly work with physical hard drives of 500 GB and logical partitions of over 1 TB. To properly analyse and document such a drive can take a very long time and new tools are being developed to try to make the analysis easier, but it still requires considerable patience.

But all in all, a great evening - a fascinating topic, well presented. An dfor those IT people that think the BCS is only for academics, I would strongly suggest that you go along to one of the (free) events - I'm sure that you'll change your mind.

Hard driving SQL

2010-01-29T02:49:00.000-08:00

We have been working on installing an SAP ERP system for some time now. It went live in the latter part of 2009, and almost immediately we started to get some performance issues. After some discussions, we were advised that we should move a number of components form the SQL server to separate disks.

The server had originally been set-up to the specific instructions of the system integrators, and they had carried out the installation of their software. We had 2 logical drives; the operating system on the C: drive and the rest of the product on drive D:.

Essentially, they now advise that we should put the paging file, tempdb files, and transaction log files all on separate logical drives. This does make sense; with the extra drives, there will be less data being processed at the same time by the same equipment. However, the server we have is an HP Proliant DL380 with space for just 6 drives. As all the slots are full, we can’t physically add any more to the existing device.

However, there is a way around this; HP sell external disk arrays which can be added to an existing server. In our case, we obtained the MSA 20 unit which hold 12 SATA drives and this is connected to an HP 6400 SmartArray controller card. We ordered all of the required equipment back before Christmas, but unfortunately we had a series of problems getting the hardware. The bad weather didn’t help as we are a bit out on a limb, but the various bits were coming from different depots, so weren’t despatched together.

Laste week after all of the equipment had finally turned up, ee set-out to do a test of the process of adding the hardware and this went through fairly well. It toook us about 5 hours as we wanted to double check everything at each stage to make sure it worked; we had not had the chance to do something like this before and wanted to be certain it would work. We made notes of the steps and waited for the Sunday so that we could make a start on adding the new hardware to the main system.

The controller card was very easy to add. Pop open the cover, lift out the holder, insert the card and replace the cover. I also connected the cable to the disk array at the same time as I found that easier than trying to fiddle about in the back of the rack trying to make the connection. The slot that the cable uses on the back of the card is quite small and difficult to reach when the server is back in place.

When we fired up the server, it ran through the normal POST routine, and it quickly identified the new Smart Array device. It took a while for the disks to initialise; about 12-15 minutes for them all. However, we then hit our first snag; when it reached the end of the initialisation, it suddenly crashed and re-booted. Funny thing though, when the server restarted, it went back to the initialisation routine and then completed perfectly.

It was then necessary to set-up the logical drives and this is really easy to do. Within the configuration utility, just select the physical drives, the type of RAID and away you go. We chose to put 3 drives at a time in a RAID 5 configuration. It should give the space we need, the protection that it wanted and we get 4 logical drives (12 HDD divided by 3 = 4). With all 4 done, we could then re-boot the server, and see the new drives in the disk manager – we set it to create a new partition on the logical drives and format appropriately.

All of this took us about an hour, perhaps just a bit over. We then moved the paging file and set it to a slightly larger size than before – a quick reboot and still everything was going well. We copied the tmpdb folder to a new drive and then used a SQL script that we had found for dropping it and then re-attaching to the new location. It took literally only a few seconds to do and we were starting to get really cocky. Then it all went wrong.

We stopped the SQL service to copy the transaction log over – all 38 GB of it! We then started the copy process and it took ages. It seemed to copy about 8GB and then it would pause for ages (almost 20 minutes), before then carrying on. We got a point where it had reached around 12-14 GB and the damn server blue screened (one of the few occasions that we have seen Windows Server 2003 do a BSOD).

It turned out to be a paging fault error – once started we modified the paging file to put it back to the same minimum size that it had been, although we left it on the same max size. I restarted the copy process and we waited.. and waited… and waited…. and waited…..

Evetually after about another two and half hours, the copy process finished. We then ran the SQL commands to change the database to point to the new trans log location and once done, we verified that this was correct. We then ran up the ERP to make sure that it worked and it was good. By this time, it was well after 1:00 pm – we quickly finished everything off and locked up, then headed off to a local watering hole for Sunday lunch on the company.

And just to finish the story off, the technician’s wife works at that hotel. Whilst we were eating, she sent a note through from the back room, demanding to know where her dinner was. So a small piece was cut off of the dinner and put on a small plate to be sent out to her – 5 minutes later a message came back demanding to know where the ketchup was!

New year plans

2010-01-06T06:48:00.000-08:00

So the holidays are over and we are all back to work – well almost. Unfortunately, the bad weather has caused some disruption, as a number of staff can’t get into work. Although that hasn’t affected IT staff, we are having to a do few things to help others out. Bet we don’t get any help from them when we need it later in the year!

I like to plan out what work we have to do – preferably at least a few months in advance. As such, I have a list of jobs and priorities against them and this gets updated throughout the year. At the moment, there are a large number of items for the next 3 months and quite a few for the second half of the year.

We are planning to go on a couple of specific training courses, there are some hardware and software upgrades, a couple of events that I feel would be appropriate for myself or my staff to attend and there are a number of jobs that need to be done as part of rolling maintenance programmes. We also have several projects under way and the various steps need to be arranged in the correct sequence and fitted in amongst the other work – plus of course we have the occasional problem that needs to be supported.

Unfortunately, there are several jobs that we cannot yet schedule – we are waiting for information from other people. One of our sites is proving to be a bit too small to handle the work load, so the company are looking at alternative locations. However, the senior managers can’t decide which of the newer sites would be most appropriate, so we can’t yet arrange for any work to be done that is required. Of course we know full well that when they do finally decide, they will expect all of the work to be complete within a few days!

In fact that move is going to be a much bigger task than they anticipate – once the decision is made they will then argue over the layout of the place and almost certainly, will change what they want on a daily basis. We will be cabling up the site for a network ourselves – it saves the company quite a bit of money although it does take up a bit of time. I’ve designed a particular method of network architecture that really works for us, and provides a great deal more flexibility and scalability than the way that these installatins normally get done. Most of the people doing cabling appear to be electrical installers, and they think CAT 5e can be treated like standard 2 core and earth and they seem to have a real problem if you ask for work to be done in a particular way.

On top of that, we have get the telephone lines moved, get an ADSL connection and move all the IT equipment ourselves – the last time we had a move, we also ended moving all the desks and cabinets as well. The staff seemed to think that they could just close down the PCs, put on their coats, pick up their handbags and walk to the new site to find the desks all set up, the PC installed and turned on for them! They were rather upset to find that they were expected to do some of the work themselves!

So January is looking to be quite a busy month, what with one thing and another. Happy new year!

Iiiittttsss Chriiiiissssttttmmmaaaaaassss!

2009-12-14T09:06:00.000-08:00

Somone mentioned the old Slade hit from the 70's and I haven't been able to get the damn tune out of my head all day! I think that it's going to drive me crazy! (Mamaa, weer allll crazeeee now!)

Many years ago, on 24th December, I would stay right to the end of the day, and last thing would shut down all of the servers. No-one would be back into work until the first week of January, so it seemed pointless to burn all that power for no reason. Plus it gave the equipment a chance to be shutdown properly and restart. This doesn't always hurt as it can clear out any rubbish in memory.

The trouble was that the CEO felt lost without his email - after we gave him VPN access, he wanted to be able to check his email on Boxing Day, just because he could. Then of course, he wanted to be able to check the sales figure - why? There have been no sales and won't be for 2 weeks - but he wants it, so he gets it. And of course, that means all of the ERP systems have to be running. By the time that you work out which systems he might possibly want, it's easier just to leave them all running. (And of course, you know that he is going to phone up to check if the figures have been updated!)

So we don't shut things down anymore - and that means we have to keep an eye on systems to make sure that nothing untoward is happening. As you can imagine, the WAGS take a dim view of this - it only takes a few minutes to logon and make sure that each of the servers is up and running, but the amount of time is not the issue. We have automated alerts to let us know if specific events occur, but it's not quite the same and there is always a possibility that the relevant alert doesn't get through.

So the laptop is going to be hidden away somewhere, and an excuse made to either "take a nap" or "pop down the pub" - then a quick logon just make sure it's still all OK.

Whatever; we are fast approaching the holidays and the end of yet another year (where does the time go?) From my staff and I, the very best wishes to all the readers of this blog and to all the hardworking IT staff wherever you are. Have a great Christmas and try to enjoy whatever time you are allowed to take off. See you all in 2010!

Up in the clouds

2009-12-01T09:10:00.000-08:00

One of the hot topics in IT at the moment is “cloud” computing. Effectively, outsourcing your hardware to a dedicated data centre. A lot of people try to convince me that this is the way forward, that everything should be put “on the cloud” and that this will save astonishing amounts of money. I’ve seen some of the calculations and I am not sure that they always stand up to scrutiny.

For example, I looked at a Dell PowerEdge unit – the cost to buy outright (£1,200) was a bit higher than the cost to rent in a data centre for a year (£700), but obviously over a longer period such as 4 years, it would work out cheaper. There is an advantage to the cloud offer in that they would replace the equipment (probably with newer equipment) at a set point, but then it doesn’t appear on the asset ledger in the company accounts, which upsets the beancounters.

Of course the purchase price doesn’t include the Operating System, whereas the cloud offer usually does (but not always); and there is the cost of electric to run the item and to provide cooling which have to be factored into the equation. There is also a need to provide anti-virus protection, patch updates, data backups etc. Again, that is not always included in the price of the hosting contract and so might need to be added to their quoted price – something that is always clear.

In addition, there is the cost of managing the unit – and they don’t always provide all of the management services that might be needed. In most cost comparisons, they show a figure for on-site management (and I sometimes feel that these figures are inflated a bit) - but then they don’t include similar values in the cloud offer even though it would be appropriate to do so, making the comparisons meaningless.

Suppose the 4 year basic cost of renting the server in a data centre would be £2,800 – reading the small print of some hosts, adding in the other items could take it to as much as £4,500. My calculations show the internal cost of the device for keeping it on site could be about the same, perhaps just a little more. Certainly the outsourced system might still be cheaper, but not by that much.

Then there is another point – what happens when things go wrong. It doesn’t happen that often, but when it does, the PTB want to know that someone is working on the problem. They like to be able to go into the server room, and for staff to point out flashing lights, explain what is happening – it gives them enormous comfort to see that someone is on the job and that the problem will be resolved evetually. This can’t happen with an outsourced system – even with numerous phones calls, they just don’t get the same level of reassurance, and you cannot put a price on that.

Now I will accept that I have used very generic figures – and to be blunt, most numbers can be manipulated to show pretty much anything that you want. Ultimately, it should be down to each individual case to be decided on it’s own merits. If it makes sense to keep it in house, then do so; if it is cheaper to host outside then that has to be the right decision.

For example, we have our company websites hosted externally – the cost is far cheaper than we could do it for as we don’t pay for a whole server box, and in addition, we don’t have to provide 24 x 7 support which would really rack up the support cost. However, we maintain our own CRM system – we checked it against SalesForce.com and our internal system works out at half the cost over 2 years. We also maintain our own ERP system – we were offered the chance to have it outsourced, and the cost of the management fees per year alone was more than the wages of our entire IT department.

So I suppose my advice would be to look at the numbers very carefully – make sure that you are really comparing like for like. Then think about the importance of the systems to the business and what would happen if the external system failed and how much of an issue it would be. If the risk is acceptable and the figures check out, then by all means outsource it. But I would strongly suggest that for many people, cloud computing is not the great panacea that it is made out to be, and that it would be appropriate to think carefully before rushing headlong into a situation just because it is the latest, greatest thing.

Temporarily offline - working from home

2009-11-26T12:57:00.000-08:00

I went up to London to a training session on Monday of last week. It was a really good session (better than I had hoped for) and I thought it well worth while. Unfortunately on the Tuesday afternoon, I started to feel a little unwell - shivering, shaking and sweating. By the end of the session, I was feeling really bad, and the trip home was a real struggle. I eventually got home very late (almost midnight) and I literally collapsed into bed.

It was a rough night - hot & cold sweats. The next day I felt more ill than I have done in a very long time. I had thought about grabbing my laptop to do some work, but I couldn't get up the strength to go downstairs to get the bag. It wasn't until the Thursday that I actually felt well enough to do more than stagger a few steps. When I did get back online, I quickly cleared a small backlog of emails, dealt with some enquiries over access permissions, and processed some internal items.

For most people in IT, this is actually quite a straight forward situation - there really is nothing particularly unusual about it. Within our company, most senior managers, departments heads and the sales people are more than capable of working from home for several days, perhaps even a week or two. We have also started putting together some processes to allow some of the other staff the option to be able to work from home - driven partly by a need to ensure business continuity, but also to allow a more flexible working pattern.

However, when you look at a lot of companies they just don't have the faciltiies for this. There is still a real antipathy towards the idea of remote working, and it is seen as less than desirable. Yet there are so many benefits - reduced travel costs / environmental impact, better work / life balance, the opportunity for staff to cover a longer working day, more productivity and the option for some people to hold a job when otherwise it might not be possible due to family committments or health issues.

Will this situation change? I think it will as many of these companies will start to find that they have to adapt to these new patterns of working. But I suspect that it may still take many years before everyone gets the option. A real shame - but I suppose that is just a reality of life.

In the meantime, I'm now back to work and it's almost as if I hadn't been off.

Microsoft Data Protection Manager Server 2007

2009-11-13T01:09:00.000-08:00

I written about this software before, but my staff and I think that it is such an awesome utility, I’m going to post some more comments about it. Quite simply, it is the best product that Microsoft have produced in quite a while, but for some strange reason, they just don’t promote it. As we are using it and it works so well, I thought that it would make sense to share some of our experiences.

So what is DPM Server 2007 and what does it do? Essentially, it allows you to backup servers and workstations using a disk-to-disk process, then a disk-to-tape process for longer term storage. In days gone by, almost everyone used a tape backup process as standard – but there are some serious issues with this.

Tapes stretch, or suffer degradation which makes them less reliable. Add to that, people have to change the tapes over (and sometimes they get tapes mixed up) and if you have to rely on non-technical staff on remote sites to change tapes (as we do), then you’ll know that they often forget to do it. Regularly, the backup software throws a wobbly so nothing gets backed up; and they don’t know how to check this or correct it, so they change tapes without anything being written to them.

Even if all has gone well, the recovery process can be awkward. First you have to make sure that you have the tapes (or even the right ones), someone has to change them back over, and sometimes you have to then inventory the tape to find the relevant file before you can recover that. Add to that, if it is a database, then you have to try to work out which bit you are going to receover – the actual file, the transaction log; it can get quite complicated.

The problem is of course that people do delete or over write files – this happened this morning with one of the design office guys at one of our remote sites deleting some drawings that another person had worked on yesterday. To recreate them would have taken probably the best part of a full day, and they are actually needed for a meeting with a customer, so they were keen to get them back as quckly as possible.

The recovery process is so simple with DPM Server, that it is almost embarassing. In the recovery console, point to the relevant server, open the drive and navigate to the file / folder. Click on it and select recover – then choose the options, such as restore to new location or overwrite, original permissions or new permissions, etc. Click start and wait for a about 1 minute while it starts the recovery process, then watch as the files are recoved. In our case, about 18 Mb of data restored in just over 2 minutes to a remote site. No need to panic, no swapping of tapes, no need for staff to run around like headless chickens.

As you may imagine the staff at our remote site were pretty greatful – we’ve told them that they owe us a few drinks the next time that we are up there (and you better believe we intend to collect!). But in all seriousness, the DPM Server makes the backup and recovery process so straight forward that our lives are considerably less stressed as a result. Anyone responsible for the data integrity of a business should really consider looking at using this product – you will make your life a lot easier.

BCS South West

2009-10-28T07:40:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I attended an event organised by the BCS South West (but forgot to post this write up!) – it was a presentation entitled “Towards Onlince Safety” given by Ken Corish, an Education Advisor. Although primarily intended for parents of school children, I felt it had a lot to offer those of us working in other areas such Commerce or Industry, and thought that many of the points made by Ken were highly relevant.

The presentation notes can be downloded from the BCS website: http://www.bcssouthwest.org.uk/server.asp?page=pastevents (Towards Online Safety). These give a really good overview of the current situation and how the issues are being tackled. However, watch out for a couple of the pages as they contain some really bad language – just bear in mind that the screenshots are of real pages created by children on social networking sites and you might be a bit surprised.

In addition there were a couple of short videos shown that were created by CEOP as part of the process of educating young people about the potential problems – these have been shown in many schoools and I would suggest that if you are a parent, you might want to see these for yourself. They can be downloaded from:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IOOn2wR8bU (Where’s Klaus?)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp5nScG6C5g (Think U Know: Girls)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4vyRBMjEv8&feature=related (Think U Know: Tom’s story)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w4_Hrwh2XI&feature=channel (Think before you post)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE2Ru-jqyrY&feature=related (Once posted, you lose it.)

Ken made the point that many adults don’t understand some of these issues, and so how can we expect children to. However, it’s also clear that many adults know little about online safelty or think that it is someone else’s responsibility. Whatever your view, it is important that the message does actually get around to everyone.

The Internet can be a great place – there is a lot of really good information available, you can achieve a lot and make great friends particularly if you are reasonably savvy. But it has its darker side and sadly, there are some really nasty people out there. However, that reflects real life and we should make sure that the more vulnerable people (and not just the youngsters) are properly educated to make sure that they stay safe.

I don’t know what I want – but I want it now!

2009-10-28T05:56:00.000-07:00

Anyone that has had young children or has worked with them will know the feeling. Children can’t articulate what it is they want, and because the adults around them don’t understand them, they don’t get what it is they think they want (and often if they do get it, it turns out not to be what they really do want!).

Sadly this is often the case with many business people as well. They don’t understand the technical side of technology, and can’t use the right terminology to explain what they need (and often don’t actually know what it is they want). This can cause enormous frustrations on both sides – IT people are expected to be mind readers and business people are surprised that their simple requests seem to be so hard to fulfill.

We’ve had an example of this just recently – Sales wanted a report that would show some sales figures. However, they assumed that it was just a case of “output sales figures”. When it was then identified that there are a large number of fields in the database that hold different figures showing different things, they simply couldn’t understand this. As a result, the report produced is meaningless because it produces the wrong values for what they need. After several rewrites, it still doesn’t give what they want, and we appear to be nowhere near getting a satisfactory output.

Another issue has been some data that was used in a system that is not part of our remit to look after. That system has failed and they cannot get access. We’ve taken on the challenge of recovering the data, and we were getting phone calls every hour to ask how we were getting on. Fortunately, we have found a way, but it is irritating to have to keep explaining that the interruptions are delaying the process and as we are not psychic, we don’t know how long the process will take.

This is not a new problem, nor is it just confined to specific areas of the business. I’m sure that everyone has had to explain to senior managers that just because they have one copy of Office 97, they can’t install it on every single PC. Similarly, they are very keen to block access to web sites that they think are inappropriate for work, but it then turns out that they were the ones going to those sites!

Over the past few months, there has been a lot of discussion about future developments within IT; a lot of this focuses on the development of cloud computing. I’m not entirely convinced that it is the best way forward for everyone, although I can see some major advantages in certain circumstances. However, the problem is that some of those concerns are of a technical nature – the business people don’t understand the potential problems, and therefore can’t see the risks involved.

The problem is of course that many of the individuals concerned simply don’t want to learn the technical side of things – it then falls to the more technically minded to try to educate them in an appropriate way so that they can appreciate the problem. However, to do that, we have to be able to understand what they need so that we can provide the correct response, and in a way that they will appreciate the message. Basically, we need all IT staff to develop a certain level of business acumen (or to enhance their parenting skills!)

The Sad, The Mad and The Bad.

2009-10-05T14:19:00.000-07:00

A while ago, I was asked to take part in the Microsoft Technet Community Council. We had a meeting a few weeks ago and it was really positive – from comments made on the day, I think that Microsoft are serious about listening to people and taking their views on board.

Whilst I was at the meeting, I met several of the Technet staff, including James O’Neill – I’ve followed some of the stuff that he has done in the past, and it was really good to see the person behind the writing, so to speak. He’s really driven by his passion for technology and has written eloquently on several topics which I have found of real value. Catch it here at: http://blogs.technet.com/jamesone/

So I was saddened to read his latest piece - it turns out that he has been the victim of a theft, and has lost many treasured items that were in his laptop bag. No top of the range gizmos, but none the less, things that mean a lot to him. His blog shows the anger and frustration he feels – it’s a terrible thing to become a victim and although several other people have offered their condolences, I know that he will still feel the pain of the loss.

Many people have their lives in the mobiles or on their laptops – contact details, names, addresses, numbers. Many others keep other ID details and some even keep credit card or other bank information in their devices. Losing the device is bad enough, but then these people are unable to run their normal lives until they can replace the missing information. And if that information falls into the hands of bad guys, then they really have major problems.

People are generally trusting; we assume that other people will behave in a way that is similar to the way that we ourselves would behave. It’s a terrible blow when we realise that some people are not as trustworthy as we would like. It’s even worse when the people concerned are people that we know or trust. In this case, it was a public event organised by Microsoft for technology specialists - in other words, probably one of our own.

For many years, I worked as a manager for a number of the bigger UK retailers, some of whom are still around, a couple long gone. At the start of my training, I attended a security session – the trainer was the company CSO, a former senior officer with the Metropolitan Police. His first words to our groups of trainees were, “There are only 3 types of people in the world; the Sad, the Mad and the Bad. Everyone falls into one of these 3 categories – and that includes all of you”.

His cynicism was the result of many years dealing with the public – no doubt, he had heard every excuse, every sob story, met people that had suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and met many, many people that were just no damn good. But everyone? And he then made the statement that we lost more through staff theft, than through pilfering by customers. I argued with him, but to no avail; and his response was that one day I would understand. And I hate to admit it it, but yes he was 100% correct.

Sniff, sniff.

2009-09-21T01:50:00.000-07:00

I woke up yesterday feeling a bit ragged around the edges – sneezing / sniffing, coughing, eyes watering. No it’s not flu (not even Man flu) just a bit of a later summer cold. No aches, pains, shivering etc.

However, it did make me think again about our Business Continuity planning. I did some work on this a couple of years ago and we actually have a basic outline plan of what to do. I went through it earlier in the year with the HR manager as they were concerned about the possibilty of the swine flu epidemic causing us some issues.

Although nothing much happened at the time, going on past experience of influenza pandemics, there will be another bout of it over the winter months, and possibly a third wave later next year. Although it seems that swine flu is not as virulent as other strains, it could still cause some staff to take time off work.

As we are a manufacturer, production is likely to be affected by a reduction in staff available. They do have the capacity to run some light shifts, but it may be necessary to move production between the different sites. Fortunately possible as we have standardised methods – we don’t yet have a single system to control this, but that is a longer term project that is underway.

For office staff, we currently have a number of key people that work with laptops; these people have a remote access facilty that allows them to connect to internal systems and continue working. We are currently looking to replace a number of those laptops and the older ones will be kept back, cleaned down and issued for use in an emergency situation.

We also installed a new telephone systems a while back – we still have some more modules that could be added to this, but we hope the new system will aslo improve the way that staff can communicate with customers and suppliers in the event of some issues.

But one item that I did discuss with management hasn’t been fully implemented yet – a scheme to encourage better hygienic practices. Anyone that has worked in food production or in the health service will know that considerable resources go to training people to take more care over preventing passing on germs. I worked with some people in a lab for a while and the level of bacterial infection found in some of the swab tests could really put you off your lunch! And I’m sure everyone has stories of what they have found under the keys of a keyboard!

It’s strange how people that are so careful to wash their hands after relieving them selves, don’t bother to give their work surface even the most cursory of cleaning. And how many telephone handsets get a wipe with a cloth that looks dirtier than the surface it’s being used to clean? Perhaps we need to have a new certification – the correct sanitisation and cleaning of Personal Computers!

Suffering with Delusions of Adequacy

2009-09-11T03:34:00.000-07:00

Some years ago, I came across the phrase “Suffering with delusions of adequacy”. It was used in a contemptuous way to describe the attitude of some people working on a major project – the people concerned hadn’t bothered to check their work as they knew that what they had done was totally perfect because they had done it. In fact their work was severely flawed and as a result, the project delayed whilst the problems were fixed.

It’s possible to see this attitude on many different user forums. Someone will pose a question, and another person will then post a response belittling the first person for their lack of skill. However, the individual leaping to criticise the other may not have taken all of the factors into consideration and as a result, the comments may be completely inappropriate.

I had a situation like this some years ago – a frantic sysadmin posted a comment on a forum about a problem with an ERP package that wouldn’t startup. One of the forum moderators responded with a confident assertion that the person had a virus and would have to completely re-install the OS and ERP package. I posted a comment that I had the same problem myself just 2 days before, and that it was solved by one of the run time elements being restarted – perhaps they should look at this first. When this was suggested, the moderator posted a major rant that newcomers should keep quiet!

In another incident several years before, I worked with a programmer on a large software package. I was running some tests using a manual script to check the functions of the software after a number of changes. I came across an unusual error which I reported to him – his response was that the software worked fine and it must be an error in the data that I was entering. I sent him copies of the data, screen shots of the process, yet he still refused to acknowledge there was a problem.

This went on for 3 weeks – eventually I spoke to another programmer who checked the code and found the error. It subsequently turned out the the first programmer hadn’t even bothered to run the checks – if he had, he would have seen the problem for himself as every other programmer did when I checked with them. This was extremely annoying as the wasted time could have been saved for more important issues and the faulty code had been issued to customers and had to be replaced.

Of course this is not specific to programmers (although they can be bad!) I’ve had discussions with networking technicians that refuse to accept that they could have made a mistake in setting up a routing table, and DB admins that can’t accept that their precious database is flawed. And don’t even get me started on consultants! As for the linux lovers and mac fanboys with their “my OS is better than yours”, they can be a real pain at times.

It seems that there are a lot of people in the IT world that suffer with delusions of adequacy. I’ve long felt that we need to try to improve the professionalism of the people that work in the industry, and this is one particular area that needs looking at. It seems to me that there are just far too many people that think they know the answer to every single problem, but need a large serving of humility. Whilst people act as if they are the fount of all knowledge when they clearly are not, it will be difficult to persuade others that people working in IT really are professionals.

(Un)Social Networking

2009-08-24T04:43:00.000-07:00

People are social animals for the most part. We love to communicate with one another, share information about what we and people we know are up to – and it’s been suggested that this is why human beings developed the capacity for speech. In years gone by, people wrote letters to one another, or if urgent would send telegrams. Later, the telephone allowed actual real time conversations between people and that has lead to the growth of the more modern methods.

With the growth of the Internet, different methods of communicating have been developed and are used by people to enhance the way that they converse. And this has created a major problem; many workers want access to these new methods of communicating – instant messaging, blogs, wikis, social networking, video streaming and photo sharing sites. This increases the amount of data being transmitted and stored, which also increases the pressure on resources, and adds to the possibility of security issues.

Now many will maintain that these new methods provide significant benefits to the modern organisation – arguments are put forward such as “providing new revenue streams”, “improving marketing opportunities”, “ensuring real-time communications” – all the usual buzz words that you get from the people trying to persuade you that this is the way forward.

I like to think that I am quite open minded about most technologies, and I can see that there is a lot to be gained on a personal level from the use of these products. I can even see a number of practical applications within a business environment and have planned some projects to explore some of these. However, I do have a number of concerns relating to the security of these systems and how much time people will spend on them.

For example, being cynical I know that most data losses are caused by internal staff, not by outsiders hacking into the systems. Most companies are extremely protective of their data; but the social networking facilities can make it very easy for this to be copied and moved.

There is also the possibility that these systems could provide a route in for malware to be loaded. A user wants to install a new “Tool bar” application they see advertised on an IM message and click to install, not realising that what they are really doing is installed a keystroke logger.

Of course, there is also the concern that the staff may spend more of their working day actually chatting or posting items online rather than doing the job that they are supposed to be doing (I’m doing this in my lunch break!). And we have all heard the stories of embarassment of people posting comments in emails or on Facebook that are then sent around the world. These can cause an organisation to lose business and come to haunt a company for many years after the original event.

I think that there is a place in work for some of these tools – if we can teach people how to use them properly. But we have to make sure that they are being used appropriately and that we have a set policy so that all staff know where they stand, and we have to make sure that we can enforce these. I doubt that we can completely block their use, but I think it appropriate to try to set some ground rules so that we can at least try to make sure that they are not being used inappropriately.

What do you think?

The battle of the Vs – VMWare vs Hyper V

2009-08-11T07:20:00.000-07:00

Last week, I and one of the guys in the department had the chance to attend an event that demoed VMWare 4 and Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V. Many thanks to the people at Nexus in Exeter (http://www.nexusopensystems.co.uk/) that hosted the event, especially Gary that did the demos.

The presentations were quite straight forward. The first session was VMWare and we were shown the installation process starting right from the bare metal server. The actual installation process was Linux based and took about 20 minutes on releatively low spec machines. Once it was all up and running, we had the chance to see some virtual servers being created – literally just a matter of a few minutes work. We also discussed the switching process and the various options, and briefly saw how to create virtual switches.

There was a bit of a discussion about the merits of the VMWare product – how it allows you to “overload” by selecting options for the virtual servers such as levels of RAM that total up to more than the physical amount actually available. I would want to check this out for myself, but it certainly seemed to run OK.

We then discussed clustering and resiliance and the demo that followed showed a high definition media file being moved from one virtual server to another – the file ran constantly during the move and there was not even a slight pause during the process. Really impressive! Certainly, this would be of significant value in a situation where you are having to move production data when people are still working on it.

The demo actually ran over a bit as we were really interested in the product and had several questions to ask about various aspects – and Gary was only too pleased to show us the various bits in response. There is no question that it is an awesome product.

We then had the chance to see Hyper-V in action and for me it was the first chance I’ve had to look at this. We have Windows Server 2008, but not the R2 version which contains the hypervisor. The main difference between the two is that the VMWare hypervisor sits above the hardware and handles all of the driver requirements. Hyper V sits at the same level as the OS, just above the hardware, but each virtual server will handle it’s own drivers seperately. It also doesn’t allow overloading of resources – once you hit the limit, that’s it.

From what we saw, the Hyper V runs well – certainly it provided a smooth experience whilst we were watching it and the test moving the media file ran pretty much the same. There were a few diffences in the way that the virtual networking operates, but certainly it seems to run as we had expected. It definitely doesn’t have all the functionality of VMWare, but then there is a price difference – it’s a lot cheaper.

I’ve been looking at this now for a few months (in between other jobs) and I’m convinced that virtualisation is the way to go. It will certainly cut costs in terms of the electric bill, and it will also fit very nicely into our backup process / business continuity / disaster recovery planning. About half of our servers will reach 5 years old next year, so it seems a good time to start planning a move over to a virtualised system.

We have had a couple of visits to different vendor demos and they have been really useful. Although nothing has been decided, we are leaning towards the Dell Equalogic equipment – it seems to be everything that we could want and a bit more. The big issue of course is what software to run on the servers which is why we wanted to get to the event in Exeter. Howevever, I still not sure which one I think is the best option for us.

I’ve therefore planned that in the new year, say Jan / Feb 2010, we will get ourselves a spare server – there are plenty of cheap machines around at the moment. There is a trial version of VMWare available and of course, the Technet subscription allows us to install an evaluation copy of Server 2008 R2. Hopefully, this will gives us the chance to actually work with both products so that we can get a really good idea of which one we prefer – all we then have to do then is sell it to the powers that be!

Terminal headaches

2009-08-05T06:01:00.000-07:00

We have been trying to implement some new software for the CRM – the product has been used by one of our sites for some time, but not on the other sites. They had tried to use it before, but it’s not designed to be used across a WAN, so it had been set-up as multiple databases and when they started getting issues, they just stopped using the product.

The company concerned have issued a new version and our sales people have seen it and really like it. The vendor has produced a modified client GUI to run in a web browser – the idea is that those users on the remote sites would make use of that and so we could run a single database for all sites.

Well, that WAS the idea – the software runs OK locally, but when it was running through the browser, it was not as fast. Although it was usable, there was a definite speed issue, and we were worried that the users on the other site might not be convinced enough to use the product if the speed was poor.

It then occurred to me – the database was installed on the server and we also had a copy of the client software installed on the server so that we could test it was running as it was being set-up. I did a quick RDP to a server on the other site, the from there did another RDP back to the server on our site. The speed of operation was good – as far as I could tell, the speed was the same as if we were running it directly at this site.

So I set-up some shortcuts and emailed them to the users at the remote site, and then talked them through how to save and use the shortcut. They agreed that this worked well and they were really happy with the speed of operation. But then we hit a snag – only 2 users at a time. As we are talking about having some 20 remote users, then there is clearly a bit of a problem.

Now my predecessor had bought volume licences for a lot of software which included some terminal server licences, but unfortunately, none of the paperwork specified what was what. I found the paperwork ages ago and set-up a profile on eOpen to manage all of the various items. https://eopen.microsoft.com/EN/default.asp - this is a great resource and I suggest that you check it out if you don’t already use it. It allows you to see what the various bits of paper refer to and it gives you details on date of purchase, vendor, type of licence, quantity etc.

However, when I double checked, the Terminal Services licence server had been setup and the licences applied – so that wasn’t the problem. I then searched through the various bits and pieces and subesquently realised where it was all going wrong. The server that the software was installed on was set to use Remote Desktop as the licensing mode, not the correct Terminal Services mode. A quick couple of clicks and problem solved.

So now the staff at the remote site can all connect to the server and all use the CRM software. It seems to run just as quickly when half a dozen of them are using it – so they are all happy!

Windows 7

2009-07-27T06:21:00.001-07:00

Like a lot of people, we’ve been keeping an eye on the information coming out about the next version of Windows. We received a copy of the RC 1 candidate for Windows 7 on Monday (thanks Georgina) – we have a PC with a copy of Vista Business Ultimate that we use for testing purposes (a Dell Optiplex 210 with a dual core 1.8 GHz and 1 GB ram), so thought we would partition the disk and do a dual boot so that we could do a direct comparison.

The installation went quite well – some of the usual types of screens for the initial installation, but not as many as we would normally see for older OS. The actual process start to finish was a little over 40 minutes. We didn’t join the PC to the domain although we left it plugged in and it picked up on the required settings, so we were able to activate it straight away. We then joined it to the domain a couple of days later - no hassles at all.

I’ve also run another copy on a second machine – an HP dx2450 with a dual core 2.3 and 2 GB RAM. This one installed in just over 25 minutes. Again, it was a very straight forward installation, with only a few screens to configure and absolutely no issues at all.

Initial reaction to it was that it does look a lot like Vista – same screens, same gadget bar etc. However, within a few minutes, it was noticeable that it was faster that the equivalent Vista installation probably about 40 – 50% faster. The Start button, Taskbar items and other shortcuts all seem to work much quicker as well – no delays between clicking the button and the app starting to open, which was a bit of a major gripe with the Vista installation.

We added our AV product (Nod32 by Eset) – it worked straight away, without any issues at all. We then added our automatic patching tool (Shavlik) – as it’s an RC product, we didn’t expect it to work. However, it did actually pick up on the OS, although there were no patches for it at this stage. The second PC was left as a stand alone system and AVG free (8.5) was installed as the AV product. The PC was connected to the Internet to allow it to run the automated patching – again very quick, very straight forward.

At this stage, we are still testing different apps on the machines – our ERP software, some CAD software, and various applications which we use. Not one of them has had an issue with running – the UAC threw up its warnings, but I don’t consider that a problem as that is exactly what it should do.

We’ve left the test machines in an office for people to check out – so far only a few have taken the time to do this. However, of those that have used it, not one has said that they don’t like it. All comments have been very positive and it seems that a number of people are now very keen to get the product for themselves and we may well consider installing it early next year with our next hardware refresh. All in all, it seems that Windows 7 is just what the doctor ordered.

Security 101

2009-07-15T08:29:00.000-07:00

I don’t pretend to be a security guru, but over the last few years I have had some specialist training in this area. I’ve also read a number of books on various security topics and have developed a bit of an interest in the subject. As a result, I tend to look at things a bit differently now – and sometime what I see really gets me wound up.

This morning, I received a telephone call from someone that said he worked for the credit card fraud section of one of the main UK banks. Our company does have an account with them (we actually use several banks) and we get company credit cards through this particular bank. These are used for a number of things – minor expenses, making travel arrangements, increasingly to buy things on-line. It makes life easier, and the credit control staff in our accounts department can track the charges much more easily than though petty cash arrangements.

The person that phoned explained that he wanted to query a particular payment – not a problem. But then he said that he needed to go through some security checks to make sure that I am the right person to talk to. He asked for the card number, my date of birth, account password plus some other items – effectively everything that a crook would be able to use to pretend to be me. At that point I refused point blank – he has phoned me, and I have no way of knowing if he is in fact anything to do with the bank.

I tried to explain this to him – but clearly he was reading from a script and couldn’t deviate from the process. So I insisted that I wouldn’t discuss anything further and hung up. I then phoned their helpline (the number was on the back of the card) and was put into an automated system. Eventually, I got through a nice young lady who explained that she couldn’t put me through to that department; they only work via outgoing calls and will not accept an incoming calls “for security reasons”.

As it happens, she was able to check the required details and I was able to confirm that the transaction was OK. But I have to say that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way that this bank are working. I tried to get put through to someone to discuss this – they refused point blank. In fact it appears that the only way I can register my concerns is in writing – a letter is going to go off to them tonight and I’ll update this blog to let you know what they say.

To indicate why I’m so uptight about this, I should explain that a while ago a I bought a copy of the book “The art of deception” by Kevin Mitnick. I was a bit ambivalent about this to begin with, as I don’t think it is right to reward someone for bad behaviour; but I wanted to understand how he achieved the various expolits that he got away with. Although some of the descriptions of his activities are now out of date or only relate to things in the US, the majority of the principles are actually very relevant today.

In the book, he described how he managed to obtain information by talking to several people, using one piece of information obtained from one person to persuade someone else to reveal another and so on until he got just what he needed. In this way, he gained access to a lot of really sensitive information, and if he had wanted could have caused a lot of trouble. What is so disturbing is how easy he found it all.

In my case, I refused to pass over the information and then took steps to verify the person was who he said he was – but it appears that the bank don’t want to work that way and in fact try to prevent a fairly sensible set of precautions. Worse they are propagating a method of verification that is open to abuse, and it is likely that if the average person sees that the bank do it a specific way, they will assume it is OK and not question someone else that telephones them, potentially leaving them open for a security breach.

Social engineering is a fact not a theory – and that is why so many people still fall victim to scams and the quantity and quality of spam we get is testament to the amount of money that is involved, and the number of people that regularly fall prey to these crooks. The risks are well known and I would expect those people that are involved in areas of security to understand this. If they don’t follow good procedure, how are the rest of us going to enforce it at our level?

Hot, hot, hot...

2009-07-03T04:45:00.000-07:00

I booked to take a week off of work last week – no plans to go anywhere, but just wanted a bit of a break. It was a glorious week, with lots of sun, but not too hot, and I managed to catch up on some outstanding jobs at home, such as painting the windows. I also had the chance to sit around and just relax with a glass of wine or two….

So back to work on Monday this week. I thought that I would get an early start as there are a number of projects on the go and I wanted to get a few things out of the way. When I arrived, there was note on the door – the inventory clerk had had problems getting on the system, so had left a note for us to investigate.

When I checked the server room, everything was off and the room was absolutely boiling – we normally run at around 22-24 degrees C as we find that’s a nice temperature to work in, the servers are OK with that and it uses less power to cool the place down. I quickly checked and everything had shut down including the air conditioner which wouldn’t even re-start.

I looked at the UPS and that was showing power going in, but nothing coming out. I looked but couldn’t see a problem so grabbed a couple of power extension leads from our office and ran them around so that we could get a couple of systems running. Priority number 1 was the DHCP / DNS server so that we could get network services and that was the first one running. Next one was email – no problem there, it started up fairly quickly. But with the room so hot, I had to find a way to get some air movement. Even with all the windows and doors open, the room was still close to 40 degrees.

I pinched some fans from the HR office as a quickfix, and after about 20 minutes the maintenance manager came in. He did a quick check on the air con unit and discovered that the power breaker in the mains supply in the factory had tripped out – he reset this, but when the unit started up, it wasn’t cooling anything down. He contacted the service company who sent an engineer down later.

With the rest of my staff in, we started moving a couple of the servers – we have small backup room at the other end of the building so were able to put a couple of them down there as a temporary measure. By about 9:00 am we had most of the system running so that people could get on with the daily work.

When the engineer from the aircon company turned up, he identified that the compressor had failed and needed to be replaced. It took a couple of days to get this, only for him to then discover that anpother part had failed causing all the refridgerant gas to leak out. This is what caused the aircon to fail – and as a result everything over heated.

We checked the UPS settings as it is supposed to send an alert for various events, and it turned out that every event was ticked except the one for temperature. Doh! Basically the device had gone up to 60 degrees C and then just shut everything down. In addition, a switch on the device had tripped preventing any outgoing power.

So now we are almost back to what passes for normal – we have to make time to come in one Saturday to put everything back in place as it takes longer to build a rack up than it does to strip it down. But the aircon is cooling away nicely and hopefully, now we’ve ticked the box, it will warn us of any similar event in future.

Castle walls

2009-06-29T02:24:00.000-07:00

Just over a week ago, Microsoft held their Technet Virtual Conference – I found it a really useful event and there were a lot of interesting features. If you missed it then you might want to know that the material is still available from their main website.

During the day, items were split between technical and management; the first item in the management section was a recorded talk by Miha Kralj, one of their senior architects. He had a lot to say on the topic of where IT is likely to go over the next decade and it was delivered in a straight forward, humorous fashion. I found that I agreed with much of what he said – but there were a couple of items where I think he was a little bit out.

He talked about people in the workplace – how they fall into certain categories, Baby Boomers born the 20 years after WWII (which includes me!), Generation X, Generation Y and the latest additions to the work place, the Digital Natives. He stated that this latest generation are much more attuned to using computing devices and companies need to take this into account when planning for the future.

He argued that the Digital Natives are used to making use of newer technologies such as Instant Messaging, social networking sites such as Facebook, video sites such as YouTube or photo sharing sites like Flickr, and will expect to be able make use of these as part of their normal work routine. They are therefore unlikely to be happy conforming to corporate rules preventing the use of these products, and so companies need to “tear down the walls” to their networks.

When I heard this, my immediate reaction was one of horror – like many others, I have had to deal with issues such as virus or spyware infection caused by a user opening an email or downloading a file that is actually a piece of malware. The old saying “an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure” is very relevant for those of us at the front end.

I understand the value of making use of these products, and in fact we are looking at introducing some newer methods of communication to improve the way that people work. But I also am very concerned about the topic of security. The reality is that the majority of users are still very naïve about safety measures – those of us entrusted with system administration cannot afford to rely on the users to keep themselves safe, and we have to make sure that they are not put in a position where they can compromise the security of the network.

Unfortunately, the new Digital Natives may well know how to do things, but are not yet savvy enough to know if they should; or more importantly, why they should not do something (and for that matter, most other users are just as bad). We may be able to allow some windows into our secure networks, but to remove the protection completely would be a very foolish thing indeed.

Technet Virtual Conference June 09

2009-06-21T02:56:00.000-07:00

One of the problems for many people working in IT is the tendency to work in small groups, possibly even alone – there are many more of us working in teams of 5 or less than there are that work in larger groups. Unfortunately, this can then cause us to develop a “silo” attitude to working. It’s then very easy to become blinkered in our attitudes and the way that we work.

For that reason, I try to get out of the business occasionally to attend various events, and I encourage my staff to do the same so that we can see what else is going on in the world. In the last few years we’ve been to various seminars that were on developing technology that we thought might be of use to us that we needed to learn more about, and of course we always try to get along to the supplier events (just a hint to the suppliers – guys, forget all the crappy junk that you hand out, it’s t-shirts we want!)

Over the years, I’ve seen the Tech-Ed events and have wanted to go; but the company won’t pay and I can’t justify stumping up the cash myself. So when it was announced that the Microsoft Technet team were planning to hold a “virtual” conference, I was intrigued. I work quite a bit with video-conferencing and audio-conferencing – and as part of my studies through the OU, I’m used to collaborative online work with forums, wikis and blogs. For me, making it an online experience makes a lot of sense – instead of spending money on event facilities, the resources can go into the content.

If you didn’t get the chance to attend the event, then most of the material is still available on-line at: http://vepexp.microsoft.com/govirtual
and I understand that this should remain available at this location until September 09 – I imagine that it will be available after that, but filed away somewhere else. I would suggest that there is something for everyone – plenty of useful material for the techie, and for the managers alike.

Now many people can get cynical about these sorts of things – they envisage it purely as a sales vehicle. I understand those concerns and yes, it could be argued that Microsoft is trying to sell us on the idea of buying more of their products. Well Duh! they are a commercial enterprise – of course they want to sell things. However, the event was much more about the ideas behind the use of the technology and the way that it can be used.

We are currently doing some evaluation work with Windows 7 and there were a couple of items during the event that discussed new features and the way that Microsoft sees it being deployed. These were very useful – they highlighted bits that we hadn’t actually seen and we will be making a point of checking them out at some stage. There was also information about some of the additional features in Server 2008 R2 that we want to look at – and there was a session on Data Protection Manager Server 2007 which my staff and I think is one of the most valuable / useful products we have ever bought.

A few minor criticisms – I had a couple of issues with some of the material, probably because I was watching on a laptop whilst doing some other work, so on occasion the videos were a bit jumpy and some of the lip synching was slightly off; the presentation slides could also be out of step with the talk. I had a problem with one of the sessions; it froze part way through and wouldn’t re-start. (OK, I need to buy more memory for my laptop, I only have 512M.) However, I went back to it the following day and watched all the way through. There was also an issue with the chat function – apparently even the Technet staff had this problem.

On the positive side, I would highlight one particular session that stood out for me – a look at the future in a session by Miha Kralj. Really thought provoking and delivered with sense of humour. I would have to say that I do actually take issue with some of his points and may even discuss it in more detail in subsequent blog posts. But don’t take my word for, go the site and hear what the man has to say for yourselves.

All in all, 2 thumbs up for a very useful resource produced by the guys and girls at Technet – I think that they all deserve a big pat on the back for a great job well done. I’m told that around 4,000 people took part on the day and I really hope that many more go back to the site to check out the resources in the next few months. I think that they also plan to hold more events like this in future and I for one would definitely be taking part if possible.

You don't want to do it like that .....

2009-06-09T07:49:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I was invited to go to another company. Whilst there, I had the chance to talk to a couple of their IT people about some of the issues that they face.

One of the first things that I discovered was that they have a real problem with their Exchange Server – it regularly stops working because the database un mounts. I was interested to know why, because we have only had that happen to us once in 4 years; and that was just after we had migrated from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003.

It appears that their mailbox database is 85 GB in size; quite a bit over the 75 GB that is referred to in all the material on Exchange. All of the stuff that I found indicates that this will cause regular un mounting of the database due to the limits of the product (Standard edition).

I was a bit surprised at the size of their mail store – ours is just over 16 GB in size and we have about the same number of users. I told them that we operate a rigid set of limits – 200 MB per user for their mailbox and no attachments over 5 MB in size. They were astonished that we could get away with that; they told me that their users would be very unhappy at such limits. But as I asked them, are the users happy that the email system goes offline several times a week?

We’ve found that if you allow certain people more space, they just push it to the limit and if you then give them more, they will just save more rubbish. We’ve had people delete files, then leave these in the deleted folder – just in case they want to refer to the mail. We’ve had people keep emails from 10 years ago – in many cases the sender or recipient concerned are no longer around. Unfortunately, our experience shows that users will not manage their mailboxes unless you force them to.

We also found that people were just emailing files without even thinking about what they were doing; no attempt to compress or even check if it was appropriate to email the files. The worst case was someone from a sister company sending in a .pdf file of 80MB – to make it worse, the recipient was the CEO and he only wanted the one page from the document, not the whole file. We also regularly get people sending large files to multiple recipients – a few weeks ago, someone tried to email a software attachment of 8 MB to 20 people.

So we enforce the limits with absolute rigidity, and for the most part our users are used to this. We do allow them to archive off some mail to data files that are stored separately on a server – and these are then backed up as part of our normal backup routine. As a result, we get very few problems – this would indicate that our way of working is efficient and therefore other people would be wise to follow what we do.

However, what works for us most definitely would not work for other people. I’m aware that there are people that need to keep emails for much longer and are not allowed to delete anything as they have to keep records of all contacts for regulatory reasons. There is a tendency for IT people to assume that what they do will work for everyone – a bit like the Harry Enfield character who insists “You don’t what to do it like that, you want to do ….”

Unfortunately, in many cases, the person so insistent that he knows the best way to do something is unaware of all the facts. I had exactly that a few years ago; someone insisted that I could fix a problem by doing a particular thing to the TCP/IP settings. When I pointed out that we were using IPX/SPX, it meant nothing to him – he had never worked with NetWare and didn’t understand the difference between the two networking protocols.

Despite this, I am of the view that we could do a lot more in the industry to pass information on good practice around between people. In our department, we regularly find hints and tips that we like to test out in case there is something that helps make our job easier or prevents problems from occurring. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t – but it’s all good.

Le VPN - Il marche maintenant!

2009-05-29T05:41:00.000-07:00

The company I work for has sites in several European countries. A few of these are wholly owned, but many are business partner type set-ups. One of the latter was in France; but last year, we bought out the partner and the business is now wholly owned by us, and the business is run as a separate concern.

The long term plans are to get them to use the same systems as the rest of the group; but this is taking a bit longer as we are in the process of implementing a new ERP system and it has to work for us first before we put them onto the same system. However, we have set-up a VPN connection, got them to transfer to using our mail server, linked in their DNS and the AD and started them Video conferencing, so they are now looking more to us for support.

Working with the staff there is OK; all but a couple of older ladies speak some English and even they manage to understand me most of the time. One young lady in particular is native French but speaks fluent English and German; she can even switch language mid sentence. It makes me feel very inadequate (but then I remind myself that I speak binary and hexadecimal!) Like most people of my age, I did learn French at school; but that was over trente years ago. Even then, it was definitely the "la plume de ma tante" style of speaking. I'm sure that I could have played the part of Officer Crabtree in 'Allo, 'Allo with great effect!

We wanted to use our equipment over there so that we could manage it, but the former partner company, whose systems the site still have to use for the time being, insist that they want to control the connection. We occasionally get problems with the VPN - their router plays up and the connection doesn't get re-set properly, so I have manually do it from our end. A bit frustrating as we seldom get issues like that within the sites in the UK.

This week there was one such incident. However, this time it was worse than normal, as all attempts to get the VPN running again failed. The funniest part was whan they asked me to speak to the ISP helpdesk in France; they gave me a telephone number over there which I called. After about 2 minutes, I got through to a very nice young lady - in India! Fortunately, her English was better than my French!

After several exchanges of emails and various tests, we did actually get it running again. Although this is a slower way of dealing with people, it works well in multi language situations as each side gets the chance to think more carefully about a response - there isn't the pressure of a live conversation. Having said that, most of the people that I have to deal with do manage to make themselves understood. I do try to speak their language - but usually, they smile slightly then politely suggest that we should stick to English. Clearly, my French hasn't improved since Mme Vincente tried to teach me to correctly conjugate my verbs back in the late 60's. Ah, zut alors!

Netbook update

2009-05-26T08:01:00.000-07:00

I managed to catch the CEO this morning to talk about his experience with the Inspiron mini. He has been using it for a few days now, including the weekend and has had the chance to try it on a short trip.

Generally, he is very impressed by it. He thought that the screen might be a bit too small, but he found that he was working a bit closer to it when he was on the plane, so didn't really have an issue. He has been shown how to find the screen magnifier, but prefers to change the font size instead.

The battery was conditioned before he took it away and he is getting just over 3.5 hours life - he feels that this is enough for most things. I discussed getting him a second battery to keep as a standby, and I may do this, but at the moment, it's not a priority.

When it is on his desk, he uses an external monitor - there have been a couple of issues with getting the screen resolution right and we tried using several devices including a wide screen monitor but that didn't make a lot of difference. He seems happy enough with the one he is now using running at 1024 x 768. The re-installed O/S appears to be working as well as if it had been factory installed.

It doesn't have a specific docking station, so we are using an old Belkin port replicator device; that works just fine. I did discuss him having one for use at home as well; not a particular need, but I think he may think about it again later.

As indicated, most of what he looks at are emails, some documents, spreadsheets and occasional web pages. He also has Messenger running so that he can talk with his son who is at Uni. The device handles this well; there is no sign at the moment (early days I know) of any real speed issues. He has shortcuts to data on our data store and can access these really easily; he also used the VPN connection to get access over the bank holiday and reported no problems with anything.

So far, a definite 2 thumbs up from him and from us. He has even been talking about getting a couple more; primarily for use by some of the other senior managers throughout the group.

Update:

The CEO came back to the office today and he is even more impressed with it than before. He did say that a couple of programs seemed to run a bit faster than on his old laptop - I think because it hasn't built up all of the various junk that accumulates as you use these devices.

He did make a point of saying that he can fit into his suitcase for when he and his wife go on holiday. I suggested that she might not be too happy (I know she won't be!) and that she might object quite strongly to him adding into his luggage. He said it is small enough that he can sneak it in without her knowing - oh well, I don't think I'll be invited to sit on their table at the Christmas party this year!

Notes on a Netbook

2009-05-18T08:31:00.000-07:00

We’ve just bought a new lightweight notebook for the CEO – a Dell Inspiron Mini 12.

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/laptop-inspiron-12?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&ref=lthp&s=dhs

I thought that I would do a review of this as it’s a new product and a number of people have expressed interest in knowing how we got on with it.

First the background – the CEO does a lot of travelling and wants to be able to work wherever he is. He has a laptop that he is happy with, but in the past few months, some airlines are getting a bit restrictive on hand luggage, so he wanted to try and get a lighter device that could be packed in his bag.

He has tested a smart phone – the HTC Touch Pro and thinks that this is good for the email side of things, but the screen and keyboard are too small for him to use for more than very basic functions – he needs to refer to spreadsheets, documents etc so he really needs a larger device.

I checked out the details of several models of the smaller notebooks including the perennial favourites of senior management, the Sony Vaio. However, the Inspiron is much cheaper at just over £300 – he decided that at that price, he could swallow wasting the money if he didn’t like the device, or if it proved not powerful enough for what he needs to do.

We placed the order and it took a bit longer than most items that we’ve ordered through Dell; it appears that it is only currently manufactured in China, so that’s not really surprising. It actually took just under three weeks; we normally get stuff within 7 days. Mind you, as they are closing their place in Ireland, we may have to get used to waiting a few extra days.

When it arrived, everybody’s first impression was one of astonishment – it is so small and light. At 1.2 kg, it is just a bit more than a bag of sugar, but it actually feels lighter. It has a smooth shiny top lid (ours was black) and it looks very professional. The trim inside is silver with the new flatter touch pad – and the action of the pad is very smooth and positive.

Start up seemed a little bit slower than a normal laptop, but not by much. Once we had gone through the normal Welcome to Windows menu items, the unit seemed to operate pretty much as might be expected. I’ve not used a device with the Atom processor in it, and if this is anything to go by, it seems to do the job.

The notebook comes with an integrated web cam, and the aperture is tiny – less than 5 mm across (no that’s not a typo – 5 millimetres). However the clarity is really excellent and the necessary software is quite easy to use. The screen generally is easily readable even though the surface is quite shiny – we tried it with the blinds on the windows up and even with a strong outside light, it was still easy to read.

The device has built in network (100Mb not gigabit), wireless connection and Bluetooth facility. We tried all of these and the connection was smooth and quick to set-up in each case, just like a standard laptop. It doesn’t have an optical drive as the case just isn’t thick enough at less than 10 mm – but there are USB ports and also ports for microphone and audio output.

Unfortunately, it comes with Windows XP Home edition – no good for connection to a domain. I was a bit surprised at this and queried why – however, it appears that almost all of the mini notebooks are loaded with Win XP HE. The few exceptions are the Sony Vaios and some of the HP models which have Vista Business.

As Win XP HE is no good for us, and we have a spare copy of XP Pro, we decided to try and install this. The installation took about the normal length of time for a new install. At this point, some of the drivers for the integrated hardware would install, but most wouldn’t. However, we then installed the service packs – once they were on, we were able to get all of the drivers loaded OK.

At this stage, we have Office 2003, Adobe Acrobat 9, our ERP software, patching software, and anti-virus software all installed. Our tests seem to show that is noticeably slower than a normal laptop, but certainly not to an unusable degree. Generally, the windows seem open quite smoothly and programs starting up do not take an unreasonably long time.

We are currently trying to condition the battery – it seems to last about 2 hours at the moment. We’re also going to install a USB modem for mobile broadband. In the meantime the CEO now has a USB mouse and a port replicator set up on his desk to use with it and we’ve supplied a mini USB mouse for him to take with him on his travels.

I’ll get some feedback from him and post it in a couple of weeks after he has had the time to get used to it.

Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam .................

2009-05-14T05:16:00.001-07:00

We had a slight problem yesterday – access to the Internet became a bit flaky. People kept calling to say that access was denied or sites were taking a long time to open. At first, we thought that this was just people being impatient, but quickly we realised that there was a problem.

The firewall device seemed to be struggling a bit – the connection log showed a very high level of packet transmission. That wasn’t too unusual as our current connection gets maxed out on a regular basis and we have seen it much worse. A few tweaks and it all seemed OK – so we thought no more of it.

Later in the afternoon, we had the same problem; tweak again, all OK – but then it happened again very quickly afterwards. A brief discussion and it was decided that we should re-boot the device to clear anything that was cached that might cause a problem. One quick reboot and everything was hunky dory.

When I got into the office this morning I was a bit surprised to find about 20 or so emails that were exact duplicates of ones that I had received yesterday. I asked around and a number of other people had the same problem. I did a few checks, but couldn’t see any problems. There seemed to be the usual level of network activity – nothing that would indicate any issues so I put it down to the previous day’s problems.

Over the next couple of hours, I worked on various items including a few support issues. During that time, I received several more emails, some internal, some external. Around mid morning, I thought about it and realised that I had actually received no new external mail, they had all been duplicates. I did a quick check using an external mail service, and realised that there were no incoming or outgoing mails at all.

The guys and I did some tests and quickly realised that something was seriously wrong with the firewall – it was running like a 3 legged dog and several pages of the control menu just would not open at all. We called the support team at the mail service and they checked but confirmed mail was coming in – so we called the vendor of the firewall. They checked but also found that it was running slow so they escalated the problem to the manufacturer.

About an hour later, we got a call from the vendor – the support guys from the manufacturer had found that there were a lot of emails in the cache of the device – about a 1000 or so. They said that they would run a script to clear the cache and expected that this would fix the problem. About 20 minutes later, they phoned back again – it wasn’t a thousand, but one hundred thousand! - and more coming in by the second.

Eventually, they cleared the cache and the email started to move, and our spam mailbox suddenly started to groan under the weight of the mail. It was all from one IP address in Japan, to one mailbox, with one subject line. A quick calculation showed over 10,000 incoming mail every hour. To deal with it, we set-up a PC logged on with the user account for the spam mailbox, and then we set a rule within Outlook to delete the incoming mail from the specific sender. Once this was set running, we could see the incoming mail, but also see it being deleted – it was really cool to watch.

All in all, we feel pretty good about it; once the problem was identified, we had a solution really quickly. Yes we did have a period of a couple of hours with no email, but no-one actually realised this. One of the directors did have an issue with trying to send an important mail to a potential client; but I was able to do that for him using a specific backup external mail facility set-up for that purpose.

After identifying the problem we had outgoing mail within about 15 minutes – incoming mail took slightly longer because of the backlog of garbage, but still less than 30 minutes. The staff were all kept informed – but later it seemed, most of them hadn’t even realised that there was a problem until they got the email from me to tell them about it.

I’m going to sit down with the guys in the next few days – we will draw up a brief outline of what happened and will use that to see if there was anything else we could have done to (1) prevent it, (2) detect it, (3) prepare for it happening again. This will be added to our Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery Plans

Hanging on the telephone

2009-05-12T09:03:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, I highlighted that the company telephone systems were getting very old – one of the PBX switches was so old that parts were no longer available for it, and support for all of the systems was very limited. On top of that, the systems needed very specific handsets which were getting harder to source if we needed to replace them, and many of those we had were in very poor condition. I also felt that the telephones didn’t really meet our needs as they had limited functionality.

I spent quite a bit of time looking at various options for replacing these and had numerous meetings with potential vendors. I did some comparisons and produced a short list; those were then invited to put together a final presentation. After about 4 months work, I eventually decided to buy a Mitel system through BT.

I have to say that the new system is really good; it has great functionality and I think that it is really easy to use. Mitel provided a couple of trainers, access to an online training system, some documentation and advice – and the engineers were really helpful. I made the documentation available to all staff and took the time to go around every single member of staff to show them how to do the basics, and how to get access to the online training material.

But even though it is such a good system, there are a number of issues. Incoming calls can now be routed between offices, and yet I regularly hear people advising customers that they have dialled the wrong number and they make the caller re-dial instead of just transferring the call. The other day one of the senior managers wanted to have a 3 way conference call, and couldn’t remember how to do it; he had to phone up the IT office from another phone to ask how to do it whilst the customer waited on the other line.

There are still some people that haven’t recorded their voicemail message after almost a year of use; of those that have, many just use it as an answer phone and still don’t appreciate that there is so much more that they can do with it. I really can’t see why it’s such a problem for them.

However, this technophobia didn’t come as a complete surprise to me; when we ordered the system I decided not to take all of the additional functionality as I suspected that most of our staff would struggle to learn just the basic operations. I suggested that once they had become comfortable with the new phones, we could look again at the optional extras.

Last week, I took a couple of people up to the Mitel head office (a big thanks to them for their hospitality) specifically so that they could see some of the additional functionality. Much of this is based around the concept of unified communications and having previously seen this, I’m impressed by the possibilities. The two people that I took with me were equally excited – within a matter of minutes, they were discussing how all of this could be used to provide efficiencies.

Unfortunately though, I am a bit concerned about getting the go ahead for this from the board; I don’t expect the new functions to come cheap, and it is going to be difficult to predict a valid return for the investment. If it is used properly, than there is no doubt that we will see some useful improvements, but I am not certain we can count on people to actually use the new functions properly. (Yes, I am having another go at our technically challenged staff.)

Part of the problem is clearly that people are naturally reluctant to change the way they work. This is especially true if they have been doing things a particular way for some time. Although I’m trying to make things easier for everyone, and make their working life better, they don’t always see it that way. From the user’s point of view, it’s no fun being told to do something a specific way if it makes no sense to you and when you try to do your best, you get made to feel stupid.

But we have to be able to communicate, and the new technology is important in making sure that this is efficient and cost effective. We have to find a way to get everyone to make the best of this – both for their sakes and for that of the company.

I see you - can you see me?

2009-05-01T05:13:00.000-07:00

My first experience of video conferencing was because the company that I was working for needed a way to communicate between sites. At the time, they had 2 sites in the South West and one in the Midlands; people spent hours travelling between sites, just for a 1-2 hour meeting. They felt that audio conferences just didn’t meet their needs, which is why they travelled for face to face sessions.

The MD had received an invite to a presentation showing how video conferencing worked and he was so impressed, he bought the equipment on the spot (he was a bit like that). The supplier made sure that he knew it would use ISDN, so we had the lines installed before the equipment arrived. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to supply anyone to set it up and show us how it worked, so I had to trawl through the manuals to work it out for myself.

For about the first 6 months, we had problems; mostly down to people unable to work out how to use the remote control handset (yes really). There were some technical issues to do with line usage that I finally managed to get straight by talking with my colleagues at the other sites. Later, we started to call some sites in Northern Ireland on a regular basis – again a few issues to start with, but once we hammered out the protocol of who called who, it all ran very smoothly.

At one stage, the staff involved in Quality Control on all of the sites were calling each other up on a weekly basis to discuss procedures and how they could deal with some fairly major changes to meet customer requirements. The VC sessions allowed them to respond far quicker than had been the case previously and this was the primary reason that the customer continued to send the business our way.

My current company has sites right across the UK and Europe; the CEO and other senior managers used to spend a lot of time travelling at quite a cost to the business. I proposed the VC option shortly after I started and at first, the reaction was less than overwhelming. However, I got a really good IP based solution installed and set-up the connection between the two main sites. They were totally bowled over. In fact, it went down so well that we were told to roll this out across the group – we had each site connected within a few weeks.

Again, the first 6 months were the hardest bit – people will play around with the settings! Eventually though, things settled down and the VC units really began to pay for themselves.

Now people will argue about the true cost savings – everyone has their own way of calculating these. Basically, I just work out what the saved travel costs are (fuel, trains, hotels, etc); although you can also include saved time not spent in travelling to be more accurate. Based upon just travelling costs, in the first year alone, we saved about 5 times the amount the units cost us to buy. In the second year, we saved over £100,000.

The really interesting thing is how people re-act in VC meetings; when we first started, they were very self conscious and nervous about talking. However, in a very short space of time, this changed – in most cases, before the end of the VC session you would see that people were just talking as normal, they forget that the other people are miles away. Although it was generally just managers at the start, now all staff take part; we had one meeting a while back, where some of the goods in staff were taking part in a session to discuss a new procedure with their colleagues from the other site.

Unfortunately though, we are getting a few issues currently – the bandwidth on the Internet connection is getting crowded and we desperately need more than we have available. Hopefully, we should see this sorted in a few weeks time, but long term we really could use a decent fibre connection. (Stephen Carter, minister of communications; are you listening?)

As you may gather, I’m a big fan of video conferencing – it saves money, time and improves communications. It does also allow you to appear really professional if it is done right. As a business tool, it’s suitable for most SMEs, not just the big boys. For those interested in environmental issues, it’s a really great way to reduce the carbon footprint caused by travelling and very cost effective.

However, I have also seen the next generation of video conferencing – Telepresence. (Link below)

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps7060/index.html

It is really astonishing and I want it now! You have to see it to really appreciate it – but there are some videos on websites that give a good idea of how it works and just how good it really is. As far as I am concerned, the only bad thing about it is the price tag. I foolishly asked what it would cost us, and 2 years ago it was just over a million dollars US (probably the same amount in sterling now). This is a bit on the high side for us – I don’t think that I can persuade the board that it is worth spending that kind of money.

For those companies that have multiple sites, particularly if they are some distance apart, video conferencing is a really good way to keep people in touch without breaking the bank. With all of the environmental pressures, I’m sure that in the future we will see the take up of video conferencing increase; this has to be good for everyone.

Suffering Support!

2009-04-22T01:35:00.001-07:00

A while ago, I upset some of the senior managers – after a particularly stressful day, I suggested that we retire all of the existing office staff, and then go down the local junior school and select 30 children at random. I offered my opinion that these young people would be more IT literate than our current employees!

Of course, I was joking (mostly); but sometimes, it is difficult to understand why people find the simplest things so hard to do. For example, if you can’t print, then it would seem a fairly simple thing to do to check that the printer is turned on, and has paper and ink in it. Yet not a week goes by without someone complaining that their printer is “broken”, and then upon investigation, we find that it has run out of consumables.

A few years ago, I tried to carry out some research into the effectiveness of our support team: I analysed the number of support requests and how quickly they were resolved. But then I looked at what the actual items were; and most were what we would refer to as very basic IT problems. Some related to simple hardware issues such as cables pulled out, others were minor software related items; where is my “lost” file etc? Only a few really needed “an IT person” to fix, just someone with a reasonable level (as we see it) of common sense.

Now the first reaction was to check if this was down to laziness on the part of the staff member; after all, let’s be honest, it is easier to pick up the phone and call for help than to try to fix something yourself. However, it became obvious from the analysis that there was a large number of support issues that came down to the various individuals lacking some pretty basic IT skills.

I then carried out some more research and it soon became clear that many of the staff had actually had no real computer training – at best, they had been shown a sequence of steps to perform; click button A, click button B then button C, then print. But if it didn’t print, they often just pressed the same buttons again as they didn’t know why they had to press those buttons. When I asked, they had difficulty explaining what they were doing. They just couldn’t explain in terms that I could relate to (in many cases because they didn’t know); and some of the instructions I offered were clearly just as meaningless to them.

This worries me; a great deal of time is wasted and productivity suffers as a result. Users feel frustrated that they are unable to work with the tools, and morale begins to suffer. Then the IT staff turn up, and too often the user feels belittled by someone that shows annoyance at having to deal with a very minor problem.

So the immediate reaction would be to suggest that all staff should be better trained; clearly this offers benefits, yet too often, the reaction of management is that the users don’t need to become “IT trained” in order to carry out simple tasks. This is possibly true – but equally, we cannot continue to put people in front of a PC and give them so little training that they make as much work as they actually achieve.

To offer an analogy, many people drive cars – but we don’t allow people to climb in and drive off without undergoing some form of training and taking a basic skill test to prove they are ready to be let loose on their own. Whilst using a computer is not quite as serious (for the most part), it still makes sense to ensure that the person using it has a certain level of knowledge to make them as efficient as possible.

Printing for Fun and Profit

2009-04-14T10:44:00.000-07:00

When I started with my current company, I was more than a bit surprised at the number of printers - almost every other PC had a printer attached, and most of those were inkjet printers. There were so many different makes and models that keeping track of them was a problem - and there were almost 40 different cartridge types that had to be bought. We were ordering replacements every single week, and not just a couple at a time, but literally dozens. We had a storage cupboard just for these cartridges.

Now to me, this is simply crazy. Although there are some inkjet cartridges that hold larger quantities, most will have less than a standard pub spirit measure (25ml) - and while you can still get a single measure of scotch for £1.50, the same amount of ink will set you back £15 - £25. Given the choice, I know which one I'd prefer!

My predecessor had simply bought cheap printers - and every time, he bought a new one, it needed a different type of cartridge. He also considered it easier to attach them directly to a PC so there were very few people doing any form of network printing. The problem is of course that this is exactly what the printer manufacturers want - they sell the printers at a cheap price, knowing that they will make their money on the ink (and boy, do they make their money). And of course, a cheap printer will fall apart quicker, but hey that's OK as it doesn't cost that much to replace it (although you'll then have yet another different type of cartridge!).

So we started by working out where the most appropriate place was for a networked printer, then ordered up some decent mono laser devices. Within a year, almost all of the older inkjets were gone. In fact, we now have about 50% more users, but 30% less printers. And we are now down to about 5 toners with about 5 inkjets, so it's easier to keep track. Plus, the laser toners last much longer so it works out much cheaper. In fact, we reckon that we save about £25,000 to £30,000 per year over what we had been spending.

Now of course, there are those that will say "use compatible cartridges" or even "refill them". Tried those and they are an absolute waste of money and more importantly, time. You end up spending so much time fiddling around - I really think we have more important things to do. Also many of the compatibles don't work; and a lot then cause cleaning issues. I just think that it's far better to get decent equipment and be done with it.

That's not to say that users were happy; far from it. When we first started moving them onto networked printers, you would not believe the fuss it caused. People really don't want to walk 20 feet to get their print jobs. But eventually, they started to accept it and now the situation is so different. Although we still get some problems, there are far fewer than we used to have, administering them is easier and most of all, we save money that we can then spend on other things that help us do the job better.

In fact, this is such a simple thing to do, that I am astonished how many companies are still using large numbers of inkjet printers. I spoke to a manager at another company and they have around 500 users - he told me that he has one member of his IT staff almost permanently dealing with printer issues. He couldn't actually tell me how many they have as they have actually lost track of them; they think that they have over 300. (that's not a typo; yes it's three hundred!)

Now no disrespect to him, but for me, that is a red flag - time to make some serious changes. And if people complain, then I would insist on charging them for buying cartridges. If these consumables end up on their budget, I guarantee they will take notice!

So do yourself a big favour - get rid of all inkjet printers, replace them with laser printers. You'll feel better for it.

Email me

2009-04-09T01:03:00.000-07:00

I do actually remember sending my first email. It would have been around 1990 - I had been playing with PCs for about 3 years. I had managed to get some odd bits & pieces of equipment from an auction; one of these was a modem that ran at a blistering 2,400 bits per second. And in those days, there was no plug and play, you had to create files that would contain the necessary commands to make the hardware work.

In my case, it actually took several days to get it working, but finally I managed to get it to dial out on command. The only problem then was what to connect to - there were not the ISPs we have nowadays. I actually managed to connect to a Bulletin Board Service (BBS) that I think was based in North London; I remember watching with fascination as the screen suddenly displayed a list of numerical options - of course no GUIs in those days. I vaguely remember that to post a message was option 5; I sent some messages to a couple of people, but there weren't that many people you could mail.

Of course it has all changed now; email is a major tool of the business and it is difficult to imagine how we could work effectively without using it. Every department relies heavily on being able to contact others, both inside and outside the company. And unfortunately, this leads to some major problems. Previously, the company had very few effective controls on the email and no email policies at all. I made my self quite unpopular because I insisted on setting these controls in place and worst of all, enforcing them with total rigidity.

To begin with, we upgraded to Exchange 2003 from 5.5 which was quite a task in itself - nothing had been prepared and the AD wasn't quite right. Later we had to move from an older server to a newer rack mounted device with more processors, memory and storage, and that process was much easier - in fact one of the easiest migrations I've ever had to do. We also started to get people moved from all different varieties of Outlook onto one version (2003); it took several months, but we got there.

Among the changes we made was to implement a fixed limit on mailbox sizes - just 200 Mb. Now for most people that is not a problem; but we regularly keep an eye on the sizes, and every time, it's the same names that appear close to the limit. I regularly get asked to increase the size limit but refuse; if I increase it, they will just let it run to the new higher limit, then complain that isn't enough.

To provide some assistance, I set-up space for mail to be archived to a .pst file on a designated space on a server, so it gets backed up as well. People have been shown how to archive, but you could be forgiven for thinking that we hadn't as so many users still don't seem to be able to do this.

We also limit the size of attachments on incoming and outgoing mail to 5 Mb. You would not believe the number of emails that get rejected due to the size of attachments - and the size of some of these; we still get complaints that a mail won't go through when it has a 20 or 30 Mb attachment. We've shown pople how to use other methods of transferring files, but they just don't want to know. As an example, I checked the mail logs yesterday and there was another incoming mail rejected from a user at our parent company in Germany - the person had attached a spreadsheet of 14 Mb, and sent copies to 5 other users in Germany, and 6 in the UK. When it failed, the person then re-sent it to all 11 people twice more!

Still, I suppose that I can't complain; the system is now working really well (apart from the users!) - we have even managed to add the domain for our French company to the system and they now connect to us for their email. Il marche tres bien! In fact, it looks as though they are particularly impressed as we fix issues for them far quicker than their previous host.

Just now have to wait for Exchange 2010....

Networking

2009-04-03T04:27:00.001-07:00

At my previous company, the network cabling was pretty poor – it was put in by a guy they referred to as “Dodgy Dean”. I’m told that he is wanted by 3 separate police forces and is currently living somewhere in the Costas!

Basically, it was a mix of old coaxial cable (with BNC connectors), some Cat 5e cable most of which done correctly, but some of which was reversed (green / orange). It was run through gaps in the walls, through drains, over the roof, through guttering, mixed in with power cable, under motors – pretty much a mess. There was absolutely no structure to it what so ever.

The network used to crash throughout the day – tests showed that quite a number of the cables were dead (around 20%). I also found some strange configurations in the hubs, with cable crossing over and packets travelling unnecessarily longer distances. The speed was pretty poor (as you might expect) and people would often accidently cut through or disturb cables to cause disruption.

I eventually decided enough was enough – I set about replacing all the crap. As I started to pull the old cable out, I found even more hidden away than I knew about – it turns out that he never took anything out, just ran more cable when one piece failed. Some of the old cable was covered in all sorts of green, brown and black slime! Much of it showed signs of the outer sheath cracking or breaking up as it was in such poor condition. In the end, I filled a whole standard skip up with the dead cable and still had enough over to half fill another.

Eventually, it was all tidied up, documented and tested and the network became a lot more stable and transmission speed improved. Then I changed jobs!

When I started with my current company, it was a bit like taking a step back in time. Again, there was a mixture of older coax cable, some fibre and mostly Cat 5e. The cable runs were really poor, just shoved in where they could with no planning of any real kind.

So I trained up one of the staff, showed him how to do basic Cat 5 ends, and punch down in the patch panels. I spent some time analysing what was really needed through the offices and factories, then considered how best to replace all of the garbage.

We started with some fairly basic changes – moving some cables and putting some new ones in a more controlled way. Then we added proper basket tray above the office spaces to carry new cable and it started to take shape. We always run cables in threes – the extra cost is minimal, but it provides a lot more capacity and it is easier than trying to add in later.

When the company decided to build new offices, it was agreed that we would cable it up – we had had quotes in the range of £38,000 to over £50,000. In the end, we put in almost 10,000 metres of cable for the new offices and the cost of materials was a little over £3k. Add in another £3k for staff time involved and it became a major cost saving. It actually allowed them to plan for a really fancy lighting system that cost some £30k.

In the comms rooms, the patch panels look really pretty as they are very carefully patched. In most places, these normally resemble explosions of spaghetti, but ours are very different and nicely laid out. We have had several people in from outside companies that are astonished at the quality of the work we have done. (See the picture above for an example of a comms rack - we have 3 full height units, 1 half size and 2 wall cabinets, and they all look like that.)

So why do we put all this effort in? Well, we take a pride in our job; we want to have something that we can point to as high quality work. It also makes our lives easier; if there is a problem, it takes less time to identify and resolve. The structure we use provides much more capacity for growth with minimal effort – it’s also a lot easier to move people around when necessary.

The problem is of course that within the company, most people don’t recognise the effort that has gone into it. All they are interested in is that the system works when they want it to, and as a result they just don’t appreciate that not everyone takes as much care as we do.

DPM Update 2

2009-04-02T09:06:00.000-07:00

Having sorted out the problem with the autoloader, we can now add the tapes in and it displays them on the screen - it shows the barcodes on the label attached to the tape to help keep them ornganised as well which is quite useful. However, one small issue - 2 of the tapes are marked as "suspect". This is strange; they are both new and have only been used for a basic test.

It turns out that this is a known problem and there is a fairly simple solution. Details can be found here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb808923.aspx. It's to do with the database used by the software - it marks the tapes with data and this can get conflicted if the data and the label don't quite match. It appears that this is what has happened to us as the tapes were used for the testing, before the bar code label was put on.

A couple of caveats for this process; there is a script that you should download and add to a text file to run as a command. Make sure that the script is all on a single line - if it isn't, then the script fails. You might also need to watch what AV solution you use as some don't like you running command files.

It is also important that you follow the described process; remove all suspect tapes, run the script, then add just one of them and run the script again. Then after it detects the tape correctly, erase the data on the tape. Repeat until all tapes are added and data erased. If a tape failes, take it out and add it to the end of the line and use one of the others, until all tapes are OK.
It took a while to complete the process - nearly a full day, but we got there in the end. So all is well....

Well not quite. Now the reporting services function doesn't work. Again, it's known problem, but most of the sites that offer fixes for this, only do so for Server 2008 and we are on 2003. Still, I have hopes that we will get a fix for this fairly soon.

Decided to edit this rather than post a new item having spent a few days working with the guys at Dell. Really helpful chap called Javier who is a SQL specialist - he determined that the reports ran OK through a separate browser window, but not through the DPM console. From this, it appeared to be an issue with the .ASP settings and he did eventually get it fixed. Unfortunately, he didn't give me the exact details as he was working on it using a webex session for several hours. However, from what he told me, there are some issues with access rights - it's probable that the update carried out earlier reset those, which is why it wouldn't run.

DPM Update

2009-03-31T02:13:00.000-07:00

Having spent some time with the man from Dell (monty?) it appears we have resolved the issue with the autoloader. It now backs up across multiple tapes - hooray!

It appears that the Removeable Storage Media service was the problem; once it was stopped and the Dell drivers updated, the system was able to correctly identify the autoloader device; previously, it just showed it as an Ultrium 3 tape drive.

I carried out a couple of tests over the weekend and they both worked really well - I've now loaded the device up completely, erased all existing data on the tapes and am going to start setting up a more efficient tape backup regime. I did one test and it allows me to pull out individual files from the tape - I need to work out how long we are going to keep the backups and how often we will run them. We have a number of options, but I'm not certain which is going to be the most efficient method. I'll maybe post some more on this later.

Ooops; Time to backup

2009-03-28T05:38:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest issues in IT is the subject of backups; they are a real PITA until you lose data, then they are sooooo important. The problem is that it's difficult to get users to set-up a sensible backup regime that they will actually use. And of course when they delete that important file or folder, and it turns out that it isn't backed up, it's all the IT dept's fault.

Over the years, I have tried numerous different products from the big vendors - they all have their good points and unfortunately, many faults. Several are complex to manage and with limited time and resources, it's difficult to maintain a good level of secure data backup. Personal opinion; many of them now are just too bloated with unnecessary addons - they might be needed by larger companies, who might have the people to spend all day managing them, but it's not what I need.

Anyway, just over a year ago, my Dell account manager told me about Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2007. I have to be honest, I was pretty sceptical- someone had sold me a similar thing through another supplier and it was an unmitigated disaster - we eventually got our money back, but it left me with a bad taste in my mouth as a result. Much against my better judgement, I bought one of Dell's PowerVault servers running MS Storage Server with the DPM software.

I have to say though, it was a really good decision; the product worked, literally straight out of the box. Within just a few minutes, we had started getting a secure disk to disk back up from a couple of servers. Later we added one of their MD1000 JBODS to increase the amount that could be stored. Now, with the one device, we do a disk to disk backup of all the servers at our site and at the 2 remotes sites as well; we don't have to rely on them to remember to swap the tapes over. We are even suggesting that we could backup servers in another country.

It operates during the day, synchronising with the data stores; it then creates recovery points automatically, from which we can restore as necessary. Occasionally, we take a quick look to make sure that it is still running - RDP to the server, check the "Protection Groups", all done in about 5 minutes. The Recovery console is pretty simple to use as well; search through the folder list, find the items to restore and press the recover button. Simples!

It also can be set-up to allow the end user to recover their own data (now I know what you are thinking, and I have to agree, who in their right mind would trust the average user to do a data restore?) In fact we limit it to a couple of very specific users that are smarter than the average bear and quite capable of doing it without causing even more damage. Yes, it works and they love it to bits. (I still wouldn't trust most of our users to do it though!)

Sounds too good to be true? Well yes, it has its faults. The data replication / synchronisation from the remote sites is a bit of a lengthy process - we have limited bandwidth and desperately need more (Are you listening Stephen Carter? 2MB by 2012 is NOT enough! We need 100MB NOW!)

We also had a problem with the tape backup process - turns out that the old autoloader was faulty. We bought a new Dell 124 tape loader, but still couldn't quite get it going. It would do a backup to tape, but only if the amount was under the tape limit; it wouldn't swap to a new tape automatically, which is what it is supposed to do.

Anyway, I spent just over an hour on the phone yesterday with one of the Dell support people. Now not so long ago, Dell support was an oxymoron; I have to say, it is pretty damn good now; their guys really know their stuff. Finally got it sorted and now the loader seems to be doing its thing as it should (still got to check it out).

As you can probably tell, my staff and I are pretty chuffed with this product. It has definitely improved our backup process - we reckon that we save about 1 to 2 hours a week. We used to have major issues with the tapes on the remote sites, and that is just a distant memory now. Data recovery is so easy, it's almost embarrassing - we had a young lad in on work experence, and even he could work out how to do it without loads of training.

Anyway, if you are a small or medium enterprise with limited resources having backup problems, or want to improve what you are doing, then I would suggest that the DPM Server product is something that is worth considering. Just to help, here's a link http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/dataprotectionmanager/en/us/default.aspx

There are loads of white papers / case studies / product notes on the Microsoft site, so you can get a bit more technical - but for me, the main thing is that it works, it works well, and it is very cost effective.

Have you turned it off and on again?

2009-03-26T06:39:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't seen this clip before, here's a link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt9j80Jkc_A

No doubt that this is what a lot of people think an IT depart is actually like. I would say that I don't agree at all (obviously); but the problem is that what our users think of us is important, and if this is their impression, then we have a long way to go to rectify that view.

If the users think we are ignoring them, putting them down or talking over their heads, then they will not listen to us; if they don't listen, then they won't learn anything. We are then stuck in a situation where they repeat the same errors, and never understand where they are going wrong and never learn how to do something correctly.

As it happens, we do find that in many cases, a simple re-start will fix the problem; people don't know what they have done (or quite possibly, don't want to admit to what ever it is they have done) and the restart puts everything back as it should be. Not necessarily the right way to do it, but we have to get them working again as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, it then gets to be a bit of a cliche.

It's also very true that sometimes, we use a bit too much jargon; many users do get very confused by it, and sometimes it doesn't help if they think we are just trying to put them down. In most cases, it depends upon the user - some of them can handle it, but all too often it is just not what they want to hear. As is often the case, it is very much "horses for courses".

A short one today; more later.

Blogging away

2009-03-20T06:11:00.000-07:00

I can't actually remember when I did my first blog - it was definitely some years ago. But, I never really could be bothered to keep up with it, as I tended to think "who is going to read this?".

Back at the end of the 19th Century, many famous diarist / writers etc. use to write to one another, sometimes 4 - 6 times a day. Of course in those days, the post used to collect and deliver many times a day - in London, especially around the West End or City areas, they would have 8 collections / deliveries per day. How times change! I actually can just remember the last time that I got a personal hand written letter - just before Christmas 2 years ago from a friend I haven't seen in about 5 years.

Electronic mail (including IM, and texts) has taken over from writing letters and I know that many people do keep in touch that way. We don't allow IM at work (as it could encourage people to spend time away from their job) and I note that there are a number of people that send "text emails" - they use their email to send the short one line abbreviated messages that would normally go via the mobile.

The blog of course is more like a personal newspaper comment section - you make your feelings known and post for all the world to see (or more likely not). Although there are some bloggers that do attract larger audiences, it's more likely that they are espousing extreme views or have attarcted notoriety for some other reason than the quality of their writing. Of course that is not what this one is for - it's more about sharing information, particularly of the sort that might be of value to other people in a similar line of work.

Some years ago, I was told by a senior manager that too often, people were working so hard that they forgot to stick their heads up and take a look around them to see the bigger picture. I can agree with this; particularly in IT, there is so much going on all the time, that it easy to forget that the work we do is a means to an end, not just work for its own sake.

The blog partly allows us to do just that - stick our heads up to see what else is going on. And hopefully, my comments and thoughts will be of value to other people rather just an ego trip for myself.

In the Land of the Blind, the One Eyed Man is King

2009-03-16T08:50:00.001-07:00

... Or so the story goes.

(In fact, if you read the story, it turns out that the Blind don't actually see it as a handicap; and the sighted person is treated as a freak!)

Dare I suggest that this has a resonance for those of us that work in IT? We have built up our skills over a period of time, and take pride in our ability to do various tasks. The users that we support tend to have at best, a level of knowledge that is patchy. In many cases, they don't even appreciate how little they know - you then get the person that has installed instant messaging at home, so therefore thinks that they can do this at work and is unaware of the larger issues involved or the problems that it might cause.

What makes it worse is that for many of us, we have to work with business people that don't understand how it all hangs together (and often don't want to); but immediately something goes wrong, they want to micro manage fixing the problem - rather like someone grabbing the steering wheel in a car when it goes into a skid.

I think that those in the medical profession would understand some of this. They spend many years training, before going on to their specialisation. They get patients that have abused their bodies, smoking, drinking, eating too much, and when the patient falls ill, it is expected that the doctor can issue a pill, potion or injection that will instantly cure the problem.

The reality is course that there are many things doctors cannot do; in fact, they all take an oath to "First, do no harm". Although medical science is improving almost daily, all they can do is delay the inevitable. And in many cases, their advice is ignored; and I think almost everyone in IT can relate to that.

In many ways, we are like the Guild of Handlemen of Holywood (apologies to Terry Pratchett - "Moving Pictures"); we are not passing knowledge down from father to son, but more around to each other at the moment. It's also true that as the technology develops, practices have to change, and we see that happening at a much faster rate than any other profession has in the past.

I am a great believer that we need IT to be recognised as a profession and that the practitioners should all be encouraged to seek some form of professional or qualilfied status. This will not be easy - IT as an industry is still a very new area of expertise, whatever date you mark it from. Although there are those that worked with mainframes in the 50s, 60s & 70s, the speed of growth in the nature and importance of IT over the last 3 decades is the crucial issue.

As a result, we should realise that we are setting the standards by which others will follow; we need to look up from the tasks we have to do on a daily basis and take stock of what is happening. We have to ask ourseleves the right questions - not just how to do something, but why should we do it (and sometimes why not).

I think we should begin not by considering ourselves as "one eyed men", but that those who we see as blind are actually just newly born; and that they can learn to see as well as us.

If you build it, they will come

2009-03-11T06:10:00.000-07:00

"If you build it, they will come". The tag line from the Kevin Costner film "Field of Dreams".

I regularly get information about using the newer web technologies within the business. "You must have a portal, it's essential for staff to have blogs, make use of Twitter" etc. These proponents seem to believe in the statement above -"If you build it, they will come".

The reality for me is far from this. I set-up a SharePoint portal over a year ago, did numerous demos, sat with people to train them. Of over 150 staff, less than 25 are making use of it on even an occasional basis. We have 15 portal sites, of which 2 are in semi-regular use.

We've proven that it works with several major projects. It shows that with the data in one place, it makes it easier to collaborate, there are fewer problems, and the time saved is quite noticeable. But still people won't use it - Why?

I wish that I had an answer. I will say that training is a definite problem; even though I have spent some time with various individuals, they still don't understand what the benefits are and I think that there is more chance of me winning the lottery than getting them to use the portal. I have difficulty even getting them to go the portals - you would think that I'm asking them to perform brain surgery.

I constantly get loads of offers from companies that want to help me re-design portal pages, develop wikis, set-up IM servers, introduce all manner of other projects. They all say the same; this will help you win business, retain customers / staff, help you develop products faster, get them to market quicker, yada, yada, yada. But if we cannot get people to use these products, they are just another waste of money. It doesn't matter how wonderful they are, they are only of value, when they actually do something for us to achieve our core goals.

Which one is the "Any" key?

2009-03-06T06:41:00.000-08:00

This is just really to get started - I've been asked to set-up a blog to take part in a study organised by a big company. The study is to help them understand some of the issues involved in support and how it could be improved. Call me Mr Cynical, but I think that the best thing to help us would be a brain implant for all users!

This is a rough list of some of the issues that we have had to deal with this week. One of the directors had a problem with his home PC at the weekend - daughter downloaded a music file and it had a virus. Then another director put some home pictures on his laptop and he has a trojan horse. So we have had to deal with that for a couple of days

We've had about 7 requests for help with printing - 4 needed a new toner cartridge, 2 the print spooler had stopped, 1 had a piece of paper jammed in the device.

A lady in payroll took the week off; someone else had to go in to the work, and she needed help setting up the PC so that she could work with the HR / Payroll software. She also needed her phone moved.

There was a request to move / repair a network cable - it was a temporary thing that has turned into a more permanent solution. One of the staff also had to go to another site as we are cabling up a new building and he needed to do a second lot of work on patching cables up.

I had to deal with a site in France - the VPN link went down again (their connection is dodgy). We have also been trying to get the DNS server transferring zone data, and I finally got that resolved.

They had a query with setting up a new email account that will be shared; this was made more difficult as they have both Office 2003 and 2007 and the proces is slightly different on each. I had to set-up a copy of Office 2007 so that I could create screenshots to help demo the process.

They also asked about potentially running an EDI process, however it turned out that was actually not what is happening, plus we are implementing a new ERP solution, which makes it academic anyway.

I've been carrying a massive series of updates on the new ERP - spent almost 3 full days on that alone. One of my staff runs an automated process for patching, but it can't do the ERP.

I'm also trying to get a server set-up to act as the DC for a child domain of the groups main domain - this is the brainchild of my opposite number in Germany. Unfortunately, it's made a bit difficult as the guy that looks after their network doesn't reply very quickly to emails. I'm still waiting for a response to a mail I sent on Tuesday.

We are putting in a new autoloader tape drive for backups; it's now in, and we seem to be getting the tapes working. We'll see how it works later. It's linked to an MS DPM server which we all think is the dog's nuts - it backs up all our servers on all sites and the recovery is a piece of cake. We are so impressed with this product.

In addition, one of the guys is developing a web based portal for use by our staff and customers - he has been trying to develop something to reduce the amount of Excel spreadsheets that are being used on another site.

Mid week I went to a vendor presentation - early start (5:00 am) and later finish (10:00 pm). We are way down south and it takes ages to get anywhere.

Hopefully that's enough to get started - more later.