Long time, no blogggg....

Been a while, thought I'd take a stab at brushing off the cobwebs and getting back to logging my technical journey.

Let's start with a good ol' rant.

Blackberry Torch. I was unlucky enough to be forced to use this hunk of junk all weekend long due to an unplanned on call rotation. There's no way on earth I'm giving up my phone number to external clients, so I snuck a Torch out of the inventory and set up my email account for work on it.

What a pain.

Let's start with the obvious thing first and get it out of the way - the Torch wants very badly to be your iPhone. It's not. All interactions with the screen can be dismissed as a worthless effort on the part of the user. Just don't even bother. Extend the tiny, cramped keyboard and use that little flat nubbin on the front for all of your navigation because on-screen control are very inaccurate and respond in ways that had me saying "WTF are you doing THAT for?" on more than one occasion. Once I managed to get my email set up (relatively painless), I quickly remembered one of the chief reasons I hated Blackberry - internal storage of mail. I am weird, I guess. I want my mobile solution to mirror my inbox exactly. If I mark a message, I want it marked on the server. I don't want to have to decide for each message how to handle it. Before you think me uneducated, I know you can modify the Blackberry to behave this way. I got it and I'm still not a fan. Everything on the phone feels jerky and the interface is cluttered in weird ways. Forget browsing on this thing. Even on wifi, it's slooooow and the screen resolution makes for some odd formatting problems from time to time. Pics and video are marginally ok, but pixelation is pretty awful on it. Another nit-pick: message alerts. This version of the Blackberry gets it ALL wrong. I used to love the older versions of the Curve for one reason - there is a claxon-like alert for email that is REQUIRED for me when I am on call. To be fair, not even my iPhone has gotten this right (yes, dear reader, I'm back on the iPhone, hallelujah), and the Android wasn't much better. Now Blackberry phones are being plagued with the same oversight.

Hey, some of us need to have those super-loud ring tones to bounce us from alcohol-induced naps...

Wifi Tethering with the 2.2 Nexus One

I've just done my first test using the Nexus One as a wifi hotspot and it seems to work quite well. I'm doing this post from the connection with the N1 in the desktop dock so the phone battery doesn't take a beating.

Setting up the wifi hotspot was easy and seeing as how I have great signal where I am (currently showing as connected to 3G), I am very happy with this as a fallback plan when I need quick connectivity. Now the real world test comes - I want to take my Macbook down to the picnic area where I work and see how this functions with no wires and with potentially fluctuating connectivity.

Very excited right now!

FroYo to the rescue!

OK, so since my last blog post where I was spitting venom about the Nexus One, I've jail broken my 1st Gen iPhone to work on T-Mobile. This was a dismal failure - I'd become accustomed to the GPS, speech-to-text, and a few other features on the Nexus. I was not keen to stay on the Edge speeds I was experiencing on the venerable 1G iPhone. Back to Nexus I went, fuming all the way, but resigned to my fate. Around the same time, things were starting to get interesting regarding the iPhone 4.0 release and the Gizmodo acquisition of a 4G prototype. Hope was starting to fill my heart - soon I would be reunited with some Apple goodness and all would be right in the universe.

Then something interesting happened. Amidst all the sturm und drang about Flash not ever being on the iPhone/iPad, Google announced that the 2.2 version of Android would support Flash and that the speed improvements of the OS in general were going to really amp up the Android platform, and....what? OH! The Nexus One is going to rock bawls from a performance perspective. Reaaaally? Well, well, well...

This past weekend, a buddy of mine hit me with a link that rocked me back on my heels - Nexus One owners got a little gift from Google in the form of an early copy of 2.2 (ridiculously code-named "FroYo"). Nice one, Google! So I poked around with not a lot of success yesterday, then today found this link describing the very easy to follow directions for early update to 2.2.

The update went flawlessly from the SD card and the phone booted perceptibly quicker once the update was complete. When the SD card initialization completed, the first thing I noticed was that the ActiveSync calendar was added automatically - no input from me required. If you've been following any of what's been happening in the world of Android, you know where I headed next - the Flash website. I was taken immediately to the Market where I installed the Flash 10 Beta. I was hooked to wifi at the time and enjoyed the Flash animation on the site, which played quite smoothly. A later demonstration to a colleague while I was out of wifi range didn't fare so well - the animation loaded and then locked up. I waited it out and found the playback to be a bit choppy, but passable I suppose.

The 2.2 Home screen gets a neat little space-saving link to the phone and the browser on either side of the link to the main application sub-menu. This saves some space that would otherwise be taken up by those shortcuts on the Home screen (it was on mine, anyway). I've also ditched the lame pattern lock for a more secure PIN lock, although I would like to note here that there is no wipe option if you enter it incorrectly too many times - this is a pretty unforgivable omission in my opinion considering that every smart phone out there has this indispensable feature. I would imagine that the security wonks will point to this as a major flaw.

I took the time to set up something else that I'd previously ignored - folders. Not sure why I didn't use this feature before...probably just contempt. Talk about cutting of your nose to spite your face - this is a neat little trick and helps to tidy up a cluttered Home screen.

More to follow as I discover what 2.2 has to offer. My thoughts so far? Mmm...there's hope, I suppose. Time will tell.

Resizing a Windows VMDK on ESXi

I was faced with a puzzle last week and it took me a bit to figure out. I had created a Windows 2008 VM for some dev work - it was originally supposed to be a very light requirement, so I did not give the VM much in the way of disk space on either the boot volume or the data VMDK. Not unsurprisingly, the original needs of the server changed, requiring me to install both SQL 2008 and Visual Studio 2008. The disks were not sized appropriately to allow this, so I had to figure out a way to grow the VMDK files and have Windows recognize the change. From what I had read, this is not as simple as going into the configuration on the VM and changing the sizes on the virtual drives because Windows would not automatically take advantage of the newly available space. I found a number of tutorials out there that suggested the use of GParted to resize the partition after reconfiguring the virtual disk, but it turns out that there is a much more elegant solution.

VMWare offers a tool free of charge called vCenter Converter. This very powerful tool can do a number of tasks - I won't insult your intelligence, you can read on the site - but what it did for me was allow me to very quickly resize the drives on the VM in question. The trick, as it turns out, is to install the converter software directly on the VM. I was trying to figure out how to convert the VM by installing the converter software on a physical server in my data center. This would only allow some very basic configuration options and resizing wasn't among them. I read a forum post that pointed me in the right direction. Once I installed the converter as a standalone, it was a simple matter of telling the converter which host I wanted the converted VM to be posted to, what datastore, necessary credentials to do so, then finally the changes I wanted. The interface presents you with a final summary of what changes are being made before blastoff. The conversion took a little less than an hour to convert a 15GB C: volume and a 25GB D: volume to 30GB and 50GB respectively. Interestingly enough, the website that was running on the server continued to chug along during the process (albeit with a little more lag than usual).

Once completed, I had two VM's - one with the small disks (running) and a new one with resized VMDK's (offline). I took the original VM offline and started the new one - all told, maybe about 15 to 25 seconds of total down time. The new VM booted right up and Windows 2008 recognized the entirety of the disk space on the converted VMDK's.

It's official - start the countdown clock...

I'm done. I admit defeat. The Nexus One is gonna get replaced the moment Apple releases the next iteration of the iPhone. Sorry, Google, nothing personal, but this phone sucks. I have been trying to put a good face on for it, but I can't deny it any longer. So, now I start the long wait and will sob occasionally when dealing with the complete mess that is the N1. I'm so disappointed.

Among my many complaints (just a recap of what I've already written, really):

1) Keyboard input is completely awful

2) Interface is not very intuitive compared with iPhone

3) Mail interface is severely lacking

4) No native calendar or contact synchronization using Active Sync

5) Battery life is really terrible

6) Service is spotty - forget walking into a store and carrying on a conversation

7) 3G service is practically non-existent. I'm on Edge more than 3G and flipping back and forth kicks the battery's ass

8) Pictures and movies look like crap and the flash is useless

9) Ringtone options suck and you don't get any options to repeat alerts in case you missed and email or text message. The message notification light is insanely bright at night.

10) The "soft button" bar is a total FAIL.

11) Screen doesn't always auto-lock, resulting in random butt-dialing and garbled texts.

12) General feeling of quality overall is low despite some very nice hardware.

So, in short, I'm disappointed and will jettison this POS the moment a new iPhone emerges. Come on, Apple...don't screw this up!

The grey fog of buyer's remorse...

I hate to report this, but the Nexus One is starting to annoy me.

It's really disappointing to be saying this - I had very high hopes early on, but now I'm starting to feel that familiar pinch that occurs when you buy something and then start to regret it. I'm not having full-on buyer's remorse just yet, but it's coming...I feel it.

The reasons for my angst:

-Navigation: There is no provision to mass-delete messages from the message lists. This can be quite irritating when there is a large volume of emails or texts that you want to remove in bulk. You must either access each message individually or press-and-hold on each one to get a delete dialogue. When you are in the message and you press the "menu" soft key, the on-screen arrangement sometimes invokes the keyboard instead of deleting the message.

-Display anomalies: I have experienced some really odd glitches in the N1 browser. I was reading a news item on the NY Times site and was trying to scroll down on the page. Nada. Couldn't pinch to zoom, couldn't double-tap. If I left the browser and went back to it, the problem was still there. I tried accessing another page and the touch interface started working again, but the problem just got stranger - whenever I would scroll down, the display would flash and twitch spasmodically. I had to reboot to clear this.

-Interface glitches: When holding the phone in what I would consider to be very normal ways, whether in portrait or landscape mode, I find myself accidentally nudging the soft keys at the bottom of the screen and invoking the action of that key. This can be extremely irritating when you are working on something and then find yourself booted out into the home screen when your finger was nowhere near the soft key bar.

-Text input: My hatred of the text input on the N1 is growing exponentially. How could HTC/Google have screwed this up so royally and Apple get it so right? I can't believe I'm saying this, but I actually PREFER the iPhone's text input now. Let me be specific about what I do not like; I was trying to type a simple, quick email yesterday and as I typed, the keyboard input mapping started to get worse and worse - it was almost as though the mapping was "slipping" upward. Flipping from landscape to portrait had no effect. The problem resulted in some ridiculously inaccurate input errors - so much so that I actually had to reboot the phone (AGAIN) to clear the problem.

-Message notification: I did not realize how much I had come to rely on the iPhone's message notification icon labels. If you have never seen this, let me explain; when you receive a message in email or SMS on the iPhone, that icon has a screaming red label slapped on it telling you how many messages you have, and that label stays on the icon until the message is accessed. By comparison, the N1 has the message notification bar at the top of the main screen that pulls down like a window shade to list your incoming messages. If you have six text messages and you select that in the window shade list, it accesses the "messages" app, and the notification is REMOVED, regardless of whether you read the messages or not. This is really aggravating behavior for someone who needs to stay on top of unread messages.

-Ringer: The ringer on this phone is woefully inadequate. I cannot find a good ringtone for new message notifications, but specifically for text messages. The other problem here is that the alerts do not repeat. The iPhone, although similarly deficient in this area, would at least repeat the new message alert sound. This increased the chance that the sound would wake me up when the server monitor service sends alert text messages to me at 2am.

-Battery life: I intentionally did not plug the phone in yesterday. I had several calls, some browsing, a few text messages, and some emails. Late in the day, I got a call from a friend that lasted just under an hour. When I ended that call, the battery was nearly drained. I hope that this is just inaccurate reporting and that the battery life is not that crappy. I have a little app that I grabbed from the Market called "Advanced Task Killer" that will hopefully help with keeping background services shut off (thereby increasing battery life).

-Miscellaneous: The N1 is just...well...boring. I had several indispensable games and apps on my iPhone that I did not realize were filling the little gaps in my life. I find myself reacting to a muscle memory of reaching for my phone when I am (for lack of a better term) "indisposed" and I feel a little pang when I unlock the N1 and see nothing interesting other than the news app. Sure, there are games in the store, but none of them are calling to me enough to make me spend money on them just yet. Native games? Yeah. None.

So my first week with the N1 is not ending on an up note and I'm starting to feel that my decision to move to this platform was a bit rash.

One unexpected ray of sunshine - T-Mobile service is surprisingly good. More bars in more places. Heh.

Jumping into the abyss with the Nexus One

I've taken a leap of faith (based on careful research, of course) in my decision to leave the warm, comfortable, known-quantity of my venerable first generation iPhone. It was a tough choice and one that I agonized over for months. The iPhone has been good to me and I almost feel sad leaving it behind, but I have been experiencing some glitches with it lately that have made me pine for something a bit better.

The Android interface has intrigued me from the outset. I've had occasion to see it on several devices and the only thing that made me hold off trying it before now was that it lacked the spit-and-polish feel of the iPhone. It was like visiting a foreign city - everything you are used to is still there, just in all the wrong places and sometimes you just don't get what you need. Some time has passed since my first look at Android and I'm happy to report that some things improved, but sad to say that not everything is Zen.

I had intended to do a carefully documented un-boxing, side-by-side comparo with the 1st gen iPhone, and step-by-step setup video when I got my Nexus One yesterday, but the excited little boy took over and I ripped off the packaging like it was Christmas morning. After popping in the battery and starting the charging process, I initiated the port of my AT&T number. All told, it took about 6.5 hours to complete the setup and migration over to T-Mobile. As of right now, I am fairly certain that the process is complete, but I still need to figure out how AT&T is going to punish me for my transgressions against them.

So what works?

Well, let's start off with the physical form and feel of the Nexus One. It's a handsome device, which was another leap of faith on my part since there's no way to actually SEE the thing before you buy it. Thankfully, it's quite nice. The outer shell is a rubberized plastic material and the front of it is an oleophobic glass face much like the 3GS. The top of the phone has an unlock button and a 3.5mm headphone jack, but their positions are opposite the iPhone. Volume controls are placed on the left side in pretty much the exact spot as the iPhone, although the up and down rocker is slightly more recessed. The glass front contains a speaker at the top of the screen, and four "soft" buttons for back, menu, home, and search at the bottom. Just below the screen is the scroll ball. It serves the dual purpose of navigation and message notification light similar to late model Blackberry phones. The bottom of the phone has the microphone and a micro USB jack. The outward face of the phone has the camera, the LED flash (more on that here shortly) and a noise-canceling microphone. The overall color scheme is a two-tone graphite style. The look of it is dark and fairly business-like.

The screen itself deserves it's own section - it is stunningly pretty. I was prepared to be only slightly impressed with it, but I have to say that after using it that the 3.7" 480X800 AMOLED screen lives up to the hype. Just thumbing through the phone's OS is nice, but cranking up a video on YouTube and watching at a high resolution is by far better than the iPhone in my opinion.

The interface itself is quite easy to use - after using it for less than 24 hours, I feel at this point as though I have managed to get everything set up like I want it. I like the widgets feature and while incredibly cool, the live wallpapers are going to be good for only one thing: distracting my daughters when I need a couple of minutes of quiet. Otherwise, the animations just chew up processor speed (although not in tangible way). The mail functions are nice and the controls are logical. One thing that I didn't immediately notice was the window shade that pulls down from the top of the screen that contains notifications for mail and text messages - I really like this feature because it offer an at-a-glance view of all inbound communication.

The camera feature is easy to use, but I need to interject one negative here - the flash is way too bright and tends to wash out the picture. The video camera works very well and the integration options to publish the videos and pictures quickly are appreciated features. Less thrilling are the gallery features, but I'll cover this below.

So what do I not like?

Let's get this out of the way now - at the stage I am now with the Nexus One, I feel that text input is pretty awful. I was not happy with the iPhone in this regard and I'm even less happy with the Nexus One. It's very twitchy, resulting in some less-than-desirable events. For example, I was trying to compose a simple email and it took an unnecessarily long time to type in an email address that was not in my contact list. Typing the body was equally annoying and the auto-correct feature reminds me of trying to type on my least favorite device ever made - the Blackberry Pearl. The soft keyboard is completely unusable for me in portrait mode and only marginally better in landscape. Having said all this, I'm not entirely unhappy because there is one saving grace: speech-to-text input. This function is outstanding. With no training whatsoever, I was able to compose a very complex message with only minor corrections for punctuation. I intentionally used words that I thought would throw it off ("palindrome", "endometriosis", "pellicle", and "endoplasmic reticulum") but it worked extremely well. Now I just have to get over the distaste I have for dictating emails in public.

Aside from the text input problem, I should mention that there is no provision for calendar synchronization using ActiveSync. I can get my email this way, but not my corporate calendar. The phone does sync with my Google calendar, so I may need to adjust a bit to compensate. Regardless, this is a big shortcoming and one that I think may scare some folks off. I knew this going in because I researched it, but was willing to accept it because I know there is high demand for it to be fixed and there really are few times when I really need to use my calendar anyway. Hopefully Google will get going on adding the feature.

More "meh": The picture gallery is just weird. I don't like it. It's interesting, but unnecessarily complex. I liked the gallery function on the iPhone for the simplicity. Also, I don't like the fact that there is no option in the camera feature to jump straight into the gallery of photos. These are minor complaints, but definitely worth noting if these things are important to you. Also, I have decided not to move my music to the Nexus One because it would mean a long conversion process that I have no interest in undertaking. I have an iPod for music. I will miss my tech podcasts, but I suppose I could put those on the iPod as well.

So which device do I prefer? Well, I can't really say just yet. I need more time to adjust and become acclimated, but I can definitively say that I am very impressed with Nexus One and I would recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who has never owned an iPhone.

More to follow as the days progress. I can tell you at this moment that I am fairly certain that I will have another blog post regarding T-Mobile. I'm cautiously optimistic about using them as a provider and I hope that I won't be disappointed. Time will tell.

iPad? iGag.

iPad. Eww. Really?

I should say that I did not expect the announcement today to match the hype and I wasn't wrong.

Let's hit the easy thing first - the name. My opinion is that this device should be collectively renamed by the user community to iTouch XL or iTouch Pro. I'll not indulge in the obligatory menstrual references and jokes that everyone is bandying about - I just think the name is horrible. I was personally pulling for iSlate or something a little more thoughtful or interesting. I'll use this forum as my first entry stating that the "i" everything is getting long in the tooth. Apple products may be good quality, but the marketing folks are asleep at the wheel.

Ok, next up - iPod Touch XL as an ebook reader. I'm going to guess, based on my experiences with reading books on my iPhone that this feature is not going to play well unless there is some as-yet unknown feature that allows you to seriously dim the backlighting. Reading a book on iPhone is not a good experience at all in my opinion. I get a headache quickly and forget reading in low light - it's just too much. Adding more screen real estate is just going to exacerbate this condition. I'm going to give the advantage to the Kindle here.

A related item here is the connectivity - considering that the Kindle comes with ubiquitous, international, and FREE connectivity for product delivery makes the argument for the (groan...OK...) iPad a low value proposition. That's before considering WHO the 3G connectivity is coming from. Hearing that AT&T is still in the mix was so disheartening. I am really saddened by this turn of events. Again, Kindle gets the nod.

I suppose the people who will opt for the iPad over the Kindle will be interested mainly in the gaming potential, although I have to state here that I just don't see it. From a business-use perspective, there would be very few times in my mind where carrying the iPad would be preferable to bringing my MacBook Pro or MacBook along with me. I know that you're thinking the concept is for this product to slide in between and offer a completely new choice, but don't see a large value here, either. The reason being is my next beef with the iPad.

Storage space. Wow. Really? You increase the form factor of a device so radically and yet can't find room enough to bump the storage much beyond what's currently offered on the iPhone 3GS? That's kind of pathetic. I just don't see why the floor couldn't have been 64GB and scale up from there. The alternative would be....GASP....an SD slot? Dude!!! Why is Apple so scared to add this? If I lean left right now, I see an SD slot on my MBP! From a technical perspective, I suppose that adding an SD card would potentially open the device up in some way that would make compromising it easier. That has to be the reason because it just doesn't make sense otherwise.

Then there's the pricing - Apple may have been aggressive here, but I still think they biffed it. For those who don't know yet, it breaks down like this:

16GB, wifi only - $499
32GB, wifi only - $599
64GB, wifi only - $699
16GB, wifi + 3G = $629
32GB, wifi + 3G =$729
64GB, wifi + 3G =$829

None of the 3G device pricing includes any of the aforementioned required AT&T connectivity. The one ray of light is the fact that they plan to offer unlimited 3G at $30/month with no contract. I can see how that's nice, but I just wonder (and highly doubt) if it's worth the $130 premium to go with this option. Consider that AT&T can barely keep up with 3G as it is...it's shameful that Apple didn't try to open this up to other carriers.

Other concerns are:

-No HDMI output?

-No USB port?

-No wireless synchronization options? This doesn't bode well for the iPhone getting that feature.

-No multi-tasking? (Think: several iPhone-sized applications running in CoverFlow mode!)

-No camera?? Why is there no camera? I don't get it! Aside from being an awesome way to usher in augmented reality....uhh...hello? Skype Video chat?

-Final concern is that Apple is now providing processors. This scares me. How long before they part ways with Intel, closing the door forever on Parallels and Boot Camp? Not happy about this at all.

I have tried to visualize myself owning an iPad and I keep coming to the same conclusion - it would be a neat toy initially, but the limitations of it would keep it on the outer periphery of usefulness and it would fade into the background as a mere curiosity.

Sorry, Apple. I'm curious about seeing your iTouch XL up close, but I think I'll be saving my money for the next version of the iPhone.

Consolidating a test lab using virtualization

I have not blogged this yet, but I have been working on a project during this year that's finally a reality...the consolidation of our test lab.

Whenever we make software changes or need to test a particular client load-out, we use our test lab. Without going into a long, boring diatribe on why this test lab is no longer feasible, I'll simply say that it is long overdue for a refresh. Switching between the 50-odd permutations of Windows flavors that must be tested during a sweep can take days, sometimes weeks of painful manipulation using Ghost images.

When I was first introduced to the process as it currently exists, I was a bit skeptical that it would work at all. The systems being used are ancient. Huge. Unwieldy. Slow. Ripe for my favorite way to fix problems: virtualization.

So I came up with this concept:

• Get a Mac
• Put Parallels on it
• Virtualize each OS that we use in testing
  
• Use snapshots to move between the different software loads required during a test sweep

When I presented this idea, I got the typical reaction, which I will not even discuss here because I'm starting to get that twitch in my forehead signaling the onset of an idiot-induced migraine. Once I started to explain the benefits (AKA: threw a tantrum), it was clear that this was the way to do things. At the time, I put together a quote of around $2400 to obtain all of the required items (I had intended to use a late-model iMac, and a Drobo). This was met with some resistance due to the cost, but I persisted.

Then, Apple and Parallels did something awesome, almost simultaneously:

1) Apple released the Mac mini server.

2) Parallels released version 5 of their amazing virtualization software.

Presto, chango! Suddenly the cost for my plan was reduced to ~ $1200! Time to strike!

Let's start with the Mac mini server. For those of you who are not aware of the Mac mini, let me tell you, this is an indispensable piece of hardware - small footprint, flexible, an impressive array of connectivity, and...well, duh. It's a Mac. The truly enlightened IT shop will have two or more of these guys laying about for testing purposes and the really intelligent ones will press them into service. I led the charge for my previous company to use them as member servers in a render farm, so I am no stranger to mini-mania. When Apple announced that it was going to offer the mini in a server configuration, I knew I needed one of them for this project. It's perfect for one main reason - redundancy. The mini comes standard with two 500GB drives that can be combined into a RAID1 mirror. Poof. Redundancy. Gotta love that. Pair that with 2.53GHz dual-core processing and 4GB of RAM and you have a pretty nice little package, but did Apple stop there? Oh, no. The most current iteration of OS X server retails for $999. Guess what the mini server loaded with OS X server costs? Yep, you got it. $999. Can this possibly get better?

Yes, it can.

Parallels recently introduced the fifth iteration of their incredible virtualization suite. This new version brought with it the one thing that really pushed it over the top for me: performance. I have always had a sense of wonder and love for running an operating system within another operating system - there's something kinda kinky and cool about that. But Parallels upped the wow factor by streamlining everything and making the virtual machines perform at a level that makes them feel more like working on a physical machine than ever before. I could research and post whatever magic sauce they used to accomplish that goal but why peek behind the curtain? It's awesome and I love it. Enough said.

So after not much convincing, I got approved for the purchase of a mini server, a 24" flat panel monitor, an external DVD drive, and a 1TB external firewire disk. Yum! After what seemed like an eternal wait, my new toys my highly efficient new test lab arrived.



I'm currently in the process of setting up all of the virtual machines to test all of the versions of Windows that we want to use in our sweeps. Once the base shells are created, we'll use the "snapshot" feature of Parallels to move between the different permutations required. After only about one solid day of work, I'm nearly done with setting the shells up. I may blog more about how I'm structuring this within Parallels during a different post.

If you've made it this far, you're probably wondering why any of this matters. Completely ignoring the significant performance enhancement, and the space consolidation (I'm freeing up an entire office), here's the main reason for all this:

• On the old test lab configuration, moving between different load-outs required that the tester reload each OS from a Ghost image. This can take between 15-20 minutes. Considering that there are over 50 different loads to test, you can see that this is highly inefficient.

• On the new configuration, moving between different load-outs is done by invoking a previously created snapshot - not much different than the process used in the old system, but the difference is that loading a new snapshot takes about 30-45 SECONDS.

I'd call that progress.

ninite.com is a MUST HAVE

If you ever deal with Windows (and who doesn't, really?), then here is a must-have tool for you:

http://ninite.com/

This handy little site has a pick list of all of the most commonly used free utilities on the internet for Windows. Each utility has a check box next to it - pick the ones you want, then select the "Get Installer" button. All of the apps you selected will be downloaded into a package that installs each one in one shot. I tested this under my Windows 7 install and it works flawlessly - it even has the nice feature of NOT loading all the things you don't want, like Google and Yahoo toolbars.

Mac users? NO SOUP FOR YOU!

Boot Camp & Windows 7 on my 13" MacBook Pro

I finally convinced the company I work for to let me buy my own laptop instead of bringing my MacBook in to use at work. It only took me a frickin' year. Some of that is pure hatred for all things Mac at the highest levels of the pecking order, an attitude that I just can't understand. Everyone ooohs and ahhs at my laptop when I bring it to meetings, loves my Keynote presentations, and has googly eyes when I point out the finer points of Mac goodness, but put a quote for Apple hardware in front of them and it's like salt on a slug. I finally cornered the owner and just laid all my cards on the table and......he approved! Whee!!! A short day later, I had a sexy white box of aluminum yummy-ness sitting before me with its Snow Leopard-y awesome glory. Since that day, I have been putting this thing through its paces (both at work and at home) and it hasn't missed a single beat. To say I'm in love is a bit of an understatement.

So, for all of my non-existent followers, I offer this: I have a love/hate relationship with Windows, and if you read my Windows 7 write up, you know that I have a grudging respect for the OS. I am a man with access to MSDN and I know how to use it, so it's logical to assume that the next thing I'd try is a lil' Boot Camp action.

...aaaaaannnnd...Wow. All I have to say is "Where has this been all my life???" Not sure why I was so reluctant to try Boot Camp before, but I did last week and it's amazing. The process is so seamlessly perfect that I seriously cannot believe I didn't do this earlier. Windows 7 goes on the Pro with zero problems, boots crazy-fast, looks amazing, and is at least on par with 10.6 with regard to performance.

Now, let's not get crazy here - I'm not saying that I'm going to switch hit 100% of the time. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool-Mac nut, but having the option to have this run a non-virtualized copy of Windows natively and without any problems is Awesome Sauce (tm). That's not a slap at Parallels, but let's face it: a VM is never going to match running an OS straight up. The performance gain is obviously quite impressive.

I'd normally post a mini-tutorial here on "how-to", but if you can walk in a reasonably straight line whilst sipping a Caramel Macchiato, I think you can follow the steps to install Boot Camp and Windows. It's criminally easy to do and anyone with an MBPro (or any recent Mac, actually) should consider it.

Let's REPLICATE! (or "What I have been working on since my last post")

I've been researching data replication products for two separate projects.

The first is one-to-many data replication for our web farm. I looked at several utilities that would accomplish the same goal, but what eventually led me to the RepliWeb offering was cost. The R-1 product line is what I evaluated to do replication of web content across four servers. The software is not the most intuitive I've ever worked with and required a fair bit of back and forth with the pre-sales support team (which, incidentally, is fantastic). Once we got it working, I was very impressed with how quickly data was pushed from the main "Center" server to the "Edge" servers. Another key factor in my decision to recommend R-1 to the business was the incredible flexibility and highly configurable nature - there are a mind-boggling number of options that should make short work of any data replication tasks (as long as you are not replicating data with file locks).

SUMMARY:

Company: RepliWeb
Product: R-1
Pros: Cost, replication job options, multi-stream, WAN options
Cons: Cannot circumvent file-locking, replication is not bit-level

The second project I'm working on is the aforementioned Kerio data replication issue. I was looking for something that would do server-to-server bit-level replication...and of course...had to be cost-effective. I found it in SteelEye's DataKeeper offering. This product gets around the file locking issues I had with R-1, but has other limitations that make it unacceptable for the web farm replication project. DataKeeper is very simple and elegant - deceptively so, in fact. When I first set it up, I was a bit surprised at the lack of configurable options in the GUI. This is because a lot of functionality in DataKeeper is in the command line. Once you build out a replication job, any serious tinkering that you will do is going to be in a console. Those unfamiliar with working in command line will probably be a bit off put by this, but I think it works rather nicely. The only other limitation to be aware of is that DataKeeper is not intended to replicate data on the C: volume - you must build jobs out on a second partition or drive. In my testing, I installed all required files and data on the D: volume and replicated it to the target server. Once the mirror was built out, I simulated a failure on the source, unlocked the target mirror, started mail services and everything worked brilliantly. I was not able to simulate production mail flow, but the product was designed to work in high-transaction database environments. Our rate of change on the email server should not present a problem.

SUMMARY:

Company: SteelEye
Product: DataKeeper
Pros: Cost, bit-level replication, multi-stream, WAN options
Cons: None that I was able to find - the issues I had were self-inflicted (I didn't RTFM)

Now the hard part - getting approval. Ugh.

Fifteen days of Kerio

We cut over to the Kerio server on 6/29/09, leaving our hosted Exchange service behind. The transition was ridiculously smooth - we had only a few minor issues with the data migration that were easily resolved. Most revolved around user accounts with enormous mail databases - one user had over 36,000 messages in his Inbox, 11,500 of which were unread (Srsly, WTF is up with that?). Another had over 2GB with 4000 contacts and a very healthy organization structure. This one took a long time using KOFF until I realized what I was doing wrong - the system being used to do the import was badly underpowered. I stopped the transfer and moved the PST file to a 64-bit system with 6GB of RAM, which proved more than ample to handle the remainder of the migration. In short, the slow speed had nothing to do with the server (thankfully).

Speaking of the transfer, I will quickly outline the process we used for posterity:

• Log in to the old service using Outlook profile
  
• Export to a PST (select top level folder and make sure "Include subfolders" is selected)
  
• Install the KOFF Outlook connector and set up the new profile
  
• Allow KOFF to sync the new account
  
• Import the PST file
  
• KOFF syncs to the server, systray icon goes from grey to blue when complete
  

Since a good number of the transfers I did included people who have historically worked from OWA, I did this process repeatedly on my workstation. All of the data transfers happened very quickly with little drama. I monitored the server from two different perspectives - the VMWare host performance as well as the guest OS performance. Neither one even showed signs of breathing hard even when multiple data transfer streams were under way and that was in conjunction with normal production mail flow.

The transfer to KMS has not been completely without drama. I have submitted some requests to Kerio for improving the WebMail component:

• Need to have a new message notification sound
  
• Address cache and GAL auto-fill
  
• Expand the contact sort functions
  
• Add ability to administratively deny specific users the option to change their password (currently must disable globally by renaming a .php file)
  
• Active spelling and grammar check would be a welcome option.
  
• Add support for Chrome browser. Currently, we have too many problems to support Chrome for WebMail despite intense interest in doing so.
  
• On all computers in our group, regardless of OS or browser version, it is necessary to hit F5 to see messages that have been previously marked as read or to see new messages that have come in between reload cycles (this is especially problematic on shared accounts). The "refresh" button does not always work properly - I've instructed my users to use F5 until this can be addressed.
  
• When a message is saved as a draft, it is closed. The users have requested that it stay open for further editing after being saved to the drafts folder.
  
• We have experienced some odd issues with the HTML formatting - the preview window and the actual message when it is opened do not always display the same way.
  

WARNING, RANT AHEAD: Some of these items were known issues going in to Kerio, but no one predicted that they would impact daily operations. I have to resist the urge to continuously remind people how much money we really saved and must stop asking "Are these insanely minor issues really worth the additional cost and headache of Exchange?" because - and this is a universal truth - no one cares. The users want what they want and they want it NOW. They don't care how much money you saved the company, don't care how much easier it is to administer, don't care how resilient or redundant the solution is. I hope Kerio is really listening when they say that their product development is "user-driven" because ignoring the improvement requests will be the first thing that drives us back into the doldrums of Exchange. END RANT

Now, luckily, I have some pretty understanding users. More often than not, I can find a workaround or train them on a different method of performing a task. The group is small and they tend to talk among themselves, so the good process gets spread without me having to continuously craft and distribute documentation for people to ignore.

I will keep posting more and more about the experiences we have with KMS. Right now, I am trying to find a product that we can use to do the replication I mentioned in previous posts - ViceVersa isn't cutting it in a production environment. We're going to have to use something like Double Take to do the true fail over redundancy.

Kerio Mail Server - update

Sadly, my dreams of a Linux-based email system have come crashing to the ground.

I had to admit defeat and abandon Linux in favor of Windows 2008 Server for Kerio. This decision was not made lightly - I had done a significant amount of work on Kerio running on CentOS and liked the OS quite a lot. The problems that led me to make the call to go back to Windows were related to issues I experienced in both VMWare as well as CentOS.

The first issue was VMWare - I opted early on to use the KMS virtual appliance. This was fine until I added a VMDK for storage. From all I can tell, there appears to be no way to bind up the second disk to the virtual appliance in such a way that the entire thing can be gracefully cloned to a secondary VM host. Huge bummer here.

The second issue was Linux and this problem in itself is really twofold:

1) I simply do not possess the ability to haphazardly toss corporate email onto a system that does not have some solid backing that would allow me to quickly and easily garner support from an authoritative source (please don't even mention the "helpful" forums - I've had just about enough of the snarky, flame-ridden nonsense of Linux message boards, kthxbai).

2) My co-admin is equally lacking in the required skill set to successfully administer CentOS and has been a complete baby standoffish about the whole endeavor (I could write volumes here, but I'll be nice).

So, with a heavy heart and a snootful of humble pie, I trudged the lonely mile back to Windows this week. Woe is me.

One shining ray of happiness is that the KMS backups can be restored between differing OSes with only a minimum of fuss. One command in DOS and a edit of two lines in a config file and I was able to start services and log in to Windows. The setup is now:

VM Host 1:
Primary KMS server on Win2K8

VM Host 2:
Clone of primary with KMS services offline
ViceVersa replication of KMS program files and data from primary

This setup allows for the system to be restored with a theoretical five minute lag on the backup - in optimal lab conditions. I will be very interested to see how this works in full-swing production.

So, a little less happy, a little less kludgy, and...admittedly...a little bit relieved.

Opera Unite

I have been playing with the newest beta version of Opera and I have to say, I am impressed.

http://unite.opera.com/

The free browser looks nice, but has the same rendering problems that all non-MS browsers do (a brief pause here to let me raise two middle fingers to all web devs that code for IE only). I did have a few other issues with sites that did not render properly that Firefox and Safari have no problems with - for this reason, FF will remain as my primary browser for now.

The most interesting part about Opera is also what makes it nerve-rackingly scary: it comes with a web server.

That's right. A full-fledged server right there on your desktop. Now granted - you have to create an account with Opera so that they can violate your privacy in all manner of terrifying ways. Once you give up all your precious personal information, you can use the features of Unite. Hopefully that is enough of a deterrent to thwart would-be ne'er-do-wells, but something tells me it won't.

File sharing is among the most useful, I think, but probably the most ripe for abuse. You can set a private address that will point to a location that you specify on your local machine. From that point, it is up to the user to either make that info public or private. Either way, it's a nice way to bypass the shortcomings of email when it comes to transferring large files. The good news is that this sharing only persists during the session duration - once you close Opera, the sharing closes down.

There is a full-blown web server in Unite, too - and it works very well. I had a website backup sitting around in my files - I pointed the settings to the backup index.html and then went to the URL in Unite and saw a six month old version of my site. Very nice! Once minor complaint is that there is some embedded Flash that didn't run, but everything else worked perfectly. The Flash problem might very well be brought on by some code changes I made recently - I'll try uploading a more recent copy of the site and see if it works.

The best parts about Unite are the fun stuff - there is a "fridge" feature that allows people who know where to find your system to leave 40 character messages on a virtual refrigerator. It's kitschy and cutesy, but I can see the appeal. You get a notification message in Opera when someone posts something (provided the person posting signs the message - I did not get notified about anonymous posts that I did during testing).

Another "fun" feature is an embedded chat room. I doubt very seriously that any of these chats are encrypted, so as much as I'd like to say that it's secure, I wouldn't bet the farm on it. Still, it's a neat feature to have and ridicuously easy to set up.

The other two features are neat but suffer from a performance perspective (at least on my system). Photo Sharing allows you to create an easy to access gallery and Media Player allows you to point the Unite service to a directory of music files which can then be played on systems to which you grant access (DRM-protected files will obviously not work). Personally, I was not wowed by either of these services, but I can see how some folks may find value here.

Opera itself has many cool features that I appreciate - one of them is the option to synchnronize bookmarked links across multiple systems. This is a HUGE boon to people like me who have several computers, each with it's own set of bookmarks. I can see this cutting down on the "where the f did I put that link?" crap that I deal with from time to time.

On to the bad parts:

• My initial stab at working with Unite was totally unsuccessful - I kept getting errors on my laptop about a proxy server, but I am not using proxy in my office. The Unite features would not work no matter what I did, but would work perfectly from my Mac at the house. Tried rebooting and everything - still no go. Then, poof, started Opera up the next day and it worked fine.
• When you are in the configuration settings for the different services, clicking on the services to access the parameters spawns a new page rather than keeping to the same window. I find this to be ugly and very confusing. I would prefer that settings pages stay locked to the same window to reduce clutter/confusion.
• Speed is an issue for me with this - you're asking a desktop system to perform server-grade tasks. I know, I know!...most modern systems have spare cycles up the wazoo, but I still saw some thrashing on my system during page loads that would probably frustrate the hell out of the average user.

I have really only done a cursory dive into Opera and the Unite services, but I find a lot here to love. I am looking forward to seeing where this goes once it evolves a bit.

Acrobat.com - short review

For those who don't know (I didn't!) that Adobe is putting together an online suite of tools, check out http://www.adobe.com/acom/. I evaluated the free version and found some pretty significant shortcomings.

As with Google Docs, you can import existing documents on your hard drive up to the Adobe site. Once there, you can convert them to PDF, perform markup, and then share with others. There's a limited meeting room function built into the site that uses a skinny version of Adobe Connect (a product which I absolutely adore).

The free version leaves a great deal to be desired, unfortunately. Office 2007 documents are a no-go - you must convert your .docx to .doc if you want it imported. When you are able to import the document after conversion, the limited font set mangles your original formatting. Spreadsheets are similarly limited - importing a sheet with any decent size to it causes it to spill into multiple pages and the resulting file is just a mess. From what I'm able to tell, there are no math functions to speak of, so the possibility of editing complex sheets appears to be out of the question.

Markup was a feature I thought would be cool - adding comments to a PDF document is very helpful in the full version of Acrobat when trying to collaboratively edit large files. Unfortunately, the online version just doesn't cut it - there's nothing that I can see that links a comment to a specific set of text - it's just a box floating out there on right.

Importing PDF files for sharing is fine, too, but no editing of any secure PDF's is allowed. For those interested in creating secure PDF's, the free site is stripped of that capacity from all I can tell.

What's good about this service? Well, the interface is absolutely slick - if they evolve the functionality of the free site, I think it could have real potential. It should be noted yet again that I only looked at the free service - opting for the subscription might elevate the experience somewhat, but for $14.95/month, this is a non-starter for me.

None.

Post withdrawn.

Follow up post from DL360 upgrade

I got done with the upgrade on Friday and found that one of the battery modules wasn't being recognized in what is my primary host. I had to go back into the data center and re-seat everything in that server. I went ahead and reconfigured the arrays while was there so that the 512MB caching ratios are set 50% read, 50% write on both hosts. I did not do the testing on Friday.

I tested everything this morning and while I cannot report speeds in the GB/s range as predicted by my overly zealous sales rep, I can report an over 10X speed increase copying files from host-to-host. While I'm not bowled over by this improvement, I will take it...

HP Proliant DL360 G5

So, I had an annoying thing happen today.

Actually, this is the culmination of several weeks of annoyance. First, some grounding info regarding my situation.

I purchased two HP Proliant DL360 G5 servers to act as the hosts for my VMWare ESXi implementation. Everything works fine until you want to copy data from one host to the other - the transfer rate is horrible. The best sustanined rate I could achieve was 3MB/s. From what I was told by the rep who sold me the server, I should have seen rates in the 3GB/s range. Whoa! Big delta there, dude! WTF?

So, I called up support like a good little IT monkey and found out that the P400i controller in the servers had only 256MB of cache and ALL of it dedicated to reads, none of it to write. Also, no provision was made for the controller to be reconfigured without an upgrade. I find this to be annoying in the extreme.

So, $456 for two 512MB battery-backed cache modules later, I found myself on a step ladder in my data center peering into the innards of one of the Proliants, scratching my head. Where does this battery module go? Hmmm. HP Support! Ah, no. No help. They sent me the same useless doc that I had there with me. Sales support!? Nope. Dang. Time to de-rack this puppy for a better look.

So, out the server came. I immediately noticed when I took it down that there was a little recesssed area just in front of the middle fan pack. After removing the pack, my counterpart in IT reached in and removed a tray and "WOW"! The battery module fit perfectly! (^5's to RR!)

Now, here's the stupid part - the module has LED's on it that tell you the state of the array cache. When you slip the little tray upon which the battery clips, guess what? Can't see the LED's! Nice one, HP!

So, all's well that ends well, I guess. The arrays are happy now, but I still have to reconfigure them to change the read/write ratios. I'll do that and repost my findings.

UPDATE:

Installing the modules DID result in an increase in write speed, but nowhere near the blistering fast pace I'd been lead to expect (damn you, HP rep!). At best, it was about a 9.5x improvement - still pretty pokey, but acceptable when moving large data sets.

WWDC 2009 reaction

My tag line for this blog states that I'm an Apple fan, so I suppose I should do my obligatory post about the announcements from WWDC 2009.

MACBOOK UPDATES:

Apple will absorb the aluminum MacBook into the MacBook Pro line and provide a general refresh to the entire MBPro line that is expected annually. Honestly, I can't imagine why ANYONE buys a laptop near WWDC time - I would be so pissed if I had just bought an aluminum MacBook. The new 13" MacBook Pro comes standard with the backlit keyboard, a feature that I desperately miss from my old 17" PowerBook.

Another enhancement that I'm interested in seeing is the new battery life, which has apparently been changed to provide 7 hours of charge time.

Other notable additions:

60% better color gamut on the new MBPro displays
Built-in SD card slot
8GB RAM capacity
Pricing schedule has been lowered across the entire MBPro line

OS X 10.6 - SNOW LEOPARD:

Snow Leopard enhancements were covered and the release date set to September of this year. Don't think that this is not a calculated move on Apple's part - they are scrambling to get SL out ahead of Windows 7. Pricing is an unexpected $29 ($49 for family pack). Based on the reaction in the Ars IRC room I was in, I don't think I was alone in being nearly floored by this uncharacteristically altruistic move on Apple's part.

Snow Leopard will bring enhancements that will take greater advantage of the 64-bit architecture for more efficient computing, significantly enhanced versions of Expose, Safari, and QuickTime, as well as built-in support for Exchange through Mail.app.

Since I'm nearing the day when I'm going to flush Exchange, I could care less about the integration. It should be noted here that Exchange 2007 is required for this integration to work. Yuck.

iPHONE 3.0 and 3GS:

The iPhone portion of the keynote (if you can call it that) was painful - I should be used to the annual circle-jerk that is the WWDC, but this year was particularly unpleasant as we were subjected to nearly an extra hour of developer love-fest nonsense and botched demos when the only information that everyone was really interested in knowing was "When the hell can I have 3.0?" It was clear to me that there was a tremendously burlesque strip tease act going on during this stage and it was just tiring. I've been missing Stevie J., but never more than yesterday. That announcement was just screaming for his panache and timing.

There was a great moment was when Scott Forstall dropped the bomb that although tethering is a feature in 3.0, AT&T does not allow it. This was greeted with groans from those in attendance. The message from Apple to AT&T is clear: either shit or get off the pot. Although I'm as likely to tether my first gen iPhone as I am to willingly submit to an electric anal probe, I still resent the hell out AT&T for taking the choice out of my hands. Another not-so-gentle slap was also delivered by Forstall when he announced that MMS wouldn't be available until later in the year. Uhm...isn't this technology that I had circa 2002? WTH is AT&T doing? I'll tell you what - they are screwing us ROYALLY, and I wonder how long they will get away with it. Even mild-mannered Schiller took a cheeky pot-shot when announcing the ability to send MMS video "if your carrier supports it".

In addition to the already announced and much-desired C'n'P feature, iPhone 3.0 will also include a location and security feature that requires MobileMe called Find My iPhone. This provides a slick way to locate a lost phone with audible location sound that plays regardless of volume or mute settings. Invoking the service on MobileMe will give you a map location of the phone. If you cannot find your phone, you can remote wipe it to protect your data. Other enhancements were announced earlier this year. See here for a list: 3.0 enhancements

When the June 17th release of 3.0 was finally announced, I truly thought it was going to end, but then Phil announced the release of a new model of iPhone called the "3GS" (ostensibly the "s" stands for "speed"). The phone has quite a few nice enhancements, but the biggest was the announcement of a 32GB model. This is what I've been waiting for, but I will wait until others have a poke at it before I invest.

Other notable enhancements unique to the 3GS:
-Updated Safari (supposedly faster)
-Camera enhancements
-Video recording
-Voice control (including voice dialing)
-Digital compass (including map orientation in the Map key app)
-Accessibility settings
-Nike+ (for those of you crazy enough to use your iPhone when running)
-Data encryption (should help iPhone in the Enterprise)
-Battery life enhancements (9 hrs internet surfing, 10 hrs video, 30 hrs audio, 12 hrs 2G talk, 5 hrs 3G talk)

3GS will be available on June 19th for $199 (16GB), $299 (32GB) for new and "qualifying" customers. You don't even want to know the pricing if you have to buy it outright without the AT&T subsidy.

The standard, non-"S" 3G 8GB iPhone will stay in the inventory for $99, again for new and "qualifying" customers.

Website testing tool

For anyone involved in the creation of websites, a handy tool to have is one that will show your site on multiple browsers, operating systems, and different resolutions.

You'll find just such a tool at http://www.crossbrowsertesting.com/

This site offers a free five minutes on a diverse range of operating systems. Opting for the pre-paid "credits" service gives you the privilege of moving to the head of the line in front of the users who are working with the free service.

I have used this service personally for a website that I maintain and while there are occasional issues with lag, it's a very useful tool when needing to ensure that your site is going to display the way you want it to across OS and browser boundaries.

To use the site, register (free) and log in. You will launch a console that lists all of the OS flavors available, each with a particular load out of browser versions. Each listing comes at a default resolution of 1024x768, but you can easily opt to a resolution as low as 640x480 and as high as 1600x1200 (if the OS is configured to support it). Once you've dialed in the system you wish to use, request it and a java applet will pop up and display the OS in a separate window. The experience can be frustrating - I mentioned that lag between your input and what actually happens can be slow, painfully so at times. CBTesting helps matters a bit by offering a text input box at the top of the window that can be used to fill in forms on the remote OS.

People within my organization were concerned about security, so I made inquiries through the website support and recieved a very quick response. Ken Hamric from Cross Browser Testing responded:

"We went to great effort to isolate our customers from each other. Each of our configurations run on separate LAN segments to prevent one user from using a packet sniffer to see another user's traffic. Each of our configurations is launched from a 'frozen' snapshot - when you finish your session the configuration is turned off. The next user to launch the same configuration gets the original snapshot, not the configuration after you have worked with it. This protects both parties. The second person does not have to worry about a previous user installing spyware / tracking software to capture information from future users, and the previous users do not have to worry about future users looking at old cookies or browser histories to see what previous users did on the configuration - each configuration is 'refreshed' every time it is used."

This satisfied some of the security requirements, but it should be noted that the Java console uses VNC. As this is not an encrypted protocol, keystrokes and screen updates are potentially susceptible to sniffing. It is my opinion that most testing will occur in development and staging, and not production, so this should be of little concern.

In closing, this is a great addition to any web developers toolkit and one that I hope will become more sophisticated and operationally sound over time.

Kerio Mail Server

I had mentioned in an earlier post that I have been working with Kerio mail server. I have just finished putting the final touches on the KMS server. I am going to start blogging more about Kerio as I am nearing the date when I make it our production email server to document our experience.

A bit of history first - I've been administering email servers now for some time with the bulk of that experience on Exchange 2000 and 2003. When I came to work for the company where I am now, they had a locally-hosted Exchange 2003 implementation, but someone had opted for Small Business Edition. Bad move. There were many things wrong with that server and we didn't have time to work on them due to the volume of mail that needed to go through it. The groundwork had already been laid for moving to a hosted Exchange scenario, so the migration became one of my first tasks here. I'll fast track this a bit - the experience was not good. I was tasked with finding Yet Another Hosting Provider (tm). I did so, we moved a second time, and the experience was even worse (you'll notice I'm not inviting any lawsuits by keeping the names of the hosting companies to myself).

So, we decided to start looking into locally hosting email again. Naturally, everyone wanted Exchange, but didn't want to pay the price of entry. Since I had already planted some seeds with regard to virtualization, I started lobbying to get VMWare to use as a redundant aspect of mail hosting. I had already done some of the research regarding Kerio - I'd evaluated it already and knew that it was an excellent mail system. The final piece of the puzzle that got my plans set into motion was a five-year TCO I did on the Kerio/VMWare marriage vs. locally hosting Exchange. The price delta was obscene.

Thus far, all of the testing I've done with KMS shows it to be a fantastic system that is an extremely cost-effective Exchange analogue. The best part is the fact that it will run on Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows. It integrates with Outlook (more on this in a later post) and can be configured to work with Active Directory or Open Directory for single sign-on. Calendaring, global address lists, public folders, and other familiar features are all in KMS. McAfee AV can be included in the package and the integration is seamless. Companies that don't at least consider KMS are doing themselves a great disservice.

My plan is to bond together four key elements to create a resilient, cost-effective solution for hosting email:

1) VMWare - this is the core of my solution and I'm using ESX 3i on two HP DL360 G5 servers

2) CentOS - KMS is offered in the form of a Virtual Appliance, and that's what I'm using as a guest OS running under ESX. The appliance is based on CentOS, a flavor of Linux that is a modified RHL distro. So far, I've found the OS to be well-documented and easy to use. Nice thing about getting it as an appliance is that some of the work of paring down the OS has already been done for me.

3) Kerio Mail Server

4) Webroot - this is the sneaky little part of my plan. Webroot anti-virus/anti-spam with mail continuity services will be my "safety net" that I'll use to provide 28 days of mail service to my users in the event of a catastrophic outage. This service offers a simplified webmail interface to the users to keep them running when the primary server is offline. Since all mail is delivered through them first, it's a no-brainer. Add to this that the cost is ultra-affordable. I won't tell you what I'm paying, but suffice to say that it's an excellent value.

What's left out here? The sharp-minded among you are already asking yourselves "What about VM replication or high-availability?"

Well, let's just say I haven't crossed that bridge just yet. For now, I'm planning to use the backup software integrated into KMS to drop mail and configuration backups into an SMB share on a physical server that I can restore to the secondary VM host if necessary. I have another KMS server configured there that can accept the backups. This plan will evolve as I get pricing on products that will allow me to replicate from one host to the other. The challenge (and the biggest problem) is that I did not opt for shared storage, so there are some issues that I've inflicted upon myself knowingly.

Kludgy? Maybe...we'll see.

WEEKS 3 and 4 - Windows 7

Well, it's over. I'm done with Windows 7 for now. As I head back to the warm, comfy OS X interface, I can literally feel the tension in my neck easing a bit. It's not that I had a BAD experience with Win7, it's just that - for me - OS X is just a better system.

So much for objectivity...

I need to catch up since I played hooky last week. Week 3 was a totally uneventful, short week - I only worked Wednesday through Friday. Win7 just kept trudging right along, never actually causing me any major grief, but the cracks were starting to form in my resolve. I wanted to stay true to my commitment to make it through the full four weeks, so I kept working with the OS. I had one system crash that took out the entire thing while I was trying to test out an Outlook configuration with a new email system that I'm working on implementing. I am unsure what exactly caused the problem - I had a lot of things open at the time, so I can't blame Outlook completely. A reboot got me back up and running again with no errors. Event logs were no help, so the actual cause of the crash remains a mystery. My guess is that I simply asked too much of the VM and it tanked, so I can't officially put all the blame on Win7.

This week has been a bit of a chore - we've had a lot of problems and demands at work and my attitude has been less than forgiving when it came to the Win7 testing - I completely skipped Monday and spent the day working from the Mac side. The rest of the week was just more of the same from last week, so I will just drop to my final thoughts on Win7 to close this out:

Window 7 is a fantastic operating system in the form that I used to conduct this test and I'm looking forward to the final release. I believe very strongly that this version will be adopted by many organizations that skipped over Vista. As strong as the beta copy is, I'm thinking that there is very little left for the Redmond team to do before putting a nice bow on this and offering it to the world. Admittedly, I did not do as deep a dive as I'd hoped to do - I'm sure that under the hood, there's quite a lot that will cause some people concerns (compatibility with existing software and hardware will likely be chief among the problems that early adopters will face). For my part, I can attest to the fact that the interface is very clean, familiar options are easier to find due to built-in search capabilities, and the stability of the system is excellent.

In all, I'd say...albeit grudgingly...that the promise that Microsoft will continue to dominate the personal and business computing landscape for the foreseeable future seems pretty well assured.

WEEK 2 of 4 - Windows 7

I'm nearing the end of Week 2 of my 4 week journey using Windows 7 Ultimate. So far?

I love it.

There are a lot of choices when it comes to operating systems, and I have already copped to being an Apple proponent. I can't front - this OS could be a game-changer. I've looked forward to booting into the OS every day and using it is a pleasure. All of the apps I've loaded into it work exactly as you would expect from a gold standard OS with only minor niggles*.

I did notice something interesting this week. I was attempting to access a server on a different domain than the one Win7 is joined to via UNC path. The DNS did not resolve the address, so I addressed via straight IP. Still no joy - regardless of what I tried, I could not get Windows to stop attempting to use my domain creds. Even after Windows gives you a nice dialogue to use a different account, it's still stuck on passing the default domain along with a new username and password. I haven't had time to look into this behavior, but I thought it was a bit strange. Perhaps this is a new security feature?

*The only other two items that have popped up are related to software I loaded on Win7. I opted for the Kapersky AV beta suite from a choice of options provided at install time. At least three times a day, I get a warning from it stating that "svchost.exe" has changed and I must approve it. Regardless of whether I approve or deny, the OS keeps chugging right along. Again, haven't had time to research this. I'm guessing that some running process is spawning a new svchost PID and KAV doesn't like it. The only other issue I've seen is a redraw problem in Pidgin with the transparency plugin enabled. The main buddy list will occasionally go wonky and display data from windows that were overlayed. Clicking on the buddy list makes the problem go away.

So, all things considered, this has been a very pleasant two weeks and I am optimistic about Windows 7. I hope to continue reporting a good experience.

One other cool piece of info I'd like to impart - if you run a Parallels VM in full screen with Spaces enabled, you can toggle quickly back and forth between host/guest without changing the Parallels view by assigning a hotkey to switch to a new Space. I use Control + Arrows to toggle to iTunes when necessary.

Securing Pidgin IM

For those fortunate enough to have discovered the Pidgin IM client (nee Gaim), I submit to you a methodology for securing the client so that the pipe between you and others with Pidgin + the OTR Plugin is encrypted AND so that your log files on your local system are secured from prying eyes.

To secure settings and log files in Pidgin:

-Create a directory within whatever directory encryption program you wish to use (a secure volume in Cryptainer or TrueCrypt, for example). Make note of the full path to this directory.

-Install Pidgin and the OTR plugin, but do not start it up.

-Right-click "My Computer", go to Properties, select the Advanced tab, then choose "Environment Variables..." at the bottom.

-Add a new user variable named "PURPLEHOME" and use the exact path to the encrypted volume for the value.

-Start Pidgin and authenticate to your IM account.

-In Pidgin, go to Tools->Plugins. Check the block next to "Off-the-record Messaging", then select "Configure Plugin" at the bottom of the window.

-On the Config tab under "My private keys", click the "Generate" button to create a new fingerprint for this account. Accept defaults for other options. [NOTE - There is a key exchange process that must be undertaken when securing communcations between you and the recipient of your IM. That is not covered in this writeup.]

-Back on the Pidgin menu, select "Tools->Preferences", and then the "Logging" tab. Tick the first two options on this menu if you wish to retain messages.



After configuring these options, Pidgin is now enabled for secure messaging with encrypted logs. There are many, many configurable options in Pidgin, so get Googling!

Windows 7 Eval - Four Weeks of Windows

Open-mindedness being a desirable trait, I have decided to give Microsoft another chance.

I'm nearing my fifth year of being a Mac user in a Windows world and I am getting back to roots with a look at the release candidate of the forthcoming Windows 7, Microsoft's latest iteration of the venerable (and venereal) OS.

After wringing every possible microcent out of Windows XP, it's very much time for Windows to finally be what it portends to be - a stable, easy to use, and elegant operating system that has broad appeal. With the outright disaster of Vista nearly behind them, the team from Redmond really had their work cut out for them. To be fair, Vista wasn't all bad conceptually - the problem was the failure of MS to understand that you should not have to own a Cray supercomputer to run just the OS. Even after turning off items that should have been disabled by default (the "Gadgets", for instance), the consumption of system resources under Vista is considerably higher than necessary and was therefore off-putting to a lot of people who evaluated and ultimately rejected the embattled OS. Those of us in positions of influence in the IT world just outright ignored the entire thing and slogged along with the infinitely better value proposition of Windows XP.

The Mac fan boys just nodded knowingly, secure in the knowledge that the Windows franchise was faltering and probably wouldn't regain it's footing anytime soon.

Wrong.

Since the first beta copy became available, Windows 7 has shown real promise. The interface overhaul is quite nice. Vista users will be right at home here - the "who-moved-my-cheese?" moments will come from XP to 7 converts looking for menus that are no longer there or are buried within the control panels. For those patient enough to keep digging, you'll find that the changes that have been made are quite easy to use and offer a welcome respite from the doldrums of XP and the question-ridden world of Vista ("Are you SURE you want to do this? Really?").

It is my opinion that you really cannot judge an OS until you live in it for a while. The occasional visit just isn't enough - you have to immerse yourself in it to truly appreciate what life is like working with what is essentially a new toolset. It is with that spirit in mind that I have decided to boot my Macbook up and immediately work from Windows 7 running under Parallels for the next four weeks. I started the journey on Monday, May 5th and will revert back to Mac only after I have really lived in Windows 7 for four weeks. I feel that this is the only way I can objectively evaluate the merits of the OS (even though this is the first version of the release candidate).

For the nerds among you (along with anyone else bored enough to have gotten this far), I am running Windows 7 Ultimate, build revision 7100. For the really dorky, my Macbook can only manage to pull a 1.0 on the "Windows Experience Index" due to the low-end video performance - this is very interesting because one thing that I noticed immediately is how nice the OS looks. The windows are very crisp and appealing, the text is ridiculously clear and easy to read, and the default desktop backgrounds are stunningly rendered. One other bit of good news - the much-maligned "Start" menu button has been replaced with a candy-like nubbin bearing the Windows logo (although now that I think about it, this is probably the same in Vista and I just never cared enough to notice until now).

The performance of the OS has been pretty bog standard from what I've come to expect from Windows XP - mostly solid with occasional unexplainable slowdown and the odd tendency to place commonly-used items in the strangest places. The taskbar has been given an overhaul and can be customized in many ways. The default settings feel a bit unnatural at first because the text labels are missing - you just get a program icon. If the program in question has multiple windows associated with it, you can select it to see them and click whichever one you want to invoke it. I disabled this behavior immediately in lieu of more comfortable settings and discovered that many new features have been added. I will detail those more over time, but my initial reaction to the taskbar is that it seems to be much improved.

As far as my loadout is concerned, I am running Office 2007 SP2, I am using Outlook 2007 exclusively for email, Pidgin IM, Adobe Acrobat 8 standard, Firefox, VMWare Infrastructure Client, and the Windows 7 Kaspersky AV suite beta. Thus far, I have not encountered any anomalies with any of the programs.

One bit of aggravation - only one of our four office printers has Windows 7 drivers: the HP LJ 3700. I know, I know - that's the price you pay in beta, right?

Anyway, feel free to post comments if anyone has specific questions about the OS. I will do what I can to answer.

ShellExView

Had an interesting problem on a system today. When right-clicking My Computer or Network Places on an XP box, the system would crash completely and then hang until a force-quit of Dr. Watson was performed from the Task Manager. There were other anomalies regarding context-menus with the same symptom.

I found an article that mentioned this problem and recommended using ShellExView to see what ClassID's are being called for context menus. Turns out in this particular case that the AdAware installation was causing the problem - the great thing about ShellExView is the ability to sort all items based on whether or not they are Microsoft products, and then it was a simple matter of picking out the non-MS context menu items and disabling them one by one until the problem went away. Once I identified the problem program, I removed it, rebooted and all was working again.

Worst week ever

Last week SUCKED. Everything that I touched seemed to just generate radiating waves of failure.

Started things off by wrecking my VMWare server, then a software package that I introduced to the company for quick turnaround recovery of Windows XP started exhibiting signs that it was causing disk corruption on some of the systems. Two of them failed completely, and in keeping with my luck of late, one happened to be on an executive laptop. I managed to recover both of them with minimal loss of data, but not without causing major stress for all involved.

By the time I got out of work on Friday, I was thinking that a carreer flipping burgers or manning a cash register might not necessarily be so bad.

This week has just got to be better...

VMWare goes "splat"

So the last two days of my life have been spent learning valuable lessons about VMWare and how my need to be tidy can sometimes be a burden.

I came in on Monday after completely setting up all necessary components of VMWare, CentOS, and Kerio and decided to do some cleaning up of the VMWare data store. In so doing, I managed to clip a critical component of the Kerio VM - the core VMDK file. For anyone reading this who understands what that means, go ahead and enjoy a chuckle. It's been a while since I've felt white-hot panic from doing something egregiously stupid and noob-tastic and I'm hoping this little foray into how NOT to administer a VMWare server will resonate for years.

Good news is that I managed to get back up and running and very nearly recovered to the point I was on what I'll call "Smash Monday".

VMWare & Linux

I finally got approved for and received my first VMWare server (it's actually the second one that I've gotten, but this one is mine to set up/administer). I am in a state of something akin to panic/excitement over the prospect of learning something completely new. Add to that the fact that the intended purpose of this is to run our email on a Linux-based platform and you have a very happy admin indeed.

Currently, however, I am struggling to understand some of the quirks of ESXi (yes, the free one - shut up). Being Linux-based itself, there are some things about the underlying structure that I simply don't get - at least, not yet. The problem I'm faced with ATM is the fact that you cannot simply import a VMDK without performing some sort of elusively documented voodoo. Particularly annoying as I am interested in the extreme in a virtual appliance - the virtual Google Search Assistant. Can't import it without doing the aforementioned and seemingly undocumented conversion.

Argh.

Being on ESXi is like being an unwanted guest at a fancy dinner - you can eat, and the food is amazing, but you don't get a menu and the waiters hate you.

The answer is out there - I just have to find it.

Honda Fury

Gotta love Honda, man.

http://fury.honda.com/

I am now totally obsessed and will be trying to get my aft end on one at some point. I love the look they went with, even if it is a poser chopper - I'm sure the purists are laughing, but I care not. I am a former Shadow owner, so I'm already sold on the quality of a Honda bike.

I will post again after seeing one in person.

A nail-biting moment...

OK. (deep breath)

Now that I have a few posts under my belt, I decided to go public with this blog. I just flipped the switch in the Blogger settings to allow it to be crawled by search engines.

(dons his flame-retardant underwear)

Bye, bye iTunes!

It occurred to me just now that I have never posted about one of my major obsessions - Pandora. I am so crazy about this site. Since discovering it, I hardly ever fire up iTunes.

http://www.pandora.com

Think of a radio station attuned to you specifically and you've got the idea. The coolest part (for me anyway) is that you can log into other computers and pull up your "stations" that you create. I have a list of all my favorite genres of music that I can select based on the mood I'm in at the time.

Pandora, I love you.

An exercise in brevity

Something I found interesting:

http://www.appscout.com/2009/04/learn_the_value_of_brevity_at.php

The idea is that you publish a one-sentence story and the community votes on whether it should stay or go.

I'm hooked.

Love the Scr.im you're in

Another email privacy service that allows you to mask your address with another:

http://www.appscout.com/2009/04/protect_your_e-mail_address_wi.php

http://scr.im

This service offers pretty much the same thing as TinyMail and MeltMail services inasmuch as it allows you to remain anonymous to potential sources of spammage, but Scr.im allows for personalization for a more convincing facade.

Deep thoughts

I just spent some time uploading my first Flickr photostream and I had a thought during the process that was a bit depressing.

I'm in Hot Springs, NC at the moment and will be attending a funeral for my wife's grandmother later today. This is a very small town and from what I'm told, I'm lucky to have a hotel with Internet access. My AT&T phone has been displaying "NO SERVICE" since we pulled into town yesterday.

I had some idle time this morning and had been meaning to get some pictures uploaded from the weekend of Brandi getting a tattoo for her birthday. I started the process using iPhoto '09 (which, incidentally, has a fantastic one-click publish feature for Flickr, Facebook, and MobileMe). During the upload process it occurred to me - we're eventually going to have a problem as a society. A key factor in our human existence is our ability to pass down from generation to generation images of that which we hold most dear, and that which influences us. One thing that is always immediately apparent when people come together after the death of a loved one is the sharing of remembered events - time capsules in photographic form of that which shaped the outcome of our collective destinies.

The depressing thought that occurred to me was that the rush to take photos from paper to electronic form is potentially a bad move - as technologies evolve, I think people are not giving thought to what happens when there is no technology. It's probably the pessimist in me, but I keep having this recurring image in my mind of a post-apocalyptic time where a survivor wants to remember the face of a long-deceased loved one, but cannot because all of the photographs were stored electronically. Then the image fast-forwards out into the future, where mankind has rebuilt itself, but does not understand its roots because of the gap in knowledge left behind in computers that he cannot resurrect.

Another perhaps more realistic take on this is the concept of a world-wide internet outage. What happens we we're not able to access services we depend on for cloud-based backups and storage?

Pessimistic, to be certain, and I'm sure that I'm being typically dramatic, but I think that a fundamental understanding of the delicate nature of the underlying storage mediums that we depend on for sharing information makes me ponder these possibilities and wonder - what happens if it all comes crashing down around us?

Evernote

Dad pointed this out to me:

http://www.evernote.com/

This is a totally slick way of capturing information so that it can be accessed from anywhere. I have this now on my Macbook and iPhone. I am VERY impressed with the tight integration - I can snap pictures of items I see with the iPhone and they will be automatically synchronized to my Evernote account. Clipboard dumps and website captures can also be turned into notes. All notes can be tagged with metadata for ease of searching later. There's supposed to be an OCR search capacity for locating text within images, but I haven't gotten that to work just yet. Despite this, I'd venture to say that this could be one of those indispensable tools that come along only every once in a great while.

Thanks, Dad!

Single-click DVD Ripping

bitRipper

Only works on WinXP, but it's free! Will review if I decide I care enough to rip a DVD...

Asus Eee Keyboard PC

This has got to be one of the coolest gadgets I have seen in a while. Not that I haven't seen computer-as-keyboard before, but this one is far superior in appearance and features (how cool is wireless HDMI?)

Asus Eee Keyboard

I need one. Now.

How to: Use Windows Restore Point from Recovery Console

This process worked brilliantly on a Windows XP Home system that would not run *.exe files (including rstrui) without throwing app errors. Sys recovery would not work from Safe Mode, either. I'm sure the following would work in any instance where the GUI is not available:

Check the boot priority in the Bios settings to ensure the PC will boot from CD-ROM, then boot from the XP CD. Start Windows Setup and press R to access the recovery console. Select your Windows installation, then type the administrator password – press Enter if there isn't one.
Now enter the following commands:

CD C:\
CD "system volume information\_resto~1"
DIR

You'll see a list of restore point folders with names such as RP1, RP2 and so on. Pick the restore point you wish to use, using the folder date stamps to guide you. Enter the commands:

CD RPx (the restore point you chose)
CD SNAPSHOT

This takes you into the folder containing the restore point snapshot files. Copy the Registry backups so that they overwrite the existing Registry files.

COPY _Registry_machine_system C:\Windows\System32\Config\System
COPY _Registry_machine_software C:\Windows\System32\Config\Software
COPY _Registry_machine_sam C:\Windows\System32\Config\Sam
COPY _Registry_machine_security C:\Windows\System32\Config\Security
COPY _Registry_user_.default C:\Windows\System32\Config\Default

Type the command exit to close the Recovery Console and restart the PC.

Embedded docs!

Do you have a need to present documents in a web page, but not allow downloads? This service packages the document in a Flash wrapper and gives you the code to embed it in a secure fashion.

Cool stuff. I'll be using this very soon on a charity web site that I host. Will post feedback if I remember to do so.

Happy New Year, Zune owners!

Ouch.

iPhone as book reader

It just doesn't get any better...

http://www.appscout.com/2008/12/stanza_turn_your_iphone_into_a_1.php

I was already in love with Classics:

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/10/28/review-classics-lets-you-touch-your-books-on-your-iphone

I am nearly through reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea on the iPhone and other than occasionally wishing I could vary the text size, it's been a pleasant experience. Having seen both the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader digital book, I can tell you that the iPhone does not compare with regard to low-light readability. You really have to crank the illumination down for a comfortable level of light. The key here is that annoying buzzword - convergence - which, in this case equals CONVENIENCE. I already have my iPhone and don't really want to schelp around yet another device, so I can look past the shortcomings.

I have spent a very brief time with Stanza and will post more about it if the mood strikes, but initial reaction is that it is very well executed, seems easy to use, if perhaps lacking in some of the panache and cool factor that Classics has.

Survivorman

I'm so bummed out right now.

Just watched the episode of Survivorman where he's in Papua New Guinea. Les drops the bomb as the episode is about to end - it's the last one. So sad. I love this guy. He's a bit of a personal hero to me - a man's man if there ever was one. I read that he might return on a different show where he follows in the footsteps of famous explorers and I really do hope that happens.

Screen capture made easy

Free, open source screen capture utility for Windows with a great feature set. Will review and post findings here.

Holey fonts save ink

While you are busy killing trees printing out documents, might as well save on printer ink. This open source font supposedly saves 20% by cutting holes into the characters that compose this set. This doesn't impact readability until the font size gets much bigger. At 12pt, it looks absolutely normal in Word on both the Mac and PC.

BSOD @ 1000 feet under water? No, thanks!

Scary decision...interesting to note the cost savings. I wonder how much more they could have passed on to taxpayers if they had invested in a modified OSS deployment?

MeltMail

Whenever I fill out one of those online forms to get a trial copy of software, I often wish I could provide a generic email address that was somehow forwarded to my real account, thereby saving myself the headache of being inadvertently added to a spam listing....

OH!  Wait!  I CAN.  

Bless you, MeltMail.

AppRemover

Useful tool for removing aged or unwanted security software from PC's.