Technically Speaking

Because it has saved me a few times I decided to do a quick video about using Altaro Software’s Oops!Backup.  It is my first screencast (or the first that I am sharing at least).  Enjoy and let me know your thoughts in the post comments.

I am hoping to keep these going, but we’ll see…

The last few days were insanely busy, with sessions and discussion and emerging new standards, but all in all Tech Field Day Seattle was an amazing experience.  I took a pile of notes, though there could have been more and met a group of great people who I would likely not have been able to meet otherwise.  We heard from several companies and got great information about using new ideas and products and spent a lunch hour discussing the effectiveness of a new standard in networking communication #FCoTR (Fibre Channel over Token Ring).

This post is an overall view of what I got out of #Techfieldday, which was quite a lot.

What’s this all about?

As in a previous post, Tech Field Day is a summit of technical thinkers and organizations who can benefit from the feedback each has to give.  I realize that the sponsor companies were looking for product feedback and constructive discussion which they got, but I think the delegates were able to learn a great deal as well, both about the hot new products coming from the sponsor companies and about technology in general.

I know I got a lot out of the networking opportunity with everyone and that was very valuable for me.

Getting into the discussion

We heard from 5 companies at Tech Field Day Seattle this week and the theme was definitely storage.  The companies that came out were:

Virtualization of both systems and storage were hot topics this week and rightfully so.  Since big storage allows a huge amount of virtualization possibilities the two go hand in hand.

Working to provide feedback to these organizations as well as have some open discussion about our opinions of the product was the overall goal of the sessions.  To be honest and open and not solely “for the press” by giving the presenters honest feedback and not worrying about media image, but of technical relevancy was a nice change.

A bit about the companies we saw

First up was Veeam.  Its always good to go first, sets the tone for the rest of the day.



The Veeam crew provided information about their Virtualization solutions providing backup and replication of virtual machines.  The seemingly easy to use process of being able to get your VM Snapshots replicated to a DR environment.  Being new to the Virtualization space (and wishing spell check would be OK with the word Virtualization) I can see the usefulness of a tool that takes the guesswork out of ensuring your VM environment is both backed up and safe somewhere else in the environment.

But some would say…

Snapshots are not backup.  Which they arent, technically.  However if there are enough snapshots taken regularly, there is no reason that this could not be almost a complete replacement for actual backup.  Depending on the size of the environment and resources available.

My organization is just now looking into Virtualization and this solution could be a great supplement to existing backup methods once we get there.  Perhaps to keep the VMs in a mount-ready state at another site and back them up with our current solution.

Next up was Nimble Storage.  They built an array that uses both flash based storage and more affordable storage to provide a high-speed read/write solution and manage it all from one interface and in one box.

This was a highlight for me.  Not only because I am interested in and learning about storage arrays but because the company launched at Tech Field Day.  They have been working on development of the product and with customers, but chose this event to go live.

Bringing to market a storage solution is one thing, but to deliver a product that can accomodate what appear to me to be the pitfals of typical storage, fast reads and lower cost long term storage could be huge.

Most companies like cheap storage… cheap is relative of course, but being able to put data on SATA disks can save quite a bit of money in overall solution costs.  They are cheap and they work great for read operations.  So with SATA disk you get great storage and read access, but the writes can be a bit slow.  Depending on the environment and the number of drives in the solution (and number of hits by users) the reads may also be slow, but many times not deal-breaking.

Along with the afford-ability of backend storage, Nimble Storage combines high performance writes to the array in the form of a flash cache.  On the front of the storage system there is a flash based cache that allows nearly instantaneous access to storage (both for read and write).  Data goes into the cache and is written to storage or disk at intervals.  So if there is a file that gets written into the cache and is highly used it may not get written until much later in the day making it instantly available within the flash disk for your users.

I think of it as a tiered approach (although it is not quite the same as other tiered solutions we saw, more there in a bit) where information goes into the flash based portion of the solution on write and stays there until the cache gets to a certain percent full, then is written to the disk.  Once the cache is written to disk portions of it can be cleared to make room for other data.

Tiered storage isn’t new

I know there are other organizations that use tiering to keep heavily accessed stuff highly available to the users, which is a great concept, but the heavy incorporation of a set of SSD media to improve overall performance (especially writes to the array) is great.

After lunch on day one, we took a break from the Storage/Backup stuff for a while and went over to F5 networks for a session.

F5 was new to me.  I had seen their building before on other visits to Seattle, but wasn’t really sure what they were all about.  What I learned was networks were the business they were in but it wasnt necessarily pointing users or companies at the Internet (or network), it was more about providing an experience on the network for the users that was optimized in many ways.

The F5 core product is a device called Big IP which proxies connections to resources and can optimize the availability or access to these resources for the user needing them.  This was very cool.

An example would be a website that lives on servers spread across multiple locations.  The Big IP can optimize the use of these resources by doing things like figuring out which web server is closest to the requester and routing the request to that server to display the content.  Doing this creates better resource distribution for the servers and a much faster/smoother experience for the user.

Another concept that was introduced to me while at F5 (aside from the awesome cupcakes) was their technologies of iRules and iControl and the community they have put together to help provide and support these technologies.

iRules are the items that move things around.  They allow you to apply scripts to traffic that hits the Big IP device and take action on it.  Like the delivery of content from a server near you as discussed in the above example or working around an error found on a web page.  Suppose my website was sitting behind a Big IP device and I discovered that a string entered in browser when looking for certain content allowed pages to be manipulated by users.  iRules could be created to inspect the traffic as it was coming through the Big IP and based on the rule send the visitor to a predetermined place instead of the area where the manipulation might happen.  This effectively works around the issue.

iControl allows applications on a network to work together even on dissimilar environments.  Traffic monitoring and business process management come to mind for me here.  Suppose you wanted to monitor traffic coming into your network across all locations. iControl would be able to provide a simple interface across all of these devices to allow for monitoring rather than having to capture all the data at each location and work with it separately.

Tech Field Day – Day 2

On day two we were able to board the bus a bit later, which was great.  First on day 2 was Compellent for a session about their storage technology.

Compellent produces storage arrays that support automatic tiering of data across multiple types of disks.  This is really pretty sweet.  The automatic tiering idea is one that takes a look at the data being stored and scrubs it for statistics every day.  With the information it discovers during scrubbing the algorithm used within the array can determine how much use their is on a file (or group of files) and move limited use data to a higher tier of storage, or one that isnt as frequently used.

Perhaps your production database is kept in tier 1 to allow for fastest access, but some of your company’s marketing material is not accessed all that much and can be kept on tier 3 storage costing less money long term.

Why do I care about where items live?

If an item is used infrequently it can live on inexpensive (and slower) storage media.  Perhaps things that are not used often will live on SATA drives within the array and things used every day will live on faster SAS drives.  This could be done by administrators, moving things around to optimize their use, but Compellent takes care of this and does it all within the same array.

Another area where I found Compellent to be particularly impressive was in replication. With Compellent arrays on both ends of a DR solution, replication between these arrays can be done at a much faster rate because the information can be compressed and only the changes replicated rather than the entire file during certain time periods.  This can speed up performance and optimize bandwidth when needed by users.

During the intermission…

During the intermission of lunch and blogging at TFD day 2 a great deal of discussion was had covering a new networking standard Fibre Channel over Token Ring.  You can read more about that here.  We also made a trip to building 92 at Microsoft to check out the company store and more of their campus.

Back to Storage

Our last presentation was at NEC North America and covered their HYDRAStor product.

When I got to NEC I had no idea they were in the storage business.  I have used NEC projectors and things but this was completely surprising to me.  Not only was the product new to me (and most apparently) but our host Gideon Senderov was a wealth of knowledge on the product.  It was by far the presentation that captured my attention the most.

The HYDRAStore product is built on NEC gear (Servers… who knew NEC made servers).  And each device making up the solution, the Accellerator Nodes and the Storage Nodes are running on servers with memory to facilitate access and improve performance.

Midway through the presentation we toured the test lab at NEC which seemed to get its cooling right out of a wind tunnel.  No the HYDRAStor arrays do not need a wind tunnel for cooling, but it was kinda cool to see it in place.  The lab had four racks full of storage running and was able to hit throughput rates at 10 GB per second.  The speed offered here was definitely amazing.

The NEC Solution was very high end and seemed to me to be greatly suited for archival.  Something used to keep long term copies of your data on with a suplimental storage solution used for every day read/write.

Overall thoughts on Tech Field Day

I had a blast networking with the other delegates and sponsor companies at Tech Field Day Seattle and learned quite alot about these companies and their products.  Coming from an end user role this helped me to see why Storage is so paramount and that there are many ways to skin the storage cat.

I hope the sponsors got the feedback they were looking for and will continue to support Tech Field Day in the future.  As for the solutions, they are all extremely good and accomplish big things.  I think combining some of them, perhaps in a very forward thinking environment or a large environment could be a great all around storage and or backup solution.

I am working further with information learned at Tech Field Day and will be communicating with the sponsor companies to further develop my notes for future blog posts.

Finally I would like to thank Stephen Foskett and others at Gestalt IT for allowing me to be a part of Tech Field Day and the other delegates for helping me learn so much while attending.

Tech Field Day Seattle is just about here.  There has been some interesting discussion about the things to do in Seattle around the conference that make me wish the plane from Appleton left at a more reasonable time, but the tickets are booked and I am jazzed to be headed out to the event.

I have not decided on  if I will be blogging from the event, but I will be taking lots of notes, and hopefully some awesome content will jump off the page.  Surely the event will see the blog… this blog and a few others, but I do not want to jump the shark with any ideas.

I am interested in the event sponsors and to see what they will bring to the table for sharing, but Im also interested in meeting some new people.  I have a feeling I am going to gain a huge appreciation for all things storage… it has begun already, but I do not get to do it everyday…

See you in Seattle

Recently I published an article over at TechRepublic covering a text replacement application called PhraseExpress.  The tool is extremely useful, but building lists takes some time.  After all, words that fit the application for key wording aren’t known right away.

In playing with the application, which I am still doing, I discovered a set of video tutorials to walk through the application even further.  Check out the video clips to get an even better idea of how the application can make you more productive and maybe even provide a few tricks along the way.

PhraseExpress Video Tutorials

I know that I will be going through these to improve the application for me.  Folders have proven quite tricky, but I think with a bit of patience I will get it nailed down and be able to write entire blog entries using only acronyms of three letters or less.  (or not… but it would be an interesting challenge).

Last fall I was tasked with overseeing a phone system installation at my organization, which was a rather large undertaking given the short time frame for getting it accomplished, but we got it done.

The months since the new phones went in have been a vast improvement over the previous phone setup we had, depending on who you ask of course.  However adding this many IP based devices to our network has introduced some challenges in keeping things running smoothly and keeping devices online where they belong.

Quite simply we are running out of space in the kiddie pool that is DHCP.  My new project is to rescope our environment and split things up into VLANS.  The beginning of this endeavor was this week and it is starting to make sense.  I understand the reason for creating VLANS, to essentially keep the voice devices and traffic somewhat segregated from the PCs and other data devices.  This way the DHCP pool available for each device type gets to grow a bit.

Working with all these hosts

I guess adding things to the network as they become necessary is catching up with me.  Sure we need the device and it serves a business purpose, be it a printer, PC, or phone, but this doesn’t mean there is room by default.  The fact that we haven’t done a lot of big adds to the environment and usually aren’t growing at a huge clip put me in sort of a docile mode about the whole thing.

Big picture getting clearer, but still not a Monet

The move to a VLAN environment will also allow me to essentially rebuild our whole infrastructure.  No not with brand new gear all over the place, but with cables of a more desirable length and a better cable management arrangement (and some labeling too).  This should clean things up and make it easier to manage.  I am not sure I will be putting in a glass door to show it off, but it will be more pleasurable to work with for sure.

Another positive is the learning aspect for me.  Sure I am learning, but I am glad I didn’t try to get to a scalable network without some help.  It seems this is quite a big undertaking and should be closer to complete by the end of the summer… I hope.

Everyone uses passwords.  In todays connected society it is all but a fact of  life  that a password or pin number will be used almost everyday.  Sure you might go fishing way up north somewhere and your fish finder and cooler do not need a password, but most every other day… somewhere a password is waiting for you.

In recent months I have tried a few methods of managing passwords, from a paper notebook to a thumb-drive running a password application and for a while these were great ways to keep things moving and prevent me from forgetting the needed information to get into a website or some other area.  Lately, an online application that works in browser as an extension and on my mobile phone has been just what the gatekeeper ordered.

LastPass to the rescue

The concept of LastPass is that you have a single password to remember and it will  provide you with all of the rest of your passwords as you need them.  I realize that other password keepers do this too… allow you to make a list of the items you need to keep, ATM pin numbers, logon information, etc; but LastPass does it in a way that also helps you use the information.

When I log into LastPass I can use the browser extension in Chrome to record passwords as I enter them in their respective websites.  When entered, I can click the save site button and the information and URL are kept in a vault.

This vault is synced with other platforms, different browsers, my phone through an application, and other methods as well.  this way when I am using a different method to access things online, I can get the logon information from LastPass.

Note: Obviously displaying my personal details about LastPass is a bad idea by nature so screen shots are limited.

Cost?

To use the basic, in browser features LastPass is free for all who sign up.  Adding mobile features for devices like the iPhone or Android costs about $12/yr.  Because I recently got an Android phone (more on that in another post) I decided to get the pro/premium feature set as well and boy is it nice.

When the folks at LastPass get into Windows (or other platforms) applications I will be completely convinced it was the right move.  I mean what better way to start blogging more frequently than being able to remember (and not just reset) the password for your blog account… Just sayin’…

Give LastPass a try at http://www.lastpass.com and see if it helps you out as much as it has me.

So typically when I review an application for TechRepublic or any other website, I do not look to far into the sales pitch type of information because I am more interested in the functionality of the application (and whether or not it works as advertised) than making money on the sale of licenses.  Altaro software is starting a partner program to help get the word out about their software, Oops Backup.

I covered the Oops Backup product for TechRepublic a while back and have been consistently impressed with the application.  Being a bit lackadaisical about backing up my laptop, the plug and play nature of the application is perfect for me.  Please excuse me while I go plug in my drive for backup…

The details of the program

Simply put, Altaro is offering those who participate in the program 50% discount margin for the first 50 licenses purchased by the partner for sale to clients.  The first 50 licenses must be sold by July 31, leaving about a month and a half from press release to end of promotion.    Essentially, you can purchase the first 50 copies for sale at a 50% discount of retail.

Note: This is a a VAR situation for Altaro and participants will purchase the software from them for resale to clients.  Because I use this software frequently and know that it works, and because the benefits available to VARs are very good I feel confident that the partner program from Altaro will benefit both participants and their customers.

Following the first 50 licenses, the discount margin going forward will be 40% of revenue for each sold.

Other benefits

Sure making a little money through referrals is nice, but for me the other benefits of the program are much more valuable.  Participating in the program will also net you a lifetime Not For Resale (NFR) license for Oops Backup.  Meaning you will never have to purchase the application, they will provide you a copy for your machine free of charge.

Keep in mind: If you review the product and have received an NFR copy, it is always good to disclose that with the blog post or publication.

You will also receive direct access to the developers of the product.  This is the icing on the cake really.  Being able to send in an email and point out a bug or some feature that you (or your clients/colleagues) feel might work better or be improved is really something that will help keep the product moving and allow you as a partner input on.

Beta Access

Who doesn’t like early access to the latest application (or version thereof)?  Testing new features before release is not only helpful to developers, but can give you as IT pros the chance to kick the tires and play with a new feature before release.

These are the nuts and bolts of the deal.  Like I mentioned above, the best parts of the program are not necessarily the monetary ones, but it might cover your hosting fees which is always welcome.

I encourage you to check out the partner program and most of all check out the software, remember backup is critically important and Oops Backup makes it really easy to keep up.

Click here to learn more about the program and to sign up for free.

Many times policies are put in place for a reason at the time of their creation.  Once this happens, very rarely are these items visited again (unless a good majority complain).  The times may change and tools once at the top of mind may fall to the bottom of the heap when new more advanced technology comes along.

This has been quite the hot topic on the Internet lately, do we or don’t we love the smart phone.  By that I am looking solely at corporate supportability of the do everything devices.  Many companies either do not care because the IT group is the only set to have them, or have a so/so policy on them dictating they are not to be support but can you help me out with my smart phone.

Deciding how to proceed… tread carefully.

In many ways, having a smart phone is great for employees.  It allows them to have technology right at their fingertips and see their e-mail, calendar, and other things anywhere they might be.  However setting a standard for these devices is next to impossible if you are trying to exclude a certain type of device or carrier.

I believe that those who provide the support should decide the support.  Since the IT group will be responsible for ensuring mail works on any devices capable of getting email, they should make the call or generally provide the settings which allow for devices to be used.

The second option is my personal favorite.  Allowing personal technology to be used by making the needed settings available to the user of the device and allowing/requiring them to configure their own technology.  This is likely to be a popular choice for all because it removes physical support for the device from the IT group, but still allows the employees to carry whatever they want assuming the back-end technology (like mail) is up to speed enough to support the latest phones and devices.

My overall position

I created a document outlining how support will be handled for blackberry devices.  It provides the needed settings and directs the user to their carrier for other issues.  Seems to be the best move, and as I can test additional phones to build documentation for similar support, they will surely be added as needed.  If the organization wants to add support for additional phones that is ok too, but make sure they give the ample opportunity to test/try the device within the existing infrastructure.  If the latest iPhone release doesnt work with the items your company needs it to, then supporting it is irrelevant.  This should be known/tested prior to telling anyone to get/use the phone.

Stand by your documentation

If the documentation for a particular position is circulating, make sure all the employees in the support area know that and understand the document.  This way when asked, they can provide both the document and likely a statement over the phone about how to get things moving.  It will avoid the “what do I do?” scenario when a user calls for help and the tech employee isnt sure they should help because of the company position.

In the event that the company does not wish to support a device, make sure the support staff explains this to the user.  Just saying no might not get the information across to the user.  If there is definite position of no support, make sure the support group also understands that as well as the reasoning behind it.  If they do not know why the devices aren’t supported, they are likely to send mixed signals to employees by having some support the devices and others not.

Bottom Line…

Sometimes the best thing to do is simply provide information that will get the users started.  Since most smartphones do exclusively (or can) use Outlook Web Access (OWA) to connect to Exchange, it may be a simple settings outline for them and a very open document that explains where to click and what to type in.  This is more like encouragement for the user community to try a device and its config for themselves than actual support and can be a win/win for everyone.

Have been hooked on the idea of Groove and secure file sharing/collaboration for a while now, but the new version SharePoint Workspace 2010 is an even better application.

I am by no means an expert just yet, although I am hoping to dig in even more as I get my more opportunity with the product.  I did try a large file transfer within a Groove workspace and it was surprisingly fast across the LAN.  The file was about 500Mb and it was completed within 10 minutes.  Somehow I expected more delay than that.  Not sure if I would try such a big file across the Internet, well unless I knew the connections on both ends were fairly good.

What does SharePoint Workspace 2010 do?

This application is billed as the offline client for Sharepoint, however it still supports work group style collaboration that was available in Groove, but adds SharePoint functionality.

Personally I have found that disconnected collaboration works very well in both Groove and Workspace.  Suppose I am going to work on a project with two other individuals and they do not work for the same organization as I do.  Workspace 2010 (and Groove) allow me to create a collaboration session (or workspace) for the project and invite them to join.  When they do this all parties can trade files, messages, and other information.  Without the need to worry about firewalls or access rights.

Since all the content is encrypted share away, there is not too much need to worry about file transfer (although there is always some need).

Another way I have used SharePoint Workspace (and Groove) is to trade files with my other computers.  Suppose I am working on something at home and need to get it to the office.  Sure I could use a flash drive or cart my laptop to work.  Or I could put it in a workspace to which both of my computers belong.

This scenario might be good for those who are occasional road warriors.  In the office most of the time, but attend trade shows or other events from time to time.  Maybe they have access to the VPN, but if they are occasional travelers they may not.  Using a tool like SharePoint Workspace, the traveler could use a workspace on their work computer and on their laptop (or a company one that they checked out) to allow access to needed files while on the road.

Does it work?

So far, in the testing that I have done it works very well.  I have a few work spaces configured to trade files between my various PCs.  Another nice feature is that you can create an account (associated with your Live ID unless a Groove Server is used) and open or subscribe to as many work spaces as you need without the need to log in separately for each one.  Of course the multiple account scenario seems to be supported as well.  I tried that for a while, but didn’t like logging on to other identities to work with certain files.

When Office 2010 gets to you (it is already available on TechNet and MSDN and maybe even to business) I recommend giving SharePoint Workspace 2010 a look.  It might be just the collaboration tool you need, both with and without SharePoint.