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TAG: Testing notes

April 29, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Actively refused connections...OCS+Asterisk UC Integration

It's now been several weeks of tinkering to install an OCS Server collection (AD, SQL, OCS, Edge, Mediation, Web Access) on a brand new Dell M-Series Blade Server. The goal of the Unified Communications (UC) group in the INTEROP Labs (iLabs) is seeking to delve into the intricacies of interfacing XMPP and SIMPLE based UC systems so that they can exchange VoIP calls, IM and most importantly presence.

Glenn Evans of DiVitas has this to say about UC:
Unified Communications (UC) is a commonly used term for the integration of disparate communications systems, media, devices and applications. This potentially includes the integration of fixed and mobile voice, e-mail, instant messaging, presence, Internet Protocol (IP)-PBX, Voice over IP (VoIP), Voice over Wireless LAN (VoWLAN), voice mail, fax, audio, video and web conferencing, unified messaging, and unified voicemail into a single environment. UC represents a communication’s “Holy Grail” by magazines and writers in the science fiction community.

However, the team ran into a snag on the part that should have been easy. Sending a voice call from an OCS Client to the SIP gateway (asterisk) only to find log entries saying the target was "actively refusing" the connection.

Start-Line: Exception: Microsoft.Rtc.Signaling.ConnectionFailureException: Unable to establish a connection. ---> System.Net.Sockets.SocketException: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused

Using TCPDUMP with the syntax "tcpdump -i eth0 -m mediation_server_address" we got the following:

12:11:35.000777 IP ipaddr_mediation_server.65529 > asterisk.0: UDP, length 36

12:11:35.000789 IP asterisk > ipaddr_mediation_server: ICMP asterisk udp port 0 unreachable, length 72
*NOTE: ipaddr_mediation_server was substituted in place of the actual IP address

Yuck! So with some help of the other engineers at Interop we found the following blog entry about how OCS doesn't currently play nice with Asterisk. Which leads me to to believe that the SIP gateways that it does play nicely with must be VERY understanding to accept a UDP port 0 connection attempt for the opening of a SIP conversation. This blog article indicates that apparently the Asterisk team has "loosened" up and seem to now be allowing such a connection...we're upgrading now to see. Here's the article: It's enough to be on your way...: OCS/Asterisk integration Update

Considering just how much grief the iLabs UC team has had getting the two disparate technologies to talk to each other, we're looking at creating a long term UC sandbox at a couple of universities to help push cross platform integration. We hope to eventually have ways to get all of the UC pieces to talk to each other. Maybe someday folks on Jabber can see presence information for OCS users and be able to seamlessly escalate to a VoIP call or a chat. Both Jabber and OCS tout federation capabilities, perhaps in the coming year we can see if the two warring protocols can be made to talk via some sort of gateway?

So in summary: OCS talks just fine with itself and the new Polycom CX700 phones and Microsoft's LiveMeeting using their new Office RoundTable UC conferencing phone+Camera. Jabber talks just fine with other jabber servers and various soft phones and clients. However, getting the two to play nice together is making for LONG nights and more than a little gray hair.

Posted by Brian Chee on April 29, 2008 12:34 PM

April 14, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Old but frustrating problems all too easy to forget under Windows

As Windows ages and evolves, it's sometimes too easy to forget those little gotchas that creep up and become the bane of sysadmins. My scenario is working on the Interop iLabs (technology demonstration areas) on Unified Communication. I'm responsible for bringing up Office Communications Server so that our group can get both voice and presence status to transit a gateway to a Jabber server through a federation interface. But I lost a bunch of time on little nit-picky issues as I burned the midnight oil rushing to meet our ship deadline....

So for the newbies, take note and save some bookmarks. For the old timers, have a good chuckle and remember the pain you went through when you first got bitten.

Are your machines all in the same time zone?

Especially in Active Directory (or just about any directory service) the computers need to get at least within spitting distance of each other. My sin was accidentally not checking the daylight saving box during the unattended installation section. So all my new servers were a day off from the AD box.
The dead giveaway for this issue is when machines can't join the domain but others can. Did you forget to set the date? The machines can't be too far apart or AD Logins no workie since it uses Kerberos...

The security of the protocol relies heavily on participants maintaining loosely synchronized time and on short-lived assertions of authenticity called Kerberos tickets.

OCS and quite a few other Microsoft programs like storing all their info in SQL databases. After a while, however, you realize the SQL Express isn't going to cut it anymore and you move to a full version. Then you start getting SQL login errors. Use OSQL /L to list out network instances of SQL servers. This way you know if you fat-fingered the instance name during the install.
Don't be a bonehead like I was; OCS currently doesn't run under x64 so the lesson here is to check the system requirements first.
Too bad the OCS install Wizard doesn't check this before it starts populating the Active Directory and does a forest prep. I ended up re-genning my AD for the demo. This would be a BIG problem in a production environment, but this wasn't...
Hmmm....this also sounds like I didn't pay attention to "best practices" and in my mad rush to get this demo built I forgot to backup my AD. STUPID STUPID STUPID!!!!
Maybe next time I'll just forget about performance issues and go virtual for my demos...that way I could have just have done snap shots of everything.
Read up first. I missed the 32bit-only portion in the planning guide and regret it now.

Yeah, not terribly revealing, but the Google ranking on these subjects has fallen over the years and finding the fixes, late at night while sleep deprived, wasn't much fun. Maybe this little refresher will bring the results higher in the list?

Posted by Brian Chee on April 14, 2008 12:15 PM

April 10, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Ixia opens their iSim-City for business

Opened on February 26, 2008, Ixia's iSim-City is a beautifully implemented facility that combines an executive briefing center with a large-scale proof-of-concept lab that can be used alone or with professional services. Located in Santa Clara, this city-scale testing facility is designed to meet corporate overflow testing requirements and will be used for some upcoming InfoWorld shootouts. In my case, I'll be showing up at the start of my test, but after the scripts and methodology are debugged, I'll be able to fly home and run all my tests remotely. With upwards of 5000 gigabit ports on demand, this facility should be able to fulfill whatever testing scenario you can dream up. Trust me, I'm going to see if I can build some shootouts that will stretch this lab's capability ... maybe ...

It was over some truly great curry that Ixia CEO Atul Bhatnagar and I started dreaming of just what an InfoWorld + Ixia testing partnership could do. So although we already have some Ixia testing gear in the Advanced Network Computing Laboratory at the University of Hawaii, what we don't have and can't afford is thousands of ports. One test we've always had to shy away from is that huge 10gig campus/colo/ISP shootout we've had on the back burner for the last couple of years.

The reality is that corporate America needs testing. You don't buy a car unless you've taken it for a test drive, and you don't just sit in the driver seat nor do you just see if the trunk lid opens. The point I'm trying to make is that network testing that runs synthetic traffic across a real network gives you that baseline performance metric with which to judge further upgrades. I've heard a multitude of horror stories about a shoot-from-the-hip guestimate going horribly wrong because no one knew how the network was doing as a system instead of a single device. Over the years I've tried very hard to stay neutral when it comes to test equipment but everyone has weak and strong points; Ixia's strength has consistently been the attention to the Human Computer Interface (HCI). It was just easier to run and thusly more approachable. The stigma has been that you had to be a super human network engineer to run these types of tests. Heck, I've heard some rumblings that you had to be super-human just to know enough to ask the right questions.

What I'm looking at doing is to work with test equipment vendors to publish testing scenarios. We've published out methodologies in the past, but I think it's high time that we flesh these out in more detail so our tests can more easily be duplicated by you the readers.

So to that end CEO Bhatnagar and I also dreamed of cooperative education projects and my dream of creating a coalition of advanced networking labs across the country. We're going to test the water by leveraging Ixia's experience and resources with my years of experience teaching kids about real world networking. I'm dreaming of this coalition graduating hundreds of students a year, helping to fill corporate America's need for the next generation of network engineer. Stay tuned; maybe this partnership between InfoWorld and Ixia will yield more than just cool tests. Maybe it will also result in a skilled workforce able to help you confirm vendor claims on performance instead of just trusting those glossies.

Posted by Brian Chee on April 10, 2008 03:30 PM

March 25, 2008 | Comments: (0)

iPhone to Meeting Maker GoBetween

The folks at PocketMac have created a niche made up of software shims to connect mobile devices like the iPhone to enterprise organizer systems. In this case I shanghaied a buddy of mine at the University of Hawaii Information and Technology Services (ITS) group to help me wring out their link between his shiny new iPhone and MeetingMaker. With a stable that includes links between Lotus Notes and Blackberry/iPhone/Windows Mobile 5&6, this PocketMac has been catering to the mobile user that has been feeling left out when on the road.

The key issue here is that no two mobile phones are completely identical and due to marketing sparkle, new features are driving extremely short mobile phone life cycles. The pain point here is just how to migrate to the new platform and just how far out over the bleeding edge you can go without giving up connectivity to the enterprise. These questions really are the basis of why we see two basic product ladders. Consumers are driving demand for the latest sparkly, but the enterprise wants some sort of consistency for connectivity and road warrior support. This model, though, went all to pieces when the iPhone exploded into the market ... and has left IT support scratching its head on just how to provide consistency for such a new platform. The answer has been with the folks at PocketMac in the form of a series of niche market "shims" that provide the data manipulation necessary to connect these disparate platforms. What these shims do under the hood is create a maze of code to mashup the database on the mobile device to match the expectations on the enterprise application (like MeetingMaker or Lotus Notes) and make a best guess as to what the user was attempting to do with field customization. In this case, the UH ITS group and Chris have made some changes that required a bit of tech support time to labels in the calendar. From reading the e-mail thread between Chris and the PocketMac folks, it seems like they're responsive and genuinely willing to jump through some hoops for the users. In fact this story got delayed a bit while Chris and I were put under NDA for a beta version that fixed Chris' need for an SSL connection to his MeetingMaker server. I'm glad to say that my NDA is now lifted and the SSL connector is now part of the normal code for this product.

Here are some testing notes from Chris Zane with a few clarifications added as we got answers back from PocketMac Tech Support:

MeetingMaker GoBetweenconsists to a two-part solution, the SyncManager and GoBetween. Chris Zane of the UH ITS group describes the installation as easy with no annoying reboot required. Once installed he found himself navigating to the "advanced" tab to tweak the connection to his MeetingMaker server.

Notice that he seems to have an option for several different mobile devices, in his case he chose specifically to sync only his calendar.

Chris mentions: For calendar, click on Appointments and then choose what categories to sync. This is where it got a bit confusing. We had a very difficult time syncing specific MeetingMaker calendars and iCal calendars together. Tech Support provided a method that sometimes worked. Perhaps it was our setup on MeetingMaker and the fact that some of our labels were already changed from the MeetingMaker defaults. In the end, we resorted to trial and error and finally got something working reliably.

Answer from PocketMac Tech Support:
1. MeetingMaker Label and iCal calendar syncing:
We're looking into a pop-up window to allow one to move the iCal calendars and MeetingMaker Labels to align them with one another. Right now we have it set, so, users need to review and configure three different areas (iCal,MeetingMaker Advanced Preferences and MeetingMaker Labels). This process can be confusing and steer beginner users away from configuring their synchronization preferences. This would be a version 2 update.

Chris Zane: Once we got past the calendar name/label syncing, it worked as advertised. New iCal events in specific calendars showed up on MeetingMaker with the appropriate label and viceversa. We could then sync these calendars to our iPhone correctly.

Chris Zane: When events are deleted, the GoBetween application pops up a window to ask what to do - either restore the event from the other system (i.e. you delete on iCal, it'll restore the event from the MeetingMaker system), or sync the deletion. This probably occurred since we were using two way sync - if we had selected overwrite iCal, changes on MeetingMaker would be automatically synced to iCal. There is also an option to overwrite MeetingMaker. For those who use both (i.e. an iPhone and MeetingMaker) an automatic sync, regardless of deletions, etc, would be ideal.

Chris Zane: All in all it works as advertised, there are a few rough edges on matching calendars. Credit goes to the PocketMac tech support who were more than willing to assist in getting things working.

Brian Chee: So while Chris had a few rough edges, I should point out that the PocketMac tech support was very responsive and were able to get almost everything in Chris' punch list either fixed or confirmed that it will be fixed in the next release.

So thank you very much to Chris Zane of the UH ITS group for letting us experiment on his shiny new iPhone. All in all this looks like a pretty good solution for those using MeetingMaker to provide services to their remote user PDA's/SmartPhones.

Chris Zane is an IT Specialist for the University of Hawaii Information Technology Services, Technology Infrastructure Group; and as such provides support to the Advanced Network Computing Laboratory at the Main University of Hawaii campus.

Posted by Brian Chee on March 25, 2008 03:56 AM

March 05, 2008 | Comments: (0)

T-Punkt'ed in Germany

So I'm having fun, T-Punkt is one of the German versions of a regular T-Mobile shop, but wait...not quite...because Deutschland's citizens can purchase DSL, home telephones, combo DSL+Wifi+Cellular routers all under one roof. My experience started as I started my quest to stretch the proverbial penny (or Euro in this case). With Hotel wireless hovering in the 20 euro per hour range, I just had to find something cheaper to satisfy my cheap nature. I had gotten lots of help from T-Mobile USA with a list of hotspots I could use my T-Mobile USA hotspot account on, but they just didn't work time and time again. So out of frustration, I blew 20 Euro on a 24hour card at the T-Punkt store in Celle.

Punkt {m} [Satzzeichen]

ling. period [Am.]
ling. full stop [Br.]
Shamelessly borrowed from http://www.dict.cc/

So I happily started bragging about my new hotspot card to the rest of the American Journalist contingent....and found that it didn't work at the Hotel...or the Hannover Hauptbahnhof (aka train central), nor the convention center...feeling more than just a bit cheated...I was confronted by the biggest T-Mobile booth I had ever seen. Unique to the Hannover Fairegrounds are permanent booths/buildings for carriers like T-Mobile/Vodaphone and a few others.

After a short wait in the tech support queue/line, I found myself showing off my new Nokia N810 Internet Tablet to a 20 year old deutchlander who tried and tried but couldn't figure out what was going on...and as I got ready to just toss the 20 Euro card into the trash can, he tugged on my sleeve and asked me to follow him to the tier 2 tech support. Huh?! (This UberBang is actually called an interabang which is an emphatic query) Seems T-Mobile/T-Com has a permanent tech support facility just off to the side in a glassed in corner of the hall. We were seated at a diner style table (bench seats on both sides with a computer at the end) where a the tier 2 tech oohed and aahed over the Nokia and mentioned that perhaps here husband might buy one for her this Christmas. Well while she too couldn't figure out what was wrong with the account on the card, she was bright enough to realize that the purpose of the card had passed, and that an immediate refund was in order. However she didn't stop there, she pulled up a knowledgebase article and told me that to use the T-Mobile hotspots in Germany, I should append .US to the end instead of .COM for the account name. Voila...hotspot heaven....

Keep firmly in mind that your US T-Mobile phone will ONLY work here IF you signup for the service AND are willing to pay some roaming fees. The same goes for both mobile service as well as the hotspot service...but it's a lot better than ending up paying the ridiculous hotel fees.

/brian chee

Posted by Brian Chee on March 5, 2008 06:10 AM

February 12, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Once upon a time there was an arp entry

So a short story for you…

…once upon a time I was hosting a research server behind my firewall and had done one-to-one NAT to hide and protect it…however, the researchers decided they wanted their own firewall and moved down the hall, but were still using the same “public address” for their server…things were kinda ok, weird slowdowns and such came and went but we couldn’t put our fingers on it…well today I swapped in my super duper faster firewall that went from a 100mb/sec uplink to a gigabit uplink and from a VIA processor to an Intel Xeon with multiple Caveum encryption processors….about a 100 fold increase in throughput possible…well now the researcher’s itty bitty NetGear FVS-318 (max 1mb/sec WAN) was never able to provide an arp response fast enough to the upstream switch, and all requests to that server kept going to my firewall, which kept saying that the server wasn’t there….sigh…when I finally killed the address objects for the server, everything sped up and I’m sitting here with egg on face….

The moral of the story is that you should never put off doing cleanups, not even if folks are screaming at you...this little cleanup chore actually has costed me quite a bit of time tracking down a red herring slowdown...that was just a cleanup job left undone...

sigh...

/brian chee

Posted by Brian Chee on February 12, 2008 04:01 PM

January 04, 2008 | Comments: (0)

SonicWall TZ180W

With more and more small office and branch offices (SOBO) opening around the world, it makes sense that vendors are attempting to add big box features into tiny little appliances. Now while I've not done any real throughput testing (RFC2544 or similar) I can say through experience that you need to be a bit realistic about what you ask such a device to do. Putting it in front of a 100mb/sec pipe and expecting it to handle a small server farm might not be a wise choice, but putting it in front of a branch office that might have a dozen workstations, a POS (Point of sale) aggregation server might be more realistic. It's in the combined services that make this appliance a cost effective choice, but you need to make sure you're ala carte choices are appropriate. This is after all a company that needs to post a profit and if they discount the base appliance, they're going to want to make some bucks someplace else. So it's like buying razor blades...they just about give the handle away for free, but make their profits in the blades. So choose what you really need and take a bit of time to ask yourself some hard questions on what you really need at that small office or branch office.

One of the features that came over from a larger SonicWall (the 1260) is the ability to segregate the switch on the back of the TZ180 so that you can create protection zones between ports. Think of it as a way to setup varying levels of trust so that perhaps you can have different rules on what can be sent from the cash register (point of sale) zone to the store management zone, versus the admin zone. Since each segregation point may have a new name, the firewall rules matrix can expand to allow for as much granularity in zone rules as you wish to add.

SonicWall has also grouped together various common services together (called service groups) so that you can reduce the chance of missing ports when setting up remote Active Directory Logins or similar.

Another cool feature is that SonicWall has implemented a hover field so that hovering will bring up the values buried in each portion of the chart.

Another big box feature comes in the form of dashboard reporting, though you need to keep in mind that the statistics can either be for the individual firewall or an aggregate of all the statistics gathered by SonicWall, Inc. from all customers that are allowing their product to report back. To change the scope of the dashboard reporting simply change the radio button from Global to the name of your firewall. (NOTE: the default is the mac address of your firewall but it can be changed)

Now in all reality, the IT professional tends to sneer at 100% GUI devices while mumbling about speed, accuracy, offline editing, and a wash list of very valid reasons why a CLI (Command Line Interface) is sooo much better. I don't disagree (I took my beating with the Interop NOC folks) but counter in that not everyone can afford a 100% FTE (full time employee) to handle their IT. At many a branch office it's going to be the franchise owner, or some sort of manager that also has to handle HR, branch accounting, inventory, right down to sweeping the floors. Forcing a CLI down their throat is not going to get things done, and for the untrained, even a traditional GUI isn't going to cut it. So while I have a great amount of respect for some of the other firewall vendors and their amazingly detailed CLI's, I'd like to say that perhaps the SonicWall folks might be better listeners in this particular market segment. I back this up with the wizards tab...

So while the SonicWall is capable of being setup in transparent mode (Thanks to O'Reilly Press for making preview portions of safari searchable) most of us are stuck with just a few IP addresses (if more than one) from our upstream ISP. So I should be safe in saying that a great number of Small Offices and Branch Offices (SOBO) are probably using Cable Modems and DSL providers and NAT (Network Address Translation) is a MUST. So with something like NAT you're faced with several steps when making any of your computer visible on the public Internet:

So in the case of say something like IPTables under Linux you'd be faced with something like what's documented in this how-to webpage. So while it works, I'm not sure I'd toss something like this at a fast food branch manager.

SonicWall's wizard selection has grown significantly over the last couple years, but by far my favorite is the public server wizard. Even though I'm fully capable of doing it all by myself, the wizard just does the first couple ports (HTTP, SSL, SSH, etc) in just a couple of clicks. Then I can edit the newly named collection of services (i.e. botany web server services) to add additional services as needed.

Another change in the way Small Offices and Branch Offices do business is where VoIP is concerned. It's happening and it's happening through VPN's and it's happening over public internets. (Check out folks like AGN who even have support for Asterisk along with a good selection of SMB PBX's) I first met up with the AGN folks when they provided all the VoIP SIP trunking for the entire Interop trade show in both Las Vegas and New York.

Remember how I mentioned how you can setup zones on this box? Well other than the user defined zones, the TZ180W also has a handful of factory default zones.

In keeping with the Unified theme of this appliance, the developers have given you a way to measure throughput to various devices. Might be nice to use as a double check on those Google Analytics numbers you've been getting.

So since this is a branch office appliance, that typically means you'll want to link back to a corporate office. In addition to the IPSec VPN the TZ180 also has L2TP to support Windows VPN's and can define both users and groups at the local, LDAP or RADIUS or a mix. (i.e. local+RADIUS).

One unexpected feature actually makes a lot of sense and that's a scheduler. When you create rules, those rules can have a schedule associated with it. I'd say use your imagination on just what you might use it for.

hmmmm.....now packet capture at the firewall was just....unexpected for a sub $1000 firewall....

So speaking of pricing....it's a bit ala carte in nature....the base firewall has a whole bunch of cool capabilities, but the "unified" stuff is where gateway antivirus, IDS, etc are added either individually or as a package.

Info from the SonicWall folks....

Target market: The SonicWALL® TZ Series is the ultimate security platform for small and distributed networks, providing a choice between absolute ease-of-use for basic networks and unsurpassed flexibility for networks with more complex needs.

MSRP - $605 – The TZ 180 is only available through our TotalSecure bundling packages, so 1-year subscription to our GAVASIP, CFS and 24x7 Dynamic Support is included. This package also includes our Viewpoint reporting software. This is based on a TotalSecure 10 package. The TotalSecure 25 MSRP is $750. For wireless versions, you’re looking at an MSRP of $700 for TotalSecure 10 Wireless and $845 for TotalSecure 25 Wireless.
- Cost to go to enhanced SonicOS – MSRP is $500
- Cost to get security services enabled: to renew all services after first year, best to buy a 1, 2 or 3 year subscription of our Comprehensive Gateway Security Suite. MSRP is $210, $357 and $504 respectively.

Corporate Offices
1143 Borregas Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089-1306
USA

P +1 888.557.6642
P +1 408.745.9600
F +1 408.745.9300

Posted by Brian Chee on January 4, 2008 01:58 PM

December 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Avocent - SwitchView 100 4-port PS/2 KVM Switch

The InteropNET crew has been using the Avocent KVM solution for quite a while, but we've all been in agreement that justifying an enterprise grade KVM for your desktop is something none of us want to pass by the CFO. The main issue has been getting a KVM that will handle the increasing screen resolution and scan rates of modern monitors, while also making sure that as CPU's restart that the KVM answers back correctly to avoid boot errors.

You might have noticed that some consumer KVM's have little Linux Friendly stickers on them...this has been because el'cheapo KVM's have typically not answered back in a timely manner when Linux asks what kind of Keyboard+Mouse+Monitor is attached. Many Linux distros have a failsafe in that like the Sun Sparc's of old, they will automagically add a serial console device if it can't detect a keyboard on the box. So while this is a great thing (always able to get to the console) it can be darn frustrating pounding away at the keyboard only to be ignored...all because the el'cheapo KVM didn't answer back in time. Similar things happen when systems go off to power saver mode and loses the keyboard since the KVM isn't sending any sort of keep alive to the CPU. I don't mean randomly hitting a key, just making sure that the keyboard signal stays there and when the CPU polls the keyboard i/o chip that the KVM answers. Sounds simple, but missing from a bunch of KVM's I've thrown away over the years.

Now keep in mind that while there are USB versions available (see above list) these are ONLY for keyboard and mice. Not storage devices.

So since many of these KVM's are going to be used for desktops, it makes sense to also make sure that the speakers and mike get swapped along with the keyboard+mouse+video. Afterall when that call comes in from the rest of you HALO team, you want to make sure you answer on the right machine.

So getting to the tech specs...I tossed a couple questions at David Scarlett, Avocent Product Manager for the the SwitchView 100 and here are the answers:

1. I’m assuming this is a single KVM console to four, not a matrix like a 2x2? So four machines to single console….
(SIDE NOTE from Brian Chee: such a thing does exist from a UK vendor, but ain't cheap... checkout http://www.adder.com/uk/products/SmartViewMultiscreen.aspx )
AVCT> Yes you are correct. The unit provides access for up to 4 machines from a single keyboard, monitor, mouse, speaker set and mic.

2. I’m also assuming like other Avocent KVM products, this does kvm keep alive for machines if they reboot.
AVCT> Yes.

3. What is the limits on resolution conversion?

a. Can it handle upwards of 1600x1400? Or lower?
AVCT> All of the SwitchView 100 models support up to a maximum resolution of 2048x1536 @ 60Hz.

b. What kinds of scan rates can it handle?

c. Is there a matrix of what it can handle (scan rate versus resolution)
AVCT> The SwitchView 100 supports a wide range including these common resolutions:

800x600 @ max 120Hz
1024x768 @ max 120 Hz
1280x1024@ max 120 Hz
1600x1200 @ max 100 Hz
1920x1200 @ max 80 Hz
2048x1536 @ max 60 Hz

4. Is the audio stereo or can it also handle the new 5.1 stuff coming out over a mini-plug?
AVCT> The audio is stereo and does not support 5.1.

5. Is a DVI version available?
AVCT> No. Currently the SV100 series supports VGA only.

a. Analog in but DVI out?

b. DVI in and out?

6. What is the warranty length?
AVCT> 2 years.

7. Does it pass through the plug-n-play monitor information?
AVCT> Yes.

8. How does it handle power saver mode for the monitor?
AVCT> The unit passes through from the PC.

9. Is there going to be a USB mouse+keyboard version in the future?
AVCT> This is not in the current plans.
Brian Chee> I'm pretty sure that this question was misunderstood. I'm fairly sure they thought I was asking if there were going to be additional USB ports added that will give you USB storage sharing capability. Such a thing is pretty complex and I don't blame them for waffling on such a feature in a SOHO product.

10. How far can I extend the cables?
AVCT> The USB can be extended up to 12 feet and the VGA can be extended up to 15 ft.

11. This is targeted at the SMB market, so not really dual use for SOHO+gamer applications right?
AVCT> The unit was not specifically designed for the gamer applications. The unit should support many gamer applications, and it would depend on how hardcore the user is as to whether or not it would be acceptable for him or her.

MSRP Pricing:
$45 2port ps/2
$90 4port ps/s
$50 2port usb
$100 4port usb
*NOTE: Cables ARE included with the system.

Posted by Brian Chee on December 21, 2007 12:17 PM

December 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft Windows Home Server

Microsoft is stepping away from the traditional home server like those being offered by Infrant/NetGear, IOMega, Buffalo, and others. The pack is attempting to offer the SOHO environment a smaller version of the enterprise servers we're used to having at the office, but never quite getting there. Heck, I've had conversations with other editors on how Microsoft should have put in kiddie/parental controls, email filtering, and a wash list of advanced features. What I'm suggesting is that you take a step back and look at this from a different point of view:

“With Windows Home Server, Microsoft and its partners are launching a new category

of consumer products that will make it much easier for people to connect to their

digital content and share experiences with friends and family, no matter where they are.”

-Bill Gates

Key to just how well this product will play is how the Home Server team ran a programming contest as the beta program drew to a close. A wide assortment of entrants leveraged the Home Server API set with the top dog producing a plug-in that will accept a .ZIP file of digital photos and once received will unpack, create thumbnails and automagically post to the user's home server web site. Here are a couple useful links to read about the other entrants, and what other users are doing with their Home Server.

•Windows Home Server Website

•Home Server Blog

•Home Server Forums

Hey folks, if you're looking for a home version of Windows Server 2008, take a deep breath and shake it off. This isn't Server2008 Home Edition, and if you even try to squint at it sideways to make it look like Server 2kxxx it's just going to make you mad. This is grandma's server to backup her and dad's workstations, post the latest pictures of the grandkids, and let granny get access to her scrapbooking stuff from Edna's place. Not to mention that the turnkey versions from HP and a herd of others all tend towards sipping at the power meter.

Another key feature is getting away from expensive pieces like RAID by having you click on important folders which are then duplicated on another disk. This way the hardware stays simpler, lowering cost of purchase and cost of repairs.

*NOTE: Pictures from Windows Home Server presentation by Todd Headrick and Joel Burt of Microsoft
My favorite feature is the backup and restore (bare metal no less):

*NOTE: Pictures from Windows Home Server presentation by Todd Headrick and Joel Burt of Microsoft
Notice that the system will monitor the health of key folders with a green orb... status at a glance through color changes.

*NOTE: Pictures from Windows Home Server presentation by Todd Headrick and Joel Burt of Microsoft
Again, this isn't Windows Server 2008!!! Notice things revolve around content. Heck, you don't even need drive letters anymore.

So get it from folks like HP or roll your own with the Enthusiasts version that will install on almost any modern desktop computer. You can even download a 120day evaluation version that will bootup and setup one of your old desktops. So while activation keys upgrades aren't available (aka you can't just drop in an activation key like in Vista or Win2kX), you can drop in a full licensed copy over the eval and tell it to leave the data drives alone. So not quite seamless, but not bad.

Posted by Brian Chee on December 12, 2007 07:40 PM

November 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Communicator Mobile 2007

Oliver Rist and I had a whole lot of fun with Office Communication Server when folks from the Microsoft Unified Communications group brought five different Virtual Server images to my Hawaii lab to show off OCS in all its glory.

I had it running on an AMD dual CPU dual core Opteron server with 6gig of ram, and while I wouldn't have been able to handle a lot of load, it was certainly adequate for a proof of concept setup. Keep in mind that the suite can be scaled all the way up to something in the range of 125,000 users spread across quite a few servers for HA and load balancing. The point is that if you barely use certain features, combine that server with another low usage function and save a box.

Anyway, we're both in Redmond, WA with the world press to hear about Windows Server 2008, but we played hooky for a few hours and went down the road to visit with the Microsoft Unified Communications Group to talk about their new release of the Office Communications Server client for Windows Mobile 6 officially named Communicator Mobile 2007. Nicknamed CoMo, this new client is a huge step forward on giving the mobile user as much presence functions as they would on their desktop.
(Well within limits of what is actually able to run on the mobile device.) The part I liked the most was the fact that the user interface for CoMo just felt familiar, so kudo's to the HCI (Human Computer Interface) designers for shoehorning it all onto such a tiny screen.

(here is where I start talking about both CoMo and System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008)

Some key new features:
- Considerably more control over what mobile enhancements can be used in what situation. With compliance looming over mobile devices, you can turn on/off things like: camera, wifi, bluetooth, infrared, file sharing, etc all through a policy.
- Force complex passwords on the entire device instead of just the removable storage.
- More efficient sync (they say 30% better)
- Deny consumer email to close down potential paths for unauthorized information leakage

To really illustrate how modular this system is, click here to see an architecture overview:
View image

Here's some screen shots showing off the new user interface:

Posted by Brian Chee on November 6, 2007 11:52 AM

October 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)

FarStone's Drive Clone Pro

Well I've been ranting about how much I liked the Restore IT backup product, and some of you mumbled about an uncertain future of this product....well that's because Far Stone has decided to drop the Restore IT name in favor of Drive Clone Pro instead.

More to the point, Drive Clone Pro still gives me everything that I decided I liked in the old Restore IT product, but added some features that has me scratching my head wondering why I so rarely see these features in their competitor's products. Like: incremental file backups can now be by category (picture files, music, desktop folder, video, etc) and will ask you how many different versions of duplicate files you wish to keep....WOW...about freaking time!!!

Actually more to the point, why has it taken so long to see enterprise backup and restore features for individual workstations?

So I screen shot-ed you to death with Restore IT so I'll save your bandwidth and cover why you should dump the backup utility that came with your USB drive and buy a copy of Drive Clone Pro.

Incremental file backup that is application sensitive and you can specify how many versions to keep.
Mounting your backup image as a drive
Image backup verify
Partition or whole disk cloning
Support for every USB optical and external drive I could lay my hands on
30 day trial downloadable from farstone.com
Multi-user packs
FIREWIRE support for external drives
Bare metal restore capability
Non-Windows partition image backup (Linux EXT2/3 and others)

All in a package that actually works under Vista....

FarStone
6 Morgan, Suite 160
Irvine, CA 92618
Tel: 949-458-3666
Email: information@farstone.com
Web: www.farstone.com

Posted by Brian Chee on October 20, 2007 01:52 PM

September 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Research Scientist and Blackberries out to sea

Some comments from Brian McLaughlin of the University of Hawai’i School of Ocean and Earth Sciences and Technology (SOEST) working on a cabled underwater observatory anchored just off of Waikiki Beach

Mr. McLaughlin’s comments…
What works well:
- For the most part, the housing is nice the blackberry seats well inside and has never unclasped.
- Keyboard presses are nearly always accurate.
- Track wheel usage is good, pressing the track wheel sometimes leads to scrolling a little bit first resulting is choosing a different choice than you wanted.

The Otter Box doesn’t add a whole lot to the size. The blackberry is large to begin with anyway. I can still use one hand to operate it.

What could be better:
- Definitely not water proof, probably not water resistant. The gasket and speaker membranes probably do a good job of keeping out dust, but a light shake of the housing while just under the water’s surface allows water inside. Splash proof, maybe.
- The screen is illegible in sunlight, indoor conditions require the brightness on the blackberry to be turned up to max.
- Track wheel adapter does need to be re-seated sometimes and this works to get more accurate track wheel clicking.

I feel that is it robust and have more confidence I won’t break the blackberry from dropping it. If I were to use this on a boat, I still would take great care to keep it dry. Depending on the retail cost and inconvenience in replacing the blackberry, a good sacrifice if the housing were to be damaged due to a drop.

--
Brian E. McLaughlin
Oceanographic Research Specialist
Department of Oceanography
School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Honolulu, HI 96822

Posted by Brian Chee on September 11, 2007 07:32 AM

August 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft LiveWriter64

First and foremost, many thanks to Joe Cheng of the Microsoft LiveWriter team for rushing through his burrito to help me out. LiveWriter for 64bit platforms (Windows XP 64, Vista Business, etc) installs a slightly different version of LiveWriter and while my 32bit versions were able to post successfully to Movable Type (our blog engine), the 64bit version would give me weird and wonderful errors.

New to the 64bit version is a richer selection of multimedia handlers (video, tags, etc) and more blog engine specific items (like the split post aka 'more') button that's oh so important in blog engines like WordPress to avoid clogging up your front page with long posts. Additional plugins are appearing rapidly.

So getting to the point, the solution is that the registry entries for LiveWriter64 are case sensitive (though registry entries normally are NOT case sensitive) due to some hashing algorithms. So fire up 'regedit' and navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Windows Live Writer\Weblogs\some long alphanumeric value assigned to the particular blog\UserOptionOverrides

Then you need to change the subkey of:
UserOptionOverrides => subkey characterset => characterSet

You first MUST change characterset to something like 'foo' and THEN change it to characterSet otherwise it will give you a duplicate subkey error. The subkey MUST be blank/null so don't add anything.

Hope this helps out my fellow bloggers as they migrate from a 32bit Windows platform to one of the newer 64bit platforms.

Brian Chee

Technorati Tags: LiveWriter, blogger, movable type, wordpress, blog tool, blog errors, 64bit

Posted by Brian Chee on August 22, 2007 12:21 PM

August 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Behind the scenes of "Pimp your data center" Part 3

"Man is it hot in here" is one of those phrases you just never want to hear in a data center. So while this project is purposely being done in a smaller data center, we are running some mighty expensive Dell Clusters that don't like getting hot an sweaty. Little did we know that we were in for a huge education in industrial air conditioning systems that even included EPA licenses.

This just isn't your dad's split system air conditioner, here are some of the gotchas we ran into:

The outside units (aka Condensers) are about 400lbs each, but to reduce air conditioning costs we re-roofed recently with foam insulation and a asphalt composite membrane roof. So this means we have to build a platform on stilts to rise above the insulation and waterproofing membrane to support the weight of the condensers. (Click here for PDF of the mechanical engineering diagram showing how we're doing the mounting)

Oh did I tell you that the condensers will be out in the hot Hawaiian sun and we're only a couple miles from Waikiki Beach? The hot salty air will eat the galvanized steel in nothing flat, so they have to be sent to a contractor to be taken apart, and literally dipped in anti-corrosion formula, and that will still only get us a 3 year warranty on corrosion.
If you're in a coastal area, make sure your project manager orders the anti-corrosion coating from the factory.

Then the air conditioning grade copper pipe has to be run through a wall, down a utility corridor, and through the back wall of the data center. (Click here for PDF of the room layout drawings, showing the stub outs on the back wall)

Once we get through the back wall, we need to bring the copper pipe to each APC InRow RP unit, change to a Rotax (sp?) air conditioning coupler and go directly into each compressor unit.

Oh yeah, each compressor unit is getting a dedicated 100amp 3phase power input hard wired from the breaker panel.

The big gain over traditional air conditioning systems is that we're putting the cooling right where we actually need it. So by arranging our racks into "hot aisles" and "cold aisles" we dramatically increase the overall efficiency of the cooling system.

Posted by Brian Chee on August 8, 2007 05:10 PM

July 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Behind the scenes of "Pimp your data center" Part 2

Today is RackWise Training being done by Kristine Astrom of RackWise. The goal is to create in Visio+RackWise both a physical and logical layout of the new data center. Since floor loading has become an issue in this geriatric building, we're paying close attention to the weight thresholds in addition to the normal heat and power thresholds. In a nutshell, we're taking our inventory and tossing it into the new racks in the actual future layout. By adding in specific model numbers, the system can accurately add up heat output, weight and power consumption making it significantly easier to evenly load the room resources.

Once the room design is finalized right down to which cable is connected to what port on the switch; we can then give the work orders to Silverback Migration Solutions for the moves, adds and changes involved with the renovation.

Here are a few BEFORE pictures of the office turned data center....posted to Picasaweb.google.com Note, that thing on the floor is a centipede next to someone's flip flop and a hard disk to show how big it was...

/brian chee

Posted by Brian Chee on July 24, 2007 12:15 PM

July 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Behind the scenes of "Pimp your data center" Part 1

We've all seen the excitement that television shows like Extreme Makeover creates and Oliver Rist and I are working with the University of Hawai'i School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) on Pimping out one of our smaller data centers on the 3rd floor of the Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics (HIG).

HIG was chosen for a couple of reasons:

ANCL is located in the penthouse and will have our production racks located there when it's all done.
The building (HIG) is an older building, much more typical of what readers might encounter in a legacy building. The data center is actually two old offices combined to house the growing computing needs of the largest school at the University of Hawai'i.

So I'm hoping this situation sounds painfully familiar to our readership, and I'll be posting a series of stories on the grief we're going through in order to modernize this data center. Key issues we're dealing with right now are:

The plans don't exist in CAD so we're having to work off paper plans
This building was put up in the late 1960's and was retrofitted for the new earthquake regulations in the 1990's.
Since this building is a concrete beam on post with concrete slabs laid on the beams, we've contracted a mechanical engineer to work with us on floor loading issues.
The ceilings are tall, but have large beams protruding downward, so we've decided to shy away from a raised floor in favor of ceiling mounted cable raceways instead.
The building does NOT have enough "spare" chillwater capacity in its air conditioning plant, which is forcing us to investigate emerging data center cooling systems. In this case we'll be using the new APC (American Power Conversation) system that will place the cold air where it's needed and keep the hot and cold air from mixing and thusly increasing the A/C efficiency.
The original roof leaked, and has been retrofitted with foam slab insulation overlaid with a composite membrane for waterproofing. Installing heat exchangers on the roof is requiring a roofing contractor to modify the membrane so that we don't void the roof warranty.
We don't have a real freight elevator in the building, so we're working with the APC engineers to size the rooftop heat exchangers so that we don't have to rent a crane to lift the units.
Since floor loading, heat and power are always an issue; we'll be using both the APC and RackWise data center management systems to keep track of these key issues as we load everything up.

We'll turn over as many of the proverbial rocks as we can in hopes that our bleeding over these issue can help our readership in their renovation plans. If you folks have any data center renovation horror stories, toss them in as comments or drop me an email. Please indicate whether you want me to remove any references to your company or not.

Stay tuned....same Bat Channel...Same Bat magazine....

/brian chee

Posted by Brian Chee on July 20, 2007 11:46 AM

July 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

iChannelDirect Direct Desktop Digital Delivery

DigiWonder's Saas (Software as a Service) is offering iChannelDirect as a novel approach to the frustration some vertical markets have getting delivery confirmation on time sensitive and important messages.

iChannelDirect™ Direct Desktop Digital Delivery

Simply put, the iChannelDirect client is a super small system tray app that periodically sends out a tiny http request to the service to check on status of various channels you're subscribed to. When new messages show up, their iBlob icon in the system tray starts pulsing. In a screencast done with the CEO Grant Holmes, he mentioned that it's the user's choice when and where to download the full message. Once you open the iBlob you get a list of your subscribed channels giving you a chance to determine whether you really need to get it here at the airport or wait until you get to the hotel room.

What makes this different from email is the ability to confirm and verify that the message has been opened. Grant's example scenario was a special deal for a particular sales channel for some unclaimed SuperBowl tickets, but if you read the message after SuperSunday, it's not worth delivering anymore. Another example are things like FAA airworthiness directives. I for one, REALLY REALLY want to make sure that airline mechanics get timely notices about aircraft safety changes AND read them.

Another differentiation is that the iChannelDirect system can also provide delivery verification via a certificate stating date/time/ipaddress/machine info/etc.

So while this may sound a bit Big Brother-ish, I can see a need in certain applications. It's just too easy to delete an email and then use the excuse that you never got it. So while it might not be a big thing for a sale notice, it could be a huge deal if it's a lawyer getting notification of a new witness in a trial.

An interesting SaaS application that isn't going to appeal to everyone; but for those verticals that absolutely positively MUST have a message delivered it could be a godsend.

Check out the iChannelDirect website if you're interested...the DigiWonder folks are looking for beta testers and now is your chance to put your $0.02 worth in.

You can also get additional detail in my screencast that Grant and I did over WebEx using Camtasia to capture the video and synch our conversation.

Posted by Brian Chee on July 17, 2007 04:26 PM

May 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Windows Mobile 6: Not going to kill the blackberry, yet...

So I've been on a journey that started with a Blackberry 7100t from T-Mobile, had a false start on their new Dash (actually the HTC S620) that originally came with Windows Mobile 5, and just a little while ago T-Mobile offered up a software update that bumped it to Windows Mobile 6.

The Microsoft folks tried very hard to convince me that I was going to love the Dash, and I have to admit it sure felt good in my hand...however, I ended up with a list of complaints and features missing in my migration from the Blackberry to the Dash.

No password vault! I ended up spending a few bucks on SplashID to replace the free version on the Blackberry
No text editor
No bare metal backup and restore
Incomplete support for SSH
Slow to switch applications
4-5 times daily crashing and forcing a battery'ektomy to get it to play nice again
I actually had to do a registry edit (not the XP machine, but the phone itself) in order to get it to start the voice command stuff correctly for my Plantronics 510 bluetooth headset. It also required a phone reboot to get everything to take effect. See Randy's Rants for documentation on how to get the Voice Command stuff working over your bluetooth headset.

In it's favor, WM5 did have support for One-Note (as long as you have a full copy on your desktop) which I found to be FAR superior to a simple text editor.

So while I'm still not sure I'd concede to eBay'ing my Blackberry yet, the update to Windows Mobile 6 is actually making me consider never going back. Here's a list of new features that are doing their insidious work at making me feel good about this move...

Voice commands, NOT just dialing...it actually does a pretty good job of reading my appointments and finding just about anything in my contact list. Though I should point out that if you mumble, your contacts may get waken up by misdialed numbers.
Voice dialing: not just contact list stuff, but you can also voice dial individual digits for numbers not in your contact list.
Office Mobile: MS Word, MS Excel and MS PowerPoint came with this upgrade. So now I have both one-note AND my most used MS Office applications.
Live Search: You REALLY want an unlimited data plan if you configure this, cause it's pretty habit forming to have a search bar on the phone desktop. (hmm...maybe it's a brainwashing attempt by T-Mobile to get everyone to move to an unlimited data plan)
Updated Windows Media Player 10 mobile: while it still doesn't support .ogg sound files natively (yeah, who cares except Oceanagraphers) it feels like a pretty hefty subset of the full desktop version. Though this version seems to have worked out some of the bugs in playing media streams from internet radio sites.
It feels like it has a better power manager. I sure get much better battery life when using the WiFi features, but nothing quantifiable this time.

Most importantly to me is that I've now gone 3 days without a crash. One of the other folks that I chatted with at Interop mentioned that he never had a crash, but then again he didn't have ANY 3rd party software on it. I should point out that T-Mobile does seem to have an allergy to 3rd party apps, but get real. If companies like T-Mobile/Cingular/Verizon want to get better penetration into the corporate world, they'd better get used to it.

One thing that still bugs me is that I still can't cut-paste simple things like LONG ENCRYPTION KEYS!!!! Guys, this typing in AES 256bit encryption keys is going to get VERY old VERY fast. Someone PLEASE put the cut-paste into the menus, though if you take the time to setup a certificate authority, you can do an enroll once you've logged into the cert server. In fact, if your corporate wireless supports LEAP, WM6 also has a LEAP configuration utility in the expanded wireless configuration menu.

My last bitch only really applies if you're like me and administer a collection of Unix/Linux machines. I'd love it if something like Putty actually worked with the native keyboard (the native keyboard won't come out of numeric keypad mode) but if you use the Elekson Fabric Keyboard you have a mini SSH terminal perfect for command line changes to your Linux machine.

So while I'm not willing to call it a win...I am willing to say that this has finally become a horse race and that I'm willing to stick it out on Windows Mobile 6 for a while to see how it evolves.

/brian chee

Posted by Brian Chee on May 29, 2007 11:19 PM

May 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Farstone's RestoreIT

In my long search for a backup/restore utility for my Windows machines, I've tried just about everything I could get my hands on. Norton's Ghost was pretty good, but only for a full backup and bare metal restore. The rub is that everything else would leave open files since it was running on top of the host operating system. (YEAH, I know, for Linux I use DD for full volume backups and Amanda or a simple tar for file backups...in this case I'm talking about Windows) Ghost worked well because you're booting your machine into a DOS based session where you can get exclusive use of the partition. No more open files since Windows is no longer running so no more open swap files, no more open temp files, no more stuff running in the background. What I had been wanting was a cross between the two, boot into a non-Windows system to do a full backup, but still be able to use that same backup to restore just the file I accidently dumped in a mad disk cleaning frenzy.

*NOTE: I will point out that RestoreIT is available in the Linspire Linux distribution, but not at this time for Mac OSx.

Farstone

Address
6 Morgan
Suite 160
Irvine, CA 92618

Phone
949 458-3666

Fax
949 458-3633

E-mail
information@farstone.com

Restore IT version 7
System Requirements
CPU: Intel Pentium 133 or higher
RAM: 64MB or more
Hard Drive: 150MB free space
Operating System: Windows 2000 and XP 32-bit operating systems (RAID Support)

Single user download cost: $29.99, Upgrades: $14.99 with Multiuser downloads also available.

Quick start initial menu once you've restarted into the DOS session and Windows is no longer running.

So why am I so excited about something as mundane as a backup/restore utility? The answer is simple, I travel a lot and have had a disk drive die out from under me. I want to be able to let a backup run over night and dump it to either optical or a USB hard disk. I don't want to have to make multiple passes on the restore, I don't want to have to dig around for my Windows License key, I don't want to be forced into a single vendor solution, and most importantly I'd like a restore utility that gives me back a machine ready to go without forcing me into repairing various applications.

I like this program...I should be able to roll back from incremental backups on my USB external drive, and I should be able to do a full restore. Heck, I should be able to boot from either an optical backup or if your machine supports it, boot from a USB external disk. According to the Far Stone FAQ, they hide an incremental backup partition on your machine if you choose that option.

So this is a case of having my cake and eating it to. Up until this point I'm flirting with the capabilities that have been available from Ghost forever. The difference is in being able to do file level backups and restores in addition to the entire partition/volume or the entire disk. All with very few hardware demands, so while not blazing fast on an old Celeron 550, it also wasn't painfully slow either.

So even if you're system can't boot from an external USB disk, you can boot from a restore CD/DVD and then get the rest off the USB disk. Heck, when I did a backup to the Optical Drive in white box clone Celeron machine, I didn't even have to format the CD-RW first. I just used it and went to town.

This is a sample screen that you get when trying to do a restore...interestingly enough, RestoreIT seems to have recognized just about every optical drive I had in the lab, and any of my USB external disks. Once I can wheedle a full compatible hardware list out of them, I'll post it as a comment.

So here and now, I'm making a strong buy recomendation. I'm really looking forward to the enterprise server version that claims to work nicelly with SQL and Exchange. Download the free demo and see for yourself. Heck, if you really like it they even have multi-user downloads available for purchase and download.

*Addendum from Far Stone Regarding questions posed by readers:

RestoreIT as a stand-alone software title is based on FarStone’s trademarked and patented RestoreIT ™ technology. The product features available in FarStone’s RestoreIT 7 Pro are now being offered in FarStone’s DriveClone 3 Pro. With this spring’s general market availability of the Vista Operating System and upon extensive customer surveys, FarStone decided to make their Vista-compatible product release available under the name DriveClone instead of RestoreIT. DriveClone is also an existing product title from FarStone and customer surveys indicated that DriveClone, as a software name, received a more universal appeal and more clearly describes what you can do with the product (i.e. disc imaging). Currently customers who have been using RestoreIT 7 or earlier version and wish to upgrade to a Vista-compatible version should evaluate/purchase DriveClone 3 Pro.

Posted by Brian Chee on May 18, 2007 06:35 PM

April 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)

BgInfo v4.10 from Microsoft

I totally agree with the article written by Bryce Cogswell Published: March 16, 2007 in the Microsoft TechNet. When you have a bunch of machines all configured similarly for either testing, or just a rack of similar machines doing different things. The desktops all start to look the same, especially if you're buring the midnight oil on deadline. It's just all to easy to make a modification to the wrong machine.

Our of self defense I started editing the wall paper with the machine names in my lab, but Microsoft has released a really cool tool that does such things automatically. As an added bonus, if you put it into the scheduler, it will refresh the image periodically with current information on critical items like the amount of free space left. The amount and type of information is configurable during setup.

Neal Allen of Fluke Networks brought this to my attention (thank you Neal) at Interop HotStage. His luggable had it running, and he's setup it up on the desktops of the virtual machines he's got running on the lunchbox luggable the Fluke folk use for testing. Wow, so simple, but yet oh so very useful.

Kudos to the Microsoft folks for a wall paper that totally makes sense.

*NOTE: much thanks to Microsoft for NOT locking down their images on the technet site.

/brian chee

Posted by Brian Chee on April 21, 2007 10:43 AM

March 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Spousal support on Outlook Web Access and IE7

I just had a problem after I updated my Spouse's machine to Vista

Microsoft Knowledgebase article #911829

Just a heads up that as other work from home spouses start bugging you to upgrade their home computer in that there is a gotcha in Outlook Web Access and Internet Explorer 7.

The symptoms show up as a blank editing window (i.e. message body, etc) where only a little x shows up in the top left corner of the message body that looks just like an unlinked image if a picture is missing from a web page.

During my spousal tech support session, I found LOTS of threads dating back to the Internet Explorer v6 days that have documented this issue, with threads continuing into items regarding Windows Vista deployments. The fix is simple, but requires someone from the IT group to apply patches to the Exchange server as documented in this knowledgebase article that has references all

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Farstone

Corporate Offices
1143 Borregas Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089-1306
USA