Technology Update

Cisco readies move into the server hardware market

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:18:00 +0000

I’ve bought “Cisco” servers many times before. They were always HP or IBM servers with a Cisco logo tagged on the bezel and came with ridiculously high support contract and spare part costs, but they were Cisco servers. It seems that Cisco was not satisfied with playing at that level, however, and now they are moving forward with a true line of Cisco server hardware, part of their Unified Computing System platform.

The newest component of this platform – the servers – is a blade server chassis designed to plug in to the existing fiber and copper switching infrastructure as well as work with their storage management tools. It all sounds great, I suppose, but I’m not entirely sure that the move will be compelling for an enterprise.

For starters, the hardware platform is all unproven. Sure, the vast majority of the parts in any of these systems are OEM from known manufacturers but there is still a ton that goes in to the final assembly of those systems. After all, how else can you explain just how badly the Dell Blade systems are assembled relative to the HP or IBM blades? And even if they have better and cheaper hardware (like Sun did with their x86 server platform) , there is still a huge unknown about how well Cisco will be able to support the server infrastructure. They are generally very reliable when it comes to supporting their switching hardware, but after that things tend to tail off.

And, of course, since this is the era of virtualization, it is critical that any story about data center infrastructure include mention of the ability for the platform to be “fully virtualized” or support non-virtual solutions. I love marketing buzz. The hardware will be available with both VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V platforms, so they are continuing to partner with the big players on that front.

Only time will tell just how astute a move this is from Cisco, but there are certainly plenty of open questions (like when they are actually going to have hardware available in the channel) to ponder in the meantime.

Making a “core” OS for the desktop

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:31:00 +0000

One of the big features of Windows Server 2008 is the concept of a “Core” OS version, stripped down to just the basics to improve performance and reduce the attack surface. Now some news is leaking out about Windows 7 that suggests it will have some similar functionality. Specifically, Windows 7 will have “check-box” ability to disable Internet Explorer 8, Media Player, Media Center, Fax and Windows Search, among other features.

All I can say is that it is about time. Sure, the “N” version of XP and Vista have been around for a while, but only in some specific countries. It looks like they are finally making it available to everyone. My guess is that these settings will also be available for management via group policy settings, meaning that managing systems and controlling the apps installed as part of Windows just got a lot easier.

Microsoft, Citrix team up against VMware

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 22:44:00 +0000

Neither Microsoft nor Citrix appear to be making much headway against the 800-pound gorilla in the virtualization arena, VMware. So they’ve decided to become partners in an attempt to dethrone the leader. This week’s announcement on that front comes in the form of the Citrix Essentials pack for Hyper-V.

Citrix Essentials is designed to help manage storage assignments for the virtualization hosts and also manage some of the lifecycle process for virtual guests, similar to the VMware Lab Manager functionality.

This is just the latest attempt by these two vendors to take a bite out of VMware’s pie, and they seem to be struggling mightily on that front. Too bad, really, as reasonable competition generally results in lower prices and better products. Then again, there isn’t a whole lot out there that I’m jonesing for on the virtualization front, so incremental improvements aren’t really all that big a problem to me.

Updates on the mobile front

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:33:00 +0000

Mobile access to email is, in many cases, a base requirement now for power users. So anytime a new option appears to enable or enhance such access my eyes light up, as I’m all about having that connectivity and making sure my users do, too. This week’s World Mobile Congress trade show in Barcelona has seen many such announcements, including a few that I find particularly intriguing.

First up, a new partnership between Lenovo and Research In Motion (RIM). They’ve agreed on a specification for a communication link between Lenovo ThinkPad laptops and RIM Blackberry devices that works even when the laptop is powered off. The card will be called “Lenovo Constant Connect” and appears to be providing a wireless tethering of the laptop to the Blackberry without the hassle of loading third-party software onto the device. It will sync Outlook data in the background using the data link that the Blackberry provides so that when the laptop is powered on the offline copy of Outlook is already up-to-date. It only works with Outlook right now; a Lotus Notes version is expected soon. The card is expected to retail for less than $150 when it comes out in the second quarter of this year.

The other interesting announcement comes from Acer. They are a huge PC manufacturer and already makes some pretty small mobile devices (I love my AspireOne Netbook). Now they making the leap into the mobile phone arena in a major way. They unveiled eight new phone models at the conference yesterday. They are looking at this as a long term investment, with a 3-5 year horizon before the segment becomes profitable for them. The products are expected to range in cost from ~$65 - $600, depending on the model. All of the initial eight will run Windows Mobile, and they are also looking at Google’s Android platform as an option. I’m not particularly impressed by either of those platforms, but I like the idea of more options on the market, especially from a company that understands what it takes to make a functional portable device.

And, last but not least, another Android-based phone was announced and is expected to be available in Europe this spring. Yeah, that’s great and maybe they’ll finally get some better traction in the enterprise space, but I’m not betting on it as the software really doesn’t have much in the way of administrative control, integration to enterprise systems or other things that companies find helpful.

So there you have it. Lots of new toys coming down the pike in the next few months. Have fun!

Google syncs up with Microsoft

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:58:00 +0000

Much like Apple before them, Google has finally succumbed to the Microsoft machine on at least one front. They have agree to license Microsoft’s ActiveSync technology to allow sync’ing of data with Microsoft Exchange systems. The license is a key part of Google’s release of Google Sync for Windows Mobile, iPhone and SyncML phones. The Google Sync service is a nice way to keep multiple different systems in sync, particularly between a Gmail account and a work account. And the latest version supports contacts in addition to calendar items.

I like anything that makes the data more portable, and this seems to be a move in that direction. Plus, Microsoft gets to have a bit of fun knowing that they made Google pay them for something.

The many faces of Windows 7

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:37:00 +0000

Hoping for a simpler licensing scheme with the upcoming Windows 7 release? Keep dreaming. Microsoft announced their plans for the various versions yesterday, and there are six different versions on the roadmap, not to mention special versions for the European and Korean markets.

The versions are:

Windows 7 Starter Edition (for emerging market and netbook users)
Windows 7 Home Basic (for emerging market customers only)
Windows 7 Home Premium (the main “Media Center” equivalent)
Windows 7 Professional (the business SKU for home users and non-enterprise licensees)
Windows 7 Enterprise (for volume licensees)
Windows 7 Ultimate (for consumers who want/need business features)

Some interesting things to note on the list. First off, there is no formal definition of what a “netbook” is, so there is no way to control who will use that license. The bad news on that front is that the Starter version will be artificially limited to only run three applications at a time. That renders it pretty useless, even on a netbook. I’m sure that Microsoft is claiming that it is to ensure reasonable performance or something like that, but the reality is that they are trying to force people into the more expensive versions. I cannot imagine anyone running only three applications at a time. I know I certainly couldn’t.

There there is the Professional/Enterprise schism. Enterprise is actually pretty much the same as Ultimate, according to this review, with the difference being how they will be purchased. Both will have all the features available, including BitLocker, but will no longer be required to get the Media Center features. That will be available in the Home Premium and Professional versions. For companies it will only be possible to get Enterprise if they purchase Software Assurance. This is basically Microsoft extorting a 50% premium on the OS charges from their corporate customers. It is particularly egregious when you consider that most customers will have to pay the manufacturers for the OS and then buy-up directly from Microsoft. Today one has to buy Software Assurance to have the luxury of paying a bit more to buy the Desktop Optimization Pack – a wise investment for most large organizations – so this isn’t a particularly new thing that Microsoft is doing. But it does demonstrate how they continue to struggle to provide legitimate value with the Software Assurance product. The good news is that most folks will probably be fine with Professional, so it shouldn’t be too big a deal.

Another interesting bit is in the upgrade options. For home users there will be an upgrade product from XP Home to Windows 7 Home Premium, but it will only be a discount on the license cost; technically it will require a clean install still. For business users the upgrade path will only be from the Vista product line. While that is a bit of a slap at business users the reality is that very few business users buy the OS directly or upgrade the OS on existing hardware, so that isn’t such a big deal.

At the end of the day it looks like the vast majority of users will be buying either Professional or Home Premium, with enterprise license users getting their hands on Enterprise. No pricing released yet, which isn’t too surprising. The media frenzy is starting to ramp up. This should make for a fun few months until the actual release.

Virtualization coming to the desktop

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:52:00 +0000

No, the concept of OS virtualization on the desktop is not new. But that won’t stop Citrix and Intel from trying to convince you otherwise. The two vendors are teaming up to provide what they claim are some intriguing options on the workstation virtualization front these days.

The combined technology will let information technology professionals dynamically stream a centrally managed corporate desktop, and all related applications, directly into a secure, isolated, client-based virtual machine, Citrix officials said.

Unlike server-based desktop virtualization technologies, this approach caches and executes desktop and application software directly on the PC client, enabling high-performance, rich graphics and full off-network mobility for laptop users, the officials said.

What does any of that mean? I have no idea. It sounds like they might be putting together some infrastructure that allows for centralized management of the virtual OS images that are deployed to the desktops, but that isn’t particularly clear.

Either way, look for this great new technology to be hitting the street in the second half of this year.

Autonomy to acquire Interwoven

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:26:00 +0000

There aren’t too many established companies in the Enterprise Content Management space, so when one changes hands lots of questions are bound to come pouring out. I happened a few years ago when Hummingbird sold their ECM business to Open Text and it is about to happen again, with Autonomy picking up Interwoven last week.

In theory, this is a great development as it means integrating one of the better turnkey Document Management platforms (Interwoven) with a phenomenal search and archival platform (Autonomy). But the devil is in the details, and there are a LOT of details to be discussed in this deal.

For example, Autonomy took their acquisition of Zantaz and the associated archiving product and integrated it pretty tightly with their IDOL search engine product. They also took a look at all the sub-2000 user sites where it was installed and pretty much told them to buzz off. That’s not a great way to make friends, especially when one of their primary markets is the legal industry where there aren’t too many huge clients to be had. If they take a similar stance with the Interwoven products the legal market is in HUGE trouble.

Of course, Interwoven’s legal business is a result of their acquisition of iManage years ago, so it really isn’t the compelling reason for the acquisition by Autonomy. This could end up with the legal industry in a world of hurt should Autonomy marginalize their business in this area.

For now I suppose it is a waiting game, but the Open Text acquisition didn’t result in anything good for the Hummingbird customers and the iManage/Interwoven deal didn’t really do much good either. Autonomy has a great search engine and infrastructure, but if they can’t figure out how to scale it down then legal is in big trouble.

Are NetBooks viable in a business environment?

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:19:00 +0000

There’s an old adage that goes something like “Fast, good and cheap; pick any two.” In the case of mobile computing the phrasing changes slightly to “fast, light and cheap,” but the general concept remains the same: If you want to have a functional and lightweight computer you should expect to pay for it. Lenovo has always charged a premium for their lightweight laptops as have Sony and Dell. Over the past year or so, however, the NetBook form factor seems to bee shifting the balance of this equation, with good, lightweight computers now available at dirt cheap prices.

So can these NetBooks be a viable option for users in a business environment? I think the answer is a resounding yes, despite some media reports to the contrary. Yes, they are small. Is that a problem? The screen is small, but certainly functional for a Citrix XenApps client, Outlook or web browsing. And the keyboard is slightly smaller than a standard one, but it took me all of 15 minutes to get used to typing on the new keyboard, and I now have to “adjust” when going back to a full-size laptop or desktop keyboard. Moreover, many of the limitations bandied about in the media really aren’t that big a deal.

Sure, they run on a processor and chipset that is slower and less powerful than the latest and greatest Core 2 Duo processors that you can get in a laptop. But, honestly, how much processing power does running Outlook, Word or other applications really take? Not much. No, they do not have the processing power to handle the huge graphics overhead that the Vista Aero UI requires, but they are plenty powerful to run Windows XP (the OS the vast majority of businesses are still running) and even graphics-intensive applications like Google Earth.

The deciding factor for users may just be the weight. They are ridiculously light. Coming in at under 2 pounds in many configurations there is truly no comparison with the traditional laptop configurations.

And the deciding factor on the business side of the house will likely be the cost. At ~$350-400 per system they are WAY cheaper than traditional laptops of a similar weight.

Hardware manufacturers are pooh-poohing the idea of NetBooks as business tools, but they are wrong (and likely desperately trying to defend their rapidly shrinking margins).

Dell, for now, suggests business users stick with full-size laptops, spokesman Jeremy Bolen says.

…

Meanwhile, at the Consumer Electronics Show this month, HP rolled out "road warrior" models aimed at business travelers.

"This is a new market that is absolutely developing before our eyes," says Carol Hess-Nickels, marketing director for Mini-Note PCs.

There are definitely applications where it isn’t the correct solution. The screen is a little small for heavy document review or graphics manipulation work. But for the vast majority of Information Workers (Microsoft’s fancy term for white collar folks) the NetBook is a great option. And they are cheap enough that trying them out in your business isn’t a huge investment.

Give them a try. You might manage to please the CFO and the users at the same time.

Nortel seeks bankruptcy protection

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 02:51:00 +0000

Nortel has filed for bankruptcy protection in both Canada and the United States today, hoping to stave off a complete collapse. The telephony and networking hardware vendor has been struggling for years with shrinking market share and less than spectacular improvements in their products. That adds up to a bad situation for any company and it seems to have finally caught up to Nortel.

I was never really a huge fan of their products, either on the network switching or IP Telephony side of things. They were slow to embrace the IP side of the telephony business and I believe that it hurt them in the long run. On the switching side their products were OK but they didn’t really have much that was compelling to compete with the 800 pound gorilla named Cisco.

There could be some huge fallout from this in Redmond, as Microsoft has been teaming with Nortel on much of their Unified Communication platform. There is very tight integration between the vendors and I believe that Microsoft is leveraging Nortel technology in some of their voice mail products, among other things. There is certainly enough spare cash in Redmond to buy out Nortel at this point – something I thought might happen a couple years ago – but it seems that it is still not to be. Maybe now that Nortel is truly on the ropes Microsoft will step in and save their UC investments.

Hyper-V introduces Live Migration

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:54:00 +0000

No, this isn’t another of Microsoft’s Live product ventures; this is the real deal for their Hyper-V platform. Microsoft has announced that Live Migration – analogous to Vmotion in VMware – will be available on the Hyper-V platform starting with the Server 2008 R2 release.

This announcement is a huge step forward for the platform and brings it up to a point where it starts to have functional specs that make it feasible to use in production environments. Server 2008 R2 is still in beta right now, so it isn’t immediately available in a state that I would put in to production yet, but it is getting very close.

This is particularly bad news for VMware as it will likely take a large dent out of their hypervisor market share. Of course, the hypervisor platform that you use doesn’t really matter as long as it meets your needs. There are many more important things to consider, namely the management tools available to you, and Microsoft seems to be running a pretty tight ship on that front. With Live Migration now in play I suspect that they are going to start seeing some very significant deployments of their product.

Windows 7 – Overwhelming demand!

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 16:55:00 +0000

Or something like that. Apparently Microsoft couldn’t foresee the amazing demand for the Windows 7 Beta code that they published last week. They had to pull the software offline to add servers to handle the demand.

Thanks for your interest in the Windows 7 Beta. The volume has been phenomenal—we're in the process of adding more servers to handle the demand. We're sorry for the delay and we'll re-post the Beta as soon as we can ensure a quality download experience.

On the plus side, lots of folks are reporting that it works reasonably well for a beta product. On the minus side, it is still based on the core bits of Vista, so it really just isn’t going to be all that different than Vista, and all the other apps that don’t work on Vista are likely to still not work on Windows 7. But it is new, and that’s all that really matters, right?

Oh, and if you really want the code, the bits are apparently available via torrents and have been since it was first released during the PDC conference in 2008.

And, of course, about 2 hours after I initially posted this the download is available again.

Dual screens – now on the go

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 09:15:00 +0000

Dual screen setups are all the rage these days. The monitors are relatively cheap, many new computers can easily support it out of the box and the LCDs are way smaller on a desk than CRTs, so they actually fit pretty well, even in small cubicle. The benefits of a dual screen environment are hard to argue against. The extra desktop space – whether for managing large spreadsheets, comparing documents side-by-side or managing remote systems on one screen and local resources on another – is a great thing to have available. But mobile users could never really take advantage of such an option on the go.

Until now.

Some pictures have been making the rounds recently of a new Lenovo laptop that offers a 17” primary screen and an additional 10” screen that slides out from the primary. I don’t really expect that this will become the next mainstream laptop design that everyone will be clamoring for, but it does look pretty cool, if not heavy as a brick.

OneCare bows out of the security market

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 12:54:00 +0000

Microsoft made a big splash when they introduced their OneCare product. It was supposed to be the answer to the other major players in the desktop anti-malware arena. It just really never took off. Microsoft tried pretty hard, including giving away a free copy of Office 2007 – one of their most profitable product – as part of the subscription for a while.

It seems that Microsoft has finally decided to throw in the towel on the OneCare experiment. Or they’re upgrading and rebranding, depending on which talking head you want to believe. The facts are that OneCare is being pulled from sales channels at the end of June 2009 and replaced with “Morro” a free offering from Redmond.

The new offering is supposed to run more efficiently and provide comparable virus protection, but will be removing the backup and management tools from the offering. I’m not so sure that it is much of a stretch for most folks to have assumed that software with less functionality would be more efficient, so that doesn’t really seem to be a huge selling point of the new software to me.

Of course, now that it will be free rather than a subscription priced product there is a real chance that the fears of 2006 will be realized, with Microsoft’s marketing muscle helping it to displace the established anti-virus players in the market. They couldn’t before because the product wasn’t really any less expensive than competitors and certainly wasn’t any better than them either. Some number of folks is going to care more about cost than quality and that will help drive adoption of Morro.

I’ll wait to see the new Morro product before passing judgment one way or another, but look for a lot of noise about this from Microsoft next year when they make the switch. It might be a great way to save a good chunk of change and also restore some of the performance that the security suites have sucked out of your computers.

Smokin’ fast storage

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:22:00 +0000

For many years now the benchmark for storage speed has been the 15K RPM drive. There’s a new game in town now, however, and it seems that Fusion-io is looking to raise the bar quite a bit with their new ioDrive.

First, the good news. The drive has breathtaking read/write stats: it can write at up to 368 megabits/s and read at 473 megabits/s. That’s crazy fast.

Now, the bad news. It connects to your computer using a PCI-Express x4 slot, so it isn’t a normal disk drive. The pricing is rather ridiculous, starting at $3,000 for an 80 GB model, and it maxes out at 320 GB right now. And the current iteration of the drives are not bootable.

So there are a lot of technical issues that need to be overcome, not the least of which is getting a fast enough drive bus in place to allow multiple drives to be mounted in some sort of RAID array and keep these speeds. But there seems to be a lot of potential up-side for such a technology moving forward. I’d guess a year or so until we see these in production in some reasonable capacity.

Multi-user EvDO on the go

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:06:00 +0000

I’m a huge fan of cellular WAN cards and the connectivity options that they provide. Extending that access to a group of people was always a bit of work, but made it real easy to set up an office on the go or otherwise share the joy of being online.

Novatel is addressing the complexities of the sharing with their new line of EvDO routers. The device is a combination of a cellular WAN card and wireless router. A single device to handle both the LAN and WAN halves of the connection. Plus, it looks good. It even runs on a battery rather than requiring a plug, so you can set up your own personal hotspot on the train. I’m officially in lust.

Setting up a war room, conference site or remote office site just got a LOT easier.

Hitting the (memory) wall

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:42:00 +0000

One of the issues that comes with increasing the number of cores in a processor is memory access. Back when AMD initially came out with their dual-core processors they were WAY better than the Intel models, in large part because their chipset allowed for faster access to the memory. That gave them a pretty huge in-road in the processor market for servers and a solid couple month head start over Intel in the multi-core processor battles.

Now chip manufacturers are starting to worry about memory bottlenecks in upcoming generations of multi-core processors. Recent testing at Sandia National Labs suggests that going past an 8-core processor actually causes problems with memory access. A 16-core processor actually performed at about the same rate as a dual-core processor. Oops.

Apparently Intel knows about the problem and they’re working on it, but it is still somewhat worrisome that the future of virtualization and other fun improvements in system performance and functionality pretty much depends on this working. Processor speeds are slower now than they used to be and future growth is going to be in the number of cores, not processor speed. If the performance issues can’t be solved then we’re in big trouble.

Microsoft goes patch wild this month

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:29:00 +0000

Sure, it is only eight patches that were released this week, but the actual impact is pretty significant. There are 28 different bugs/holes being patched this month, the most in any month since Microsoft started with the Patch Tuesday program five years ago.

The patches range from Office to Windows to SharePoint, mostly covering remote code execution issues. The Word and Excel patches seem pretty significant to me as the exploit simply requires opening a malicious document. And with the number of documents passing back and forth via email the surface for an attack seems pretty broad.

Happy patching.

Blackberry runs into trouble with the Storm

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:58:00 +0000

I’ve been wanting one of the new BlackBerry Storms since I first heard about the specs and plans for the device. I was super excited when the pictures and details started leaking out. And then the reviews started coming out. Bad news. Then the supply issues set in, with devices not available in stores. And there was the last-minute OS downgrade due to unspecified security issues.

And then I finally got my hands on one today for 5 minutes. And I’m pretty convinced now that there is no way I’ll want to use the device.

It is way too slow for typing if you’re used to typing on a normal BB device. The rotate is slow. The screen navigation and UI are fine, but those are icing on top of the cake that is basic functionality. Sadly the Storm seems to be coming up short. It’s really too bad, as I want a new toy.

Microsoft launches Server 2008 SMB options

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 20:48:00 +0000

Microsoft made great inroads in the SMB space with their Small Business Server solution. It provides the server and application licenses at a much lower price than buying the full products outright. There are some limitations to it – most notably the 75 user limit – but in many cases it is the best solution for an organization. Today Microsoft is extending those benefits to the Server 2008/Exchange 2007 platform with the launch of Windows Essential Business Server 2008 (“EBS”) and Windows Small Business Server 2008 (“SBS”).

SBS remains as a single server solution (two servers in the premium edition), but now with the most current versions of the server and application suites. It also remains capped at 75 users. EBS is a new product offering from Microsoft for slightly larger organizations. The basic edition includes multiple server licenses (up to three) and allows for up to 300 users to be licensed.

The pricing on the licenses is still better than buying the individual server licenses and CALs outright, but the limitations are hard to overlook. For an organization with very simple and basic needs these products are fine. If, however, an organization needs any flexibility or ability to grow the SBS/EBS options are rather limiting. Plus, I dislike the fact that Microsoft assumes that an SBS/EBS customer would necessarily use all the components and how things actually don’t work right if you don’t install them all.

This release is great news for SBS customers who want to take advantage of the benefits Exchange 2007 provides. Unfortunately Microsoft’s documentation for migrating to the new platform is still pending, so it is pretty much a crap-shoot at this point. Good luck with that.

Also on the good news front is that SBS/EBS can be purchased with Server 2003 R2 instead of Server 2008 until December 31, 2009 for folks who are a bit gun-shy about running the new server OS. Similarly SQL 2005 is still an option rather than SQL 2008 for the premium versions.

AT&T opens up WiFi network to smartphones

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 20:27:00 +0000

AT&T has decided to open up their WiFi network for free to anyone who has a smartphone on a data contract with the carrier. The offering was originally for iPhone users but it has also been announced for Blackberry Bold users and then for all smartphone contracts.

Why is AT&T doing this? I guess it depends on who you ask, but most theories seem to be focused on this being an offering to make up for poor 3G performance on their network and many upset iPhone users. With the now November 4 release date of the Bold having been delayed more than once because of concerns about the 3G network performance. Since the AT&T WiFi coverage includes all Starbucks locations they’re basically offering a huge hotspot solution to the bandwidth problem. Hopefully it will assuage their customers. If it doesn’t their approach of having cool phones available first may not be enough to keep their business growing.

Sprint and Cognet in a peering battle

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 00:30:00 +0000

I spent a couple hours today troubleshooting a problem with connectivity from a client to a collection of web sites. The cause? Apparently Cogent went and upset another ISP with their cheap bandwidth and decent support services. This time around it is Sprint that is upset, and their solution was to black hole all traffic destined to the Cogent network.

If this sounds familiar that’s because it is. Cogent has had similar problems in the past with other ISPs and has resolved them eventually, but the outages are an incredible pain to the affected customers. A law firm unable to file documents with a court based on their ISP choice could be somewhere between malpractice and disastrous. And there is very little that a customer can do about it one they find themselves cut off.

Of course, planning ahead provides a chance of success. In this particular case having redundant internet connections from different carriers and BGP configured for IP connectivity meant that forcing traffic to the “other” line was sufficient to get around the problem, with virtually zero impact on the end users. This may not be a “typical” business continuity scenario since everything in the world appears to be operating normally, but for this client having such a configuration means overcoming a significant barrier to doing business based on circumstances outside of their control. If that isn’t business continuity in a nut shell I don’t know what is.

Not sure if your business continuity plan is up to snuff? Let Proton Associates talk it over with you and see how it looks.

Windows 7 shows up at PDC

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:02:00 +0000

We knew it was coming, and Microsoft delivered, showing off a “pre-beta” version of Windows 7 today at the PDC conference. And how does it look? Well, a lot like Vista, it seems. In fact, while I see a lot of press about “not making the same mistakes” and “simplifying things” for the users, there doesn’t seem to be much solid information about how they are going to do that. And since the basis of the new OS is shared with the core code of Vista, chances of major changes are pretty slim.

"The general perception is that Vista is a damaged brand, so it behooves Microsoft to move on to sell something new even if it's not a quantum leap in terms of technology," said Toan Tran, analyst at Morningstar.

In other words, if Microsoft can figure out how to release something with a new brand, even if it doesn’t really change much from Vista, Microsoft should do well by it. I have to disagree with this analyst. Customers want an OS that actually works, that is easily managed and easily deployed. Vista didn’t hit those targets, and unless things actually change under the covers Windows 7 will be just as disappointing as Vista, even if the hardware drivers all work just fine.

A “special” Microsoft Security alert

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 01:50:00 +0000

So I’m sitting at home this evening, watching the World Series and I get an email from Microsoft. I get a lot of those so I rarely pay attention to them, but this one seems different. For starters, it says “critical” in the subject line, so I know it must be important. It turns out that they’ve released an out-of-cycle security patch that apparently affects every version of Windows.

What are the effects of the bug? The standard “Remote Code Execution” flaw. This one is in the Server service, which has been a part of Windows since the NT days. And the bug allows for unauthenticated user (except on Vista/Server 2008, where the user has to be authenticated) to compromise the system they are attacking completely. This is the the type of hole that major worms are based on. And even though the bug almost certainly affects systems dating back to NT4 and probably NT3.51, Microsoft only has patches for Windows 2000 SP4 and later versions because the older stuff is no longer supported. Awesome.

There’s a patch out, but no cool name for any exploits yet. So we don’t have a Slammer or a Melissa yet. But the hole is there. Go ahead and patch up all your computers. Good times.

Virtual Machine Manager 2008 released

noreply@blogger.com (Seth) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 02:24:00 +0000

Microsoft has released the most significant piece of their move into the enterprise virtualization space today – Virtual Machine Manager 2008.

Sure, there is Hyper-V, and it is a decent hypervisor, but the hypervisor itself doesn’t really matter all that much. So when looking at a virtualization environment the management and integration tools are key. And Virtual Machine Manager is a huge leap forward on that front. Designed to integrate both into the System Center toolkit and with the three major commercial virtualization platforms (VMware, Citrix/Xen & Hyper-V), SCVMM08 is basically the cat’s pajamas of virtualization management. Get a copy of this tool if you can; it is definitely worth looking at if virtualization is part of your environment.

And for those of you keeping score at home, Citrix/Xen was busy earlier in the month, with the release of a beta version of Kensho, a tool to facilitate the move of virtual guests between hosts running different hypervisor platforms. Some additional comments about Kensho can be found in a post I had a couple months back.