It sounds ridiculous, but seriously, this new phone is great.
It looks like a pretty standard touch phone but then when you start
to use and experience the phone you then see what the big deal is
about. All of the information is at your fingertips due to the
Information Tiles.
Its screen is great, has enough storage for me, has almost
100,000 Apps.
Check out this Video:
And this one too!
Cool, Right?!!!
NOTICE:
IF THESE STEPS ARE PERFORMED INCORRECTLY OR WITHOUT TESTING
IT IS POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO WIPE OUT YOUR XENSERVER DATA LOSING ALL
STORAGE REPOSITORIES. TAKE GREAT CARE WHEN FOLLOWING THESE
INSTRCUTIONS. Strickland Networks is not responsible for someone
erasing their virtual disks by mistake.
Now that that is over, let the fun begin!
I was updating a 6 server XenServer Farm yesterday and came
across a memory error. It started out as a hardware (HW) error
and then turned into a BIOS problem. The Dell Engineer then began
to search for the updates that I would need for my Server. The
Dell representative was very helpful and began putting together a
list of updates that I would need… I began to ponder the
multitude of different servers that I had to update after I
finished with these six. I also know that I have a Windows update
DVD that will update all the Dell hardware on my Windows Server
plus the drivers.
I asked the question to the Dell Tech and he replied that yes
there was a solution. You need these two DVDs:
DVD 1 (System Management Tools and Build – DVD):
ftp://ftp.dell.com/secure/sysman/OM_6.3.0_SMTD_A00.iso.001
ftp://ftp.dell.com/secure/sysman/OM_6.3.0_SMTD_A00.iso.002
DVD 2 (BIOS and Firmware Images – Dual Layer DVD)
ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/sysman/om631_suu_a00.iso.001
ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/sysman/om631_suu_a00.iso.002
ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/sysman/om631_suu_a00.iso.003
ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/sysman/om631_suu_a00.iso.004
This tool can join the files for you:
http://www.treepad.net/download/hjsplit.zip
Proceed down to see the process.
It should be noted that this same process can be run on any
Linux Server. It is not recommended on Windows Servers due to
possible driver incompatibilities.
Some people will try to tell you that the only enterprise class
virtualization out there is VM Ware, but I am here to tell you that
Citrix is a contender. Not only is it a contender but it is
growing in features and in acceptance. Citrix XenServer is
actually the World’s largest Internet Facing Virtualization
environment, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Because the
foundation of XenServer is built on the open source Xen, there is
lots of opportunity for developers to to build upon the feautres
and functionality of the product. One such features is Everun by
Marathon Technologies. The product will allow you to even unplug
the server that your primary node is running on and the transfer to
the secondary server is so seemless that if you were running XenApp
on the server your end users would never even know that they
swicthed to a different server.
http://www.marathontechnologies.com/high_availability_xenserver.html)
There are many companies that can benefit from an iSCSI SAN but few can afford the entry level price of a DELL MD3000i with 30 Terabytes of Native Storage would cost roughly $14,000. That is a good chunk of change to drop for a storage solution.
We have been able to leverage some of our market contacts and now can deliver an entry level SAN solution with 32 Terabytes of Storage for around $8500. To be fair, I chose both to have similar hardware and support options. Sounds compelling, doesn’t it? Give us a call for this entry level solution and get your Virtualization, Cluster, or just storage environment off to a good start.
817-224-2100
Most all of my clients have either a BlackBerry or an iPhone.
And almost all of them use Microsoft Exchange. This is not going
to be a compare and contrast of who is better: the BlackBerry or
the iPhone. Of couse the iPhone has ActiveSync integrated into the
OS if you have the Enterprise Data Plan from your Wireless
Provider. But now there is an equalizer, AstraSync enters the
picture. AstraSync allows for you to synchronize your BlackBerry
with your Exchange server without having to Install BlackBerry
Enterprise Server or its free counterpart. AstraSync is like
ActiveSync for the BlackBerry. It allows you to get and recieve
Exchange Email, it updates your calendar and your contacts, you can
flag messages and add attatchments. Pretty slick if you ask me.
Also, what I hear is that you do not have to upgrade your phone to
the Enterprise Data Plan to be able to use it. You can just get an
unlimited data plan with your provider and away you go. The
software costs $49 per year and is well worth it when you look at
your savings from not having to have an Enterprise Data Plan. They
also offer a free trial so that you can get your feet wet with to
see if you really want it. Just use the link below to give it a
try.
I had a client contact me recently about email encryption. I new already that there were 3 ways to go about this:
This is a necessity for many that send sensitive email because once an email leaves your organization it is no longer encrypted.
Example 1: You have hotmail account and you email a yahoo account: the email is not encrypted once it leaves hotmail’s servers. and visa versa.
Example 2: You have an Exchange Server in your organization and you email another company out there that has an Exchange server by default these messages are not encrypted either. **
While I was updating my pricing list for different services to recommend, I found a very compelling new service: http://www.sendinc.com
The service does not store any of your data. You go to the main page which has the email form on it. After you type in your email address they require you to register. You then create your message and choose who you want to send it to. You can attach as much as 10 Megabytes of attachments. The message is encrypted and then attached to an email that is emailed to the recipient. So the message is no longer stored at Sendinc. When the end user opens the website attachment the data is uploaded to the website and decrypted there. All data transmissions are RSA SSL encrypted (1024 Bits). Even if you forward your email to someone else they cannot read it. It has to be opened from your email.
I give this web app two enthusiastic thumbs up!
The other night I was up late (imagine that), and I was
tinkering with my phone and some possible cool apps. I came across
one of my all time favorite apps, QIK for my Blackberry. QIK is
really a website, www.qik.com,
that allows you to stream live video from your video camera enabled
cell phone. I live streemed this video from my Phone and then it
was automatically Published to the site. You can also mark videos
as Private, share them with specific people, or publish to several
social networking websites. Your Live Streams are also
archived.
If you are also interested in finding out more about the
RoomAlert, check my blog or subscribe to the RSS feed. I Should be
posting about it soon.
Very Cool!
So okay, I wasn’t able to sleep so I started reading some email.
You kow trying to catch up on some inbox reading. I then came
across my occasional MCP Flash email that told me about a new
online game. It is a Microsoft Professional Quiz Show style
game! I know sounds geeky, but I figu re if you are reading my
blog you might be into this kind of thing. Anyways, You can use
your passport login on Live ID whatever you have, and give it a
go. If you login it will track your progress so that you can leave
and pick up where you left off later. Also for me it was adictive,
and it points out what I need to brush up on (since this is my
career I figure I need to stay sharp).
Questions Range from Easy, Medium, and Hard and it is timed when
you see your answer choices. There are also some lifelines or as
they call them, “Vouchers” that you can use. Questions topics
include but are not limited to: Win 2008, 2003, Exchange 2007, Win
7, XP, and SQL 2005. There could be more but I didn’t play for
long.
The name of the game is Are You Certifiable?.
And, here is the link:
http://www.microsoft.com/click/areyoucertifiable/default.aspx
If you want add me as a friend in the game, screen name: DRMILES
Happy Gaming!
With all of the new features of XenServer 5.6, I have been very
excited about rolling it out. There has been one thing though.
OpenManage and XenServer haven’t been the best pals. When we had
been trying to rollout any XenServer on a Dell Server, it seems
that we had to jump through hoops to make OpenManage work. Well
Dell has really worked on being more XenServer Friendly and
released a Supplemental Pack for XenServer.
A Supplemental Pack is an install package that can be
slipstreamed into the install of XenServer. So if you were
installing XenServer you would simply start with the install CD,
then use the Linux Templates Supplemental CD, and then use the Dell
OpenManage CD when it asks for you to continue the install. It is
great!
I had to call Dell to get a copy of the ISO because it was not
yet available on the website. Here is the link so that you too can
enjoy some Dell and Citrix Xen!
http://ftp.dell.com/sysman/OM-SrvAdmin-Dell-Web-LX-6.3.0-2075.XenServer56_A00.10.iso
By
the way, Thank You! Johanness Far (Dell Enterprise Technical
Support Senior Analyst) for getting me the link.