Category: Business

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Business Life Technology

Eggs and Baskets

My family’s farm has a handful of egg-laying hens so I like the phrase “don’t put all of your eggs in one basket”. I tend to think it is a pretty good mantra to live by in many facets of life (not all, mind you).

In technology it gets to be interesting because many times we are encouraged to toss in as many “eggs” as possible into a single vendor’s “basket”.

That tweet made me just a little sad because the same sort of tweet could have been tossed around about Microsoft, or IBM before them. The “nobody ever was fired for using [insert platform here]” meme rings almost too true when it comes to technology decisions for many.

Now, I’m just as terrible since I try to stick as close to the Cupertino mothership as I can, but when making IT decisions IĀ spread the wealth around when appropriate. It is a “right tool of the right job” sort of approach which has served me well.

When leveraging a single platform you have so little control over to do so much, you put yourself at extreme risk if that platform owner would decide that they are going to amend the deal you’ve been working on. Think of it like poor Lando when Vader comes to Bespin. You better hope that Leia is there to save your skin in the end.

I know monolithic platforms can provide some benefits, but they also are filled with extreme risk. Google is no different from Apple is no different from Microsoft is no different from IBM. They’re all seeking money to stay alive (and create military robots … sorry). Relying too much on a single platform will, some point in the future, bring you pain.

The question is always: will the pain be worth it?

Categories
Business Life Technology

Saying Goodbye

Everyone seems to want to say goodbye to IT, but I have some things I would like to say “goodbye” to in the technology world.

  • Optical drives. They take up an insane amount of space for something that I use maybe once a year … if that much anymore. Disk space is limited. They are noisy. They have moving parts. Just get rid of the things once and for all.
  • I might be alone in this, but I would love to do away with hinges on technology items. Laptops. Convertible tablets. Game Boy Advanced SPs. Just get rid of the things. Almost no company can make a good one (some ThinkPads get really close) and they are the weakest point of almost any device. I would love it if we could just do away with hinges. This is a major reason I would love to go iPad + desktops only in the future.
  • Can we finally do away with printers? I know some people still swear by them, and I am fully aware we are not going to get rid of them, but they are really annoying and a major cause of headaches. Their drivers are flaky, at best. They are loud. They are noisy. They have MANY moving parts. They break … all of the time. Can we finally do away with these things!?
  • The phrase “I’m not very good with computers” should be retired. I understand that you might not be comfortable with everything involved with computers and modern technology, but pulling out this excuse everything time something doesn’t go exactly the way you expected it is more annoying than endearing. There are plenty of times things go wrong for me … that’s part of the business. Just ask for your help and we’ll get through it together.
  • All current, standard USB cables. The whole lot of them are terrible. Having the Lightning connector on my iPad mini and iPhone 5 has seriously spoiled me … when it comes to good cables. Reversible. Solid-feeling. All USB cables are a sham. There is hope since the future of USB looks to be reversible but … we have yet to see what that will look like. Even the Thunderbolt port and cables are light years ahead of USB. Shameful, really.
  • Websites trying to sell something without clearly listing a price. Usually they are something like “Request a Quote” or “Call for Pricing” instead of clearly listing a pricing. It doesn’t necessarily need to be the final pricing … but I want to know what I am getting into so that I don’t have to waste my time. The likelihood of me leaving your site if you don’t list pricing increases almost ten-fold.
  • Websites trying to sell a software product without good, and representative, screen shots. Every operating system comes with some way to take screen shots. DO. IT. I understand that design is not only what it looks like, but I want to know what it looks like. If your product pages are huge blocks of marketing text … I’m going elsewhere. Immediately.

This is not a complete list, but you get the idea.

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Business

The Start of a Relationship

As a vendor, let me give you a recommendation.

When meeting with the IT staff who are vital to getting your product to work correctly, here are the things you should not do:

  • Belittle the current solution. You never know who is listening and how your comment is going to be taken.
  • Don’t patronize. That IT staff member might know more about what you are trying to talk about than you do.
  • Watch your tone of voice. Talking down to someone because they don’t have “X-year of experience with this product” is not going to engender trust.
  • Cut the gimmicks. IT staff do not care about having their picture in your product or that little gift you are handing out. Actually, it probably raises flags in our heads about what you are NOT telling us.
  • Always have an answer for the following: what are the weaknesses/problems with your product/solution. Not having an answer will also raise flags.

That’s just a start.

The start of any relationship with any vendor is of vital importance because it sets the ground rules for how things are going to go and the mood and tone for the relationship going forward. Don’t mess it up.

Categories
Business Technology

Vendors Lack Flexibility

I’m not going to rail against 3rd party vendors here, but I do want to point out one area where I have found an extreme weakness … the same one pertaining to two different vendors.

We are looking at a domain name switch here on campus and luckily, we have the domain name. Sadly, we can’t add it to your Google Apps for Education account (yet) because it was used prior by someone else. That stinks.

So I’ve been working with support for the past week trying to get it added to our account, but no luck so far. I’m supposed to have more instructions later today, but they said that yesterday as well. All told, I can’t add the domain to our account which means I can’t really start the move tot he domain.

I have run into similar issues trying to add my email address to my personal Google account because I had used that domain in Google Apps in the past. Support has not been able to help me with that one so far.

Then, I want to try out Microsoft Live for Domains again because I kind of like the new web Outlook. Out of luck for the same reason I can’t add the new domain to Google … it has been used with some Microsoft property somewhere in the past. So I sit and wait for support to get back to me there as well.

If I was running my own server, just having ownership of the domain name is enough to get me going. I don’t need to contend with a vendor’s policies as well, and that is a real weakness. It is hard enough to navigate your own policies but then you need to be willing and able to navigate the policies of another party when trying to get things up and running.

The questions, as always, center around whether it is worth it and what the loss of flexibility and control mean for your institution.

I’m sure I’ll get things worked out, but I would be testing already if I would have kept stuff in-house. I’m not going to even think about whether that trade-off is ultimately worth it right now, but it is something to always keep in mind when faced with the decision of outsourcing parts of your IT infrastructure.

Categories
Business Technology

How To Upgrade to XenServer 6.2: My Story

This is my story on how I was able to upgrade our two virtualization stacks to XenServer 6.2. It is a tale of woe, so be prepared.

Where to begin …

We have two virtualization “stacks” consisting of four servers each. Two servers are for storage (Ubuntu 12.04 boxes using DRBD for replication) and two are XenServer hosts. At first we were hoping to use software RAID on the host boxes, but that did not work out.

So, we went ahead and purchased Adaptec RAID 6405 cards for the host boxes even though they were not on the HCL list for XenServer because we thought it would be easy enough to go ahead and create driver disks. While it is possible, it is still a pain.

Worse than that, when we attempted the upgrade to XenServer 6.2 from our 6.1 pools … the installation media would not see the prior installation even when using proper driver disks. We could do new installations, but we could not upgrade pools.

What!?

So … a new plan was hatched. Here are the steps:

  1. Purchase new LSI MegaRAIDSAS 9260-4i card as a replacement for the Adaptec RAID 6405 card currently in one of the host boxes.
  2. Install said card into host box and test installation of XenServer 6.1.
  3. After installation of XenServer 6.1, test upgrade to XenServer 6.2
  4. Reinstall XenServer 6.1 onto host.
  5. Run patches and add back into pool.
  6. Order three more RAID cards.
  7. Migrate VMs to the newly added pool member.
  8. Drop other host box with the Adaptec card still in it.
  9. Install new RAID card and install XenServer 6.1.
  10. Run patches and add back into pool.
  11. Upgrade all pool hosts and pool to XenServer 6.2.

Do that for each stack. It allows me to move each host box onto a RAID card supported by XenServer and then allows me to upgrade the entire pool to XenServer 6.2 using the mechanisms with XenCenter.

YAY!

I’ve learned a lot, again, through this entire process … maybe most importantly how vital it is to have a plan ready to go in your head before you start and to follow it as closely as possible. Luckily, this one worked.

I’ll have to wait and see if I am as lucky in the future.