Category: Technology

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.

Categories
Technology

Head in the Cloud

There is an infuriating post over at Wired’s Innovation Insights titled MDM is Dead, Long Live the (Enterprise) Cloud.

Let’s start with the obvious. The author, Israel Lifshitz, is the founder and CEO of Nubo.

Who is Nubo you might ask?

Nubo is, from their site: REMOTE Enterprise Workspace for all mobile devices. It says that right on their homepage.

Nubo

Well, almost all mobile devices. iOS and Android.

They’re a Cloud company (I’m going to use the capital C when referring to the hyped marketing term). The CEO of a Cloud company wrote a fluff piece about how Cloud is going to do away with managing devices and that BYOD (with the Cloud) is going to rule all things, forever.

First, I want to believe in this future. I really do. The idea that anyone can bring any device and get all of their work done without any issues is indeed something I would love to see. It would free IT up from having to manage devices so that we could work on providing new technology to people and maybe even, *gasp*, training them as well instead of fighting fires.

However, I think that we grossly underestimate what that might mean for not just IT, but for our colleagues as well.

Moving to an entirely Cloud-based future puts all of the strain on networking, for one thing. Your internet connections become the only way for you to get work done. Don’t have a ton of options or can’t easily afford redundant connections so that if one provider goes belly up for a little bit everything doesn’t grind to a screeching halt? Well, too bad. It is in the Cloud, so hold tight because it will come back.

That’s not always acceptable … so you better be ready to have an answer for that besides an SLA with a few 9s attached to it.

Here’s a quote:

If nothing is stored on our personal devices, IT has nothing to manage. The can take data out of your control. Ultimately, isn’t that the purpose of MDM and EMM?

The problem with the idea that there will never be anything to manage is that you’ve moved the management from company-owned devices to person-owned devices … which still need to be watched. Updated. Fixed. Cleaned. You get the idea. What you have done is expanded the number of types of devices that IT is now supposed to support.

Does your new Enterprise Cloud support the latest version of IE 11? No? Too bad, three people in Finance just updated their machines to IE 11 so you need to find a way to support them. Also, the person in Recruitment just called and updated to Mavericks and the Enterprise Cloud currently does not support that either.

It’s coming. Soonish. You’ll need to purchase the next service pack in order to continue to have access to that. Also, don’t think about ending your service contract anytime soon because now all of your information is stored in an Enterprise Cloud and getting it out could prove tricky.

Mobile is happening right now and IT needs to catch up, but I’m not convinced that BYOD is going to be some great liberator of the masses from their technology hatred because, shocking, most people don’t love their technology like IT does or can. People want to get work done, in the easiest way to do it, and in a consistent way that will continue to work.

BYOD brings in inconsistency, no matter how well things might work. Even Facebook acts differently and I’m pretty sure you aren’t going to find an Enterprise Cloud with the narrow focus of Facebook nor the resources available. They have a hard enough time.

Big changes are coming, but let us be certain not to throw out the good in the endless cycle or searching for the perfect. We’re going to end up very disappointed.

Categories
Technology

Siri’s Comeback

When originally released,  I did not use Siri all that much besides checking to see what would be thrown back at me when I asked a strange question … or to see if she can understand my boys better than I can.

However, something changes about two months ago and now I use Siri every day, multiple time a day, and I expect her to work every time. That’s a big change for me as I always expected Siri to get it wrong in the past.

I’m not a power user by any means, but the things Siri allows me to do quickly and easily make her an invaluable resource.

Here is how I use Siri:

  • Set timers for many different things (cooking, the laundry, keeping track of time for the boys, reminding myself to do something in the near future, etc.).
  • Create initial calendar events.
  • Create tasks in Reminder.

I also make heavy use of the dictation feature of iOS while I am holding my newest son. However, a good portion of my day is made easier by allowing me to just dictate to Siri the above things and then let the algorithms take care of the rest.

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.