Category: Technology

Categories
Technology

The Possibilites Are Endless

I thought I was done with the indecisiveness of technology decisions … but it has only gotten worse.

When all you have to choose from is Apple, it narrows the field down quite a bit. That is especially true when you can knock off the top-end of every category. However, if you start to include Linux-based machines in the mix, the field opens up and you start to get bogged down in the tiniest of details …

… and there are many.

So, to help my mind work through the huge backlog of information, I am going to write down some ideas for where my setup is going to go.

Goals

My current setup works just fine for me, but it has some weaknesses as I continue to move further and further into my sysadmin position.

  • Linux is now the primary OS I work with every day and Windows is the primary OS I support every day (on the user side of things). We are seeing more and more iOS devices on campus, but still few Apple computers.
  • I want to have as light a machine as possible to take with me when I travel to see family or for conferences and other things.
  • I read a lot more documentation now than I did before, which means I need some way to keep that documentation with me and read it easily.
  • I need something to test different configurations with, so a virtualization platform is a must as well … something I can easily spin a VM up on to see if an idea will work. I want to be able to take that with me too.
  • My wife needs an upgrade soon. The 2009 MacBook she has been using has worked really well for her, but it is getting a little long-in-the-tooth and I would like to have her use something with a built-in SD card reader.
  • This is a long shot, but I’d love to be back down to a single computer between work and home that is my “main” machine. That might be too much to ask for currently, but that is the future goal.
  • Want to spend the least amount of money and there is a distinct possibility of eliminating some of my extra computing devices when this is all said and done. Having fewer things around would be very nice.
  • Must still allow me to do what I need to do.

One thing you learn right away is that anything is going to be a compromise. There is no single setup that is going to easily meet all of my requirements, which makes me sad but is inevitable.

The greatest area of compromise is in ease-of-communication. Apple has a very slick and very integrated system with iCloud, iMessages, iTunes, and everything else. It really is quite remarkable what they have been able to accomplish.

For example: I can work on a document in Pages in OS X, close the lid on that laptop, pick up my iPad mini and continue working on that same document. That is pretty cool. I’ll hopefully have a post in the near future why the tech-elite thinks Apple can’t do server-side technologies.

Hint: it is because, most often, Apple isn’t trying to be Google.

Before I get too far ahead of myself, I guess I should probably lay out some options.

The All Apple

All Apple almost everywhere.

There are two variations of this:

  1. I keep my 13″ MacBook Pro, my wife keeps her 13″ MacBook, I sell the Mac mini.
  2. I keep my Mac mini, my wife gets the 13″ MacBook Pro (which we share at home), and I sell the 13″ MacBook.

The parts that stay the same are the iPad and our iPhones. Those are not going anywhere. I’m probably going to end up selling our 1st gen iPad just to rid ourselves of the 30-pin dock connector once and for all.

The first option above would get me down to a single machine, but my wife sticks with her aging 13″ MacBook for a while. The second option fixes the latter problem, but I’m splitting time again between two machines (and the 13″ MacBook Pro would be shared between us with two user accounts … not ideal).

However, I keep interoperability, which is nice. It also narrows things down just because I still have all-Apple at home. Makes it easier for me there as well.

Linux For Life

After the first, these all get more interesting.

  • My wife gets the 13″ MacBook Pro.
  • I sell the 13″ MacBook and Mac mini.
  • I use the Lenovo ThinkPad X220 as my main laptop and purchase new iPad Air as traveling machine.

Oh boy, now it gets interesting.

This would solve a number of things. First, I would be down to a single mobile machine, my wife would get an upgrade, but we lose many of the nice things about owning Apple devices. I’d be working mostly with Linux, so there would be that portion as well. I’d need to break apart some of my workflows to make them more platform-agnostic, but is that such a bad thing?

I’d probably end up purchasing a docking station for at work and at home so that I don’t have to worry about unhooking cables all the time. This is an interesting one because it would eliminate two machines I currently need to take care of.

That simplification is quite compelling.

Don’t Touch That

I guess another option is not to touch anything. Don’t sell anything. Just keep going as I am right now.

It might seem to make sense to do this, but that isn’t usually how I “roll” … more or less. I’m a tinkerer, and if there isn’t something holding me back, I’ll tear apart my setup and rebuild it just because I think there might be some way to do it just a tiny bit better.

Many people might yell at me to just go this route because I could be spending my time on other things, but where is the fun in that!?

Mix & Match

Then there is always the possibility of mixing-and-matching things as well. Maybe I ditch the 13″ MacBook and the Mac mini and just try to get by with an iPad mini for a while, Or maybe an iPad Air … or do I go crazy and get myself a Nexus 7 to play around with just because I’m kind of nuts.

And that is kind of the problem, there are so many different combinations that I don’t know which way to turn.

Here is a list of what I am working with the items italicized to indicate those which cannot be sold.

  • 13″ MacBook Pro (early 2011)
  • 13″ MacBook (late 2009)
  • Mac mini (late 2012)
  • Lenovo ThinkPad X220
  • 16 GB iPad mini (1st gen) w/Verizon LTE
  • 16 GB iPad (1st gen)
  • 16 GB iPhone 5 (black)
  • 16 GB iPhone 5 (white)
  • Custom desktop machine
  • ASUS 24″ LED monitor (2)

That’s a lot of computing power but it also means there are too many ways to do things. Being able to simplify the whole thing down to fewer options (and fewer things to take care of) would be the best option.

Endless Possibilities

I don’t have an answer right now for which way I am going to go with this, but I do know something has to change. I’m extremely frustrated with my current setup precisely because there are too many variables in it.

As usual, I’ll report back when I’ve made a decision.

 

Categories
Technology

The Importance of HCLs

This is going to get a complete and total “DUH” from many of my system administrator friends out there, but I thought I would just share my experience as well … and why I should never just expect that a little extra work will be worth it in the end.

We run XenServer here on campus for our virtualization infrastructure and have been relatively pleased with how it has fit out needs. While updates should be trivial, a decision I made definitely complicated things far beyond what they needed to be.

For all other servers on campus we use Adaptec RAID controllers and have been very happy with them. We also used them in our storage boxes (running Ubuntu 12.04). They have been rock-solid and so I wanted to stick with what we know when it came to the XenServer host boxes as well.

The only problem is that Adaptec is not well-supported by XenServer. You can do it (and we did originally) by creating driver disks every time a new kernel is installed. That means that normal updates can cause headaches as you wait for the DDK to drop, then create the driver disk, and then hope that the driver installation works when you install the update. We did it a number of times and it worked fine, but it was not ideal.

It also caused an issue where we could not move from XenServer 6.1 to the new, open source, XenServer 6.2 at least in part because we were using Adaptec RAID controllers. That was enough. So I finally sat down with the HCLs for XenServer 6.0.2, XenServer 6.1, and XenServer 6.2 and worked to find a RAID card to help us with the upgrade to XenServer 6.2 and also push us into the future as well.

Needless to say, I found one, and I wish I would have done this sooner.

Working with a supported RAID controller has the following benefit, so far:

  • installation is faster because I do not need to install separate drivers for the RAID controllers
  • updates as faster because I do not need to have driver disks for each kernel update
  • upgrades are faster (and possible) because I can now do an upgrade to the XenServer pool without needing to do a fresh reinstall and migration of VMs
  • I have peace of mind because if something happens, I’m just a reinstall away from a working box again … regardless of whether I have the driver disks anymore or not

So I’ve learned my lesson. I am now going to pour over the HCL for a given software package before I go off making decisions. Fortunately we have use for the Adaptec cards I am replacing … and I am very happy to finally be rid of them soon in our XenServer host boxes.

Categories
Life Technology

Limiting The Future

Marco Arment posted some commentary to Matt Gemmell’s The Unacknowledged Compromise. While I’m not sure I disagree with much that was posted by the two gentlemen, the footnote added by Marco rubbed me the wrong way.

If you can’t afford both an iPad and a laptop, and you’re technically proficient enough to enjoy my site, you probably shouldn’t get an iPad at all.

You’d probably be better served getting a laptop (as your only computer) first, a smartphone second, and maybe an e-ink Kindle if you want a bigger screen for portable reading.

A lot of what he wrote is true, but I think it definitely underestimates just how much better something like an iPad can be for traveling.

It isn’t just the size of the device, or the fact that it doesn’t have a hinge, or the fact that the accessories are so much smaller for the iPad (compare a MacBook power adapter to the iPad charger). Those are all things in the iPad’s favor.

It is how you pack that changes when you move from a laptop to a tablet. A tablet is something you can add to any bag without needing to bring anything extra along. You limit the amount of stuff you need to bring along to be productive. I have my iPad mini in a case so, along with the power adapter, that’s all I need to bring along and I’m set. I can toss that into any bag that I might bring along on a trip or just carry it sans a bag.

That’s a big shift.

With a laptop I bring along a power adapter, an extension cord for the power adapter (because if you hang that power adapter on a wall it is going to take up too much space),  a mouse, an external hard drive with my “work”, another power adapter for my phone … you see where I’m going.

I had forgotten about that. The same charger for my iPad can double as a charger for my iPhone. That doesn’t even bring into account the idea that I can have LTE connectivity built into my iPad so that I am completely untethered. Those are big wins.

The reason we need laptops and desktops right now is because almost every single workflow we have right now is built around laptops, desktops, windowed operating systems, etc. OF COURSE they’d be easier to do on those devices, it only makes sense.

However, let’s not think that it will always be this way or even that it needs to be right now. Already email is easier for me to handle on an iPad or iPhone than on my desktop and media is easier to deal with on those devices as well. More and more we are going to see (here’s that word again) a stratification of tasks, workflows, and devices based on what they are best at.

I will state that we are not there yet and things are just STARTING to happen, but there is no way we are going to know what to do if we don’t try to push the boundaries a little bit. Pushing the boundaries can sometimes be annoying at first, but that is the only way to truly find the pain points.

This isn’t just about iPads and iPhones and MacBooks … but about the general tension between the mobile devices we are seeing now and the general computing devices many of us are used to from the past.

Categories
Business Technology

A Collegiate Opportunity

I wanted a good title, so this is what I came up with.

The rise of Apple, mobile devices, and the quandary Microsoft currently finds itself in with the uncertainty at CEO along with product issues (Windows Phone, Windows 8, etc.) is providing a unique opportunity for 3rd party software providers to get into colleges and universities by providing a better experience than Microsoft can offer with the influx of non-Microsoft devices.

Providing services for all platforms is where these 3rd parties need to be headed. While the “cloud” might sound all fluffy, there are concerns about security and control which need to be addressed but they need to be addressed in such a way that there is still flexibility as to what devices can be used and where. That is a weak point right now.

Apple isn’t going to provide it, and Google is going to keep it to themselves s (on their own servers and services) so it leaves an opening. Companies who have been pushed into the background would do well to take advantage of this unique opportunity.

I added Collegiate to the title because I see it where I work. Students no longer use the file server space we provision for them and even many faculty and staff members have gone outside to find the flexibility they crave. Providing a solution to provide flexibility along with appropriate amounts of control would go a long way to solving many issues.

When I entered college in 2005 it was still relatively rare for an undergraduate to have a laptop (at least where I went, a small private college in the midwest). Now, however, a single student will have three or four distinct devices attached to their name … and that doesn’t even count the ride of Xbox and Playstation as not just a staple for gaming entertainment, but entertainment in general. I spent the better part of a couple of days figuring out which headers our firewall was stripping from just the Playstation 3’s Netflix application because it was affecting enough students on campus for someone to finally contact me.

Those are huge changes and more are on the way. Just today a student showed up with a 7″ ASUS Windows tablet and was having issues connecting to WiFi on campus. Besides being an abysmal experience (I’m sorry, it just is for me), it is ANOTHER new type of device to try to take account of.

The pace of change means that IT departments are looking for ways to continue to provide tools to students and faculty. 3rd parties have a great opportunity right now to provide something, anything, to make this easier and/or better.

It won’t be there forever.

Categories
Business Technology

Mobile Parity

The phrase “mobile first” is tossed around quite a bit in technology circles and for good reason. Mobile devices (e.g. tablets, phones, etc.) are selling in ever greater numbers to ever more diverse people in more locations. For many people, a mobile device is now their primary device for accessing information via the internet and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

It really is a continuum when you think about it. I’ll try to lay it out as my mind perceives it here:

  • Mobile Only
  • Mobile First
  • Platform Parity
  • Desktop First
  • Desktop Only

For a long time we were at the Desktop Only side of things because, simply, desktops were the only things available. You didn’t need to worry about mobile devices because mobile devices didn’t exist.

Or at least not the extent we think of now.

We are now in a time where we have a multitude of different devices, form factors, and connection opportunities to be able to stratify products and services so that we can put them in the place they are most needed and will be the easiest to accomplish. There is no need to only support a single platform outside of resource constraints.

Also, don’t get me wrong, resource constraints are a huge issue.

However! In order to have the best experiences for your colleagues/users/customers you need to start asking the following question: where would this best be used? I’ll give an example.

Harvest is a wonderful web-based time-tracking and invoice-sending app. I’d dare to say they have the best interface for easily tracking invoices and time attached to work. I’ve used them a lot. They do have a mobile app but it is a focused mobile app (thinking specifically on iOS). You can’t do everything on the mobile app (yet), but you CAN track time and expenses attached to project.

Those are things you probably would want to be able to do while out and about with your iPhone.

It never needs to be an all-or-nothing endeavor. It doesn’t have to be mobile-only or desktop-only but you can pick and choose where tasks and services can best be used to provide the best and most flexible experience for everyone.

The proliferation of mobile devices isn’t killing the desktop or generalized computing but freeing generalized computing devices to be good at what they are good at … and allowing mobile devices to just be good at what they are good at.

There is going to be a lot of overlap, but also going to be unique use-cases as well. I don’t need picture-taking applications on my laptop or a full-blown IDE on my phone. Let’s stop trying to pit one-against-another and instead see what we can do when we let the constraints of different platforms guide us to unique and new decisions.