I attended Microsoft’s TechEd 2010 conference in New Orleans a few weeks ago, and the most notable moment was they keynote presentation on the first day. During the presentation they had one of their head dorks come up and give a quick demo of Windows Mobile 7. It looked great! They’ve got some great ideas for usability as far as layout and organizing the different functions, I was really impressed during the keynote and I wanted to see more. » Read more: Windows Mobile 7
Archive for the ‘Technology’ category
Windows Mobile 7
June 23rd, 2010Blurring the lines between admin and security
June 22nd, 2010I’ve been a network/systems admin for a long time now and just when I think I’ve got all of my responsibilities nailed down, I discover a new pile of them hiding in the corner. The latest batch has turned out to be security. Yes that’s a very, very broad scope. I’ve always been responsible for network security, being the primary manager of our firewalls and VPN platforms, but this is quickly branching into areas I’m not comfortable (yet) with.
We’re currently being audited for PCI compliance by our bank. This means that all sorts of things need to be tested and verified and that numerous configurations must be in place from the perimiter to the desktop. Lots of these things aren’t in place, mainly on the desktop side, but I was welcoming this audit as I’ve always felt that we should be better about security and I just didn’t know where to start. Well the PCI stuff is pretty straight forward, but what happened was that during the interviews I discovered that several of our internet-facing systems are allowing the submission of sensitive customer data. It turns out that some of our internal developers don’t have much sense for security and have taken some of our web applications much further than we in the IT department ever anticipated. This was a massive wakeup call. Massive. » Read more: Blurring the lines between admin and security
Why use Lotus Domino?
June 22nd, 2010Why indeed! I’ve been a IBM/Lotus Notes/Domino user since 1997 and I’ve been doing Domino admin stuff for probably 7 or 8 years. I’ve always been comfortable with it so I’ve effectively been a proponent of it as well. Add to that, the companies I’ve worked for relied on the Domino platform for custom applications, which made it all worth it. Or did it? Have I been blindly supporting a heaping pile of bullshit? Yes, I’m afraid I have.
I recently attended Microsoft’s TechEd 2010 in New Orleans, Louisiana with two of my colleagues from overseas. During this trip I got a look at a lot of new stuff that Microsoft has to offer, and we had a lot of in-depth conversations about why we’re using the platforms we’re using, and why we shouldn’t be. Notes/Domino was a big part of these discussions. » Read more: Why use Lotus Domino?
Let’s stop web-borne malware – Qualys
March 1st, 2010My oh my how the landscape of malware has changed over the last 10 years. The traditional “virus” is all but dead, and the transports for new threats are evolving almost faster than the security services can adapt. The latest trend of malware is web-borne annoyance-ware like FakeAV, which tries to trick you into buying something and then essentially makes doing any task on your computer so obnoxious that you can’t even use it. Is FakeAV dangerous? That depends on how you look at it. Is FakeAV a big problem? Absolutely. » Read more: Let’s stop web-borne malware – Qualys
Another Blackberry Outage!
December 28th, 2009I’ve been a Blackberry user and BES administrator since 2005 and while there have been a few bumps in the road over the years, nothing has ever been so bad as to question the platform’s integrity as a service for the enterprise. From Sales, to Operations, to IT, these devices offer the access, reliability, and security that our business needs. Our people have become so accustomed to being connected 24/7 that they depend on it. Heavily. With our BES and RoveIT Mobile Admin implementation, I’m able to take care of a lot of issues without being at my desk, in the building, or even in the same state as my employer. The Sales guys are on the road all the time and pretty much live on their Blackberry when they’re not in a hotel where they can use their computer. 
» Read more: Another Blackberry Outage!
Websense Remote Filtering – x64, Vista, Windows 7
November 6th, 2009We have been a Websense customer for quite a few years now and while the basic functionality of the system has always been acceptable, I’ve always found everything else to be a tedious and slow process with them.
For example, when we first implemented Websense we had a Cisco PIX firewall and integrating Websense with the PIX was a snap. Eventually we replaced the PIX with a Watchguard and had to find a new method of integrating Websense into our network. We had a Cisco router as our LAN gateway, and Websense had an integration for Cisco routers so that seemed like the logical road to go down. After spending over a month working with their support crew without getting the integration to work, one of their techs asked “why don’t you just use it in standalone mode?” Naturally I had assumed that standalone mode would require the Websense server to be physically between the clients and the internet gateway, or to have the clients configured with proxy settings. Neither of which was something that I was willing to do. Turns out, neither is required. Why wasn’t this the first road for tech support to show me? It turned out that standalone mode was SO easy to install and configure, that I still can’t for the life of me understand why they even have integration options. » Read more: Websense Remote Filtering – x64, Vista, Windows 7
Outsourced SMTP – Good or Bad? – PostIni Outage?
October 13th, 2009I’ve had some pressure from time to time, to outsource our SMTP gateway function. There are some legitimate reasons for doing this but there are also some fairly serious drawbacks as well. Right now it appears tha PostIni is suffering a significant outage and I can’t email Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart, I said. Just think about how many other enormous companies are being affected by this outage right now!
As I have resisted the pressure to outsource everything from backup storage to SMTP servers, we are not one of those companies stuck in the mud today. This does highlight one of the more serious drawbacks to having your SMTP outsourced. Yes they have redundant servers. Yes they have redundant networks. Yet somehow they are experiencing an outage. » Read more: Outsourced SMTP – Good or Bad? – PostIni Outage?
Disaster Recovery Simulation
October 13th, 2009I’ve had this problem over the years, with managing to execute even a basic DR simulation. Once I bought some huge external drives to test restores from tape. By the time I got around to doing the test, the external drives weren’t big enough to do any but the smallest of our restores. I’ve been fortunate though, and the few real disasters we’ve had were easily recovered from, but I’ve been burned a few times by smaller instances of data loss because of issues that would have been discovered during a DR Simulation. » Read more: Disaster Recovery Simulation
Data Backup – Growing Pains
October 5th, 2009When I started at my current employer during the summer of 2000, we had 4 servers, three of which had with thier own 20G DDS4 tape drive managed by independent installations of ArcServe. Combined, we had less than 50G of data being backed up by the daily full backup. The backups were usually flawless and completed in a few hours at most, and sending a monthy set offsite was no big deal and that set typically contained the data set from the last day of the month. I miss those days. » Read more: Data Backup – Growing Pains
Capacity Planning for Virtualization
September 28th, 2009When I began my journey toward virtualization, it was early and there weren’t many good tools for planning performance capacity. Step 1 started with a single host server with local storage, and after a year of running 14 low-resource servers on the one box, I had the leverage to take a big step up to Step 2.
Step 2 included an EqualLogic PS400E iSCSI SAN, and 4 Dell PowerEdge 1950III servers with VMWare ESX Enterprise, with a Virtual Center Server. Our immediate needs/goals for virtualization were modest, with plans only to virtualize file, application, and mail servers and only 15 to 20 physical servers. Our Oracle and SQL servers already had dedicated platforms and until we break into the realm of a ‘real’ SAN like EMC, I didn’t want to deal with the i/o headaches these systems would cause on our virtual platform. » Read more: Capacity Planning for Virtualization
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