They purchased a (at the time) a state of the art system and spent a big chunk of change thinking it would last them forever.  Fast Forward 10 years and that same system that cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars is now worth 30K (if they found a sucker on the street) and they were spending thousands of dollars every month on maintenance for the ancient piece of equipment sitting on the wall.  They were stuck with a dinosaur and were quickly falling behind their competitors.

At the time they had four options.

1. Invest a significant amount of money into a upgraded phone system
2. Move to a “Virtual PBX” a fairly new type of phone service, mainly used for home based businesses
3. Stick with the Dinosaur they know and continue to fall behind their competition
4. Move to a unproven, unknown “Hosted” solution.

Looking back I believe they should have chosen the Virtual PBX option.  This would have allowed them to take advantage of the new features coming to market as well as keeping their costs down and without replacing equipment.  It also would have allowed them to keep ahead of the game by taking advantage of the new features as they come to market instead of waiting for upgrades to a proprietary phone system.

These Virtual PBX systems have come a long way since I first started to research them.  I have been given a 90 day free evaluation of the new Mobile service by RingCentral and I am impressed at the progress these services have made.  They allow small companies to get the services provided by a enterprise class phone switch without making the large investment up front.

Do you think Virtual PBXs are the route of the future?  How would this technology help your company?

Never fear, Intel hears your cries for extreme power. Intel is readying it’s launch of Nehalem-EX processors for this month. The new processors will boast 8-cores, 16 threads and support for up to 8 processor sockets on a single board.

The Intel announcement states:

• 45nm process
• 8-cores per CPU
• 16 threads per CPU
• Up to 8 sockets
• QPI Architecture with four links
• 24MB of shared cache
• Memory controller integration
• Turbo Boost Technology
• 9 times the memory bandwidth of current Xeon 7400’s
• 16 memory slots per physical processor
• 2.3 billion transistors

]]> http://js-kit.com/rss/techvirtuoso.com/p=1011 0 http://techvirtuoso.com/2010/03/08/not-everything-made-by-cisco-is-made-of-gold/ http://techvirtuoso.com/2010/03/08/not-everything-made-by-cisco-is-made-of-gold/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:14:36 +0000 Jake Sonelly http://techvirtuoso.com/?p=1005 The scenario:  You’ve found yourself working at a company that is experiencing phenomenal growth.  The employees have actually decupled in the past year and show no signs of slowing in the near future (on this note, when was the last time you saw the “decupled” in print?). You have inherited a network that is truly a Frankensteinian creation that not even the original architects understand any more.  You have noticed that you neither have a working firewall nor a decent VPN system, though Cisco VPN is used by a handful of key employees to connect to a Cisco 1800 series router.  The IP scheme for the organization, which spans three sites, is using the 192.x.x.x address space. You wish to straighten everything out with a minimum of downtime and as seamless as possible for the end-users.  What do you do?

Well, instead of telling you what to do, allow me to tell you what not to do.  Not just that, let me drill into your collective skulls what not to do.  Are you ready?  Here it comes:

Do not, and this is key, so write it down… do not buy a Cisco SA 500 series device.

Did you get all that down?  Now, I know some of you are thinking, “Wait a minute there, sir!  Cisco makes excellent business systems!  I am shocked at your lack of understanding!”  For those of you saying that, you have probably used something like the Cisco ASA 5505 to wrangle your network and think Cisco walks on water.  It’s okay… until recently I was one of you.  I’m here to tell you that putting the SA 500 in the same category as the ASA 5505 is akin to putting your child’s refrigerator “art” in the same category as the Mona Lisa (sorry, moms).

Here’s the lowdown on this “Security Appliance” that will be the bane of your existence.   First, the unit is essentially and enhanced and rebranded Linksys product meant for small businesses.  Now, I like that Cisco bought Linksys when it comes to home and small business products and up until meeting this hardware from hell, I had thought the merger would never go wrong. So what is so wrong with something like this?  Well, if you like certain features like a command-line interface, support for any VPN client other the Linksys (whoops, I mean, “Cisco”) QuickVPN and other things you’ve come to expect from a Cisco device, than you’ll understand the issue I have with this product.

Second, the price points for these units are right up there with the vastly superior ASA 5505.  You’re paying the same price for this Yugo of a device as you would for one equaling a Camaro.  Why would someone in their right mind do something like this?  Let me tell you how someone could be misguided into purchasing this unit.  Unlike the ASA 5505, the SA 500 allows you to integrate Verisign’s One-Time Password service for VPN access.  Now, I understand how OTP is a good thing, but for a medium-sized company, I’ve found tying VPN access to AD Authentication (using IAS) is not a bad alternative (especially if you’re using best security practices and least user access).

So, let’s say you are okay with the lack of Cisco VPN support and you’re young, so you love purely web-based GUI interfaces (This is you if you’ve ever thought “Command line… what is this, 1985?”).  What other issues would you run into?  Well, for one, the SA 500 doesn’t allow you to activate support for QuickVPN unless you’re on a 10.x.x.x network.  So, you know, you would have to redo your entire corporate IP scheme.  If that isn’t doing it for you, keep in mind that there is a big difference between Cisco VPN and Linksys/Cisco QuickVPN:

The SA 500 still looking that great to you?  Remember that since there is no CLI, you’ll be unable to simply copy the config from your old Cisco Switch over to your new model, so there will be considerable downtime.  This will be far from seamless and, I would expect, cause massive amounts of user headache.

So, if you’re going to be buying a new Cisco device, and your company has more than 10 – 20 users… do everyone a favor and purchase a Cisco ASA 5505, everyone will thank you.  Now then, I need to get back to trying to hammer this square peg into this round hole here.

No matter the reason I cannot wait to get my hands on this device.  The rumored Snapdragon processor, slim form factor and large display should make this phone a winner among many Sprint fans.  Look below for some leaked photos of the new device, these photos have been taken from EngadgetMobile.com, androidmobileos.com and youhtc.ru.

Telegraph.co.uk reports that almost a dozen underage children were found to be working in Apple-contracted factories last year.  Apple did not disclose the locations of the facilities with underage workers, but did confirm that they were found at three separate locations.  Apple auditors visited facilities in a total of 9 countries which build iPhones, iPods and various Apple Computers.

Apple’s progress report (PDF) states,  “Across the three facilities, our auditors found records of 11 workers who had been hired prior to reaching the legal age, although the workers were no longer underage or no longer in active employment at the time of our audit.”

After the video Gary Thome, Chief Architect for ISB presented an overview for the Infrastructure Software and Blades division as well as presenting his thoughts for Data Center trends for 2010.  One of the key points of his presentation was virtualization of the data center, including power.  After Gary’s presentation was complete we had a partner presentation from a HP Partner on their business and why they partner with HP.  Before we broke for Lunch we had a great presentation on Virtual Connect and how HP views standards like FCoE and other standards.

After we broke for lunch we split up into two groups.  My group went into the BladeSystem lab to discuss the HP Blades.  We then visited the Insight Software group to learn about the Infrastructure Software HP is working on.  After we went over the Infrastructure Software we then went back into the BladeLab to go over a competitive difference session.  Stay Tuned for more in depth posts of these sessions coming in the next few days!

We ended our day at HP with a discussion from Paul Perez, CTO of Storage for HP.  Paul had some very interesting views and ideas of where storage is going toward the future.  One of the items he was very passionate about was something called a memristor, a new type of storage that he believes will fuel the next generation of storage products.

This trip was sponsored by HP.  HP paid for the travel arrangements and most meals for 10 bloggers to visit the HP Houston campus.

The pizza and drinks were very good and during dinner I had some great discussions with @kevin_houston, @Knieriemen, @rbrambley, @kiwi_Si, @StorageNerve and @sfoskett.  We talked about everything on how to create a good podcast (Contact Greg Knieriemen if you need to know how to create one, he loves it) to the origins of ProCurve (which we still do not have a full answer).

Dinner at Pizza Fusion – Picture taken by Stephen Foskett

After dinner we headed back to the hotel where John Obeto surprised us with some Nigerian Palm Wine.  I was a little hesitant after the smell but after a couple of drinks I decided it wasn’t to bad.  After a couple of glasses I decided It was probably best to call it a night before I wasn’t able to get up in the morning.

The Palm Wine – Picture taken by Rich Brambley

Stay tuned for more posts on the HP Blades Tech Day!

This trip was sponsored by HP.  HP paid for the travel arrangements and most meals for 10 bloggers to visit the HP Houston campus.

I will be blogging and tweeting about anything that catches my eye.  Here is a list of the other Expert Bloggers who will be attending the event.

Kevin Houston - @kevin_houston – http://bladesmadesimple.com
Greg Knieriemen - @Knieriemen – http://www.storagemonkeys.com
Chris M Evans – @chrismevans – http://www.thestoragearchitect.com
King John Obeto – @JohnObeto – http://absolutelywindows.com
Rich Brambley - @rbrambley – http://vmetc.com
Simon Seagrave - @kiwi_Si – http://www.techhead.co.uk
Martin McLeod - @martinmacleod – http://www.bladewatch.com
Devang Panchigar – @StorageNerve – http://www.storagenerve.com
Stephen Foskett – @sfoskett – http://blog.fosketts.net

Calvin Zito from HP will also be attending with us.  His blog link is below.

http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/datastorage/default.aspx

You can follow all the action by searching for the Twitter hastag #hpbladesday.  Greg Knieriemen has also put together a Twitter list of all attendees.

Updated: Added more info and someone I missed to the list!

This trip was sponsored by HP.  HP paid for the travel arrangements and most meals for 10 bloggers to visit the HP Houston campus.

Today I saw a tweet from @DellServerGeek about a new technology that Intel has developed in partnership with RealVNC for the new Intel vPro 2010 series chips.  This amazing technology will allow IT Support to be able to connect to a machine, even when the machine can’t boot and resolve the users issue without the need for a technician to be sent out on site.  This KVM over IP technology has been around for some time in the server realm with DRAC cards from Dell or Lights-out boards from HP but I believe this is the first time it has been tried on Desktop/Laptop machines.

This new technology will not only allow the remote technician to take control of the machine but also will give the technician the option to turn the machine on or off remotely as well as rebooting the machine when it does not respond to keyboard or mouse gestures.  You can also use the IDE Redirection option to remotely boot to a cd or image.

Check out the RealVNC site for videos and more detailed information!

Over at the blog Clustering For Mere Mortals, David Bermingham has a great write up comparing the features, pros and cons of  the latest version of Hyper-V vs VMWare vSphere (previously ESX)

How do I recover my virtual machines in the event of a complete site loss? The good news is that virtualization makes this process a whole lot easier since a virtual machine is just a file that can be picked up and moved to another server. While up to this point VMware and Microsoft are pretty similar in their availability features and functionality, but here is where Microsoft really shines. VMware offers Site Recovery Manager which is a fine product, but is limited in support to only SRM-certified array-based replication solutions. Also, the failover and failback process is not trivial and can take the better part of a day to do a complete round trip from the DR site back to the primary data center. It does have some nice features like DR testing, but in my experience with Microsoft’s solution for disaster recovery they have a much better solution when it comes to disaster recovery.

Head on over to his site to get the full rundown.