by ezs | Apr 4, 2008 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
One of the things I get to plan is moving the IT infrastructure. Pulling the plugs and moving the servers is the easy part; but what about the DSL, static IP, mail, MX records, DNS..
I think I’ve found a solution for the mail (hosting the mail server) and the DNS is already moved out and re-hosted on two different DNS servers. Might be just web-mail for a week or so – but that’s more than enough.
The blogs and photos will be offline while the servers are on the move – the rest of the infrastructure is just internal stuff; NAS, print, authentication etc.
Any hints and tips from those that have moved SLES and Windows 2003 servers before?
by ezs | Apr 4, 2008 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
Slowly but surely moving towards general availability.
Download from here.
by ezs | Mar 30, 2008 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
I’ve got three Apple Airport Express units to stream music around the house. They work really well – and when used with Rogue Amoeba Airfoil I can play pretty much any music now via Airtunes.
However… I’ve had a sticky problem for the last year – 50% of the time iTunes or Airfoil just can’t see all of the Airport Express boxes. I’ve spent a lot of time researching Bonjour (aka Rendezvous, zero touch, multicast DNS) and doing packet traces. No joy. Everything looks fine; the multicast DNS is working fine over 5353; the radius is within limits; firewalls are non-blocking; the data is not crossing a router. I was stumped.
Tonight I think I fixed the issue. As part of de-cluttering for the impeding house move I took my last 802.11b device off the wireless subnet and bumped the configuration to be exclusively 802.11g. Instantly everything started working.
So in summary: Airport Express, Airtunes, iTunes and Airfoil really work well on an exclusive 802.11g network.
Hope this helps someone else.
by ezs | Mar 25, 2008 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
Most hotel internet connections use an outbound SMTP proxy to store and forward email.
I’m never happy with that – it means that my mail could be delayed/lost/corrupted/tampered with/read on the way.
[Note: I know – SMTP is SMTP – it’s not secure; it’s like writing a postcard – but if I can avoid that proxy – it’s one less set of eyes..]
I’ve now configured Thunderbird to connect to a high port that’s NATted back down to port 25; I’ve also forced TLS to the mail server.
In theory that should keep my outbound mail (or really internal mail that only sits on my web server) a bit safer.
by ezs | Mar 21, 2008 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
(Not a rant; I’ve not had the Kool Aid or the Lobotomy yet..)
Really only of interest to US readers – those in Europe probably have no idea of the context here.
My 16 month old boy needed tympanostomy tubes (ear tubes or ear grommets) to drain off fluid from a recurring ear infection. A five minute procedure – but it does involve day surgery and a general anesthetic.
My previous health care benefits were excellent – friends in Utah kept telling us we had incredible insurance – with good coverage, choice and a reasonable deductible and co-pay. Even so we estimated that we would end up being around $750 out of pocket for the ear tubes.
Microsoft Health care is fully funded. No deduction from my pay; no co-pay; no deductible. Incredible.
Before I joined Microsoft everyone I knew who had joined raved about the benefits. Now I know it’s true.
Take a look at this: http://www.viewmyworld.com/ – especially the first video on Microsoft Perks.
by ezs | Mar 20, 2008 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
So what changed between running a laptop at Novell and Microsoft?
Desktop OS
Firstly my Novell laptop was primarily a Vista machine. I’ve been using Vista as my primary desktop since November 2006. It’s helped build a better ZENworks Configuration Management.
Microsoft is obviously standardised on Vista.
Collaboration
Email is the killer. I do miss a lot of the advanced features of GroupWise – particularly the email status tracking. Outlook/Exchange won’t show me the delivery/read/deleted status. GroupWise was a killer in knowing that your ‘red’ emails had been delivered and deleted without being opened.
I don’t miss GWIM at all; I still use Pidgin (formerly GAIM) as my IM client – running plugins to all of the major networks. I do really like the Unified Communications via Office Communicator and Outlook. One thing that Microsoft IT has done well is brought together IM, email, fax, voice and voice messaging into a single place.
Applications
Obviously most of the Microsoft internal sites are IE only. (Great UI, great user experience – but lots of ActiveX). I’m also running Firefox 3 Beta 4 – that’s my personal preference.
No OpenOffice – that’s a given; one thing that did surprise me was that everyone is using the newer Office 2007 doc formats; even to outside people.
Network and access
Wow. I was really impressed by the IT organisation. IPv6 on the wire; IPsec everywhere; smartcard and certificate security for wireless and remote access; Network Access Controls running with quarantine.
Certainly it’s given me some new ideas for my home network 🙂
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