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    Getting Started with Amazon's EC2 Cloud

    May 1, 2009

    Yesterday I did a quick review of the various cloud offerings from Amazon. Previous to that I had done a review of using S3, the Amazon storage service, with Mac OS X, primarily through the lens of using S3 as a destination for Final Cut Server archives. Today I’m going to go ahead and look at using EC2 from Mac OS X. To get started, first download the EC2 tools from Amazon. Next, log into Amazon Web Services. If you don’t yet have a login you will obviously need to create one to proceed. Additionally, if you don’t yet have a private key you’ll need one of those too –…

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  • Business,  Consulting,  VMware

    Looking at Amazon's Cloud

    April 30, 2009

    There is a lot of talk about “the cloud” in the IT trade magazines and in general at IT shops around the globe. I’ve used Amazon S3 in production for some web, offsite virtual tape libraries (just a mounted location on S3) and a few other storage uses. I’m not going to say I love it for every use I’ve seen it used for, but it can definitely get the job done when used properly. I’m also not going to say that I love the speeds of S3 compared to local storage, but that’s kindof a given now isn’t it… One of the more niche uses has been to integrate…

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  • Business,  Consulting,  Kerio

    Google Mail adds ActiveSync

    February 9, 2009

    Exchange/iPhone users, you’ve finally gotten the Google hookup. ActiveSync has been added to the Google repertoire allowing gmail users to sync their contacts and calendars in the same fashion that Exchange and Kerio users can, although mail will still need to go through IMAP, which is fairly straight forward to configure. This means that Google Mail is finally in serious competition with a few other players in the messaging market. At this point, Google has finally knocked down one of the serious barriers I had with gmail adoption for companies. I am glad to see that they realize (and I’m sure have realized but just got the kinks worked out)…

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  • Business,  Consulting

    Tech Predictions Rant

    February 2, 2009

    <rant> According to Mayan tradition if you jump into one of the cenotes by the Mayan pyramids you can make predictions as to the future. Apparently, one person predicted he would be a ruler and was thus anointed such. Funny how that works. Well, I cave dived into a cenote and then read the January editions of eWeek, ComputerWorld, NetworkWorld, CIO and about 10 other magazines that show up to my house despite the lack of funding on my part for them to do so. Let’s see if I can wade through the fluff… First off, January is a funny month for tech magazines as it’s all IT predications, “look…

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  • Business,  Consulting

    Cisco + Postpath = Unified Communications – Clear Strategy

    January 31, 2009

    I’m just guessing that there are smarter people than me at Cisco working on this type of stuff.  Cisco has purchased Postpath. If integrated with WebEx it gives them an interesting new perspective on collaboration, but I’m still not sure that the industry is ready to get away from Outlook, Entourage, etc and to get into using something fully in the cloud. I think for a company full of younglings it might make a lot of sense, given they’re already going to be used to this kind of thing, but then I’m also guessing they’re likely looking toward something like Google Apps. Having said this, the good people of Cisco…

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  • Consulting

    Technology in the Classroom Videos

    October 18, 2008

    The George Lucas Educational Foundation has a new series on iTunes that explores technology in the classroom.  Check it out on iTunes at: http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/edutopia.org.1648591016.01648591018

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  • Consulting

    On the Road Again

    July 11, 2008

    When you’re traveling it can be difficult to keep track of all those receipts.  Whether it’s cabs, parking or meals you’re bound to loose a receipt or two.  That’s one reason I like to reconcile my expense reports on a nightly basis.  I’ve made a little spreadsheet to do it for me, but sometimes I get back to the hotel room and realize I’ve lost that receipt.  This is where being able to log into Amex comes into play.  I scribble down what I missed in the spreadsheet and then it appears on Amex shortly thereafter.  I print the copy out of the web portal, attach it to my expense report, and…

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  • Consulting

    On the Road: Milwaukee

    July 9, 2008

    Traveling for work can suck.  Like really suck.  It just gets old.  But then you get sent to a city like Milwaukee, WI (aka Beer City), where all they can talk about on the radio is Brett Favre.  If you get the chance, stay at the Ambassador Inn some time, head down to Mader’s (which is over 100 years old) and grab some good old school German food and then try to go do work the next day…  It’s tough, but well worth it!

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  • Consulting,  Network Infrastructure

    WAN Optimization

    July 8, 2008

    Latency is the bane of my existence.  Latency is the kind of thing you just can’t typically fix when you’re talking site-to-site communications.  But you can mitigate it.  These days I’m experimenting around with a variety of WAN optimization tool kits, from Riverbed’s Steelhead appliances to F5 to various open source offerings.  For SMB/CIFS the various offerings can be pretty cool.  Most products require an appliance at both ends to do proper optimization, but I like that Riverbed has a client app that can run on the Mac.  Having said that, nothing seems to really optimize AFP the same way that SMB can be optimized.  Maybe there isn’t a market…

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  • Consulting

    Checking your Backups

    July 3, 2008

    The other day I had a client call wanting to restore four files from a Bakbone backup server I installed almost two years ago.  Now, I was skeptical but elated to see all but one of the files were able to be restored.  It just so happened that the client had deleted the original folder specified in the script and created a new folder without altering the scripts.  There were failure reports in the logs that the source was not acceptable for about 4 months prior to the call.  The lost file really only cost the client about 2 hours worth of re-editing but I still felt bad about the…

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