• Business,  certifications,  Consulting

    Microsoft Gold Partner

    Getting to be a Microsoft Gold Partner is like learning to program in some languages.  I think there’s a distinct possibility that those who manage the partner program are those who developed FoxPro.  When Microsoft bought FoxPro methinks they just moved the people over to a new department…

  • Consulting,  sites

    Moodle

    After checking out all the various Course Management Systems or Content Management Systems with a specific bent towards Courseware, Moodle stands out as the way to go.  It’s open source, it’s easy to setup and it just works. Now if I can only get it to automate the process of creating courseware…  😉

  • Consulting,  Kerio,  Mac OS X Server,  Microsoft Exchange Server

    Blocking Spam Attacks

    Various Spam Issues and the Appropriate Steps to Resolve Them:   Symptom: Users of the domain are getting a large amount of spam Problem: Spam sucks… Resolution: Outsource spam to MXLogic, Postini, Katharion, etc., limit incoming traffic over port 25 to the IP scheme of the outsourced service and use whatever form of message hygiene is built into the server for a layered approach (eg – Intelligent Messaging Filter in Exchange, Spam Assassin in Mac OS X Mail Server, Kerio Spam rules, etc.   Symptom: An IP or domain name is getting flagged as being a spammer although the users do not send spam. Problem: The mail server potentially does…

  • Consulting,  Network Infrastructure

    WAN Acceleration Magic Quadrant

    WAN Acceleration has been a hot topic for some time.  But over the past couple of years the cost of acceleration technology has dropped drastically due to its emergence as a full-blown market.  Riverbed has jumped to the top of the leaders circle for a number of reasons, with Juniper, Blue Coat, Cisco, Packeteer, etc in its wake.  For the most part, all WAN accelerators are going to have a few things in common.  There are a pair of appliances, each with a disk that can cache files going between two points.  To some degree, the purchase of accelerator appliances should be driven by the protocols to be used.  For example, if you’re a…

  • Consulting,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server

    Apple's New Certification Track

    I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal The Tiger Apple Certified Systems Administrator (ACSA) track allowed certification candidates to accomplish the ACSA by getting an Apple Certified Technical Coordinator (ACTC) and then obtaining 7 points. Points were obtained by taking a variety of exams whose point values were based on the number of days of the corresponding class. Apple has now posted the ACSA requirements for 10.5. There is no longer a point system, which was a unique approach in the IT industry for achieving certifications. Instead, for the Leopard ACSA, Apple has now trimmed down the number of courses that are provided and require that all exams be completed to…