Amuyu

Extremetech just published this article on why Vista won’t suck. It’s a good read because:

1. It looks like it might actually be kinda cool.
2. It’s cool to see the Redmond marketing machine giving technology sites data to include in their “unbiased” reviews (Read all of the Why’s It’s Important entries – only the best marketing could have written that).
3. The new software features are basically a description of iLife + Aqua in almost a feature for feature basis

And, not to mention that all of these cool things won’t be available for all of the Vista users. There’s going to be SIX different flavors: extreme rookie, rookie, usable, cool, over priced, and why-not-just-this-version-at-a-reasonable-price. All of these features make this article all the more relevant. Why would Apple drop an ahead-of-the-curve OS for something that is very obviously playing catch up? Call me a fanboy, but I’m in for OSX for a while to come.

One of the “fun” things of my job is that I get to go around the country and experience many things. One of them is the nature of gyms. Well, this week, I’m in Sunnyvale, CA. I bought a day pass at the local 24hr gym. Things were going good until it was my time to go do some cardio. On the way to the elliptical machine, I ran into this:

The picture is fuzzy, but check out the first …. ahem…. man on the stair master. Yes, that’s correct, a leotard with black spandex see-through hose.

WTF!?!

Recently, I had a customer ask for further clarification on a proposed storage assessment. They, wisely, had asked third parties (Gartner) to give them perspective on the value of doing a storage assessment. The third party, expensive, consultancy came back with four major areas that should be addressed:

1. Proper provisioning of storage
2. Maximize ROI by devising Data Lifecycle tiering strategy
3. Capacity planning for future purchases
4. Validate disaster recovery strategy and intra-company SLA’s

The customer, again wisely, asked us and the two other bidders to explain how our proposals would address the above. My response was very targeted, but had some insight that I think should be thrown to the aether. I’m also expanding it a bit since the original response did not address all of the points (they were out of scope for what we were trying to do).

So without further ado, here’s my thoughts on this:

1) Proper provisioning of storage

Gartner identifies this as an issue because most organization do not have a good understanding of what storage they have and how it is allocated. In addition, most organizations allocate storage as a “knee jerk” reaction to demand. By that, I mean that most allocation is done either by satisfying the customers requests (“I need 400GB of disk for my SQL database”) or by including storage in the acquisition of servers. These types of allocations do not consider the true cost of data management or even the true storage requirements. Provisioning is also typically looked as a one way function: storage allocation. However, there is a flip side to this: storage reclamation. As you well know, most users will over request storage because it’s easier to go to the well once. Very rarely, if ever, will they tell you “I asked for too much – you can take back 200GB.”

So, the first step in establishing a provisioning strategy is to understand what storage you have, how it’s allocated, and how well it’s being utilized. Once you have that understanding you can start making more informed strategic decisions on how your business should operate the storage infrastructure. With that in hand you can then start creating policies and procedures regarding your storage allocation and de-allocation. Only then will you be able to design a technology architecture to support your business requirements.

A good star for an assessment, internal or external, should give you: and understanding your current policies, procedures, and infrastructure. Additionally, it should make some broad recommendations as to the direction to take for your next step. However, determining a complete storage provisioning and management policy should be a project of it’s own right.

2) Maximizing ROI by devising Data Life cycle tiering strategy

Similar to point #1, the first step in understanding your data life cycle is to map your current storage. Any strategy needs to consider the results of #1 and do exactly that for both your unstructured and semi-structure data (files system, and email). An analysis of the data should give you the ammunition necessary for you to determine what tiering structure makes sense for you. Careful consideration should be given to the results to match them to industry best practices. However, those best practices should only be a guide as each business is different. The ultimate strategy will be a blend of best practices and targeted site specific practices.

3) Capacity planning for future purchases

This, again, ties to point #1. Capacity planning is part and parcel of a provisioning strategy. Because storage, systems, and growth in most companies varies drastically, a plan should be developed for the projected requirements for the subsequent 18 months. This will assist you in planning for the current, expect growth. However, as is the nature of any assessment like engagements, the recommendation are created only with data that identified during the duration of the engagement. If your business changes unexpectedly or grows faster than the projections created during the engagement, the recommendations will probably not be accurate. This is where you would need to have a capacity planning process that accommodates for changes. This process would, but it’s very nature, need to be something that is on-going and self monitoring. Typically, It is outside the scope of and assessment to device this capacity planning process. However, it is something that you should be able to device, albeit with some minor help, after this type of engagement.

4) Validate disaster recovery strategy and intra-company SLA’s.

Storage provisioning, allocation, and capacity planning is part of a properly maintained DR strategy. However, many companies fall into the trap of believing that a data protection or data replication plan is the DR plan. They neglect to consider the people and non-IT processes that are required to implement disaster recovery. While it’s true that these data based protection mechanism can help in the case of minor or even major disasters, a DR plan should be primarily based on managing the business processes in the case of an “event.” A good storage protection strategy would be used to accelerate the recovery process, but not be the recovery process. Any assessment engagement that addresses this element, should be focused on either how to implement a data protection methodology, or how the current or proposed protection systems map to the larger DR plan. The only way to drive these results is to create or validate SLA’s amongst all of the business units or stake-holders.

Speaking of which, that is the other most common failure amongst many of my customers. Data protection mechanisms are created based on perceived needs rather than any measured or clearly defined business requirements. As an example, it’s very common to encounter sites that use backup technologies to capture nightly incremental backups and once weekly full backups. These are typically implemented across the board without considering that some applications require more frequent, or even less frequent backups. Often, secondary protection mechanism are implemented by application groups, DBA’s, or even non-storage system’s administrators. These secondary schemes are in place because the system wide protection mechanisms are perceived as either in-adequate or not realistic to their needs. These are clear indications that the overall DR strategy is flawed, and needs to be addressed.

Having used X for going on twenty years, I thought I’d just be checking out a cool retrospective when this article came out. For the most part I was right until we got to the nested X server stuff and the VNC stuff.

I’ve know about ssh‘s ability to forward X windows stuff for a while (check out the -X -C options, and the -L option as well). What I didn’t know is that you can run Xnest to actually fire up an X session from the remote machine to your local machine.

The howto on that starts around page 8 of the article. Well worth checking out even for old-timey UNIX folks.

update

Turns out there’s an even better ssh option as described here. This fixed up some minor font thingies that weren’t working before.

UPDATE: I’ve posted an updated list here for those of you referencing this old posting.

There’s a zillion of these lists out there, but this is mine. A list of the essential, cool, and nice-to-have Mac apps. This is all my most important free or shareware products. The list of commercial stuff will be the topics of another day.

Essentials

1. Adium – Premium, way cool, instant messenger. Supports Yahoo, AOL, MSN, Jabber, Google, + many others (free)
2. Cyberduck – The FTP/SFTP client for Macs (free)
3. Desktop Manager – Multiple virtual desktops with the coolest switch transitions. This alone has made people go “ooohhhh! I need a Mac” (free)
4. FFView – The fastest, most feature rich image viewer I have been able to find for the Mac. (free)
5. Firefox – if Safari won’t do it, this will (free)
6. HandBrake – The easiest way to rip, transcode, and store DVD’s. Can be used for video iPods as well. (free)
7. Thoth – The best USENET news reader out there (there’s also Unison – actively being developed). Thoth is not actively being developed, so you have to … ahem…. find it on USENET. (free – kinda)
8. Vim – The VI clone with a GUI interface. Already comes in a CLI format built in. Vim.org has the GUI version. (free)
9. VLC – The opensource Video viewer. If this doesn’t play it, you can’t play it on a Mac. (free)
10. Flip4Mac – Microsoft has stopped supporting their video player and is now giving this as a Quicktime plugin instead. This works better than the media player ever did, but doesn’t work with DRM content. (free)
11. RDC Menu – Let’s you launch multiple windows remote desktop sessions at the same time. (free)
12. Spark – A key macro tool that lets you control your apps via keyboard shortcuts. I use it to control iTunes while it’s hidden. (free)

Cool

1. CHM Viewer – let’s you view/print Microsoft CHM format documents. A ton of technical ebooks are now in this format. (shareware)
2. ecto – A blog editor. WYSIWYG and HTML formats. Let’s you edit with spell checking and live previews. (shareware)
3. Gimp – The opensource image manipulation program. (free)
4. LaunchBar – Spotlight on steroids and then some. (free)
5. MacTheRipper – Another DVD ripper. This one doesn’t transcode, but it does a superb job of de-DRM’ing your collection. (free)
6. TinkerTool – tinker with a zillion Mac options. (free)

Nice-to-Have

1. Azureus – the best torrent client. (free)
2. BBEdit – the most feature rich native Mac editor. If it wasn’t for VIM, i’d use this all the time (shareware)
3. Opera – a very nice, fast, feature rich web browser. (free)

Outside of Safari.App, Mail.app, and Microsoft’s Office apps, I spend 90% of my time in the stuff here. There’s other command line stuff that I use, but that too is the subject of another post.

It just occurred to me that no-one in that slashdot thing actually asked me how much this stuff cost to get!

Now why would that be? Everyone got the on the “bigger penis”, “electrical cost”, and “here’s my geek fest.” Not a single comment was made on how much does that crap cost to acquire. Odd, very odd.

So, I should for the record say this. Of all those things I paid for: PowerBook, backup hard drive, ups, wireless router 1&2. Everything else was donated, gifted, or salvaged. Now that I think about it, that’s pretty amazing. More juice than GaTech on basically a dime budget.

Now that’s the most cool thing….

It’s been pretty cool to run a fairly large network at home as described in slashdot, so I thought I’d find out what other geeks like me like doing in their own home.

My expectation was that I would get some derision, some laughter, some “my penis is larger than your penis” comments (both good and bad), and also some insight into some people running larger, more sophisticated networks. Well, if you read through the article, you can see that there was a ton of all of that. However, I was surprise to find that most people, even the ones that I would nominally call my peeps, just don’t understand. There was a few that had comparable or even larger setups, and I think they get it. It’s not about the amount of crap I can put together, or “I can piss farther than you can,” but more about the “I can do this, so I will,” and the “wouldn’t it be cool if…”. It’s more like the car guys that want to figure out, can I make this thing go twice as fast by adding all these whatsits, or by injecting perclorofloroanalmoverzine. It’s not about saving the environment, but about just doing it.

Some of the responders also pointed out that the same kind of stuff could be done with much less. Very true. I just checked across the DCF and saw that I’m on average running a load of .0something. If you think about it, that’s very much to be expected. My home setup has more computing resources, by far, than the combined resources of my first admin job at Georgia Tech. Yes, my little, fun toy setup is much more capable and has more bandwidth, storage, cpu, and memory capacity than all of the systems at Tech did 20 years ago. By a large margin. That alone brings me some pleasure.

But, the biggest part of this all is that it’s also cool for me to stay sharp at doing system stuff, specially since my job’s technical requirements is now essentially limited to email, excel, visio, and powerpoint. Not that I mind that as my job, I just enjoy the sysadmin stuff. My mind thinks that way, so I like to exercise it.

So – this is not an apology for what I have, it’s not even an explanation or justification for the things that I do. Like the thing itself – it just is.

Here’s some pictures of the DCF:

Home built rack system. You can see: main server, ups, netapp, drive shelves, printer, KVM, main switch, wireless switch 1&2, backup server, and print server. You can not see, monitor, laptop, gig-e switch.

You can also see some of the boxes for my Amiga 2000, Amiga 1000, TRS-80 Model 1, and TI-99/4a. That’s part of another story.

The rest of the crap is scattered around the house.

Turns out that Marsedit is cool, but it doesn’t have such a good formatting tool bar for an HTML rookie like me. So, while trying to bolster my knowledge of HTML via BBEdit I ran into ecto. This tool has both Mac and windows versions, costs less and seems to have a richer set of tools for editing documents.

So, this is a test with it. And here’s a nice pic:

Let’s see how this all works out.

The first I heard of this was from John C. Dvorak on TWIT. Dvorak basically said that he has a theory that Apple is going to go all hardware and quit using OSX. So, earlier in the week came the article he talked about on the podcast. Now, Dvorak is quite the guy, and has some deep thoughts from time to time, but I have to take the exception to this. Let’s enumerate the points he makes:

1. Apple Switch is over – with no-one switching
2. iPod FireWire giving over to USB
3. iPod didn’t get people on the Mac
4. Intel switch
5. Freak-out over the breakout box
6. 5 years of Office, wtf?
7. Adobe for x86
8. IBM dropping AIX and OS/2 for Linux and Winblowz
9. Intel platform is wide open
10. Devices that don’t run on the Mac or Linux
11. Compete directly with Dell, HP, etc on a hardware only basis
12. Layer Mac OS services on top of winblows

Well – my counterpoint:

1. I switched. Not only I, but many many good technical people are doing it. They are also recommending that their friends and family’s switch. For good reason too. My record uptime on my laptop is over 52 days. Try that on a winblows machine while traveling all over the country, installing tons of software, visiting tons of open access points, etc.
2. FireWire – ok cool tech, but there’s tons of other samples of good technology loosing to cheaper, mass produced stuff. I can’t imagine that firewire chip sets are anywhere near as cost effective as the ubiquitous USB. I just call that smart cost control.
3. So, iTunes runs on winblows. Good for Apple. It means that they have a cash cow that is funding the rest of the strategy. I just went to the Apple store yesterday to pick up a new batter for the laptop. Guess what, there’s a buzz. Kids there want their iPod’s on the Mac. The important thing to note is that they already have an iPod. Now the Mac is the thing to get. Maybe the parents aren’t getting them this year, but they will soon. I take my daughter as a prime example of this. She has an iPod. She loves it. She has a nice winblows laptop, but would gladly chuck it for a Mac, because she knows it works better. A 12 year old knows.
4. Now, given all the rumors about the why of the switch, one thing can be said for sure. Those nice Intel processors are much faster, consume less power, and probably cost Apple less. Once again we get into some smart hardware cost savings thing.
5. This is a strange one. However, having been part of the corporate world, it doesn’t surprise me that someone in the legal department of a multi-zillion dollar company got their panties in a wad about something. And then, to save face, they went wild and took it too far.
6. Of all the things he talks about this one is the one that bothers me the most. Why say five years, unless Ms. Ho is just not so good at the presentation thing. There’s ample evidence of that. Lookup any of Steve’s keynotes where she presents. It’s like watching paint dry. Besides that though, is it really in M$’s best interest to say they will support office on Mac beyond a five year window? What will the landscape be then? Are they really setting a stage that is that far out? Now, how about the Mac being able to run winblowz native office directly on OSX through something like Wine? There’s many rumors floating around that the next iteration will be able to do this. Do you really need a native app at that point? I know that I’d much rather run the "real" thing and not have to worry about the compatibility issues that creep up.
7. Isn’t this the same as what happened during the Classic to OSX transition? Why’s everyone freaking out about this? It sucks, yes. Does it mean we change the everything to support one set of, admittedly, kick ass applications? Hell no. Even my newly instated Mac addiction would be kicked out just out of principle of the matter.
8. There’s no real cheese on the moon. What the hell is this got to do with it? Yes, other people switched OS platforms, but there’s no real correlation here. True enough, OS/2 was a kick ass platform, but look at who was pushing it – IBM. Other than in the corporate world, they have no real marketing savvy. There’s no RDF there. There’s no one that makes people want to buy their stuff in the mass market space. Dvorak argues that this same technology would be used to convince us that we can do without OSX, but I doubt that one (hence the whole point of this diatribe).
9. Come on! Dvorak! McFly!?!? Intel platform is wide open because there is no PC standard. There is a Mac standard. The hardware is under control. Only apple is making this platform. This is so true that they didn’t even use decrepit PC BIOS.
10. Other than things that are on the edge, I’ve had a hard time finding things that don’t work on a Mac. There’s always going to be something along those lines. Maybe now that the USB thing is settled and the Intel thing is settled the stragglers on this this will go away. From what I have been able to gather, writing device drivers for the Mac is actually not that hard of a thing.
11. Would you want to go against Dell? Really? Why? They are happy with 5% margin. I mean really happy. Unless you have all of their processes patents and are willing to duke it out for little to no margin, why the hell would you put yourself on this space? I mean – come on. Apple has a captive audience willing to pay top dollar for hardware that is supper slick and just works. But it just works because it’s a tightly integrated software and hardware platform. There’s no way I would pay over $3k for a Dell laptop to run winblows. I did for a Mac, so I could run OSX. I did this even knowing that I was paying a performance penalty and that my work stuff was going to require some extra attention. Why? Because I knew that the rest of the time it was going to work. Not so for a Dell.
12. Nope. Won’t do it. Won’t really work. Although I do trash winblows, they do, finally, have a stable OS platform. However, layering the Mac "executive" on top of that is going to fritz crap up. This is thinking is not much different than what drove Microsoft’s to spawn Bob. Besides, what impetus would M$ have to make that work well? Remember that little word processor WordPerfect? Remember how much Microsoft helped that "partner?" Enough said on that.

As you can tell, this Dvorak thing has me fired up. I don’t really know why. Is this an example of that rabid addiction he talks about? Probably. Is this an excuse to post on my blog? Yep. Will this be read by anybody? Probably not. But, I feel better.

-Juan

This could be another zonedit. A free DNS engine! Very nice since it’s hosted off site and has a reasonably simple web interface. It won’t let you do some of the more arcane things, but if you need that, set up bind for yourself.

But the main reason this entry is here is to test this little thing: marsedit. It let’s me edit blog entries the same way that I would edit email. Versions, spelling (thank God), etc. Mac only, but way cool. We’ll leave this guy on the maybe list for a little bit.