We’ve created an edition in the new Google Currents app listed in the iTunes App Store and the Android Marketplace. It’s a great and easy way to get the latest Tech Journal articles in an easy to read format that is available for offline viewing.
You can download Google Currents for your device here.
To add the Tech Journal to your library in Google Currents, follow this link in the browser on your device.
Happy reading!
Squid is an open source package available at http://www.squid-cache.org that caches web files to a local server, increasing throughput for users and decreasing the amount of traffic on WAN connections. A Mac OS X software package named SquidMan, which includes Squid is available at http://web.me.com/adg/squidman/index.html. SquidMan makes installing and using Squid much easier, giving nice buttons to use for management rather than managing Squid using configuration files.
Once SquidMan is downloaded, copy the SquidMan application bundle to the /Applications directory. Then open it. At the Helper Tool Installation screen click on the Yes button.
At the Squid Missing screen click on the OK button to install squid itself.
The Preferences screen then opens. Click on the Clients tab and, if you would like to restrict access to only a set of IP addresses, define them (or use the net mask to define a range).
Click on the General tab. Here, provide the following information:
Click on the Parent and define a proxy server that this one will use (if there is one, otherwise it just uses the web to directly access files). This feature is only used if you are daisy chaining multiple squid servers.
Click on the Direct tab and enter any sites that should not be proxied. Internal staging environments are a great example of sites that should bypass proxy servers.
At the Template tab, enter any custom variables.
Squid is usually used to cache and speed up web access, so the default configuration file is optimized for small files. In order to cache larger files effectively, change the configuration to allow for larger files (up to 64 megabytes) and allow for more total disk storage of cached files (up to 8 gigabytes in our tests for a few specific projects, but much larger is fine). This usually depends on the total available disk space on the machine which will run squid.
These are some of the options which we updated for a specific project we’re working on in the squid.conf (Template):
http_port 3128 transparent (add transparent if using NAT to redirect http requests):
maximum_object_size_in_memory 65536 KB
cache_dir ufs /usr/local/var/squid/cache 8192 16 256
maximum_object_size 65536 KB
These days, we prefer to use squid running in NetBSD’s pkgsrc, although any method of installation (such as the squidman approach) should be acceptable.
Next, click on the SquidMan application which should have been running the whole time and click Start Squid.
The squid daemon then starts. Looking at the processes running on the host reveals that it is run as follows:
/usr/local/squid/sbin/squid -f /Users/admin/Library/Preferences/squid.conf
Client systems can then be configured to use the squid proxy, or PAC (Proxy auto-config) file can be configured to configure clients. Another option being transparent parodying:
rdr de0 0.0.0.0/0 port 80 -> (local Squid server) port 3128 tcp
Yelp. They came onto the online scene fast, and have since become the way many of us find restaurants when in foreign lands (or even our own back yard). They even ended up doing so well that Google tried to acquire them for half a billion dollars in 2009. But when you’re hot, you’re hot, and they decided to continue on their own path.
Zagat, a classic company founded way back in the 1970s is kind of the Gold Standard of restaurant reviews. I remember using Zagat to find restaurants in Rome back in the early 1990s (couldn’t quite afford to eat at a place with a 30 rating back then). And their review guides are great. In 2008 they put themselves up on the auction block and summarily took themselves right back down. At that point in time, Zagat would have cost a cool $200 million. A steal compared to upstart Yelp. But while a company with a lot of content, not really a company with a lot of content freely available on the web – which seems to be the name of the game these days.
While Google doesn’t own Yelp, they still want user-generated reviews. Google announced on their blog today that they’re buying Zagat. This move isn’t just about user-generated reviews though, it’s about content. Zagat has 30+ years worth of content, much of which dates back to the manual form of user-generated reviews.
If you look at Google’s most recent acquisitions, many involve coupons, social media, price comparisons, gaming, travel and who can forget a big-daddy of content in YouTube. All that Google needs to do is buy Wikipedia and they’d own a huge chunk of the content out there, or at least they’d own enough to point you to their chunk. The moves only make sense. Try running a define search (e.g. define: Google). Notice that rather than all of the links be hits on other sites, the first is now an actual definition. Clicking More>> brings up the Google Dictionary, not Wikipedia. And in some cases, that dictionary entry is basically the only thing (YMMV).
Google changed the game when it comes to how people find things. They’re in the process of changing that game again. How can you capitalize on these changes? This is going to be different for everyone, but your 318 Professional Services Manager will be happy to discuss strategies for social media, online strategies and the new king of the online world, content. If you do not yet have a Professional Services Manager, please contact 318 at 310-581-9500 or sales@318.com for more information!
Spanning Tree Protocol has always been a problem with Mac OS X Server. This goes back to the early days when OS’s whacked each other over the head with rocks to go from Alpha to Beta. This usually manifests itself in weird speed and connectivity issues. You can mitigate by changing timing values, but when testing, it is often easiest to start by disabling Spanning Tree Protocol, seeing if the problems you have go away and then working from there.
By default, Spanning Tree is enabled on all Cisco Switches. In this article we’ll look at disabling Spanning Tree Protocol. But it is important to point out that once disabled, it is important to keep in mind that creating an additional VLAN automatically runs another instance of spanning tree protocol, so you may need to repeat this process in the future.
First backup the device. Then, ssh into the device:
ssh admin@64.32.49.172
You should be prompted for credentials at this time if using telnet. If you are using SSH you should only be prompted for the password. Once connected to the device you will need to go into enable mode by typing en at the command prompt and hit enter:
en
It may prompt you for a password, which you will need to know. Once complete you will notice that the prompt turns from an > to an # symbol. Now that you have administrative access, you will need to go into global configuration mode using the config t command:
config t
Now let’s actually disable spanning tree protocol. Enter in the no verb followed by spanning-tree, the protocol we’re disabling, followed by VLAN, followed by the VLAN identifier:
no spanning-tree VLAN vlan-id
Repeat for each VLAN if you need to do this on multiple. When done, exit config mode by entering the end command:
end
You can then enter the show command along with the spanning-tree option and view to see if there are any remaining spanning tree’s still active and verify if your command took:
show spanning-tree
If the command took and spanning tree is no longer enabled. Run the coppy command, followed by running-config and then startup-config, which copies your running configuration to your startup configuration making your change permanent:
copy running-config startup-config
It is then usually recommended to go ahead and reboot servers and clients prior to testing.
In the life of an Xsan shop, you will at one point or another be presented with the need to defragment your volume. Defragmenting a volume is a good way to recover lost performance, but can also be beneficial in other scenarios: defragging is an absolute must after performing a bandwidth-style expansion of your volume, and is often recommended (though not absolutely necessary) when performing a capacity-style expansion. In case you’re confused, a bandwidth expansion is the type of expansion performed when you add LUNs to a specific storage pool. Conversely, a capacity expansion involves simply adding new storage pools to an existing volume.
Because the make-up of a storage pool is drastically altered when a bandwidth expansion is performed, the data is not properly distributed across any of the new LUNs that were added to the pool, this results in a shadow-effect where all capacity of the storage pool is not available for use by the system. Because of this, it is an absolute requirement that a defrag routine is ran. To perform this defrag, we use the standard snfsdefrag command, but we use the special ‘-d’ flag, which ensures that this shadowed storage space is reclaimed and that data is properly distributed across the storage pool:
snfsdefrag -dr /Volumes/MyXsanVolume
There are several scenarios where it may be desirable to rebalance the data on an existing volume. A capacity expansion of a volume will result in one or more new storage pools being added to the volume, but the new storage will not have any data written to it. Alternatively, an allocation strategy of round-robin or fill can, over time, result in a poor distribution of data across your storage. By spreading data across the storage evenly, you ensure that all disks are running at similar capacities, therefore netting more consistent performance across the volume, as disk performance tends to degrade as capacity increases.
When an snfsdefrag is ran, it will defragment files as specified by your parameters, and these files will be distributed onto the volume as per your allocation strategy. If you defragment a volume that has a ‘Fill’ allocation strategy, you will not gain any benefits of having evenly distributed data, though your individual files will no longer be fragmented.
Thus, if your main goal is balance all data across the volume, it will be necessary to change the volume’s allocation strategy to Balance and then defragment the volume. This will result in fragmented files to be relocated the lowest-capacity pool, an extremely effective method for balancing data. In Xsan 2.x, you can change a volume’s allocation strategy at the GUI level, which can be changed while the volume is live. In our experience, the change can be performed live and will not result in Xsan client service interruption to the volume, and active transfers proceed with no disruption. Even so, it’s best to perform the switch at a time when there’s minimal activity (preferably none) on the volume and no active transfers in progress.
Once you’ve converted the volume to the new strategy, you can proceed with the optimization, which is a fairly straightforward defrag performed with the command
snfsdefrag -r /Volumes/VolumeName
This will defragment any files with more than one extent, re-provisioning the optimized files to the next LUN in the allocation strategy. And because we’re now using the Balance strategy, the next LUN will always be the one with the lowest capacity—-our new LUNs, in this case. If, however, you had a healthy Xsan volume, this command may not properly balance data, because fragmented files will be rare. In such an event, run the command
snfsdefrag -r -m 0 /Volumes/VolumeName
This will defragment files with more than 0 extents, which is every file on the system, letting you rest assured that the volume will be nicely balanced at the end of the operation. The main trade off here is that doing so re-provisions all files on the volume, which can be a very time consuming task. If the volume has standard levels of fragmentation, running the command without the flag should do a decent job of balancing without having to operate against non-fragmented files as well.
Whenever dealing with data migrations, is always important to get a good handle on what data you need to transfer, and the purpose that it serves toward the operation of the program: some elements may be more important to you than others. In the case of Remote Desktop, there are a number of different data stores that you’ll want to be aware of:
Once we have an understanding of the data stores utilized by ARD, it’s fairly trivial to transfer the admin database. Assume in the following example that we want to migrate our ARD database from our local computer instance, to a new computer connected via Firewire disk mode and mounted at /Volumes/NewMac. For most cases, all we really have copy over is the main user preference file ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.RemoteDesktop.plist:
cd /Volumes/NewMac/Users/username
cp -p ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.RemoteDesktop.plist Library/Preferences/com.apple.RemoteDesktop.plist
If you have any stored command templates, or want to preserve your task history, copy over the Application Support folder:
cp -pR ~/Library/Application\ Support/Remote\ Desktop/ Library/Application\ Support/Remote\ Desktop/
If your ARD install is collecting reports, you’ll likely want to copy those over as well. Because this database is root-owned, we’ll need to use sudo to copy it:
sudo cp -pR /var/db/RemoteManagement/ /Volumes/NewMac/var/db/RemoteManagement/
That’s it! It’s probably a good idea to restart for good measure, but for the basic ARD admin application, a relaunch should get you up and running with the new database.
318 is in the news yet again. This time as the central figure in an article from eWeek entitled How Influx of iPhones, iPads Impacting Enterprises. The article is available at http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/How-Influx-of-iPhone-iPads-Impacting-Enterprises-582284 and focuses on, as the title references, what enterprises are to do with the infiltration of the iPad and iPhone. While the article is specifically geared towards Apple-based devices, the ideas can be used for any other platform as well. In the article, Chris Preimesberger interviews the 318 Director of Technology, Charles Edge and provides a number of answers to some specific questions that enterprises come to the table with when they approach the Apple platform.
If you are adopting Apple into your enterprise, you may have even more questions that need answering. If so, please feel free to contact your 318 Professional Services Manager or sales@318.com if you do not yet have one.
The 6th book from 318′s staff is now available: Enterprise iPhone and iPad Administrator’s Guide. In this title, Charles Edge, the Director of Technology at 318, takes a look at lessons learned in our numerous iOS integration projects, from procurement to deployment to patch management. Per the publisher, Apress, the following indicates who the book is intended for:
This book is intended for IT staff members that will be charged with planning an iPhone and ipad implementation or pilot program, as well as those that will be charged with ultimately deploying and provisioning the devices and delivering support to iPhone and iPad users. Readers should have an existing background in IT management, systems administration, and end user support working in a medium to large business or enterprise environment.
If you are considering doing a large scale integration or remediation project for iOS-based devices in your environment then contact your 318 Professional Services Manager or sales@318.com for more information on how 318 can assist you in your endeavors.
The iPhone has a built-in voice controls that allow you to speak to the phone and have it perform certain tasks, such as dial a given contact, go to the next track when playing music and even start playing music. This allows you to control the device, hands free and perform basic tasks. Have you ever wanted to use that same kind of technology to dictate emails, notes and write documents while on the go? Well, Dragon Dictation, from Nuance Communications has got ya’ covered!
Using Dragon Dictation, you can press a button and dictate text. You can then review and edit the text if needed. That text can then be emailed, posted to your wall on Facebook, posted to Twitter, sent as an SMS and yes, even copied to the clipboard. If you find yourself in any situation where you cannot use the keyboard for extended periods of time then Dragon Dictation is a must have! And you can’t beat the price; Dragon Dictation is currently free!
Dragon also has a product for Mac OS X, Dragon Naturally Speaking, and versions for Windows as well. You can also use the desktop applications to control the computer itself, allowing you to name it Jarvis, KITT, GERTY, HAL, Mother or just plain old Computer. If you link it up to automator or do a little scripting then you can even control other applications, allowing you to tell the computer to turn the lights on, make you coffee and even turn off those Christmas lights.
Google Docs live on Google’s servers and are edited in a web browser. One of the most challenging aspects of leveraging this type of a cloud environment is workflow. Looking at every users workflow before making institutional changes is so daunting a task that it is rarely performed, resulting in users being left out of the process and at times also resulting in a breakdown in adoption from these “edge cases.”
Luckily, Google is wise to this predicament and has acquired DocVerse, which has resulted in a new option from Google: Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office. Cloud connect was announced last week without much fanfare. But the Cloud Connect toolbar for Microsoft Office is one of the more important new features of Google Docs in a long time, because it bridges the gap between the cloud and the client. In so doing, Cloud Connect breaks down some of the more critical arguments against adoption in the enterprise: retooling the entire workforce, redesigning workflow and working with documents while offline.
At 318, we have been working closely with many of our customers on transitions of data to cloud environments. Whether you are using Google or a competing vendor, please feel free to contact your 318 account manager or our sales department to discuss how this announcement can help to ease a transition to the cloud for your environment.
In a press release on their website, Novell has announced that they will be acquired by a company called Attachmate for $2.2 Billion. The announcement can be found at http://www.novell.com/news/press/novell-agrees-to-be-acquired-by-attachmate-corporation. Microsoft (or a consortium run by Microsoft) will also be acquiring a few hundred patents as part of the arrangement.
Attachmate will be operating Novell and SUSE as two separate business units, calling into question some of the strategy that seemed around the corner in previous quarters. This at the same time that Novell is rebranding its social products into Novell Vibe and Novell Vibe Cloud and really doing better than they have in a long time with products like Platespin, WorkloadIQ, Endpoint Management Solutions, Identity Manager and ZENworks. Novell has also had a lot of success in recent years leading Solaris to Linux migrations.
For many, this has come as a shock. 318 has been a Novell, Microsoft, Redhat and Apple partner for a number of years and can work with you to decide what this means for your organization. Please, feel free to contact our main office at 310-581-9500 or your Professional Services Manager for more information.
Last week, German software company ARCHIWARE released version 4.0 of its enterprise backup solution, PresSTORE. This version is for new installations only – version 4.1, planned for release in October, will support upgrades from existing 3.x deployments.
The new features of PresSTORE 4 can be found on the company’s website, but here are some highlights:
Aaron Freimark also wrote a post about the new version on the Xsanity site that talks more about the Xsan-specific features.
As before, PresSTORE is supported on Mac OS X (10.4 and higher), Windows (2003, 2008, XP, Vista and 7), Linux and Solaris. Backup2Go Server is only supported on OS X and Solaris.
PresSTORE support is great – during testing of the new version, the iPhone monitoring app was crashing. Within a day, a new version was available in the App Store that addressed the exact issue. Bravo!
To learn more about PresSTORE (including pricing options), please contact your 318 account manager today, or email sales@318.com for more information.
Thanks to Google for referencing our post introducing sandbox in their sandboxing design document for Chromium at:
http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/sandbox/osx-sandboxing-design
Their use of sandbox is really over and above what we’ve seen from any other vendor. Each installation contains 3 distinct sandbox profiles (currently I have 4.0.249.49 and version 5.0.342.9 although mileage here may vary according to updates), each profile allowing access to only files and resources that are absolutely necessary to complete the task that the process that leverages them requires. You can see the specific resources that are accessible by looking at these profiles. The profiles are located at:
cat /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/Versions/4.0.249.49/Google\ Chrome\ Framework.framework/Resources/renderer.sb
You can then edit the profiles easily. For example, if you want to enable debug logging for sandbox, etc. This allows you transparency into what Chrome is doing but also allows you to further tighten security. Although, they have really taken their time to secure Chrome well and locked things down, so we doubt much further restriction is necessary or really possible. Overall, Chrome provides a great example of taking sandbox to the next level and extending it much more into the applications with graphical user interfaces than we’ve seen it extended to thus far.
Follow 318 on Twitter
Come visit our booth at Macworld 2010 on the expo floor. We are located in Booth 566C and have a bunch of free schwag to give out.
We also have a number of sessions this year:
Hands-on Snow Leopard Server: Collaboration Services with Charles Edge
2/10 – 1:00PM to 3:00PM
Push: The Next Generation of Collaboration is Snow Leopard Server with Charles Edge
2/11 – 4:30PM to 6:00PM
Advanced Integration with Final Cut Server with Beau Hunter
2/12 – 3:30PM to 5:00PM
iPhone Mass Deployment with Zack Smith
2/13 – 2:30PM to 4:00PM
We hope to see you there!
Here are some great OmniGraffle Tips and Tricks!
Thawte is no longer offering free accounts for mail. As an interim, they are going to offer a free year (through a partner deal) of VeriSign’s similar service which is then $19 after that initial year.
https://search.thawte.com/support/ssl-digital-certificates/index?page=content&id=AD196&actp=LIST&viewlocale=en_US
McAfee has announced that they will be acquiring MXLogic, outsourcer of message hygiene solutions. This strengthens the cloud offerings from McAfee and also brings one of the better known spam names into the umbrella of a larger entity. This move should allow MXLogic to strengthen offerings while allowing McAfee to bundle further services into existing MXLogic environments.
EMC owns VMware. EMC owns Iomega. As a great result of these two acquisitions EMC is now able to provide the StorCenter, a 1U shelf of storage with 4TB (~3TB with RAID5) of capacity that has been qualified to run VMware. For environments looking to get started with Vmotion and some of the clustered aspects of VMware the Iomega StorCenter offers a nice alternative to the high dollar storage arrays that EMC offers under their own brand.
The StorCenter can provide iSCSI LUNs to host Virtual Machines. It’s not going to get the same IO as storage of a higher class will get, but for smaller environments with 2 or 3 physical hosts and a number of virtual machines, the StorCenter allows a number of features that can’t be had through traditional direct attached storage.
As an EMC reseller, 318 can help guide you through the process of a containment or a consolidation project, whether you’re looking to deploy 300 TB of fibre channel based LUNs to accommodate your environment or 3TB, we’re here to help!
318 is excited to announce that we are now on Twitter. You can find us at https://twitter.com/318INC.
If you’re wondering what was included in the 10.5.7 update, the itemized list has been compiled here.
Sun was in merger talks with IBM. Talks that had fallen through. Today, the Sun website says “Oracle to Buy Sun.” Oracle is the largest database company in the world and has been tinkering with selling support contracts for Linux and the Oracle suite of database products, that already includes PeopleSoft, Hyperion and Siebel. This merger, valued at $7.4Billion, will give Oracle access to sell hardware bundled solutions, further the Oracle development product offerings and give Oracle one of the best operating systems for running databases on the planet.
Oracle doesn’t just get hardware and Solaris though. This move also solidifies a plan for Oracle customers to integrate Sun storage. Oracle had previously been working with HP in a partnership that never seemed to gain traction. Then there is Java, MySQL, VirtualBox, GlassFish and OpenOffice.org. A number of the Sun contributions will be Open Source projects, but overall it’s possible to see a strategy that can emerge from a new Oracle + Sun organization.
As a Sun partner, 318 can assist its clients through this transition, be it with storage, MySQL, Java, Solaris or Oracle middleware scripting. Overall, this deal makes a lot of sense and 318 is behind doing whatever possible to ease our clients through the transition.
Finally, for those concerned that Oracle might just be buying Sun to kill off MySQL, keep in mind that the Open Source community built MySQL in the first place (or was integral to building it) and it can build another in its place just as easily, this time faster and with less required legacy support. MySQL is not a fluke. PostgreSQL or a newer solution will take its place if MySQL were to fall by the wayside under the Oracle helm. Oracle is not going to make MySQL into a martyr of sorts, and is going to want to capitalize on their investment (a Billion dollar purchase by Sun and obviously part of this purchase); especially with a clear business plan for MySQL to be profitable (which is why Sun bought them for such a lofty price in the first place). Overall, Oracle has no reason to kill MySQL; instead, with Siebel, MySQL, Oracle, PeopleSoft, etc – they can simply tout “All Your Databasen Are Belong To Us!”
The EMC Celerra NX4 comes with a number of IPs (and other settings) set from the factory. The IP addressing, by default, is as follows:
The File Replication Pro folks have published a customer success story outlining some of the ways we’re using their product. Check it out and if you have any questions about what we’re doing with it feel free to drop us a line!
There’s been a lot of talk the past year or two about unified messaging. You may remember the old ATT All in One commercial where a person was golfing and his important call would find him, and he wouldn’t miss the call. Or have you ever had a job where every morning you had to check your e-mail, then your voicemail on your phones, and then walk to the fax machine to check your faxes? Well, Google this week released a new service called Google Voice. Google Voice is just a revamp of their system called Google GrandCentral. You have one number that people will call, and Google will route the call to all of your phones to try and locate you, and allow you to essentially ignore the call or accept it. You can also search your emails, voicemails, and SMS messages from the web. Microsoft Exchange offers a system that will allow you to get all your email, voicemail and faxes in one centralized location. Weaver just released a service in February that will allow Asterisk users to have their voicemail transcribed automatically and e-mailed to them. Below is a chart of services offered by Google, Asterisk, and Microsoft Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging to give you a better understanding of what technology route you may want to go.
Microsoft Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging
Microsoft’s Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging goal is to tie in Email, Fax and Phone into one manageable place. An example that Microsoft uses is that first thing in the morning most people check their email, then check their voicemail, and after check their faxes. Exchange Unified Messaging has the ability to tie together all three of these communication technologies into a single place for management.
Exchange Unified Messaging on it’s own cannot serve a PBX function, but harnesses a current PBX infrastructure into Exchange for end users to have a seamless place to manage their communications. The current iteration of Exchange Unified Messaging is with Exchange 2007. To leverage the entire suite of features, you must use Outlook 2007.
Google Voice
Google Voice is a communication infrastructure much like Exchange Unified Messaging, but seems to be targeted for non-business consumers. Google Voice is the current iteration of what was once known as Google GrandCentral. Its purpose is unified messaging as well, as it ties in your Gmail, SMS and incoming phone calls into your phone account created on Google Voice. Google Voice is an IP-PBX (VoIP) that allows you to make and receive calls with unified messaging capabilities.
Receiving calls can be done through any cell phone that you have, or through their Google Voice web interface. Making calls can be done via GoogleVoice (web-based), or through any other phone (landline or cell phone). The price point is very good (as in free). The price is free for all calls made to US numbers (long distance charges to other countries apply, of course). It requires no additional hardware.
Asterisk
Asterisk is an open source IP-PBX (VoIP) platform based on Linux. It requires a computer to run on and can tie in your existing land line with almost any VoIP provider of your choice. Call pricing depends on your phone carriers.
|
|
Google Voice |
Asterisk |
Exchange 2007 |
|
Voicemail |
Yes, stored on Google’s PBX Server. |
Yes, stored on PBX Server. |
Yes, originating from current PBX, but forwarded and stored in Exchange |
|
|
Yes, integrated with Gmail. |
Yes, SMTP’d to host of your choice. |
Yes, integrated with Exchange and Outlook |
|
Transcribing VoiceMail |
Yes |
Yes, not natively as it needs to use VoiceScribe[1] and then emails you the trasncript |
No, but allows the user to take notes (including manually transcribing voicemail) to allow voicemail to be searchable via Outlook |
|
Price |
The use is free, and calls to US numbers are free. Your cell provider rates still apply, and Google has their own price for long distance calling[2]. |
Free to install and use, and configure. The call price rate depends on your local and/or VoIP carrier. |
Phone calls rates are based on your PBX/Call Provider. Only certain PBXs are supported[3]. The price for Exchange is $699 for Standard or $3,999 for Enterprise depending on how many storage groups and databases per mailbox server role you need.[4] Both come with unified messaging. |
|
Can call more than one of your phones at a time to try to locate you. |
Yes |
Yes, but you need to purchase additional trunks (VoIP or PSTN) |
Depends on PBX |
|
Can automatically locate you and route calls depending on bluetooth proximity. |
No |
Yes |
No |
|
Native Address Book |
Yes, integrated with your Google Account. |
No |
Yes, integrated with Exchange Contacts |
|
Call Management |
Yes, via your phones (and possibly through Google Voice) |
Yes, via your phones or through HUD |
Yes, through Outlook and possibly through your PBX Software |
|
Fax |
No |
Yes, but it’s through VoIP, and not realiable[5] |
Yes, through a standard fax line |
|
VoIP |
Yes |
Yes |
Depends on PBX |
|
Listen to voice messages without changing their context to another application |
Yes, integrated with Google Voice |
No – you need to use whatever sound application is installed on your computer |
Yes integrated with Outlook |
|
Multiplatform |
Unknown, but since it’s web based, it may work on Linux, Mac, and Windows. |
Yes – Linux, Mac, and Windows |
No, just Windows with Outlook 2007. You can play messages in Entourage, but may either have to change file type in Exchange from *.wma to *.wav, or have Mac users install WMP 9 for OS X[6] |
|
Configure individual voice mail settings |
Via phone or web |
Via phone or web |
Yes integrated with Outlook |
|
View all voicemail in one location |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Distinguish voice and fax messages from email messages within mailbox |
No, just voice mail from email, and only through Google Voice |
No |
Yes integrated with Outlook |
|
Determine whether a voice message has already been played |
Unknown |
No |
Yes integrated with Outlook |
|
Add notes to a voicemail message natively |
Unknown |
No |
Yes integrated with Outlook |
|
Reply to a voice mail with email |
Unknown – not sure if it can work with blocked numbers or telephone numbers not in contacts. |
No |
Yes integrated with Outlook |
|
Add telephone numbers received to Contacts natively |
Unknown |
No |
Yes integrated with Outlook |
|
Share VoiceMail |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Adding a user |
Free. Requires that each user is registered with a Google account. |
Free. Just create a new extension for IP phones. For non-IP hard phones, you must buy a FXS card (or to connect a regular phone to an ATA). |
You must buy CALs for each user. For unified messaging, you must have both the Exchange Standard AND Entprise CAL. Exchange Standard CAL is $67, Exchange Enterprise CAL is $35.[7] You must purchase both CALs for each user. You also need to add a user to your PBX – pricing and licensing depends on PBX provider. |
There are some things that may catch your eye (or not) when you first see this chart. Exchange Unified Messaging is expensive, but offers a lot of features that the other two don’t. From a “birds eye view” it may also fit your enterprise better if your companies’ locations use different types of PBXs, but you want to “unify” all of the communication in Exchange.
If you have a heterogeneous environment or non Windows environment, Asterisk or Google Voice may be a better route for you.
If you are concerned with regulatory compliance, Google Voice may not be your best choice since you do not have a centralized location of all your communication readily available.
When determining which choice is a better fit for your business, carefully weigh your options (price, compliance and room for expansion to name a few). It will be exciting to see how the technologies are managed, and what the future holds for unified communications. If you plan to roll out any of these services, or are in need of consultation, please don’t hesitate to let us know. We’re here to help.
Craigs’ list is a great place to find all kinds of things. But sometimes you need to keep looking for something, over and over for months on end until you find it. Maybe it’s something you just don’t want to pay for or maybe it’s someone that wants that thing you just don’t want to throw out (like that bondi blue iMac). Either way, there’s a site that will search Craigs’ List for you and email you when a pattern that matches your search appears. Simply do a search on Craigs’ List, copy the URL from your address bar in your web browser and then open CraigsListWatch.com. Here, you can paste in the URL, enter your email address and every other hour they will look for new postings that match your criteria. This is a great way to take so much stuff and automate your searches, without having to write an Automator workflow to do so!
Load balancing is fairly straight forward in Microsoft Windows Terminal Server 2008. Before you get started you’ll need to have multiple terminal servers, a Windows 2008 Active Directory environment and a centralized location to store your user profiles.
When setting up Terminal Servers with load balancing and redirected profiles, no single terminal server should get overloaded by users while another terminal server sits idle. When a user tries to connect to the terminal server, the master terminal server checks the load on each one of the servers. It then logs the user into the terminal server with the least load. Since redirected profiles are setup, every user that logs in will have all of their desktop items, documents folder and pretty much everything that they will need. The user does not even need to know that they are on a different terminal server then they were the last time that they logged in.
To install Terminal Server clustering first verify that you meet the prerequisites of centralized home folder storage, Active Directory 2008 and multiple terminal servers. Then install the TerminalServer Session Broker service on each one of the servers. Then on one of the servers, you need to add all of the terminal servers into the session directory under groups in Local Users and Groups. You only need to add it on one server and the change will replicate.
The next thing you need to is setup an alias and put all of the IP addresses for the terminal servers to be associated with that alias. Once complete, when you do an nslookup on that alias, it should display all of the IP addresses that you entered.
Then you will need to make some changes to group policy. It appears that you must have a 2008 Domain Controller setup with the most upgraded schema to be able to do this. Go to Computer Settings -> Policies -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Terminal Services -> Terminal Server and then TS Session Broker. In here you need to put the name of the alias under Configure TS Session Broker Farm Name. Then put the name of main terminal server in Configure TS Session Broker name. Also you need to enable Join TS Session Broker and also User TS Session Broker Load Balancing. After you have that setup, save the Group Policy Object (GPO) and attach it to the Organizational Unit (OU) that holds the terminal servers.
Once your group policies are in place you can focus on making the lives of your users a bit easier by enabling redirected user profiles. First, you will need a place to put all of the user profiles. Then you will want to move all of the users that need to access the terminal servers into a new Organizational Unit, create a new group policy object and enable folder redirection. To enable folder redirection, go to User Configuration -> Policies -> Windows Settings and then Folder Direction. Here, enable each folder redirection policy that you feel the users in the organization will need (this is different for everyone and can require a little testing to get it perfect). While the choices are a lot to consider at first, Appdata, Desktop and My Documents are the most standard ones to choose and represent a great starting point. The basic setting is what you will most likely want to use and then just put the root path to your profile in. It will then give you an example of where everything will be stored and you will verify that the user names and the folders that you created on the network share are the same.
Once all of the users will be able to log into any of the terminal servers and get the same exact environment no matter which server they log into you are mostly done. Setting up load balancing, the worry of one terminal server being over used is no longer something you need to worry about with 2008. Once the cluster is setup, the master terminal server will take care of the rest.
Citrix XenApp has been around much longer that its new name would suggest. Formerly known as MetaFrame Presentation Server, XenApp has been a reliable solution for many years. It is the premier solution for application publishing and remote workplace access, while it also helps to ensure the highest level of security with built-in encryption.
Customizable Citrix Authentication Window
XenApp provides a seamless workplace environment that enables IT departments to centralize the management of data and resources in a granular and automated fashion. As all of your information is hosted on company servers as opposed to being distribution across numerous client machines there is an inherently lower security risk of data being compromised, virus infestations and of course untrustworthy users.
XenApp is one of the most mature products of its type. XenApp provides greater advantages over most remote workplace applications in that it utilizes software that enables it to run across all platforms of systems. This ensures Windows, Mac and even Unix/Linux clients can access the same information in exactly the same way – using the native Windows applications published through a web or Citrix client interface. A unified approach to management drives down administrative overhead and expense by allowing IT departments to focus on one interface rather than having to support various individual systems all with their unique quirks or configurations.
Citrix in URL
With Citrix, a user simply browses to the website where the Application is hosted and logs in. From there, the end-user has access to all the applications that they have been granted access to.
Citrix Application Selection Dialog
Access to applications can be based on granular, user based settings or as a result of larger, more scalable group memberships either local to the Citrix server or based on Active Directory. Either way, each unique user can be provided a very specific and unique user experience tailored to their needs. For some users, you may allow access to a full Desktop environment while for others you may limit access to only a small subset of applications.
Citrix in Action
When you are looking to have an enterprise-level deployment of Mac OS X, Citrix can help to ease the transition burden. For example, many applications are not available to the Mac. If Mac OS X users are not able to access the corporate ERP system then they are not full citizens of the enterprise. The same goes with obtain support for various browser incompatibilities that may exist with corporate Intranets and obtaining features not available in the Mac versions of applications, such as being able to auto-archive in Microsoft Outlook (which is not a feature of Entourage). All-in-all, Citrix can help you ease into an enterprise switching campaign rather than force all of your users into a culture shock of new applications, new ways of doing things and compatibility problems.
Citrix is also a scalable solution. The clustering options in XenApp are far easier to configure than with Windows Terminal Server. The failover is fast and less infrastructure is required as the Citrix server is able to manage most of the workload.
318, Inc is a trusted Citrix Partner well versed in providing Remote Workplace and Application Publishing connectivity for organizations in both homogenous and heterogeneous environments. Allow our highly-skilled technology consultants assess and recommend the ideal Remote Workplace solution for your organization.
