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Active Storage releases mMedia & mVault

Monday, January 9th, 2012

Active Storage has some awesome new products that were announced today:

ActiveSAN Joined By High-Capacity On-line Storage and Near-line Archive Components for Adaptable Production Platform

LAS VEGAS (Storage Visions), January 9, 2012 – Active Storage, the leader in high-performance storage solutions for media and creative professionals, today announced the mMedia platform, a complete end-to-end workflow storage solution for post and broadcast production.

The mMedia platform centers around an enhanced ActiveSAN high- performance metadata controller appliance, and adds two exciting new products, mRAID and mVault (also announced today, see related releases), along with optimized management software; all were combined and demonstrated for the first time, live, on the Storage Visions show floor to reveal a complete, unified mMedia platform installation.

With scalable performance and capacity, mMedia provides content producers the components to assemble complete storage solutions that meet their individual needs plus the integration and management software that lets them choose the best production tools in the industry. Together mMedia is more than a collection of components; it’s a complete media creation storage platform for storing and managing content from ingest to archive.

“mMedia is the platform of the future for broadcast production,” said Alex Grossman, founder and president of Active Storage, Inc. “mMedia provides an integrated workflow storage platform with the performance, scalability and configuration flexibility to meet nearly every broadcast and post-production facility’s ingest, on-line and near-line archive capability.”

The mMedia platform leverages Active Storage’s strong partnerships with industry leaders by offering an open platform that works with other production solutions.

“The mMedia platform is a very exciting development for the Levels
Beyond Reach Engine,” says Art Raymond, CEO of Levels Beyond. “We deploy to some of the largest and most demanding creative workflow sites in the world, including major MSO’s, Studios, Broadcast Networks and Live Sports distributed globally. We’re very enthusiastic about the potential of deploying our solution leveraging the new mMedia Platform to deliver even tighter integration, speed and management for a more advanced customer experience than exists in the market today.”

“Our technology on Active’s mMedia platform can support significantly more capable Media Asset Management solutions for Adobe Premiere, Apple Final Cut and Avid workflows,” says Danny Gold, VP Client Solutions of Levels Beyond. “The combination of Reach Engine and the new mMedia Platform is a complete game- changing way to deliver cost-effective, seamlessly integrated high- performance archive solutions.”

About Active Storage:
Active Storage, Inc. is the innovative storage leader for media and creative professionals, broadcast, post-production, on-line and archive solutions. Fast, reliable and easy to deploy, Active Storage products deliver a best-of-breed user experience, marrying award-winning industrial design, unmatched speed, reliability and customer service. Ease of use and robust performance make Active Storage the first choice for complex professional storage deployments.

318 is an Active Storage reseller and can work with you to plan for and acquire Active Storage products into your storage environment. For more information, contact your 318 Professional Services Manager or sales@318.com if you do not yet have one.

Tags: Active Storage, archive, lion, Mac OS X, metadata, mMedia, mVault, near line, Storage, tape, Xsan
Posted in IT Management, Mac OS X Server, Xsan | Comments Off

Monitoring Xsan with Nagios and SNMP

Monday, December 12th, 2011

Monitoring a system or device using SNMP (a SonicWALL, for instance) is simple enough, provided you have the right MIB. XSNMP is an Open Source project that provides a simple Preference Pane to manage SNMP on OS X, and it also includes an MIB developed by LithiumCorp. This MIB provides OS X’s SNMP agent to gather and categorize information relating specifically to Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, and Xsan.

XSNMP-MIB can be downloaded from GitHub, or directly from Lithium.

Download the XSNMP-MIB.txt file and put it in /usr/share/snmp/mibs. You can verify that the MIB is loaded by running snmpwalk on the system, specifying the XSNMP Version OID. If snmpwalk returns the version, the MIB is installed correctly. If it returns an error about an “Unknown Object Identifier”, then the MIB isn’t installed in the right spot.

bash$ snmpwalk -c public -v 1 my.server.address XSNMP-MIB::xsnmpVersion XSNMP-MIB::xsnmpVersion.0 = Gauge32: 1

The fact that the MIB was developed by Lithium doesn’t stop us from using it with Nagios, though. You can define a Nagios service to gather the free space available on your Xsan volume by adding the following to a file called xsan_usage.cfg. Put the file in your Nagios config directory.

define service{ host_name xsan_controller service_description Xsan Volume Free Space check_command check_snmp!-C public -o xsanVolumeFreeMBytes.1 -m XSNMP-MIB }

The host_name should match the Nagios host definition for your Xsan Controller. The service_description can be any arbitrary string that makes sense and describes the service.

The check_command definition is the actual command that’s run. The -C flag defines the SNMP community string, the -m flag defines which MIB should be loaded (you can use “-m all” to just load them all), and the -o flag defines which OID we should return. “xsanVolumeFreeMBytes.1″ should return the free space, in MB, of the first Xsan volume.

Posted in IT Management, Xsan | Comments Off

Using Nagios MIBs with a SonicWALL

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

MIB (short for Management Information Base), is an index based on a network standard that categorizes data for a specific device so SNMP servers can read the data. SonicWALL MIBs are specific to device AND firmware. Each can be downloaded from www.mysonicwall.com (you will need to have an account to download). Click on Downloads, Download Center and then find the firmware that you are running. Then click on “SNMP MIBs” to download.

Once downloaded, copy the MIB files to /usr/share/snmp/mibs to prepare them for loading into NetSNMP. Then run check_snmp with a -m option followed by ALL so that Nagios will detect the new MIBs:

check_snmp -m ALL

Once complete, determine the OID. OID’s are MIB variables that instruct an SNMP server monitor to look for information on the device. These variables can be determined by reading the MIBs. One tool that assists with doing this is MIB Browser by iReasoning Networks http://tl1.ireasoning.com/mibbrowser.shtml MIB Browser can run on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux/UNIX. To obtain the appropriate OID’s:

Load the MIBs in MIB Browser by going to File > Load Mibs
Manually comb through to find the OID you want (a string used in the SonicWALL Web Configuration).

To put this into use, let’s prepare an snmpwalk from a TZ100. First, download the SNMP MIBs from MySonicWALL.com for a TZ100 running firmware version (5.6.0.12-65o). Then let’s load the MIB for SONICWALL-FIREWALL-IP-STATISTICS-MIB into MIB Browser. Searching for “CPU” (Edit -> Find in MIB Tree) shows sonicCurrentCPUUtil, the OID for this fact is .1.3.6.1.4.1.8741.1.3.1.3.0. We used the OID shown in the drop-down near the menu in the MIB Browser. This shows the full OID, which sometimes includes a “0″ at the end (shown towards the bottom of the window). Next, add the OID into a switch.cfg file in nagios:

define service{ use generic-service ; Inherit values from a template host_name TZ100 service_description CPU Utilization check_command check_snmp!-C public -o .1.3.6.1.4.1.8741.1.3.1.3.0 -m all }

These settings include the following:

host_name: the name of the device (whatever you want to call it)
service_description: the name of the service you are monitoring (whatever you want to call it)
check_command: -C is to define the community SNMP string, -o is to define the OID to read, -m is to define which MIB files to load – to be more specific, for this example you can narrow “-m all” to “-m SONICWALL-FIREWALL-IP-STATISTICS-MIB.MIB”

Overall, setting up Nagios to be able to leverage MIBs from 3rd party vendors is an easy task, if not tedious when there are a lot of settings you’d like to walk through with SNMP.

Tags: mibs, nagios, snmp, sonicwall
Posted in IT Management | Comments Off

Deploying Font Servers

Friday, October 21st, 2011

Mac OS X has come with the ability to activate and deactivate Fonts on the fly since 10.5, when Font Book was introduced. Font Book allows a single user to manage their fonts easily. But many will find that managing fonts on a per-computer basis ends up not being enough. Which begs the question: who needs a font server? A very simplistic answer is any organization with more than 5 users working in a collaborative environment. This could be the creative print shops, editorial, motion graphics, advertising agencies and other creative environments. But corporate environments where font licensing and compliance is important are also great candidates.

Lack of font management is a cost center for many organizations. There is a loss of productivity every time a user has to manually add fonts when opening co-workers documents, or the cost of a job going out with the wrong version of a font. Some of the other benefits of fonts servers are separate font sets for different workgroups and isolating corrupt fonts to clean up large font libraries, along with quick searching and identification of fonts.

Font Management and Best Practices

Anyone who uses fonts for daily workflow needs font management. This could be a standalone product such as Suitcase Fusion or Font Agent Pro. But larger environments invariably need to collaborate and share fonts between users, meaning many environments need font servers. Two such products include Extensis Universal Type Server and Font Agent Pro Server. But before adding font management products, users should clean up and any fonts loaded or installed and added prior to moving to a managed font environment. Places to look for fonts when cleaning them up include the following:

~/Library/Fonts
/Library/Fonts
/System/Library Fonts

Leaving any necessary system, Microsoft Web Core, and required Adobe fonts.

The best resource for this process can be found at Extensis Font Best Practices in OX v.7, which can be found at: http://www.extensis.com/en/downloads/document_download.jsp?docId=5600039

Types of Font Server Products Available

There are two major font server publishers: Extensis and Font Agent Pro. Both have workgroup and enterprise products. All server products from both products work on a client/server model. Both can sync entire font sets or serve fonts on-demand. The break down for the Extensis Universal Type Sever is at 10 clients. Below 10 clients Universal Type Server Lite is a 10 clients product, which lacks Enterprise features, such as the ability to use a SQL database or integrate in Open Directory or Active Directory. The full Universal Type Server Professional adds Directory integration, external database use, and font compliance features and is sold as 10-user license, with an additional per seat license.

Insider Software offers two levels of font servers. The first is FontAgent Pro Team Server designed for small workgroups and sold in a 5 or 10 client configuration. The next level of product is Font Agent Pro Enterprise server. This adds the same directory services integration as Universal Type Server Professional. This product also has Kerberos single sign on, server replication and fail over. It uses the same per-seat pricing structure as Universal Type Server Professional.

A third tool is also available in Monotype Font Explorer, at http://www.fontexplorerx.com, which we will look at later in this article.

Pre-Deployment Strategies and Projects

Before any font server deployment, there are a few things to take into consideration. First is number of clients. This will guide you to which product will be appropriate for installation. Also note if Directory integration and compliance is needed. Is failover or a robust database important. The most important part of any font server installation is the fonts. How may are there, where are they coming from, are separate workgroups needed? Are all your fonts legal? In my experience probably not. Is legal compliance required for you organization or your clients? What is the preferred font type, PostScript Type 1, Open Type? What version are the fonts? Most fonts have been “acquired” over time, with some Postscript fonts dating back to early to mid nineties. As a font server is just a database, the axiom “garbage in, garbage out” is true here as well. This should lead to a pre-deployment font library consolidation and clean up. This can be either be done by 318 or we can train the you to perform this task. If compliance is an issue this is where we would weed out unlicensed fonts. Which to my experience is about 90% of all fonts. A clean, organized font set is the most important part of pre-deployment.

A major part of any font server roll out should be compliance and licensing. This allows for the tracking and reporting of font licenses and to make sure that stays in licensing and compliance.

Extensis

Universal Type Server includes the ability to generate and export reports to help you determine if you are complying with your font licenses. The font compliance feature only allows you to track your licensing compliance and does not restrict access to noncompliant fonts. To help you understand how the font licensing compliance, let’s look at the following typical example of how to use licenses and the font compliance report in your environment.

Say you are starting up your own design shop and need a good group of licensed fonts for your designers to create projects that will bring you fame and fortune. You know that fonts are valuable, and you want to be sure that you have purchased enough licenses for your requirements. So, you purchase a 10user license of a sizable font library. Using the Universal Type Client, these fonts are added to a Type Server workgroup as a set. A font license is then created and the Number of Seats field is set to 10. This license is then applied to all fonts in the set.

When you run the font compliance report, Universal Type Server compares the number of seats allowed to the total number of unique users who have access to the workgroup. If more users have access than licenses available, the fonts are listed as “non-compliant.” You can now either remove users from the workgroup or purchase more font licenses to become compliant.

Universal Type Server is unique amongst other products in that it uses a checksum process to catalog fonts. Others just use file names and paths.

Universal Type Server can limit users to be able to only download fonts installed by administrators. For initial deployment, each user does not need to download all of the fonts, which helps in environments when you have a lot of fonts (e.g. more than 5 GB of fonts) that need to get distributed to several hundreds clients, so if each user had to download all of the fonts (e.g. each time they get imaged), they could loose a production system for some time.

Universal Type Server Deployment

Universal Type Server system requirements include the following:

Macintosh Server

•          Mac OS X v 10.5.7, 10.6 Mac OS X Server 10.5 or 10.6•          1.6 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor (PowerPC is not supported)
•          1 GB available RAM
•          250 MB of hard disk space + space for fonts
•          Safari 3.0 or Firefox 3.0 or higher*
•          Adobe Flash Player 10 or higher*

Windows Server

•          Windows XP SP3 (32-bit only), Server 2003 SP2, Server 2008 SP2 (32 or 64-bit version**)
•          P4 or faster processor***
•          1 GB available RAM
•          250 MB of hard disk space + space for fonts
•          Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 3.0 or higher*
•          Adobe Flash Player 10 or higher*
•          Adobe Reader 7 to read PDF documentation*
•          Microsoft .NET 3.5 or higher

Universal Type Server Installation Process:

1.         Verify server system requirements
2.         Run the installer on the target server machine
3.         Login to the Server Administration web interface
4.         Serialize the server
5.         Set the Bonjour Name
6.         Resolve any port conflicts
7.         Set any desired server configuration options, including backup schedule, log file configuration, secure connection options, and any other necessary server settings.
8.         After installing the server, configure workgroups, roles and add users.

The basic user and workgroup configuration steps include:

1.   Plan your configuration
2.   Create workgroups
3.   Create new users
4.   Add users to workgroups
5.   Assign workgroup roles to users
6. Modify user settings as required

Optional Setup:

Managing System Fonts with System Font Policy The System Font Policy feature allows Universal Type Server administrators to create a list of system fonts that are allowed in a user’s system font folder.
Font Compliance Reporting
The font compliance feature only allows you to track your licensing
compliance and does not restrict access to noncompliant fonts.
Directory Integration
Directory integration allows network administrators to automatically
synchronize users from an LDAP service
(Active Directory on Windows or Open Directory on Mac OS X) with Universal Type Server workgroups.

* UTS Documentation:

http://tinyurl.com/4xgn9rr

Both Universal Type Server Professional and Font Agent Pro Enterprise can be configured for Open Directory, Active Directory, and LDAP integration. Both also can utilize Kerberos Single User sign on. Universal Type Sever Professional directory integration instructions can be found in the UTS 2 Users and Workgroups Administration Guide at http://tinyurl.com/4xgn9rr. Some users have reported issues connecting to Open Directory (which happens with all products, not just this one).

Universal Type Server runs in Flash for administrative functions, which many do not like.

Monotype Font Explorer

Monotype Font Explorer is a third tool that can be used to manage fonts. Available at http://www.fontexplorerx.com there are some things that some environments do not like about Universal Type Server or Font Agent Pro. Let’s face it, the reason there are multiple products and multiple workflows is that some work for some environments and others work for other environments/workflows better. For example, Font Agent Pro stores master fonts on one client machine, which is then synchronized to the server, and from there to the rest of the clients; not everyone wants a client system acting as a master to the server. Font Explorer keeps the master is on the server, groups and synchronization works well and the administration is in the same window as font management. And best of all, Font Explorer is also typically cheaper than its server-based competitors in the font management space.

Extensis publishes a guide as to which fonts to include in the system and which to handle in the font management software. According to Apple documentation, and fonts in my ~/Library/Fonts folder take precedence to fonts in /Library/Fonts, which again takes precedence to /System/Library/Fonts. That means that if I install Times in my ~/Library/Fonts folder, it will be used instead of the font with the same name in /Library/Fonts or in /System/Library/Fonts. So how is it that I should care which fonts is installed where, as the font management applocation should simple take precedence to the others? If it does not take precedence, then where in the chain is it actually activating fonts? Maybe fonts are handled in these solution in parallel with the system mechanism? Thats the only explanation I can find to that, but is then only valid for UTS, or is it also valid for the other solutions?

End User Training and Font Czar

No font server installation would be complete without end user training and the appointment of a Font Czar. User training can be a fairly easy endeavor if client systems are using the same publishers stand-alone font client. Other times it could entail discussing licensing and compliance concepts along with adding metadata to fonts. An onsite Font Czar (or more than one) is very important to font server installations. The Font Czar cleans up and ingests new fonts, adds new users to font server, and in general be the Font Admin. This is usually a senior designer or technical point of contact for the creative environment.

Conclusion

Font Book is adequate for most users that don’t need a server. Universal Type Server, Font Agent Pro and FontExplorer are all great products if you need a font server. They all are installed centrally and allow end users to administer fonts, based on the server configuration and group memberships. They all work with directory services (some better than others) and can be mass deployed. In big workgroups or enterprises, where only a few people are handling the administration of fonts for a lot of people, a centralized font management solution is a must. But in much smaller organizations, it requires care and feeding, which represents a soft cost that often rivals a cost to purchase the solution.

Finally, test all of the tools available. Each exists for a reason. Find the one that works with the workflow of your environment before purchasing and installing anything.

Note: Thanks to Søren Theilgaard of Humac for some of the FontExplorer text!

Tags: font server, fonts, Universal Type Server
Posted in Directory Services, Editorial, IT Management, Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, Mass Deployments, Web Development, Windows | Comments Off

Final Cut Pro X

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

Version 10.0.1 of Final Cut Pro X is now out. This update returns the ability to use Final Cut Pro X projects and Events on Xsan. This is a must for multi-user environments. Users can now each others media and projects, and edit them from any system on the SAN, as with previous versions of Final Cut.

Additionally, some other new features including custom starting timecode, the new Tribute theme, GPU-accelerated exports, One-step transitions, media stems export and of course, XML support. XML support is very important as it introduces the ability to integrate Final Cut Pro X with asset management systems or APIs from other applications. The ability to interact with other tools helps to plan and implement an automated workflow, reducing the labor for reoccurring tasks common in media environments.

Apple also now provides a free 30 day trial to Final Cut Pro X. If your organization is considering migrating from Final Cut Studio into Final Cut Pro X, or if you have a Final Cut Server based asset management solution that you would like to migrate to something newer and supported, then please feel free to contact your 318 Professional Services Manager, or sales@318.com if you do not yet have one.

Tags: Final Cut, Final Cut Pro X, SAN, Xsan
Posted in IT Management, Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, Web Development, iPhone | Comments Off

318 Featured in Archintosh

Monday, March 14th, 2011

318 has been featured in an article in Archintosh, the leading Internet magazine dedicated to Mac CAD and 3D professionals and students worldwide. The article, titled iPad 2: Impact on enterprise, engineering and CAD, is by Anthony Frausto-Robledo and focuses on the impact of iOS (and more specifically on iPad 2) in CAD and 3D graphics environments.

For more, see: http://architosh.com/2011/03/ipad-2-impact-on-enterprise-engineering-and-cad

Tags: 3d, autodesk, CAD, Enterprise, ipad 2
Posted in IT Management, iPhone | Comments Off

318 Featured in CIO Again

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

CIO ran another article on the iPad featuring 318′s Director of Technology, Charles Edge. This time focusing on preparing enterprises for iPad 2. You can find the article at http://www.cio.com/article/675163/How_to_Prepare_Your_Enterprise_for_iPad_2_Expert_Tips?source=rss_all.

If iPad and iPad 2 integration is something you feel your enterprise needs help with then please feel free to contact your 318 PSM or sales@318.com for more information on this exciting aspect of our portfolio of services.

Tags: Enterprise, iPad, ipad 2
Posted in IT Management, iPhone | Comments Off

318 Director of Technology Interviewed By V3

Saturday, March 5th, 2011

Charles Edge, Director of Technology at 318, did an interview with Iain Thomson of V3, a popular UK-based technology news site. The article, available at http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/analysis/2275079/apple-ipad-tablets-enterprise looks at iPads in enterprise environments. While I don’t agree with the fact that iPad 2 provides little reason to upgrade, I do think the article turned out pretty good.

If you are interested in purchasing iPad 2, please contact your 318 professional services manager and we can get a quote out to you asap!

Tags: 318, adoption, Enterprise, integration, interview, iPad, ipad 2, sell
Posted in IT Management, iPhone | Comments Off

CIO: An Interview with Charles Edge on iPad 2

Friday, March 4th, 2011

Charles Edge, the Director of Technology for 318 was interviewed recently by CIO magazine, shortly after the announcement of the iPad 2. In the interview, enterprise viability of iPad 2 and a number of other items around iOS in the enterprise were discussed.

See the full article here:
http://www.cio.com/article/672117/Do_iPad_2_iOS_4.3_Make_Enough_Gains_for_Enterprise_?source=rss_news

Tags: Charles Edge, cio, CIO magazine, Enterprise, iOS, ipad 2
Posted in IT Management, iPhone | Comments Off

An Interview with Kevin Klein

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

Today, TechTarget.com ran an article with an interview from Kevin Klein, the CEO of 318.

With the plethora of Apple iPhones and iPads used for business, security solution providers may be considering expanding their Apple device security offerings. To address this strategy, SearchSecurityChannel.com interviewed Kevin Klein, president and CEO of Santa Monica, Calif.-based solution provider 318 Inc., which specializes in securing Apple devices in its customers’ enterprises.

Click here to read the full article.

Tags: 318, kevin klein, techtarget
Posted in IT Management, iPhone | Comments Off

Disabling Spanning Tree on Cisco Switches

Monday, February 21st, 2011

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.

Tags: cisco, Cisco Spanning Tree, cisco switches
Posted in General Technology, IT Management, Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, Mass Deployments, Scripts | Comments Off

Migrating the Apple Remote Desktop Database

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

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:

/Library/Preferences/com.apple.RemoteDesktop.plist – This file contains system-wide preferences, primarily serialization information, which is system-specific (so you’ll need to serialize on the new system using the original serial number).
/var/db/RemoteManagement – This database and set of caches contains the Remote Desktop Client database used by client reporting.
~/Library/Application Support/Remote Desktop – This folder is used to store your command presets (including Unix Send Command templates), your task history, and task manager settings and actions.
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.RemoteDesktop.plist – This file contains the bulk of the Remote Desktop application experience, including the entire computer database, computer lists, scanners, and last but not least, access credentials for all computers in the database.

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.

Posted in General Technology, IT Management, Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server | Comments Off

318 Gets a Nod from Fierce CIO Magazine

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

Carol Carson, from Fierce CIO, posted some tips from 318 in an article on January 2nd called “Embracing the inevitable tablet onslaught”. The article, which can be found at http://www.fiercecio.com/story/embracing-inevitable-tablet-onslaught/2011-01-02 is a look at some ramifications of consumerization as it eeks its way into mainstream enterprise. As usual, Carol is keen to pick up on enterprise trends in a variety of places: this week, at CES. We hope you enjoy the article!

Posted in IT Management, iPhone | Comments Off

eWeek Article Featuring Charles Edge

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

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.

Tags: consulting, iPad adoption, iPad integration, iPhone in the Enterprise
Posted in General Technology, IT Management, iPhone | Comments Off

318 Featured in IT Business Edge

Tuesday, December 28th, 2010

318 has been a leader in bringing iOS into the Enterprise for some time. We have been sitting alongside our customers, working to get iPhones integrated into organizations of all sizes for years. Since the release of the iPad the quantity of projects we are involved with continues to increase. Now, 318 has been featured in a slide show on IT Business Edge illustrating “how 318’s team is advising clients who are trying to bring iPads and iPhones into enterprise environment.”

And if you would like to discuss how your organization can deploy iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch please feel free to contact your 318 Professional Services Manager or sales@318.com for more information.

Tags: Enterprise, iOS, iPad, iPhone, slide show
Posted in IT Management, iPhone | Comments Off

Book On Enterprise iOS Integration Available

Monday, December 20th, 2010

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.

Tags: Charles Edge, enterprise deployment, iOS, ios integration, iPad, iPhone
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318 Press Releases

Friday, December 17th, 2010

Today, 318 released two press releases pertaining to initiatives within the mobility space. These include the following:

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Challenged-by-Deployment-of-Apple-iPads-in-Your-Enterprise-Tips-From-318-Consulting-1371111.htm

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Leading-Enterprise-Class-Apple-Consultancy-318-Becomes-iPad-Reseller-1371114.htm

Also worth note is that 318 has been a reseller for Research in Motion, the makers of the Blackberry and Blackberry Enterprise Server, Google Apps and a number of other solutions that fit nicely into the mobility space. If you would like to discuss any of these topics please reach out to us at 877.318.1318 for more information on services and products that 318 can work to integrate and manage for your organization.

Tags: airwatch, consulting, iOS, iPad, iPhone, Mac OS X, press release
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Attachmate Acquires Novell

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

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.

Tags: Apple, Microsoft, Novell, Redhat
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Tier Zero Asset Development

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

The staff at 318 is responsible for developing over 75 courses, 40 exams and thousands of pages of assets for ourselves and our customers, including vendors that you may have obtained certifications through. 318 is a firm believer in education, developing a substantial amount of documentation and testing materials for our own internal use and exclusive use for various customers. We are able to do this because we have a strong emphasis on education, which can be seen by the fact that 7 of our staff have become technical authors publishing books while at 318.

But developing assets that can be leveraged to decrease Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for an organization is arguably a different beast. FAQs, knowledge base articles and pre-populated wiki entries are only the beginning to the self-servicing power that can be unleashed for your users. Concerned that you don’t have the deep technical backgrounds, the time to develop the required assets or the writing experience on staff, then let 318 work with you to develop a plan and assets that can be provided in a variety of means to meet the needs of your dynamically changing user base.

Contact 318 today for more on leveraging our experience to help you with your emerging zero asset needs.

Tags: 318, asset, tier zero
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Non-profits in Need of GroupWare?

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Not-for-profit and looking at options for messaging and groupware moving forward? Then you need to take a 2nd or even a 3rd look at Google Apps! Not-for-profit organizations with less than 3,000 users can get Google Appls Education Edition for free! For a not-for-profit with more than 3,000 users you can get Google Apps Premier Edition at a 40% discount.

Imagine all the infrastructure that can be repurposed, all the networking and message hygiene that you won’t have to do any more and most importantly, how happy the users will be. If your interest is peaked give 318 a call today and we’ll be happy to work with you on a strategy, whether it’s Google Apps, Microsoft Exchange, Zimbra, Mac OS X Server, etc – 318 is agnostic to the platform and here to help!

Tags: Education, google apps, Non-profit, not-for-profit, Premier, Zimbra
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318 Video on “Gone Phishing”

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

Tags: email, hygiene, phishing, video
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Thawte No Longer Offering Free Certificates

Monday, October 12th, 2009

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

Tags: thawte
Posted in General Technology, IT Management, Security | Comments Off

Google Latitude, GPS and Development

Monday, July 27th, 2009

Google Latitude is a fairly new service from Google that allows you to find your friends. But Google Latitude is more than just that. Using Latitude’s API you can do a number of other tasks. You can pull location information and display it on a map of your own, which enables you to pull from multiple users. You can also export a “badge” from your Latitude account that shows you where a single device is at any given time, as can be seen here.

The API and the ability to embed data opens up the opportunity for a variety of custom mashup portals. Maybe you’re a delivery company looking to keep track of where each of your trucks are, or maybe you are an airline curious as to why your pilot is not at the plane, ready to fly or even tracking the location of each person on location at a production (ie – directly from RepTools). Google Maps has been an insanely successful tool for custom development opportunities for organizations. Adding Latitude to that mix goes beyond exporting an address from a database and displaying it on a map but instead gives you real time statistics on the location of your devices.

Google Latitude is supported by most smart phone’s and a number of other devices. There is also a Google Latitude app for the iPhone coming soon. For more on integrating Google Latitude into your solutions, contact your 318 Professional Services Manager today.

Tags: Development, Google Latitude, Google Maps, GPS, Real time tracking, statistics
Posted in IT Management, iPhone | Comments Off

Low Cost Storage for VMware

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

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!

Tags: ECM, esx, esxi, StorCenter, Virtual Machine, vmware
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Oracle Buys Sun

Monday, April 20th, 2009

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!”

Tags: MYSQL, Oracle, Oracle to buy Sun, SOlaris, sun
Posted in Directory Services, General Technology, IT Management, Linux, Scripts, Web Development | Comments Off

Unraveling Unified Messaging

Friday, March 13th, 2009

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
Email	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.

[1] https://www.weavver.com/Public/Default.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fDefault.aspx

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/technology/personaltech/12pogue.html?pagewanted=2&8dpc&_r=1

[3] http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc164342.aspx#supipgate

[4] http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/howtobuy/default.mspx

[5] http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+fax

[6] http://www.microsoft.com/mac/itpros/default.mspx?CTT=PageView&clr=99-15-0&target=d01fafd1-6c54-459b-9ea6-2d7b80cffab71033&srcid=d0b1e054-62c9-4980-954b-f15b90b720a91033&ep=7

[7] http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/howtobuy/default.mspx

Tags: Asterisk, Exchange 2007, Google Voice, Unified Messaging
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File Replication

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

Performing replication between physical locations is always an interesting task. Perhaps you’re only using your second location for a hot/cold site or maybe it’s a full blown branch office. In many cases, file replication can be achieved with no scripting, using off the shelf products such as Retrospect or even Carbon Copy Cloner. Other times, the needs are more granular and you may choose to script a solutions, as is often done using rsync.

However, a number of customers have found these solutions to leave something to be desired. Enter File Replication Pro. File Replication Pro allows administrators to replicate data between two locations in a variety of fashions and across a variety of operating systems in a highly configurable manner. Furthermore, File Replication Pro provides delta synchronization rather than full file copies, which means that you’re only pushing changes to files and not the full file over your replication medium, greatly reducing required bandwidth. File Replication Pro is also multi-platform (built on Java), allowing administrators to synchronize Sun, Windows, Mac OS X, etc.

If you struggle with File Replication issues, then we can help. Whatever the medium may be, give us a call and we can help you to determine the best solution for your needs!

Tags: file replication, java, Mac OS X, sun
Posted in IT Management, Linux, Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server | Comments Off

Terminal Server 2008 Load Balancing

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

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.

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Citrix XenApp: New Look, New Features, Same Great Product

Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

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.

Tags: citrix
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