Data centres to off-centre opinion

This post is especially for my family RSS feeds are an easy way for you to get information you’re interested in delivered to your computer. See the overview here. 

To use it, you’ll need an application whch technology which allows you to subscribe to a “feed”. If you’re using Internet Explorer 6 or 7 you’re already set. You need to do two things to make this work, I’ll walk you through it for this site:

Step 1: Subscribing

1. In the sidebar on the right of this website, there is a section called Metadata. Below this, right click on RSS and chose Open in New Tab
2. Click on the new tab, and then click on Subscribe to this feed which is at the bottom of the yellow box at the top of the screen
3. Click Subscribe in the dialog box which comes up

Step 2: Reading

1. In Internet Explorer, click on the orange star at the left hand end of the browser tabs. Its just below the address bar (where you type in internet addresses like www.sangwell.com)
2. Click on Feeds
3. Click on Data centres to Climbing centres
4. This will show you the most recent posts I’ve written. Alternatively, you could just visit www.sangwell.com/blog …

Many websites provide RSS feeds, an easy way to tell is to look for an RSS logo (white text on an orange background).

ChannelWeb are reporting that Microsoft has just released an update to Desktop Search. It will be made available on Windows Upate as a Recommended update sometime soon (recommended updates are downloaded and installed by default), but if you want to get it before, its available to download from the Microsoft download centre.

Desktop Search is builtin to Vista and is part of many MSN products (e.g. toolbar). You’ll know if you have it installed on XP becuase these will be an MSN butterfly search box on your toolbar as shown below;

You may not have realised, but the search functionality in Vista will find programs, internet favourites and more as well as documents. I typically launch programs like Word by clicking on the start pearl, typing Word and then hitting enter on the keyboard: much quicker than trying to find the icon in the start menu.

We’ve all heard stories and some of us have been unfortunate enough to permanently loose some of our valueable data. Its when this happens that you realise how important it is to keep a backup of the data – once bitten twice shy.

My first data loss was in 1997 and fortunately it was just some documents. Annoying but not a nightmare. The experience spurred me to go an buy a consumer tape streamer. I think it was an HP device which connected to the PC via parallel cable and had a massive 700Mb capacity. This I used for a good 2 years before I started using CDs.

When I installed my first server at home, backup got more complicated: I was now backing up a complete machine (NT 4.0 with Exchange 5.5) and its data rather than just the data itself. For this I started using a backup utility (NTBackup) which saved the backup on another computer (the client). This worked ok and I continue to use this model for backing up four servers today: a Domain Controller (this stores usernames/passwords and other user-related information), an Exchange Server (email and calendar) and two ISA Server firewalls.

Last year I installed a Windows Home Server, and this has made data backup so much easier. Home Server is a special-purpose computer which has no screen or keyboard and acts as the focal point for home networks. It stores all your data, allows the family to access it from any computer in the home or on the internet. It automatically backs up every computer each night and even provides a simple way for you to restore a computer from scratch (e.g. after a hard disk is replaced).

However, if I lost the Home Server, I’d also loose all my data and the backups! Hence I’ve subscribed to iDrive. iDrive is an internet-based backup service which securely keeps copies of all my data on servers in their datacentre. Further, it keeps multiple copies of each file in case I want to go back to a previous version. Every night, iDrive copies all the files which have changed that day up to their servers, encrypting them in the process so noone else can read them. And they only charge a measly £50/year for this privilege. There are alternatives to iDrive (e.g. JungleDisk) but I preferred the UI on iDrive.

I don’t know about you, but when I work for a company who gets bad press about its products it can be difficult not to take it personally.

I still hear and read comments from people who have had a bad experience with Windows Vista. Admittedly, far fewer in the last 6 months or so, but there is still a groundswell of bad opinion. Some of this is absolutely deserved: I have personally had both a very good and very bad experiences with Vista. Others are simply bigotry from those who often haven’t even tried Vista or at best tried it 1 year ago and haven’t since.

So why write this post? Simple: to share my experiences. Is this objective? Reasonably see the first line of this post

Extremely bad:

When I first started with the Vista beta builds (mid ’06) my work laptop was a Toshiba Tecra M4. To be frank, I nearly threw this on the floor any number of times. It was extremely slow, I got bluescreens several times a month, it would not stay hibernated resulting in the “flaming rucksack” phenomenon. It wouldn’t reliably connect to an external monitor and after the second motherboard replacement it simply froze at least once a day needing power and battery to be removed to reset. Most (not all) of the problems were down to drivers and poor hardware. Apparently Tosh modify the nVidia graphics chipset which means the standard nVidia drivers don’t work – and the Tosh drivers were terrible. I also heard that there was a fault with many of the M4 motherboards which caused the hibernation and freezing problems (relatved to overheating). Vista was a complete dog on this box: too slow to be useable. But most of the problems were driver related.

How did this get resolved? I got a new HP laptop and put XP back on the Tosh.

Pretty good:

Both my HP nc8430 and Dell D830 laptops run Vista flawlessly. Admitedly, the first thing I did was blow away the Vista build installed by HP and Dell respectively. I installed my own copy of Vista and they’ve both been reliable. No bluescreens, no lockups, no more application failures than normal (application failures are not often caused by the OS). My Alienware box at home also runs Vista as reliably as the laptops (once I replcaed the Soundblaster card with a SoundMax card: Soundblaster drivers were late and crap). As does Carols Dell XPS1710 (which she plays WoW on – so its definitely being pushed) and Stephanies Sony Vaio laptop.

Why not Extremely good?

I think this is the crux: the way Vista does some things I simply don’t like. The new explorer interface is less clear than the old XP interface IMO. Its slower than XP on the same hardware. I don’t like the new Network Management user interface. Normally I like change; IE7 is a great improvement (and there is room for more), I like the Sidebar (but some sidebar gadgets are unreliable ) and I really like the improvements in elevated permissions compared to XP; being prompted for admin username/password (or Cancel/Allow if you’re logged on as admin) is much better than simply “access is denied” under XP.

Our Media Centre machine seems to corrupt recordings.xml a few times a year resulting in the box bogging down. About once per year something else causes it to slow to a halt but I’ve not worked out what yet. A rebuild fixes the latter issue and re-creating recordings.xml fixed the former.

So, is Vista extremely good or extremely bad? Well that depends on how good the drivers are and how well the hardware vendor (HP, Dell etc) have setup Vista on your machine. My recommendation: always install Vista yourself, use Microsoft drivers if you can (they will have undergone a ton of testing) and only install vendor-supplied drivers if the Microsoft ones don’t work or are missing a feature you need (e.g. colour management in the nVidia drivers).

Ever since my first job in the IT industry, none of my friends or family have understood what I actually do. Each progressive job title has got longer and more complicated, along with the job.

I’ve tried explaining it many times, but to no avail and I’m not alone – industry colleagues share the same challenge.

So here is a description of what I’m responsible for in my current role as a Mission Critical Solution Architect:

Mission Critial

Many large businesses rely on IT to such an extent that their business would be in serious danger should key IT systems fail. For example, if the IT system which processes trades for the London Stock Exchange were to fail, no trading could take place. Its easy to see that no trade=no revenue and no company can survive long without any income. The key IT system here is obviously Mission Critical.

Its a fact that failures occur – every one of my friends and family members have called me with a problem they’re facing with their computer/a website. Sure, some of these problems are user error but others are real failures e.g. broadband being down, hard disk failing, machine running slow. IT systems which are mission critical have to be designed to withstand failures without interruption. Many of these systems also have to perform at a certain level and if they don’t its also viewed as a failure.

My Job

At its simplest level, I ensure IT systems are desiged and engineered to ensure they meet their availability and performance requirements.  I do this by working with the customers IT staff who are designing the system; providing input to the designs, reviewing existing designs and getting the people within Microsoft who design and build our products to perform formal design reviews of the customer solution.

In other words, I sit in meetings contributing to the agenda or running the meeting, I attend and run whiteboard sessions (scribbling designs on a whiteboard), write documents and review other peoples documents.

The Mission Critical part of my title should now be obvious, the Solution Architect part is a posh way of saying I’m responsible for many parts of the solution. A bit like a building Architect is responsible for the complete design of a property. This analogy works very well because the Architect(s) will have a vision which is then turned into reality by a team of specialists. In the building industry these specialists include quantity surveyors, structural engineers and more, in IT they include developers, systems engineers and more.

Contrary to popular belief, I don’t spend my time sat in Starbucks drinking lattes