This is a topic that has become a pretty big deal in the past few months it seems like. At my work we recently requested to be able to use IPv6, and after a few weeks or preparation our ISP gave us IPv6. They gave us a /48 subnet. For those who don’t know that means we can have 65,536 subnets with 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 IPv6 addresses in each. All in all, that is a lot of IP! With that I have decided to use a combination of Microsoft Server 2008 R2′s DHCPv6 and IPv6 auto-assignment features. The reason is I love the idea of the MAC address being part of the IP address. In addition to that we can use the MS DHCP to specify the gateway, DNS servers and those minor detail things. One of the other decisions I’ve made is related to how I want to do some “core services” IP address management. Like I don’t want to rattle off some complex IP address just for a DNS server or something. For that I will be using an address with the suffix [server subnet]::2 or 3 and so on to keep it simple, that means some servers will have a handful of IP addresses but it will allow administration to be easier. This is still a work in progress so it will be interesting to see how everything works out related to deploying a dual stack of IPv6 and IPv4.
I’ve been working at my new job for over 6 months now and I was just recently sent to a training for our Aruba Controller. Before this job I’d never heard of or worked with Aruba Network’s wireless controller. Many people might think, why buy an Aruba Wireless Controller, Linksys/DLink/NetGear is fine for everything I need! Well sure at home that is true, but there are so many features you don’t get on an end user access point compared to an enterprise solution like Aruba. There are many other companies that offer similar products but I feel like the features and deployment/management are top of the class.
Here are some cool things the Aruba offers that is pretty cool (or so I think):
1. IPS – detect rouge Access Points, and many man in the middle style detections.
2. Thin APs – easily deploy more access points that work together.
3. Easy Remote/VPN deployments – Most of their APs as well as some custom APs will quickly create a VPN connection to the office, and offering the same wireless networks as your office.
There is more but it has been a long week and I can’t think of a ton more than that. If you are looking to deploy a wireless solution within your office, I highly suggest Aruba!
My cousin was able to get a Google Net book, which has told me how much he loves. He told me about how he has switched completely to cloud based living. I thought about how I’m far from that point. He was also telling me about how he doesn’t use Microsoft products much at all any more. Again I thought that was interesting, but I felt differently. For my email and what not on this domain I started using Google Apps just a few weeks ago. I personally love the features I get with it, but feel like I am still so disconnected from the cloud based computing options it gives. http://docs.jakehaldeman.com takes me to my personal document center, but I haven’t been sold on the Google Docs offering. I use Office 2010, and I really like it. I guess Google Docs isn’t featured enough for me, and then the Microsoft/Live version offers more features, but it is still this cloud based thing – what about my current docs, and why use a limited word processor when i have Office on my computer already? I guess my interests in Cloud Computer aren’t inline yet with what I have currently at my disposal…
My cousin also claimed the Microsoft hasn’t innovated anything in 20 years, instead they are always a generation behind. I thought about that and realized I disagree. Sure they might offer features a little later then Google, but 8 years ago they planned to have web based products. At the same time – I think many of the products are innovative. Microsoft also run into a very tough situation – if they make too big of a change people get really upset and concerned, they have to stage in major changes (like comparing XP to Windows 7 – they had to put out Vista to help migrate to the bigger and better OS. Then tonight I logged into Office Live and Google Docs and looked at the two different products, I like how there aren’t really menus in the Office Live, but I wish it had the better page view that the Google Docs and the normal Office offers.
So it has been a little while since I’ve posted. I’ve moved to a new state and changed jobs since my last post. That is good excuse right? Recently I’ve setup some game servers! If you play L4D2, Day of Defeat Source, Team Fortress 2 or Half-Life 2 Death Match you should try the game server: echobase.neumont.edu. For now, that is all!
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SharePoint Foundation 2010 and Search Server Express 2010
0 Comments | Posted by jake in General
I’ve been a fan of SharePoint for sometime. Just recently I deployed it at work with a slightly more serious need. It is on a dedicated Windows 2008 Web Server and the main portion is for the company intra-website. Now we have some cases that include several million pages of PDFs that we need to be able to work with. This seemed to be the cheapest and quickest solution. Today I spent a few hours setting up the Search Server Express and adding the iFilters for WordPerfect (future plans with our documents) and for PDFs. I set it to index the shared folder containing all of the PDFs and and am excited to see what happens. I just fear something will mess up and come Monday when the attorneys demand a working product I realize I don’t have one. We will see how it goes!
Just to add a few thoughts about the new SharePoint – they have taken some great steps in making it an easier to use tool. It seems like everything I’m trying to do is easier compared to SharePoint 2007. The look and feel is much more pleasant and pretty easy to customize.
I can picture it already, the question “how was your Memorial Day weekend?” Already I shudder as I think about my response. Should I keep it simple? “It was good,” or should I tell the truth? It was long, hard and not that enjoyable. It isn’t over yet, but from Friday morning until now I have worked 42 hours. Plus time at church, minus the mid-church trip to the office for a frustrated user.
“Why?” you ask? Simple – it had to be done. I have a strong personal belief of properly balancing your work life and personal life. I think with that everyone knows sometimes you have to take on for the team. This weekend it was for work. We have a Small Business server busting at the seems – I got the approval to purchase Server 2008 and Exchange 2010. I moved forward, it was a long tedious process but I’m working on the last of the Virtual Desktops that need mailboxes reimported and settings tweaked. I didn’t do it alone (thank goodness – that would have been horrible!) Eddie over at EliteNetworks helped me. He has done several Exchange 2010 installs, and because of how well he made that go, I moved forward with the domain migrations unplanned. At our office we had 3 Small Business domains working well, but it was a mess – seems like errors would pop up all over the place – communication problems especially. Because it was Small Business you can’t create trusts or anything so we had to bite the bullet and go for it. With the help of Kevin – my former cohort in crime – finding a great tool from ForensIT that joined the computer to the domain and set all the permissions to the old user account saved me from the headache of having to deal with moving profiles.
Between the moving computers to a new domain, configuring Exclaimer (another great find my Kevin), BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express and making all the small tweaks and learning adjustments it was a busy weekend. I’m excited to be breaking free from Small Business – I’m happy my work was OK with the huge purchase of software, putting total trust in me. Now let’s hope all goes well and that this doesn’t let them down!
The past few months my work has had problems with extreme amounts of network traffic. We can try to point fingers and blame different things, but until we can properly identify the problem, I struggle with jumping to conclusions. In order to help me identify problems I’ve been trying out different tools (ideally free) to capture network traffic. It seems like the biggest issue is analyzing it and identifying the problems. Here are some of the ones I have been using with a few comments:
SNORT – Powerful, but a pain to get running and to use.
Microsoft Network Monitor 3.3 – Simple, easy to use and offers easy filters and can allow more complex filters too.
Soloarwinds IP Address tracker – Great simple tool to see what IP addresses are in use and to what.
It is a short list, I know. I hope to add more to it soon. This time around I haven’t used Wireshark (formerly Ethereal – thanks for pointing that out Sam Ogden) but that is always a helpful one. What do you use, or suggest?
I love Amazon, my mom is an Amazon Prime member so I get to benefit the free 2nd day shipping, and cheap overnight shipping. But there is another side to Amazon many don’t know about. They offer some awesome web services over there at http://aws.amazon.com For the average joe this isn’t anything special. But someone who needs a server ASAP you can have a Windows 2008 server with SQL Express running in about 15 minutes.
This dedicated server is competitively priced at about $100 a month – based on hours ran and level of computing you need. I used their service about a year ago and loved it, but I wasn’t a fan of their interface. I had to download some Java packages and do some weird setup stuff, but now you can login and manage the firewall, load balancing, and the spinning up and down of servers from a very eye pleasing web service. They have many ready made servers you can spin up including flavors of Linux and Windows, but they also allow you to create your own images and store them on their S3 storage network which also has some amazing cheap pricing.
If you are a developer, administrator or just a hacker (and I mean that in the most ethical sense possible) you should check out the Amazon Web Services and see how they can help you out.
So it has been sometime since I’ve done web site design for a client, but tonight I was reviewing some of the current trends in web development. There are a few things I used to think, “oh I’ll never become one of those lame all the same look style developers.” But with that said, I’ve realized that there are some principles in web design I will not live without.
First off it is important to invest in some quality images. As a designer you should probably work into the bid some money for a photo shoot as well as some purchased images (don’t steal from other sites – that can bite you in the butt quickly). If they’d rather have their cousin’s uncle’s brother’s friend do the photos instead that is fine, if they are high enough quality, and you get a disc with jpeg images.
Also I don’t tell my accountant how to do my taxes. I don’t tell my doctor how to fix me. I don’t tell the plumber or the mechanic how I want the work done. I just know what my end result should be – something that is working. So this gets tricky with web design. Just because you want flashing lights and neon purple on black doesn’t mean your customers will like the site, or you after visiting the site. I don’t claim to be the world’s greatest web designer, but I have an idea of professional vs. amateur. There are a few things, like making good use of columns – limiting the amount of information on the home page, even to the pictures that go with the copy that is extremely important and if not used correctly can ruin a site.
I touched on columns, I think they are so important. Without them a site can look like crap. For an example, look at Apple. Have you ever noticed how much they use columns? Go ahead, I’ll wait, but please do come back. I loaded it up tonight and found a picture of their new iMac. Image on the right, text on the left. hmm columns.. Another great thing about the site, how much do you have to scroll? Is their anything important not visible? Now I have my screen resolution high, so I see a lot more than most people. But sites like that, or Google’s home page are great examples of columns and effective use of screen real estate.
Next point did you ever notice for almost 20 years Microsoft always had their logo in the top right part of the page? Ever wonder why? Simple, where was the go button, before people realized they don’t need it? If you are still wondering, it was just above where the MS logo would show up. Interesting? Well think about it, back in those days studies showed people started looking from the top right to the left and down in an inward spiral circle. Now days people tend to start at the top left because that is common, but also it is close to the back and forward buttons and the address bar (so they can go back to Google).
SEO is the last point I’d like to touch on tonight. Everyone is freaking out about SEO, it is the most important thing ever. Why? Because it is. SEO makes your site popular. Right, well kind of right. It can help your site be found, but it might not guarantee people want to go to it. Google is great for making sure sites are listed correctly, but it still happens I search for blue and red comes up for the number one result. Google Analytics is great, if you are seriously looking at them. Where are the people coming from? What type of screen resolution do they have? Do they have Flash player? Who cares about that crap? I want to know how many people are going to my site! Good point, but how about if we start thinking about what type of people are going to your site, because well they are the ones that will end up paying your bills, right? Market the site to meet their needs. Make sure the site looks good at their screen resolution, make sure their flash player works correctly, make sure their browser looks OK with your site in it. Maybe even make sure the site is in their language! This is where analytics become invaluable. Once you tweak your site to meet their needs, suddenly you will find more quality visitors. When people are clicking to your site, others are linking to your site, suddenly your website will start appearing closer to the top. It takes work, and TLC but it can help. As you apply those types of SEO practices you will probably start to find yourself naturally applying many of the other important SEO suggestions you will find on the web.
I’ll get off my soap box now.
Chirstmas has come and gone, and Santa brought me a larger cell phone bill and a Samsung Moment! The phone runs Google’s Android. So far I have really enjoyed the phone and the Android Market. I have some cool apps, for church, games, and what not. It also has some issues. I think the hard part with the phone is that it supports so many different types of hardware. With that there tends to be compatibility problems.
I’ll post comments about the Andriod as time goes on, but so far I’d give it a 4/5 stars.
