April, 2009

Firing policy - Come on HR, work with us here

So it’s time to fire someone. A sad task that falls on HR because everyone else is busy doing real work.  Here are the two major ways that HR tends to fumble on this all too easy task.

1) You fire the poor schmoe and don’t tell us. Sorry HR, we need to know. There is lots of stuff we need to do to make sure that when you get rid of this guy like disable his account so that Mr. Disgruntled can’t screw up the company.

2) You let us know in advance but then don’t send the guy away. So here we are disabling this guys account and he is still working away at his machine. The problem isn’t going away on its own HR, you still need to inform him and get security to escort him out so we can confiscate his machine. Even with a disabled account there is still a fair bit of damage he can do if he is already logged in.

Please HR, try to work with us on this we can make this an efficient easy proccess and then we can go back to working and you can go back to whatever it is you do.

File level restore from a VM: Veeam vs vRanger

So you want to do a file level restore from a VM? Well great, its a nice feature and I think you should. Now what software are you going to use to do it with?

Both vRanger and Veeam have the ability, here is the difference. with vRanger it has to completely uncompress the entire VM before it can do this, depending on the size of your VM you can guess that this isn’t a quick process. Veeam doesn’t require you to do this and its pretty instantaneous.

So here is your choice for your restore: a few minutes with Veeam or a few hours with vRanger. Not a hard choice for me.

Watchguard MUVPN not working due to Mcafee firewall

I hate personal firewall products but none so much as I hate mcafee. I was testing a MUVPN and the tunnell just wouldn’t established. I turned that thing into swiss cheese, it shouldn’t have been blocking anything but the VPN tunnel STILL wouldn’t come up until I actually turned off the service. Gah it’s frustrating.

Windows 7 RC released today

Hey all

Windows 7 RC is being released for download today by  Microsoft.

I have taken a look at it, and I have to say, it seems pretty good way better then Vista.

I encourage you all to check it out.

VMware develops rival protocol to ICA to compete in the VDI market space

One of the exciting (and long overdue) announcements from VMware is there development of a new PCoIP protocol for use in the VMware View product. This protocol will be replacing their use of RDP. One of Citrix’s big claims to fame in this market space with it’s Xendesktop product is it’s use of the ICA protocol which is far and away the superior protocol over RDP.

Good on Vmware for taking the fight to Citrix. I think this fight will go a few arounds so sit back, relax, and enjoy the match.

Upgrading Citrix from Presentation 4 to Xenapp 5

I recently had a discussion with some guys from Citrix and asked about the optimal way of upgrading Presentation server 4 to Xenapp 5.

Here is there recommendation

1) Upgrade the licensing and upload the new license file onto the license server

2) Run the upgrade on the server acting as the Resource Manager

3) Upgrade the remaining servers in whatever order you choose

Microsoft releases Windows 7 RC go live dates

Check it out here:

 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/26/…

I’m really excited about Windows 7, from everything I have seen it may be Microsoft’s best client OS yet (ok I realize that’s not a high bar to set ….)

Windows 7 Seminar in Winnipeg

I attended a Windows 7 seminar yesterday put on by Microsoft. Windows 7 looks good but that’s likely because they are copying the best features from other more creative entities.

Read more about my experience here:

 http://diaryoftheitranter.blogspot.com/

A review of the Cisco ASA 5505

I deal with a lot of small business’s and branch offices and up until now we generally have been promoting the Watchguard X10e for their firewall needs. However I have recently been very impressed with the Cisco ASA 5505 for this business space. Its got great functionality, robustness and the price point is far cheaper then I think most people might realize. For 10 user license pack CDW is retailing a unit a 414 dollars! For a Cisco partner such as my company we can usually do even better.

Epic Technology Day - April 21st, 2009

For those not familiar with this event, my company hosts a bi-yearly technology day seminar. It’s a great free event with lots of interesting and informative seminars presented by companies like Cisco, VMware, Citrix, HP and others.  The next one is coming up on April 21st in Winnipeg and the 23rd in Saskatoon.

If you are going to be in one of these area’s you should register to come and take a look

Go here to check out the seminar list and to register:

 http://www.epic.ca/events.asp