facility management

Microsoft’s environmental campaign - XP goes green

Microsoft has a special section of their website dedicated to fostering environmental sustainability. To that end, they have released a product called Edison PC Power Management software. The application will work on XP and Windows Vista. According to the Microsoft Environment website features include:

• Scheduling. Identify work and non-work schedules to optimize power schemes based on when your PC is in use or on standby.
• Settings. Choose from among several options for power savings and settings.
• Estimated Savings Reports. Find information that shows how PC power settings correlate to money, kWh and CO2 savings.
• Intuitive User Interface. Drag easy-to-use sliding bars to choose settings and instantly see the power and monetary savings. Clearly marked tabs make the interface easy to navigate.

So… if you want to reduce your carbon footprint in 2009, check this out. I know I will.

Tools for documentation - Network discovery & monitoring

If you have not begun the process of documenting your network, then please begin as soon as you finish reading my first posting on Tools for documentation - screen marking & screen captures and this posting. These tools will come in real handy in a crunch to identify causes of issues and when you are not around to help with resolution.

The next tool I would like to describe is NeDi - short for network discovery. Take a look at this 4 minute movie about NeDi and what it can do for you.

A week with NeDi

Are you impressed yet? I know I was when I discovered this network tool and how it can be used and extended. Some of the screenshots below may help you with the decision if this tool will work for your environment or not.

Network Health

Device Listing

Network Map

Node Status

Device Write

I’m sure you have other tools and processes you use. Please feel free to share them with the others here and help make someone else’s life easier. Enjoy the movie above. I think the guy has a very good sense of humor and knows his movies!

Crunching numbers - is this any way to manage a network?

I just got done catching up crunching wide area network usage statistics for the last 6 months. Wow… what a job! I should be doing it at the end of each month but I got behind due to other major activities like moving a data center and implementing a new e-mail system for >2000 users. Those kind of major activities seem to take over the day so routine items sometimes get left behind.

Getting back to the WAN statistics. I download usage stats daily. The stats are in 10 minute increments. So, I get really good detailed information about utilization at the sites. Well, 10 minute stats over a 24 hour period is about 144 data points per day per site (actually, multiply X2 since there are stats for inbound AND outbound usage). Since this is such a large volume of data, I distill it down to the busy business hours of 7AM to 7PM local site time, Monday through Friday. For a regular month, this may give me around 1600 data points each for inbound and outbound. I also have to do some work in converting the dates/times from the vendor reports to Excel-friendly format.

I take these data points and run them through Excel performing some frequency plots and trend analysis. This gives me an idea of utilization at the site during the past month and possible trends for the future month. As you can see, this is a labor-intensive activity. I don’t know of another way of  getting this information given the current toolset I have available. Do any of you have a similar challenge? How do you address it? I do think the task is worth the effort since a global WAN is a significant monthly expense.

As always, thanks for checking out my blog. Let’s be good network citizens together & practice safe networking!

Moving a datacenter - one weekend - DONE!

Well, another busy month here. Last month we moved more than 2000 users from 6 different e-mail systems to a single e-mail platform. This month we moved a factory facility about 5 miles. The original facility was too small for our needs and we are also integrating a recent acquisition that was in a separate facility.

This event had been in the planning and implementation stages for months. The building had to be outfitted for occupancy and services had to be ready for use on day one.

Fortunately we had implemented a Cisco CallManager solution at the old facility and it was easy enough to move into the new facility. However, some challenges existed with that implementation. First of all, our original implementation was not a full CallManager implementation. It was a Survivable Remote System Telephony (SRST) implementation. The actual CallManager cluster for this site is located in southern California. This site is in northern California, several hundred miles away.

Another issue was that the site was experiencing growth due to the merged office. Our current gateway solution was not large enough to handle the additional handsets. We implemented a larger gateway with capacity to handle the current user population plus some additional growth.

I say “We” because we had a partner helping us with the implementation. This is not something we have in our staff skillset. Our partner helped us with the original implementation at the site. They provided outstanding support and were available to help with other network issues as they arose during the move and day one of business. I was able to breathe a sigh of relief with this partner onsite.

Our servers moved over without a glitch. Our structured cabling plant looks really nice (for the moment, I’m sure) . Our users enjoy the new facility. So, it’s a win-win!

My only real issue happened unfortunately on day one of business in the new facility. For some reason, both the primary and secondary network links went down. This was definitely not a good thing especially since the site used the remote CallManager to manage calls. During this period, the WAN link was unreliable and calls were dropped and phones reset. Another item that you should note is that there was another tenant moving into the building next door. My company and this other shared a telecom closet where all communication circuits entered the facilities. I have major concerns about cross-connects as well as the danger of miscommunication with the carriers about circuits being terminated or orders placed.

My WAN provider went right to work though and had the carriers investigating why both our primary (T1) link and backup (DSL) link went down. The circuits are provided by different carriers so they could work unrestricted on their issues while we waited for resolution. The T1 issue was due to some problem at the carrier central office (hmmmm…. likely story since I had a new neighbor moving in at the same time.) The DSL issue turned out to be some kind of problem with inside wiring.

Our circuits became stable later on day one and have been stable ever since. I’m really glad the event is over! Now we are planning for a new site implementation coming online in January and the facility has not even been built yet. The new facility is not even in the USA so this will be even more of a challenge.

Thanks for your time. Let’s be good network citizens together & practice safe networking!