Fiber optic Testing

Now that our PTP 200mb circuit is installed, its time to test our new bandwidth. We started by simply coping files from our Mesa Campus to our Gilbert Campus which is 10 miles away. These transfers were better than our old T1 circuit but left some questions. I discovered that file tranfers don't maximize the bandwidth.
I have discovered several companies, like Asperasoft.com, that specialize in high-speed file transfer software. We are currently testing their software. Thier software uses UDP to communciate between both sites.
The software reveiled 45% packet lose with our connection. So, is the problem with QWEST or on our network? We now have something else to troubleshoot. We have installed I-PERF to test our connection. The I-PERF teats reveal we are only getting 40 mbits from our fiber ciruit. Now I need to document everything and speak with Qwest.

Optical fiber circuit complete

Qwest just finished installing a 200 MB circuit from our Mesa Campus to our Gilbert Campus. The Gilbert staff is very happy. This circuit replaces our intial T1 circuit. We will now start testing the circuit by copying SD and HD video files (40-50 GB's) each week between campuses. The big question is how long before I get a request to increase this new circuit?

Ever thought about strategic value?

Do all of your IT projects have strategic value? If so, how much? Do we waste time? I think sometimes we work on too many projects that may not have much strategic value. I think we need to develop our thinking, at times, for the long-term. I think this is very hard for us but very important for the church. We need to make sure everything we do directly aligns with the churchs strategic goals. It's easier for us to fix problems and move on.

I challenge you to make a list of all your current projects and rank them by strategic value, its an eye opener.

Qwest Metro Optical Ethernet coming soon

We have signed up for a 200 MB circuit between our Gilbert and Mesa sites. The build out will take Qwest about four months. We are very excited to move beyond our current T1 circuit.

http://www.qwest.com/largebusiness/enterprisesolutions/products/ethernet/moe.html

Postini - ROI on SPAM protection

We converted from Symantec(Brightmail) SPAM filtering about three months ago with expectations to improve our 70% filtering ratio. I'm am extremly pleased with thier filtering service. We are now filtering over 92% of all our email as SPAM. Unbelieveable! Here is something to think about for calculating ROI. We had a total of 354,078 spam emails deleted over the last 30 days. If a staff person would take about five seconds to view and delete each of the SPAM emails, then we have saved about 492 staff hours or $9,835 in staff productivity. (Using an arbituary $20 per hour per staff) Now that's ROI.

Arena CHMS update

We have been working over the last year or so on migrating from Shelby Version 5 and all our custom .NET applications over to Shelby ARENA. We are making steady progress. ARENA is both elagant and powerful. No software program is perfect but we are very happy with our ARENA decision.

New technology to watch

Microsoft is acquiring Kidaro to enhance thier ability for desktop virtualization. This is exciting technology and could radically change the way desktops are used and managed. Microsoft will be including this new technology in the Desktop Optimization Pack or MDOP. https://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/enterprise/default.mspx

This technology allows a master image to boot clean every time . This technology could dramaticaly change our ServiceDesk operations.

Cisco Wireless controller....awesome

We have the Cisco 4400 Series wireless LAN controller at our Gilbert Campus. We have been amazed at the broadcast range of the light-weight access points.

We are now adding more access points at our Mesa Campus that will be controlled from the wireless contoller at our Gilbert Campus. We are gradually replacing all the standalone Linksys AP's in Mesa that are not centrally managed or monitored. One of our best technology investments was getting a centrally managed wireless infrastructure.

Blog update!

Here is my new feedburner address: http://feeds.feedburner.com/adventuresinit

A new era...64bit technology

We just ordered our first 64bit Dell 2950 server. We will be using Windows Server 2008 Data Center edition as a virtual host server using HyperVisor. We are very excited about this new technology. We hope to eventually move all our virtual servers to this new platform over the next year. We currently have three virtual host servers running Windows 2003 Server Data Center with about 15 virtual servers in production. We have been very satisfied with Microsoft Virtual technology especially Virtual Machine Manager. I'll keep you posted on our progress. These are exciting times.

Microsoft Groove....killer ap?

Sometimes we need to step away from a problem in order to find a better solution to the problem.

We are setting up a Groove Server to improve file collaboration among the staff. We have many laptops that depend on offline syncing of server-based files. The Groove sofware solves this problem by sending just the file changes to all Groove Workspace members automatically wheneverthe document is saved. the transmition of the changes is encrpted to all Workspace members. This is not sent by email. So everyone can see the latest changes...very cool. The Groove client software comes with Office 2007 Enterprise Edition.

Could this be a killer ap?

Research Project: Application Virtualization

I have just started to look at Microsoft's SoftGrid program for application virtualization. The prospect of saving tech time and improving our software management are too compelling to over look. We already have about 15 virtual servers running on two Dell servers. So why not try this with applications? I'll keep you posted as we venture out and test this product.

Managing your environment

We are now dependent on WUG (as we call it) for monitoring our network. Its like having another IT staff person monitoring our network while we do other projects. The old days are gone. We really like WUG and have only begun to tap into all the features. Now that we have a tool like this, we will never go back to the old ways. I believe managing your network environment is part of being a good steward of God's I.T. resources.

New SAN is working well

We purchased a Dell MD3000 iSCSI SAN with ten 400 SAS drives for tier1 storage to replace our old Dell DAS server. We also added the MD1000 SAS storage chassis for tier2 storage using 750 GB SATA drives. We have really liked the features, performance and quality of these products. Each chassis can hold 15 drives. We are using one dedicated hot spare drive in our tier1 storage with 2 TB RAID5 volumes.

We will be using Micosoft DPM to store snapshots of our tier1 storage on the MD1000 chassis. We can also add another MD1000 chassis to this solution when we run out of space.

Virtual servers are here to stay

We have made some significant changes to our server infrastructure, over the past few months, by hosting about 13 servers on two physical Dell 860 PowerEdge servers. And we are not done yet. We have about 15 more servers that will be vitualized over the next. We ae using Windows DataCenter Edition to host unlimited VM's per server. It's sweet! All of our storage is stored on our SAN (details in another post). We are already planning for 64bit Hyper-V later this year.