Nokia 6120 + RoadSync: Better than BlackBerry

Posted by James Kahn on November 26, 2007 in life

When up in Cairns on a business trip, I managed to drop (read: snap in half) my company provided flip mobile phone. It was a pretty basic phone, with a couple of annoying little characteristics, such as it’s incredibly laggy interface.

Well, after showing the results of my work to my boss, a new phone landed on my desktop pretty promptly: a Nokia 6120. It’s not particularly expensive, but it is a very, very cool little phone. As well as having all the standard gee-whiz features that phones have these days, such as bluetooth, 3.5G data connectivity and music player functionality, it’s a smartphone in disguise. It runs Symbian S60.

I managed to scour the web for push email functionality for the 6120, and happened upon RoadSync. RoadSync interfaces with Microsoft’s ActiveSync, including full support for push email.

After loading it to the phone, it was less than 5 minutes to set it up. It just works, beautifully. The interface is snappy, phone attractive, and it syncs my calendar and email like a dream.

Battery life and general phone sexiness is better than Windows Mobile.  And what’s best, all the BlackBerry boys in the office are jealous ;).

Full-stop-capital-letter

Posted by James Kahn on October 18, 2007 in life

I remember sitting in class when I was six years old, repeating after the teacher - full stop, capital letter.  It’s a basic rule for written English.

Here’s a not so universal rule, that I learned in high school - Comma, one space.  Full stop, two spaces.  It doesn’t bear much relevance to handwriting, but it does on computers.  Do it!

Eating humble pie on VDI

Posted by James Kahn on October 9, 2007 in tech

Just a quick one.

My thoughts on VDI have had a shake up after a few recent presentations from some vendors - it is starting to look very good, with some tangible advantages over Presentation Server in certain scenarios.

Just forget about it…

Posted by James Kahn on September 11, 2007 in blog

After spending too long away from making a post here, I’ve decided that trying to target my blogging just to Infrastructure Management is far too restrictive for me.  I’m not a professional blogger, and have no desire to be.  I’ll just blog about whatever I like.

VDI - Why You Probably Shouldn’t Care

Posted by James Kahn on June 18, 2007 in tech

Edit: After recent developments in the industry and some re-thinking on my part about the benefits of VDI, I’ve changed my tune on this. VDI is relevant for a significant segment of the market that SBC isn’t. Primary benefits of VDI? User empowerment, desktop customisation and simpler maintenance.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure - or VDI for short - is one of the latest phenomenons striking the IT industry. If you’re tuned in to the standard IT industry rags, Citrix, and Virtualisation resources, VDI seems to be hailed as the next revolution in desktop delivery. However, that isn’t the case.

For those that aren’t aware, the concept of VDI refers to centrally hosting desktop virtual machines - usually Windows XP or Vista - on a number of servers stored in the data centre. End-users would then use thin-client devices or low-end PCs to connect to and work from these virtualised PCs. The actual operating system and data are all stored centrally in the data centre.

The advantages of doing this include:

  • Your data is centralised, so it’s easy to back up and keep it under control.
  • You can take advantage of some of the availability features of virtualisation solutions to (perhaps) provide greater uptime.
  • Users can have a full “PC” environment when using only a thin client.
  • It’s much more hardware and budget-friendly than the terrible blade-PC solutions from HP and IBM. (On a side note: Why anybody would go for a blade PC solution blows my mind. They must have very good sales people).

While at first glance VDI appears to be a compelling and potentially beneficial architecture for running your business on - the truth is a little different. VDI would be a great technology if it existed in a vacuum. Unfortunately, it doesn’t, and there are a number of solutions that already solve many of the problems that VDI does, and they do it in a more cost-effective, manageable way. If you’re investigating VDI, there are two other technologies you should be considering that will probably provide a better solution in the end: Citrix Presentation Server/Terminal Services, or a Managed Desktop Environment.

A Citrix Presentation Server environment involves setting up a farm of Windows Server-based terminal servers, and hosting your user’s applications and desktop environment on these in a classic multi-user fashion. Depending on the applications and server configuration, you can usually get between 50 and 80 users on each standard specification server. To compare Presentation Server with VDI:

  • Your data is centralised with either solution.
  • Presentation Server/Terminal Services usually has a greater user density, resulting in a higher number of users per physical server, and reduced licensing costs for operating systems when compared to VDI.
  • Both have built-in load balancing/availability characteristics, although VDI’s is more seamless if hosted under VMware.
  • Presentation Server provides a management platform to manage your user farm, whereas VDI management tools do not solve the platform and application management problems (more on this later).
  • While you can give people free reign with VDI, you generally want your Presentation Servers to be controlled to provide a stable user environment.
  • Both have inadequacies and are unable to smoothly provide rich, graphically intensive applications.

In short, Presentation Server is generally a cheaper, more manageable solution than VDI for the main VDI use case - hosting the data and applications centrally.

A Managed Desktop Environment is a controlled desktop platform hosted on standard desktop computers. A tool like Altiris’ Client Management Suite, Microsoft SMS/SCCM, or Microsoft System Center Essentials (for smaller environments) provides a standard operating system build, standard application installation packages, configuration management and remote support capabilities. You can give your users as much or as little freedom over their own computers as you like, based on your requirements. When compared with VDI:

  • VDI centralises the workstation and data environment to the datacenter; a Managed Desktop Environment doesn’t centralise the workstation platform, but can centralise or replicate the data.
  • There aren’t any built in availability characteristics in a single workstation, but if it fails only one user is down for a short time while another machine is automatically built.
  • Costs can be similar to VDI, when all hardware and software is accounted for, including capable, thin clients for the VDI solution.
  • A Managed Desktop Environment performs well with all types of applications, including graphically intensive ones.

A Managed Desktop Environment needs a management platform (e.g. Microsoft SMS), which has a cost associated with it. However, in order to provide a standard operating platform, a VDI solution also needs a management platform. VDI only addresses the question of where the operating system is run from, and not the desktop environment management system.

Most businesses - I would go as far as to say 99% of the businesses I deal with - would reap more benefit at lower cost from a Citrix Presentation Server solution or Managed Desktop Environment for their core operating environment than with VDI.

VDI is a very neat technology, and it does have it’s place. There are some very specific situations where you might use VDI, for example:

  • An outsourced developer (in say, India), that needs to use a Windows desktop environment where they can install applications, don’t use graphically intensive applications, and where you want to protect the data by storing it centrally; and,
  • Other development “sandbox” style environments.

VDI, like many other technologies, will find it’s niche in the long term as a point solution, but won’t become a major game changer.

Thanks to BrianMadden.com for their series of articles on VDI.

Edit: Please note that I’m not saying VDI has no uses. I believe that it’s useful in it’s niche, but is not anything to get terribly excited about.

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When to use Systems Center Essentials - and when to not

Posted by James Kahn on June 5, 2007 in tech

System Center Forum have a very insightful article on when to deploy Systems Center Essentials, and when you shouldn’t.

The only caveat I have with the article is in regards to Operating System deployment - Microsoft Windows Deployment Services will suit the typical SCE environment for OS deployment.

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Change In Business

Posted by James Kahn on June 4, 2007 in concepts

Ian Blyth has a great blog post up about integrating new software or change into a business - in this instance, Systems Center Operations Manager 2007.

The five stages are essentially:

  1. The existing status quo;
  2. Resistance to change;
  3. Chaos as change occurs, knowledge is updated and people learn;
  4. Integrating the idea or software into the business processes; and,
  5. The new status quo, at a higher level of performance.

Recommended reading.

Stay Tuned

Posted by James Kahn on June 4, 2007 in blog

I’ve been very busy both at work and outside of it recently and haven’t had much a chance to do any blog writing.  I’m still here, and have some articles in the works.

Converting MOM 2005 Management Packs to SCOM 2007 Format

Posted by James Kahn on May 22, 2007 in tech

Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Management Packs can be converted to native Systems Center Operations Manager 2007 Management Packs using two tools, MP2XML and MPConvert.exe. Microsoft have instructions in SCOM 2007 help, as well as on the web.

Keep in mind that in order to do this you will need a MOM 2005 Management Server from which to run MP2XML. If you’re upgrading an existing MOM environment, keep your MOM 2005 management server around until you’ve converted all of your management packs. If you don’t have a MOM 2005 environment but need to use MOM 2005 management packs, you’ll need to set it up in a test environment to do the conversion.

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One Year in Australia Today

Posted by James Kahn on May 21, 2007 in life

I’ve been living in Brisbane for one year today. Yee-haw, I love this place!

That is all. Thanks for listening.

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