Tech Talk

Shortly after embarking on our VI3 implementation at HTC, we also decided to upgrade our core network with HP Procurves.  We had been using switch port based load balancing in our old core switches to provide redundancy for many of our more critical applications.  With those switches being retired, we needed to find a new [...]

A co-worker, Jamie, loves watching presentations for TED.com.  TED.com bills itself as the site with “Ideas worth Sharing,” may of which were presented at the TED conference.  And I’ve seen some wonderful presentations.  And he’s shared may of those wonderful ones with me.
This week, he sent me a link to a presentation from a MIT [...]

Our journey to VDI continues.  This week, we had several more milestones on our road to delivering this solution into the far reaching corners of our area.   Among those accomplishments were implementing the DHCP options successfully, setting up several pools of linked-clone virtual desktops and a wider testing of the Pano devices and their [...]

The bain of a sysadmin’s existence is documention.  Most of us hate doing the tedious paperwork, but doing so helps the group around you and many times yourself once you’ve moved on to new projects.  I know its a struggle for me and my co-workers. 
Part of the problem is that documentation tends to get outdated. [...]

Last night, we undertook replacing our mid-plane in the blade enclosure that had problems last month.  It was the first recommendation from HP support after several hours of working with various teams, but both our internal team and our HP field service guys didn’t feel it was the cause.  Turns out, we may have been [...]

I may have already mentioned that one of our projects for the year is to transition our corporate ESX cluster from 2U hardware onto blades.  The process of transitioning does not come without some concern and some caveots moving to the blade architecture.  We feel that blades are a good fit in our case for [...]

Normally, a firmware release wouldn’t warrant a post on here, but this case is a little different.  Earlier this week, Apple introduced newer models of the Airport Extreme broadband router/switch and the backup appliance version, Time Capsule.  Along with that announcement came several enhancements that most figured would be released for previous hardware.  These features are enabled [...]

For anyone in my local area, I wanted to make sure to let you know that Wilmington, NC, area has a newly formed VMware Users Group.  Their inaugural meeting will be March 25 at the North Carolina State Port Authority.  The Port Authority will be presenting a case study of their VMware View (VDI) deployment. [...]

My co-worker, Jason, was tasked with our VMware View implementation and I’m glad to report that its been largely successful and more importantly easy to deploy.  I thought that now was a good time to reflect and share with you how we came to the decision to deploy virtual desktops, where we plan to use [...]

The past month of my life has been spent dealing with the fall-out over a massive failure of our local blade enclosure.