So far the Webcasts and Events sections have been recipients of the facelift - Blogs is a bit more complex as there are a significant number of comments to migrate across, while the others didn't really have any of note.

In the process of working on Events, I noted that there were a number of user groups that are no longer meeting, and cleaned them up. We also recently upgraded Events to include full timezone support, so I needed to update the existing events to the right timezone. This means that events from other timezones (such as Perth, Adelaide, etc) can be better accomodated, and of course that ical subscribers will see events in their local time.

I also adjusted some recent changes to the ical feature, which will allow broad compatibility with the vast majority of apps that allow subscription to Internet calendars, including Outlook and Google Calendar. We actually use Google Calendar as the benchmark for ical operation, because it's quite strict in validation.

The overall concept with the AuTechHeads Events Calendar is, simply, to provide a single point of reference for Australasian IT Pro and Developer events - be they AuTechHeads exclusives, conferences, web conferences, user groups, meetups, training, vendor events, or others we haven't thought of. There's a lot of noise out there for different events, and it can be really hard to keep track of them from their many and varied sources. As our goal is to be product, technology, and vendor agnostic, we welcome all kinds of tech events.

All members - individuals, vendors, and whoever else - can add events to the calendar, and anyone can subscribe to our ical (or RSS) feeds.

The benefit to putting your events in our calendar is that you get access to a broad audience of interested people. Equally, everyone gets the benefit of an up to date and comprehensive calendar with useful features to help them always keep track of what's on.

One of my favourite examples is the member who travels (or moves) interstate, and wants to discover what's on where they are. User groups and meetups are a great way to meet people, and they generally allow people to drop in out of the blue. And of course, taking advantage of training opportunities and vendor events while you're there has value to all concerned.

We like to keep the Calendar up to date and relevant, so please - if you have a tech event, add it to the calendar! Sign-up is free, and there are no strings attached. We are free for the benefit of our members! If  you're interested in bulk import of events to the calendar, this too can be arranged - please contact me.

And, of course, spread the word! The Calendar is a useful resource, and one which we hope will only become more useful as time goes by.

My tweets are their own event: @OhCrap

So enough with that idea. I figure that most game reviews are far too long, and this kind of annoys me. I figure that if a game really is great, okay, maybe that justifies a long review, but the bulk of games just don't justify it. So I've decided to go with a new game review format, until I change my mind or get bored with the idea. I figure everything I think about a given game should fit into twenty words. Not "or less", and not "give or take a couple". It's twenty words per review.

This is a catchup set, reflecting several games I didn't get around to reviewing. Pretty much all are in the RPG genere, and as a bonus, three of these are new games! All are based on Xbox versions.

I have already written more words than the total for all games reviewed, so let's get into it.

Two Worlds II

Similar to Two Worlds, but with better graphics, more interesting bugs, less hilarious voice acting, and no retailers stocking it.

A wonderful way to erase any goodwill you had gained toward Bioware from Dragon Age Origins. Some people like it!

Skyrim

Pretty. Put it down for a while and it's too much effort to pick up again. Don't care about Kinect.

Mass Effect III

Why the hell would I care? 1 and 2 bore the hell out of me. Dragon Age II in spaaaaaaaaaaaace.

Fable Heroes

Where did this come from? Lionhead jumped the shark with Fable III. Bodes poorly for Fable: The Journey On Rails.

Minecraft for Xbox

I care about this as much as Minecraft for PC. Which is to say, I don't. Not enough to buy.

 Until next time, unless I forget or get distracted.

Hello,

• The password must be at least 8 characters long.
• The password must contain at least:
• one alpha character [a-zA-Z];
• one numeric character [0-9];
• one special character from this set:
  ` ! @ $ % ^ & * ( ) - _ = + [ ] ; : ' " , < . > / ?
• The password must not:
• contain spaces;
• begin with an exclamation [!] or a question mark [?];
• contain your login ID.
• The first 3 characters cannot be the same.
• The sequence of the first 3 characters cannot be in your login ID.
• The first 8 characters cannot be the same as in your previous password.
• Passwords are treated as case sensitive.

 This list provides a number of new hotfixes that have appeared since. These additions are constrained almost entirely to issues that can affect DPM and other backups. It's by no means comprehensive, just a useful list of important fixes. As with the previous article, I've coloured the hotfixes most relevant to DPM in red. A number of these hotfixes may replace previously listed ones - if anyone would like to note any replacements, I'd be happy to update the list.

As always, you should consider the applicability of these hotfixes to your own environment before applying them. However, you can easily batch install all hotfixes, using the example provided in the previous post, and this is useful once you've established the hotfixes you require.

These hotfixes are additional to the consolidated list. For Hyper-V systems, you should also consult this useful list for a more complete list of fixes, since even issues that aren't obviously related could affect your backups in this environment.

Once again, I hope this is of use!

 What is BYOD? Bring Your Own Device, or in other words, staff bringing their own smartphone, tablet, notebook, or similar devices to work. It's an idea that's gained quite some traction with marketers, journalists, and C-level execs. It's not so far different from the classic problem of a high-level exec buying a new shiny device - outside of the Standard Operating Environment - and insisting that IT make it work. It's just spreading that out to a much broader degree, following the innumerable "trends" of times past.

Server-based computing and thin clients never really set the world on fire. Server virtualisation didn't reduce complexity or server sprawl - in the sense that it's now all too easy to run up a new virtual server, and you now have a whole host of new considerations (and licensing) in play. And desktop virtualisation? Well, if you listen to some, BYOD will make them happen.

That's just a very narrow selection of trends, and you'll note for example that virtualisation is actually very successful - just not necessarily when measured against the original hype. I'm not saying BYOD won't happen - all "trends" have their adopters to lesser or greater extent. Virtualisation has been a great benefit to IT, overall, and no-one would seriously call it a failure.

You could say that I myself use BYOD right now, to a limited extent. My mobile device connects to my current employer's mail servers using ActiveSync. My notebook gets plugged into their network, and I do a lot of my work on it, rather than the machine they've provided. It has a better screen, for starters, and MS Project, which the provided machine doesn't have. But in fact I copy my work onto a USB key and save it to their network drives when finished; I don't connect to their servers at all, although do make use of their Internet connection. Using my own notebook and my own phone is just a convenience and a privilege, rather than a necessity.

There's plenty of companies that provide remote access to staff from home, using their own computers to connect to work - generally with some restriction to the level of access provided, of course. There are those who might say that BYOD is simply a logical next step, especially given the proliferation of personal iPhones, iPads, and the like. But just saying, promoting, or mandating something doesn't make it practical, realistic, or actually happen on a widescale level.. something many journalists, marketers, and C-levels perpetually fail to appreciate. I am a strong proponent of the simple fact that IT exists for the business, not vice versa, and that we are employed specifically to meet business needs.  But sometimes IT has to push back on fads. Sometimes we should hide the management magazines and periodicals. Sometimes we should do terrible things to marketers and journalists that promote complete and utter guff.

Is BYOD realistic? The IT manager in me gets all kind of alarm bells just thinking about it. It's an additional risk to consider, and one which can require a lot of mitigation to make that risk acceptable in any form.

A device outside the scope of business ownership and management is a risk. Who's responsible for ensuring that it's suited to the task, and won't impact productivity? Who ensures that it has appropriate antimalware that is up to date and correctly configured? Who ensures that data stored on it is backed up, that it's ultimately stored on corporate servers, and that it's ultimately removed from the device? When does a device failure become an IT problem? When does a broken or lost device become an insurance problem? Who mitigates unrestricted admin access to the client machine? Who ensures machines are updated for critical zero-day bugs? What are the licensing and support liabilities? Do you have an 802.1X / NAC / NAP deployment? Do you already have wireless, or is this an investment you'll need to make for the sake of a few iPads? Are you going to mandate staff buy their own devices (good luck), or are you going to have a dog's breakfast of owned and personal devices to keep track of (yes)?

These are just a few of the issues. There are answers to each of these - some not as pretty as others. For example, ownership is important, and an employer could perhaps be said have liability for lost or broken devices. Do you want to have that argument? Is tackling all these issues really sensible, in contrast to getting on with business as usual? It's easy to say that server-based computing could enjoy a resurgence with BYOD, or that desktop virtualisation will come into its own. For some companies, one or both of these will be true. Others will just go with straight out unrestricted access. There are always those who jump on the bandwagon, and in some cases, casualties.

I've always seen the value in employer-provided computers and mobile phones. Generally, risks can be far more easily covered in the SOE paradigm. I've seen a lot of different mobile phone ownership models from different employers - including reimbursement of business calls - and I don't think anything really tops employer-issued phones with good central reporting to avoid abuse, and using call caps where appropriate to minimise the cost. Perhaps a better answer to BYOD is expanding the device offering - let staff pick from a range of devices that suits their job, and keep it corporate-owned. You can then assure the business in supportability, productivity, and flexibility.

Some will always leap on the fad bandwagon before they think. It's always interesting to ask a CIO the rationale for their latest mandate, and I can say that it's easy to pick those who let magazines and marketers dictate their thinking, rather than the business and the realities of their IT environment. Sadly, there's all too many of those, and you may well get stuck with a poor decision that doesn't actually match business needs. It wouldn't be the first time, and it won't be the last. Unfortunately, it's the business that suffers in the end.

 System Center is, of course, Microsoft's integrated management platform for IT, and one of its fastest growing product lines in business terms. That's no accident, either - management is the single most consistent challenge across IT shops, regardless of size, technologies, and headcount. We've come a long way from the days where Systems Management Server (SMS) was the only Microsoft offering in this regard -  and even since the introduction of Microsoft Operations Manager. These products were clunky and limited in contrast to their modern counterparts, System Center Configuration Manager and Operations Manager.

Times have moved on; now the System Center portfolio also covers backup, virtualisation, service delivery, and endpoint protection (antimalware, if you prefer). It's no accident, of course, that these are areas that have tended to be pain points for Windows environments, or that these challenges are common across the vast majority of IT shops. Even more heterogenous environments with other operating environments like Linux and Mac face these challenges, and although System Center isn't necessarily going to fit into strictly non-Microsoft shops, the suite certainly delivers a level of integration and interoperability that makes it fairly compelling for those who do have a significant Windows footprint.

Nowadays, cloud is the universal buzzword, and System Center is no different. You won't hear about 'standalone' infrastructure for the most part - that's 'private cloud'. Hosted services are 'public cloud', and environments that straddle the two are 'hybrid cloud'. It's for this reason that you find System Center 2012 rolled up into a single suite with two technology areas - Cloud and Datacenter Management, and Client Management and Security.

Client Management and Security comprises Configuration Manager 2012, and what was formerly Forefront Endpoint Protection - now System Center Endpoint Protection. Given that FEP/SCEP uses Configuration Manager for its management, deployment, and update capabilities, this certainly has some logic to it. This is the area for management of desktops, mobile devices, and applications. Realistically, of course, configuration management really does apply to servers as well, so this area does tend to cross into Cloud and Datacenter Management anyway .. but the vast majority of ConfigMgr functionality is endpoint-focused.

(Incidentally, I'm told that the correct or preferred acronym for Configuration Manager is, in fact, ConfigMgr, rather than SCCM. There are reasons for this, but I've always tended to use ConfigMgr anyway).

The remainder of the suite sits within Cloud and Datacenter Management. This is where Operations Manager, Data Protection Manager, Virtual Machine Manager, App Controller, Service Manager, Orchestrator, and yes- Configuration Manager again - sits. Products like App Controller and Orchestrator roll up Microsoft acquisitions such as App-V and Opalis into 'official' components of the suite, while the remainder are 'from scratch' developments. Mobile Device Manager has essentially been rolled into Configuration Manger.

 While I'm not going to run down each product within this article, it's of note that Microsoft will no longer license them individually. They're now licensed as a complete suite, and this is based entirely on endpoint licenses and "Managed Operating System Environments". Licensing can be one of the most confusing aspects of Microsoft products, so I thought I'd summarise how it now works. The short story is as follows;

Client Licensing

• Configuration Manager and Virtual Machine Manager are covered by Configuration Manager Client Management Licenses for non-server clients.
• Service Manager, Operations Manager, Data Protection Manager, and Orchestrator are covered by Client Management Suite Client Management Licenses for non-server clients.
• All products are covered by System Center 2012 Server Management Licenses, based on a CPU count, for server clients
• Endpoint Protection also requires a subscription

Server Client Licensing

• Server Management Licenses cover up to 2 physical processors. Servers with more than 2 physical processors consume multiple ML's.
• Managed Operating System Environments (MOSEs) cover physical servers and virtualisation. The System Center Standard and Datacenter suites differentiate on MOSEs.
• Standard allows for 2 MOSEs. Datacenter allows for Unlimited MOSEs.
• A Standard license would allow a 2 CPU physical server hosting 1 virtual server to consume 1 Management License.
• A Standard license would require a 2 CPU physical server hosting 2 or 3 virtual servers to consume 2 Management Licenses.
• A Standard license would require a 4 CPU physical server hosting 1, 2, or 3 virtual servers to consume 2 Management Licenses.
• 8 CPUs would require 4 Management Licenses, but allow for 7 virtual servers, with Standard licensing.
• A Datacenter license will make CPU count the only consideration - so a 2 CPU server consumes 1 ML, 4 CPU consumes 2 ML, and so on.
• So in the example of 4 CPUs, a flat 2 MLs are required, with no restrictions on the number of virtual servers, and 8 CPUs would require 4 MLs
• There is "Step up" licensing available to move from Standard to Enterprise suites for Server Management Licenses

Core and Enterprise CAL Suites

The Core and Enterprise CAL Suites are generally good ways to save on licensing components. Unfortunately I've seen plenty of IT departments who aren't aware of the value or saving that they can provide. One of the key offerings of CoreCAL and ECAL is in the System Center area. For System Center 2012, the following applies;

• Configuration Manager Client Management Licenses (Configuration Manager, Endpoint Protection, Virtual Machine Manager), and the subscription are included in the Core CAL Suite
• In addition to this, Client Management Suite Client ML (all other System Center products) are included the Enterprise CAL Suite
• For both suites, you will still need to purchase the appropriate Server Management Licenses for your Server clients.
• There is no "Server License" to run management servers- you only license endpoints being managed. This includes SQL licensing for management servers.

Software Assurance

Although I've summarised most of the key licensing points, there is still the question of how licensing transitions to the new suite. Rather than trying to pick out each individual migration scenario, I'll point you to the licensing data sheet here: System Center 2012 Licensing Datasheet

I hope to do some more posts on System Center 2012, and particularly Data Protection Manager, shortly, but hopefully this helps to understand how the new suites work, and what you get from each license component. There's a lot of value to System Center, and having the entire suite at your fingertips could be terrific, and should present a level of cost saving over the old model. I'd be interested to know what people think though!

In line with the System Center 2012 release, Microsoft recently rolled the various MVP areas for System Center up to just two - System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management, and System Center Client Management and Security. Client Management and Security covers Configuration Manager and Endpoint Protection, while Cloud and Datacenter Management covers the rest of the System Center suite. My own MVP award for Data Protection Manager was therefore rolled up into the Cloud and Datacenter Management area, and until now I was the only one in Australia and New Zealand.

I don't have a full bio for him, but Rob specialises in Service Manager, and is very active in the Microsoft newsgroups around this. I know from talking to him that he's extremely passionate on the subject, and on System Center in general! Rob is based in New Zealand, which means of course that he falls within the scope of AuTechHeads, and in fact he's recently signed up. I know we have a few members who have quite a bit of  interest in Service Manager, so it might be an opportunity to start up some conversations!

Please join me in congratulating Rob - it's certainly nice to have someone else in the region to share the SCCDM area!

I had to rush off to the airport and crashed out, back home in Adelaide now. It was a very interesting event, and was great to get the opportunity to talk to some key HP staff. I'll summarise the whole event in a few days once I've absorbed it all.

3:30pm
Bit of a gap as this section was particularly technical around layers, zones, repositorys, pools, catalogues - you get the idea :)

3:00pm
Architecture Deep Dive for HP Cloud:
IT becomes the service broker, and also needs to choose where to put what. It should also be designed to be able to be moved from one environment to the next.

This requires a common foundation. There are three layers for an Integrated cloud platform to cover all IaaS, PaaS and SaaS (hmm most things seem to be in threes today) - Demand - User Interraction, Deliver - Service Orchestration and Supply - Resource Operation.

2:25pm
If someone uses your hosted severs for an attack, who is at fault? The provider or the consumer? I'm not sure this one was actually answered (please correct me if I'm wrong!) but regardless it's a good question, and there are a lot of grey areas because laws never keep up with new technologies.

Consumer responsibility vs Provider responsibility in order: IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. So if you want the least responsibility, SaaS is the way to go.

2:10pm
Cloud Security is about perspective. HP have a lot of considerations and understanding of this, read some cloudy stuff here:

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/business-solutions/solution.html?compURI=1079449#tab=TAB2 

2:00pm
Had a walkthrough of HP's Comms Room Showcase Extravaganza, check my twitter feed @AdamFowler_IT for the pics (later because all forms of internet are now crawling here).

12:53pm
HP Networking - When you've got a single network switch that has 100's of blades connected to it with 1000's of VM's, the MAC table is going to grow huge, and there are limits. HP manage the networking for your cloud to make sure these issues don't occur... plus it's their own switches and routers in use!

HP will support VMWare, Microsoft, Citrix and HP ux virtualisation technologies. 

12:30pm EST
Welcome to part two, and I've now converted to local Sydney time to keep things confusing.

The building blocks that HP has to make your cloud: Private, Managed and Public all used converged infrastructure. The three key steps are: Standardize, Virtualise and finally Automate.

HP CloudSystem is 45% cheaper than Amazon EC2 as long as you buy enough. Based on 4 Chassis, 64 blades with 768 VM's etc - that's a rather decent deployment!

There are two stages to cloud; Step-by-step and fast track.

Step-by-step includes Standardize and consolidate, then Virtualise and automate.

Fast Track is then Self service infrastructure, self service applications with full lifecycle management and finally becoming a service broken in a hybrid environment.

The above is a bit deeper defining what I was talking about in Part 1. You're smart, you'll find where that is if you need to.

How many companies and departments have a disaster recovery solution in the works, either being implemented or planned? What happens if that strategy is called into action due to a hardware failure or malicious action?

If I told you that the main cause of data loss through deletion or removal by malicious action is actually from an internal source, ignoring the Internet and external users for a moment, how can you ensure that it doesn't happen? What implementations are there in the market that account for internal user attack?

Most firewalls sit at the gateway. they probe for signatures that identify external behaviours, they don't look back in. If the user is behind the gateway and firewall, in the "safe" zone, how can a sysadmin detect and prevent an internal user damaging a database, file store or other essential component of the data storage process?

One way is to set active directory profiles per user, eliminating access to the data - making sure that they can only see the data relevant to their role. This is time consuming.

Another way is to engage with a partner or vendor who provides accurate security either via a virtual or physical appliance. This enables the external and the internal path to data to be protected, regardless of the source of the query.

There are products that cater for this second option. One I have recently learned about is Imperva - www.imperva.com

With the data now residing in a physical location, a virtual layer or cloud layer, a one size fits all solution is now not effective. Putting a "box in a rack" is of no benefit to a verbal or cloud layer, but the IT manager may see scope to deploy several options in the key spaces. 

Security is often overlooked as the clients are complacent, but now is the time to at least educate them of alternative options. There is no such thing as too much security, each vendor has a role to play in an environment, and they are only too happy to assist.

An opinion piece here, so please poke holes and post criticisms below.

Lately I have been going through a lot of system changes at work. That is to say, more than normal, and most at the early stages. We've been stuck in a state of limbo, mainly because the several systems we want to upgrade or change all talk to each other in one way or another. I'll first briefly outline one house of cards, and then move to what should have been done better, generally speaking (or typing as the case may be).

We are on Exchange 2007, and want to go to Exchange 2010. That's not too difficult you may think, you can build your whole new Exchange environment and move a few mailboxes over for testing, then just do a mass mailbox migration over the weekend and everything's great.

This would be true, if several other systems weren't leveraging off of Exchange 2007. Firstly, voicemail. Our phone system will pass unanswered calls through to the Unified Messaging Exchange 2007 server, which means we need the same functionality in Exchange 2010. How do we even test this? We need to contact our PBX support, and pay for changes back and forth out of hours. It's not something we can easily do without business impact. Then, the PBX has no official support for Exchange 2010, so if something doesn't work or goes wrong we're fairly stuck.

Then, we've got the same problem with faxing. It goes from our PABX via Unified Messaging. Both of these services are considered business critical.

At the same time, we want to change our PBX system. So we've got the above problems in reverse, but on top of that we use OCS 2007 R1 which also needs to get upgraded. So now, we need to deploy a new PBX system, integrate it with a new Exchange environment, which in turn is integrated with Lync to replace OCS, and that talks to the phone system for both making/receiving calls and precense.

Now, because we want to change our PBX system we may need to also change our switch infrastrucutre because if we keep what we have, and went with a provider such as Cisco, they would say that they won't support what issues happen with vocie quality if the switches aren't theirs. Our switch infrastructure is up for renewal anyway.

I could go on about this with several other systems that are tied in, but hopefully the above is starting to paint a picture.

When integrating systems, think about how the OSI 7 layer model works. Refresher: each network layer can talk above and below it, regardless of what it is. This means that anything that gets changed in your network environment should work, if it meets the standards. You can swap a network card over, and everything else above it will work exactly the same way as before (drivers pending). You can swap a centralised switch, and it will continue to pass the packets of data around like the old switch did. Your application can talk to anything else on the network when anything below it gets swapped over. Hopefully that shows what I'm trying to say...

Where possible, use standard protocols or single supplier solutions. If you've got something that needs to send alerts out, go for simple SMTP emails. Everything supports it, and little to no work should be required when you have to change something. If they won't support standards like SQL databases of either the latest version or the version before, you should hear alarm bells ringing.

If you need two seperately supplied systems to talk to each other, get each company to show proof they support the other, and will in the future. There's no use 3 years later saying that company X would say it would work.

This should be the case for any system implemented - think about the future and what would happen, and what might go wrong if you have to swap out any part of it.

I just reminded myself, though, that I never reviewed the desktop computer (I'm glad I took my time, though, as time has changed my opinion for good reason, as you'll see). I suppose that the simplest reason is that I don't use it - it's primarily used by the rest of the family. I had to have a desktop PC to work from home previously, to satisfy OH&S requirements, but otherwise I'm perfectly happy to use my notebook. The same is largely true with my wife and children - unbelievably, they each have notebooks, leading me to reminisce on "ye olde days" when the first computer we had was a Commodore 64, plugged into the lounge room TV - computer usage was a pure luxury.

Nowadays it's essential, and this is underscored by the strong emphasis on computing that my daughters' school shows. I actually resisted giving my girls computers for quite some time, not wanting to "push" them down the same path as myself ... but they proved to be enthusiastic computer users. Luckily, I was able to get away relatively cheaply - the Tech.Ed 2009 netbook has passed down from eldest to youngest, and the eldest now uses a second-hand notebook (larger screen et al), bought at a very decent price.

But the need for a desktop PC remains, and they love the touchscreen all-in-one form factor. The work PC that I had had was a HP TouchSmart All-in-One, which was fairly nice, but way outside of my budget. I was able to pick up the Inspiron 2320 All-in-One - a brand new model - from Dell for around $1,000 less ..with better processor, better video, and essentially the same specifications otherwise - except no Blu-ray. Blu-ray wasn't the end of the world.

 The specifications were as follows;

    Inspiron One 2320

    2nd Generation Intel Core2 I7-2600S Processor (2.8GHz)
    8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM(2x4GB)
    23"1920 x 1080 (Full HD) WLED Touch Screen
    1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M GPU
    Internal 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet
    Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6230 with Intel Wireless Display and Bluetooth 3.0HS
    2TB 7200 RPM Hard Drive
    8X DVD+/-RW with Dual Layer Write Capabilities
    Dell(TM) Wireless Desktop Keyboard and Mouse Bundle
    Integrated TV Tuner with remote control
    Integrated HD WebCam
    Integrated 5.1 Stereo Sound
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
    3-Year Hardware Warranty

Quite a decent specification generally, and the NVIDIA GPU was a welcome addition - much like the Alienware notebook, there's onboard Intel HD Graphics, and the Switchable Graphics feature allows the OS to use the "best" GPU for a given task. The GT 525M is hardly the best NVIDIA GPU around, but it's at least a major improvement over Intel's own.

I did, however, find that the specification was extremely rigid in contrast to the notebook ordering process. By and large, it was essentially a fixed configuration once you'd decided on the 'base' features desired. I would have happily paid the small upgrade cost for Blu-ray, had it been offered - but it wasn't. Equally, I wouldn't have gone with Windows 7 Home Premium if there'd been a choice - even though I could easily do the same SKU change process as I did with the Alienware.

What is really, really aggravating though is the complete lack of the "optional" AV board as a selectable configuration in Australia. This AV board - which I believe has the part number D4V54 - should really be included by default, or at least selectable. Dell Australia, it seems, has chosen to completely omit the board though. This, sadly, makes the 2320 a dead duck when it comes to use as a media center or similar.

I'm sure that if you had something compatible with Intel Wireless Display - I don't - then it might be less of an issue. But to be frank, the lack of HDMI, VGA, RCA, and fibre optic I/O ports - which is a result of excluding this - makes it all too easy to shake your head at the stupidity. I'm fairly sure that - like with the majority of Dell parts in Australia - it's damn near impossible to buy them after the fact from Dell themselves. Stupidly, the board's only worth about AUD$20.

I haven't been able to use the TV tuner, as the study has essentially no reception (and no external antenna access). But I could certainly have used the 2320 when our main TV died, if I'd been able to do HDMI in from our TiVo. Without the AV board, though, there was no chance, and I wasn't about to unplug the TiVo to get an antenna signal.

I can purchase the D4V54 board elsewhere - sadly, there's no documentation to confirm that this Inspiron 2305/2310 board is definitely the right one for the 2320 - but until I'm getting regular pay again, that's not too likely. Regardless, this is an area that Dell always seem to shoot themselves in the foot. Their after-sales capabilities are somewhere between woeful and non-existent - but then, I could say the same of HP and others, too. They're by no means alone, but they may well be the most consistently awful.

 The 2320 is fine for day to day computing. What I've seen of the TV tuner capabilities is fine too. The touch screen is nice, bright, and responsive. The overall PC performance is excellent - but has the same caveat as I found with the Alienware; DON'T replace the Dell-supplied Intel HD graphics drivers with Intel's generic (and more up to date) version.  This will disable the switchable graphics capabilities, or in other words, the generic drivers will lock you in to using Intel graphics ONLY.

From a usage perspective, the family have no complaints. It works, and generally works well. The wireless keyboard and mouse work well, although you have to have a USB dongle attached for the mouse to work. They're quite comfortable and reliable.

If the Inspiron 2320 included the AV board, or at the very least made it easy to add during the purchase and/or purchase as an after-market upgrade, I would happily recommend it. As things stand though, I'd have to stop short. It's not the PC. It's what it lacks, and the fact that Dell could have easily addressed this.

One of the people I was lucky enough to meet at Tech·Ed Australia 2011 was Mr Paul Cunningham, who runs the popular website Exchange Server Pro. Paul is one of the most respected names going around when it comes to Exchange, and he has the real world experience to back it up. As a favour to the community (and our profession) Paul has decided to produce a free (as in free beer) boot camp for those wanting to learn Exchange 2010. The boot camp consists of four modules  containing physical challenges, early morning runs, rope climbs*, text, screen shots and videos to help you learn the basics of Exchange Server 2010. Having worked through this boot camp myself, I can say that this is an invaluable resource for those getting started with Exchange Server, and also those who may have managed an Exchange environment but not installed one before.

Please make sure you check the boot camp out, and also be sure to stick Paul’s blog in your RSS reader, it’s an invaluable resource you’ve probably stumbled on a hundred times whilst Googling (Binging?) Exchange issues.

Exchange Server Pro Boot Camp

Exchange Server Pro

* May not contain any of these strenuous physical activities.

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What? You want more?

Dwarf Fortress is a dwarven life simulation written by Toady One of Bay 12 Games.
If you have enjoyed this review, why not check out ...

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What? Still not enough? Sigh … okay. Here goes.

…
Slaves to Armok: God of Blood, Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress is a horrendously bug-laden, incredibly inaccessible, and incomprehensible game that's still only in Alpha after many years of development, and with no end in sight to development. At the same time, it's also possibly the single most fun game ever written, and purportedly the inspiration for Minecraft. It's certainly given me plenty of enjoyment.

Like many others, I stumbled on Dwarf Fortress via Something Awful and their Let's Play Forums. One of the most well-regarded Let's Play threads around, Boatmurdered, is often the first introduction anyone has to the game. Boatmurdered was a succession game thread which involved a community of players passing their save game to one another after one year of in-game time, with the intent of building the dwarfiest (or dorfiest) fortress around. Imagine The Sims set in the wilderness, with killer elephants, crazy dwarves, bottomless pits, and magma. Then forget about The Sims. And add more magma. That's Boatmurdered.

Boatmurdered definitely has its place in Dwarf Fortress lore, because it showcased both the strengths and the insanities that the game possessed. It was based on quite an early version of the game, to the extent that (as happened for me) new players expecting a Boatmurdered-style experience will be suitably disoriented. Later - and just as classic - Let's Play threads have certainly made use of newer versions, and showcased even further another strength of Dwarf Fortress - that it encourages players to build a story around their forts, supported by an incredibly rich in-game background and amazingly detailed descriptions - all procedurally generated - that the game throws up all over the place. Great examples are Headsshoots, Syrupleaf, and Gemclod ("let's all get killed and eaten") - all of which could be said to be inspired by Boatmurdered in the first place, but to take on lives and stories of their own. Syrupleaf is perhaps my favourite, a sequel of sorts to Headsshoots that demonstrates both the modding aspects of the game and the player-driven stories that can arise.

To understand Dwarf Fortress takes time and effort. Here's a (somewhat cropped) screenshot of the native version:

As you can see, it's essentially an ASCII-based game. Don't let that fool you, it's very much a modern game, but it arguably doesn't need graphics to provide an amazingly deep and interactive experience. Along the way, however, it's been made somewhat more accessible by community efforts. Here's the same map area with a community tileset applied:

You may find this to still be difficult to understand, but I assure you that it's much easier for a new player to understand. Indeed, it's by far my preferred way to play. I like having to think as much about the game as it demands, but I don't want to have to maintain a mental (or physical) list of what every ASCII character means. If you look closely, you’ll see little dwarves and animals, rocks, grass, trees, and so forth.

This easily showcases what is probably the single thing that makes the game what it is - the community. The developer, Tarn Adams (AKA Toady One), is a one-man band by choice. He's enlisted the help of his brother, and he works with one other developer to allow for cross-platform capabilities (Dwarf Fortress runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux) - but otherwise, that's it. In the process, he's developed an incredibly deep and detailed game. Left to its own devices, though, I suspect that most people would be completely unable or unwilling to play. This is where the community comes in, with an incredible wiki, active forums, and amazing mod community that really give life to Dwarf Fortress.

The same community also helps to directly influence the development of Dwarf Fortress. It's a freeware game, but Toady One lives off income from the game - which is raised solely through community donation. Not a bad gig if you can get it! Along with direct donations, there's also been a sponsorship drive for new animals to be added to the game. From bees and lice to dingos and pandas, platypus and penguin to grasshopper and mosquito, the game's diversity and depth has been directly increased by these sponsorships.

The game is founded upon the generation of one or more worlds. The entire world must be generated, from the highest mountain, through the layers of clay, soil, and rock, to caverns ... well, let's not spoil the Hidden Fun Stuff here. You can directly influence world generation through basic or advanced parameters - for example, increasing the number of volcanoes, reducing aquifers, increasing minerals, and upping the number of megabeasts (and other fun surprises). You can also set the length of world history, which will cause the game to run through that history during generation. Once generated, you can engage in two modes of play, or review legends mode. Legends mode is amazing to read through - it shows just how incredibly detailed the worlds are, with each notable historical figure having their own triumphs and tribulations to read about, each civilization having its rise, wars, and possibly downfalls .. and sometimes, the extinction of entire races.

Dwarf Fortress mode and Adventurer mode are the two modes of play to choose from. Adventurer mode is a roguelike-type game, in the style of classics like Nethack, but based around exploration of the entire world that you've generated. You can encounter civilisations, go on quests, fight monsters, and even visit fortresses that you've founded and abandoned (current versions disable this temporarily). Adventurer mode has recently had some substantial updates to make it more fun .. but frankly, for me, the meat is still in Dwarf Fortress mode.

Dwarf Fortress mode lets you pick an embark site anywhere in the world - except, by default, already-settled or abandoned sites (you can reclaim your own fortresses if they've been abandoned, and there's community mods to let you embark anywhere). From there, you pick 7 dwarves and their starting equipment (or let the game do it for you), and send them on their way.

You start in one of the embark sites within the map area that you've chosen. As the intro screen tells you, you need to prepare suitable lodgings ere the [insert local predator name] get hungry. Strike the earth! And you generally will, unless you somehow managed not to bring a pick, or you decide to try to build an above ground fort (not recommended for new players).

Your miner dwarves - one of many tasks that can be enabled for each individual dwarf - can dig down, or into the side of a hill or mountain. You can carve out walls and passageways - but don't take too long. You need to start developing industries. Typically high on your list: farming, carpentry, masonry, brewing, cooking, and craftsdwarfs.

A typical game goes like this: you only have so much food and booze with you. For dwarves, booze is the top priority, but both have importance. You need to at least collect more raw food - by plant gathering, farming, and hunting/trapping - to satisfy the food needs. Cooking is arguably optional, but your dwarves get happy thoughts from well prepared cooked meals. You also need to start brewing booze, because without it, your dwarves get unhappy thoughts, and will ultimately throw tantrums. Brewing uses certain plants, which are also often used in food preparation - so you need to be careful, because cooking will use up the seeds of the plants as well, making it hard to grow more, and also reducing the amount of booze that you can distill. Be equally careful with the booze itself - it, too, can be used in cooking.

Still with me? Okay, so brewing is all well and good, but you need something to store it in. And you only brought so many barrels with you, most of them still full of food or booze. So you need to chop down trees and have your carpenter make more. You could get more complicated and start a pottery or glassmaking industry for your food containers, but this requires both fuel and either clay or sand, and you need your carpentry industry for beds anyway. Most other things can be made with rock by your masons or craftsdwarfs, but beds are wood-only. Helpfully, your carpenter can also make bins to store your crafts in, which is useful come trade caravan time.

Yes, trade caravans. You need to trade to help your new fortress get off the ground. You can sell a lot of your fortresses stocks - even the food and booze, or the wood you've chopped - but to really afford the trade caravan's goods, you'd best start a craftsdwarf industry. They can make rock items that are, for the most part, useless, but which have value for trade, and they can churn them out at a reasonably high rate. If you play it safe, by the time the first caravan arrives, you'll be able to buy most of the useful goods. And as a bonus, a healthy craftsdwarf industry will tend to attract more migrants. As will artifacts, generated by dwarves that enter “strange moods” – you can’t sell them, but they can be useful, and they increase your fortress value … so long as you meet the dwarf’s demands!

Migrants are the single best way to grow the population of your fortress - which you need to do to sustain the demands of your growing fort. Someone needs to do the fishing, hunting, farming, plant gathering, plant extraction, milling, mechanism building, mining, masonry, engraving, and so on. Oh, and you'll probably need a militia. Soon, before the vile forces of darkness arrive.

Invasions are part of the game, and you'll almost inevitably experience them fairly fast. The most common source of invasions are nearby goblin civilisations, who hate dwarves and everything they stand for. A frequent early warning sign is gobin snatchers, who steal dwarf children and take them back to their dark tower to be enslaved. Generally easy to thwart with some well placed traps, but when they start appearing, be ready for ambush parties and invasion soon after.

Ambush parties are small squads of goblins who'll sometimes appear and kill dwarves that stumble across them. They, too, are frequent precursors of a full invasion. You'll know the difference when you see it, because the typical goblin invasion force is pretty damn big, and often includes trolls.

Hopefully you've trained your militia up and got some good defences in place, and maybe even trained some war animals. The invasion force will path straight toward your fortress entryways- a drawbridge and moat is often a damn good strategy. You can certainly go after them with your militia and defend with ballistae - but early on, battening down the hatches might just be the way to go. The besieging force will hang around, kill any animals and residents of yours that they can find - and maybe incoming caravans and migrants - but eventually they will hopefully get bored and go home. Or, in the case of a predominantly goblin archer-based force, run out of arrows and get slaughtered by your militia once you realise.

Having survived your first invasion, you can collect any goblin gear left on bodies (and arrows or bolts that are lying around). Sometimes you can get some great gear from this, especially in the early game when you need it. The community calls this "goblinite", a renewable resource. Because the goblins will most certainly be back.

If you've lost dwarves with friends or family to the invasion, you may well encounter your first tantrum, or worse still, a tantrum spiral. This is a dwarf, or dwarves, who are upset by their loss - they won't work, they'll pick fights, and they may destroy things. They might even go insane, drop into a deep melancholy, or go beserk (literally - they'll start killing dwarves). It's all part of the fun!

Meanwhile, you need to rebuild as necessary, and keep expanding. Resources are a challenging part of the game - you need water, plants, animals, wood, rock and metal ores, clay, sand, and more. These are incentives to expand your fortress. Rock and metal ores are a big driving force in digging deeper - if you want to make copper, bronze, iron, or even steel weapons, you need metal ores, and for steel you need flux. You also need fuel to power the furnaces and workshops. If you're lucky to find magma - either underground, or in a handy volcano - you can use this to replace some fuel - but you still need fuel for some reactions! Thankfully, wood can also be burnt to create coal, but this is a costly use for a limited resource.

The deeper you dig, the higher your risk. There are caverns below - with interesting plants, water, and beasts - along with more valuable rock and metal ores. There's good reason to find them, but beware - hostile creatures can find their way to your fortress from below as well. You'll find out all about the fun that this alone can create when the first Forgotten Beast appears.

Then there are titans and megabeasts. When your fortress reaches certain milestones, the game will happily start to throw them at you. These are generally enemies, created during world generation, that happen to be in the area. You might get a roc or a dragon, a bronze colossus or a titan .. much like Forgotten Beasts, these can signal the end for a poorly prepared fortress. But defeating them is also incredibly satisfying!

That's just a small snapshot of the game. We won't talk about what happens if you dig too deep, or any of the other fun surprises that can happen. Suffice to say that the official motto of the game is "Losing is Fun" - don't expect to win. Expect to lose, sooner or later, in interesting and surprising ways. And then start a new fortress, or reclaim. This is what Dwarf Fortress is all about.

There is plenty of fun in this game- both by design and as a result of the procedural generation. There's unintentional hilarity. The latest version includes necromancers and evil biomes that raise dead bodies - or body parts - from the dead. New and old players alike are encountering zombie skin from animals that they slaughtered. Which keep rising. Again and again.

For myself, one of my favourite memories is a Forgotten Beast racing up stairs from a cavern to attack one of my farmers - who promptly sidestepped, and the Forgotten Beast dropped off a cliff, landing where it had started (but in a lot more pieces). Another frequently cited example is that of mermaid bones - in a past version, they had as much value as dragon bones, and the community promptly started to figure out ingenious and inventive ways to "farm" and slaughter mermaid offspring in order for their fortresses to profit. Toady One was apparently appalled by this one, and patched it in the very next version.

As mentioned, Minecraft - a game I actually can't get into - was purportedly inspired by Dwarf Fortress. Equally, there are references to Dwarf Fortress in all kinds of games - even World of Warcraft. Skyrim might have its Minecraft reference, but it could just as easily serve as a Dwarf Fortress tribute.

It's fun. It's engaging. It's challenging. And it's free. As I said at the outset, it's bug laden, inaccessible, and incomprehensible. The game’s performance can deteriorate incredibly as your fortress grows, and it uses only a single core on a multicore system – Toady hasn’t implemented multithreading. Equally, as a 32 bit-only process, it’s subject to a 2Gb RAM limit, and crashes if it hits it. That really only encourages the community to come up with solutions and workarounds, though. If you perservere, you'll find that it really is addictive, and arguably deserves the praise that it engenders. Given Toady One's own estimates, I don't know that it'll ever actually move out of alpha and reach a version 1.0 release - but so long as he keeps releasing new versions, adding more and more to the game, it's almost certain to have an audience and a devoted community.

One of the comments on my old post about backup hit a chord. It was about small users, backups and tapes.

I am a mac user. I have been for several years, even when I was only using a PC, I would skin it up to look like a mac. (sad, right?) Anyway.

Apple gives all apple users a product called time machine. Smart mac salespeople convince you to buy an external hard drive. So I back up once a day, all my data is duplicated and goes into the drive. PC users have similar options, home users back up so as to save valuable photos & documents.

The basics of backup are there. 

What happens when a small to medium business has lots of data? Do they:

a) Back up every day?

b) Backup once a week?

c) Backup every day to the same tape / drive option?

d) Backup to the same individual Tape or drive?

The answer, unfortunately, is mostly d). The theory is that the tape or disk isn't full, so it must be ok, right?

I have seen first hand over the years the damage that a de-aligned head can have on a tape, making it unreadable.

So... what can a business do? How can they backup and be safe? 

Some companies tell end users that Hard drives are safer than tape, then proceed to sell them the mass produced hard drives, you know, the cheap ones, cheaper than the server or desktop drives the client already uses. they also trot out the old line that Tape is slower than disk. DAT Tapes, certainly. Not LTO4 or 5. They are a different breed entirely.

The best option I have seen to date is a Virtual Tape Library (VTL) created on a hyper-v system, storing the VMs on a SAN, backed up by a physical Tape library, storing multiple datasets. This allowed the provider to run multiple VTL instances for several clients, but back them up as VMs to the physical library. VMs backup faster than individual files, reducing delays, and a VM rebuild and restore is easier when the server goes foom.

It is a cloud solution, sort of, more an offsite management solution, and with an investment by most resellers, an easy to implement and run solution.

It is likely that my next job won't be client facing. This idea is used around the country to a lesser extent, and there are companies who can provide you with the VMs  if you are a reseller, or the whole solution if you are an end user. 

Why did I mention that I am not client facing? so if this idea seems plausible, you won't be fighting with me to make take it to the market... 

Quick post to let everyone know that the AuTechHeads are getting together for social drinks on December 3, 7pm after Infrastructure Saturday. We're meeting at the Villager in Brisbane.

All AuTechHeads members are welcome, attending Infrastructure Saturday is not a prerequisite so please spread the word and RSVP so we can book the venue with correct numbers.If you're a new member or you're looking to meet some new people in the group please come along and introduce yourself.

If you're interested in sponsoring this event or future events please get in touch with any of the core team members.

Where: The Villager, 185 George Street, Brisbane
When: 7pm - lateWhat: Drinks (Beer & Wine) + Snacks & a lucky door prize all sponsored by TechSmith !

Numbers are limited
RSVP by November 30

Simone
@kittenstix

Infra Sat: http://www.infrastructuresaturday.com/
Our Awesome Friends over at TechSmith: http://www.techsmith.com/
Click here to RSVP http://new.evite.com/services/links/52OCGP76VS

Much discussion was had about all things ranging from Xbox to System Center to Golf. Zune Music Pass was the subject of much attention, in the wake of its Australian release last week.

Hopefully last night is a sign of good things to come within the Melbourne end of the AuTechHeads community. If you're in the area, please sing out, we'd love to hear from you. Please don't forget to join the Melbourne Members group.

Thanks again to everyone who came along, we appreciate your support

Yes, we know it's next Monday, and a school night, but hopefully we will see you there!

Venue has been confirmed as Squires Loft City Steakhouse at 12 Goldie Place, Melbourne 3000, booked for 7.30PM.  RSVP is mandatory for numbers reasons, so please use the registration form below or tweet us.  Please hit either @hjmcmanus or @chrisbrownie up on Twitter.

Officical hashtag is #MelbourneMeatUp so check it out!

Link to map of venue here.

One of my long standing thoughts on cloud services is that they often don’t consider the existing infrastructure, from the client site(s) all the way through to the cloud’s edge. I’ve always disliked the assumption that ‘everything’ can go to the cloud, and that the WAN or Internet providers in-between the cloud and its customers can deliver 100% availability. Neither of these can be proven true with any level of certainty – especially third party network uptime. You could argue that, in Australia for example, matters have improved significantly and will probably improve even further with the advent of the National Broadband Network. That said, I have yet to see the politicians address our international links and the need to grow them in line with local network capacity. With a large amount of cloud services being based overseas now, and most likely in the future, this is certainly an important consideration.

While HP can’t really address this, it’s clear that they are taking a comprehensive look at the reality of cloud services as a whole. There’s a distinct effort to address what has been split into private, public, and hybrid clouds – and to blur the many and varied definitions of these service types. HP would like to be your port of call from the beginning of your cloud journey onward, and they have developed a number of products and services to this end. It’s very much an infrastructure-level view, which can have both positive and negative aspects for the business looking to make their cloud move.

HP is in a decent position to leverage this. I can talk to any number of people that are massively invested in HP already – Proliant servers in particular have a high brand recognition and adoption. I for one prefer using Proliant in my enterprise, and I’ve known plenty of others to feel the same. It’s reliable, it’s well developed, and it lasts. I’ve seen businesses choose alternatives, such as the ever-competing Dell, but this is often driven by factors such as cost and desktop fleet. A company using Dell at the desktop is more likely to adopt Dell at the data-center – and that’s perhaps a testament to Dell’s sales efforts. It’s by no means the rule.

On the networking and storage side, it’s a bit more of a mixed bag. There are, without a doubt, the enterprises who have deployed HP throughout… but I’ve seen ample evidence of EMC and Cisco solutions in a huge number of datacenters, to name but two competitors. Without a doubt, HP is making inroads, but they have been playing catch up to some extent. I’ll freely admit to being a strong Cisco advocate when it comes to networking, if only through inertia from a time when Cisco was the bee’s knees. They still have great stuff, and most recently I’ve been a fan of the Nexus 1000v virtual distributed switch for VMWare.

The HP announcements were split into 4 key areas;

• Transforming data centers for the cloud era
• HP CloudSystem
• HP VirtualSystem
• HP 3PAR Utility Storage

A very big part of this is around the HP consulting practice. I don’t propose to go through this in detail, but the general concept is that HP can help businesses from the very outset of their cloud journey – what HP would like to call “Data Center Transformation”. There’s a lot of sense in this, because HP can position themselves as the “voice of reason” with customers. Adopting a trusted partner approach, they can guide business decision makers through the ramifications of their cloud moves, the business and staff impacts, and ensure that their internal practices and policy are well aligned for the journey. Naturally there’s a strong focus on governance, which from my perspective is a perpetual Good Thing™. For perhaps too many businesses, this could be their first exposure to proper ICT governance, and entirely appropriate before they even remotely consider any form of cloud service (whether internal or outsourced).

If there’s a possible fault with this, it would be that I was left with the distinct impression that it was geared toward large enterprises, and businesses with large revenue. That’s certainly not a problem on HP’s part – they’ll certainly have a lot of customers – but it perhaps ignores a huge potential market for cloud services, the small to medium enterprise. I’ve long felt that small businesses in particular are the best poised to benefit from a well considered cloud strategy, and that they probably stand to make the best saving and most benefit in the shortest time.

In my next couple of posts, I’ll talk about CloudSystem and VirtualSystem. I’m particularly keen on VirtualSystem, so I’ll talk about that next!

After reading about the improved battery life in the 4S, I had a great first day with the phone. After actually getting it and turning it on from about 8:30am, playing with it for the morning, and then doing a full restore from my old phone. Apart from the charge while the restore was going on, I didn't charge it for the rest of the day. Played lots with it in the afternoon and had about 10% charge left by 11pm that night. From the next day, the battery life wasn't good at all. I even Tweeted about it. In the last day or so I've read through what people have suggested, and I'm pleased to say that there is a definite improvement. Let's take a look.

This setting has been widely reported as a fix for the battery issue - Under Settings -> General -> Date and Time, change "Set Automatically" to off. This setting basically uses 3G towers to detect where the handset is, and if the date and time needs changing. Setting this to off will reduce 3G traffic which should reduce power consumption. Just this setting by itself didn't work much for me, but it has worked for a lot of people. If you don't travel, or are willing to set the time zone yourself, setting this to Off should be recommended.

In theory, collating and sending diagnostic and error reports should be a benefit to help Apple. However, I had a look through my diagnostic and usage data, and found a lot of "awdd" reports, some of them only 10 minutes apart! I'll take a stab in the dark and say that "awdd" stands for "Apple Wireless Device Diagnostics" or "Apple Wireless Device Data". Having these and other reports being generated continuously points towards something crashing, or being enthusiastic on collating data. And of course, sending the reports continuously will drink battery as well. So while it seems counter-intuitive to disable this and not let Apple see the data, I'd take a wager that they know about the issue, given how much data my phone alone was collating. Disabling this has seemed to have stopped the "awdd" reports and certainly has helped battery life.

Disabling Contact sync over iCloud seems to have a pretty big impact on performance as well. From what I have read it appears to be a or several imported contacts that are corrupt, and sync doesn't complete properly. While I haven't had any iCloud backup errors (all reports it completed successfully), disabling this in the short term doesn't hurt, and again has helped battery life.

Here is a left field solution that seems to have worked - if you have imported email settings from a previous backup, deleting and recreating the email account is highly recommended. This seems especially imported if you sync calendars with a remote server. While this is a hard one if you have multiple email accounts, rebuilding the accounts seems to work. This is interesting, as I put my password into the imported email account the day after I set up my phone, and from here my battery life went down. Make sure to also disable push notifications for email. This is also reported as a solution that has helped people, so if it is possible, I would highly recommend rebuilding the email accounts to make sure.

For me, individually these changes didn't really do much for battery life. But when I did all these, the battery life improved dramatically:

Before - note the usage and battery usage

After - again, note the phone usage and battery usage

Once you have played with these settings, make sure you do a full battery discharge! While modern batteries don't have memory, iOS does need to calibrate the battery percentage. Running it flat, and then performing a full charge after will calibrate the battery's capacity with the OS and make sure it isn't reporting it wrong. It's been suggested that the phone has a full discharge and recharge cycle once a month, and I'd probably agree this as best practice.

While some people are having higher battery use with their iPhone 4s and iPads, the issue seems to only really affect the iPhone 4S. I can verify this, as my Girlfriend got an iPhone 4 8GB the same day as my 4S, with iOS 5, and she rarely goes under 50%, even after playing games. So while the above settings will definitely help improve battery life, there is definitely something happening with the hardware or new device drivers that are causing too much battery drain.

Finally, the "awdd" error reports. If anyone is familiar with iOS dump bugs or similar, and have any idea what this dump may mean, feel free to leave a comment. I'm going to take a stab at it myself.

Looking at the dump, it appears to have something to do with the 3G modem that is in the iPhone 4S. Now, reading over some of the reports from America, it seems that iPhone 4S' on one provider aren't having battery issues, while others with another provider are. Looking at all the error reports, they point to the WCDMA modem as the issue. Which is interesting, given Apple's move to a Qualcomm MDM6600 GSM and CDMA chip. In fact, when comparing with the iPhone 4 using the GSM only baseband, there are no "awdd" error/crash reports in the diagnostic logs at all. My gut feeling after looking at all this, is that there is an issue with the software driver for the new modem/baseband that is either crashing, or causing some else to crash, and restart. Naturally, anything that uses data over 3G (such as the Time Zone detection setting) is going to cause whatever it is that is causing what seems to be a crash, and the more that happens, the more battery it uses. This is really where the issue seems to lie, and I dare say Apple should be looking in this area to figure out what is going on.

If you have an iPhone 4S, try out the tips above to see if it improves your battery life. Feel free to let me know how it goes for you, or if you haven't had these issues with your iPhone 4S, by either leaving a comment below, or pinging me on Twitter (@D_Keating). I hope this helps you reclaim your iPhone 4S battery!

What's it do?

What's in the box?

Getting the thing going

So, How's it go?

The speed is OVER NINE THOUSAND!

Not quite, but this thing is damn fast. I said earlier that it's more like "3G times ten" . I've even got some figures to back that up. These tests were configured using my tethered iPhone 4 (on Telstra) for the 3G connection, and the 4G USB for the 4G connection. I won't illustrate too much, the numbers speak for themselves:

(all speeds in Megabits per second)

Alright, how do I get one?

- Posted from Melbourne Central shopping centre via my Telstra 4G USB.

Disclaimer: I have been given a 4G USB Device by Telstra free of charge to review. The comments expressed by me reflect my own experience and personal opinion and are not made on behalf of Telstra.

I recently moved on from my IT Manager job within the NSW Government, and a top priority for me was to buy a new notebook and desktop computer - the old ones having gone back to my employer. I don't use a desktop myself, but the family does for various purposes, and they've fallen in love with the All-in-one touchscreen style; I'll review that one next. I'm in the habit of using a notebook for everything, and I find I need a fairly high powered specification to meet my many and varied needs, including;

• A/V editing and rendering
• graphics editing
• gaming
• running multiple virtual machines
• and, of course, more general usage

While my work notebooks have grown ever greater in power, they've never totally suited my needs - the closest I'd come was a HP Elitebook, but I've found the HP offerings can be quite inflexible and limiting within my price range. There are plenty of HP notebooks that do suit people, and I feel they're quite good for business use (with a decent SOE), but I really couldn't find something from HP that had everything I wanted within my budget. I was particularly keen to have at least 16gb RAM, dual HDD, Blu-ray, DVD-RW, and a good GPU. I was particularly set on an Nvidia GPU, having had less than satisfactory experiences with the ATI/AMD offering in the past. I also really wanted to move up to a 17" screen - 15" has been sending me blind of late, and I really like to use my notebook anywhere and everywhere. I don't want to be tethered to a monitor.

ASuS came close, but they didn't offer the flexibility for configuration that I wanted, and their site was confusing and unintuitive. I do have an ASuS notebook that my eldest daughter uses, bought second hand and which is really great - but at the end of the day, their specs didn't cut it Much the same with Lenovo in terms of configuration, and I've never really been a fan of the Thinkpad and their ilk. So it was that after a lot of research for alternates, I trundled off to Dell. I've had a mixed bag with Dell over the years - having bought 2 notebooks from them myself in days of yore, and having had them as our PC and notebook fleet at my employer, before they dropped off the contract (temporarily) and we found ourselves having to switch to HP. They have their good and bad, and I certainly have my share of both positive and negative - and a couple of horror stories. Frankly, for service in particular, HP had proven to be more reliable - but still by no means perfect.

These are considered risks, though. I've certainly always found that after making enough noise, I could get my issues resolved, whether by Dell, HP, or whoever else. I question any business that makes it a necessity to make noise as a matter of course in order to get faults resolved under warranty, but as I haven't purchased any desktops or notebooks from Dell for over 3 years - I'm happy to give them the benefit of the doubt. I found that there were two Dell lines which could meet my needs to a lesser or greater extent. The XPS 17 could come close, if I navigated the right way through the Dell customisation to get the specs I wanted. You had to pick the Nvidia 3D graphics, then change the screen type to 3D, then go back to RAM to change it from 8Gb to 16Gb - the only way that this configuration became available.

Not that I really wanted 3D - I didn't. But I was willing to consider it for the sake of getting 16Gb RAM, and on the surface the XPS 17 looks like a nice package. But as I came to understand the various benefits and pitfalls, I did hit a dealbreaker - the 3D package would disable NVidia's Optimus technology, which I absolutely wanted. Good battery life is important to me, as is at least 16Gb RAM, and without the 3D configuration, I was limited to 8Gb. This was a shame, since the XPS with the specifications I  as happy to accept was a cheaper price than the alternative - the Alienware. I also noted other issues, including the lack of an inbuilt VGA port - which is still important to me. A Mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter was available with the XPS 15, but not the XPS 17 - one of the typical annoying aspects of the Dell site, along with the inability to purchase it as a separate accessory. This was a minor consideration in some ways, but as this purchase is for a machine to last me for quite some years, I wanted to be totally happy with it, and not to have to hunt around for more accessories after the fact.

For this reason, I also started to think about whether I'd be happy on an ongoing basis with the Nvidia GTX 555M  GPU. I certainly saw some negative points from gamers on this, and while I'm not a hardcore PC gamer, I want my games to run well and look as good as possible, preferably for quite some time to come. Equally, I'm aware that GPU acceleration is steadily creeping into many different software packages beyond gaming. On top of this, I noted concerns from various online sources over a low number of USB ports, reports of poor cooling, the keyboard layout, LED placement, and so on - it was enough to turn me against the XPS, in spite of the price point.

So on to Alienware. I was certainly aware of them before their acquisition by Dell, and I'd heard some seriously nice feedback over the years. I can't say I'd seriously looked at them before, and this was a purchase I was putting some serious time into researching before jumping. There were two notebook models of interest to me, the M17X R3 and the M18X. The M18X looks like an amazing piece of hardware, especially with the dual GPU with SLI - but I don't need quite that much power to justify the significant jump in price, which put it outside of budget for me.

The M17X R3, at least, could - just - squeeze within the absolute high end of my budget (after finding a good discount coupon). It allowed a 16Gb RAM configuration without any restrictions on video card, it met the dual HDD requirement, and as a bonus, it offered the high end NVidia GTX 580M GPU. I could configure Bluray with DVD-RW capabilities - I didn't want a Bluray writer. And it essentially addressed all the concerns that had arisen with the XPS - for example, not only did it have the integrated VGA port I wanted, it still featured mini-Display Port, along with HDMI output and HDMI input. It was a tough call, given the price jump from the XPS 17, but in the end I went with it.

If I could pick a real concern that arose, it would be the look of the notebook. I was primarily basing this on pictures from the Dell website - it didn't look quite so professional as the XPS. I'd say that this holds true, but there is certainly a "coolness" (to me at least) to its looks that, on reflection, I don't mind at all. In fact, it's a bit refreshing to have something different from the typical dull gray that my notebooks have had in recent years. I do think it's really cool that you get a custom laser-etched nameplate on the bottom of the notebook, and that you can pick the default wallpaper and user account picture - not that those two aren't easily changed anyway. The nameplate is a really nice touch, though.

The specification I settled on was as follows;

Alienware M17X R3

2nd generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2860QM 2.5GHz (3.6GHz with Turbo Boost, 8MB Cache)
16GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM(4x4GB)
17.3" (43.94cm) Full HD (1920x1080) WLED LCD Panel
2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 580M
Internal 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet
Killer® Wireless-N 1103 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO for Gaming & Video
Dell Wireless 375 Bluetooth Internal mini-card
2 x 750GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
Slot Load Fixed Blu-ray BD-ROM / DVD + /-RW Combo Drive
AlienFX® Illuminated Keyboard (English)
3.2 MP Integrated WebCam
Integrated 5.1 Stereo Sound
9-cell Primary Battery
Windows® 7 Professional 64bit (English)
3-Year Premier Service

Ordering and Delivery

Ordering was much the same as it's ever been from my past encounters. I had cause to contact Dell sales while preparing for the purchase - the site started having some problems - who then wanted to push me to order through them. From experience, I'm aware that they get commission this way, while they don't for Internet purchases (although I believe that they used to, if you entered their name during the ordering process). While I wasn't totally averse to this, I actually prefer ordering online. I guess it might be the experience of human error in the past, or perhaps just the simplicity of the transaction. I opted to continue with ordering online.

I have some level of frustration with Dell's customisation process - it can certainly be shortsighted or restrictive in nature. For example, I wanted a dual HDD configuration - but I wanted one SSD and one large SATA or Hybrid drive. You could actually choose a hybrid drive in one of the multiple "bundles" for the M17X R3 that Dell has, and that would have been fine - except that bundle came out more expensive than the best priced bundle, for essentially the same configuration. The best priced bundle, with my configuration, didn't offer a hybrid drive - instead, it offered 2 x 750Gb SATA drives in a RAID 0 configuration, or 2 x 256Gb SSD drives in a RAID 0. You could also buy just a 256Gb SSD, but I'll discuss my issue with that in a minute.

You could perhaps argue that this is where Dell sales could have customised it for me, and you may well be right. I have had mixed results with this in the past, and I didn't really think that they could in this instance. In any case, I was happy enough to have a 750Gb SATA drive, and I could handle the idea of having a spare on hand after replacing one with an SSD. I didn't, however, want to buy an SSD through Dell. My reasoning may, or may not, make much sense. Firstly, I wasn't happy that they didn't identify what SSD would be supplied. There are SSD's, and then there are SSD's. It's quite possible that Dell provide one of the best performance SSD's with the package - but if they do, this then runs into my second point. They seem to add a premium to the price for an SSD. It didn't seem to reflect the prices for which I could get a good SSD separately, which doesn't make a lot of sense if they can get them wholesale. I didn't identify a similar concern with the SATA drives, and I wanted to get at least one high capacity SATA or Hybrid drive with the notebook. Thirdly, I had previously purchased an SSD which was now unused and - although a SATA 2 standard rather than the SATA 3 supported by the M17X - would do the job and allow me to get good speeds without blowing out the budget.

I was also unimpressed by the inability to deselect McAfee's products from the order. I'm sure Dell get a nice bonus from including this, both from McAfee and from the cost they bundle into the price, but I have a very poor opinion of their products (with some good reason) and never intended to use it. I could forgive this, though, as they actually allow you (by default) to not include any version of Office, unlike pretty much any other part of their range. I have access to Office via MSDN and Technet subscriptions, so this was welcome.

My order was placed, and for the first time I opted to do a bank transfer rather than pay by credit card. This would prove to be a minor mistake when Dell failed to note that payment had been settled for the M17X part of the order - while the other order, for an All-in-one, progressed fine. The sale was automatically cancelled, and I had to get Dell sales to place the order again. Happily this was just a minor hiccup and I had no further problems.

One thing I've never been able to successfully overcome with the "build to order" concept, regardless of the company - the pain of waiting for the system to be built, shipped, and delivered. I'm not prone to hitting refresh every 5 seconds on the status tracker, but the time between placing the orders, system build, shipping, and delivery seemed like an eternity - although in reality it was less than 2 weeks. It's just a symptom of the age of instant gratification, I suppose.

But at long last, my new notebook made it through customs and hit the courier for delivery. There was still a slight snag, but it was no fault of Dell's - I was flying to Singapore on the day it would be delivered! While I hoped it might be delivered before I flew out, so I could take my new system on the road and get it up and running, there was of course very little chance at the outset, and it arrived while I was already en-route to the airport. Oh well - it just meant a few more days before I could unpack it!

Hardware

The Alienware notebooks come well packed for shipping - in fact, slightly more than necessary, since they put an Alienware box inside an Alienware box. I couldn't help but be surprised to slide out the second box, wondering what the actual point was. But no problem. I've seen HP pack notebooks into what look like server-sized cartons, so this shouldn't have raised an eyebrow. There are a couple of little "nice to have" bonuses which come with the order that I wasn't previously aware of - an Alienware cap, mouse mat, and sticker. The notebook also comes in a cloth sleeve which is actually quite nice, and easily reusable. I'm tempted to use it to avoid scratches and marks when in my bag, which I'm sure is the actual point.

This is by no means a light notebook - you can really feel the 5kg+ that comes from such a feature packed beast. But I wasn't overly concerned about weight. The battery is very well secured by latch, and it's highly unlikely to become lose and drop out (like a couple of notebooks I've had)! There is no latch to hold the screen in place while closed, but the screen itself is rather solid and the hinges seem well designed, so for once it doesn't feel like one is needed.

The "soft touch" casing of the notebook feels quite nice - nothing like the metal feel of my previous HP Elitebook's exterior, or the plastic feel of its interior bezel. It doesn't really feel like plastic, it's quite a pleasant texture. It feels quite solid too. This carries over to the keyboard and touchpad. The layout of both of these is basically perfect for me - once again I have a full sized keyboard with numeric pad - plus backlight now, which is terrific. The touchpad is larger than I'm accustomed to, which is not at all bad. Keys and touchpad are responsive and tactile, and I'm extremely happy with both feel and operation.

I really love the WLED LCD Panel - it certainly puts me in mind of a typical Macbook screen. It can be somewhat reflective, but this of course is down to lighting ... generally having the backlight at the right level seems to be all that's needed. And the 17" screen, coupled with 1920x1080 resolution, is great for readability (no more eyestrain)! Colours are bright and vivid, and it seems evident to me that it's a high quality piece of work. I have no regrets about not getting 3D. At all.

Both the casing and the screen can very easily attract smudges and streaks. These are quite noticeable, but it’s easy enough to wipe them off.

The inbuilt sound is great - really clear, loud, good bass .. absolutely no complaints. I'm not an audiophile at all, but it really does sound terrific.

No fuss in booting up - quite quick and straightforward, with the usual "Who is your daddy and what does he do" questions that come with any OEM install. I was pleased to see that the Alienware range comes with an absolute minimum of crapware (in which I include McAfee), and what is there is easily uninstallable without leaving a trace. I didn't worry about this during the initial boot, though, since I still wanted to get my SSD installed.

One of the pieces of software included with the notebook is Alienware Respawn, which allows you to back up the recovery partition to a DVD or USB stick for recovery to a factory default state. This was my first port of call, and it was very straightforward. I just needed a 4Gb or greater USB stick - no problem, I had a 16Gb one on hand. Within a few minutes, I had the means to replace one of the SATA disks with an SSD and get the system back up quickly. I removed the RAID 0 configuration and switched off the notebook.

Replacing the HDD couldn't have been much easier. Two screws under the battery is all you need to undo to slide off the bottom cover. The RAM and HDDs are easily accessible. The 2.5" HDDs have a small adapter connected to allow easy drive removal in the limited space, and it's easy to take out the drive, remove the adapter, and remove the HDD from its mounting case. I plugged the adapter into the SSD, put it into the mounting case in place of the old HDD, and slide the case back on. I appreciated how easy it was in contrast to some of the past notebooks I've had!

Up the system came, recognising the SSD and allowing me to boot from USB. In no time, the system was back to factory defaults, and with all the software, drivers, and extras that the notebook originally had. I had my fast system drive, and the large secondary HDD that I wanted. I'm sure a SATA3 SSD would be even more amazing, but frankly, the speed of a SATA2 SSD is perfect for my purposes - and it leaves room for a possible upgrade down the road!

Software

I really appreciated the relative lack of crapware. McAfee was soon gone, to be replaced with the free Microsoft Security Essentials - a product which, along with the business-focused Forefront suite, I have a high regard for (and have only positive experience to report). I uninstalled pretty much anything I didn't need, especially if it ran as a service or a system tray - I want the most out of my battery life! There was some Dell software that I lump into this which arguably isn't crapware for everyone - but I have no wish for facial recognition to login at this point, so it was quickly removed. Equally, I don't really want the 2GB online storage for 12 months that Dell insist on foisting on everyone. I really have no complaints with this though, because it was uninstalled with no fuss whatsoever. Alienware Respawn was also removed, since it no longer served its purpose (no more recovery partition, and I didn't need the optional "upgrade” for backup and restore).

One interesting omission from the factory restore was the Widcomm Bluetooth software. I was puzzled to find that there was no way to quickly switch the Bluetooth adapter on or off, until I realised that I was only running Microsoft's standard Bluetooth stack. One quick download from Dell's support site later, and I had the arguably more functional Widcomm software with its convenient desktop tray option to turn the adapter on or off. But this omission really seemed to be the exception to the rule - nothing much else was missing.

I ordered the Alienware with Windows 7 Professional, even though I had MSDN and Technet entitlements to any version of Win7. Realistically, I could have gone with the minimum option of Windows 7 Home Premium, but I hadn't decided whether I'd subsequently upgrade it to a higher SKU at the time. In any case, I did an Anytime Upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate more or less straight away. I like having the availability of Bitlocker, and this is one of the SKUs that feature it. There's not a lot of massive benefit to Ultimate, but I have licensing for it, so I used it.

The Anytime Upgrade, as always, is a screwy process which has never worked exactly as intended, in my experience. As per past experiences, I plugged in my retail key for Ultimate, validated it, started the upgrade, and was promptly informed that I couldn't do the upgrade. And then, exactly as I've found in the past, I reboot and it promptly does the upgrade during the reboot process. Go figure, but at least it ends up with me running the intended SKU.

I also installed the Windows Home Server 2011 Connector to the notebook, and Firefox 7 soon after. It was here that I did encounter a problem specifically related to the Alienware offering - the WHS 2011 launchpad couldn't connect to my WHS, and Firefox couldn't browse websites. It didn't take much for me to figure out that there was a DLL - BfLLR.dll - which was causing the SMSvcHost.exe process to crash. This process is the Net.Tcp Port Sharing Service, and it would seem that both the WHS 2011 Connector and Firefox 7 are dependent on this service working.

BfLLR.dll proved to belong to the Killer Network Manager app, which is part of the Killer Wireless-N 1103 Network Adapter. Updating the driver made no difference, and there was no option to install the driver without the manager. Ultimately, I took a copy of the Killer Network Manager installation folder, uninstalled it, and then added the driver by searching the KNM folder using Device Manager. This gave me a driver-only installation, and everything then "magically" worked. I've since reported the problem to Bigfoot Networks, the maker of the Killer cards, since of course I'd like for KNM to operate properly and give me the full functionality that it offers.

I'm happy to report that this was the only Alienware specific issue I encountered. Everything else went flawlessly, and it was easy to get my notebook setup to my typical preference, with all my usual software. The notebook runs like a dream, especially with the SSD, and the speeds are just fantastic.

Features

As is my wont, I made a run for driver updates. I like to keep everything up to date, and my experience with Nvidia in the past has indicated that this in particular is a good idea. I did manage to identify one specific caveat though - don't update the Intel HD Graphics driver with the generic Intel version from Intel.com (and, presumably, the one offered by Microsoft Update) when you have a secondary GPU! Use the manufacturer provided driver only, even if it is an older version. The reason? Using the generic Intel driver effectively disables proper operation of the "Switchable Graphics" feature - this is the Intel feature that allows NVidia Optimus to work. Essentially Optimus will ensure you automatically use the Intel graphics for maximum battery life, only using the NVidia GPU for applications that require the performance. I did try the Intel generic driver, and my battery life was *at least* halved. Reverting to the older Dell-supplied driver restored my battery life to a far more friendly 4 - 5 hours of active use.

This is the only real gotcha I could find - updating the Nvidia drivers to newer versions from the Nvidia website seems to have no such side effects. In a lot of cases, there's no reason to hunt down a newer driver than the Dell one - but Nvidia is a definite exception, since they regularly add and improve features and performance.

One aspect of the Alienware notebook that I can't help but love is AlienFX. By default, Dell Australia ship the system with a red backlight scheme for the keyboard, logo, touchpad, and grills - but you can change this directly from the AlienFX software. It splits the keyboard and various other backlit areas into zones that can be set to a wide range of colours, all different if you like, and even add effects such as blinking, or a slow transition between colours. It's cool, and has a lot of features, but in my case I used it to set the backlight to blue across the board. I like blue.

Another cool aspect of the M17X is the Alien head power button. This serves as a visual indicator for multiple purposes, including power on, charging, and low battery (and you can customise this with AlienFX too). The Alien's eyes are the HDD activity indicator! I also like the special function row (eg. volume, track forward/back, eject, wireless on/off).. they aren't touch sensitive like the typical HP layout, which ultimately proves a pain. They're proper buttons, flush with the notebook bezel and depressing slightly when touched. They have a satisfying feel and can't be accidentally triggered like with HP notebooks .. and once again, you can change their colour.

AlienFX also has an optional "dim lighting zones while on battery" setting which pretty much addresses any concern I'd have about leaving it on while on battery. Of course, you can also choose "Go Dark" from the handy system tray icon to switch them off on the fly. Along with AlienFX, there is also AlienFusion (power settings) and AlienTouch (touchpad settings). These are really just themed apps to manage the same settings that you can change elsewhere, but that's fine. It can certainly help to bubble up settings that might otherwise take some finding, so it still makes sense.

The supplied wallpaper and user account pictures are cool – all based on the Alien theme, of course. You do, however, get just the standard Windows 7 taskbar and interface. I stumbled across a download from an Alienware site, though, called "AlienGUIse", which adds some very nice alien-themed effects to your overall interface. It works very well, and I like the look of it - in just a couple of cases, though, it does cause UI problems within applications (like Seesmic Desktop), but you can add exceptions within the MyColors / AlienGUIse app to use the standard theme for this. It really added a nice touch to my new notebook, so I've adopted it!

Battery life is really, really good when Optimus is working properly - and, of course, depending on your usage. For simple word processing, with the Balanced power scheme customised to be fairly aggressive on power savings, and without any breaks, I can easily get 5 hours. Even with relatively heavy usage, I still get respectable results. I'd love a 12 cell battery for this baby, but in truth - the battery life I'm getting is better than I could achieve with a HP Elitebook that had a secondary battery. That's not bad at all.

Conclusion

The M17X R3 can be quite an expensive piece of kit if you want to spec it as highly as I have - but I have to say that I feel it's been worth the cost. It’s by far the best computer I’ve yet had. Adding my own SSD most likely did save me money, especially since I was happy to use a SATA2 SSD rather than SATA3. My final thoughts are that it's high quality, high performance, and packed with value for the power user or gamer. If you can stretch the budget to afford it, it's definitely worth a look.

So here goes:

File Quotas are a pain -  File quotas in DFS replication can burn you – hard. The DFS health report will come up with an error about being out of disk space, but will not reference anything to do with file quotas. Essentially, DFS will try to replicate a file that has ownership to a user. The user will have filled up it’s quota at one side of the replication. When this occurs, DFS will error out. If you decide to setup user folders with quotas and DFS, make sure that you use FSRM and set up the quotas to email the users when they are reaching their full mark. 

Fishing in the DFSRPrivate Folder -  When implementing DFS, it is worthwhile investigating into a solution that provides remote file locking – because DFSR replication lack’s this feature. The impact of this is that two users can open the same file at both ends, write to the file, and close it. The result is that one of these files is overwritten which means your service-desk will get a call requesting that a file be fished out of the DFSR private folder – except that the user will just think that the changes they made to their file have disappeared – fun and games. 

The evil magic of files being overwritten -  The most recent issue that I had with DFS was our DR site overwriting our production site. I still haven’t figured out what truly happened, but it did scare the crap out of me! Having said this though, I think the root cause was that we had set up one way replication in Windows Server 2008 – which isn’t recommended, Anyways, make sure that you have backups (As any good SysAdmin should), and it may even be worthwhile to implement VSS snaps on your shares.  

If you are looking for some more information, I found the following sites particularly helpful – Ned Pyle has a great blog site with plenty of posts.  I found the ones about the Debug logs particularly impressive:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2010/09/03/replacing-dfsr-member-hardware-or-os-part-1-planning.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2009/03/23/understanding-dfsr-debug-logging-part-1-logging-levels-log-format-guid-s.aspx 

Other than that, I would also suggest to read up on the DFSRadmin and the DFSRdiag commands as they are pretty useful tools when you are troubleshooting. I hope all this help somone.

 Happy DFS’ing

As a point of reference, I had an iPhone 3GS for over 2 years, didn't upgrade when the 4 came out, and have been struggling with iOS 4 on the slower processor for some time. So naturally, an upgrade to a 4S would be a sizeable one, regardless of the features of the new phone.

Image (c) Apple, 2011

The Apple iPhone 4S is the latest smartphone from Apple. In many ways an upgrade from the iPhone 4, the new device sees Apple enter the dual-core mobile processor era, with the 1GHz A5 dual core chip with 512MB RAM. Apple claim the A5 processor improves graphics performance by up to 7 times, and while it's hard to gauge whether that metric is correct or not, it is very, very fast. Games play smoothly with no lag, apps open and close quickly and easily (no doubt helped by the better flash memory that has been reported to be used), and multitasking is a breeze, no doubt helped by the extra RAM as well. Rendering hi-definition video is also quick; a 27-video was rendered to 720P YouTube format in less than a minute. While far from the fastest chip on the market, the A5 handles tasks with aplomb.

The second major upgrade given to the 4S is the camera, up from 5 mega-pixel to 8 mega-pixel. It has also received an upgrade to the lens, with a larger aperture, and a new sensor which promises better white balance and light detection. And it's not just photos that benefit - the iPhone 4S allows you to take full, 1080P Hi-definition videos straight from the phone. The videos are easily edited on the phone, or in the iMovie app (which currently costs $5.49AU on the app store) which lets you do more than just cut and paste. Photo quality is outstanding, even when viewed on a high resolution screen. It is truly nearing the quality of good point and shoot cameras, and often more useful as editing and sending can be done on the device. Here is a photo taken from my iPhone 4S. As you can see, the detail and balance is quite stunning. And here is a video taken of a recent storm over north Brisbane - make sure to change the resolution to 720P. Ironically, the YouTube app doesn't allow full, 1080P videos to be submitted. It seems if you want to upload in full HD, you need to manually upload them. A bit of a shame given the native 1080P recording.

The newest feature that has garnered the most attention is Siri. This is a voice controlled assistant which allows you to ask it questions, set reminders, control your phone, and search for things. Siri is 'in beta' on the iPhone 4S, and as such only works properly in America. This is mainly because the directories it accesses to get map, business and location information are all US based. So for us Aussies, we can't ask Siri for directions, locations of businesses, or much else really. We are limited to asking Siri silly questions (which plenty of others have documented, and some I have managed to replicate), and asking Siri to perform tasks on the phone, such as setting reminders, calling people, and replying to SMS and emails. Once Apple opens up an API it will no doubt allow Siri to access an almost infinite number of functions across its apps.

But for what we miss out on with Siri in Australia, there are just as many uses for Siri and it's voice recognition technology. The biggest is the voice technology itself - this can be accessed anywhere in iOS where there is a keyboard to allow dictation. This works amazingly well, even with noise present. Siri also learns as you use it, so words that it didn't pick up before it eventually recognises. I have had to control the speed of my talk for it to recognise words, and certainly Australian words and place names it does struggle to pick up. No doubt the more it learns the better, and it is very useful as a hands free dictation function. Siri has a long way to go to be functional for users outside of the US, but as a dictation function it works exceptionally well.

iOS 5 has also brought many changes to iOS, with new standard apps, performance improvements and the new Notifications centre - a refined way of dealing with notifications, something Android users have enjoyed forever. iOS 4 wasn't the fastest performer, and certainly junked my old 3GS, but iOS 5 takes a massive leap in performance which was noticeable on my 3GS. The iPhone 4S just improves that even more. But with performance, often comes a decrease in battery life, and that seems to be the case for my 4S. I certainly don't get the use or standby time that Apple have claimed, and I'm somewhat relieved to see others have seen it too. While it has certainly copped a flogging in the last week, I don't feel that I am getting the best battery life possible. No doubt the Notification centre plays a part; I also have a suspicion that the CPU has a 'performance' profile which takes more juice out of the battery to run games and high performance apps. But that is conjecture, it is possible an iOS update may improve the life, but I wouldn't hold out hope.

The other half of my experience is migrating to Telstra from Vodafone. Everyone has heard of Vodafone's issues, and when Telstra released competitive plans for the 4S it was a no-brainer. I was one of the first through the doors of my local Telstra store at 8am, and signup including a number port took around an hour. The 4S was bundled with a Creative D80 Bluetooth speaker set, screen protector, case and car charger. My number port took about 2 minutes to be activated through the system, and was completely removed from Vodafone within 2 hours. Everything was painless and handled very well in the T-Life store. Telstra pre-orders weren't handled as well from reports on Twitter and beyond, which is never good, but my experience was very positive. Hopefully that continues for the remainder of my contract.

Telstra's coverage over Vodafone is also an unexplainable improvement. In my local area, the speed and latency is as good as, if not better, than my home ADSL connection. In some places I was getting over 500KB/s using Speedtest. Using the phone outside of home WiFi coverage felt like it was in WiFi coverage; notifications came through without lag, and no issues downloading large batches of tweets and images. I've been in areas with limited Vodafone coverage and been amazed with the reception from Telstra. Voice quality of phone calls is very good, far improved over what I had previously - this could be the newer handset, not just improved service. The iPhone 4S has received the Telstra Blue Tick for its improved antenna, which certifies the device will work in regional areas where signal may not be as good as metro areas. From my use so far, all has been great with the coverage and speeds.

Given the iPhone 4S is essentially an upgrade over the 4, many people have questioned who should be upgrading to it? Well, for anyone on anything older than a 4, the decision should be a no-brainer: yes! Especially if you have just come off the standard 24-month contract, you are well overdue for an upgrade regardless of what you go to. If you are looking at getting into the iOS ecosystem and are able to afford it, the 4S is the best option. For those on a budget, the iPhone 4 8GB was also released which is great for those wanting a cheaper iPhone option. But for those who have a 4, who aren't concerned about being on top of the iPhone curve, it's a harder choice. Most carriers won't let you upgrade to a 4S easily, being just over 12 months into contract. Breaking out of contract is an expensive way to go for an iPhone 4S, and not everyone is going to notice the speed or camera upgrade, and certainly Siri has limited usefulness at the moment. So it's a tough call. And certainly those with high-end Android devices probably won't see a want or need for it.

I'm quite impressed with the iPhone 4S; it is most things Apple said it would be. As an upgrade over the 3GS it is basically incomparable. The performance, the camera, better antenna, the screen and functionality is brilliant. As for a must-have upgrade for iPhone 4 owners, it's a 50-50 call. Plenty of 4 owners are taking the chance to upgrade, in usual iPhone fashion. iOS 5 is a great update for all iPhone users, and the new OS works wonders on the new phone. So while it isn't an essential upgrade for some, the iPhone 4S is a great phone for the iOS ecosystem. My upgrade from the 3GS to the 4S has been great, and the change to Telstra has been painless (touch wood, so far) and the performance and coverage improvement over Vodafone very well received. Overall, I am a very happy new iPhone owner!

Just a heads up to let you know that SMBiT Professionals Brisbane is running a Spotlight Session this coming Sunday (2011-10-23) at the Chalk Hotel in Woolloongabba where we're delving into Group Policy with Alan Burchill and Remote Desktop Server with Bryce Telfer as related (in particular) to an SBS 2011 environment.

The event will be streamed live for financial SMBiT Professionals members in our SharePoint site, under the Brisbane sub-site.

For everyone else, the event will be streamed free (of cost, password, however not advertisements) at:

http://www.justin.tv/hiltont

http://www.Ustream.tv/channel/SMBiTPro-Brisbane

So, feel free to get your geek on with us this weekend - the show starts around 10:00 AM and will be over just in time for us to watch the Rugby Union final!  :)

Thanks to Telstra, I've been given a 4G card to trial - so let's see how we go! This is just a quick 'Out of the box' experience and not intended as a full review or guide. 

First, I've put the SIM into the rather short and fat 4G modem, and plugged that into my laptop. It's autodetected and kicked off an installer.   Several minutes later, the installer is done and launches the Telstra Mobile Broadband app! But, it's saying 'Cannot detect SIM card'. What have I done wrong?  

I pull out the modem, open it up and switch the SIM card around the other way. It's not too clear as to which way it's supposed to go, but looking at the manual it does confirm I had it incorrectly inserted.   Back in it goes, and look it's now detected and showing me signal strength!   I click the 'Connect Now' button and am instantly connected.

The Telstra Mobile Broadband program pops up a top news story, as well as giving me links for some Online Services - BigPond Home, BigPond Sport, BigPond Weather, Citysearch and WhereIs maps.   Lastly there's a sensis.com.au search window. If you're on the go I can see how this would make it easier just to use a service rather than opening up your web browser first.  

Anyway, I don't have full signal strength here. There's 5 bars, but only 4 of them are green.   Speedtest.net results:   I've used a Telstra 3G card and the new Telstra 4G card to see how they differ.

Here's the results:  

3G http://www.speedtest.net/result/1540873854.png 

4G http://www.speedtest.net/result/1540891332.png   

Ping times are firstly a bit better, 10ms improvement. I've read you can get up to 40ms, so I might try again later in a different spot.   Now, download and upload speeds are where the big performance increase is. 3.1mbit vs 12.8mbit for uploads, and 1.3mbit vs 14mbit for downloads (rounded)!  

Next up, remote desktopping to home. It works, and works quite well. There's a bit less lag and stutter due to the better response times, so that's a big plus.  

Then, a download. I've picked a file from Internode's games.on.net - a Playstation 3 Softawre Update 3.72, The file is 185MB and peaks at a download rate of ~1mbit/s and took 3mins 19 secs. That isn't too far off what I expected.  

Finally, a ping test to google.com. 100 packets, none lost. Minimum = 49ms, Maximum = 62ms, Average = 56ms. That's rather stable for a wireless solution.  

I'll play with this more in the coming days, and if there's anything you'd like tested let me know.

If you'd like to know more or discuss further, Telstra forums for the 4G are located here: http://crowdsupport.telstra.com/t5/4G/bd-p/4G and here are details about Telstra's plans and the 4G modem: http://go.bigpond.com/wireless/

Please click here and check out our website, PowerShell Down Under for more info!

I treated data exactly the same way, up until the day the cup broke. I kept everything locally, I didn't use the H: drive set up on the server for me, I didn't even bother to save my Outlook PST file. As is the way with data, it grew. the outlook data grew until one fateful day, without warning, it crashed the system. When I rebooted, I got the chilling message that any user fears...

<Disk not Found>

I had a command prompt, so, drawing on my old basic commands, I tried to see what files were there, if I could find the C: drive, a directory tree, nothing.

I was, to put it mildly, in a large amount of poo. I had a tender to respond to, a proposal to write, umpteen emails to reply to, and I couldn't even see the Operating system, the hard drive or my network. I yelled at the computer, I banged the mouse, the keyboard and cursed it to the lower reaches of hell. I blamed the IT Guys (unfairly, of course) the manufacturer, anyone I could think of. I never ran a rescue disk, I never thought about it and blamed myself.

I managed to hunt down a dusty floppy disk. it had "rescue" written on it. I didn't know if it was this version of windows, DOS, or PS/2. I gave it a go, and windows returned to my screen. I was very lucky.

I completed my work for the week, and went on holiday.

When I returned, my cup was broken, my system was bloated with all the emails people still sent me, even though my out of office was on, and I was confronted with two pressing issues: Replace the cup, (Noooooo) and move my data off the PC and onto the H: drive. I transferred a couple of Gigs of data, then copied and pasted (I know) the pst file on the server. The server was now in serious trouble, it needed data to be backed up. Up until my using the H: drive, the sysadmins had realised that they had a bit of space to play with. when I started using the H: folder, suddenly, they didn't. The server was backed up by a Virtual Tape Library, on a SAN, and had an offsite physical tape library option installed. Overnight, and everything was back to normal.

The company hat taken backup seriously, but they had neglected to create a very important document - a Data Storage policy document, which could have told me that it was mandatory to back up to the server all files created on desktops. this document could have saved a lot of angst for the sysadmins. 

It doesn't matter where the data is backed up, by which brand of software, as long as it is. I have seen clients who have monstrous outlook files because they have never, ever backed up, until the damn pst file is too big to move and the backup regime is incremental - archival by month.

Things have changed as well. Before, Tape was very, very, mind numbingly slow. Now, it outperforms hard drives in transfer speeds. It is still slow on fetch specific files, which hard drives are good at, but the backups don't take all night to complete. Hard drives are reliable sources for backup. They meet a specific market need, usually the SOHO or SMB space. One of my old bosses once told me that if the business runs a server, use a tape drive.  If they don't, a hard drive is fine.

Now we have online backups, Hard drives & Tape drives. All have specific market niches, but all of them are better than explaining to management that you don't have the report / proposal / response because you didn't back up your data.

One of our members and long-time friends, Heather Samsa - on Twitter as @i_enigma - has been tirelessly and single handedly helping to rebuild the small town of Marysville - which Australians may remember as being utterly devastated by the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009. She created the Marysville Cookbook, a combination of memories and recipes that is truly charming and unique. The initial print run was for the residents of Marysville, but others wanted to purchase it.

Heather started to sell the book, which costs around $20 per copy to produce, for $30. The $10 "profit" goes directly to Marysville through various community ventures, and so far Heather has raised $4,700 single handedly.

That's no small feat by any means! I actually bought the book as a gift for my wife, and it is simply gorgeous. The recipes are delicious, the photos are fantastic, and my wife absolutely loves it. The fact that it made some small contribution to the rebuilding effort made it just that much more special.

Now, however, there is a chance to help out Marysville to a degree that dwarfs even Heather's sterling efforts. Through the Lenovo "10 Second Hero" promotion, Heather has a chance to win $50,000 for Marysville. She's submitted her entry, strictly following the rules of the competition, and delivers what I feel is a straightforward, direct, and engaging message in the 10 second video allowed!

Heather, for her efforts, gets a Lenovo IdeaPad - which is wonderful, and I feel it's well deserved recognition. This is a reward for being a finalist, and independent of the prize, which is all the better. But wouldn't it be fantastic to see her win that $50,000 and make an even more massive impact to Marysville? Imagine if it were your own town!

 Please take the time to vote for Heather's entry - you can vote once per day, and it only requires your name and email address to vote. Voting closes on 5th October, so get cracking and make Heather's dream come true!

VOTE HERE:  http://lenovo.promo.eprize.com/hero/like.html?entry_id=434

(you'll need to scroll to find her entry, it's randomly placed in the finalists)

And, of course, please consider buying the Cookbook. From my own experience, I can tell you it's easily worth the $30 - even if you don't cook any of the recipes, it's a great coffee table book!

More Info: http://www.marysvillecookbook.com