Cisco has announced the plan to discontinue the Cisco PIX. After July 2008, PIX will no longer be available for purchase, with accessories sales ending in January 2009. Cisco will continue to honor only existing support contracts after July 2009, and will honor those commitments until 2013.

Models on the chopping block include: Cisco PIX 501, PIX 506E, PIX 515E, PIX 525, and PIX 535.

Why? Even though many network admins would say "mine gets the job done." Cisco says there is a greater need to support Payment Card Industry Data Security, HIPAA, and SOX standards and the PIX doesn't cut it like their new ASA device does.

Rumor has it that the biggest complaint is that the Java-based user interface (PDM) doesn't play nicely or at all with the latest Java virtual machine. (Cisco doesn't make any mention of this).

Almost as a reflex, I refuse those extended service warranties the consumer electronics retailers push to boost their bottom line. Because of them, most people view warranties as scams rather than the insurance policies they were originally intended to be. Unfortunately, this thinking gets extended to the critical hardware in the server room. E-mail servers, file/print servers, domain controllers, and more sit in server rooms years past when the manufacturers warranty expires.  This is a bad situation.

What happens when an extended warranty is purchased?  A client of ours had a system board die in their warrantied file/print server. Within four hours, a technician arrived with a replacement system board and the server was back online, all covered under the warranty and free of charge.

Without the warranty, the alternative scenario plays out like this: a replacement system board has to be ordered via overnight mail, which may arrive in 2 business days depending on the ordering deadline for next day delivery. If you don't have IT in-house, you coordinate with your IT consultant to install the part, at their regular hourly rate.  Besides the costs of the part and service, figure in opportunity costs for lost productivity or billable hours for the day or more that the server is down.

What is worse than the scenario above?  Not knowing whether your servers and network equipment is under warranty or not. At the very least, you should perform an audit so you know the risks you are running.

Silence from users about IT is a sign of trouble rather than success. In a sense, IT should be invisible, where it fades into the background. But is the system really running great or are people just making do? Here are some probing questions to determine whether your IT system really is computing nirvana or a sleeping dragon.

Is your team actually preventing IT problems, or just more efficient at solving a recurring problem?  Kudos to the team for getting the firm back up and running quicker after that pesky outage that happens at least once a month, but what are you doing to prevent the outage from ever happening again? Sometimes in IT we get caught up in solving the problem, rather than preventing it in the first place.

What workarounds are users creating to deal with IT issues rather than complain? We had one client who was amazed at how fast their systems booted after an image refresh. Why had no users been complaining of a slow boot process?  For one, they didn't have a standard to compare against, so they just assumed it was normal. Also, they adjusted their work schedule to accommodate the quirks and failings of the system.  So before the image refresh, our client's employees started the login process and then went to the break room for 10 minutes for coffee and kibbutzing. When they returned, the computer would be booted up.

Are you asking them? Despite the many complaints that IT professionals hear, most people will silently bear minor inconveniences. They may not know how to explain the problem or think the time to solve it will be greater than the small dings on their productivity. They may not even see the cumulative costs of those productivity hits personally, but have tremendous effects when viewed from the firm's perspective.

Our post last week discussed how "time-to-restore" is the primary factor in data backups. Here are some solutions for speeding up the process.

D2D2T - Disk to Disk to Tape. Many of our clients use this solution. In the event of a server failure (and not a disaster that destroys the server room), the last backup is local and can be restored from a local resource rather than pulling it over the Internet or having devices couriered to the site. These backups complete much more quickly since internal connections (LAN, USB 2.0 ESata, Firewire) are faster than the Internet connection. Meanwhile, the remote backup can be pulled over the Internet for redundancy. 

Bare Metal Restores. When a server fails, getting the server back up and running is time consuming before the restore can even start. It might take 4 to 6 hours to install Windows and its service packs, install applications (Exchange, SQL), then install the backup agents and start the restore. This type of "rebuild" always has long time delays finding the software media as well as configuring the machine (drives, install paths, data paths). With bare metal restore capabilities you typically can boot to a CD and begin restoring the machine much quicker.

We all sleep better having more back-up options, with disk and online either complementing tapes or replacing them altogether. Because these options offer greater reliability, security, and performance, no longer do we ask whether we can back-up. Now we ask: how fast can we recover? The new bottleneck is bandwidth: how much data can we move between the back-up and our restored systems. Recovery takes time; sometimes a long time.

Moving gigabytes and sometimes terabytes of data though LAN or Internet/WAN connections means that backups can sometimes take 24 hours or more. Disk and online back-ups are a blessing and a curse. We back up more data, which means there is more to move. So even when you do everything right and have multiple back-ups in various locations, you may still be down for a day or more just because you are moving data around.

How to address this issue? The obvious but difficult solution is to continually cull data. Remove unwanted files, e-mail messages, and the like. While the cheapest solution, it is the most difficult since it requires asking stressed out professionals and staff to take time out to manage their files. Other solutions like SANs (Storage Area Networks) and real-time backup and replication become real expensive real quick.

The leading article in the February 2008 issue of Wired contends that technology and personal interaction are complementary like peanut butter and chocolate, usurping the conventional wisdom that technology destroys distance. While the hope still remains that cells phones and broadband will allow introverts and traffic planners to telecommute, author Tim Harford makes a compelling case that technology makes "face-time" easier and creates more of it.

Just like how indoor plumbing and urban sanitation allowed greater density in cities, so do Google Maps, cell phones, and Facebook allow people to find other people and things in a vastly larger population. That population can be a large city, organization, or community of clients, vendors, and colleagues. Email allows someone to maintain greater communication with more people in less time, freeing up time for more meetings in person.

And face-time seems more critical than ever. If indeed the workplace is shifting to value ideas because problems and processes are becoming more complex as the author contends, then meeting face-to-face is the best way to communicate those ideas. The upshot for your business or firm, studies have found that the most productive companies have the most intra-company e-mail, which actually encourages more personal contact, not less.

Here is another episode from our series “The Devil is in the Details.” This time, our setting is online data backup, that may be part of the larger world of managed IT services. Whether looking at online backup vendors or when it is bundled as part of a managed IT service, here is an important feature you should insist upon: Real time view and access into your backed-up data.

You want the ability to view and manage your backup data without needing an intermediary. For instance, you want to see your files and restore a file without needing to place a support ticket that someone fulfills for you most likely in a manner not-described as “timely.” You have options in online backup, decide on the one that gives you the greatest flexibility for the price.

While Litigation Support is a very technology intensive discipline, they don’t always see eye-to-eye with the IT department. The reasons are many: Litigation Support is often created and budgeted outside of IT and the practitioners largely come from the paralegal, attorney or administrative ranks. Although you would believe these two entities would find common ground, often their relationship is more noted for misunderstandings, misperceptions, and differing agendas.

IT and Litigation Support departments are tasked very differently. IT must provide quality, predictable service on a budget, whereas Litigation Support is tasked by the attorneys with getting the job done at all costs. For this and other reasons, Litigation Support and IT are separate entities in many firms, large and small. Litigation support is steeped in data. Their job is collecting, searching, and re-purposing data, that requires tremendous storage capacity, fast networking, and a wide variety of tools to search, extract, catalog, redact and “produce” that data. These demands sometimes run counter to IT’s mandate to provide stable, predictable, high-quality service for the entire firm. Large amounts of data on its servers or coursing through its wires can negatively affect performance. IT also has concerns about staffing a help desk that must know a couple dozen esoteric litigation support tools.

These are just some examples of the differences between IT and Litigation Support. Over the coming weeks, we will be exploring how to improve this relationship to realize the synergies and benefits of a close working relationship between the two.

You think you are protected: RAID to guard against hard drive failure; dual network cards with separate Ethernet switches, and redundant power with a couple of UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) systems in case of a power failure. But what about your telecomm closet?

Doh! Here is the scene we have seen repeated countless times: Internet router, firewall, and even your Ethernet switches are just plugged into the wall outlet! Your vital link to clients and the outside world rests on an unconditioned wall plug and an electrical grid in dire need of upgrade.

Make sure all your network electronics are protected by a UPS. This alone will save you from losing components due to power fluctuations and outages. You may need two for heavier loads. UPS's fail too, so an online spare won't hurt. With respect to potential of losing hours of productive/billable time, UPS systems in your telco closet are insanely cheap.

Here is an idea to think about and discuss. This isn’t an endorsement. Hopefully, it is the start of a conversation.

Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired Magazine and the main who coined the them “the Long Tail” has an interesting post about dual IT networks—one official, the other not—at Wired’s offices. One is the corporate network that is locked down and heavily managed to protect its core functions like accounting/finance, file storage, backup and Exchange. The second is an “open” Internet connection, providing full access to Skype, instant messaging clients, and Facebook.

Now Wired magazine is about living on the digital edge, and law firms and professional services firms are not. Law firms especially need to protect data because the professional and financial ramifications of not doing so are devastating. But innovation is required in any industry, and we have touted the many advantages of new Web applications and services like RSS, social bookmarking, wikis, and more. Giving employees a playground to experiment could lead to a better way to provide client service or an innovative approach to services via these new Internet technologies.

As Anderson mentions in his blog, many corporate CIOs are implementing or seriously considering this dual networking strategy, either with physically separate networks or virtual networks. Time will tell, however, what problems could arise from this intriguing approach. At the person and workstation level those networks converge, causing potential headaches like lost productivity to fantasy sports leagues; malware pickup up from risky web sites and apps, and random questions about obscure web applications into the help desk.

Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Via the Legal Blog Watch, some law firms—or at least some web savvy people inside them—are going all Web 2.0. They are creating social networks on Facebook and updating their Wikipedia entries. Some even appear to have succumbed to the temptation to edit the Wikipedia pages of the competition to cast them in an unfavorable light!

While law firms are notoriously conservative when it comes to technology, this is a rather quick adoption rate in an industry that just migrated to Windows XP in the last couple of years. Networking and research seem perfectly logical arenas for firms to try out these new forms of web interaction. So how long will it be before videos go up on YouTube?

We have been booked for a number of speaking engagements in the next few months, and it seems they all want to know about IT trends for law firms. We thought it would be fun to crowdsource our reader’s thoughts on some of the trends we see. This is what we are following:

Server Virtualization (also tied closely with disaster recovery). Virtualization technology has matured and makes real sense for firms of many sizes. Most important, it facilitates disaster recovery and business continuity efforts that many firms are implementing today.

Data-vaulting. The future of back-ups are online. Time to throw away those back-up tapes you forgot to swap anyway.

Managed IT services. Remote monitoring and management of IT for 24/7/365 coverage. Small firms get experience, expertise, and the complete package for maximum value for their IT budget, while larger firms can get preventive measures like daily server checks that would otherwise be neglected.

Online Services. Work is moving to the web. Many applications have already moved online like accounting, IP, and CRM, and more are coming. Meanwhile, newsfeeds (RSS) and search are revolutionizing information like e-mail revolutionized communication.

Outsourcing. The timeless sturm-und-drang of in-house vs. out-source extends to practically every corner of the firm, including litigation support, facilities, and even secretarial.

Paperless. Ah, the holy grail. The paperless office seems closer today than ever, but it means some drastic changes in workflow and a rethinking of your equipment and IT.

Vista/Office 2007. From the meat-and-potatoes department, the shift will eventually happen, although no one seems very excited about it.

Give us your feedback on the comments. How would you expand on our points? What are we missing?

This great blog essay over at Digging My Own Ditch [via Found|Read] provides a primer on the value of Web 2.0 for people (or “users” if you want). Rather than being caught up in descriptions of RSS, AJAX and other technical aspects, the essay is about what “Web 2.0” dynamics mean for people, and then applies those dynamics to the archetypal IT tool: corporate email.

Here are the three dynamics that define the Web 2.0 experience for people:

• Personal expression – Web 2.0 provides people a greater ability to express their personalities to others
• Efficient connections – Web 2.0 services make meeting new like-minded people more efficient
• Information discovery – Web 2.0 software and services change how people discover information

Information discovery and efficient connections make perfect sense, but how in the world would enabling personal expression improve corporate e-mail? Turns out that as more people join communities online, they are used to posting photos of themselves (or avatars) and expressing their interests, specialities, accomplishments, and more. This aides in creating networks of like-minded people (efficient connections) that make finding information easier (information discovery).

Connections are more efficient because they are self-selected through common interests, which filters information to be more relevant and is thus more valuable. Throw in tagging, social bookmarking, and trackbacks (cross-linking)and people can find information and webs of information in ways better suited to them compared to a taxonomy or literal search engine. Applied to corporate e-mail, contacts are grouped by each person’s personal network, and e-mails are tagged for concepts that the e-mail is about but does not explicitly mention.

So what does Web 2.0 mean to businesses? Better connected employees with better access to the right information.

If your firm is making the switch to VOIP, make sure you have an advocate for IT on the project, especially someone who has been through a VOIP migration before. If left unchecked, VOIP engineers and consultants can unknowingly run roughshod over the IT network, dictating changes and additional network services that can impart unforeseen consequences if not done correctly.

The IT advocate will protect the integrity and stability of the network and help avoid common pitfalls during a VOIP migration. He or she can:

• create an inventory of what network services would be impacted,
• point out design changes like the proper number of switches.
• properly setup and configure network services that the VOIP systems require, something a “phone guy” may be able to do, but will likely not have the experience and expertise to avoid any adverse effects that impact a pre-existing network infrastructure.

Going VOIP also means ceding some control over the network—especially in hosted VOIP services—and the IT advocate can help smooth that transition. Depending upon the type of service you select, you may lose control over vital network functions like NAT, port access translation, VPN and Citrix service redirections. (Access to internal systems you may have come to take for granted until they no longer operate properly). The IT advocate can help map out how to handle these critical services within the new environment. At the very least, an IT advocate will represent your network interests with the experience to help guide your VOIP installation in a way that will impact your existing infrastructure with as little negative effects as possible.

The company installing the VOIP system will work to provide the best phone system, but the IT advocate will make sure that it doesn’t come at the expense of network reliability, functionality and performance.

Sure, we like to think some relationships will last forever, but they are really the exception to the rule. People change. Companies change. Industries change. Things, umm, change. When SAGE got into the managed IT services arena with OnSight, we recognized change as a given. That is why we built in quarterly technology reviews, for instance, but we also made it easy for clients to quit if circumstances changed and the relationship no longer worked.

OnSight doesn’t lock in clients the way other managed IT services do. Clients own their own equipment and infrastructure, so if they decide to go in another direction they don’t face sticker shock of “rebuilding” the network from the E-mail server to the Citrix box. And while we work with lawyers, we didn’t get a team of our own to write draconian contracts that lock in clients for long periods of time. If OnSight isn’t providing the right service for a client, than a document should not be the only glue binding us together.

The newest engineer to join the crack troops here at SAGE is Colin Marks, who as a certified Cisco Network Engineer brings a wealth of networking and WAN experience. One appliance he has found that can help large firms is PacketShaper. It allows companies to easily manage their bandwidth to maximize performance and ensure quality of service. PacketShaper and other like applications let you prioritize, segregate, and otherwise manage your bandwidth. For example, dedicate a certain percentage for the VOIP system and give priority to Citrix applications over web surfing, especially on draft days for fantasy sports.

Another advantage to this class of network appliance is the easy management, bypassing the arduous task of manually configuring your routers. A GUI (Graphical user Interface) to set priorities or limits, monitor performance and get reports makes optimizing performance a much easier endeavor.

There are many different flavors to managed IT Services. SAGE OnSight falls into the category, but managed IT services come in many flavors and it is important for each organization to find the service that best fits its needs. Following are some more subtle points to consider when looking at managed IT service providers.

Personal Factor. Trust and confidence in your IT provider is vital in managed environments. You want someone on the other end of the line who is not only knowledgeable, but also responsive and trustworthy. It’s also nice to see them in person too.

Lock In—or Barriers to Exit. These can be contractual or monetary. Contracts can range from a few months to three years or more, and according to many lawyers we know, some are rather ironclad. Good service providers will require only a one month termination notice if the relationship is not working out after the initial contract period. Also consider the cost of creating a network if you decide to separate from a provider that completely outsources your IT. The infrastructure you once had now has to be rebuilt, from the E-mail server to the Citrix box, and it all comes with a price tag.

Speed and Responsiveness. While the Internet is great for working over great distances, network latency can affect the speed and responsiveness of your systems. Slow systems mean frustrated users.

Turnaround Times. How quickly will the service provider turn around new user accounts or have workstations set up for new employees? Good service providers know your time is valuable and people need to be productive as quickly as possible.

Control Issues. Many administrators who once lorded over the domain are sometimes locked out when the outsourced IT provider takes over. Instead of rolling up the sleeves and figuring out the problem, you are sending a service request. Many service providers monitor your systems and often know of a problem before you do, but you want prompt service if you are no longer in the driver’s seat. Also, having eyes into the system only increases your confidence if you can verify what the service provider is telling you.

Many of you reading the title are probably chuckling at the perceived paradoxes in it. Who would think “network administrators” and “creativity” would appear in such proximity? This blog post makes an excellent case for constraints as the engine of creativity for technical folk like system engineers and network administrators, and why they gravitate to “emergencies” because they have clearly defined boundaries rather than blue-sky projects that do not.

In the post there is a fun little thought experiment that makes the point about creativity and constraints. Other notable points and suggestions include:

• Everyone wants a stable network and network engineers would like to initiate projects and proactive solutions, but tend to work on the fixes and emergencies since they have clear problem to solve.
• To overcome this, managers should challenge network engineers with “specific forward-looking issues” and ensure they spend time on it.
• Don’t be afraid to throw “business” problems to the engineers (if there really is such a distinction between IT and business these days) along with constraints to focus their efforts on longer term network performance.

People in traditional “design” disciplines like architecture, art, industrial design, etc. have long known the vast power that constraints have to spark creativity. Constraints like budgets, materials, and time have led to more innovation than a blank check and no deadlines. Even in the business realm, Wal-Mart attributes their success in creating the world’s most efficient distribution system from the fact that they had to build everything from scratch in the Arkansas backwater. They had hundreds of constraints—mostly lack of resources—which they eventually found elegant solutions that lead to business success.

The good folks at ALISM have invited us to talk about virtual computing for their 2/21 Luncheon in Washington, DC. SAGE's own Doug Daniel will be surveying the landscape, exploding some myths, and discussing the real advantages virtual computing has for law and professional services firms.

Be sure to sign-up over at ALISM's web site, ALISM.org.  Registration is $25 for members, $45 for non-members.  It's a real deal when you figure in that lunch is included!

Virtual computing has been around for a long time, but only recently has it become one of the most exciting areas of IT. Below are just some of the virtual computing news on the Web in the past few days:

• The virtualization market is very real and growing;
• You may be just getting into virtualization, but others are already pushing "Virtualization 2.0";
• Leading virtualization software developed VMware has released with a small and medium business (SMB) bundle;

We will be touching on those news items and more.  We hope to see you at the February 21, 2007 ALSIM Luncheon.

We are thrilled to announce that for 2007 we are sponsoring ALISM, the Association of Legal Information Systems Managers. This deepens our support for the IT and legal community in the Washington, DC metropolitan region, as we already sponsor ILTA and the ALA Capital Chapter, as well as our membership in the LFVA. We are fully behind ALISM's mission to facilitate learning and communication among its members.

We'll be attending ALISM's meeting this Wednesday, January 24, 2007.  Also look for SAGE experts at ALISM meetings throughout the year.

In ALISM's own words:

ALISM facilitates the exchange of information regarding the technical and management problems peculiar to the legal automation environment, and to improve the standards and qualifications of information systems managers and their staffs. ALISM provides an environment where members share their experience with other members of the legal IS community and learn about new technology trends. ALISM members learn what other firms are doing, how other departments are run and networking with colleagues.

We are glad to be on-board and look forward to a great year with ALISM.

If the Apple iPhone’s innovative “multi-touch” interface stands up in real world use, it may usher in the shift in computing from desktops to handhelds. Laptops are already poised to overtake desktops the business world in the next few years, and sales have surged for smartphones like the Blackberry and Treo. The iPhone promises to overcome the last hurdle to widespread adoption of handhelds for most computing tasks: the interface.

We’ve discussed handheld devices and the supporting “information cloud” of data, information, and reference material that Blackberries/Treos make possible. Even laptops cannot compete with the mobility afforded by fitting snugly into a pocket. High speed cell networks and Wi-Fi have solved the bandwidth bottleneck, so the last hurdle to accessing the information in the cloud on a handheld was the interface: the stylus, small keyboard, and small, low-resolution screen. According to one tech pundit:

“[Apple CEO] Jobs is breaking the tyranny of the keyboard and trying to break the tyranny of the cursor as well. We've been able to get computers into our pockets for a very long time, but the issue has always been, 'what do you do with it?' You don't have a keyboard, you don't have a stylus and your thumbs are too big to type. This is the first serious attempt to break the tyranny of input. Until now, everybody's always focused on output -- is the screen big enough or sharp enough -- and the screens are high-resolution and bright. We've conquered that. Now the limiting factor is input.”

Simple input, fully capable high-speed web browsing, and reading documents on a widescreen display are all major advances in handheld computing. So whether you think the iPhone is the real-deal or over-hyped, if you or your employees want to be unchained from the desk, you should be rooting for the iPhone to succeed.

There it is. A blatant plug for one of our services. You knew it had to happen eventually. But we also want to boast about our great people here at SAGE.

Tech salaries came up the other day when talking with a client. Just so happens, E-Week ran a story yesterday on the shortage of specialized IT skills is pushing up salaries. That reminded us that an advantage of SAGE OnSight is that we provide the expert IT staff or augment your current staff. Our clients don’t have to fight for scarce tech talent and their consummate high salaries, because we already do that.

Our OnSight clients rave about the service because of the staff. Our Application Specialists manning the OnSight Support Center have the unique combination of extensive knowledge, great communication skills, and happen to be some of the most considerate people you will ever meet. Then our crack engineers are some of the most intelligent thorough and creative around. Frankly, there isn’t much they haven’t seen in network design and support. Not only are they terrific at troubleshooting issues, but they can explain it in laymen’s terms. We have already done the hard work to identify great IT talent, so you don’t have to.

The Thanksgiving Holiday brings out the Charlie Brown holiday specials, and “Pig Pen” makes his annual cameo in the cartoons. Pig Pen has the cloud of dirt and dust that follows him wherever he goes, but what if that cloud was information, instead?

Look no further than someone carrying a Blackberry or Treo and see a whole new generation of high-tech Pig Pens followed by a cloud of e-mails, contacts, documents and more. The new mobile workforce is no longer restricted by their own memory or brain power since they have access to tremendous information resources at the push of a button. Handheld computing and wireless technologies have untethered knowledge from bulky reference items like PCs, dictionaries, file cabinets, etc. Now add GPS, RSS feeds and web services like Del.icio.us or Google Notebook, and information is at the fingertips of anyone with a smartphone.

For example, Del.icio.us bookmarks can be an RSS feed, subscribed to through Google Reader, that has a mobile version accessible through any smartphone’s web browser. On the other hand, one SAGE employee visited a museum over the weekend where he ran into a person using his smartphone’s camera to photograph the plaque so they “could read them later.” With cameras on cell phone’s reaching 3 megapixels, each cell phone becomes a handheld scanner.

The challenge to IT in facilitating making all our workers like Pig Pen is thinking beyond secure VPN and Citrix, but how to use RSS and services to not only feed information, but also store and share with co-workers from practically anywhere.

Virtual computing environments are one of the most exciting developments in IT in years. Recently, SAGE hosted a seminar on virtual computing with the Capital Chapter of ALA.  The seminar was a big success, and now we are taking that seminar to you.

The session starts with an overview of the technology and its applications, and provide a survey of configurations, products, and platforms. We share our insights into the best applications for virtualization, and the various platforms and software currently in the market. The session delves into the costs and benefits of the technology, addressing the often touted myth of large cost savings. Based on our experience, We will also share the pitfalls to avoid when going virtual, and where virtual environments are heading in the near future.

The seminar covers:

• What is virtualization? Common configurations, products, hardware platforms and system requirements.
• Uses for virtualization, including development, consolidation, disaster recovery, etc.
• Pros and cons of virtual server environments.
• Maximizing performance in virtual computing.
• Myths and realities regarding the economics of virtualization.
• Real costs of going virtual for firms of various sizes.
• Complementary technologies for virtual server rooms like SANs, and remote power control.

If your firm is interested in learning more virtual computing, please contact Karin Magness at SAGE and we will bring the roadshow to your company.

Here is an application that we are keeping an eye on: VMware Converter. Currently in beta, VMware Converter turns physical machines into virtual machines for consolidation, disaster recovery, or any other reason you would want a physical Windows OS machine to go virtual. Best yet, it will convert a number of physical machines on the fly, or even from other vendor’s VM products like Microsoft’s Virtual Server. Here is another scenario: thinking of upgrading to Vista? Convert your current Windows XP image into a virtual machine for safekeeping in case you need access to apps that are incompatible with Vista.

VMware Converter is certainly an app to watch, and we’ll be putting it into our lab to give it a thorough ringing out to see if it lives up to its promise.

Today, Doug Daniel and George Nicholson are giving a seminar on the maturation of virtual computing technologies for the ALA Capital Chapter's Information Services and Technology section. Server rooms of the future will be incorporating virtual machines in addition to physical servers. From the presentation, here are some of the uses for virtual computing:

• Test and development
• Server consolidation
• Production servers
• Remote office
• Disaster recovery
• No more “desktop” servers
• IT agility and responsiveness

Doug and George make the point that forget the hype of huge savings that many virtual computing vendors tout, the real payoff is in the agility and responsiveness that virtual computing affords the IT department.

We will be posting with more from the seminar, so keep checking this blog.

With the upcoming launch of Windows Vista, the operating system replacement for XP, here is a sampling of news and opinion from around the web.

• Vista will reportedly have highly restrictive, some say draconian, licensing restrictions: a one-time, and one time only, transfer of the license to another device, but you can run the same copy virtually on the same machine.
• MS will also be taking a hard line against piracy, reportedly crippling machines with unauthorized versions of Vista. This presents a problem, since there are complaints that its watchdog program, Windows Genuine Advantage, produces too many false positives
• A few people have put together a wiki of third-party applications that are not working or have significant issues in Vista RC2; Although Microsoft’s Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 may be a workaround for legacy systems, if you are brave enough or have mad skillz.
• Then there are the many existential musings about whether Vista is worth the upgrade, including Great Britain's The Inquirier, and from Windows evangelist Paul Thurrott. That leaves some to ponder where is the business case is for upgrading?

We will weigh in on the Vista upgrade issue soon, but give us your thoughts in the comments.

We are still ironing out some of the details so the formal announcement hasn't gone out yet, but we can let you know of a new seminar. SAGE’s Doug Daniel will be giving an overview of virtualization technologies for the Information Services and Technology Section of the ALA Capital Chapter on October 25 from Noon to 2:00 PM. 

Doug will guide attendees through the virtual computing landscape. He will provide an overview of the technology and its applications, and provide a survey of configurations, products, and platforms. Furthermore, he will share his insights into the best applications of virtualization, and the various platforms and software currently in the market. Doug will delve into the costs and benefits of the technology, addressing the often touted myth of large cost savings. Based on his experience, Doug will also share the pitfalls to avoid when going virtual, and where virtual environments are heading in the near future.

The seminar will cover:

• What is virtualization? Common configurations, products, hardware platforms and system requirements.
• Uses for virtualization, including development, consolidation, disaster recovery, etc.
• Pros and cons of virtual server environments
• Maximizing performance in virtual computing
• Myths and realities regarding the economics of virtualization
• Real costs of going virtual for firms of various sizes
• Complementary technologies for virtual server rooms like SANs, and remote power control.

The venue is still not set, but will likely be hosted at Wilkinson Barker Knauer, LLP office in Washington, DC. For more information, or if you are interested in registering, e-mail Peter von Elling at SAGE, or Kenny Mitchell at Wilkinson Barker Knauer.

By the end of the year, SAGE will be making available Sentinel to all OnSight clients, letting them view the status of their network and us as we perform daily checks on their servers. OnSight clients will have their own user names and passwords and can see everything SAGE engineers and managers can see for their own network. This provides IT managers and firm administrators the means to monitor their network and our performance.

We don't mind the accountability that comes with the transparency Sentinel provides to our OnSight customers. When managing a firm's network, we have the responsibility for its continuous operation and optimum performance, and our customers need to to have confidence that is indeed happening. The way we look at it, providing Sentinel to customers gives them that assurance, which translates to peace of mind that their network is in good hands. Lastly, the more eyes present to spot problems whenever and where ever they may occur is never a bad thing.

One of the dirty little secrets of IT is that anyone worth their salt knows that daily server checks are critical in avoiding crashes, outages, and poor network performance, but hardly anyone ever does it. There are only a handful of core items to check (memory, disk space, logs, antivirus signatures, and uptime), but either remoting to the server or physically checking it require a fair amount of time that is compounded by the number of servers. Logging in, opening the appropriate apps and recording the information for each server wouldn’t be so bad, were it not