Category Archives: Technology

Implementing Agile from an operations perspective

Posted by on May 3, 2011 No comments

From wikipedia Agile is a group of software development methodologies based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams.

Business Guy: Hey developer, I’d like these five features

Dev Guy: Sure.. (works for 2 weeks)

Business Guy: No asswipe, that’s not what I asked for. This button needs to send data to four places.

Dev Guy: Business God, we store data in one place and let other people retrieve it at 10:02PM until 10:13PM via FTP

Business Guy: OK, Ship It. Ops will support that while you fix it.  But, you can’t do that. Our clients need access to it 24/7. There is also customer sensative information in there.

Dev Guy: You didn’t tell me that. We can make sure the data is encrypted and send it over a secure channel like SSH. Clients can get the data from 10:02PM to 10:13PM daily. We need another two weeks.

Business Guy: Clients will need access to the data 24/7

Dev Guy: OK. We’ll need two more weeks for that feature.

Business Guy: But I need all the features we talk about within two weeks

Dev Guy: Hmm OK. It’s going to take me two weeks to figure out how to manage the time.

Business Guy: OK, fine, four weeks it is.

Business Guy: (4 weeks later). The site works occasionally. Can you see what’s wrong? But otherwise, ship it. Ops will figure it out while you fix it. We need the additional features in your latest sprint.

Ops Guy: Hey guys, I hate to rain on your parade, but the servers keep crashing and we need some dev time to look into the issues.

Dev Guy: No, it will take us another two weeks to figure out.

Business Guy: OK. I need four more features in the next sprint. Ops will have to deal with the platform stability issues until these latest features get out.

Dev Guy: OK. You’re the boss.  We do need to spend time on this though.

Business Guy: (two weeks later) – Our site keeps crashing. We’re losing most of the people we had. The next round of VC funding will be tough.

Ops Guy: (hands business guy an “I told you so” card”) Here’s my card. Call me when you want to talk. Stability is a feature you no-talent ass clown. From Yoda: “If platform not available, no visitors will you have”.

 

 

 

 

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Ditching Windows at Home

Posted by on April 3, 2011 No comments

I’m ditching Microsoft Windows at home. Considering that I make my living running Web Sites on IIS, most people may this this is a big deal. Get over it. It’s really a matter of practicality.

No, I’m not crazy. My current PC is circa 2003 (AMD 3200+, 1.5GB RAM, nVidia FX 5700). Read more »

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Which mobile device would you pick for work?

Posted by on January 22, 2010 No comments

It’s pretty cool that my office is giving us a choice with phones / Internet devices. It is a limited choice, but they are all top of the line phones. The choices are:

iPhone 3GS / 16GB – AT&T

Blackberry Bold 9700 – AT&T

Blackberry Tour – Verizon

From my previous posts, you that I already have an iphone which I love. I use the MS Exchange account on my iphone to sync with google apps. It’s fast and it works well.

The thinking:

I’m not planning on getting rid of my iPhone. I could pick an iPhone for work and give my iPhone to my wife. My personal mail would take a back seat since the company’s email would use the exchange activesync. My work position is running large internet facing web sites. Email and alerting are big deals to me. I also charge my iPhone everyday. With the amount of email I get, I’d be luck if it lasted that long. The 3″ touch screen and the fact that I can have a real browser to troubleshoot web related issues is a huge plus for the iPhone. The 200 mail message limit and limited email alerting capabilities are big limitations on how I would use the device for work. My inbox receives over five hundred messages per day. Many are alerts to systems we’re monitoring. To make it easier, I have categorized the most important alerts via folders in my inbox. The phone will need to alert appropriately on the correct folder while I am away from my desk. Basically, I need to know when a really important alert or email comes through and not just any email. Not that you know a little about what I do and how I use email, the choice for a blackberry fits most of my requirements… so now which one?

Bold 9700 Tour Winner
21 Days battery life 14 days battery life Bold 9700
Track Pad Track Ball Bold 9700
AT&T Service Verizon Tour
Wifi No Wifi Bold 9700

The Verdict:

Verizon service where I live is certainly superior to AT&T. I had a curve not to long ago which had the track ball. The track ball loses action after a few months and you need to keep cleaning lint out of it. For this choice, I chose the Blackberry Bold 9700 due to the features above. I am keeping my iPhone and have a blackberry for work. True ops folks would have a phone  one two different networks since my blackberry and iPhone are both AT&T. Considering that the only network that stayed up during the September 11 attacks was sprint, I don’t mind putting my eggs in one choice carriers. I LOVE the trackpad on the bold 9700. Being maintenance free is a big plus. The track ball does offer finer mouse movements, but I find that the track pad is easier on the thumb and fingers since you don’t have to push anything. Having wifi is a bonus too and I think it helps make up for AT&T’s service issues. The device receives email either wifi or 3G/phone network.

For me the Blackberry bold 9700 makes sense. What would you choose?

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Apple pulled Voice Central and all other Google Voice apps

Posted by on July 29, 2009 No comments

Yesterday, Apple pulled all Google Voice iPhone apps from the app store.  Riverturn, the maker of Voice Central was contacted by Richard Chipman from Apple. A transcript of the conversation is on the riverturn blog. http://www.riverturn.com/blog/ . Sean Kovacs, the maker of  GV Mobile also recieved a call from Richard regarding the status of his application. Sean decided to release GV mobile through an alternate app store called Cydia, which can service jailbroken iPhones. Sean is making GV Mobile available at no cost. Sean’s blog is http://www.seankovacs.com

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Voice Central for iPhone

Posted by on July 26, 2009 No comments

I am certainly a Google Voice convert. The service is fantastic. I love everything about it. It truely is a virtual assistant. Using it on the PC is easy to do since it’s browser based. But how well does it work on an Internet capable device like the iPhone? The browser version is less than to be desired. It works OK, but certainly nothing like a native iPhone app would.

There are already clients for android devices and blackberries authored by Google, but not for the iPhone. There are two choices out there written by a few external software developers. I chose to install and use Voice Central. It has an incredibly easy to use interface and most of the Google Voice funtionality that you’d want to use from a phone interface. I like how the tabs are organized with voicemail, history, contacts, keypad and settings.  I can track SMS conversations, voice mails, missed calls etc.. everything you would expect to have on a moderm phone, but with all of the call routing functionality that Google Voice has to offer. The call routing functionality is done on the Google Voice Web Site and not on the phone. But everything else the application does and does very well.

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Google Voice = Fantastic

Posted by on July 22, 2009 No comments

Just got Google Voice. What a fantastic service. It was easy to setup and use. The voice mail transcription works well. Getting a text message of the transcription is very handy.

The only “glich” really is that I mainly use Google Apps for email and not GMail.  All of my contacts are in Google Apps. I exported the contacts to csv file, then imported them back to GMail. This will be a slight headache for awhile. Google doesn’t support Google Voice with Google Apps accounts… yet.  But, I’ll live.

A developer wrote a Google Voice app for the iPhone. It’s not sanctioned by Google and has some mixed reviews. I thought I would buy it, but I’ll probably wait until there is either an updated version of the app which fixed some issues or wait until Google writes one.

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Reduced iPhone costs?

Posted by on June 9, 2009 No comments

I  had the play-by-play sites up from Macrumorslive.com and appleinsider.com during the Apple WWDC keynote speach. Let me commend Apple on the fantastic innovations. I really liked all of the updates to OS X and the MacBook Pro. It makes me want to go out and buy one. You can really see that Apple listens to their customers. The new iPhone 3G S is an update to the 3G, while it has some compelling new features like video recording, longer battery life, speedier app launch (all of which I would love to have), I’m not going to run out and upgrade my 3G yet.

One thing that perturbed me was Apple wanted to “reduce” the cost of the iPhone. While it sounds good on the surface, most phone are subsidized through the carrier calling plans. The calling plans are really the bulk of the cost of the phone. At $70/month (with no texting) for 24 months, that total is $1680, without taxes , fees etc.. If someone is willing to fork over $1680 over a two year span for the calling plan (I am willing to do that though) , what really is the differnence spending $299 for the 32GB 3G S phone vs. $99 for the 8GB 3G? A couple of percentage points in the total cost of the service? I am not saying that folks who should by an iPhone should always get the most expensive model, but just understand the total cost of what you are buying over the lifetime of the device/service.

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Why I am switching to Google Apps

Posted by on June 5, 2009 No comments

I have used Microsoft Outlook for most of my computing life at home as well as at various professional positions. Outlook’s format is very easy to use and using rules to move mail to particular folders works well. This helps me keep organized. I also like the follow up flags and tasks.  I can sync the tasks, calendar etc with the iPhone. There is a previous post on using tasks with the iPhone if you are interested. I run my own mail server and use ASSP as my spam solution. I don’t really keep up with recompiling the spam database so, more regular emails get trapped in the spam folder than I would like. The one feature that is missing is instant search. With Outlook 2007, Microsoft created Windows Desktop Search, which searches folders, emails and has filters for pdfs, zip files, docs, spreadsheets, text files etc… More often than not, the search product slows down my computer to a halt and often crashes it. I have tried version 3.0 and 4.0 with mixed results. Bear in mind, that my computer is an Athlon 3200+ with 1.5GB RAM, which is fairly old. I also tried google desktop search. Searching mail and files was very easy. The interface is very similar to the Web Search and results from the Web were sometimes included in the results. That feature can be turned off. The googleupdate kept crashing me computer when attempting to update itself. Chrome doesn’t try to update itself, so I have not had any issues with that.

Long story short, having instant search on mail is something I really need. But also having it on a web based platform, is incredible. The labels and conversation linking are a few of the features in addition to the search that make Google Apps / Gmail a superior product. I have also enabled some google labs features like additional stars, tasks and flickr previews.

Now, that I am hooked it’s time to get folks off my email platform and onto Google Apps!

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To Linux or Not to?

Posted by on May 10, 2009 No comments

With my new infatuation with the iPhone, I am seriously considering getting a mac. Some of my friends swear by them. My first computer was an Apple IIc. (Yes, I know I’m dating my self a little bit).  I’ve used them before in the apple store and my opinion was that it was just an operating system. My Apple friends continue to persuade me to try it out for longer than a thirty minute period at the Apple store. They say it just works. Printing works, browsing works, updating the OS works. No viruses etc…

Well, with all of these Mac OSX thoughts, I can’t install OSX on my pc. (Yes I know about the EFI stuff, but I  don’t want to bother), I said to self….”Let’s try Linux”. Whait a minute. I have used Windows since 3.1, Why would I want to try something else?

Well, I’m not a fan of Vista, but I am trying out Windows 7. I am curious to see how much of my life I can run on open source applications. Will they make me more productive than running Windows/Windows Apps?

One of my Apple friends suggested I try Ubuntu Linux. They said it was easy to configure.

I formatted an IDE hard drive in my system and booted up Ubuntu to the LiveCD. Right away I could browse the Internet, run office applications, edit photos etc.. Pretty cool. 

So I decided to install it. It was a very easy install. Ubuntu even let me know that there was a proprietary driver for my nVidia card. Very cool.  I also enabled some desktop effects which added elasticity to the dragged windows. Again very cool.

So now I have the basic OS installed. My next course of action is to figure out what apps I need to convert to Linux….  I’m not going to throw my Windows XP install out the Window at all. I am now on a quest to see what programs I can run on Linux that affect my daily computing life.

My next posts will be lists of what I use on Windows and some possible matches to what runs on Linux. If you have suggestions, feel free to email me.

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Five tips for Successful Disaster Recovery Implementations

Posted by on April 29, 2009 No comments

Disaster Recovery is one the major topics that are coming up in my interviews. I have been implementing DR (short for Disaster Recovery) for most of my career, so below are five tips with concrete examples with implementing Disaster Recover solutions to work well. 

1. Properly set DR Expections with clients – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in where clients expected one level of service for disaster recovery and IT provided a different and usually less functional recovery plan/implementation. Proper client communication is necessary. At an IT manager it is critical to understand how the appliation behaves, how the client expects the application to behave and the level of service required for the application. Trust needs to be established between IT and the application/development folks. Without it, the disaster recovery plan will be weak.

Example: A new client wanted to test the disaster recovery for the SQL Server. I asked them if there was a DR plan and implemenation steps. They said no, they usually just turned off the production server and turn on the disaster recovery server and in five minutes (which was their expectation). The reality was that the DBA had a read-only copy of the database on the production server and did not turn off the production server at all. The DR test was marked “success”, but the client expectation as well as the implementation were two different things.

2. Simplify Everything - When something hits the fan, the last thing IT staff will do well is follow complicated disaster recovery instructions. The failover and client communciation should be as automated as possible. The client should have all major fail over steps with approximate times for completing each step. The client will want to guage for him/herself how well the plan is being executed on a real-time basis. This will also serve to help improve or adjust difficult steps with the understanding to simplify the implementation.

Example: One client gave me a series of twelve steps that needed to be completed in an hour to fail over an application properly. The SLA was two hours. Previous attempts using this plan were completed in four to six hours. One of the steps was uninstalling/installing Web Server software on the disaster recover system. Basically, the client doesn’t update the disaster recover system on a regular basis. We elimonated six steps by adding the DR systems to their current software deployment process. Now the application disaster recovery plan was reduced to thirty mintues.

 

3. Test the DR Plan as well as the implentation regularly –  If the plan requires people getting on a conference call, test that too along with IT implementation. Get people on the conference call. There have been dozens of times where conference call numbers changed, and different people need to be notified. Make sure that all tangible assets in the plan will be used/tested. Make note of the items not used in the plan so they can be removed later or if new ones need to be added. People, numbers, and plan steps will change as applications add more systems, features and staff.

 

4. Communicate/Distribute the plan to key parties – Everyone needs to be on the same page with disaster recovery plans. Executives need to know what conference number to call and what room they need to be in. IT folks need to know the steps required and the time required needed to perform the steps. Stakeholders needs communicate with their clients as well as monitor IT progress. Most folks will attend a DR planning meeting say “yes” throughout the meeting and stick the plan in the drawer. Please get it out once every six months or more frequently if needed and go over it so folks still understand the plan. No one really cares about the plan until it’s time to implement it. Then everyone will be calling you. There will certainly need to be a time to implement the plan when the emergency arises. It will be your fortitude to make sure that tests/plans and understanding is communicated effectively.

 

5. Don’t worry about it - If the communication has been handled effectively and everyone knows what they need to do, don’t sweat all the little things that will go wrong. Just note them to adjust the plan later. The DR plan is a living, breathing document. Not something you write once and distribute. Most stakeholders aren’t going to care if step two took ten minutes longer or if another thing needed to be updated.  There will usually be some stuff that was missed. Make note of it and follow it up. The most important thing is was the plan implemented successfully. The applications failed over correctly and are working.

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