Mobile Phone Refresh: new iPhones and a move to Everything Everywhere
In 2011 the existing mobile phone contract with Vodafone came up for renewal and so, being diligent we decided to evaluate the top three/four mobile phone companies in the UK, Vodafone (again); o2; and Orange (which quickly became Everything Everywhere due to the merger between T-Mobile and Orange).
Our Vodafone contract had been a three-year deal, and our technology fund had expired. We were currently in a situation where a third of our user base had iPhones (some 3GS, some 4) and the rest were still on classic Nokia handsets which were starting to fall apart, consequently we were looking for a deal that satisfied a number of requirements. The issues that we wanted to solve were:
- Technology fund empty – we couldn’t get any more iPhones
- Data Usage – some users are utilising data despite not having an iPhone causing extra cost (no bundle)
- Signal Strength – some rare locations such as basement offices didn’t get signal.
- Cumbersome procedures – the method of setting up roaming and adding extra packages to mobile handsets is time consuming and awkward to complete.
- Disparate handsets
- Online billing system is not ideal
iPhone, Dropbox, and Password Databases
Just a quick one from me on password databases…
I’ve always used KeePass (http://keepass.info/download.html) with a nice bit of two-factor authentication (you need to know the password AND have access to an file) to secure my passwords, and as such I don’t often know the password to many of my online services.
I’m pretty chuffed that there are a few iPhone apps which now support the KeePass file format, and as well as that (thanks to iOS4) you can open files from the dropbox app inside the KeePass apps and then, with some of them, save the file back to dropbox if you make any changes.
Pretty awesome stuff, and I picked the free one: MiniKeePass, which actually has some great features like clipboard wipe* and database erase on incorrect PIN.
*pretty lucky on my part, that feature was added and released yesterday, good timing or what?!
Remote Desktop Services (per user) license monitoring with a script
With Windows Server 2008 (R2) and the new Remote Desktop Services, you need CALs. They’re essentially the same as the Terminal Services CALs that you used to get, and with Server 2008 you get a lovely little GUI that allows you to generate reports of the current users who have valid licenses etc.
What you can’t do (easily) is use something like the old lsreport.exe to generate a list of who’s using a CAL at a given point in time.
After alot of searching I found a blog post which helped over at the Remote Desktop Services Team Blow: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2009/11/09/per-user-cal-reporting-script.aspx – it dumps a .csv file of current CAL users and their licence state (valid or expired).
Because what I actually wanted was just an updated csv file every hour so I could trend usage, I added a few lines to the script that looked like this:
objTextFile.WriteLine "time, valid, expired, total"
objTextFile.WriteLine Now() & "," & NumOfW2K8_Valid & "," & NumOfW2K8_Expired & "," & NumOfW2K8_Total
And commented out all the others before setting on a repeating task.
Bristol Deaf Club Ride – the results
Well, I don’t know if any of you heard, but the official ride got cancelled by Bristol City Council because there was a) a crash on the Portway (A4) and b) flooding on the portway.
Having asked people for sponsorship we decided that we’d better do something, so after some debate we headed up to Clifton and did a ride down towards Clevedon, and back through Nailsea and Long Ashton, parting ways at Ashton Court, like this:
Sponsor Me – Bike Ride for Bristol Deaf Centre
I never ask for sponsorship, so stop groaning…
The Centre for Deaf People, in Bristol, are raising money to continue their summer youth project / playscheme this year, they’re trying to raise a total of £10,000 to allow it to go ahead (funding has been pulled), and as a result, a group of people are doing Bristol’s Biggest Bike Ride and asking for sponsorship…. I’m one of them…
Unfortunately the Deaf Centre doesn’t have any fancy online sponsorship form, we’re running on pen and paper this year, and so I’ve decided that what I’m doing to do is simply upload a picture of my sponsorship form each time it changes, my pseudo-technical workaround. Continue Reading →
Quick: Install .NET 3.5 on Server Core 2008R2
No explanation I’m afraid, just a quick post!
Do it like this:
dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFx3-ServerCore
Quick: vCMA (vCenter Mobile Access Server)
If you’ve not seen it yet, VMware have have flung out a product called vCMA – it allows you to manage your VMware estate from a mobile device, and although only in first release and officially a “power toy”, it’s pretty neat.
What’s even more neater* is that you also use the free iPad application to connect and then administer remotely with a shiny interface (no, you can’t do it on the iPhone I’m afraid).
Anyway, the point of this was to note the default options, after downloading the OVF file and installing it,
- the default URL is https://ip-address/vim
- the management URL is https://ip-address:5480
- the management username/password by default is root/vmware
*yeah, why not?
Quick: Why not to buy the iomega ix4-200r for veeam backups
In previous blog posts (Using veeam to backup the new virtual infrastructure to Iomega NAS boxes and Backup Strategies with Virtual Machines in VMware using Veeam) I mention my purchases of the iomega ix4-200r, generally I haven’t been impressed with them because they’ve been a little unreliable.
Looking at use around the net I decided that the best way to have a target for my veeam backups would be the iSCSI initiator from Windows straight onto the device, so I should provision a LUN, add it to Windows and write to it.
I tried and failed, after about a week of to’ing and fro’ing with veeam, vmware and iomega support I got to the bottom of the issue: these nas boxes are software locked to provide LUNs that are <= 2TB in size* – bearing in mind my 8 file servers each serve up anywhere between 500GB and 1TB worth of data this means that my first backup file from veeam is always going be over 2TB, making the device pretty much worthless in my environment.
*I’ve been assured that a LUN that’s exactly 2TB will work, although I can’t actually get that working in my test lab having tried it on two separate devices.
Remote Access Options in Server 2008R2
Server 2008R2 has many different methods that allow connections to your business network from outside for whatever purposes you see fit (most often though, home working). What’s better still is that once you’ve bought your Server 2008R2 installations these specific features don’t require any extra licensing or purchase cost, all it takes is your time and willing!
The roles that I’ll mention today are:
- Routing and Remote Access (RRAS)
- Remote Desktop Gateway
- Remote Desktop Web Access
- Remote Applications (RemoteApp)
The different versions of Server 2008R2 have different levels of functionality for the roles that we’re interested in: Network Policy and Access Services and Remote Desktop Services, so you should check using this hugely cropped table that I’ve made from lifting the information found on the Microsoft website about comparing server editions by role. Continue Reading →
Find my iPhone can work on iPhone 3 and 3GS too
I know, it’s probably not something that we should talk about too loudly lest Apple get upset, but it’s true, you can use the “Find my iPhone” feature that apple recently made free for the iPhone 4 with your iPhone 3 and 3GS, but there’s a trick to it: you’ll need a willing friend who does have an iPhone 4 for you to borrow.