Trevor Pott is a full-time nerd from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He splits his time between systems administration, technology writing, and consulting. As a consultant he helps Silicon Valley start-ups better understand systems administrators and how to sell to them.
Oh no, sysadmins! VMware touts data centre that runs ITSELF
Storage bods, your time is up
Now that vCloud Suite 5.1 has arrived, VMware is pushing a new term: the software-defined data centre (SDD). It's easy at first to dismiss this as merely another marketing buzzword, meaningless PR babble like "cloud" or "synergy". If you poke your head behind the curtain, you'll find there's good reason for this newest bit of …
Thanks ever so much Java, for that biz-wide rootkit infection
Sysadmin blog Cup of coffee actually a carboy of toxic Kool-Aid
Right on cue, Java has responded to my hatred in kind. Shortly after I awoke to discover my previous article denouncing the language had been published, a client called to inform me his computer had contracted some malware. Java has, if you'll forgive the anthropomorphization of a bytecode virtualization engine, decided to exact …
Love vSphere? You're going to have to love Flash too
Trevor Pott gets hands-on with vSphere's new web client
If you're considering building your cloud infrastructure on the latest version of vSphere, you probably weren't banking on Adobe Flash being part of your set-up.
VMware has announced vSphere 5.1 and along with it an updated web based management client. Features new to vSphere 5.1 will only be available in the new web client, …
Why Java would still stink even if it weren't security swiss cheese
Sysadmin blog Nuke it from orbit - it's the only way to be sure
Java is horrible and I hate it.
Good, now there's a strong intro: attention grabbing, and it gets the natives all riled up. Sadly, the extremist sentiment of my statement is not that far from the truth. Hating or loving a logical construction such as a programming language is irrational, illogical and otherwise nonsensical. As a …
Tech conferences: Not just here for the FREE BEER
Sysadmin blog It's all about the social networking... bitch mate
Tech conferences have real value to sysadmins, something that goes far deeper than the cynical tropes of expensing beer out to the company or a free vacation. The excuse used to sell conference attendance to the brass is that they provide valuable training and a good look at upcoming technologies. The real value is in the …
Tech hacks should admit taking corporate coin, but don't start a witch hunt
Sysadmin blog One man's shill is another man's fellow fanboi
Judge Alsup has required Google and Oracle to divulge a list of their paid shills - the bloggers and journos they've paid to comment on their copyright court showdown. This sets a major precedent, the consequences of which could echo throughout tech journalism. While there is a lot of blitting in the back buffers over this, I …
Sick of juggling apps on biz PCs? This install tool will save your sanity
Sysadmin blog And how I got to buy the author a beer too
I've spent most of the past week in the San Francisco bay area. I've visited Nerd Mecca (Xerox PARC), various universities and Big Tech campuses. I've seen the Golden Gate Bridge, cursed San Francisco drivers, and discovered why Americans loathe AT&T. I've had a fantastic time down here, but the highlight of the trip has been …
Sysadmins! There's no shame in using a mouse to delete files
Sysadmin blog Only losers back just one side in the GUIs v CLIs holy war
I am curious about the thought process of some systems administrators.
When Linux is mentioned in an El Reg article, the discussion in the comments section can collapse into a tired debate of GUIs versus CLIs: a bitterly fought war over point-and-click visual interfaces in software versus typing out lines of commands and reading …
Fear not, Linux admins: There are TOOLS to help you
Sysadmin blog No, we don't mean the PFY down the hall
Most Linux distributions have a significant focus on security. This does not mean they are necessarily ready for production out of the box. Tools like SELinux, excellent firewall options, and robust access controls can make Linux exceptionally secure. Despite this, actually deploying a Linux system into production still requires …
Metro, that ribbon, shared mailboxes: Has Microsoft lost the plot?
Sysadmin blog More money for the same functionality
In a previous piece on Office 365, I discussed how difficult it was to enable public folders. The reality is that Office 365 doesn't support public folders in the traditional sense. Instead, to achieve a similar functionality to the most common use for public folders – a storage point for group emails – Microsoft have offered " …
Oil the wheels of virtualisation with 802.1Qbg
The magic of protocols
Virtualisation enables dynamic workloads within a data centre by easing and automating virtual machine movement.
While the ability to move any virtual machine from any system located on any rack to any other system located on any other rack has become commonplace, elasticity of network configuration has lagged behind. A new …
OpenFlow takes networks in a different direction
An easier route
As network topologies and data access patterns have evolved, load profiles can change so quickly that a completely new approach to networking is required. That approach is OpenFlow.
According to Renato Recio, IBM Fellow and system networking CTO, life before the advent of x86 virtualisation was simple: client computers did most …
Can you judge a man by his Twitter followers?
Sysadmin blog The enemy of my enemy is my Facebook friend
Is following someone on Twitter (or friending them on Facebook) an endorsement of that person? Social networking isn't going away, and increased corporate awareness of it means that systems administrators need to be prepared to answer these sorts of murky questions.
As a case study, I am going to pick apart my own use of social …
Forget internet fridges and Big Data. Where's my internet fish tank?
Sysadmin blog Trevor means an actual tank with fish, here
The Cloud is a great new way to store and access data, and Big Data is all about leafing through this stuff so you can figure out how to "target your audience" more accurately, almost always with advertising. These are the buzzwords of the now. Lost in all the hype is why we advertise stuff in the first place: we have something …
Sysadmins: Your best tale of woe wins a PRIZE
Competition Hey users, it's Sysadmin Day next month. We want cake
I'd like to share with you the plight of a good friend of mine. He's a systems administrator for a mid-sized American accounting firm. His story isn't particularly remarkable, but all the more important because of it.
Bob has a bachelor's in computer science, and a lot more experience than I'd normally expect someone clutching …
CIOs should fear the IP police ... have your get-out-of-jail files ready
Opinion Let's hope nobody wins this, it's disaster either way
The powers that be in the copyright world continually push for ever-stricter copyright with longer terms. They seek to externalise the cost of enforcement onto society at large. Society at large, on the other hand, wants easier, quicker access to content with fewer restrictions. Regular businesses can easily be caught in the …
Introduction to Virtualisation, Microsoft-style
Review Checking out latest MVA course
Microsoft has introduced a new series of tracks into the Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA).
These are introductions to various topics targeted at Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). SMEs being the bulk of my professional experience, I am curious, and have taken the opportunity to give one of these tracks a go.
The pick of the …
Office 365: This cloud isn't going to put any admins out of a job
Sysadmin blog Who says Redmond doesn't love you?
Moving all of your email onto Office 365 is pretty easy; making it work properly once it's there is another story. As a salable product, I find Office 365 extremely curious; it's workable enough if you have a decade or two's experience beating Exchange into submission ... but a little too complex for anyone else. The cloud is …
Start to finish: Building a cloudy service in two weeks
Feature Trevor dons overalls for Microsoft private cloud project
Wading through Microsoft's private cloud offerings has been a bit of a slog for me. My background is mostly VMWare and my experience of providing web services is largely Lamp-based.
A major element in Microsoft's play is the concept of services, and an outsider looking to learn the details of how these work may face a wall of …
Microsoft assembles a private cloud so you don't have to
Trevor's infrastructure drill-down
The backbone of a cloud is infrastructure. At its core, it is an attempt to deliver compute power, networking and storage as efficiently and responsively as possible. Every serious public cloud player has its own industry-leading approach.
From cookie sheet computing to custom networking gear to open-sourced infrastructure, …
Microsoft takes on the private cloud
Feature Trevor Pott's take on Microsoft
To many, private cloud is simply virtualisation plus management. But there is more to it than that.
There is an awful lot of misunderstanding surrounding such an important design concept, in part stemming from a lack of exposure to what is possible with today's technology.
Different vendors say different things based upon the …
I need to multitask, but Windows 8's Metro won't let me
Sysadmin blog Er, Microsoft? Multi = more than 2
What is multitasking? Different people seem to mean different things when they use the word multitasking. The definition chosen has implications for accepting or rejecting the prevailing design choices of modern user interfaces.
I have been a vocal critic of Windows 8's Metro interface. My chief complaint is that it does not …
Sysadmins: Chucked your Exchange servers up? Let's enable SSO
Sysadmin blog Keeping things simple for the users...
My previous article focused on migrating Exchange into Microsoft's cloud, but there is more to Office 365 than just Exchange. Single Sign On (SSO) between Office 365 and your local Microsoft domain can be a bit tricky. A proper implementation has high minimum requirements, and there are very good arguments against cutting …
Chuck Exchange mailboxes into the cloud... sysadmin style
Sysadmin blog UC certificates, MX records and how to make a teeny bit of extra dosh
How do we migrate Exchange mailboxes into the cloud? A customer of mine has recently approached me with a request to move his mail hosting into the cloud, and it had to include BlackBerry support. After some discussion of the options available, a hosted exchange solution was deemed best, with Microsoft's own Office 365 emerging …
The key questions you must ask to save your virty desktop dream
Sysadmin blog Shifting to stateless? Don't turn it into a nightmare
What is required for a successful stateless desktop deployment? Planning. Every implementation will be different, and experience has taught me that there are very few hard and fast rules.
Stateless desktops are non-persistent, meaning that they get destroyed every time the user logs off and returned to a known setup. Proper …
Finally, it’s the year of Linux on the desktop IPv6!
Sysadmin blog Are you following protocol?
One month from now, World IPv6 Launch Day with be upon us. Numerous online services will be enabling IPv6 and leaving it on. AAAA records will be published, and those of us with IPv6 enabled systems will start to use IPv6 preferentially to IPv4. But what does this all mean?
For the short term at least, the truth is "not much". …
Microsoft storage boffins serve up smoking 2012 NFS server
Sysadmin blog Lustrous clusters, bakeathons and the bleeding-edge
Developed by Sun, NFS version 2 was published as an IETF standard. Sun guarded NFS development for nearly two decades before handing protocol guardianship over the ITEF for version 4. This openness fueled adoption by the major UNIX vendors, even though most had their own competing protocols.
Deployment on Big Iron fueled …
Enterprise apps to bring bespoke BACK FROM THE DEAD
Sysadmin blog Yo SME sysadmins, break out your Hammer pants, it's the '90s again...
The '90s saw a boom in the development and acceptance of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software. Ever since, various analysts and pundits have predicted the marginalisation of custom software development. In the SME space, it has been hard to argue; the past two decades have seen COTS software dominate. But with the emergence …
New tech revolution: Small biz begins to lock out industry giants
Sysadmin blog VDI, BYOD, SaaS and cloud salad could free us all from vendor lock-in
Software as a Service (SaaS) combined with Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)-style technologies promise to free us from vendor lock-in once and for all. The consumerisation of IT, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and hybrid cloud-based applications are additional marketing buzzwords relevant to this discussion.
Each concept is ( …
Pirates not to blame for Big Media's sales plunge
Sysadmin blog Evil empire caught in logic loop ... arrrrrr
The RIAA and MPAA would have you believe that piracy is responsible for their decline in sales. This is all of course blame to be laid at the feet of computers, the internet and the generic "digital boogyman." Even without getting deep into the flawed math in play, there are other reasons for the middling returns on investment …
Learn everything you need to know about System Center 2012
Relax with the MVA videos
Among Windows systems administrators System Center 2012 is arguably the most hotly anticipated software release in nearly a decade.
Microsoft is at last taking the fight to VMware, and it is expending the resources necessary to ensure that sysadmins are prepared. One branch of the strategy is making good use of Microsoft Virtual …
Microsoft parts private cloud to reveal its infrastructure
Review Join the MVA
Brightly coloured videos with a cast of improbably good looking people and some upbeat music don't shift data-centre gear. Instead of the endless merriment of terrible marketing videos, Microsoft has focused on education.
Given that the vendor wants you to know about its private cloud technologies, it was just a matter of time …
IPv6 networking: Bad news for small biz
Sysadmin blog You may not get fired for buying Cisco, but you can go bust
IPv6 is traditionally a networking topic. Yet IPv6 is as much a business consideration as it is a technical one. As world IPv6 day rolls around again, we're going to see an ever-increasing amount of technical IPv6 coverage. Before we do, I think a business interjection is warranted.
IPv6 was neither designed for small biz nor …
Baffling barcode-on-steroids stickers plaster the EARTH
Sysadmin blog 18 years on, QR codes are getting even stickier
QR codes are everywhere. They have completely overrun Japan and are becoming well-established in the rest of the world as well. There are plenty of convenient uses for this technology, as well as several less carefully considered uses.
QR codes were created in 1994 by Toyota subsidiary Denso Wave. There was a need for a machine- …
Why Windows 8 server is a game-changer
Sysadmin blog More than just a few tweaks...
Windows Server "8" beta is out, and everyone reading this should sit up and take notice. This isn't a boring iteration on a previous server operating system wherein a few tweaks have been achieved and nothing really changes. Server 8 - along with the suite of associated 2012-ish server applications - is nothing short of a …
Windows 8: Thrown into a multi-tasking mosh pit
Sysadmin blog Ribbon rescue rope too slippery to climb
Does Windows 8 improve upon Windows 7 for the use cases that my real world customers and users demonstrate? After a week of tinkering with the consumer preview, the answer is far from simple.
Now that's what I call multitasking (click to enlarge)...
First up is the ribbon. For new users to a product, my experience correlates …
A sysadmin in telco hell
1-800 oh my £&$%&
At the best of times, telecommunications is a complicated field to navigate. Putting aside the technical difficulties of creating and maintaining a modern telecommunications system, customer support and regulatory compliance can be challenging burdens for organisations of any size to cope with. Even with the best and brightest …
US shuts down Canadian gambling site with Verisign's help
Got a .com URL? US law applies
The Department of Homeland Security has seized a domain name registered outside of the US, by individuals who are not American citizens, and who registered with a Canadian registrar.
What is unique about this case is that the American authorities did not get the domain's registrar - a Canadian company - to pull the domain. …
Wake up, small biz: Learn to speak internet
Blog Get searchable, get on Facebook - or lose your customers
Today I wanted to buy a metal business card case I could carry around in my pocket. I asked Google Maps politely if it knew where in Edmonton I could find such a widget, preferably on the way home. Google didn't have the faintest clue where I could get such a thing, no matter how delicately I phrased the request.
I eventually …
Telcos in Canada: Ethics, monopolies and regulation
Sysadmin blog How the Canadian regulator forces Big Biz to play ball ...
Telecommunications Politics in Canada is pretty standard. There are people worried that our regulator – the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) – has succumbed to regulatory capture. There is the common burden of institutional inertia and there are the usual sorts of shenanigans involving various …
What's in the box, Windows sysadmin?
Sysadmin blog What lurks inside the toolkit...
Windows is a powerful and complex Operating System (OS). As with any modern OS, it comes equipped with numerous features, utilities, and applications. But Windows' default tools are not always the best widget for the job at hand.
The ubiquity of these tools makes them a standard minimal toolkit that Windows administrators can …
Sysadmins: Don't get in your own way
Sysadmin blog Be prepared to try new and irritating things
I remember the first time I saw these automated supermarket tills. They intrigued me. Yet I was also afraid of the things. I was afraid that despite all of my knowledge and training I wouldn't be able to figure it out and I would end up looking like a fool. I avoided them for three years; the basis of this avoidance nothing more …
When a DNS outage isn't an outrage
Sysadmin blog Proper IT support and a snappy postmortem make all the difference
A little over a decade ago I registered my very first personal domain name. This domain was not registered for a client or an employer. This was a domain name all my own.
When I picked my DNS provider I picked one who was affiliated with the local technology magazine, and I picked them because they were Canadian. It was the …
Trevor goes hands-on with Microsoft Training
Screencap recap
Reg columnist Trevor Pott's recent review of the Microsoft Virtual Academy sparked several comments that largely said the same thing: "where's the pics?"
So we sent him back to the lab to flesh it out and he's returned with this screencap walk-through.
Watch Video
var MediaPlayerVars = {
'_': { 'http://youtu.be/5n5WYNh8nT0 …
Trevor and chums tackle IT certification
Podcast HR under the spotlight
Trevor Pott, along with his friends and colleagues, explores the benefits and pitfalls of training and certification. Do they think certificates are a good thing and worth the paper they're printed on. Or are they just a way for the less talented to get a bigger pay cheque?
Listen using the player below or download the MP3. …
Trevor explores Microsoft virtual training
Designs, UI and information overload?
I've spent quite a bit of time recently exploring Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA). Putting aside the site's content, I think that the website design itself is worth a discussion.
MVA runs on a clean, elegant website. What you need to find is easily found; what you need to do is easily apparent. In an era where information …
A preview of SOPA: Web shut down before my eyes
Sysadmin blog Hated anti-piracy laws will hit everyone
On Saturday, 7 January, a Canadian DNS host named EasyDNS winked out of existence. This was a preview of what SOPA promises to be like.
Suffering from a massive DDoS, all DNS services provided by EasyDNS simply ceased to function. Metacritic and DSL Reports are two examples of sites that affected me directly.
Random but …
DIY virtual machines: Rigging up at home
Sysadmin blog Set-ups for the time-rich and the rich-rich ...
A brief look at virtual machines for home use resulted in several requests for system specifications and configuration details. It seems some of you would like to take a go at replicating my setup.
The hardware is simple. The motherboard is an ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe, with an Intel Core i5 2500 CPU, two 8GB Corsair SODIMMS and an …
Microsoft's RemoteFX is fab - but will it play Crysis?
Sysadmin blog We all need something to do between emails and build runs
Microsoft supports two very different types of remote desktop computing: Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH) and Remote Desktop Virtualization Host (RDVH). Those of us who don't speak Redmondian know these technologies as Terminal Services and VDI, respectively.
But can they play Crysis?
RDSH takes a single instance of a server …
Virtual sanity: How to get a grip on your home PCs
Sysadmin blog Set up once, use again and again anywhere
Virtualisation can have a role in the home computing environment. Personal computers are kind of crap at migrating (or duplicating) your settings, applications and data from one system to another. Virtualisation can remove some of this grief.
In the consumer space, Windows PCs come preloaded with crapware. The shiny new notebook …
