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Looking forward to see if 8 core processor from Intel is on it’s way, as well as Dell’s Via based server solution – very exciting!

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I’m all for reducing costs – but in the right way check out blog post on why IT isn’t delivering

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I’ve been busy over the last few days working with a local charity helping out with their pcs and it made me think about writing this post.  The complaints about their IT were as follows:

• PCs were slow and unresponsive
• Anti virus software was out of date
• They needed to check their firewall settings on each pc

I’ve posted some tips before about how to keep windows xp healthy and how to re-install windows xp the ‘industrial’ strength way.

With this in mind, I’ve outlined the advice and steps taken below:

1. PC’s were slow, first steps:
   1. Cleared down user temporary data c:\documents and settings\username\local application data\ contains temporary files, all your internet history etc
   2. Cleared down the $foldername$ (themicrosoft uninstall files – they’re blue or compressed) – we don’t need those, they’re in case we need to uninstall hot fixes
   3. Cleared down c:\windows\temp
   4. Checked applications running at startup and disabled ones we didn’t need – this is stored in the registry, hk_local_machine\software\windows run once.
   5. Run a chkdsk with fix option and rebooted computer to run
   6. Now closed all applications and run defrag of the disk
2. Anti virus software was out of date – update the definitions and checked all the settings – removed the scan on read and write options, set it to scan on write, also removed scanning of the page file.
3. Firewall settings – enabled and verified the windows firewall was ok – control panel, windows firewall – this is part of service pack 2.

I also upgraded the firmware on their dell pcs and checked their specifications so the charity knew what bits the pcs could have fitted. Macupgrades.co.uk is simply wonderful for this if you’ve got a mac – I really can’t praise them enough. Also if you’re looking for a few pcs, the sites I buy from are:

• Euro pc – they’re service is outstanding – they sell refurbished Dell/HP pcs and everything else
• 2ndchance pc for mac – bought a refurbished iMAC from them and they run MacUpgrades.co.uk
• PC Efficient on Ebay – I bought a few IBM laptops from them – brilliant service

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Oracle have announced some improvements to their offerings to make grid smarter which is very cool. Anything Oracle can do to make the different layers of the grid offering work together, remove the bottlenecks in the configuration and the communication to make a unified grid platform. I’m off to read up more.

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Check out this article talking about making IT projects deliver. It’s an ongoing challenge for many organizations big and small. How you tackle it in your business will depend on you, but consider the requirements, the delivery (end user experience) and ownership of issues, creating a unified go-live support platform during hand over. It doesn’t matter who takes the call initially, what matters is that the issues are owned and resolved, that it’s communicated to the end user.

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It’s great to see Hitachi has announced improvements to its BladeSymphony offerings based on the Intel Xeon 5500 processors which should bring improvements in performance and energy efficiency. The announcement includes improvements for memory support and throughput for virtualization/hpc solutions. I’m off to read up more.

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BLADE Network Technologies and IBM have teamed up to deliver a Fibre Channel over Ethernet solution, very cool. I think we’ll see the convergence of Ethernet and storage as the long term strategy, by that I mean the enterprise isn’t necessarily going to switch overnight, but for that next project or requirement, maybe for that blade solution we’re deploying, we might use that as the basis to get it in the door. I’m off to check it out, the more solutions that come on stream, the more choice for the end user community which has to be a good thing.

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Do check out this article talking about issues relating to IIS and see whether it affects your IT, your business. Consider as ever, that the first thing your service/support provider will ask when logging a call will be, are the firmware up to date and have all the patches/service packs been applied?

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This is very cool, anything we can do to de-duplicate data during the back up process has to be a good thing in terms of improving backup times, reducing tape/disk backup requirements, of being more efficient in the enterprise. I’m off to read up more.

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Check out this article talking about Dell to release a server platform based on the VIA chip? We’ll have to see, anything the vendors can do to improve the affordability of the server has to be a good thing for server sales, for new markets and new opportunities. Information on the Via chip can be found here. It would be great if I could deploy the equivalent of a mac mini farm powered by an affordable low cost processor for a Citrix or web farm?

I’ve updated this post, there’s a comment on the dell blog here.

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