Bladewatch.com

I was speaking with Chris yesterday, we were both working, he was rebuilding three hundred blades with Windows 2008, so it was interesting hearing what challenges he had and also quiz him on his build process, he uses Altiris, we’ll go into that shortly, but first he had some questions about FindMyFirmware, they were unscripted and as ever Chris remains below the radar, but rest assured the continues to save servers for a large enterprise in the Canary Wharf area.

So why FindMyFirmware?

It’s a simple concept it’s an application designed to provide basic information to cover those typical questions:

• How old is my server
• What firmware should I be running
• What are the server specifications

The application therefore is the filter and loads our own in house xml with firmware versions which we update once a month, combined with external content from the HP Support site direct, it’s all public information and all non competitive – the concept is to empower the user.

So is it a money making exercise?

Not really, firstly we have yet to make a profit, we spent a lot of time putting the concept together and then managing the development and uploading to the iTunes store. The £0.59 price is simply to help pay towards the development costs. I’m more interested in a tool that helps me and fellow end users first – who produces it, who owns it is less of an issue, and I’m not convinced it will ever make a direct profit, that’s fine.

When are Dell and IBM being added?

Ah right we have had a few questions on this, the short answer is that we are putting together some target Dell/IBM servers we started off with HP because I have worked on them for years and have a bit more product and support knowledge in that space. They will be added once we’ve put everything together and of course the added servers will be free.

How often is it updated?

Once a month, it’s meant as a quick reference guide and is not supposed to be legally binding or accurate up to the last five minutes, as with any piece of content you should check with the vendor first, but we do try to keep it as up to date as possible.

Were any of the vendors involved in this?

No, we just thought we would go ahead and get on with it, with the believe that since we were always thinking of the end user in mind, that we used public information and that there was no alterior motive, that they wouldn’t mind. We’d be happy to speak to anyone who wants to take part, either by supplying their own feed or in helping with version 2.0 when we start work on that, we wanted the end users to get used to our current application and make recommendations.

The design is rather simple

Absolutely, look the more simple it is, the more transparent and open to use it can be, the last thing you want in an application web or pc or handset based to do is to load several minutes of flash simply to say welcome. We will work on the interface to make the screen look nicer, but for the meantime everything is there.

Can we request features?

Yes of course, we’re happy to look at that, email me: martinmacleod@mac.com

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