Manda QoP

Last week I had the opportunity to attend a Google presentation in Auckland. It was a chance to catch up on the latest news from Google Apps and to also get a first look at an actual Chromebook. Chromebooks aren’t yet available (officially) in NZ and Ed from Google said that they’re due for release here early next year. If you can’t wait that long then Amazon are doing some good deals and you can pick one up from around US$350. If you haven’t already heard about the Chromebook, here’s the official info from Google . Chromebook Overview Uses Chrome browser as its user interface. Instantly boots to a web browser which can’t be closed as it’s the o/s. No gradual slow down as nothing is stored locally – it’s all online You can set up multiple logins on your Chromebook so that whoever logs in has access to their own Google apps Constantly up to date as apps are online and new apps are always being created Chrome O/S has built in security Built in wi-fi and 3G means you can

Unable to stand the pressure of not being able to check my work email whilst on the client site, I have given in to the empire and purchased a prepaid Darth Vodem. On the plus side, it only cost $90 and came with $40 free credit, then got topped up by another $10 when I entered my details online. Groovy. See folks, this is what happens when your IT people block gmail and some of your contractor's work email is gmail. This is going to happen more and more as people move more towards cloud based solutions and get rid of the servers cluttering up their server rooms.

This week's missions: Mission 1 Create a DynamicsCRM environment for peeps at work to play with. The plan is, 1 x virtual CRM server on Windows Server 2003 o/s, 1 x virtual SQL server (might just include that on the CRM server), 1 x virtual MOSS server (again, will include on the CRM server), 1 x virtual client that people can copy and destroy as they see fit. It's going to be hooked in to our actual domain/AD server. Still stuck on installing the server updates for the base o/s system.... could take a while this. Mission 2 Once we have signed our partner agreement, grab a copy of the CRM vpc that can be used for demos - very handily created by Microsoft so that it's all set up and ready to go with every option you could possibly think of adding to CRM. Jump on to Amazon and set up a 64-bit Windows 2008 server, stick the virtual demo on the cloud based server and see how we go running the vpc in the cloud. This one could be fun. :)

Notes from Chris Auld's presentation at TechEd 09. Again, as with the other TechEd blogs, these are just notes that I can use to find out further information when more time is available. :) Azure: High scale application architecture Consolidate traditional IT to the cloud Move servers and apps out-house Reliable hardware in the cloud Virtualize to the cloud Manage explosive growth (scale out cloud) Scale out clouds are built around disposable hardware Reliability is built using software Scale out cloud is load balanced by default Greeness - PUE (power usage effectiveness) = Total Facility Power / IT Equipment Power. Google and Microsoft are getting around 1.10 to 1.25 PUE. Intergen server room is running at about 1.6 PUE. MS cloud offering = Windows Azure, .NET Services, SQL Azure Azure sits you above the abstraction layer (IMAGE TO GO IN HERE) Compute source (IMAGE TO GO IN HERE) Load balancer is key part of Windows Azure RoleEntryPointStart() has no return value. Always whi