IT Professional Report - Read here the answers I got asking thousands of IT professionals around the globe.

Firstly  Amazon EC2 is part of Amazon’s AWS services and it allows you create and run computer instances on Amazon’s huge computer farm (cloud).

You can run pre-build images of Windows, Linux, Solaris with a host of pre-set applications and databases. There are alternatives as well mentioned here… The lowest single CPU machine Amazon EC2 provides could sum up to ~$1200 for a full year 24X7 instance. This sum could be non-trivial to take compared to a similar machine that you could buy. That is unless you take into account the fact Amazon actually saves you money for electricity, cooling, maintenance, etc which could sum up quiet a bit, specially since using Amazon allows you to use it only when you need it…

Here are the responses I got so far (please do post a comment if you have something to add…)

• AppZero runs Windows Server Apps in the Cloud ( EC2, Gogrid ) - http://zone.appzero.com You can spin up a Server 2003 32 bit AMI on Amazon. visit , and select one of the 3 tier ( web/appserver/database ) virtualized apps - and in a couple of clicks - they just run with Zero install. AppZero handles many Windows server apps e.g. commercial ERP software that otherwise takes a long time to set up - can be instantiated on EC2 in a couple steps that take minutes.
• A quote from one of our members that reminds me of the early days of Client/Server and other new technologies…”Cloud computing is fantastic on paper. In the real world, I’m not sure how it works out”
• A reference to a very successful project including OCR scan of more than 17,000 WhiteHouse diaries in 26 hours only! - “EC2 made it possible for this project to happen at the speed of breaking news. I used 1,407 hours of virtual machine time for a final expense of $144.62″ More info here
• Go to http://www.cloudclimate.com for a comparison between several leading cloud computing providers such as Amazon EC2 as well http://www.newservers.com As to NewServers - These are dedicated servers…so it might look as if it does not match EC2 ability to provide dynamic expansion of computing power. However in the end, it depends on what you’re trying to do and how you define ‘expandable’.
• Citrix, Vmware and XEN have all jumped on the cloud wagon, but we still have to try it out. For now it looks like Amazon got a foot in the door first. As to Microsoft, they have Azure, but not sure they will go beyond their offering of API’s and infrastructure services and into actual computer instances.
• Another IT Professional said: “Amazon EC2 is great. It has nice interfaces and it’s well documented. We have deployed several applications to EC2 including an infrastructure monitoring solution for systems and applications. Many software vendors are making AMI’s (Amazon Machine Images) available to EC2 customers that have their software already deployed and configured. IBM is an example. All you need to do is to read the licensing terms, but some stuff can be run for free in Test/Dev”.
• There are challenges as this IT professional reports: “Unfortunately, the setup to select the instance, launch it, and set up storage for the instance, if you want to save changes seems kind of complicated for a newbie user trying out cloud virtualization. There’s also a small player called WitsBits.com that offers a similar solution to Amazon EC2 but is based in Europe
  and billing is done through prepaid account balances instead of monthly billing.
  I looked through the docs, and it appears simpler to use as well. Pricing is similar to Amazon as well. The one challenging part with this service, is that they don’t have prebuilt Windows instances. You’ll have to build your own as with local virtualization (VMWare, MS Virtual
  PC/server, etc.). They do have prebuilt instance for Linux, one based on Ubuntu. But it is
  likely a lot easier to use than EC2, even though you have to initially build your
  Windows image first”.
• Another response: “The big game players in the industry today as for VMware ESXi and Citrix XEN, Amazon gives just a taste of it - among its limitations: no save upon restart, no snapshots. XEN has an advantage - its free version includes the equivalent of VMware’s Virtual Center”. My thoughts about this response:
  • Not sure XEN now supports Windows guest without relaying on full virtualization (which runs slower compared to the state where the host and guest kernels communicate with each other). Maybe SuSE XEN has this integration…thanks to the Microsoft/SuSE co-operation.
  • Using XEN - you still have to maintain the hardware, electricity, cooling while Cloud services will allow you to kind-of-avoid those expenses.
  • Theoretically one can use Amazon EC2 to host a Vmware or Hyper-V server and this instance will run in it a full VM with all the snapshot and other capabilities…
• I asked Moshe Kaplan, a cloud expert (http://top-performance.blogspot.com) “I’d like to be able and launch a varying number of instances for ad-hoc testing. I already heard that Amazon lacks the snapshot/reset/suspend feature… I am wondering what are the main lessons learned using Amazon as well as other solutions.” And Moshe (who works for http://www.rocketier.com) says: “It can be done. However, you should be very creative to implement it. Basically you should save an image and load it from scratch every time and attach it to storage. If you are interested, we developed an entire product around this concept that enables software vendors migrate to SaaS approach without rewriting a single line of code”. For now I still have to figure out How does Amazon insure you get locality of communications between your own machine instances on EC2 as well as to their shared storage (say on Amazon S3)
• Another new Amazon EC2 related service allows you to send your pre-loaded images via snail mail on DVD or USB stick and have it preloaded to your Amazon EC2 machine image (AMI). This Amazon service will save you time and money loading it via the internet…
• Pini from STKI, a major Israeli IT consulting company says “One of our client from the financial sector has tested products on Amazon EC2 instead of virtual of physical servers”. Pini could not expand on this yet, but we hope to hear more details about this soon…
• Sun have 2 new resources related to their cloud solution: Sun’s Cloud doc: https://www.sun.com/offers/details/CloudComputing.xml
  and the signup page for Sun’s Cloud Beta tester program - https://www2.sun.de/dct/forms/reg_us_2409_516_0.jsp

All in all, it looks like Amazon EC2 and similar solutions are becoming a reality and although they do have lacks, companies who wish to save money and time on their computing infrastructure should consider a small project that verifies the validity of cloud computing for their needs and creates, slowly but surely, the proper adjustments to company’s procedures.

Here is how you can help us:

1) Please do contribute your questions and comments here

2) sign up here for our mailing list to get early notifications for future similar special reports

3) Send an invite to your IT Professional friends to join our mailing notifications at  http://itprofessional-mastermind.com

P.S. Feel free to download picks of the week on the top right side of the blog here.

Yours,

The IT Professional Master Mind Team.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

IT Professionals and accountants

I heard sometime that accountants are rated at the top of the stressful jobs list.

I think that is dead wrong… It is the IT Professional, who’s under huge stress.

Both professions require accuracy, keeping a hawk’s eye on details and

ever making sure no one is hurt by what they are doing. When they do a mistake,

it could have huge impact on many people…

IT PRO and The Story of 2 failed disks.

Once upon a time there were two small little disks.

They rotated happily and spitting out data and from time to time swallowed some bits as well.

They were not alone.

Together with them there were few other disks running and throwing bits and  bytes at each other.

They were all in the same secret group - the RAID5 group.

One day bad electricity surge boy came along and hit one of them…really hard and so the disk failed.

The other disk was shocked so much, that he could not spin no more.

And so the whole RAID group dropped dead that very moment.

FIX FIX FIX - Completely FIX!

Since the 2 failing disks could not be fixed, a service technician was called upon.

He rushed away bringing new disks to replace with the failed ones.

Actually,  the technician was so happy to help that he brought a whole new set of disks rather than just two.

He was worried about the way the two disks failed and wanted to make sure COMPLETELLY

that there would be no chance for a failure on the other disks in the group.

As he was getting ready to walk away with the bad disks, I said “STOP!”

The tech guy said “Why? What happened? Aren’t you happy?”

I said - “Put your hands up in the air and give me all the bad disks!”

The reason why I wanted the bad disks.

Why on earth would I want to keep the bad disks?

I should be restoring my data from tapes to the new set of disks - right?

Why should I care about the bad disks, their data is gone anyway - right?

Well…maybe not…

What happens if I find out the data on our backups excludes very important items…

critical items…which I can’t find anywhere…except on the bad disks…

How on earth can you recover data from a failed disk, which is part of a RAID group?

As an IT Pro, you probably know that each file stored on a RAID5 disk set,

will be spread across the group’s disks.

And so COMPLETE recovery would be almost impossible, specially if 2 of the disks in

the group have failed , resulting in the miss of the chunks  of the files they had stored - right?

Well, actually if you know a bit about Computer Forensics you are already guessing that

even thought one cannot COMPLETELLY recover the data in this failed group, he can

still recover some files…maybe the critical files that are missing.

IT Professional and The Amazing Powers of incompleteness

We IT professionals always want to Completely fix things.

We don’t like loose ends.

We want clean data, situation resolved, close all holes, failing disks trashed, COMPLETELY.

That’s great. However, I found out that many times when I accept incompleteness

it opens up better or new possiblities.

So before you run around fixing everything, solving all the issues, consider that maybe

not all issues have to be COMPLETELLY resolved. Sometimes a workaround is just fine.

Sometimes it is good to keep the failed stuff around…it may be better than the

new shiny stuff you put in place

P.S.

Do let me know your thoughts…

P.P.S.

If you enjoyed this post, please take the time and

download one of more of our white papers and reports in the vault.

You’d enjoy them and the contributors of those reports will be happy…and so will we.

Yours,

Jack.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Both me and you earn our living using our IT knowledge.
Each time you help another friend and get their huge thanks, you start
thinking “I really should be doing some more income with all
my knowledge”, specially those days.

If you want to turn your knowledge into additional income, creating eBooks,
special reports, how to videos and other “Information Products” -
then you’re going to want to download and read this new free report
that’s just been published.

It’s called the “Marketing Voodoo” report, and it teaches you two of the most
valuable and important lessons for increasing the value and price of the information you have.
It was written by a guy who runs a $25 Million per year Information Product business.

Inside, you’ll learn how to NAME your concepts and products to increase their value,
and how to “translate” the value of what you’re teaching into terms that make
your information worth a LOT more in the mind of your prospects.

You can download it right now by going to this page and opting-in to read it:

http://budurl.com/ITGuru

I’d really love to  know what’s your thoughts about this report - so please do comment here!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

know you are are already saving your data the right way.

But your friends and neighbors are probably not doing so.

And then the phone rings in the middle of the weekend and they ask for your help…

Their disk got broken…
Their computer got stolen…
A Virus totally ruined their files…
They have accidentally erased files worth 3 months of hard work…
And their backup on disk or CD does not work (if they had any!)
Result: You loose lots of time helping them out.

Well, I have been testing and recommending Mozy as one of the easy backup solutions
(2GB and more free backups with option for unlimited for $5 a month)

Here is how Mozy can help your friends:

You can forget to backup - Mozy will do it Automatically!
You can forget about your PC - Mozy will restore anywhere!
You can Forget about Paying Tech Support - Anyone can restore using Mozy (Like File Copy…)
Doesn’t matter if you have a PC or MAC - Mozy runs on both!

I have created a short PDF with exact how-to screen shots showing how to setup
and use Mozy.

It takes only 22 mouse clicks to save one PC, then another, then another, until we save the whole world

Send the link to this page to your friends so they can use it and get more info from me on how to use it.

Click Here the Simple How-To (LIVE Screen Shots)

Sign-Up now to Get Mozy Backup Critical info
Email:
Name:

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

IT Professional quick report –

5 New Tips for saving money on your IT budget

• How to Boost Performance and save money as a result
• How to have ZERO surprises…and save money gone on fixes…
• How to use Alignment to save expenses
• Develop ZERO time adjustment to change and save money
• How to commute and multiply corp. knowledge to save money

Take it here.

Let me know how it was…

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I think we are a lot a like…

We don’t have a spare minute during our workday and even not afterwards when we’re at home, spending time with our dear ones, taking care of our health, maybe enjoying hobbies on the weekends.

Even so, at all times we want to know more, get ahead of the crowd, learn and prepare ourselves for our next non-trivial assignment…

Our forum here as well as few other leading ones are a place of inspiration.
and assistance as well as contribution.

And then, we don’t have the time to review, read what’s important,
get to the end of a discussion and summarize the bottom line.

I have been thinking about this a lot.

I think I have a solution.

I am considering to launch a companion that will escort you on this journey.

The current idea is based on a weekly AUDIO summary of the best
discussions for IT Pros.

No more than 65 minutes a week (so you can burn it to CD if you like, or put on your MP3 player).

I’d like to have your advise on this one…

Click here to assist

Now, since Linkedin Polls are a $1 for each response, I am putting here
a link to a free survey service and I’d like to ask you to answer two
simple questions there.

Here is the link:

Click here to assist

Yours,

Jack.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Dell did $1,000,000 on twitter http://tinyurl.com/byqjo3

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Sometimes we, as IT Professionals get lucky to receive a project request ahead of time…

So we have enough time to brainstorm with our team, plan,

imagine all the disasters that could happen and create a backup plan.

Usually you would create a check list or even a project plan (using tools

such as Microsoft project).

But did you notice that many times you suddenly think about important stuff

and then it gets complicated to insert your intuitive idea, or gut feel

in the right position at your check list.

Why? because it is just an idea and then more ideas may float.

The whole process gets even more complicated when you get an urgent project.

And let me guess…you got lots of those…right?

So my secret method old-times method to combat those situations was

to take a clean big piece of paper and then draw my team’s ideas and link them to

to each another.

Then we would put marks showing what is critical and which goes first, second

and so on.

As we complete our brainstorm, I would take this drawing and turn it into

a checklist.

Each time we would have another idea we would put it in the drawing,

and repeat the process.

This has saved me lots of time effort, blood and tears…

But, thing is I could share this drawing easily or keep it from the seeking eyes

of the cleaner who would through my masterpiece to the garbage can.

Until I found this free amazing tool:

http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

It has all the basic tools you need to create a map of your ideas, brainstorm with your

team and let others reuse it!

I will be starting to create and share some of those maps with you.

But if you already have a need for a specific process map, let me know

and we might work on it first.

Also if you have a process map you can share, please post it…

Talk to you soon.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Just finished a Win2k3 2 Clusters with DFS on ESX3.5 U2. Works like a charm…

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Check out Microsoft’s Free Hyper-V Server…Review here: http://budurl.com/r8qa Comparison Free Vs. Paid here: http://budurl.com/8hqg

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

From the Internet.com eBook Library: Navigating Your IT Career

“…A career in information technology usually has its share of
ups and downs. Download this Internet.com eBook to learn
where the jobs are in IT, how to negotiate a salary, and
helpful advice on job security and how to deal with a layoff…”

I have read this short report and tend to agree with many items posted
there about the future of IT in the following years.

I think you should read it.

This includes:

• IT Outlook: Less Confidence, But Plenty of Opportunities
• Seven Hot Tech Skills That Employers Need
• Data Center Skill Sets, Keeping It Fresh
• Five Tips for Staying Employed in IT Through 2010
• IT Headhunters
• The Guide to IT Headhunters

You’ll have to Join http://www.Internet.com to download the report here:

Navigating Your IT Career

Yours,

Jack.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Guess we are all a bit worried those days…hearing and seeing all the recession related news…

I was thinking how we can shine above all this, and help our companies as well

as ourselves to succeed and go through all the challenges…

So I want to share with you several resources I have found.

I’ll mention here the first one.

But I want to share with you first a short story that relates to it.

My boy has just started to become interested in girls…

And he asked me to bring him books about girls in his age.

He wanted to know what interests them, what troubles them and so on.

So I asked, why he’s interested in what girls go through instead about what

happens to boys.

He said “Dad, you told me that the best way to succeed in business is learn

every thing you can about the other person you want to partner with”.

So here is a resource that will help you to get to know your partner

in your workplace…that is your employees and your employee.

Its about knowing what the other person is concerned of and what

methods he uses to measure and grade…”

Go to http://www.smarttopgrading.com/TGO/index.cfm

and sign-up for their fr-ee newsletter as well as the fr-ee eBookand learn how to get

and empower the best employee, as well as how to become a better employee.

• Avoid Costly Mis-Hires A 50-page ebook overview of Topgrading best practices.
• Learn how leading companies achieve 90% good hires
• Know your company’s costs of mis-hires
• Tips to source high performers without running ads or using recruiters
• How to save 15 hours pre-screening candidates
• Learn the most revealing interview questions
• How to get former bosses to talk to you in reference calls
• Cost of Mis-Hire Form, so your team can easily see the high costs of not using Topgrading methods.

Here is the book if you want to buy it. I do recommend.

The free eBook summarizes the book…

Please do comment here in the blog what worries you

and if you want to run our first Master Mind call and

empower each other.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Working on internal corp IT Blog “IT Reports from the Trenches” - think about this..will leverage everyone involved->Important those days..

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Dear IT Pro, Here is a Summary of IT Professional MasterMind Tech Nuggets 01 Oct 2009

You can get those updates at real time by following me on twitter at:

http://twitter.com/itpromastermind

Microsoft has released Windows HPC Server 2008, the successor to Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 http://is.gd/2XPa 12:42 AM September 25, 2008  from web

Myspace have more VMs than Oracle !!! http://tinyurl.com/6xfldq 06:36 AM September 17, 2008 from web

VT FlexMigration - new intel hardware hook allows hardware based VMs migration http://tinyurl.com/6xfldq 06:36 AM September 17, 2008 from web

Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) version 4.5 has been released. Formerly known as SoftGrid, App-V 4.5 http://tinyurl.com/5dppfu 06:17 AM September 17, 2008 from web

Vmware and Citrix cloud solutions - question when will they mature&leap beyond proven solutions such as Amazon S3 http://tinyurl.com/654k95 06:13 AM September 17, 2008 from web

VMware release Fusion 2.0 for running Windows on Mac, better performance and integration  http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=10049 05:55 AM September 17, 2008 from web

XEN5 seem to further match VMware ESX Server, including massive storage support+mgnt platform. $900 per server. http://tinyurl.com/5jzrue 05:47 AM September 17, 2008 from web

DMTF OVF- new Open Virtualization format v1.0: Migration and mgnt of VMs across Dell,HP, IBM,Microsoft,VMware,Xen http://tinyurl.com/5wa6df 05:41 AM September 17, 2008 from web

I am running HP Virtual machines Windows and HPUX guests, soon Linux as well. What are U running under HPVM?  http://twitter.com/ITProMasterMind/statuses/924538919 05:29 AM September 17, 2008 from web

Dell offers new servers pre-set for virtualization as well as 10-Gb Ethernet and 8-Gb Fibre Channel switches http://tinyurl.com/6pgc6g 05:26 AM September 17, 2008 from web

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Microsoft has released Windows HPC Server 2008, the successor to Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 http://is.gd/2XPa

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

You probably know that feeling, as you start reading an amazing life changing book…

It grabs your attention from page one, like a rabbit hypnotized by your car’s lights,

you want to read more, drink it all at once, although you know you will go

through major hurdles…but you know it is worth it.

That’s “The Dip”, by Seth Godin.

Seth is a well-known marketer, business development trainer, a great teacher

and he’s touching the most painful pain-in-the-back Entrepreneurs have.

Its all about whether you should keep on going with that new business or through it

to the dogs.

Seth shows you so simply how you identify a winner business or mission that

are worth getting over the dip for. You can easily see which projects you should let bite the dust.

Here is what you’ll get as you read it or listen to it - IT WILL SAVE YOU OODLES of TIME AND MONEY

• Why should you aspire being “the best in the world” at least on one niche (hint: #1 ranked players get a huge percent of the market)
• Why being better than most of the competition is not enough anymore
• Why are your biggest competitors actually your best allays
• When should you quit and when should you go through the challenges
• How to recognize when you can’t make it through the effort (then don’t even start!)
• Why our natural behaviors cause us to miss success, just right as we are close to it
• Why are we attracted to success stories?
• Why are all the “Immediate Success” stories unreal
• Why is are world dependent on dips and struggle and on having most of the people give-up
• why is compromise - your worst enemy , as you see a real job security
• why smart quitting is not the same as failing
• How to succeed getting the job you want
• how to stick with your strategic decisions and quit the losing tactics
• The problem with coping with “what is” and why you are better of, quitting
• Why you should decide on what terms you quit, before you start your project
• Why you should not quit when you are in a panic state
• Why we fail only by continuing doing tasks we don’t have the guts to quit
• What is the “Dip” and why it is your best friend if you want to be the best
• How does the “Dip” lead to scarcity and to success
• How trying to influence the market is more powerful than influencing one person

If you haven’t yet started seeking like a crazy for “The Dip“,

Instant Download “The Dip” Audio

OR —

Get the Book from Amazon:

The Dip

Seth Godin

Best Price $7.15

or Buy New $10.15

Privacy Information

And do let me know what you think of it!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Myspace have more VMs than Oracle !!! http://tinyurl.com/6xfldq

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

VT FlexMigration - new intel hardware hook allows hardware based VMs migration http://tinyurl.com/6xfldq

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) version 4.5 has been released. Formerly known as SoftGrid, App-V 4.5 http://tinyurl.com/5dppfu

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Vmware and Citrix cloud solutions - question when will they mature&leap beyond proven solutions such as Amazon S3 http://tinyurl.com/654k95

Bookmark It

Hide Sites