This past weekend, I needed to be on the road driving home from visiting my brother in Tampa, but at the same time I needed to launch and check all our streaming on the web (my volunteer was in Ukraine on a mission trip). So I got to do both at the same time. I have a Cingular 8125 with the data plan (wish I had the 8525), and was able to connect via Bluetooth from my computer to the phone and get online. I was able to vpn into the network, launch VNC, start the streams and at least see status, all while driving down the road at 70 mph.
NOTE: I wasn't driving the car...just clarifying for those holding breath waiting for the accident part of the story.
The data connection worked rather well although it was painfully slow. It operate around the speed of 14.4 modem, spiking up to a 28.8 modem at times. The good news is, it worked.
I am due for an upgrade soon, and I can't wait to play with the 8525, or whatever is next... I am waiting for the next windows mobile device to support WM6, and high speed internet.
Here's one for ministry on the run!
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
When laptops are stolen?
Well, we are turning a new corner today in our Church History. We had our first laptop stolen last week. Our Youth Pastor was a mission trip with the teens to DC and NY, and somewhere along the route his laptop was stolen. We were blessed that is was a new laptop, and he hadn't copied any of his information onto the computer yet except for his sermons.
This has brought a very serious issue to bear (in my mind at least). We have pastors and other staffers walking around with laptops that could be potentially full of sensitive information. I have a new project to begin looking into what technology would make the best attempt to secure that data. I know EFS (Encrypting File System) - a technology in Windows XP / Windows 2003 domains, and I have heard about BitLocker in Vista, but I haven't had the time yet to figure it out. In the coming months I will look heavily into locking down the data on our senior staff laptops.
Anybody else facing this challenge, or faced it and through the other side?
Always looking and eager for a plug?
This has brought a very serious issue to bear (in my mind at least). We have pastors and other staffers walking around with laptops that could be potentially full of sensitive information. I have a new project to begin looking into what technology would make the best attempt to secure that data. I know EFS (Encrypting File System) - a technology in Windows XP / Windows 2003 domains, and I have heard about BitLocker in Vista, but I haven't had the time yet to figure it out. In the coming months I will look heavily into locking down the data on our senior staff laptops.
Anybody else facing this challenge, or faced it and through the other side?
Always looking and eager for a plug?
Monday, June 18, 2007
The SAN Question
Do I ISCSI or Fiber Channel? What are you guys who are reading this who have SANs doing? I have worked with both technologies in my past. I am familiar with the challenges that come with Fiber Channel, but I love the speed. I have also worked with IScsi Sans... Seems easy, but the actual performance left something to be desired. However, this is a church and I want be running heavy transactional 500 GB databases (well until we grow some more)...
Please comment and leave your thoughts...
Please comment and leave your thoughts...
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Volunteers in IT Ministry
At CCM we have used volunteers in a variety of functions and roles. One of our most successful areas of IT volunteers is that of our media conversion. Every week for every one of our services we have two volunteers that take our dvd's and convert them to podcast and our archive video / audio files. They post these to the website through an interface we created for them. This is a huge ministry at our church, and we are very thankful for them.
Another group of our volunteers takes old computers and prepares them for the mission field. This is actually headed up by one of our elders. The machines are reloaded with Fedora Core 6 and a host of software and then we send them to the mission field our missions teams.
Our live streaming on our website is started and monitored by yet another group of volunteers. They remotely log into our streaming encoders and start everything. Additionally they monitor the whole service making sure that the experience on the web is optimal.
Still looking for ways to engage volunteers in IT tech.
Another group of our volunteers takes old computers and prepares them for the mission field. This is actually headed up by one of our elders. The machines are reloaded with Fedora Core 6 and a host of software and then we send them to the mission field our missions teams.
Our live streaming on our website is started and monitored by yet another group of volunteers. They remotely log into our streaming encoders and start everything. Additionally they monitor the whole service making sure that the experience on the web is optimal.
Still looking for ways to engage volunteers in IT tech.
Central Florida CITRT Group
Anybody interested in getting the Central Florida group going? I am hoping that we can all get together before the end of the year.
CloneZilla: Open Source Disk Imaging
This has rapidly become my newest Cool Tool. Struggling with the Licensing of all the Symantec Stuff, I decided recently to begin looking for alternatives. Since we are using Mac / Wintel / Linux - I wanted to find a universal solution for ghosting / imaging computers.
http://www.clonezilla.org/
Clonezilla will image everything (according to it's webpage).
DISCLAIMER: do not read the page at the link above and freak out. That is the hard version of the software. The link you want to use to setup and create your own usb stick boot of Clonezilla is here: http://clonezilla.sourceforge.net/clonezilla-live/
If you follow the directions, you can create a USB stick that will boot up linux and walk you through the process of connecting to your server, and then allow you to dump / restore disk images.
I have tested this with my Windows Vista Laptop. I have both dumped an image of the entire system and restored it as well. Worked flawlessly.
What's better is that I did not have to do any driver configuration. I have been a long time user of BartPE for doing CD based booting of Windows and using Ghost32 for disk imaging, and Clonezilla boots MUCH faster, doesn't require the complicated rebuild process when I get a new machine, is as fast on the imaging end of things, and best of all IT'S FREE!
I hope to post some more tips for CloneZilla in the coming days. I am going to try to build a customized load where the server is automatically mapped, and maybe a custom menu.
That's all for now!
http://www.clonezilla.org/
Clonezilla will image everything (according to it's webpage).
DISCLAIMER: do not read the page at the link above and freak out. That is the hard version of the software. The link you want to use to setup and create your own usb stick boot of Clonezilla is here: http://clonezilla.sourceforge.net/clonezilla-live/
If you follow the directions, you can create a USB stick that will boot up linux and walk you through the process of connecting to your server, and then allow you to dump / restore disk images.
I have tested this with my Windows Vista Laptop. I have both dumped an image of the entire system and restored it as well. Worked flawlessly.
What's better is that I did not have to do any driver configuration. I have been a long time user of BartPE for doing CD based booting of Windows and using Ghost32 for disk imaging, and Clonezilla boots MUCH faster, doesn't require the complicated rebuild process when I get a new machine, is as fast on the imaging end of things, and best of all IT'S FREE!
I hope to post some more tips for CloneZilla in the coming days. I am going to try to build a customized load where the server is automatically mapped, and maybe a custom menu.
That's all for now!
Shelby ISC 2007
Just got home from Shelby ISC 2007 in San Antonio, Texas. Wow, there was so much to learn. Will have to begin blogging on how many things are changing in Shelby. A couple of highlights for other Shelby Users:
- In the fall release they are introducing a plugin for Office 2007 that will allow you to access GlobaFile information natively inside Office Apps.
- The current 5.7.1000 release can allow you do away with username / password for shelby and allow the system to inherit the system (Windows) authentication...very cool for casual users
- Arena --- Can't stop talking / thinking about this. The system (pricey, but cool) takes everything but the financials of shelby to the web. Our church hasn't integrated most of Shelby simply because we couldn't do much interfacing from the web. But with this, that will all change.
More Highlights to come.
- In the fall release they are introducing a plugin for Office 2007 that will allow you to access GlobaFile information natively inside Office Apps.
- The current 5.7.1000 release can allow you do away with username / password for shelby and allow the system to inherit the system (Windows) authentication...very cool for casual users
- Arena --- Can't stop talking / thinking about this. The system (pricey, but cool) takes everything but the financials of shelby to the web. Our church hasn't integrated most of Shelby simply because we couldn't do much interfacing from the web. But with this, that will all change.
More Highlights to come.
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