This revealed a weakness in our hosting setup as both primary and secondary DNS entries are currently hosted with Telstra.
I’ll now change to a different secondary and tertiary dns host.

We’re also in the process of have fibre run between hosting and office in order to provide a diverse path, carrier and technology.

I’m really trying to eliminate as many single points of failure in the entire infrastructure but it’s amazing how many things you have to cover.

I’m aiming to one day get to the point where “failure is not an emergency”.

Well, yes there was a 50″ rear projection TV in my server room.
It was the foyer TV and the bulk off it stuck in to the server room.

Two problems with this.
A) heat. The unit vented into the server room.
B) size. That space has now become valuable needed space.

The server room is approximately 2.4m wide and 5m long. The raised floor and positioning of the doorway makes it just possible to squeeze in a 4th rack for new equipment.
With 1m deep racks and needing 800mm clearance at the front, that leaves only 600mm which was the space the TV was taking.

The Music Theatre Guild Awards are tonight followed by the Victorian Drama League Awards tomorrow night.

I have representation in both.
I have two lighting design nominations and am also part of a nominated ensemble group.
On top of that I’m directly related to about 6 other awards for best shows and technical and design awards.

The nominations for the VDL’s are somewhat different with nominations only being announced on the night.
The History Boys should be in with a very good chance for a few awards. Being the Technical Manager of this show I won’t be personally nominated but will be proud of any nominations or awards for the show.

I’ll be posting a few updates at the two ceremonies, and keeping a running commentary on Facebook.
(Ah technology)

Stay tuned.

http://m.facebook.com/profile.php?r7b604b8e&refid=7

Waiting at the Qantas Club waiting for my flight, I’m using a public computer to logon and check my email. (Laptop battery flat because I surrendered my power pack to a staff member who forgot theirs)

it’s interesting (but not surprising) to see the documents people have downloaded onto this public terminal but not deleted.
I did go looking for them but merely stumbled upon them when saving a temp document (nothing sensitive) myself.

Dividend reports, names and addresses, they’re all there.

Would you really want to trust a public terminal with private and confidential information?

This is also possibly a bad reflection on Qantas. They should have a more stringent cleanout policy in place to reset a system after use.

My advise:
-where possible, don’t use a public terminal
-never log into sensitive sites such as financial sites
-if you must, it must be secure, not clear text.
-where possible, use a web based service to access files. Citrix if your company offers it, that way no data leaves the corporate network.
-if you have to download files to the public machine, know where you save them and delete them. Directly opening a file from a browser will open the file from a temporary location you may not be able to find or delete. (Although it should get cleaned out)
-Always restart the computer when you are finished.
Many cleanout routines only take effect on a reboot and not a logoff.

My theory with the weather here is that it’s halfway between the great sunshine in Queensland and the unpredictable Melbourne. It’s staying true to that, with yet another trip of low 20’s and drizzle. (And it’s 30’s in Melbourne??)

Day 1 at the house was limited somewhat by only some of the roadcases being present due to a breakdown of the Melbourne / Sydney freight train.

I filled in my afternoon with a trip down the light rail line to Lilyfield and back to Star City. I hadn’t been into the casino (or any casino) for years so I thought I’d have a look. A sad state really; the people & the casino.
After putting $7 in a slot machine I decided I’d had enough excitement.

Time to eat dinner, then back to the hotel.

I recently recorded one for those that were not able to attend. Enjoy this brief introduction to Windows 7.

16 units imaged, configured and ready to start going to staff tomorrow.

Steps so far

1) Pxe boot & image
2) Install Altiris client off USB key
3) Post Image script & Driver install Job. (Altiris)
4) Software install jobs (Altiris)

There are a few other nagging bits and pieces I hope finish scripting.

The corner pile of laptop boxes disappeared but have been replaced with the stands and docks.

To make life easier, I thought I’d reconfigure a printer to use it’s network ability, but was short a network cable.

The nearest place at 4:30 on a Saturday of course was DSE.

$15 for a 1m network cable!
Actually, I wasn’t surprised, but still that’s pretty good consumer ripoff work.
(3m cable was $25)

Here’s an idea. Get rid of the fancy plastic packaging (which will be better for the enviroment anyway) and have plain or almost non existant packaging. $8 maybe? (And that’s still making a big profit)

This is only half of the boxes. There’s still the docking stations, notebooks stands and external monitors down in the loading dock.

I have managed to create a universal image to deploy to my machines. It’s not perfect, but will work.

Due to Windows 7’s relatively good native hardware support out of the box, so long as your platform stays the same (Intel or AMD) you can use the same image.
I use Altiris Deployment Server to do the actual imaging and then deployment, making use of PXE booting to a WinPE image.
It loads the Altiris client which I then assign the imaging task to. Completes in 5 minutes.

I do then have a USB key which I plug in and run batch script to delete the local user account used for initial image setup and also load the Altiris client (seems to have vanished after Sysprep).
From here on in, it’s all hands off. Every software application and Dell driver package is a scripted task.
I simply grab appropriate software that a staff member needs as well as drivers to suit the model of laptop and assign to be deployed to that unit. (along with joining the domain and naming the computer).

Well, this is all tested with our demo models. Let’s see how it goes in practice from Monday.