In the beginning.....
This Blog is all about me trying to make things work in my world of IT.
I work in the publishing industry, though I am based in the less glamorous distribution arm, however we have all the interesting bits of the datacentre based within 10 meters of my chair.
We are a reasonable sized company which is part of a much larger company that is based in the US, which is itself part of an even bigger company in based in Europe. Someone is in charge of all these bits but to be honest I don't know who is in charge of the IT bits in the UK let alone anything else, they have names and faces on pictures but I have never met them or been around their house for tea or a glass of wine so they are just a nameless horde.
Anyway, we buy stuff from the big companies like HP, Dell, SAP and Microsoft, we use HPs VMS (that is someone else's problem) but we also buy crap stuff from elsewhere despite way to many meetings before we realise that the important person had already made their mind up.
My job is to try and make as much of the Windows stuff work as best we can, this has grown to include VMware, SANs, Fibre Channel, iSCSI, DAS, servers, different flavours of Windows, SAP, proprietary stuff, desktops, anti-virus, Altiris, good stuff, bad stuff and anything someone thought was good idea to buy for more money than I get paid in a year......
At the moment we are running mostly Windows XP desktops and mixture of windows 2003 and 2008 R2 on servers. We have bypassed Vista but have a limited Windows 7 role out to 2 of our 1200 PCs, ie mine and my Boss's. Next year we might be rolling it out if we get the budget approved, we may still do it even if we don't, as I have just worked out how to roll out Windows 7 images using Altiris DS 6.9, though in my defence I have spent the last year migrating 80 odd servers to VMware so have been a tad busy with more politics than I care for, this also involved a storage migration from HP EVA to Dell EqualLogic. VMware tip of the day is to just do it and tell them after the event, if they even notice.
For the most part I enjoy my job, it is varied and challenging, however, it is also hair pulling and annoying in the extreme. I shall try to avoid the usual end user rants and deal mainly with the absurdities of dealing with third party developers, weird IT departmental structures born of takeovers and a lack of gumption to sort it all out on the part of the powers that be and the general difficulties of dealing with global IT supplies for the strange world that exist outside of the United States of America.
When I first started here we had a mere 10 servers and around 750 desktops running a mixture of Windows 95 and NT spread across several sites. This is now 1500 desktops and 150 servers. Many technologies have been introduced; most of the beneficial ones have come in on the back of other system as sweeteners. One example was Altiris which came in as part of a hardware deal from HP for our Data Warehouse deal with a HSG based SAN which comprised 2 shelves of 14 disks and couple of controllers, soon to be expanded to 6 shelves. And so it began.
We have gone through EVA and now find ourselves at EqualLogic. Does it work? Like many things it depends on what your measruring. How often does that turn up?
I work in the publishing industry, though I am based in the less glamorous distribution arm, however we have all the interesting bits of the datacentre based within 10 meters of my chair.
We are a reasonable sized company which is part of a much larger company that is based in the US, which is itself part of an even bigger company in based in Europe. Someone is in charge of all these bits but to be honest I don't know who is in charge of the IT bits in the UK let alone anything else, they have names and faces on pictures but I have never met them or been around their house for tea or a glass of wine so they are just a nameless horde.
Anyway, we buy stuff from the big companies like HP, Dell, SAP and Microsoft, we use HPs VMS (that is someone else's problem) but we also buy crap stuff from elsewhere despite way to many meetings before we realise that the important person had already made their mind up.
My job is to try and make as much of the Windows stuff work as best we can, this has grown to include VMware, SANs, Fibre Channel, iSCSI, DAS, servers, different flavours of Windows, SAP, proprietary stuff, desktops, anti-virus, Altiris, good stuff, bad stuff and anything someone thought was good idea to buy for more money than I get paid in a year......
At the moment we are running mostly Windows XP desktops and mixture of windows 2003 and 2008 R2 on servers. We have bypassed Vista but have a limited Windows 7 role out to 2 of our 1200 PCs, ie mine and my Boss's. Next year we might be rolling it out if we get the budget approved, we may still do it even if we don't, as I have just worked out how to roll out Windows 7 images using Altiris DS 6.9, though in my defence I have spent the last year migrating 80 odd servers to VMware so have been a tad busy with more politics than I care for, this also involved a storage migration from HP EVA to Dell EqualLogic. VMware tip of the day is to just do it and tell them after the event, if they even notice.
For the most part I enjoy my job, it is varied and challenging, however, it is also hair pulling and annoying in the extreme. I shall try to avoid the usual end user rants and deal mainly with the absurdities of dealing with third party developers, weird IT departmental structures born of takeovers and a lack of gumption to sort it all out on the part of the powers that be and the general difficulties of dealing with global IT supplies for the strange world that exist outside of the United States of America.
When I first started here we had a mere 10 servers and around 750 desktops running a mixture of Windows 95 and NT spread across several sites. This is now 1500 desktops and 150 servers. Many technologies have been introduced; most of the beneficial ones have come in on the back of other system as sweeteners. One example was Altiris which came in as part of a hardware deal from HP for our Data Warehouse deal with a HSG based SAN which comprised 2 shelves of 14 disks and couple of controllers, soon to be expanded to 6 shelves. And so it began.
We have gone through EVA and now find ourselves at EqualLogic. Does it work? Like many things it depends on what your measruring. How often does that turn up?
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