I jumped right into the videos and immediately recognized my instructor for the course, J. Peter Bruzzese, from his Twitter account. As you can see, he is well qualified to be the instructor for this course. Not only was I impressed with his knowledge of the subject, but also the way he was able to present the information. He is very well spoken and does a great job of explaining the ins and outs of Exchange.

In this DVD set, J. Peter Bruzzese uses a fictional company called Globomantics to give you a real world scenario of an Exchange 2010 deployment. Globomantics is an International company with various challenges including security, disaster recovery, and users who demand things that need to be supported. As the Exchange admin, you’re responsible for making these exceptions and the instructor does a nice job of configuring the various settings to support the requested functionality.

In one of the first videos he discusses how his lab is configured using a virtual lab environment. He also provides information on how to configure Exchange with Active Directory and DNS on a single server(for test environment only). This is very helpful if you’d like to test Exchange and/or learn hands-on with the videos without spending a lot of money buying multiple physical servers. In addition to discussing his lab setup and how one might create their own, we get an overview of the Globomantics geographical layout and some of the challenges we will be facing with an Exchange 2010 deployment.

The instructor then proceeds to break down each role(Mailbox, Client Access, Unified Messaging, Hub Transport, and Edge Transport) into their respective functions within a messaging environment. Going into the training, I was aware of the new roles introduced in Exchange 2007, but I wasn’t sure what the interaction of each role would be. Learning this interaction has given me a better understanding of how to utilize the concept of roles to improve the security, availability, and functionality of my Exchange environment.

Another big takeaway was that no matter what your experience is with Exchange, you’ll want to make sure you know how to use PowerShell. I have some PowerShell experience for managing a vSphere environment, but did not realize how tightly integrated PowerShell is with Exchange. You are shown how to use PowerShell cmdlets to not only save you time with an Exchange deployment, but also daily management tasks.

There are 40 lessons in the three DVD set and I believe you will find each one interesting. To be honest, I was more excited about some topics than others, but even the ones I wasn’t that excited about I enjoyed. You can jump from one lesson to the other and not feel like you’re viewing them out of order. There is a nice introduction to each lesson topic and at the end a summary of what was discussed.

I was really impressed with this DVD training series. I feel much improved in my knowledge of Exchange 2010 and I hope to apply that knowledge to my own environment whenever the time comes to upgrade from Exchange 2003. These DVD’s will also provide me with reference material to possible issues that may arise from a future migration. I highly recommend this DVD set if you’re looking to pass your Exchange Server 2010 exam, wanting to learn more on the new features of Exchange 2010 or even if you have no Exchange experience.

I wanted to thank Train Signal and Patrick Redknap for giving me the opppurtunity to watch and review this release.

To get started, you’ll need to setup a TeamViewer account here. Once the account is created, download and install the desktop client. The client was already installed on my machine, so some of the steps below can be performed during the installation of the software.

Sign into your newly created account using the local client.

The “Partner List” now appears. There are no partners configured for this account, so let’s add the current machine to the account.

Click on the link “Configure permanent access to this computer,” which will allow us to use an unattended connection(no one is required to be on the other end to allow the connection).

You will need to choose a password for each “partner” that will be added to your TeamViewer account.

You can add a partner either through the local client or through http://www.teamviewer.com. The example below uses the website. Choose “Add new partner” and select the “TeamViewer-ID” radio button.

Use the ID listed in the client and give the computer a descriptive name in the “Alias” field.

Now the partner list has the newly added machine.

Here’s the same partner on the iPhone client.

This should help you get started on connecting remotely to your computers over a secure connection. You don’t have to open any ports or configure your firewall. It just works. Try it out and let me know what you think!

An example of how to use Evernote on a business trip would be if you’re taking clients out for dinner. If you need to document who attended, take a picture of your receipt using the mobile Evernote app. Add attendee information to the note. You could also take a picture of their business card in a separate note. The geolocation information of the note will show who attended dinner at that particular restaurant.

I don’t take pictures of every receipt with my phone(though you could). I usually scan the majority of my receipts into my computer using a Scansnap S300. This particular scanner integrates perfectly with Evernote, as the scan is imported directly into Evernote. You can use any scanner, but you’ll have to manually add each scan into Evernote or configure Evernote to monitor a folder(e.g. your default scan folder).

Let’s take a look at the Evernote Windows client and see how it’s used to organize the collected expenses.

You can create “Notebooks” to help organize your notes. This is good for keeping work notes separated from personal notes. As you collect more notes, having separate notebooks helps narrow your searches.

The arrow to the left of the Notebook denotes the Default notebook for Evernote to use when receiving notes(e.g. via email or scanning). You can change the default folder(Right-click the desired notebook->choose properties->check “Make this notebook default”).

When I go to expense my trip, I simply go to the expense tag I created for that trip. My expense site requires a PDF of all the receipts, so I select all of my notes and choose Print. I select my CutePDF printer to print them into a single PDF.

There’s plenty of customization with the program, so try it out and let me know how you use Evernote to keep track of your expenses.

]]> https://vtrey.wordpress.com/2010/09/18/organizing-expense-reports-with-evernote/feed/ 2 treyanderson11 Evernote - Tags Edit Note Dinner Evernote Evernote - Notebooks Evernote - Tags Final PDF https://vtrey.wordpress.com/2010/09/06/vmworld-2010-family-made-it-possible/ https://vtrey.wordpress.com/2010/09/06/vmworld-2010-family-made-it-possible/#comments Mon, 06 Sep 2010 20:14:59 +0000 http://vtrey.wordpress.com/?p=490 Continue reading →]]> *This post is not intended to be negative in anyway towards my employer. Companies globally have cut back on travel expenses in the last two years due to the economic downturn.

For the past two years, I’ve been trying to get approval for VMworld without success. This year would prove no different. With a travel freeze in place, I could not get approval. I kept explaining to anyone who would listen how important VMworld was to attend. In addition to discussions on futures, expert sessions, and participation in the VMworld labs, the biggest benefit I saw was meeting the people in the virtualization community.

As the event drew closer, I began to concede that I would not be  able to physically participate in VMworld. About three weeks before the start date, my mother called saying she’d be turning 65(sorry mom for mentioning your age – it’s key to the story) in late August. She would be receiving her first social security check and thought it’d help get me to my first VMworld! That got the ball rolling and soon after my Mother-in-Law offered to pay for my hotel! A guy couldn’t ask for a more supportive family. I’ve thanked them several times, so much so they’ve told me to stop thanking them!

I submitted for vacation time and once that was approved, I booked my pass, hotel, and flight. A few weeks later I was on my way to San Francisco for my first VMworld! The event exceeded all my expectations! And yes, meeting the people from the virtualization community was the best part.

My next post will be on how building relationships through Twitter, allowed me to get the most out of VMworld(hint: build your relationships before going).

The map has been embedded in a few sites, which is very cool to see. It’s also being used to complement the great list of events at VMworld 2010 Gatherings & Activities.

Please feel free to contact me, if you’d like an event added to the map. And don’t tell me you got lost at VMworld!

Please feel free to leave a comment on anything you’d like to see added to the Calendar. The more information I have, the better the calendar will be for the VMworld attendees.

The VMworld 2010 Events Map can be found here: http://goo.gl/ZUKe

Update: Please visit the VMworld “Gatherings and Activities” page for the latest updates.

Below are the dates linking to an .ics file for each event.

Sunday August 29th

VMworld Fun Run

Warm Up Party As A Service

Monday August 30th

Welcome Reception

Tuesday August 31st

In-n-Out Burger Meetup

EMC Customer Appreciation Party

Veeam Party

Wednesday September 1st

VMworld Party

Thursday September 2nd

v0dgeball

*Please do not hold me responsible for any event changes that may take place during the week. This post and the corresponding Google Map is based on public information and could change without my knowledge.

I thought the array(s) would be a good addition as a backup target in our production environment or maybe even for use in a home lab. I knew the array(s) had to work with NexentaStor or I wasn’t going to be interested in using them. Luckily, NexentaStor supported the SCSI DAS without any issues.

In a previous post, I wrote about the supported features of the NexentaStor OS and why it’s a great option for those with limited budgets and existing hardware. That we would require a license to use it in production, so instead, I’ll demonstrate the home lab scenario.

I decided to setup the larger of the two arrays(fourteen 72GB 15K SCSI drives) and connected it to the DL380, which was already using NexentaStor with a five disk array. I wanted ZFS to manage the disk drives, instead of the HP Smart Array, as ZFS RAID has several RAID options.

The first step was to configure each disk as its own logical drive. You will need to delete any existing logical drives that may have been previously configured.

Next step is to select a single drive from the list and make it a logical drive. I did this for each drive.

After doing that fourteen times, each disk appeared as a logical drive

I then booted into NexentaStor and created a volume with all fourteen disk.

Data Management->Data Sets->Volumes->Create

At this point I could’ve created several separate volumes of varying RAID levels, but for this post I simply created a single RAID-Z1 volume.

The newly created “DASPool0” displaying its stats

I now have a good amount of storage with plenty of spindles. The next step will be to connect some ESXi servers to test the performance of the DAS array in a vSphere environment.

]]> https://vtrey.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/using-a-das-array-with-nexentastor/feed/ 1 treyanderson11 create_logical_drive_1 choose_disk_2 view_disk_array_3 Data_Management_14disk_02 Data_Management_14disk_03 Data_Management_14disk_04 https://vtrey.wordpress.com/2010/06/06/build-a-netapp-clone-with-nexeta/ https://vtrey.wordpress.com/2010/06/06/build-a-netapp-clone-with-nexeta/#comments Sun, 06 Jun 2010 20:11:34 +0000 http://vtrey.wordpress.com/?p=355 Continue reading →]]> Previously I discussed using NexentaStor in the data center for SMB use cases. This one is focused on those of us with home labs that want to try out everything offered by a NetApp array(Deduplication, Snapshots, Clones, NFS, CIFS, iSCSI). To be fair, you could substitute NetApp with EMC(or other storage vendors), but I’ll use NetApp in this case, as EMC’s made the Celerra VSA available to the public. NetApp requires you to be a customer to use their simulator(would love to see that policy changed). I’m sure there are a number of things that NetApp offers, including hardware and management options that are not included with NexentaStor, but this post is strictly from a storage feature(s) perspective.

One of the coolest things about NexentaStor, is its ability to support legacy hardware. I’m currently using a five year old HP DL380 G4 as a storage array for my home lab. I have six 72GB 15k drives in a RAIDZ(RAID-5) pool. This is more than enough storage for what I need in my lab. Add onto that deduplication plus compression and you’ll be able to do a lot with the smaller drives. Current VSA’s are great for familiarizing yourself with what is offered on the higher end arrays, but for those of us who need native performance on a home lab budget, will be able to do so with NexentaStor and some low priced hardware.

I’m using iSCSI with my vSphere lab and the performance is excellent. I’m able to replicate my snapshots asynchronously to my ix2-200. Cloning of an iSCSI LUN is easy to do and gives you the ability to non-destructively test your lab VM’s. So much is possible with this product.

In future posts, I’ll discuss more in-depth my lab setup and what I’ve been able to accomplish with NexentaStor on legacy hardware.

The following images will show you how to create/add an iSCSI share to OS X for use with Time Machine(note the description at the bottom of each image).

Create a new iSCSI target

We now have an iSCSI target and target name

Launch globalSAN and choose "Target"

Copy the target name from Iomega page and paste here

Add the IP address of your Iomega storage(same as web interface)

Check "Persistent" and choose "Connect"

Choose to "Initialize" the iSCSI target

Name the drive and erase it

We now have a formatted drive for Time Machine to use

Inside of Time Machine we can choose the iSCSI drive

Nexenta is only the software side of the solution, as you’ll need hardware to put it on, but that’s where it gets really exciting(at least for me)! You can use this blog post as inspiration to what can be created at a fraction of the cost of the “traditional” storage vendors. Don’t get me wrong, I think Netapp and EMC offer some amazing products, but I like the idea of creating a customized solution specific to the business needs. All at a low cost entry point.

Here’s an example: Let’s say you’re looking for a simple backup solution with dedupe that scales with the business. A basic array(hardware + licensing) would be about $3500. Compare that with a similar offering from Data Domain, which starts around $20,000. Now I’ve never used a Data Domain product, so I may be missing something(please let me know). My comparison is simply based on the product listing and what I’ve heard on various podcast and blogs.

This is just one example of something that can be accomplished with Nexenta and some commodity hardware. Of course one will need to know how to build the system and customize it to fit the business needs. I hope to discuss the product more in depth on future posts.

Please leave any comments you may have on this post, as I love hearing different points of view on storage technology.