Windows 7 on Mac with VMware Fusion: A Practical Guide

A great guide straight from VMWare’s company blog. It even has a handy video tutorial at the end of the article to further clarify the procedure.

Link to original: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aDqw8_eMzrhU&refer=home#

For the lazy ones like me, here’s the article and all I can say is WTF!?!?!?!:

Fed Pledges Top $7.4 Trillion to Ease Frozen Credit (Correct) 
By Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry

Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. government is prepared to lend more than $7.4 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers, or half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, to rescue the financial system since the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.

The unprecedented pledge of funds includes $2.8 trillion already tapped by financial institutions in the biggest response to an economic emergency since the New Deal of the 1930s, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The commitment dwarfs the only plan approved by lawmakers, the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. Federal Reserve lending last week was 1,900 times the weekly average for the three years before the crisis.

When Congress approved the TARP on Oct. 3, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson acknowledged the need for transparency and oversight. Now, as regulators commit far more money while refusing to disclose loan recipients or reveal the collateral they are taking in return, some Congress members are calling for the Fed to be reined in.

“Whether it’s lending or spending, it’s tax dollars that are going out the window and we end up holding collateral we don’t know anything about,” said Representative Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican who serves on the House Financial Services Committee. “The time has come that we consider what sort of limitations we should be placing on the Fed so that authority returns to elected officials as opposed to appointed ones.”

Commercial Paper, FDIC

Bloomberg News tabulated data from the Fed, Treasury and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and interviewed regulatory officials, economists and academic researchers to gauge the full extent of the government’s rescue effort.

The bailout includes a Fed program to buy as much as $2.4 trillion in short-term notes, called commercial paper, that companies use to pay bills, begun Oct. 27, and $1.4 trillion from the FDIC to guarantee bank-to-bank loans, started Oct. 14.

William Poole, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, said the two programs are unlikely to lose money. The bigger risk comes from rescuing companies perceived as “too big to fail,” he said.

The government committed $29 billion to help engineer the takeover in March of Bear Stearns Cos. by New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co. and $122.8 billion in addition to TARP allocations to bail out New York-based American International Group Inc., once the world’s largest insurer. Yesterday, Citigroup Inc. received $306 billion of government guarantees for troubled mortgages and toxic assets. The Treasury Department also will inject $20 billion into the bank after its stock fell 60 percent last week.

“No question there is some credit risk there,” Poole said.

‘No Transparency’

Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said risk is lurking in the programs that Poole thinks are safe.

“The thing that people don’t understand is it’s not how likely that the exposure becomes a reality, but what if it does?” Issa said. “There’s no transparency to it, so who’s to say they’re right?”

The worst financial crisis in two generations has erased $23 trillion, or 38 percent, of the value of the world’s companies and brought down three of the biggest Wall Street firms.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average through Friday is down 38 percent since the beginning of the year and 43 percent from its peak on Oct. 9, 2007. TheS&P 500 fell 45 percent from the beginning of the year through Friday and 49 percent from its peak on Oct. 9, 2007. The Nikkei 225 Index has fallen 46 percent from the beginning of the year through Friday and 57 percent from its most recent peak of 18,261.98 on July 9, 2007. Goldman Sachs Group Inc.is down 78 percent, to $53.31, on Friday from its peak of $247.92 on Oct. 31, 2007, and 75 percent this year.

‘They Got Snookered’

Regulators say they hope the rescue will contain the damage and keep banks providing the credit that is the lifeblood of the U.S. economy.

Most of the spending programs are run out of the New York Fed, whose president, Timothy Geithner, is said to be President- elect Barack Obama’s choice for Treasury Secretary.

The money that’s been pledged is equivalent to $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. It’s nine times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Officefigures. It could pay off more than half the country’s mortgages.

“It’s unprecedented,” said Bob Eisenbeis, chief monetary economist at Vineland, New Jersey-based Cumberland Advisors Inc. and an economist for the Atlanta Fed for 10 years until January. “The backlash has begun already. Congress is taking a lot of hits from their constituents because they got snookered on the TARP big time. There’s a lot of supposedly smart people who look to be totally incompetent, and it’s all going to fall on the taxpayer.”

New Deal

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s, when almost 10,000 banks failed and there was no mechanism to bolster them with cash, is the only rival to the government’s current response. The savings and loan bailout of the 1990s cost $209.5 billion adjusted for inflation, of which $173 billion came from taxpayers, according to a July 1996 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office, since renamed the Government Accountability Office.

The 1979 U.S. government bailout of Chrysler consisted of bond guarantees, adjusted for inflation, of $4.2 billion, according to a Heritage Foundation report.

The commitment of public money is appropriate to the peril, said Ethan Harris, co-head of U.S. economic research at Barclays Capital Inc. and a former economist at the New York Fed. U.S. financial firms have taken writedowns and losses of $666.1 billion since the beginning of 2007, according to Bloomberg data.

“This is the worst capital markets crisis in modern history,” Harris said. “So you have the biggest intervention in modern history.”

Federal Lawsuit

Bloomberg has requested details of Fed lending under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and filed a federal lawsuit against the central bank Nov. 7 seeking to force disclosure of borrower banks and their collateral.

Collateral is an asset pledged to a lender in the event a loan payment isn’t made.

“Some have asked us to reveal the names of the banks that are borrowing, how much they are borrowing, what collateral they are posting,” Bernanke said Nov. 18 to the House Financial Services Committee. “We think that’s counterproductive.”

The Fed should account for the collateral it takes in exchange for loans to banks, said Paul Kasriel, chief economist at Chicago-based Northern Trust Co. and a former research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

“There is a lack of transparency here and, given that the Fed is taking on a huge amount of credit risk now, it would seem to me as a taxpayer there should be more transparency,” Kasriel said.

$4.4 Trillion

Bernanke’s Fed is responsible for $4.4 trillion of pledges, or 60 percent of the total commitment of $7.4 trillion, based on data compiled by Bloomberg concerning U.S. bailout steps started a year ago.

“Too often the public is focused on the wrong piece of that number, the $700 billion that Congress approved,” said J.D. Foster, a former staff member of the Council of Economic Advisers who is now a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. “The other areas are quite a bit larger.”

The Fed’s rescue attempts began last December with the creation of the Term Auction Facility to allow lending to dealers for collateral. After Bear Stearns’s collapse in March, the central bank started making direct loans to securities firms at the same discount rate it charges commercial banks, which take customer deposits.

In the three years before the crisis, such average weekly borrowing by banks was $48 million, according to the central bank. Last week it was $91.5 billion.

Lehman Failure

The failure of a second securities firm, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., in September, led to the creation of the Commercial Paper Funding Facility and the Money Market Investor Funding Facility, or MMIFF. The two programs, which have pledged $2.3 trillion, are designed to restore calm in the money markets, which deal in certificates of deposit, commercial paper and Treasury bills.

“Money markets seized up after Lehman failed,” said Neal Soss, chief economist at Credit Suisse Group in New York and a former aide to Fed chiefPaul Volcker. “Lehman failing made a lot of subsequent actions necessary.”

The FDIC, chaired by Sheila Bair, is contributing 20 percent of total rescue commitments. The FDIC’s $1.4 trillion in guarantees will amount to a bank subsidy of as much as $54 billion over three years, or $18 billion a year, because borrowers will pay a lower interest rate than they would on the open market, according to Raghu Sundurum and Viral Acharya of New York University and the London Business School.

Bank Subsidy

Congress and the Treasury have ponied up $892 billion in TARP and other funding, or 12 percent.

The Federal Housing Administration, overseen by Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Steven Preston, was given the authority to guarantee $300 billion of mortgages, or about 4 percent of the total commitment, with its Hope for Homeowners program, designed to keep distressed borrowers from foreclosure.

Most of the federal guarantees reduce interest rates on loans to banks and securities firms, which would create a subsidy of at least $6.6 billion annually for the financial industry, according to data compiled by Bloomberg comparing rates charged by the Fed against market interest currently paid by banks.

Not included in the calculation of pledged funds is an FDIC proposal to prevent foreclosures by guaranteeing modifications on $444 billion in mortgages at an expected cost of $24.4 billion to be paid from the TARP, according to FDIC spokesman David Barr. The Treasury Department hasn’t approved the program.

Automakers Excluded

Bernanke and Paulson, former chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, have also promised as much as $200 billion to shore up nationalized mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The FDIC arranged for $139 billion in loan guarantees for General Electric Co.’s finance unit.

The tally doesn’t include money to General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC. Obama has said he favors financial assistance to keep them from collapse.

Paulson told the House Financial Services Committee Nov. 18 that the $250 billion already allocated to banks through the TARP is an investment, not an expenditure.

“I think it would be extraordinarily unusual if the government did not get that money back and more,” Paulson said.

‘We Haircut It’

In his Nov. 18 testimony, Bernanke told the House Financial Services Committee that the central bank wouldn’t lose money.

“We take collateral, we haircut it, it is a short-term loan, it is very safe, we have never lost a penny in these various lending programs,” he said.

A haircut refers to the practice of lending less money than the collateral’s current market value.

Requiring the Fed to disclose loan recipients might set off panic, said David Tobin, principal of New York-based loan-sale consultants and investment bankMission Capital Advisors LLC.

“If you mark to market today, the banking system is bankrupt,” Tobin said. “So what do you do? You try to keep it going as best you can.”

“Mark to market” means adjusting the value of an asset, such as a mortgage-backed security, to reflect current prices.

Some of the bailout assistance could come from tax breaks in the future. The Treasury Department changed the tax code on Sept. 30 to allow banks to expand the deductions on the losses banks they were buying, according toRobert Willens, a former Lehman Brothers tax and accounting analyst who teaches at Columbia University Business School in New York.

‘Wells Fargo Notice’

Wells Fargo & Co., which is buying Charlotte, North Carolina-based Wachovia Corp., will be able to deduct $22 billion, Willens said. Adding in other banks, the code change will cost $29 billion, he said.

“The rule is now popularly known among tax lawyers as the ‘Wells Fargo Notice,’” Willens said.

The regulation was changed to make it easier for healthy banks to buy troubled ones, said Treasury Department spokesman Andrew DeSouza.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said he was angry that banks used the money for acquisitions.

“The only purpose for this money is to lend,” said Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat. “It’s not for dividends, it’s not for purchases of new banks, it’s not for bonuses. There better be a showing of increased lending roughly in the amount of the capital infusions” or Congress may not approve the second half of the TARP money.

To contact the reporters on this story: Mark Pittman in New York atmpittman@bloomberg.net; Bob Ivry in New York atbivry@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 24, 2008 12:28 EST

Underground Data-Center and NOC fit for a Bond Villain…

Wow!

Remarks of President-Elect Barack Obama—as prepared for delivery 
Election Night 
Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 
Chicago, Illinois 

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. 

It’s the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference. 

It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled – Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America. 

It’s the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day. 

It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America. 

I just received a very gracious call from Senator McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and he’s fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Governor Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nation’s promise in the months ahead. 

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on that train home to Delaware, the Vice President-elect of the United States, Joe Biden. 

I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last sixteen years, the rock of our family and the love of my life, our nation’s next First Lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love you both so much, and you have earned the new puppy that’s coming with us to the White House. And while she’s no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight, and know that my debt to them is beyond measure. 

To my campaign manager David Plouffe, my chief strategist David Axelrod, and the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics – you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you’ve sacrificed to get it done. 

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to – it belongs to you. 

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn’t start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington – it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston. 

It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation’s apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth. This is your victory. 

I know you didn’t do this just to win an election and I know you didn’t do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime – two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how they’ll make the mortgage, or pay their doctor’s bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair. 

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America – I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you – we as a people will get there. 

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government can’t solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it’s been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years – block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand. 

What began twenty-one months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek – it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you. 

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers – in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people. 

Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House – a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, “We are not enemies, but friends…though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.” And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn – I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too. 

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world – our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down – we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security – we support you. And to all those who have wondered if America’s beacon still burns as bright – tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope. 

For that is the true genius of America – that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow. 

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that’s on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She’s a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing – Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old. 

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons – because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin. 

And tonight, I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in America – the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can’t, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can. 

At a time when women’s voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can. 

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can. 

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can. 

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that “We Shall Overcome.” Yes we can. 

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes we can. 

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves – if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made? 

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time – to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth – that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: 

Yes We Can. Thank you, God bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America

So my company set about to finally create a viable disaster recovery plan. Er, well, at least our IT department did. The rest of the organization thinks having a solid, fully developed and tested overall business continuity plan can wait. After all, it’s not sexy. It won’t garner newsworthy headlines. It won’t make us money. Besides, who has the time? Sound familiar? Thankfully, our director of IT at least gets that, from an IT perspective, we needed one. So I get together with the brain trust, hash it out with our consultants, and get one developed, tested, and just about completed once I haul my butt over to the east coast to complete our last phase in a day or so. That was all sooo last year. 

What did a year buy us? (along with a substantial sum involving many zeros and commas invested) 

Fully virtualized, bicoastal, server environment…check

Centralized SAN consolidating all data with auto-replication to secondary site…check

Enterprise-wide MPLS WAN deployed for increased and flexible network connectivity…check

Enterprise grade remote access platform…check

Conversion of our secondary data-center on the east coast to a fail-over site…check

Well, this is the makings of a great DR plan. I mean, what more could I ask for, right?

Heh..heh..heh…my director should have thought twice before asking me that! I mean what else could we possibly need to execute a controlled and orderly fail-over to the secondary site should our west coast data-center take a dump, or vice versa in a time-efficient manner?

Currently, we use several monster scripts and additionally have to manually do some setting and network configuration changes to affect Tier 1 systems and full network failover to the secondary DR environment. Maybe 8-12 hours total of work depending on the severity of the disaster including initial disaster and site impact assessments. Pretty good compared to the nightmare that was our DR plan before in the traditional server environment. In those days, we would have been looking at about a week at least to get our tier 1 applications fully restored and up and running along with network operations failed over. Not a pretty sight at all. I shudder to think if we ever had to go through that with the original setup.

 Enter VMWare SRM (Site Recovery Manager)

I have started looking into this baby and let me tell you, this seems like just the ticket for what we are looking for.

So what is VMWare SRM? Well, here’s the blurb from their fact sheet:

“VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) is a new VMware 

Infrastructure 3-based solution that is tightly integrated with Dell 

EqualLogic PS Series storage to offer centralized disaster recovery 

management, automation, and testing for a virtualized datacenter. 

The integrated solution  utilizes the PS Series’ native Auto- 

Replication feature, integrated directly into Site Recovery Manager 

using specialized storage adapter software developed by Dell.  SRM 

enables non-disruptive, automated testing of recovery plans and 

automates the recovery process, while the PS Series supplies cost 

effective and easy-to-configure replication over existing IP networks. 

The core server virtualization platform that provides IT environments 

with the tools to help reduce the cost and complexity of managing 

their IT infrastructure now expands to simplify disaster recovery as 

well.  Storage and server virtualization solutions from VMware and 

Dell provide the infrastructure for the fully virtualized data center, 

enabling a dynamic, highly automated computing environment.”

Sales-speak eliminated, what this add-on should do is effectively cut our fail-over times in the event of disaster to at least half of our original estimates. Depending upon the severity, they claim even shorter times for automated execution of the disaster plan!

The beauty of this solution lies in its tight integration of the VMWare platform as well as the SAN platform we are currently using in production. This means that implementation is as simple as drop-in placement and configuration because it leverages our existing infrastructure technology. Financially, it provides a compelling argument in relation to overall long-term ROI versus our initial investments. In fact, it actually enhances the ROI overall in relation to our total virtualization/SAN/DR project as the last puzzle piece.

Now I’m the type of person that needs to see to believe so you can bet your bottom dollar I’m gonna be testing this sucker out before we even think of spending a penny. Until I see it work in our environment, it’s just a lot of pretty words on paper. So until then, the jury is out. Stay tuned.

According to the PCWorld article below, Microsoft is making a strong case for Hyper-V in the enterprise due to it’s tight integration with it’s other server products. While I’m all for a tightly integrated, homogenous, environment that will allow for easier and more centralized system management, I don’t know if I’d trust Microsoft to be the one providing it just yet. Any IT veteran of the ever-present BSOD platform knows that most of the MS products usually aren’t a viable platform to standardize on until at least the third or fourth service pack, or version iteration. If you take this into account, then imagine a BSOD of epic proportions if Hyper-V were to take a nose-dive? Your entire farm environment would be hosed since your at the HAL level! While VMWare isn’t 100% perfect either, it’s proven track record speaks volumes for it’s stability in the enterprise. And honestly, IMHO, Microsoft should have beat VMWare to the virtualized table especially because they own the code to the NOS. How easy would it have been to create the market instead of trailing it? The very fact that they are the late-comer into the market tells me that their focus isn’t there yet, and neither is their commitment. The proponents in the article also point out that Hyper-V can save gobs of cash when comparing to VMWare’s platform. Gee, I’ve never heard of paying a premium to gain a proven and stable platform from the current leader in the  industry whether it’s justified or not…cough…Citrix…cough…Cisco…hack…Microsoft…ahem…

It’s funny how they play the cost vs benefits card when they aren’t the market dominator, yet when they are, they can freely charge upwards of $85-$100 bucks for a simple TSCAL and tell you to “suck it” if you complain about the cost of licensing. 

With these things in mind, how could I in good conscience base my company’s mission critical environment on a late-comer to the game? Not yet, anyway. Not any time soon. And in the interest of full disclosure, my company is an all Microsoft shop so my comments come from a current Microsoft customer’s point of view, not someone bashing MS for the sake of bashing them. My .02 cents.

/End Rant

Microsoft believes price, integration and timing could help Hyper-V win market share against market leader VMware.

Nancy Gohring and Eric Lai, IDG News Service

This article from PCWorld talks about IT organizations having to re-think their DR strategies due to the implementation of virtualization technology within their IT infrastructure. The thing that gets me about this article is that any self respecting IT organization that even looks at virtualization will typically do an audit and impact analysis of server virtualization on their company’s IT infrastructure. You’d have to, just to be able to get cost justification and projected ROI both in the long term as well as the short. It’s usually these figures that are used to get funding and approval in the first place in most companies contemplating the jump. Anyone else usually cannot afford to even try it since implementing this radical shift in technology means a complete re-thinking of the process flows and workflows of the IT organization. So what I’m getting at is, how could any competent IT manager/director/CIO even think about signing that hefty check to purchase this tech without even thinking about DR as one of the primary long term benefits justifying the expenditure? Really, virtualization tech’s primary justification is usually physical footprint reduction (which carries inherent cooling and power reduction costs), and DR strategy advantages. So if that’s the case, how could IT organizations only think of the DR impact AFTER the fact! I mean WTF? If I were the sys/net admin/engineer for these companies, that’s the first thing I’d point out as a major long term ROI advantage. It just doesn’t make sense to me, but whatever, to each his own I guess. 

/End Rant

The increasing popularity of virtualization is prompting IT organizations to rethink their disaster recovery plans, study says.

Tom Jowitt, Techworld.com

Sunday, September 07, 2008 01:35 PM PDT

There has been a ‘’significant increase’ in the number of organizations rethinking their disaster recovery (DR) plans because of virtualization, according to Symantec, in its fourth annual IT Disaster Recovery survey.

The survey found that due to the increasing popularity of virtualization, more than half of the respondents (55 percent) are rethinking their DR plans, and in North America, this rises to 64 percent.

“Virtualization has crept out from the developer test environments, where it was not part of the enterprise DR plan, and has made the shift into production environments,” said Dr Guy Bunker, Symantec’s chief scientist.

“In the old days, when you had one server running all the enterprise software, DR plans used to be straight forward,” added Bunker. “Now the virtual server can be running up to 20 apps, and the server must have the capacity to handle it. DR processes have broken down because IT admins haven’t thought of these issues.”

Rather worryingly, 35 percent of respondents to the survey said that their virtual servers were not covered in their organizations’ DR plans, and only 37 percent backup their virtual systems.

“Only 37 percent of people backup their virtual systems, which is a ridiculous stat,” Bunker told Techworld. “The CIO will, quite rightly, tell the IT admin not to put a virtual machine in a data center if he can’t back it up.”

Bunker said that 33 percent of respondents blamed the lack of tools that will backup a virtual system in an automated fashion for the poor showing of those who backup their virtual environments. Meanwhile 54 percent said resource constraints were their top challenge with backing up virtual systems. 35 percent cited too many different tools as their biggest challenge in protecting data and applications.

“A virtual machine a great, big blob of a thing,” Bunker said. “When you come to do a backup or restore, it is complex. But now you can automate backing up virtual machines on a granular layer, instead of the whole virtual machine.”

“People look at virtualization, and they mainly think of consolidation of server boxes and reduced energy costs etc, but they don’t think of the management cost,” he added. “Management of virtual machines (especially when a user has moved away from a single supplier) is tough. But it doesn’t mean that IT admins can shirk their responsibilities.”

Bunker warns that if a virtual server fails, instead of it taking out just one or two applications, it could take offline up to 20 applications.

This is the fourth disaster recovery report from Symantec, and it surveyed more than 1,000 IT managers in large organizations across the UK, the rest of Europe, the US and Canada, as well as the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Latin America.

The survey also found nearly one third of organizations have had to implement part of their DR plan in the past year. The reasons for this vary, but include hardware and software failure (36 percent); external security threats (28 percent); power outage/failure/issues (26 percent); natural disasters (23 percent); IT problem management (23 percent); data leakage or loss (22 percent); and accidental or malicious employee behavior (21 percent).

“People think of disasters like flooding, terrorist attack etc when thinking of DR,” said Bunker. “But it is also a disaster if you lose data and end up on the front page of the news.”

“DR planning now has to take into account data loss,” Bunker added. “We are seeing data loss crisis teams being set up in organizations. Customers are generally understanding when it comes to natural disasters, such as flooding. But with data loss, customers are not at all understanding, and people are much less tolerant of data loss.”

“So you end up with a crazy situation where losing a laptop is much more of a danger than losing a data center, which sounds completely daft,” he said.

Meanwhile, 93 percent of IT organizations say they have tested their disaster recovery plan since it was created, yet 30 percent of those tests are not fully successful – which is an improvement from 50 percent failed tests in 2007. Only 16 percent say that DR tests have never failed.

The survey also found that fewer and fewer C-level executives are involved in the planning of disaster recovery, which Bunker said was “short sighted.” In 2007, 55 percent of respondents said their DR committees involved the CIO, CTO, or IT director. But this fell to only 33 percent worldwide in 2008.

This article from ComputerWorld UK brings up a very thorny issue that we all face in Healthcare IT. I know that I face this issue everyday when dealing with point of care locations within our healthcare organization. The need to keep confidential patient information locked down tight in order to comply with HIPAA guidelines, more often than not, interferes with the ability for our healthcare workers and medical providers to work quickly and seamlessly within our HIS platforms. Invariably, scenarios like the one below gets played out here in the US on a daily basis. Even in my own organization, I know our people will pull confidential patient data off the system to work locally on just to keep working at the pace they are accustomed to without being hindered by, quite frankly, kludgy security which is very common in many of these large scale HIS platforms. It’s a fine line we walk as sysadmins between fully locking down everything for security & peace of mind and allowing for a system that is open enough to not hinder the workflow of the people who rely on it the most. NAC platforms show promise, but the systems out there that I’ve seen so far are still in their infancy and don’t yet have the sophistication to adapt to rapidly changing environments. OK, I’ll shut up now so you can read the article. 

September 5, 2008 (Computerworld UK) Doctors are carrying around unencrypted patient data on USB memory sticks, according to stinging research carried out in a London hospital.

But the National Health Service (NHS) maintained it is taking the right steps to protect data, and that clinicians have to follow guidelines that insist on the encryption of identifiable patient data.

In a study conducted in one London hospital, clinicians Sven Putnis and Andrew Bircher found that 92 of 105 doctors surveyed carried memory sticks, Health Service Journal reported. Some 79 of these memory sticks held confidential patient information, but only five doctors had followed NHS rules and encrypted their data.

The authors said the information included patient names and birth dates, alongside X-ray results, diagnoses and treatment details, HSJ reported.

Calling the results “worrying,” the researchers said there was “no reason why this lack of security would not be mirrored in surveys across every hospital in the U.K. and beyond.”

They said data collection and processing had made patient care “more efficient,” but that it was important the technology was monitored “to ensure we uphold patients’ rights to privacy.”

But the NHS hit back at the findings, saying it had issued clear instructions to local trusts that all identifiable patient data on portable devices has to be encrypted.

Dr. Simon Eccles, medical director at Connecting for Health, toldComputerworld U.K. that typically patients were assigned codes that meant such records would be unidentifiable to anyone but staff.

“[NHS chief executive] David Nicholson quite rightly said that any portable device that contains identifiable information must be encrypted,” he said, adding that the NHS is rolling out McAfee SafeBoot software across all hospitals to protect the data.

But he added: “At the end of the day, the responsibility for data must rest with the individual clinician.” Ideally, data should be both unidentifiable and encrypted, he said.

A spokesperson at the Department of Health added: “The NHS locally has legal responsibility to comply with data protection rules.”

NHS patients have suffered data losses in recent months. In June, two NHS trusts lost unencrypted laptops containing 31,000 patient records.

Reports of data losses in the NHS have raised concerns over the $22.1 billion National Programme for IT, which is building a central spine of patient data accessible by NHS staff with a smart card and passcode. In the summer, analysts said the NHS should urgently reconsider the program, and weigh up the benefits of patients carrying their own data instead.

In August, it emerged that across the public sector, the data of one in every 15 people in the country had been lost in one year alone.

I have been contemplating instituting wikis for my IT group to have a compendium of sorts for our past and presently on-going internal projects and IT initiatives. Reading this article from PC World makes it more compelling to consider as long as it’s done right the first time; a challenge in any lean & mean IT shop that runs extra lean when it comes to any and all resources at it’s disposal.  :-)

Dos and Don’ts for Managing IT Projects With Wikis

Wikis are a simple technology for managing information — but used simplistically, they can do more harm than good.

Ephraim Schwartz, InfoWorld

Wikis are deceptively easy to use and install, so are nowadays found in all sorts of IT departments, especially as quick and simple project management organizers.

An interesting article on CNN.com on how my F@!$ing gas is still gonna be expensive for a long time to come!

Oil: How low can it go?

With oil prices heading toward $100, that should be good news for consumers. But some think there won’t be true relief until crude hits $80 again.