Posts by Flippit 7 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jan 2012
Errrr, pointing out the obvious but I don't see how this is much different to blade chassis in use by most vendors for the past umpteen years. Have I missed out on a time portal opening up from 1982 and this article popped through?? If so, there needs to be a corresponding piece in the science section El Reg...
I've got a chromebook ARM3 from Samsung running Ubuntu using crouton and it's fantastic - the series 3 machine foes have it's limitations but is surprisingly capable running Ubuntu 12.04 and unity. I use it for some ruby and Python development. It's a great improvement over the base chrome o/s and it only took about an hour to set up too...
So on Wednesday evening (over a nice Thai Prawn curry and a game of cards - yes, it's tricky to avoid getting the cards covered in Nam Pla) I attached my iThing 4 to my PC and clicked Update... Admittedly I had to repeat this sequence a couple of times as iTunes also needed an update - anyway - the point is that "Update" was clicked. Having become decidedly petulant when it comes to watching progress bars counting up I decided to climb the wooden hill and rest my somewhat weary head (obviously the curry, beer and cards had concluded at this point and the effects of beer were inducing me to sleep - Incidentally I won a couple of hands too, which is nice).
I excitedly scurried downstairs on Thursday morning in my dressing gown, much like an 8 year old boy on Christmas day expecting to find a Big Trak under the Christmas tree (showing my age now). Having tapped the home button on the phone to see where I was up to I was relieved to see that the update had completed and that the iThing was awaiting my input for the basic configuration steps - hooray" I thought (actually as it was Thursday I actually thought - "Splice the main brace 'tis time to heave ho and get busy with iOS 7 - Yarrrrrr).
My first impression was one of "oh, ok. So that's not so different." - How wrong I was... Having been a veteran of Blackberry, Windows Phone and even a Roamer 300 from 1995/6) I was a little surprised to discover that my magic, revolutionary and (to quote Jony Ives) "Essential" iThing had been sent back in time for a rendezvous with Tinky Winky, Dipsy, La La and Po! Clearly they were given some "Enterprise Architecture Crayons" and set loose - "Dear god!" I thought as I started to discover some of the finer points of the OS like Bevel Edge gestures - a feature that drove me away from Windows Phone - A calendar function that doesn't summarise what's coming up that day - again something that WinPho did that really annoyed me, a search function that has clearly been drinking from the wrong end of a bleach bottle as it doesn't behave correctly when taking you to tracks listed in your music library but are actually in the iCloud. It wasn't until I decided to sync my email that I issued a cry usually reserved for the moment after a shot of Naga Chilli Vodka "HELLS TEETH" - I cried, the damn iThing now reports that I have 1000 unread emails in my inbox!!!! Why oh why doesn't it know the difference between an inbox and my spam folder - even my old Blackberry (most henious of corporate devices) could get that right.
All in all I'm more than a little disappointed with iOS 7 - it genuinely feels like Apple have taken a long hard look at WinPho and 'Droid and taken some of the things they thought were cool without actually living with them for any decent interval. I chose iPhone originally because I just wanted something that worked - but I'm now considering making the leap to an Android device and taking the migration/intergration hit on the chin again.
Meanwhile, I tried contacting the Tellytubbies at C-Beebies only to have someone called "Iggle Piggle" pick up the phone, and I *SWEAR* I could hear Jony Ives talking to Upsy Daisy in the background about going back to the very essence of what a phone was... Maybe next time it'll be less bad than the current incarnation...
You pose a really interesting question, and very first question I would ask is... What level of availability and support do your charity require? Having worked in the not for profit sector a few times I've come to the realisation that actually maintaining availability (and subsequently operations is really important for cash strapped orgs) - one big fat server sounds great but it's all of your eggs in one big basket, two servers is better if the business can handle a 50% loss of service for a sustained period - otherwise I'd be looking at 3 or more to minimise the chances of loss. With that in mind you would probably want some level of shared, and critically resilient, storage AND backup - if your charity is anything like the places I've worked with previously then having critical data actually held on the desktop isn't unusual. An open source product such as OpenFiler running on a storage heavy server would provide a useful repository for virtual file-systems/disk images and wouldn't break the bank.
Ahead of all of that however there are probably a few things I would personally consider:
- What are the applications that your customers are running? Do they have specific applications that require Microsoft Windows on the desktop? Are they likely to respond well to running in a virtualised environment - i.e. are there any applications that require specific hardware (dongles etc)?
- If you are considering virtualisation for the desktop (even just 30 of them) then it's important to understand your performance requirements. I'm guessing, given the implied age of the desktop, that there aren't any "heavy" applications in use such as CAD tools - that said most charities these days make use of higher end graphics and marketing packages for event promotion - so again worth take a good hard look at your application landscape.
- Does the charity have any existing virtualisation for its servers? If so then it's worth considering if you have a pre-existing reference solution to build on so that you're not building up any divergence in supportability. If not then it's worth considering what benefits you could realise from having everything virtualised - just a thought.
- Are they absolutely married to Microsoft Windows as a desktop operating system? Regardless of whether you virtualise or maintain a more traditional desktop estate considering FOSS alternatives to both the core OS and the productivity applications is an absolute must. Both Ubuntu and LINUX Mint offer excellent desktop environments for end users - and to be honest, the growth and maturity of most business type applications for desktop LINUX is in a great place right now. If you're happy to support a LINUX environment then having an Ubuntu based environment gives you low(er) hardware requirements than Windows AND the server product offers virtualisation capabilities as well which could give you an easier path to VDI down the road.
- Have you checked whether you actually need to have ANYTHING on site (aside from a terminal to consume a desktop from). If you're considering the spend on new hardware, licences, backup and support then it's well worth doing the math to see if a hosted desktop with either a dedicated provider or creating a home baked solution in the Cloud might be worth a look. Is it even possible that your business uses so few "traditional" line of business applications that they could consume cloud based services instead. Most vendors of IaaS and SaaS provide good levels of discounts for charities - you may find that actually spending the effort to identify and integrate a series of 3rd party cloud solutions gives you better mileage, less of a management headache and (potentially) better availability than running your own solution.
I realise I've not really provided you with a "do this or that" type response but I hope that maybe some of those insights might held solidify which choices you make. Either way, good luck with your potential project.
Cheers,
Phil.
Was there ever a funded study that didn't put the interested parties product on top? I merely point to Gartner or Forrester for many solid examples... it would be more (I use the term loosely) interesting to see which browser contributed more to the total productivity of a user over an 8 hour day, and subsequently allowed that user to turn off their PC overnight sooner. Which, I'd imagine, might save a heap load more energy... just a thought...
#bootnote : I wonder how many people would need to switch to IE in a month to reclaim the power consumed by running and writing up the 'analysis'? ;-)
Two things
1: MATT DAMON stickers for anyone who blindly follows their sat nav, clearly a stupid and irresponsible approach to driving.
2: have you seen the cost of updating maps on manufacturer integrated sat nav? BMW 5 series update for 2012 is around £300-£400 depending on which dealer you happen to talk to! Clearly profiteering going on here for a simple data update that could be made available on the web for download!!
Grrrr...
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