A weird one...

I've got one of those weird ones today. We've installed a new network infrastructure - all shiny new HP Procurve stuff. Yesterday morning, one of our servers didn't back up, with BackupExec reporting that it couldn't see it. RDP'd to the server fine, and I could ping the backup server, and ping the errant server from the backup server. I could also, from either server, open an UNC share on ANOTHER server but not on each other. They're both on the same subnet, plugged directly into the new core switch, the ports on which are effectively, at the moment, wide open.

This morning, another server had the same problem, despite backing up yesterday. The error logs on the servers which can't connect have the odd DCOM error which, on closer investigation, could mean one of about forty different things, none of which look like an easy fix. It's all too easy to go off on some wild goose chase here. The core switch is new, so there's a cloud hanging over that, but I had something similar before it was replaced, which I didn't investigate too deeply as it was only a day before the new switch went in. One things for sure - something out there is screwing up my NetBIOS traffic, and I want to know what it is.

A day of deep joy...

How I love sysadmining while surrounded by morons. Today's a prime example. We have an accountancy application which is, like most of these things, just about OK when used in the environment which it was designed for. Local domain, fat client, normal, networked printer. Even then, it's needed a fair bit of tweaking to get it right - it prints from an environment variable, for example, because thats the way it does it. It's one of them.

Someone tried to put it on citrix and we had a nightmare with it. We couldn't get it to print properly at all, despite the application vendor's being on site for a couple of days and dialling in god knows how many times. So I made sure that the people who needed to use it got full-fat clients, quick sharp. Everyone happy.

Except some genius has decided that it would be just too great for someone at a related institute across town to be able to dial into our accounting application through citrix. And our interface to the outside world, I might add, is rubbish. Not in terms of speed, but reliability of service of certain things. We have other people who connect through citrix, for example. Sometimes their printer auto-creation works, sometimes it doesn't. Depends on the wind. Sometimes it takes five minutes to log into NFuse (that's how far behind we are); sometimes, seconds. Reboot router, phone up ISP and complain. Right now, those are our options. So it's not going to work. In a month of Sundays. Even if it did work in the first place, which it doesn't.

Obviously, someone's ego's going to be bruised when it becomes apparent that this is going to have be er, altered. No guesse for who's going to end up wearing it, though. Be nice if I got asked at the start, for once.

Fun with Exchange mailboxes, part 2...

I'm in the middle of upgrading our organization to Exchange 2007 from 2003, and I'm currently "enjoying" the effects that adding a 2007 server to our Exchange organization's having. Not only does it screw our existing global address list, but helpfully, it's also "updated" it so that I can no longer administer it from the Exchange 2003 box. Marvellous.

I've also discovered that I've got a few shared mailboxes out there that have dissappeared, altogether, from any address list. So now, I can't even get my users to see them - which is lovely for our internal marketing, as we're rolling out a new desktop image. It's an issue I can really do without. Tonight I'm going to rebuild the Recipient Update Services on the 2003 box and hope like hell something shows up tomorrow.

On the image rollout, we've been ordered to put Office 2007 on the new image, which as you probably know, is more different to previous versions of Office than any release ever. One would expect some staff training - for our users - to be in order, then. But no. The person who's supposed to be doing THAT, had Office 2007 installed nearly a year before everyone else for precisely that reason, and who was one of the main drivers for putting Office on seems to have rinsed their hands of it. No guessing which department everyone's looking at to blame. IT and short memories seem to be natural bedfellows around here.

Plate full of Password Problems

Every week or so something fun gets tossed onto my brimming plate, and today it's the turn of password management. It's a pain in the ass, full stop, and now I'm to look at smoothing troubled waters by implementing some kind of solution that'll enable our users to reset their own passwords: memorable question kind of thing. It's the kind of thing that even a year ago would have had me in a cold sweat, thinking of all the possible security horrors. I seem to have undergone some kind of transformation though - if it adds to the user experience, makes students and the helpdesk's lives easier, then I'm all for it, and I'll deal with the security horror if it appears. Quest's Password Manager looks like it might do the do. How easy it'll be to implement is, of course, entirely another matter.

So Microsoft's officially cutting jobs. And they can't even bring themselves to issue a revenue / profit forecast. Share price fell nigh on 10%. Not a good week for them.

Citrix finding a new raison d'etre?

I talked before about Citrix being a company in need of a new killer app. Virtualization, it seems, is where Citrix are putting their money on their new future being.

They paid out $500m for open-source virtualization company XenSource, and have been aggressive in pushing their new baby. They've also got an interesting take on the cloud / no cloud thing. They reckon companies need internal clouds first - hosted of course, on Citrix virtualization / application delivery boxes - to be ready to take advantage of the opportunities when the bridges to the real cloud fall into place. They've developed Citrix Cloud Center too, to push to the third-party cloud vendors, just so you're in no doubt they're serious.

Now they're collaborating with Intel, creating a bare-metal hypervisor based on the Xen one, probably aimed at delivering virtualized desktops, which will have the considerable bonus of being fully encryted.

Now all they need to do is get the Xen hypervisor integrated with HP's industry leading System Insight Manager. Fortunately, it's apparently "on the list."

Just when I thought they looked dead and buried, Citrix suddenly looks like it might not be takeover fodder after all.

Fun with Outlook Address books; Cisco looking for a fight.

I'm having fun with Outlook Address Books this morning. A couple of weeks ago I built and introduced an Exchange 2007 server, looking towards migrating our accounts over from Exchange 2003. I created connectors between the two servers, and they're seeing each other fine. I pulled over a test mailbox, which seemed to go smoothly although I haven't been able to fully check that out yet because I need to update the ACL's on our PIX firewalls to include the new server.

So far, so good, until it was pointed out to me that somehow, mysteriously, the behaviour of my users address books in Outlook has changed. One set of users defaulted to one address list, another to another - both stored below the Global Address list. Now, those lists aren't visible from outlook, even though they both still work as email distribution lists. Confused yet? I am.

So I've populated two address lists above the GAL and they work fine, only problem being I haven't yet sussed if I can push our users to these via Group Policy, which would be ideal. So for now, the helpdesk are going to have to sort it - if someone complains, which as yet, they haven't. I know they will though, and probably before I fix it.

On another note, it looks as though Cisco are wading into the Blade-Server market. Coming hot on the heels of news that they're planning on wading into the virtualization market too, and in the face of HP's switch/routing challenge in the shape of Procurve, it's beginning to look more than a little like the day when KFC peddled their first burger and Ronald McDonald deep-fried his first chicken bollock. Hopefully, like that happy day, this ends up as good news for the customer, but with no sickly aftertaste, clogged arteries, or lingering sense of guilt attached.

Opera slings mud at Microsoft, sticks.

So the antitrust thing's back. The EU says Microsoft's violated competition laws by continuing to include Internet Explorer with versions of Windows. Opera, the original re-complainant, is understandably delighted.

So where's Microsoft go from here, other than back into the courtroom? Given that the fine dished out by the EU last time was 899 million Euros, it's a fair bet that someone's going to be digging into their pockets, deeply.

And with Microsoft feeling the pinch - its share price this morning stood at $19.71, down from over $35; and with persistent murmurs of impending cutbacks - now represents perhaps the EU's best chance to get the software giant to sit up and listen, properly.

Yes, the last antitrust issue before the EU was different - that was to do with Microsoft getting in the way - as the commission saw it - of other vendor's attempts to get their software to work properly on Microsoft operating systems.

But the EU budget's not getting any smaller, and member countries are raising less tax revenue than six months ago, thanks to the recession. Milking the Redmond cash cow might, in the once-removed eyes of European ministers, go down an absolute storm.