SANS Digital Recommendation

A few years ago I bought several cheap SAN Digital Elite NAS 104 storage units.  They are cheap way to get some disk.

Since then I have had various issues with disks dropping out of the RAID and being recognized.  I have been trying to work on the cheap, and I blamed using WD Green drives for the failures.

Except that now I have replaced those drives and am still having issues.  On  MAY 4th I tired to call SANS Digital and could not get through.  I started a support email.

As of today – May 27th I have resolved one issue on one system (Bad disk, seems to be fine after a swap).  I have one system in working order.  I have one system operating in a raid 5 that has lost a disk and I can not get any to drop back in, and I have one that lost drives and now will not build a RAID at all.

May 4 I submit an issue

I last sent a reply on May 18th and have not heard back.

These units are not expensive, and fairly easy to configure.  However, based on the support I have received, I have to recommend that people stay away from the manufacturer and look at some other value vendor.

Getting WSS 3 Groups

When one of our employees leave I often need to see what SharePoint groups a user was in.  This simple procedure in the content directory of our WSS 3 database does just that.

create procedure usp_ListUsersGroups 

    @username nvarchar(55)

As

select Title from groups where id in (

    select GroupID from groupmembership where memberid = (

        select tp_id from userinfo where tp_Login like '%\' + @username

    )

)

Once in place, you just execute the procedure with the username as a parameter.

Getting WSS 3 Groups

When one of our employees leave I often need to see what SharePoint groups a user was in.  This simple procedure in the content directory of our WSS 3 database does just that.

create procedure usp_ListUsersGroups 

    @username nvarchar(55)

As

select Title from groups where id in (

    select GroupID from groupmembership where memberid = (

        select tp_id from userinfo where tp_Login like '%\' + @username

    )

)

Hiccups

Frequently I get hit with a request for some piece of equipment, accessory, software, etc that is needed by a project.  Often, there is an expectation that I will just have something laying around, or that I will dip into my magic bag of money and buy them what they want.  Sometimes what they want is cheap (or free if I have it) but I don’t have it.  Often the request has some immediacy to it.  In this case the ball often gets passed to me since they expected that could handle the request. 

I believe strongly that everything I have described above is a hiccup in project planning.  For some of project managers, it is just a brief episode.  For others, I should have some brown paper bags in my desk.

This isn’t a complaint about project work at my company.  It is more of a plea for project managers (and a reminder to myself when I am in that role) to think through their requirements and line up their resources or their means to acquire them.  Remember that nothing is free and the bill for every resource must be paid for by someone.  Also remember that something important to your project is always your responsibility, even if it is someone else’s job to help you out.

Hiccup

Free Ice Cream

The Hilton Garden Inn just dropped by my building with an ice cream truck to promote a new pair of openings in the area.  I don’t know what they pay for driving an ice cream truck out to an office park, but it brought the people out and gave their sales team a chance to get some face time.

Great timing on their part.

I have just asked our business analyst to look at how much we are paying (per day of use) for our large in-house training facility and compare that with some area costs for facility rental.

You can bet the Hilton Garden Inn will get a look. 

DellWall

Dell Acquires Sonicwall

I use Sonicwall for some of my security devices and had been looking to refresh them this summer.  I use Dell as the primary provider of our desktops, notebooks, and servers.

Dell acquiring SonicWall certainly cleans up our relationships, though it may it be great for our 3rd party SonicWall VAR.

On March 13, Dell announced their intent to acquire SonicWALL®. Today, we are pleased to announce the successful completion of this acquisition. SonicWALL is now Dell SonicWALL.

This acquisition holds incredible promise for our customers as it opens up new opportunities for rapid growth of the company and advancement of our solutions. You should expect us to become even more visible and we hope you’ll see us in many more articles like this Next-Generation Firewall Comparison test from Network World in which SuperMassive outperformed devices from Check Point, Fortinet and Barracuda Networks.

Over the past three years, Dell has taken significant steps to develop its software and services portfolio to help customers keep up with demands like cloud computing, consumerization of the enterprise and the increasing demands for secure, anytime-anywhere access to applications and data. Dell is committed to investing in the future of Dell SonicWALL’s product lines. As a result, you will continue to see new and leading-edge Network Security and Data Protection solutions from Dell SonicWALL and our expanded infrastructure will deliver even greater support for our customers. With all of our employees remaining at the company, the way you do business with Dell SonicWALL will be no different from what you are accustomed to.
 
We truly appreciate the trust you have placed in SonicWALL over the years and look forward to continue providing you with the highest-quality network security and data protection solutions available. Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact your local Dell SonicWALL representative.

Cobian Releases

Back in January 2011 I posted about Cobian, a free file copy style backup utility.  Luis recently updated his product from v10 to v11.  If you are looking for a simple and free backup tool, give Cobian a shot.

Swearing

DAMN YOU Precise Pangolin (UBUNTU 12.04) and your default install incompatibility with the Broadcom wireless in the ACER 5516.

Dealing with DISA

I have had to deal with DISA lately, and I am impressed with their responsiveness and attention to detail.  I have seen things run well and poorly in the Federal Government, but these people seemed well organized and tuned to their mission.

It gives me a little bit of an itch to go back to something more direct than the work I do now.

Carrots Lead to Performance Drops