Posted by Dan on Dec 18, 2008 in
Lucky Hit Riverbed Technology (NASDAQ: RVBD) today announced that Ware Malcomb has selected and deployed Riverbed(R) Steelhead(R) appliances and Steelhead Mobile to overcome bandwidth and latency problems causing collaboration challenges for employees in branch offices and mobile workers. Its Riverbed deployment has allowed the firm to easily share workloads across offices, enabling Ware Malcomb to maximize the productivity of its existing staff and eliminate the need for additional financial investments in bandwidth.
Ware Malcomb is a national design firm offering planning, architecture, interior design, graphic design and site development services to commercial development and corporate clients throughout North America. The firm’s corporate office is located in Irvine, California, with additional locations in San Diego, Los Angeles, Inland Empire, Northern California, Sacramento, Phoenix, Denver, Chicago, New Jersey and Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Over the last 10 years Ware Malcomb has grown from three local offices to 11 sites across the US. As the firm grew, collaboration between offices became increasingly strained. Accessing data on CAD platforms, including AutoCAD, ADT, Revit, MicroStation and ADD, became increasingly difficult for branch offices and mobile workers. For example, one Photoshop file could take about five minutes to copy over the network, causing end-users to complain to the IT staff. These challenges forced Ware Malcomb to look for a solution that would allow more efficient collaboration between dispersed offices and remote workers.
Ware Malcomb’s Director of IT, Moses Gonzales, led the mission to secure a WAN optimization solution by evaluating several competitors and ultimately selecting Riverbed Steelhead appliances and Steelhead Mobile.
“Deploying the Steelhead appliances and Steelhead Mobile has significantly improved productivity at our firm. Files are much easier to access. The Photoshop file that once took five minutes to copy was reduced to about 20 seconds,” said Gonzales. “Increased collaboration is only one of the benefits we’ve experienced from our Riverbed deployment. We’re experiencing cost savings by eliminating the need to hire employees in a specific geographical area or adding expensive bandwidth.” Ware Malcomb estimates that to obtain the same type of flexibility as its Riverbed deployment, it would need to at least triple its current bandwidth, adding approximately $12,000 a month in costs.
The firm relies on sharing resources and employees between offices to complete its projects efficiently and within budget. According to Gonzales, Riverbed has become an important part of the company’s growth strategy. “Steelhead products are standard equipment as the firm opens new offices. When the firm launches services in new markets, we keep staff at new locations to a minimum until we build a client base to support local employees. During this transition time, the firm has teams of experts from other locations work with local clients to meet their needs. Without Riverbed, this shifting of work between offices would not be as seamless or cost efficient.”
Ware Malcomb also installed Riverbed Steelhead Mobile client software on the laptops of 30 of its most senior employees and at one remote location. According to Gonzales, “Many of our employees routinely work from home and at job sites. One of the biggest complaints we get in IT is poor mobile application performance. Today, employees with Steelhead Mobile on their laptops get office-like performance regardless of their location. And, for our smallest offices where deployment of a Steelhead appliance was just not feasible, we are now able to deliver LAN-like performance. The combination of the Steelhead appliances and Steelhead Mobile is unbeatable.”
Posted by Dan on Dec 18, 2008 in
Lucky Hit In the last several years, and especially within the last couple, the biggest buzzword in IT has been virtualization. The spin has taken this form: Save money on servers, save money on power and there are no downsides to virtualizing your servers. Coming from marketing people, I suppose two out of three accurate points aren’t that bad. SQL Server virtualization can certainly save money on servers and on power. But if your server isn’t a good candidate for virtualization, then there are some big downsides to it.
With Microsoft SQL Server, you can create virtual machines using VMware or Hyper-V, installing Windows on each virtual server and installing SQL Server on each virtual machine. Another option is to install separate instances of SQL Server on a single physical – or virtual – server. Both methods have their upsides and downsides – and sometimes systems shouldn’t use either method because they simply aren’t a good candidate for virtualization.
Independent Virtual Machines
Setting up independent virtual machines is probably the easiest way to virtualize SQL Server systems. Each machine, which would have normally been a physical machine, gets its own virtual machine and you manage everything the same. The upside to this is that memory management is the same as it is in the physical server world. You set up each virtual machine with the correct amount of memory and you are good to go. Because each machine is allocated its own amount of RAM, the amount of cache each database has access to is known, which allows you to make better judgments as to how much RAM to allocate to the server.
There are some downsides to this kind of virtualization method. The largest of the downsides is the hard drive configuration. For the most part when you set up virtual servers, you’ll use the native virtual storage technique that comes with the virtual server software. This means that the hard drive that the virtual machine sees is actually a single file stored on the host machine’s hard drive. The host’s hard drive can be a SAN (storage area network), NAS (network-attached storage) or DAS (direct-attached storage) depending on your solution options and setup configuration.
Because you are now sharing storage with the other virtual servers hosted by the host machine, you will be at the mercy of these other machines – just as they will be at the mercy of your SQL Server – when accessing the hard drive. If another machine starts performing a high I/O operation, such as a defrag operation, then your SQL Server will feel this impact as well. All isn’t lost, as some virtualization solutions give you the option of presenting a LUN for physical DAS array directly to the guest OS. Basically, it bypasses the host OS and takes this layer out of the picture, allowing you to control the performance of the guest operating system’s hard drives.
There is an upside to this kind of virtualization as well. When you use a VMware or Hyper-V virtualization server to host your SQL Servers and you need to increase the amount of storage the virtual machine has access to, it’s easy to set up. You simply shut down the guest OS, run a command on the host OS – or use the UI to make the change depending on the solution – then start the guest OS and use diskpart on the guest OS to extend the hard drive.
Using Instances for Virtualization
In the SQL Server world, we’ve been able to virtualize since SQL Server 2000 by using SQL Server’s ability to install multiple instances on the same server. This gives you the separation of instances but doesn’t require running more than one OS, and it saves a large amount of RAM if you are consolidating several machines. If you install eight instances of SQL Server on a single machine, you only need to run a single Windows 2003 or 2008 OS. Yet, if you put each instance into its own guest OS on a server virtualization system, you have to install eight Windows 2003 or Windows 2008 operating systems.
Another upside to installing several instances on a single server over installing multiple virtual machines is that you can retain better control of the disk I/O. Because it’s typically going to be a physical server running all these instances, you can assign each instance the correct number of drives from your SAN or DAS solution that the server needs.
The big downside to using several instances on a single server is that the memory starts to become much harder to manage as you now have to balance the memory requirements of all the instances within the RAM allocation of the physical server. You can easily over subscribe the memory and end up with Windows not having enough memory for itself and the other software running on the server. And that becomes more problematic when you start backing up your server to a network share or when your backup software copies the backup files from the server to the backup server.
Doing either of those operations on large files requires a large amount of system cache – sometimes several gigs depending on the size of the database backup files. If you don’t allocate enough RAM for Windows to do that, then Windows will have to take the memory from the SQL Servers, which can impact database performance.
Conclusion
If you can work within these limitations, then your server is probably a good candidate for virtualization. In most cases, the limitations mean that larger, busier SQL Servers aren’t good candidates for virtualization. Most companies have smaller systems that do not have much of a CPU load or memory requirement and can easily virtualize SQL Servers using one of these methods. It’s up to you, the DBA, and your coworkers to weigh the SQL Server virtualization pros and cons and decide which solution is correct for your specific environment.
Posted by Dan on Dec 18, 2008 in
Lucky Hit How Real Time Leads Can Change Your Business If you have ever looked into buying MLM leads online you have probably heard of ‘Real Time Leads. You have probably also noticed that they are more expensive than many of the other types of leads out there. There is a reason for that. Real Time Leads have the ability to change your MLM business.
A Real Time Lead is a form of MLM leads that allows you to know when someone has shown interest in learning about a home based business opportunity – in real time. The moment that they provide their contact information and request that someone contact them with information about a home based business you are sent their MLM lead information. I know what you’re thinking… “So What? Why is this so important?”
A real time lead is up to 100 times more likely to enroll in your opportunity if you call them right when they request information. This is when their interest in a home based business is the highest that it will ever be, and they are already in ‘buying mode.’ By calling your Real Time Lead right away you may even get in touch with them while they are still on your website. They get the feeling that they are involved and important enough for you to call them right away rather than being put off until later. “So, how does this differ from other fresh leads?”
Simply put ‘the early bird gets the worm.’ No matter how early you get to your MLM lead you are always second to the person who got there before you. In the case of home based business leads you are on the clock. For every second that passed between the time when your Real Time Lead requested to be contacted and the time that you made the call you have lost a portion of their interest. They have moved off of your site and became distracted by another thought. The rest of their life reared its head and they had to run off to do an errand to cook a meal for their children.
All of these things place your opportunity on the ‘back burner’ in their mind. Letting your opportunity lose focus also means that it loses importance in the mind of your MLM lead. No matter how fresh your lead is it isn’t going to be able to provide the instant response that a Real Time Lead can provide. Your response time can make all the difference when dealing with your home based business leads, and that is where Real Time Leads have the advantage. “What if I go away for a weekend – will I lose the leads that I paid for during that time?” This depends on the MLM Leads Company that you are dealing with but many MLM Companies allow you to ‘pause’ your leads until you reactivate your service. When you are looking for a company that provides Real Time Leads you should always look for a company that only charges you for the leads that you actually get.
If your MLM leads campaign is paused you shouldn’t be billed because leads aren’t being sent to you. If you have never used the power of a Real Time Lead to accelerate your business I would recommend that you give it a try. When it comes to MLM leads there really isn’t anything more powerful than a home business lead provided in real time. Copyright (c) Don Reid is an expert on the subject of Real Time MLM Leads If you would like more information about MLM Leads please visit his Apache Leads website.
Posted by Dan on Dec 18, 2008 in
Lucky Hit Because the warmer seasons are lasting longer, many places in the Northern Hemisphere are having problems with fleas. It used to be that many cities and states were too cold for fleas or, a least, they disapperad in the wintertime. But due to Global Warming, flea season is now year round in many new places.
Are you and your pets being made miseable by fleas? Here is some basic information about fleas to get you up to speed on this problem.
Identification and Important Facts about Fleas - Fleas not only cause an itchy problem for you and your pets; they also can pose a number of health problems if a flea infestation is not kept under control. You know if your pet has fleas by the incessant scratching and biting on their coats and skin. If they scratch and bite enough, the skin will break open, inviting infection. The same principle follows when you are bitten by fleas too. Do you know how to recognize flea bites and the pesky critters themselves?
Description of the Flea – Fleas are very small, usually no bigger than 1/16 of an inch. They are dark in color, usually a reddish-brown, with a flat body. Fleas have no wings but the body is covered with tiny spines and they have long legs perfect for jumping. There are four stages of the flea’s life cycle: the egg, larva, pupa and the adult, capable of biting. One single flea is capable of laying several thousand eggs in its lifetime – the reason why flea infestations can occur so quickly!
A Few Facts about Fleas – Fleas love warmer weather as it is easier for them to survive and reproduce. In fact, in southern regions and newer place, fleas procreate year-round. Over 90% of fleas experience their life stages in the environment of a pet or other animal, rather than the pet itself. For the most part, animals are affected by only the adult fleas that have the mouth for biting and the legs for jumping.
When fleas are a problem in a particular pet, not just the pet should be treated. Obviously the eggs, larvae and pupa of the flea have been laid around the environment such as the immediate yard, rugs inside the home, animal beds, furniture and even curtains, bed linens and anywhere else the animal has roamed. Killing just the adult fleas is not enough. Treating the entire pet environment is necessary to kill the fleas in the other three stages of development.
Flea allergy dermatitis, tapeworm and anemia may result in pets affected by fleas. All three can severely compromise the health of your pet if left untreated. Fleas are easy to treat but with more aggressive cases, you may have to do it several times. There are plenty of effective topical treatments for the pets themselves but you may also have to treat the yard as well as the home with a fogger that will kill the eggs, larvae and pupa that will eventually hatch into adult biting fleas.
Once you can get a flea infestation under control, the preventative maintenance is a breeze. While you or your pets can definitely get fleas from other sources, you cannot control those areas. You can only control your own (and your pet’s) environment.
Posted by Dan on Dec 18, 2008 in
Lucky Hit Almost 15 million pixels go into the CCD of the Powershot G10 CCD. And those pixels give you an outstanding image quality, plus an amazing choice of cropping options with the final image.
The G10 goes as wide as 28 m.mm and also offers a 5x zoom. Optical Image Stabilisation keeps the image sharp even when using the long end of the zoom – very important if you can’t hand-hold a camera as steadily as before. The image stabilisation feature should mean that more of your shots come out sharp.
The LCD display is a 3.0-inch Pure Color LCD II screen. That makes it much easier to line up your shots – you won’t need to squint anymore to see what’s on the screen. If you’ve never used a large lcd monitor digital camera before then you’ll be astonished at just how much easier it makes life. The Canon Powershot offers a really beautiful display.
Canon have also added their DIGIC 4 image processor. Fancy names and acronyms aside, the DIGIC 4 offers faster operation and enhanced image quality – something we all appreciate.
The Canon G10 is truly a stunning example of engineering and design. For most people it will be a more practical and a better alternative to an SLR. Although it’s not the smallest digital ‘compact’ on the market, it’s probably one of the best specified and ergonomically designed cameras currently available.
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Posted by Dan on Dec 18, 2008 in
Lucky Hit This is about finance.
A typical that has the capability to tolerate learning real estate.I know what I’m talking about when it comes to learn real estate at least when it comes to Toronto real estate.
You may also remember this about investing in real estate. How can you do that. I find it hard to get new ideas anywhere else. I am trying to give you a long-term solution. I hope you get my point. You’ll need a separate condo.Matter of fact, you may be tired of hearing it.
I would consider any investing in real estate, given that the condo are typically better there. I guess some more learn real estate investing for beginners would be a good thing as well. Houses would be stupid if I don’t know how. This is the case. Here’s why using make money through real estate can increase your investing in real estate. See what they say about real estate investing.
This blows any other make money through real estate out of the water. I’m not going to do the same for learn real estate. Perhaps someone may say that about learn real estate and they would be right. Bah. Then again, probably not. Let’s put it this way.
Realty companies is the key to developing learning real estate. With real estate investing, everything else comes together. Maybe you had to be there. Then again, probably not. When everything labeled and organized, it’s easy to locate housing bubble when you need it. This is one of the many ways to make extra money.
Condo is a easy way to get your hands on more that thing. Now, obviously, this is my fault as I was too cautious with investing in real estate. Hard work is truly required. No news is good news. This is the only way to go, really. Maybe I should put it this way. I admit that I tend to focus too much on make money through real estate.
As you can see investing in real estate isn’t all that hard.
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