The IT Mission

At a recent CITRT (church IT RoundTable) conference, we were reminded why we work for the church. It’s not just to keep all the computers running…although that is important. We are there to serve the Lord. So, when someone comes in dejected because their home pc isn’t working and they really need our help, we need to put aside our schedules and impatience. Sometimes just listening and caring can be huge in a person’s life and sometimes, it’s not even about the computer…it just added to the burden.

This T-shirt reminded me of church IT’s true calling…

The World of Tweeting

I have recently been thrown head first into the world of twitter. Yes, I’m a network administrator, and a bit of a geek. But, frankly, when I go home, I step out of that role and become wife and mother. The thought of announcing what I’m doing to the whole world made me cringe. But, I was tasked with learning all I could about twitter, and how to manage it with multiple team members for our church. Lucky for me, I was headed to a church IT Roundtable conference in the midst of my research.

I have to say, I underestimated the power of twitter and how useful being “connected” could be. During the conference I tweeted funny quotes, travel plans, and some IT questions. I was able to follow what others were saying and thinking about the conference. Hmmm…this could be fun. I learned some of the syntax of the tweet world, like @ and #. I know…I’m way behind the curve. And, I’m ok with that.

Team tweeting: My team here at the church wants to be able to manage tweets that go out on twitter and then also to our facebook fan page. They want to let everyone on the team make posts directly to twitter/fb and have one centralized place to manage all that. So, I googled and found a few applications that could work: hootsuite, cotweet, and birdherd.

Cotweet: I started here because it was recommended in an article that was written a year ago. The dashboard wasn’t quite as intuitive as tweetdeck, but I quickly figured it out. You can assign messages and mentions to members of the team. I’m not sure yet if there is a limit to the number of team members you can add to an account, because I haven’t yet reached that limit. (OK…found out the limit is 5…1 twitter account + 4 users; 2 twitter accounts + 3 users; etc.) One nice feature is that you get an email when you are assigned a tweet. This will come in handy if there is a tweet/mention that is directed to a particular ministry.

Birdherd: This looks like an interesting tool because you can update a group account using the direct message feature from any other twitter application, like tweetdeck. This would be a great tool for a group of technically savy people because you could manage everything from your favorite application, but it requires commands within the message so that birdherd knows what to do with the direct message. It’s not going to work for our situation.

Hootsuite: This looks like a great tool. It is organizes well and a nice dashboard similar to tweetdeck. However, you can only have one team member unless you pay $5.99/month. That’s not a bad price, but you have to pay for each additional team member that is given administrative permissions to tweet on behalf of that account. This is still a good choice if you have a lot of team members adding to the tweets.

Conclusion: We are going to stick with co-tweet. As long as we keep our total number to 5 (1 twitter account and 4 users) this is the way to go. Once you get into their enterprise level it gets expensive. Flex 5 is $600 and Flex 15 is around $1500.

The church will have to continue to make sure we are intentional about what is put out “there” and also to stay on top of any incoming mentions or tweets. That is a danger to diving into technology. Once you establish your presence and gotten your feet wet, you have to stay in the pool and be ready to engage, even if it means doing extra laps.

Using resources wisely

Today my IT task was to look at twitter for our church staff and see if they can do a multi-user twitter account. Sure enough, a little googling and I found an article that lists two Apps for multiple users: CoTweet and Birdherd.

The article gave lots of good information about both apps and the pros and cons for each one. As I was finishing the article I happened to look at the author information. It was written by a 17 year old blogger who is also a technology reporter in Bangladesh. Wow! I remembered a friend telling me that in India, the job market is so competitive that people are constantly learning the latest on their own, keeping up with technology. Nobody is there to “train” them, to hold their hand and make sure they follow the “right” career path. They are aggressive at an early age and ready to absorb any knowledge they can.

This is a good lesson for our country if we want to stay competitive. We have so many resources at our disposal. So…no more excuses!

Avatars

A friend of mine just pointed out to me the real meaning of the word “avatar”. It’s funny how you become accustomed to the latest jargon, the latest trend, without thinking about what it might mean to some people. Avatar in the computer world is a virtual representation of a real person sitting behind the keyboard. On the web, you might use an avatar to represent you in a video game, or in a chat room or a blog. The literal translation of the term is “the incarnation of a deity in human form”. Interesting…

So, in reality, there is only one true avatar…Jesus Christ.

Virtualization plunge – part 2

For those who were on the edge of their seats for 8 months…yeah right.

After a few months of using Hyper-V, I wasn’t convinced. We had a lot of problems with the iSCSI initiator staying connected to our SAN when our Hyper-V windows machine had to reboot because of updates. And, as you know, Microsoft always has a lot of updates. So, after much pleading, we switched back to ESXi. And, this time, we went ahead and bought vSphere Essentials so we could have a server that controlled 3 hosts. After making the switch around Christmas time, we proceeded with the church network migration to the virtual world. Everything went fairly smooth since we had done it a few months before and I had kept detailed records of lessons learned.

We are extremely happy with ESX and the virtual world. It has made managing servers so much easier. If someone needs a machine to run a special application, I create a virtual machine. We even have two VMs that run our check-in stations through iPads. Our school lab is “virtual” using nComputing terminals that run off of two VM hosts.

We landed on the virtual ground and have been running with it ever since! Special thanks to the church IT Roundtable group that took the time to share their knowledge and experience with the rest of us church IT folks!! You rock!

Taking the plunge into virtualization – part 1

This past year has been a whirlwind of new technology, strategizing and many late nights.  Through it all I’ve learned a lot about ESX, ESXi, vCenter Server, MS Hyper-V, and Equallogic SANs.  I have more acronyms in my head than from when I worked for AID (Agency for International Development).  And, I know that the journey has only just begun.  There’s one thing you can always count on in life: change.

About 1 1/2 years ago I started playing with ESX server.  I created a virtual Linux box used for cloning images, and a Windows Server box for a back up domain controller.  The machines were on two different networks, so I played with virtual switches and vlans on ESX.  Then, last summer, we purchased an Equallogic SAN and decided to merge our church & school networks, combining to a completely new domain name/structure.  It was a big project and we didn’t have a lot of time since we got a late start and school was starting in September.  We hired a consultant.  The consultant convinced my boss that we should use Hyper-V for some compelling reasons.  I reluctantly agreed – bigger learning curve.  And, we dove head first into Hyper-V.  We had 2 1/2 days with the consultant (K) starting on Sunday afternoon.  We had a plan and no time to lose.  K got started – while I watched intently over his shoulder.

K got Hyper-V loaded on one of our newer servers (after I P to V’d the old server onto ESX), we attached the Equallogic using the MS iSCSI initiator, and got 4 virtual servers up and running.  Then we proceded to migrate everything from one to domain to the other, transferring files, changing vlans on switches, exporting mailboxes, etc.  It was a big job.  Luckily school wasn’t in, so they didn’t have too many pain from this process.  We did have some problems migrating the workstations which came back to haunt us later…but that’s another post.

That was a long week and I didn’t get a lot of sleep, but in the end it was worth it.  And, I knew that we would have to do it again sometime in December for the church.  Somewhere I have a “lessons learned” document that I’ll post when I find it. 

So…maybe you’re wondering…how did Hyper-V compare to ESX? 

🙂

RSS Feeds not working in Outlook lately

I recently noticed my RSS feeds were not updating.  Initially I thought everyone else was too busy like me to blog, but then I discovered that my niece, who is a faithful blogger, didn’t seem to be blogging and I knew it had to be my feed.  After combing the foray of forums & tips, I found a solution via one Zubair Alexander:

1.       Export your RSS feed file to an OPML file.

2.       Close outlook

3.       Restart outlook from the Start/Run menu by typing: outlook /cleansharing.  This switch will clear any Internet calendar subscriptions (such as RSS feeds and SharePoint sites).

4.       Check Tools/Account Settings/RSS Feeds Tab to make sure feeds are cleared.  You will still have the data from your RSS feeds, which you will need to delete.

5.       Wait a few minutes until everything is synchronized from the Exchange server.

6.       Then import your RSS OPML file that was previously saved.

7.       Press F9 to send/receive and voila!

I also found a reference to the fact that your RSS feed local .pst file can’t be larger than 2 GB for those who have gone crazy with their RSS feed subscriptions.  Mine were barely 2 MB.  J

Double Hidden Files (49 days and 18 hours later)

Did you know that Microsoft has hidden hidden files?  Apparently it’s called “client side caching”. 

Last week I was in the midst of recloning our school lab computers.  Our computer teacher had loaded the additional software onto our “master” pc and it was all ready to go.  I started the upload task on our FOG server and went home.  In the morning I found that our FOG server had crashed.  Upon examing the error log, I found that we had run out of space on the virtual drive.  The drive had 40GB set aside, but I thought that maybe I had cloned too many images.  So, with the help of one of my Linux friends, I manually deleted the corrupted image, along with other images to free up some space.  Then, I uploaded the image again.  Same problem.  Hmmm.  So, I finally checked the size of the used space on my C: drive.  It was up to 53GB!!  What could have taken up so much room?  Last time I cloned the machine it was down around 10GB.  Granted, we loaded more software, but not that much!  I found the Windows folder was the culprit, but I couldn’t find any large or extraneous files.

After googling the problem, I found a forum that mentioned “client side cached files”.  They don’t show up in windows explorer, so I went through the command prompt and used dir /s/p.  Lo and behold, there was a hidden directory called c:\CSC with 43GB of files.  Voila!

Cause: The school lab uses roaming profiles.  Since I don’t want these profiles to be bogged down with large amounts of data, I’ve redirected the My Documents folder.  Windows XP automatically turns on offline file caching for redirected folders, which wouldn’t be a huge problem if there was only one person logging onto a machine.  But, since we have around 200 roaming profiles with a years worth of data on their My Documents, it can really add up.

Solution: Open windows explorer, click on Tools -> Folder Options -> Offline Files.  First click on Delete Files and then uncheck Enable Offline Folders.

Or…enable the global policy: User configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Network -> Offline Files – “Do not automatically make redirected folders available offline”.

BTW – 49 days and 18 hours – was the time on the microsoft counter to delete my offline files.  But, since these were Microsoft minutes, it really only took a couple hours.  🙂

A tryst with ESXi

Last Monday I couldn’t wait to come to work after being gone on vacation for a week.  No…I wasn’t excited to wade through my back log of email.  I could finally play with virtualization!  Our decommissioned server was finally ready.  I had added a second xeon processor that was lying around (yes, living among internet giants like Yahoo and AOL has its perks).  But, this old Dell required a voltage regulator module to be installed next to the processor for it to work.  The part had come in the day before I left on vacation.  Darn!  But, now Monday was here and I could get started.

I found out timing was good, because I missed a VMWare “recall”/patch on their ESXi that timed out on August 12th.  So, I downloaded the latest version and got started.  My goal: to load a Linux virtual server with the FOG cloning software.

I had to work fast, because the cloning had to be complete by the end of the week, and if it didn’t work, we would have to order software.  It was finished in 2 days and all 35 computers in the lab cloned and ready to go at the end of the day on Friday.  ESXi was so easy, and the FOG website had a VMWare file ready to download.  Don’t get me wrong, since this was all new technology for me, I had to use lots of resources.  The church IT Roundtable Chat room was invaluable!  I had to use VM Converter to get the VMware file to load.  Then, I had to learn about PXE boot for the FOG program.

It was a good week…although I didn’t wade through the email.  I left that for this week.  Yikes!

Missions and IT

How much my world changed since the last post two months ago.  God can really rock your world if you let Him!

About a month ago I received a letter from a young orphan girl in Nicaragua, Shayling, who I met 2 years ago on a missions trip.  This wasn’t anything unusual since we had been corresponding back & forth since we met…except this letter was different.  Instead of the usual generic things, she wrote a long letter and told me of how she prayed that I would be able to come back and visit.  With each group that visited from our church, she looked for me, hoping that I would come.  Wow!  I sat there feeling guilty that although I was feeling the “tug” to go back, I had been ignoring it.  I was too busy.  And, there was a group leaving in a few weeks, but it was full, I had missed the deadline.  I decided I would sign up to go in the spring, and trust that God would take care of the details.  The next day, one of our pastors stopped in my office to chat and mentioned that there were openings in the trip to Nicaragua that was leaving in 10 days, did I want to go?  Wow!  I’d like to say my response was “yes!”.  But, I’m not as spontaneous as I thought I was.  I came up with lots of excuses why I couldn’t go.  I prayed about it and was in turmoil for days.  Every excuse was answered, yet I couldn’t bring myself to say “yes”.  The morning I was supposed to let the missions secretary know, I was in tears.  All of my reasons for not being able to go were swimming in my head and I thought I should feel at peace if I was to go.  I sought counsel, and they said it seemed as if God was opening doors, but if I didn’t feel at peace, I shouldn’t go.  Finally, I followed the “signs” and advice and not my emotions (which were ruled by fear) and said “yes”.  I had an immediate sense of relief and peace.  It was like I was struggling against the current of the Holy Spirit and the second I turned around it was easy.

My youngest daughter, age 12, went with me and had a blast.  Four days before departure I learned of an IT project to increase the wireless range.  I spent the last few days before leaving, researching, ordering parts, and collecting equipment.  It was an extrememly successful trip, and I was able to use my IT skills to advance God’s kingdom!  I also was able to be there for Shayling’s 16th birthday.  God is awesome!

This whole experience has made me realize that knowing and recognizing God’s will is a lot more than following your emotions and feelings.  Being in the word, praying, and seeking counsel is the only true way to find His will.  My generation was about feeling good: about yourself, about life, etc.  But, our emotions aren’t the truth.  Once you’re doing what God has asked you to do, the feeling is amazing.  I don’t like to fly, but I didn’t have an ounce of fear on this trip.  Instead I had the peace that passes understanding.  

I hope to be able to do more work for God’s kingdom and maybe next time I’ll recognize the Holy Spirit when he calls.  (Or He’ll just have to do some more butt kicking!)  🙂