Travis Kensil - Church I.T.

Gotten a couple emails about our thin clients…thought I’d share some details for those that might be interested.

BACKGROUND (skip if all you want is the techy stuff)

About a year ago some of our ministries wanted designated stations for their volunteers/nonstaff personnel to work without having to use their systems. At the time I didn’t want to invest big $$$ in desktop systems for volunteers who may come and go as well as all the headaches associated with security of desktop systems; enter the thin client. I looked at options from HP and other main stage players in the thin client arena but couldn’t seem to find anything cheap; some thin clients were more than desktops! Finally after much research I came across Ncomputing. They are a relatively new startup out of California with pretty cool products and good support especially when you consider you don’t have to pay for it! Their machines hit below $200 a piece and even include additional-purchase management software for all the clients.

THE TECHIE PART

(L100 pictured - currently the “old model”)

The concept is pretty simple…the little black box has a main board that contains some basic firmware, has no moving parts and contains your monitor/keyboard/etc. hookups. Everything runs from the server (host) device you connect it to. Ncomputing has a network option as well as a hard wired option that involves a pci card and a short distance to the server. Basically you install Ncomputing’s server software on your host XP/2003 box…the client boxes automatically find the host and connect…from there everything is a standard WinXP/2003 session as if you were locally logged in to a box. We run a WinXPPRO virtual machine and have had no problems since install.

These boxes work great for the “average” web/Office user…they have no dedicated video in the box which means everything is done server side which does make multimedia difficult if not impossible. In tests and production we can still not get decent performance from users when they attempt to watch Youtube videos or play videos. Ncomputing does however have a newer thin client model that is suppost to improve performance, have not tested however. For users who only surf the web and do Office these boxes rock. Some of my boxes have been in use for 2+ years with no issues. Updates/upgrades to the OS/applications need only be done on the host machine. If we could get better performance out of them video wise I would consider using them for some of our full-time staff/users. I have also tinkered with using them for our new checkin system (more about that later)…although I would need USB ports. The newest L230 from Ncomputing has a USB port which we would need.

If your looking for some thin clients without the hefty price tag (thanks HP) you might want to give Ncomputing a try. Here is the coolest part…they will let you test drive their equipment for 30 days before you buy! Ncomputing Test Drive

A good friend and mentor of mine has a blog out there now…

He works in public school I.T. but is also very involved in his local church tech/I.T. stuff….check it out!

http://www.bloglines.com/blog/dlhousem

Just got done installing the new version of AVG 8.0 and it rocks! We’ve been using AVG for close to a year now since I got tired of ridiculous pricing from Symantec/Norton. We use the network edition in 7.5 and I was worried we wouldn’t be eligible for free updates to 8.0; went to AVG’s website and it claimed we were so I downloaded and installed!

They completely reworked the interface and made it much easier to use! The 7.5 version GUI required a lot of scrolling and multiple menus just to access certain features. The newest version also has some really neat additions such as Rootkit scanning and a very increased presence in the web browser; with a very big focus on web/link security. Apparently with the optional IE toolbar addin it can scan links/search results before you click and notify you of potential issues in the site. I did notice it adds a 1-2 sec. delay in IE7s load time but it could be worth it considering all the positive things it offers to the normal web user.

The Remote Admin. utility has also matured since 7.5. Installation was quick and a host of new wizards makes setup a snap; don’t forget the convenient network install options! Looks like AVG changed the port numbers from 4156 to 4158  as default although you can change that in setup.

Overall this new and improved AVG is quite good; I really like the rootkit and deeper layers of scanning/detection that this new version offers….really looks like AVG is responding to the mass of new threats out there. The web and toolbar integration does seem a little young and hopefully will improve with age. I am very happy with it so far; and the crazy thing is the low amount of system resources it uses even with all/most modules installed! If your using Symantec or someone else you might really want to give AVG a look; they offer VERY good nonprofit discounts. I’ll post more as I begin to roll this out to the actual users/desktops…looks exciting so far!

Thought my VSS issues were gone; no such luck. After some more testing it appears to be something in MozyPro causing VSS failures. At first I thought the issue was solved but it is back, on a different server. I am now narrowing on MOzy because I have another server not running Mozy and have had no issues. The common variable always seems to be once MOzy gets installed things start going badly. Our EMS box was running for 6 months, virtualized of course, without Mozy and no issues; I installed Mozy 3 weeks ago, after week 2 logs show the VSS service randomly quit working, failed backups with it. My next step is to collect additional data and begin working with Mozy to see if this is a bug on their end. From the comments/emails it appears I am not the only one with this issue; if you are having the issue please email me so I can let Mozy know this is not an isolated incident. Thanks!

Got some exciting projects up and coming…..they are….

1) One of my consulting customers will be going to Exchange 2007. I will definitely be blogging about that transition and making notes so perhaps someone else can avoid the pitfalls I know will happen. Also want to try and setup the replication/HA features that Microsoft claims Exchange 07 can do; will be interesting to see how well it works. Both instances of Exchange will be running on my good buddy Vmware

2) Virtualizing Shelby. With our recent push to virtualize anything/everything it just makes sense to try Shelby. Has anybody done this successfully yet? My early tests did not go well but we’ve done some equipment upgrades so perhaps better results will follow? I know reading of someone (maybe Tony Dye or Cliff Guy?) who did and suffered wicked performance issues. So if you have done it, drop me an email and let me pick your brain.

3) SAN/NAS/Storage Decision. Going back to my previous posts we are still looking into a storage solution. I am going to be ordering some more SCSI drives to pop into our secondary Vmware host just till I can get this storage issue solved. As pricing is coming back from vendors I am seeing the iSCSI SAN idea fading away; I just don’t want to try and justify that expense right now. Considering going the NAS route and just keeping all staff/media/tech files on that box and letting our 2 vmhosts run from internal storage. I’ve devised a clever (or at least I think so) way to mimic the benefit of having a SAN for failover should a physical machine die, but without actually having a SAN. What I want to do is make identical copies of every virtual machine on both hosts, leaving one in an “off” state while the other is active. My thinking is that if one box should die I could shift to the other box; grab the latest backup of data and be back up in running in under 30 minutes. For example…..we have our Shelby server image copied to both machines in a blank data state….one is production, one is backup. If primary dies I can start the backup vm, import the latest database and be good to go. Now I just need to begin testing this and see how it works. I know Windows responds well to moving servers; have had some issues with Linux…mostly with networking. Working on some sort of script that can help Linux migrate a little easier; I’ve seen something similiar on the Vmware Communities a while back.

Those are some of the latest things up and coming. Two posts in a day will be making up for close to 3 weeks without postings. Our Easter production rehearsals/programming is just ramping up and the next month will be crazy. Starting next week we have 3 rehearsals a week plus 2-3 tech. meetings. Crazy stuff, but all for the glory!

Hope all of you reading are well; good luck with your Easter productions!

One of the cool parts of my after-hours consulting gig is that I get to see, fix and document lots of weird/uncommon issues. So with that said, I have created a new category for “Bugs/Issues” where I can document these things not only for my benefit but possibly for yours. Yesterday marks another weird one.

One of my consulting customers is a 30+ staff office running Exchange 2003. One of their sales guys could never seem to open forwarded attachments. Initially I made the assumption it was just the security settings in Outlook preventing it from opening; checked those and everything was fine. I then did a simple repair/detect operation thinking something was possibly corrupt in Outlook; no improvement. I tried and was successful at opening the attachments myself in Outlook….which began to make be believe there could be some sort of plugin/3rd party product on the client machine causing this behavior.

Going back about 6 months ago I discovered that Apple iTunes installs this nifty little plugin inside of Outlook that when using IMAP causes Outlook extreme delays in startup/sync.

So with that previous knowledge from the past, I went and checked the com-addins and addins section of Outlook. I noticed two entries, Google and iTunes. After removing both entries and restarting Outlook; the staff member was immediately able to open/view messages/forwards. After some process of elimination I determined the Google plugin was the offending object. After some further research it appears there is a known bug between Google/Outlook. So with that said, here is the official bug fix…

1) Launch Outlook (so far this appears to be an issue in 2003, not sure about newer/older verions)
2) Click on Tools - Options - Other - Advanced
3) Remove Google Toolbar Tick in both Ad-In Manager and Com Ad-Ins (I actually just chose to completely remove them but either way should work)
4) Restart Outlook

Also as I mentioned, the same process about applies to fix a slow load/sync in Outlook when using IMAP protocol for your mail. Instead of removing Google remove the iTunes plugin.

Just thought I would post this in case anyone else has this issue…

About three weeks ago I noticed some of our backups and most importantly MozyPRO was having issues completing successful backups. After some investigations I found a series of random VSS errors in the logs; Microsoft and random Google searches didn’t really turn up anything of use. I also noticed that the VSS service seemed to randomly stop running and never automatically restart itself again.

In the past I have had success, when the print spooler service exhibited similiar symptoms, in simply stopping the service and grabbing a “good” version of the spooler file from either the windows disk or another workstation and simply overwriting the file, rebooting. My similiar logic applied in this scenario.

I stopped the VSS service, grabbed a “good” working copy from another one of our servers, replaced the existing and performed a reboot. So far so good…I have not seen any errors/issues currently because of this. The real test will be later tonight once our main backups and Mozy begin running….both which heavily utilize VSS.

I have not had much time to investigate how this issue begins or what causes it. I know some variables seem to be…

- An installation of Retrospect backup software (specifically the version for use with the Odyssey (http://www.imation.com/products/odyssey/index.html Removeable Hard Disk system)
- The MozyPRO client

I do believe the issue started after an unsuccessful install of the Odyssey product and somehow corrupted VSS. I want to do further testing to see if it was caused by Retrospect itself or some goofy driver issue. The problem definitely seemed to start once we attempted install of the Odyssey product.

Anyone else using an Odyssey hard disk product, install the software and wound up with a corrupt VSS service? I’ll keep this post updated as I discover more info. about this issue.

Haven’t had time to blog about it but we had another Roundtable meeting on Feb. 8th at Calvary Church. I think it went very well. We had 7 people in attendance; representing a bunch of different churches. Our discussions focused around storage/SANs (we currently were the only church looking at a SAN solution), wireless, backups/DR, Exchange 2007 and more. Overall it seems that every church in our area, big or small, is facing the same situations…..just on different scales/sizes and with different budgets to attack those situations with! Made some very strong relationships with Calvary which is just up the road from us; got some very good ideas from them! Overall I thought it was a good meeting and look forward to the next. Thinking sometime later this year (read after Summer)…would like to generate more involvement from other churches around Michigan, not just western MI. If you know anyone who would be interested, let me know.

Also took the time to properly categorize my posts up to this point, did some site redesign and added a pic from Grand Haven from last year…can’t wait for Winter to be over! Nothing is better than camping on the beach at Grand Haven all summer, NOTHING! Well, except perhaps new technology toys

Also finally setup a twitter account that I will be updating daily.

Among my roles at NCC I am also heavily involved in our Arts Department in the creative media area. One of our large issues has been proper communication and scheduling of people, specifically as it pertains to Sunday mornings. After searching the web and even contemplating coding my own homebrew solution I came across Planning Center Online. We actually signed up for the basic plan back in late 2007 and just kind of sat on the project. Eventually I found the volunteer who could take this on and really get it setup properly. We have now just completed our first month or so of “official” use. So far we are scheduling around 60 people consisting of our 3 bands and multiple praise teams as well as our tech. people. People absolutely love it! It has also prompted us to really get serious in planning ahead, we are currently about 1.5-2 months out with our music/series. Hopefully in the next month or so we will be adding our choir to the system, which will add nother 60-70 people, brining our total scheduled people to well over 100+ people. Its working so well our Children’s Ministry department wants to tweak the concept and begin using planning center to distribute PDFs of lessons plans and even volunteer scheduling! This system is working so well we just upgraded to the higher package; we already used up the initial 1GB of data storage.

SO with that said….if you need a central place to plan…..definitely check them out!

At a later date I will post some more details of how we are using Planning Center; but just know it rocks!

Well after my last blog post some cool stuff happened; got in contact with a lot of different vendors….most importantly DataCore. After speaking with them and one of their VARs I am totally sold! I don’t have to get locked into proprietary contracts/prices and can easily upgrade the system; plus its VERY easy on our budget. They also confirmed that the particular hardware config. I want to use would work perfectly! Apparently Calvary Church in Florida also uses them and has amazing success with it, running 3+ years with no problems. I don’t think we will be able to do the HA bundle I was hoping for, probably just the virtualized starter bundle….but since everything is running on commodity hardware perhaps I can rig up something to do it for me without the hefty license. I know there must be some software that will properly replicate data as it changes in my price range….somewhere.

So with that said….I definitely have my sights narrowed down on Datacore.

I’ll keep you all posted!