opus:interactive | If These Servers Could Talk

I recently attended a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer Boot Camp, put on by TECHPROS Group, in an attempt to obtain my MCSE. Yet, the certification wasn’t the only goal, I intended to meet all the criteria for the certification - in one week.

Back in August, I hopped on a plane from Portland, OR to Irvine, CA. To start the trip off, the plane had maintenance issues, so as we started to take off - literally as the front of the plane left the ground - the pilot immediately landed the plane. The plane barely stopped in time before its tires rolled off the end of the runway. For the next two hours we were stalled, waiting for the mechanical issues to be resolved.

MCSE credentials are the certifications for professionals who analyze the business requirements and design and implement the infrastructure for business solutions based on the Microsoft Windows Server System.

Because of this travel hurdle, I arrived three hours late to the boot camp. Missing certification orientation and dinner might phase one’s moral, but here at opus:interactive, it takes more than a false start at the beginning of the race to thwart a victory - a lot more.

The boot camp was held at a rented house in the hills outside Irvine, CA. It was a very nice house with plenty of space and rooms for all fifteen of the boot camp attendees (below). TECHPROS had great content setup for us in terms of lectures and labs (below). The first three days we worked through labs with VMware as well as lectures. I finished the first lab Sunday night before turning in around 1AM. The second day I finished the second lab by dinner time and was ready to start studying for the tests. I crammed for 14 hours straight and attempted my first test on Tuesday:

I passed with a perfect score 1000/1000! The rest of the day was spent going through more labs and some simulations TECHPRO had setup to prepare us for the simulations on 70-291. I studied until around 2AM and was ready to take more tests on Wednesday.

I was the only student to attempt three tests in one day and the ones I chose were:

I ended up passing all three that day with a 984/1000 on the XP test! Even with these three tests behind me, I didn’t stop. I continued cramming and working on other labs and lectures for the rest of the day into the wee hours of Thursday, turning in around 3AM.

I wanted to continue the testing insanity and scheduled three more tests for Thursday as follows:

I was again the only student to attempt three tests that passed them all in one day.

The camp was winding down and there was only one more testing opportunity before the flight back to Portland on Friday afternoon. I schedule one final test on Friday morning which would achieve my MCSE +Messaging.

I ended up taking a second test because I had two hours to kill before catching a ride to the airport. I took the following tests:

Both of these test I completed and passed, which brought my total of successfully passed tests to nine in four days! (Phew, what a relief!) I was literally brain dead at this point.

One week later I felt the itch again and decided I should take the last elective for the Security add-on to the MCSE. I quickly scheduled this test:

Another perfect score of 1000/1000! Completing that exam gave me my MCSE +Security.

Why stop there! I thought and continued a study for the new Hosting Specialization Exam:

This test encapsulates what we offer here at opus:interactive and as such: I nailed it with a 987/1000 score! That achieved me the MCTS: Hosting Specialization certification as well.

In recent months we’ve been internally studying the ITIL Foundations and was finally ready to take that exam. This particular exam was administered by EXIN the Examination Institute for Information Science and is the first step in us implementing ITIL for our organization. I studied all the material I could find and ran some practice exam engines. I was finally ready to take the test. I aced that test with a perfect score of 1000/1000! Obtaining my ITIL Foundations Certification.

A lot of testing and a lot of proof of just how excellent our organization and team are. Some might even say: the best in the business.

It’s time to unscrew the bolts of the opus:interactive server cluster and take a look at some of the behind-the-scenes flesh-and-bone bipedal hardware the keeps our data center and managed services running.

If you’ve ever called into our facility late one evening, chances are you’ve spoken to the man we’re highlighting this entry: Orlando, the night-time voice of support serenity.

One theme rings common from our data center to our homes: our collective love of hardware. From Android powered gPhones to human sized Gundam Robots in a brawl with Asimo we like to keep ahead of our peers on what’s new.

Orlando is a different breed, he calmly challenges the cutting edge notion of the newest always being the greatest hardware. He looks back to a cooler piece of hardware: his stock Vespa P200.

Recently Orlando took a week off from the data center and traveled the Pacific coastline with his Scooter Gang and documented his journey for our enjoyment, so please follow his Scooter-worn path to his travel-journal:

As gearheads and techjunkies, each new day brings fun new toys into our little Portland world here at opus:interactive. Usually this new gadgetry comes via client server purchases (yes, we get excited about eco-aware BladeSystems and VMware in the same manner we look forward to the latest Apple iPhone firmware: sweeeeet) or company laptops, but sometimes we just like to kick back and relish in a new console or PC game. Unless you were hiding under a sand dune on Mars, you’re probably fully aware of the media frenzy of the Halo 3 launch last week, and we were waiting impatiently to fire this baby up.

Fire it up we did and with company equipment at our disposal - we luxuriated in three LCD projector screens luxing against the largest white wall we have in our Lounge. The carnage was nearly full-scale dwarf sized! Each screen was set to an XBOX 360 and in turn they were all SystemLinked. We had the capacity to unleash twelve teammates at each other, but we got greedy and wanted more visual real-estate, so it was six: two people to a box.

Everyone had a turn, though some didn’t last long, the memory of their triumphs and failures will live on:

Shannon McCormack:

Jason Nuss:

Brady Wilson:

Lynn Twiss:

Rounding out the evening was the typical free supply of company available soda pop (via the Pepsi & Coca-Cola machines) keeping the caffeine injection flowing and four extra-large Garlic Jim’s pizzas to sate our stomaches (Nice spicy sauce and tons (tons!) of little pepperonis!)

There was a lot of buzz about Grid Computing vs. Virtual Machines and the combination of them together. As many of you may know Amazon (Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3) like many others, such as Google (Google Page Creator) and Microsoft (Microsoft Office Live,) has released online hosting/storage services using this technology in one form or another. The technology has been out since 1990s as a metaphor for making computer power as easy to access as an electric power grid in Ian Foster and Carl Kesselmans seminal work, “The Grid: Blueprint For A New Computing Infrastructure.”

My experience with Grid Computing goes back to the late 1990s with distributed.net in helping making encryption that much secure. With the technology originally designed to harness unused CPU cycles to solve complex problems, to now being used to hosting an infinite number of hosting environments. It is amazing the level of reliability and scalability options that are available with the system. The ability to grow in resources at an unlimited rate -on the fly- with little to no exposure to change, is outstanding. The other great aspect of this system of technology is the ability to contribute to a sustainable mindset. If done properly, you can reuse old servers and hardware that in a normal life cycle would be recycled, now can be reprovisioned back into a production environment with little concern of impact of hardware failure. This rejuvenation of hardware opens up a great opportunity to get that-much-more out of your initial investment as well as being able to pass those saving onto the customer. Do I see Grid and Virtual environments replacing all hosting environments? Not likely. In theory they have great potential to revolutionize the price, uptime, and growth opportunities of hosting. However I don’t see the replacement of dedicated environments with dedicated resources. Really, the way I look at it is: the continued growth in Grid and Virtual systems is really an improvement like public light rail has been for transportation. It has become cheaper, more reliable and continues to expand where it can go. However most of us still buy our own cars customized the way we like; from rims, stereos, number of seats, 4×4, biodiesel, the list goes on. Just like the vehicles you want to own, the same holds true in hosting. As a light rail can’t take you everywhere when you need to be, grids and virtual solutions can’t host every complex environment.

The question always seems to come up with this technology, will the Corporate Giants with the large pocket books and nearly limitless resources wipe out the little local hosting companies? In my opinion – not likely. Although the large corporate empires can deliver good products and great hardware, one thing they will always struggle with is: relationships. There is something to be said with local support and the face-to-face relationship with your hosting partner that you don’t get with the Giants. Having the ability to pick up the phone and call your solutions executive-engineer-local-host 24/7 and have them know who you are by name and the solution you utilize says a lot about the type of local provider you have. Additionally, there is something to be said about the warm fuzzy feelings we all get when we can go down to the local Data Center and see the pretty lights flashing and say to yourself, “There is my site.” The fact is, what Amazon as well as other do for the industry is what helps get the exposure to the general public about technology and drive more business to local providers as well. I think it is great. It will be interesting to see how the community responds to the technology. One thing is for sure my eyes will be watching.

Hosting Con 2007 also brought information about web 2.0 applications: MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Friendster, and Xanga community. Others refer to this as a social networking movement. I find it interesting that half of Myspace users are over the age of 35.

So what does that say? To me it says there is a opportunity harness some of the power of user driven content. There is over 180,000 active and unique visitors in these communities as of Aug 2006 and they continue to grow. One way I see harnessing the power of these users is to create a community of customers for your hosting business that can help each other. They are all in one form or another doing the same thing and can use each other’s resources/knowledge to grow together. This type of value add and communication tunnel that not only your customers can contribute and drive the conversations but also your engineers and technicians can contribute ideas or solutions to drive more business. In summary, hosting is a communication vehicle to drive your customers content.