Energy Drinks

Check out Energy Drink Reviews at http://www.energydrinksblog.com/. Read about Monster, Red Bull, Amp, Rock Star, and many other caffeine-loaded drinks.

Operating system-level virtualization - high level overview

Wikipedia has a solid overview of types of virtualization. Specifically, here on the operating system level:

Operating system-level virtualization

Operating System-level Virtualization is a server virtualization technology which virtualizes servers on an operating system (kernel) layer. It can be thought of as partitioning: a single physical server is sliced into multiple small partitions (otherwise called virtual environments (VE), virtual private servers (VPS), guests, zones, etc.); each such partition looks and feels like a real server, from the point of view of its users.

For example, Solaris Zones supports multiple guest OSes running under the same OS (such as Solaris 10). All guest OSes have to use the same kernel level and cannot run as different OS versions. Solaris native Zones also requires that the host OS be a version of Solaris; other OSes from other manufacturers are not supported.^{[citation needed]},however you need to use Solaris Branded zones to use another OSes as zones.

Another example is AIX, which provides the same technique under the name of Micro Partitioning.^{[citation needed]}

The operating system level architecture has low overhead that helps to maximize efficient use of server resources. The virtualization introduces only a negligible overhead and allows running hundreds of virtual private servers on a single physical server. In contrast, approaches such as pure virtualization (like VMware) and paravirtualization (like Xen or UML) cannot achieve such level of density, due to overhead of running multiple kernels. From the other side, operating system-level virtualization does not allow running different operating systems (i.e. different kernels), although different libraries, distributions etc. are possible.

Main article: operating system-level virtualization

Virtualization Review writes an open letter to VMware, Microsoft, and Citrix

This is an excerpt from the full letter on http://virtualizationreview.com. They make a few great points that VMware would do well to heed.

VMware: I like what you're doing. Unlike Microsoft and Citrix, you focus 100 percent of your efforts on virtualization, and because of that, you continue to lead the field. VMware View is coming along nicely, and you're making progress in brand-new areas like taking virtualization to the cell-phone and smartphone level. Your latest financial quarter provided a boost, demonstrating that the vision of CEO Paul Maritz is paying off.

Still, too often you act as if there's no competition. I hear many complaints about the expense of your solutions. You usually respond with, "You get what you pay for." Well, that argument is outdated. If you need evidence, I refer you back to our cover story, which shows that the hypervisors of your two main competitors stack up well against yours. In fact, I know more than a few admins who are taking a serious look at the alternatives. They all give one reason: price.

Remember that Microsoft and Citrix are combining dev forces, and every single product they produce in this space costs less than an equivalent VMware offering. Also keep in mind that Microsoft, especially, is spending tons of cash to narrow the gap with ESX and Virtual Infrastructure. Some customers don't worry about budgets, and will dole out whatever's necessary to get the best, which-for now-means going with your stuff. Currently, however, we're in an environment where that demographic is shrinking rapidly. I don't believe you can sustain that attitude for much longer, and I can see Microsoft making inroads faster than you expect.

How to Install VMware Server

What you need to know prior to installation - from http://www.petri.co.il/virtual_install_vmware_server.htm - visit the site for screen shots.

VMware Server will only run on Intel machines. The host operating system can be Windows or Linux. This article assumes you are using a Windows XP machine as the host operating system. The most important thing you should know about installing VMware server is that it will use significant amounts of your RAM. You can control the amount of RAM allocated to running virtual servers but it will require a minimum of 256MB per virtual server. Only allocating that much to the virtual servers may be good for your host operating system but will be bad for your virtual servers. Of course, the RAM requirements depend on what you are using the virtual servers for and if you are using the host operating system while you are using the virtual servers. In the end, you need a lot of RAM on your host system to use virtual server. Fortunately, RAM isn’t that expensive today so I would just make sure you have at least 1GB of RAM to be able to run 1-2 virtual servers. Also, remember that you are running other servers inside your host machine. That means that other things like CPU and disk will also be pushed to their maximum. Even with a lot of RAM, you can easily max out your CPU utilization. Keep these facts in mind so that when your machine slows down, you know where to look. Another tip is just to remember that your machine is not invincible. With a standard desktop today and 1GB of RAM, your performance will seriously suffer if you start more than 1 virtual machine and try to use your host OS at the same time. You can probably run more machines with more RAM but you still need to make sure you limit the number of machines you run at the same time.

HRIS - Pricing, More Information

HR Information Systems Buyer's Guide -HRIS pricing

Per BuyerZone - check out for free quotes: Understandably, prices for HRIS systems can vary tremendously: a basic HR information package for a 20-person business is not in the same ballpark as a customized enterprise-level HRIS for a 2,000-employee corporation. Even two fairly similar businesses can wind up with very different prices for HRIS software — and both be getting a fair deal.

The scope of your HRIS implementation will have a big impact on the price. A basic transactional system can provide significant benefits to your business — but won't cost nearly as much as a system that includes talent management and other strategic functionality.

Don't buy on price alone
Choosing the right HRIS software should involve careful consideration of your needs, evaluation of features and capabilities, and comparisons of dealers. Specifically, it's about more than just price.

If you're comparing three solutions with fairly similar price tags and a fourth that's half the price of the others, you can bet there’s something lacking from the discount package. Placing undue emphasis on price can lead to a purchase that ultimately fails to deliver the benefits you should expect.

Moreover, skimping on price early on can cost you more in the future. Even if you only have 50 employees now, if you plan on expanding to 100 in the next couple of years, it makes sense to buy a system that can accommodate that growth.

Basic HRIS pricing
The main cost for client-server HRIS software comes from the per-user licenses you'll have to buy for the software. A 50-person company can expect to pay between $2,000 and $5,000 to purchase software licenses.

Note that some vendors target firms with 100 employees or more, so smaller buyers may encounter minimum prices that make client-server systems a much more expensive proposition. Larger companies may see even higher per-user costs as the systems grow in complexity and scale: $80,000 for a 300-user system, for example.

Very small companies may be able to buy packaged software for $500 to $1,000, but those types of systems offer very little in the way of customization and may not be able to grow with your business. If you do choose to start with a small HRIS, make sure you'll be able to export your data so you can upgrade to a more comprehensive system in the future.

ASP-based HRISes are usually priced per employee per month. Depending on the modules you choose, you can expect monthly fees of $4 to $10 per user. While that may seem stunningly inexpensive compared to the client-server license fees, remember that you'll be paying that cost every month as long as you use the software. For example, 100 users at $6 per month adds up to almost $15,000 by the end of the second year — and you could use an HRIS for 10 or 20 years.

Whichever type of hosting you choose, you'll have to pay installation or consulting costs for customization and setup. These fees can range from $2,000 to $40,000 and up, depending on the amount of work required and the size of the installation.

Make sure that consulting and installation fees and responsibilities are spelled out in the project estimates, as well as the contracts. Hidden charges for upgrades, annual maintenance, customization, or training can drastically skew your price comparisons, as can different prices for administrator licenses, user licenses, and server licenses. Make sure the vendors present a complete cost picture up front.

Support and training costs
Make sure the pricing information you get from each vendor details what training and customer support is included — and how much additional help costs. Some vendors provide unlimited telephone and online support; others charge by the minute or per incident after a set amount of free support.

Training is usually priced separately. You may be able to choose from on-site, off-site, web-based, or video training, all at different price points. It's usually worth having at least some training to get your staffers up and running. Once you see how the system is working, you can then decide if you need more advanced training.

Storage Area Network (SAN) Overview

Good info found on computerweekly.com - All networks generally include some form of storage. Traditional network storage was located inside, or directly connected to, individual file servers that were often scattered across workgroups throughout an organization.

This resulted in a cumbersome, complicated, multiple-server environment that was virtually impossible to organise or secure. A storage area network (SAN) overcomes these problems by moving storage resources off of the common user network and reorganising those storage components into an independent, high-performance network. Storage performance is enhanced using a fast interface (e.g., 2 Gbps or 4 Gbps Fibre Channel) (FC) that connects storage servers and storage devices through an array of switches and hubs to form a fabric that supports both redundancy and high availability. San technology also supports important storage features, including disk mirroring, data backup/restoration, data archiving/retrieval and data migration.

San components and architecture

A storage area network is typically assembled using three principle components: cabling, host bus adapters (HBA) and switches. Cabling is the physical medium used to interconnect every San device. Sans can use both copper and optical fiber cabling, though the choice of medium depends on the speed and distance requirements of the San. Slower or shorter distance connections can be made through copper cables, while faster or longer distance connections are achieved through optical cables. Optical fiber cables can be single mode or multimode. Single-mode (or monomode) fiber is designed to carry only one light signal over long distances, while multimode fiber can carry multiple simultaneous light signals over short distances. Optical fiber also uses several different kinds of connectors, so it's important to select connectors that are compatible with other components of the fabric.

Each server or storage device in a San fabric requires an HBA. The HBA can exist as either an expansion card that fits into a compatible expansion slot in a server, or it may be a chip integrated directly into the server or storage device. An HBA typically offloads data storage and retrieval overhead from the local processor, improving the server's performance. Cabling is used to connect the HBA's port to a corresponding port on a switch.

A switch is used to handle and direct traffic between network devices. The switch accepts traffic, and then relays the traffic to the port where the intended destination device is attached. In a San, each storage server and storage device connects to a switch port. The switch then relays traffic to and from specific devices across the San -- this series of switched interconnections form the San "fabric," which can easily be scaled or changed. An intelligent switch serves the same basic functions but incorporates high-level San features like storage virtualisation, quality of service , remote mirroring, data sharing, protocol conversion and security.

San connectivity and protocols

Storage area networks are also defined by their interconnection scheme, which usually falls into either FC or iSCSI. FC technology is clearly the most popular approach for enterprise data center Sans. FC supports communication between servers and storage devices at 2 Gbps, though 4 Gbps implementations are now common, and 10 Gbps implementations are expected in the future. FC traditionally uses optical fiber cables to interconnect devices and is still employed over long distances. Today, short distance FC implementations can be achieved with coaxial and twisted-pair copper cables. FC can operate directly between two devices (point-to-point), or network multiple storage devices through a switch or arbitrated loop. FC technology is compatible with SCSI and IP protocols.

iSCSI is an emerging Internet Engineering Task Force standard that allows SCSI commands to support data storage and retrieval over Ethernet networks that include LANs, WANs and the Internet. By leveraging the broad acceptance of IP networks, iSCSI technology is expected to strengthen the San market and has already found acceptance in small and midsized organisations for basic San deployments. Since Ethernet networks generally work up to 1 Gbps, iSCSI isn't as fast as FC, which starts at 2 Gbps. However, iSCSI is less expensive than FC, and Ethernet is well-understood by any IT professional. In addition, 10 Gbps Ethernet is on the horizon and could also threaten FC's established position as the San networking technology of choice.

San management

Creating a storage network is more involved than simply cabling servers and storage systems together. Storage resources must be configured, allocated, tested and maintained as new devices are added and enterprise storage requirements change. Management is a vital part of San operation, so it's important to select tools that can minimise the time and effort needed to keep a storage area network running.

Storage resource management (SRM) applications are designed to monitor and manage physical and logical San resources. Physical resources include storage arrays, RAID systems, tape libraries and FC switches, while logical storage features involve file systems and application-oriented storage elements (e.g. Oracle database files). It's usually best to select one tool that can provide centralised management of the entire storage infrastructure through a single console. Ideally, a centralised SRM tool should be able to detect storage resources, evaluate their capacity and configuration, and measure their performance. The SRM tool should also be able to affect changes to the configuration and support consistent policies across the various storage technologies being managed. San management tools are available from EMC Corp., Symantec Corp. (Veritas), McData Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM, Sun Microsystems Inc. and CA Inc.

In actual practice, selecting a San management/SRM tool can be an extremely challenging process -- usually because each tool accomplishes its suite of tasks in a unique way. Consequently, a good management tool should offer heterogeneous support, being able to accurately detect, discover and visualise a San across a variety of network equipment, storage systems and operating systems. The tool should provide meaningful monitoring and reporting features, including performance measurement, and that data should provide practical information that can help an administrator identify and resolve problems within the San.

HRIS - Vendor Selection

HR Information Systems Buyer's Guide-What to look for in an HRIS vendor

Information is courtesy BuyerZone.com - check out for free quotes. When you buy HRIS software, you're also selecting a new partner for your business. Choosing the right vendor is just as important as choosing software that's easy to use and includes the right features.

First, remember that HRIS software packages can vary tremendously in scope and functionality. Look for a vendor who takes the time to understand your needs and works with you to recommend an appropriate solution — not one who just pushes their product as a one-size-fits-all answer.

The way a vendor approaches the sales process can also give you some valuable insight. Good salespeople are willing to tell you when something you request is hard or impossible, while less reputable vendors might just gloss over potential problems.

HRIS resellers and HRIS software developers
The HRIS market consists of both software publishers that sell their systems directly, and resellers who provide consulting and installation services to go with third-party software. Neither approach is inherently better than the other, but you should be aware of which you're dealing with.

When working with a reseller, you'll have to do a little extra investigation into the software publisher. Look at their history of software updates: recent updates and new releases indicate a commitment to the software. Ask how the publisher handles bug reports and feature requests, and how often they release new versions. Also, find out how upgrades impact any customization work you've done: you don't want an upgrade to wipe out your custom fields or labels.

Customer service and training
As with any complex software, you should expect occasional problems or outages. While "guaranteed 99.5% uptime" and other vendor assurances are fine, more important is how they react when something does go wrong. Inquire about their support policies: when do they have live support staff available by phone? Do they guarantee a specific response time? What kind of training do their reps have? Are there fees for support?

The vendor should offer training for everyone who will use the system. Many businesses prefer having a trainer come to their office, but that's not always possible. Web-based training can also be effective, if done properly. Regardless of how it's conducted, training should take users through the basics of entering data, running reports, and troubleshooting typical problems.

Finally, the vendor should be able to connect you with references who use their software. Ask for references to customers similar to your business in size and specialty, if possible. Call the references and ask questions such as:

• Has the system improved your HR operations? How?
• What modules do you use?
• Does it do everything you expected? What is missing?
• Are your employees satisfied with it? What do they like or not like?
• Have you expanded your system since your originally purchased it? How was that process?
• How does the vendor react when you have problems?
• What do you like least about the software?
• Overall, was it a good investment? Why or why not?

Government looks beyond servers - Virtualization 5

Applications on demand

The Defense Health Information Management System Program Office is pushing forward with application virtualization to give clinicians remote access to patient medical records in the AHLTA electronic records system.

DHIMS' information management/information technology solutions help collect, manage and share health data throughout DOD.

“We have over 100,000 end-user devices and the three services — Army, Navy, Air Force — have their own requirements for those end-user devices that we want to be respectful of,” said Capt. Michael Weiner, DHIMS' chief medical officer.

“That has given us some challenges," he said. "So we have looked at the areas of virtualization.”

A challenge DHIMS faced was giving clinicians access to patient records while they are in field clinics. When loaded on a desktop PC as a client, the AHLTA program is bigger than Microsoft Office, requiring a lot of power, Weiner said.

To give doctors in remote field units access, AHLTA has been put on servers using Citrix’s XenApp application delivery system, which lets them retrieve medical information from anywhere using any device. XenApp manages applications in the data center and delivers them as an on-demand service.

DHIMS has deployed the technology at Camp Lejeune, where Navy medical personnel can serve the Marines Corps, which does not have its own medical system. There are many small clinics at Camp Lejeune where doctors need access to AHLTA, Weiner said.

“We have a provider who is in a tent in a clinic in the field with the Marine unit,” he said. “We’d like them to be able to pull up all the health care information that has been recorded on that patient.”

DHIMS officials plan to extend the capability to Army, Navy and Air Force reserve units.

“We want to ensure that while those servicemen and women are on active duty, clinicians can pull their data up and document it into the DHIMS system,” Weiner said. For example, a reserve unit from Maine might want to see what care was delivered to its members while they were on active duty. “So wouldn’t it be great for their care provider in the reserve unit to see what was documented?”

Weiner said XenApp is being used at military hospitals in Portsmouth, Va., and Camp Lejeune. However, other services use other virtualization systems on the market, such as VMware’s ThinApp and Microsoft App-V, formerly SoftGrid.

Government looks beyond servers - Virtualization 4

from GCN.com - The agency first tested virtualization of its e-mail system. But based on e-mail volume and system configuration, the information technology team realized that the system wasn’t the best candidate, said Ron Hardin, the department’s CIO. The IT team looked toward mission-critical systems, such as those associated with environmental research, data warehousing and accompanying front-end applications, and the team decided to start there.

After doing an assessment, the team identified about 65 servers that it could virtualize.

The department now runs applications from those machines on seven HP blade servers.

The migration to virtual machines has reduced energy consumption by 30 percent and could lower maintenance and support costs by 40 percent, Hardin estimated.

Future plans are for agency officials to move software-as-a service and service-oriented architecture applications onto the virtual environment.

A place for desktops

Just as all applications might not be suited for server virtualization, desktop virtualization might not be suited for all environments.

Users typically don't notice when their organization virtualizes a server environment, said Jim Smid, data center practice manager at Apptis Technology Solutions (ATS). Users don’t know whether it is virtualized or deployed on a physical server -- it makes no difference to them.

But desktop PC virtualization is a different story.

In such a setup, users have a thin-client monitor, keyboard and small appliance to pull their unique desktop image and applications from a server that resides in a data center. Such an environment makes it easier for administrators to manage and secure the desktop because users basically have a diskless workstation. But mobile employees, for example, who need to work anywhere, anytime might resist such a system.

Yet, during the past year, there has been a push toward desktop virtualization in the government sector, especially in controlled environments, such as training facilities and laboratories, he said.

For example, many military bases across the country have facilities in which they bring in groups of people for training on software or other technologies, he said. IT administrators need to give those machines a baseline configuration that would allow for different environments.

So desktop virtualization is a cost-effective way for administrators to provide customized desktops to users and then refresh them for the next round of people, Smid said.

“There are tools available to very quickly roll out a consistent image to a lot of different folks,” Smid said. That gives them the ability to work independently without needing administrators to deploy physical infrastructure for everyone who receives the training, he said. Military facilities are deploying desktop virtualization solutions from Citrix and VMware for such deployments, he said.

EPA is considering desktop virtualization but only for specialized environments in which employees need access for routine administrative duties and secure information, Galbreath said.

“We’re treading very carefully on that,” she said. “But right now a lot of those folks have two machines” — one for the confidential information, the other for e-mail and Internet connectivity.

“We’re trying to evaluate how we can use desktop virtualization and still ensure the security of keeping the two separate,” she said.

Government looks beyond servers - Virtualization 3

From GCN.com -Within the Wintel/Linux infrastructure, DISA has about 4,500 server environments in its data centers. The agency has virtualized about 750 of them.

The biggest challenge the agency faces is ensuring that applications can move seamlessly from the physical to virtual worlds because the agency does not own the application, Rivera said.

Another challenge is more cultural. “I have had to prove to customers that the move to a virtualization environment doesn’t [degrade] performance or efficiencies,” he said. “It is educating a customer base that their application [still] sits in their own domain where it is under their own control.”

Meanwhile, EPA is just starting a multiyear effort to address server sprawl in computer rooms spread across the country.

The agency has one main data center located in Raleigh, N.C., that hosts all the agency’s enterprisewide applications. The facility has about 450 servers with 120 terabytes of storage and a petabyte of data on tape.

However, the agency has 40 computer rooms, small data centers that officials want to drastically cut down to a few, said Myra Galbreath, chief technology officer and director of EPA’s Office of Technology Operations and Planning.

EPA started dabbling with virtualization about four years ago with the implementation of IBM P Series Unix-based servers, she said. That system offered logical partitioning of workloads, and as a result, EPA data center managers were able to put about 36 virtual instances across six physical servers.

Later, EPA adopted 3Par storage technology, which lets agency managers support increased storage provisioning and data duplication. That helped reduce the volume of data that EPA needed to replicate to its disaster recovery site.

Last year, local sites and laboratories started to get into server virtualization, Galbreath said. The agency is trying to assess what has worked best, so officials can set a standard that all local sites can adopt.

EPA also has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Green Grid, a consortium of industry and government organizations that promotes energy-efficient computing, to study how the small computer rooms can reduce power consumption.

“There has been a lot of work on large data centers but not a lot on small computer rooms," Galbreath noted. "And lots of government [agencies] have these small computer rooms."

As EPA tackles server virtualization in small, decentralized computer rooms, Arizona’s Department of Environmental Quality has achieved a more energy-efficient data center with HP blade servers and VMware software.

Government looks beyond servers - Virtualization 6

Storage: the last frontier?

from GNC.com - Planned maintenance is the primary cause of downtime on a computer system. Storage virtualization is one way to mitigate or eliminate those planned downtimes, some experts say.

“We’ve been doing virtualization of storage through IBM’s Storage [SAN] Volume Controller for at least three years,” said Tony Encinias, chief technology officer of Pennsylvania’s Office of Information Technology.

“Virtualized storage reduces the down time when we have to restore or migrate data offsite,” Encinias said.

Virtualization of storage will a huge future requirement for the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, Harkin said.

For instance, much of the department’s documentation work — retention schedules and permits — is done on paper. Now the department must digitally store all of that information, he said.

There are many different types of technology that can be used for storage virtualization. The right fit depends on the environment, ATS’ Smid said.

For an agency with a small IT shop that struggles with utilization issues — for example, an IT department does not use all its storage capacity or its storage area is tapped out –- there are relatively inexpensive technologies.

For instance, storage arrays from NetApp and Hitachi can boost the utilization rate and give those agencies the flexibility to move applications from one storage array to another or move one virtual machine to another.

With those solutions, the storage array is used as a front end and everything behind it is virtualized, Smid said. That technique can be effective in a small environment that does not have a lot of transactions that could act as a bottleneck, he said.

For large environment, companies such as EMC work with a storage-area network infrastructure. The company’s approach is to push the virtualization layer to the network, so the burden doesn't weigh on any single storage device. The SAN handles the virtualization, Smid said.

The solution also is more scalable, although it can be more expensive.

“But if you [have] utilization range in the 20 to 40 percent on your storage arrays and you can deploy something where you can double that, the cost of the virtualization infrastructure very quickly pays for itself,” Smid said.

Human Resources Information System (HRIS) Overview

HR Information Systems Buyer's Guide- What are HR information systems?

From BuyerZone.com's overview - An HR information system (HRIS) is a software package that provides a complete management system for human resources activities in small-to-medium-sized businesses. They help streamline administrative procedures, manage employee benefits, reduce the need for paperwork and manual records, and keep track of all personal and job-related employee data.

HRIS can handle management of benefits for both HR personnel and company employees. HR directors can import payroll and benefits data into HRIS from in-house and outside sources. This allows them to manage all facets of HR from a single location. It also provides employees with self-service access to their accounts. With a secure system that requires a log in ID and password for each user, employees can check vacation balances, review benefits data, and update personal information without having to first contact HR staff.

HRIS basic features
In lieu of standardized paperwork, HRIS allows employees to fill out forms online, make changes based on life events, and get information on their benefits at any time. Rather than "pulling an employee's file," HR personnel can reference any information about an employee through the system, including personal information, benefits, number of dependents, emergency contacts, and job history.

HRIS include both standardized and customized reports. Standard reports feature templates for various administrative purposes including employee reviews, record keeping, OSHA, workers' compensation, employment history, and absence tracking. Customized reports be created that incorporate categories and information unique to your business.

Most HRIS applications have a comprehensive tracking system. You can keep tabs on employee attendance to determine vacation and sick time accrued, how many days were used out of a vacation bank, and how long one has held a position at the company. It also lets you track longer absences such as family leave and jury duty. In addition, HRIS tracking capabilities can maintain grievances filed by or against the employee stemming from discipline, disputes, and complaints.

Even though HRIS allows employees to have self-service access, you can set limitations. Many programs will allow you to customize which screens employees can view and whether or not they have permission to edit certain data.

HRIS buying checklist
Here are some helpful things to keep in mind before deciding to implement HRIS:

• How many employees will this support?
• How much can I afford to spend on an HRIS solution?
• Can HRIS help me save my company money?
• Will my staff and I need training to learn how to use the software?
• Has the HRIS provider worked with businesses like mine in the past?
• Can I test the software before purchasing?
• What technical support options do I have if something goes wrong?

HRIS Pricing
You have two options for purchasing HRIS: an in-house (or "boxed") software system or via license.

With in-house software, you own the rights to the program and can install and uninstall at will but it is very pricey, costing several thousand dollars plus maintenance fees and general updates.

To license software for small-to-medium sized businesses, you'll pay $500-$700 for a single-user system (one administrator) and $900-$1,200 for a network/multi-user system (multiple administrators) to chart 75-100 employees. It then costs a few hundred dollars extra for additional employees in increments of 100. Larger companies can find HRIS solutions starting at $1,000 and up.

The price of the service will often include 30 days of free technical support by phone and email and also software maintenance. You may have to pay extra to extend the warranty beyond the 30-day window.

HRIS Tips
Get help. Software may provide Help documentation in both printed and online form. Decide which format is useful for you and find out if the vendor offers it.

Try it before you buy it. Some companies may provide a free trial period before you purchase to see if the HRIS program is right for your business.

Additional options. Some HRIS programs will include all applications while others provide basic functionality with costs for add-ons such as job application tracking.

PC or Mac. Most HRIS software is compatible with many versions of Windows but some vendors may offer software that you can use in both PC or Macintosh environments.

Government looks beyond servers - Virtualization 2

Moreover, to meet the rising demand, vendors such as Citrix Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and VMware are pushing virtual infrastructures or solutions that encompass the various flavors of virtualization.

Server virtualization yields results

Virtualization can make a single physical resource — such as a server, operating system or storage device — appear to function as multiple resources. Or it can make multiple physical devices appear as a single resource.

Before DISA could move virtual machines to its on-demand computing model, it had to tackle server sprawl, power consumption and, most of all, the underutilization of its infrastructure.

As a service provider to the military services and DOD agencies, DISA works with its customers on application development and any type of virtualization at their own facilities.

“Each customer comes with their own requirements, and we work with them on an individual basis," Rivera said. "And sometimes they come with their own design."

Underutilization of resources is common in data centers. On average, if an Intel-based server that runs Microsoft Windows — known as a Wintel machine — is not virtualized, it is probably running at about 7 percent utilization, and that’s a liberal estimate, Rivera said.

So DISA must convince its customers that it makes sense to move to virtualized servers to a common platform. To save money, the agency has standardized its infrastructure for Wintel and Linux servers on VMware’s ESXi virtualization platform, Rivera said.

Several years ago, DISA adopted capacity-on-demand contracts with original equipment manufacturers. The agency buys capacity as a utility and only pays for what it uses. Hewlett-Packard provides DISA's Windows and Linux environments, in addition to a virtualization solution on top of that capacity-on-demand contract, he said.

VMware ESXi users can quickly create virtual machines through a menu-driven start-up and automatic configurations. It lets operations managers create virtual machines or import a virtual appliance with direct integration between VMware ESXi and the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace.

In the Unix environment, DISA is creating virtualization with Sun Microsystems’ Logical Domains, which partitions workloads on one physical server and HP’s virtual server environment for HP-UX systems.

Government looks beyond servers - virtualizing desktops, applications and storage

From GNC.com - Government Computer new - Virtualization is on the verge of extending its reach into agency enterprises.

During the past year, server virtualization, which is the ability to run multiple instances of operating systems concurrently on a single hardware system, gathered momentum in the government sector. But increasingly, federal and state agencies are expanding — or at least thinking about expanding — beyond servers to apply virtualization to applications, desktop PCs and network infrastructures.

The Defense Information Systems Agency, for one, is taking virtualization into the cloud.

DISA recently deployed the Rapid Action Computing Environment, a cloud-computing infrastructure that lets Defense Department personnel quickly provision virtual machines so they can test and develop applications before putting them to real use.

Through a common Web portal, DOD and military service users can purchase a virtual machine. Within 24 hours, it will be set up for them, said Alfred Rivera, director of DISA’s Computing Services Directorate. They’ll pay for it on a monthly basis, and when they are finished, the virtual machine will be decommissioned, he said.

“We’re working to fine-tune some of the security issues but, in essence, it allows our customers to provision a virtual machine with memory, storage and [other] capability so they can download their applications to do test and development before they migrate to a pure production environment,” Rivera said.

Meanwhile, officials at the Defense Health Information Management System (DHIMS) program are moving forward with application virtualization technology that gives clinicians at Camp Lejeune, N.C., remote access to patients’ medical records stored in AHLTA, the military’s electronic health records system.

However, the most common use of virtualization is still for servers, as agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency look to consolidate their many server rooms.

States also are getting into the act. Arizona’s Department of Environmental Quality has implemented blade servers and virtualization software to reduce computing costs and save energy and space in the agency’s data center. And Pennsylvania has embarked on an initiative to virtualize the state’s entire data center.

WDM for New Gigabit Speed Services

From WWPI.com - Extracted notes on Wavelength Division Multiplexing

Today’s new multimedia applications are putting a tremendous amount of pressure on enterprise networks to increase band­width. As communication moves from text-based email mes­sages to bandwidth-intensive streaming audio/video, ever-increasing volumes of data are flowing across organizations’ net­works. Ethernet is the communications protocol of choice for this data flow across Local Area Networks (LANs). As the amount of data moving across LANs increased, the initial 10Base-T Ethernet protocol (10Mbps) gave way at the back­bone to 100Base-T or Fast Ethernet (100Mbps). Now, 100Base-T is giving up its place at the backbone to Gigabit Ethernet, which has the capacity to move data at rates up to one Gigabit per second.

Where Fibre Channel Fits In

As the amount of data on enterprise networks proliferates, data warehousing and storage is becoming an increasingly important element of a company’s information technology strategy. High-speed Storage Area Networks (SANs) allow different kinds of storage devices (such as tape libraries and disk arrays) to be shared by all users via network servers. SANs, coupled with the Fibre Channel protocol used for communication in such net­works, promise significant performance (up to 10 Gbps) and administrative benefits over traditional LAN-based storage.

Beyond the LAN

Business geographic expansion, remote storage and disaster recovery needs require the ability to port LAN and storage pro­tocols across a metro network, with a minimum of protocol con­version and network overhead. In many cities, the increasing cost and scarcity of real estate has caused more and more busi­nesses to relocate workgroups and computing resources (e.g., data centers) off-campus. Many companies must travel 30 miles or more from headquarters to find suitable off-campus sites or locate backup sites "across the river" on a separate power or communications grid. High-speed access services need to accommodate a mix of Ethernet, IP, ATM and Fibre Channel— transparently and regardless of distance—from one side of a large metro footprint to the other. These networks demand guaranteed throughput at native wire speeds, highly responsive service restoration, minimal latency of data delivery, and real-time management of the network’s storage resources—without disruption to LAN performance.

Wavelength Division Multiplexing – Native Transportation of LAN/SAN Protocols

The suite of wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) products offered today enables service carriers to offer new classes of service (such as Gigabit Ethernet and Storage Area Networks) in a transparent and native fashion without the inefficiencies and expenses of protocol conversion. A classic example of this type of network is to use a modular optical access platform consisting of a central concentrator for service provider central offices (COs) or Points of Presence (POPs); a multi-port access multiplexer for buildings serving multiple tenants or services; and an edge interface device for individual cus­tomer premises. The system functions as an optical modem, providing an "extension cord" which allows connection of business premises to carrier infrastructures at full LAN speed.

The ability to provide LAN-speed access to metro networks eliminates the need for bridging and routing functions in the Customer Premise Equipment (CPE). Carriers can use a hub­-and-spoke architecture to bring all customer traffic into the CO or POP, and route it from that point. By aggregating traffic in this fashion, carriers can leverage investments in routing equip­ment and utilize the latest developments for improved opera­tional economy. Ancillary equipment, such as the new terabit routing switches, can be most efficiently used in these new net work configurations.

Multiple Configurations

WDM networks provide carriers with multiple configura­tion options such as point-to-point, cascaded multidrop (through the use of an add-drop module), access ring and hub-and-spoke architectures. Most WDM systems also support multiprotocol, remote provisioning. If a carrier wants to upgrade a particular applica­tion, for example from SONET OC3 to Gigabit Ethernet, the provisioning can be done remotely via software.The universal­ity of WDM equipment allows carriers to upgrade or cap­ture new services immediately without expensive truck rolls or the investment in new equipment

Benefits of WDM Networks

• Investment Protection: By supporting and co-existing with existing SONET equip­ment and protocols, WDM networks protect a carrier’s current infrastructure investment while creating new revenue-generating opportunities. Furthermore, additional capacity is built in to the each WDM platform. By increasing the number of wavelengths (via channel modules), additional serv­ices can be procured simply, quickly and incrementally as cus­tomer demand increases.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Most WDM networks offer the ability to scale as the need for bandwidth increases. For example using a single inter­face card that can support services for a number of standard protocols, including Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel and ATM at OC-3/12/48 rates. WDM platforms can also provide an inter­face card to integrate wire-speed Ethernet/Fast Ethernet service with multiple T1/E1 channels, enabling service providers to offer bundled voice and data service over an optical infrastructure.

Cisco looks at VMware

Per Reuters UK:

Cisco System Inc's pursuit of virtualization software maker VMware Inc could be more serious than many on Wall Street believed, as the network equipment maker searches for new sources of growth.

Cisco has long coveted VMware, whose software helps computer servers run more efficiently and frees companies from having to maintain huge data centers. It went so far as to hold informal talks last summer to buy VMware's parent EMC Corp according to a person familiar with the matter.

The companies did not move into formal negotiations, and tight credit markets make financing the purchase of a $25 billion company difficult these days. But things could change quickly if EMC decides to put VMware on the market.

"This is a logical deal to do," said a West Coast technology banker. "The question is, is it strategically compelling enough in this environment?"

Spokesmen for Cisco and EMC declined comment.

Virtualization is considered a hot technology that is changing the way companies store and manage their data. For Cisco, VMware could bring in a new source of revenue as the maker of switches, routers and other equipment -- the plumbing that manages much of Internet traffic -- faces maturing markets across its products and services.

VMware has a market value of $10 billion, a far easier sum for Cisco shareholders to swallow than a bid for the whole of EMC, the world's largest maker of corporate data storage gear. Cisco already owns 1.7 percent of VMware's common stock.

EMC previously said it had no plans to sell or spin off its 84 percent stake in VMware, but executives are expected to give an update on their strategy at a Mar 10 investor meeting.

Cisco Chief Executive John Chambers has said he plans to be acquisitive through the economic downturn. The company has about $29 billion of cash and securities, and on Monday launched a surprisingly large $4 billion debt sale.

Analysts speculated that Cisco could be building a war chest for a large acquisition such as EMC, but a person familiar with the network gear maker's thinking said Cisco was just being "opportunistic" in tapping capital markets.

"They're taking advantage of low interest rates, and figuring they might as well get the money while it's there," this person said, adding that it was unlikely the debt issue is tied directly to any plan for EMC. The source was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Rumors that Cisco could be interested in buying EMC to get its hands on VMware pushed EMC shares up 6 percent to $14.92 on July 30. The stock has since fallen amid concerns about global technology spending. It closed at $11.92 on Tuesday.

It is unclear whether EMC and Cisco discussed a price or terms during their conversations last summer, the person familiar with the matter said.

Time & Attendance System - Payroll Panic Resolved

In Closing…

New technologies continually improve the flow of our businesses, and companies should certainly take advantage when the justification is there. Sometimes it only takes 10 questions to make the difference between a time-consuming and costly disaster - and an investment that will pay for itself many times over.

Finally, “Payday Panic” will become a distant memory for your payroll department, relived only in story-swapping sessions in the break room.

NetApp Quietly Cuts 500-Plus Jobs

According to Barron's:

NetApp (NTAP) has “quietly” reduced its global workforce by more than 500 people, according to a research note today by Broadpoint.Amtech analyst Brian Marshall.

Marshall reports that he has confirmed that NetApp has cut its staff by about 6% from a base of 8.380 jobs in October 2008. Marshall contends that this is “a material step by management,” which indicates that “the company is not only pragmatic about the current challenging economy but also serious about generating operating leverage going forward.” Marshall estimates that the job cuts will save the data storage systems company $100 million to $125 million a year, boosting pro forma EPS by 25-30 cents a share.

Marshall maintains his Buy rating and $19 price target on the stock.

NetApp today is down $1.44, or 8.8%, to $14.86.

Time & Attendance System - Payroll Process

10. What changes might we make to the payroll process in the next 5-10 years?

It’s not always possible to know what the future holds. At the same time, try to have a good idea of what’s possible.

What if the payroll process is moved in-house? Or, will the organization need to negotiate with your payroll provider for lower rates? Be sure the systems you review will integrate with a variety of payroll providers and software solutions.

What level of growth is predicted? Will you need more employee licenses to accommodate this, and if so, what will this cost?

Are future upgrades included, or will these be available at an additional cost? Will there even be upgrades released?

The implementation and training process, if it is done right, is thorough and time-intensive. Don’t get tied into a system you will want to leave in three years!

News - VMware sets sights on storage expansion for 2009

From SearchStorage: By Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

"....VMWare Inc. demonstrated several products due out next year that will impact storage.

The storage products include storage resource management within Virtual Center (now named vCenter), thin provisioning for virtual machine file system (VMFS) volumes, hot expansion of virtual disks, iSCSI performance enhancements, extensible multipathing support, enhancements to Storage VMotion and DataRecovery, a new backup application.

These products are part of VMware's initiative to create the Virtual Datacenter OS (VDC-OS). VDC-OS enables VMware's hypervisor to gather and manage data center resources while taking advantage of underlying infrastructure tools from other vendors. VMware CEO Paul Maritz said storage infrastructure providers would use vStorage services to signal to the VDC-OS what capacity their devices have "so we can take advantage of that capacity."

More on storage management
IBM guts the virtual desktop data hog on any storage system

Healthcare firm solves VMware woes with SRM tool from Akorri

Tek-Tools adds path reporting on VMware and VTL

Symantec, Citrix take on VMware in storage management

VStorage will provide storage resource monitoring through vCenter, a VMware-developed tool that will report on storage allocation, utilization, snapshot space use and multipathing status. VCenter also shows which disks, LUNs, SCSI volumes, SCSI adapters or NAS (NFS) mounts the virtual machine is attached to.

VStorage monitoring will also generate usage reports, show storage resources connected to virtual machines in topology maps and allow customers to group datastores in folders and apply policies against them. Finally, the software will provide alerts and alarms to VMware administrators about storage capacity, including capacity on thin-provisioned volumes.

Thin provisioning for expanding volumes

VMware is also brushing up its support of thin provisioning. Today, if a LUN is dynamically expanded by a virtual SAN, the VMFS volume presented to the virtual machine can't be expanded with it, though 2 TB "extents" can be tacked on to the end of the VMFS volume. A new feature called VMFS Volume Grow will allow the original VMFS volume to expand and cover the new capacity of the array's LUN without appending a new extent. VMware plans a similar update called Hot VMDK Expand for the individual VMDK that each server sees as internal disk.

VMware officials also demonstrated a new feature called Fault Tolerance, which uses synchronous replication for high availability to eliminate the need for reboot during failover. Updates for Storage VMotion include the ability to migrate storage volumes from thick- to thin-provisioned devices, migrate from Raw Device Mapping (RDM) volumes to VMDK, migrate from RDM to RDM, change block tracking for live migrations and management integration into Virtual Center.

Multipathing, jumbo frames and fast paths

VMware's plans for 2009 also include extensible multipathing support through a new plugin that will take advantage of storage vendors' multipathing approaches, such as EMC's PowerPath and Symantec's Veritas Dynamic Multipathing. VMware also revamped its iSCSI software initiator to take advantage of jumbo frames and other code optimizations to boost performance. Next year, a similarly optimized guest SCSI driver will also be available in order to create a "fast path" between virtual machines and disk. Today, guest machines use the same SCSI drivers that they use in the physical world, and they're not necessarily optimized for traversing the hypervisor.

VMware senior product marketing Manager Jon Bock said VMware isn't looking to compete with storage vendors with these updates; VMware is targeting shops without advanced storage systems or dedicated storage teams. "How users deploy these features and what they'll choose to deploy, depends on their internal IT organization," Bock said. VMware integrates with its partners wherever possible, such as making calls back to the array for the "heavy lifting" with Storage VMotion, he added.

DataRecovery challenges Microsoft DPM

VMware is moving further into backup with its new DataRecovery application. VMware already offers snapshots of system state information, but leaves application and user data backup to third-party vendors. DataRecovery, based on VMware Consolidated Backup, will allow snapshots of both system information and data, and will also include data deduplication – a key technology of many backup vendors.

But there are limitations to DataRecovery that will relegate it to the low end of the market and shops without storage expertise, Bock said. DataRecovery only supports backup to disk, and requires a third-party tool to transfer those backups to tape if the user desires. The backups will be local only and won't feature the kind of application-specific integration backup vendors offer with applications like Oracle, SQL and Exchange.

But, DataRecovery does allow granular recovery of individual files within virtual machine images, a feature backup vendors have been rolling out over the last year. Bock suggested that DataRecovery will be a good fit for remote and branch offices, also a hot backup market today.

VMware is intensifying competition with Microsoft, which has entered the server virtualization market with its Hyper-V product. DataRecovery will compete with Microsoft's Data Protection Manager (DPM) low-end snapshot utility. "This isn't meant to replace something like [Symantec] NetBackup," Bock said. "Most users are using more than one tool for virtualization backup already."

"It's a necessary step [for VMware] to compete with Microsoft," said Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Lauren Whitehouse. "It'll impact some [backup vendors] more than others – some of the smaller companies may feel that DataRecovery validates what they're already doing in the market."

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 vs. VMWare - Opinion

Chris Pirillo takes on Microsoft's Virtual PC -

Indeed, I have quite a modest proposal:

Microsoft needs to license a stripped-down, slightly-modified version of VMWare 6.0 running Windows XP N - making this available for free through Windows Update for all activated users of Windows Vista. Yes, VMWare 6.0 is still in beta - but you can’t sit there and honestly tell me that beta software is any better or any worse than the bugs we’re all discovering in Windows Vista.

So, why recommend VMWare’s software over Microsoft’s own Virtual PC? That answer is exceedingly simple: VMWare is an amazingly robust virtualization tool - and it’s the only one that supports USB 2.0 device passthroughs. Virtual USB device support *ALONE* is makes it possible to run your XP-happy hardware on Windows Vista. Virtual PC is an inferior product by comparison - no arguments, my friends.

VMware” title=”http://www.vmware.com/products/beta/ws/\”>VMware” target=”_blank”>www.vmware.com/products/beta/ws/”>VMware Workstation 6.0 beta build 39849 is free for anybody to download, install, and use. I didn’t believe it would be possible - but my scanner actually works perfectly in Windows Vista… through a hardware-accelerated XP virtual machine. My FAX driver works wonderfully… through VMWare running Windows XP on top of Vista.

Apple gave its users “Classic mode” in OS X to give them some amount of backwards compatibility - and Microsoft did no such thing. In Vista (and earlier versions of Windows), you can right-click an executable and run it in “compatibility mode,” but this feature is (a) not foolproof, and (b) buried so that the average user will never find it. It’s the latter decision which brings my blood to a boil.

Microsoft: it’s not too late to save your users from further frustration. The only lucid proposal is the near-immediate deployment of a limited edition VMWare virtual machine with “N” pre-installed and ready to go. And don’t tell the world that you’re working on a new version

of Virtual PC. Fact of the matter is: I got it working today, and I really believe that you can make it equally as simple for novices to do, too.

Time & Attendance System - Budget, Leasing

9. How do we want to budget for this?

How does your organization typically pay for these types of investments? You will find a number of options available, including leasing, renting, an upfront purchase, or some combination of these.

It may be helpful to think of purchasing a house. An upfront purchase is almost always the least expensive option. However, that’s not always feasible, and often the buyer will apply for a mortgage so they can pay monthly payments instead. The buyer can put down a percentage of the cost as a down payment, and as a result, have lower monthly payments on the loan.

Finally, an individual could elect to rent a house or apartment for a number of reasons. This option is sometimes available for timekeeping systems, and as with houses, the rental payment is often the same or greater than a mortgage payment would be, and requires a higher down payment. The advantage is in the ability to leave the system if you determine for some reason that timesheet automation does not work for the organization.

VMWare News - Virtual Desktop

Pretty cool - newest news from VMware:

Have desktop, will travel.

VMware unveiled Tuesday its open source virtual desktop client VMware View Open Client, designed to provide users with constant access to their personal desktop on almost any device.

VMware View Open Client aims to provide organizations with the ability to host user desktops within their respective datacenters and allow their users to access their personal desktops from a variety of devices at any given time.

Jocelyn Goldfein, general manager of VMware's Desktop business unit, said in a statement:

Now we are sharing our source code in VMware view Open Client so vendors can easily optimize devices to create the best virtual desktop solutions. As a result, IT is able to reduce the total cost of providing desktop environments by allowing low-end or less-expensive devices that provide the same feature set as higher-end devices.

The VMware View Open Client is offered up through the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1.

_____________________________________________________________

Just a couple days ago VMware announced the availability of its free VMware View Open Client, which organizations can use with their VMware View virtualization software (commercial) to enable a Linux desktop or thin client to connect to a remote Windows desktop. According to Linuxdevices.com:

The free client boasts a “full” command line interface, and is said to support secure tunneling using SSL, and two-factor authentication with RSA SecurID. The release is said to work with VMware Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM) 2.0 and 2.1, as well as VMware View Manager 3.0. Posted on Google Code, the client software is licensed under GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 (LGPL v 2.1).

Poised to head off competition from Microsoft’s Hyper-V technology, View Open Client promises to help cut deployment costs for virtualized desktops. You can download the View Open Client binary packages, which have been posted on Google Code, along with more details on support, licensing, and compatibility.

Are you using any VMware virtualization software in your organization currently? Is it likely that you will deploy a virtual desktop infrastructure any time soon?

Document Management Software - getting started

Courtesy BuyerZone's introduction - visit their site for free quotes. This is a critical investment for a growing business.

"Quality document management systems can be customized to almost any situation, but some decisions need to be made up front. Without the right planning, you risk wasting time and money.

What problem are you trying to solve? That question, obvious though it may be, is one you have to have detailed answers to before you start working with a document management vendor. “We have too much paper” isn’t a good answer: be specific. “We need more remote access,” “We want to cut filing costs,” and “We have to enforce better security” are all better answers.

Gather details on what types of paper you’re working with, how they’re created, labeled, and filed, and what your needs are like for retrieval or ongoing usage. If you can easily categorize your documents into types, such as delivery slips or W2s, suppliers may be able to offer specific advice. A rough count of how many new documents you’ll need to enter per day is also useful.

Don’t overlook your existing electronic documents: you’ll want to be able to incorporate text files, PDFs, spreadsheets, and other important files into the document management system. Don’t get over-aggressive: stick to the types of documents relevant to the problems you’re solving.

Also look at your processes. What approval or editing steps should be built into the system? Which documents need to be permanently archived, and which should be editable? What types of documents need to be filed together for easy retrieval?

Then make sure you have management buy-in. Because of the costs and the transformative nature of document management systems, “grass-roots” efforts to implement them rarely succeed. With well thought out ROI analyses, you should be able to get executives on board.

Start slow
While you may eventually want a comprehensive, company-wide system, document management vendors strongly recommend you start by implementing a solution for one application in one department. It’s much easier to get management support for a new effort that only affects a single department at a lower cost. Tackling one problem at a time also makes installation less disruptive.

Once it’s been implemented, vendors indicate that it’s very common for a company to come back to expand the solution to multiple departments or processes months or years later. The success of the first, smaller solution leads to greater support for a more significant investment later. For example, a successful implementation in HR can serve as the launching point for larger, company-wide projects.

Time & Attendance System - Pay Policies, Shift Differentials, Calculations, Automation

6. What unusual pay policies, shift differentials, OT or Holiday rules, other varying rates, etc., should you be sure to cover when reviewing options with vendors?

In discussing this with the payroll department, you will need a clear understanding of the steps taken between collecting the approved timecards, and entering the time into the payroll software. What are the most complex calculations that they run into? In which areas do they most frequently find mistakes? Do the rules and policies vary significantly between employees, departments, or locations?

7. What other processes are currently manual that we can possibly automate efficiently at the same time?

8. What level of implementation & support will we need?

Document Management Software Benefits

Courtesy BuyerZone's introduction - visit their site for free quotes. This is a critical investment for a growing business.

"Cost savings - One of the biggest hidden costs that paper-intensive businesses face is the time it takes to work with paper files. Say it takes a $20/hour employee five minutes to walk to a records room, locate a file, act on it, refile it, and return to his desk. At just four files per day, that’s over 86 hours per year spent filing – around $1700 in wages. At ten files per day, that shoots up to 216 hours per year – over five weeks’ time, or $4300 – and that’s only for one employee. A system that lets employees find and work with those documents without ever leaving their desks can instantly slash those costs.

Document management systems also eliminate the “lost document” cost – the time it takes to recreate a document that’s been destroyed or misplaced. Some suppliers estimate the cost of replacing each lost document at $250.

Additional cost savings come from the office space that can be freed by eliminating most paper records. With real estate costs at $15 to $40 or more per square foot in many major cities, converting records rooms into usable office space can save considerable amounts of money. In other cases, you may be able to eliminate warehousing costs for years of old records.

Security
If you’re not taking data security seriously, you should be. Threats from outside (competition, identity thieves) and inside (disgruntled employees, employee theft) threaten the integrity and value of your most important information. Document management systems can provide several layers of security:

• Multiple levels of password-protected access for groups and individuals
• Encryption of document contents
• Audit trails showing who has accessed or updated documents

Disaster recovery
Whether your existing documents are paper or electronic, chances are you don’t have adequate disaster recovery plans in place. Document management systems protect your paper records by creating electronic copies that can be backed up in multiple ways. They also can include off-site data backups and other steps to ensure that a fire, flood, or break-in won’t cripple your business.

Access
Even as the Web makes it increasingly easy for employees to work remotely, paper records remain a serious roadblock to distributed organizations. The right document management system allows your employees to access vital records from wherever they are. Simply allowing more than one employee to look at a file at the same time is a significant improvement over paper files. Additionally, multi-layered access allows employees to see and change only the documents they’re authorized to handle.

Process consistency
Many companies’ document handling processes are just fine without a computerized system – or so they think. One benefit that matters more to larger companies is that a document management system will enforce consistency to the degree you want it. Different departments may have different approval processes – but once those are defined, the system will make sure they’re followed. No longer will consistency in filing, naming conventions, and workflow suffer as you add new employees or cover for vacationing staff.

Sun Microsystems answers with new SAN Arrays

Seen in the news today:

Sun Rolls Out New SAN Arrays

Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) is experiencing strong growth from its open storage efforts, but the company isn't forgetting the Fibre Channel SAN market.

Sun this week unveiled two new modular arrays, the Sun Storage 6580 and 6780, based on the company's OEM relationship with LSI (NYSE: LSI). The 6580 replaces the 6540 unveiled 2 1/2 years ago, while the 6780 is a move further up market.

One thing similar to Sun's open storage efforts is the marketing message for the new arrays; the company claims as much as "three times better price/performance than the competition," based on SPC-1 and SPC-2 benchmark results.

The "competition" is EMC's (NYSE: EMC) Clariion arrays, said Sun primary arrays general manager Nancy Hart, even though they aren't mentioned by name in Sun's SPC results. NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) created a furor last year when it directly compared its FAS3040 arrays to EMC's Clariion CX3.

Hart said the price/performance message is a good one for the current economic environment.

"The economic meltdown definitely touches the storage industry," she said. "Customers are still processing all the data, they just don't have the budget."

Sun is also offering upgrade and trade-in programs for its own and competitors' products.

The 6580 and 6780 come with the Sun StorageTek Common Array Manager. The 6580 scales up to 256 TB and offers eight 4Gb FC host ports, 8GB cache, 16 expansion trays per controller, an intermix of SATA and FC drives and RAID 6 support. It lists at $59,995.

The 6780 offers twice the IOPS and four times the throughput performance. It scales up to 448 TB, and offers eight or 16 4Gb FC host ports, 16GB cache, 28 expansion trays per controller, SATA and FC drives and RAID 6 support. It lists at $89,995.

Hart said 8Gb FC, 10Gb iSCSI, SAS and FCoE are on the company's roadmap. "There's going to be a lot of change in the next 18 months," she said.

In other hardware news, NetApp created a bit of a furor among its own users when it said it will discontinue its S-family of products aimed at small and mid-sized businesses. NetApp plans to offer new FAS2020 bundles for the SMB market instead.

Document Management Systems - Reasons

Courtesy BuyerZone's introduction - visit their site for free quotes. This is a critical investment for a growing business.

"More and more industries are falling under the influence of legislation that requires specific procedures for record keeping. Financial services companies need to be able to prove that information is unaltered to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley; medical practices have to prove that their records are safe from prying eyes to comply with HIPPA. The legal industry also has specific requirements related to discovery, including full-text searching of massive amounts of documents.

For businesses in these more regulated industries, document management systems are by far the best way to ensure compliance with strict security and record-keeping rules. It’s important to note that such systems only help your company become compliant, they don’t guarantee it. But, the right procedures and behaviors do. No matter how secure your electronic records are, if an employee prints sensitive information and takes it to lunch, you’re not in compliance.

Departmental applications
Because they benefit business units shared by almost all companies, document management systems are used in a broad spectrum of businesses. Human resources and accounting departments, traditional heavy users of paper files, are huge beneficiaries of document management.

In addition, the Patriot Act’s requirements of immediate government access to records apply to a wide range of businesses, and ISO 9000/9001 certification efforts can also benefit from document management. Manufacturing and government are two sectors that pursue document management for these broader regulatory reasons.

Any organization that wants to put more processes in place can benefit as well. Document management systems are used to enforce naming conventions, ensure strict approval processes are followed, and generally add consistency to existing procedures.

One example of document management in action comes from a BuyerZone vendor who worked with a salmon distributor in Seattle. Every summer, they used to move their entire operation to Anchorage for fishing season – including putting their corporate servers and pallets full of paper files on a barge and sailing them up the coast. At the end of the summer, they’d pack everything up and get back on the barge.

Not the most efficient business plan, perhaps, but they couldn’t operate without their records. Once their document management system was in place, all they had to do was bring a laptop and small scanner with them to Anchorage, and they could still access all their records as if they were back in Seattle.

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 - Overview

Highlights from Microsoft's overview of their Virtual PC 2007 -

Use Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 to run multiple operating systems at the same time on the same physical computer. Switch between virtual machines with the click of a button. Use virtual machines to run legacy applications, provide support, train users, and enhance quality assurance.

Virtual PC lets you create separate virtual machines on your Windows desktop, each of which virtualizes the hardware of a complete physical computer. Use virtual machines to run operating systems such as MS-DOS, Windows, and OS/2. You can run multiple operating systems at once on a single physical computer and switch between them as easily as switching applications—instantly, with a mouse click. Virtual PC is perfect for any scenario in which you need to support multiple operating systems, whether you use it for tech support, legacy application support, training, or just for consolidating physical computers.

Virtual PC provides a time-saving and cost-saving solution anywhere users must run multiple operating systems. Use Virtual PC in the following scenarios:

• Ease Migration: Run legacy applications in a virtual machine instead of delaying the deployment of a new operating system just because of application incompatibility. Test your migration plans using virtual machines instead of actual physical computers.
• Do More in Less Time: Support staff can run multiple operating systems on a single physical computer and switch between them easily. They can also restore virtual machines to their previous state almost instantly. Train students on multiple operating systems and virtual networks instead of purchasing and supporting additional computers.
• Streamline Deployment: Test software on different operating systems more easily. One crashing application or operating system doesn’t affect others.
• Accelerate Development: Increase quality assurance by testing and documenting your software on multiple operating systems using virtual machines. Decrease time-to-market by reducing reconfiguration time.

Configurability

After installing Virtual PC, you can configure it to suit your requirements. Virtual PC has a number of settings that control how the product interacts with the physical computer, allocates resources, and so on.

Easy installation Virtual PC is simple to install. Any administrator can run the Virtual PC guided setup program, and installation doesn’t require a reboot. The first time Virtual PC starts, it guides you through the process of creating the first virtual machine.

Standardization Configure and test upgrades and installations on virtual machines, and then you can deploy throughout your company a standard configuration that avoids problems caused by minor differences between hardware platforms.

Convenience Users switch between operating systems as easily as they switch between applications. They simply click the window containing the virtual machine. They can pause individual virtual machines so they stop using CPU cycles on the physical computer. They can also save virtual machines to disk and restore them at a later time. The restoration process normally takes a few seconds—much faster than restarting the guest operating system.

Host integration Users can copy, paste, drag, and drop between guest and host. Virtual PC provides additions that you install in a guest operating system to enable this functionality.

Document Management Software overview 1

Courtesy BuyerZone's introduction - visit their site for free quotes. This is a critical investment for a growing business.

"Simply put, document management systems can transform the way your business operates. Whether you’re solving a paper problem or simply improving the way you handle electronic files, the right document management system can provide a wide range of benefits for businesses large and small.

If you have employees who spend most of the day filing or retrieving documents, or if you spend good money every month to warehouse old paper records, you should investigate a document management system.

As you start investigating your options, one distinction to be aware of is between document imaging systems and document management software. The essential difference is that document imaging systems include tools to help you convert paper records into electronic files, while document management software is used to manage your electronic files.

The software is similar in both cases: you’ll still need security, tracking, and searching. But document imaging requires software and hardware to scan and index paper documents, while document management software is better suited for capturing e-mail and Web content.

Time & Attendance System - Reporting

5. What reporting does each respective department need that could be handled with this system?

This is often the key area of interest for the executive-level staff. What reports are they running involving labor costs? It is possible that those reports can be put together within the Time & Attendance software, or even automatically compiled and emailed if they are needed on a regular basis. Determine what structure and file types are desired for these reports, i.e. Adobe PDF, Excel, Access, CSV, or other types.

Time & Attendance System - Timesheet Approval, Regulatory Compliance

4. How will the timesheet approval process work?

Often, the current process can be simulated electronically. Determine whether the present way timecards are approved is efficient and effective.

Is the organization is under regulatory requirements for timesheet approval? You may want to confirm that electronic signatures are acceptable, as is typically the case.

Time & Attendance System - Servers, Infrastructure

3. Do we have the hardware, software, and infrastructure needed to support this?

Interview someone in your IT department if needed for this information. If the company has multiple locations, can each location access your network? Do all of your managers have access to workstations? Do all of your employees? Do you have a server with space available for a new software package? Do you already have licensing for any database technologies? Often, advanced workforce management systems will require database capabilities such as SQL or Oracle.

Electronic Medical Records - Centricity Overview

From GE's website, here's an overview of their EMR system.

Electronic Medical Records (EMR)

Centricity® EMR

Centricity EMR is an electronic medical record (EMR) system that enables ambulatory care physicians and clinical staff to document patient encounters, streamline clinical workflow, and securely exchange clinical data with other providers, patients, and information systems.

Centricity EMR is used by thousands of physicians to manage millions of patient records, and is among the most widely used ambulatory care electronic medical records. Centricity EMR empowers healthcare providers to deliver the highest quality of care at lower costs.

Designed by clinicians, for clinicians, this system fits the needs of both providers and administrators:

* Based entirely on easy-to-use, easy-to-maintain technology
* Available with GE Healthcare's practice management solutions for a practically paperless office
* Integrates with most revenue cycle management systems and shares common data with Centricity Business and Centricity Business Advantage
* Integrates with most healthcare information systems and shares common data with Centricity Enterprise
* More than a decade of successful releases, effective implementations and quality support

Outsourced Payroll Services: Why

Per ADP - Their argument on Why It Pays to Outsource Your Payroll.


There's more to managing small business payroll than writing checks and handing them out to employees on time. You need to keep accurate records, calculate and pay payroll taxes, and communicate effectively with employees. Many small business owners are finding that they can simplify the process by using an outsourced payroll provider to manage the entire process cost-effectively and efficiently.

Outsourcing your payroll can provide your small business with a number of important benefits:

Save time
Using an outsourced payroll solution is typically more efficient for a small business than processing payroll internally. Leaving payroll to experts frees up hours that you can devote to other important parts of your business. Whether it is your time, staff time, or a combination, chances are the hours could be better spent winning more business, improving customer service, fine-tuning business operations or launching a new product line. Among the areas where outsourcing will save time are:

• Processing payroll


• Cutting and distributing paychecks


• Calculating and paying withholding and employment taxes


• Preparing and distributing W-2s and 1099s at year-end


• Handling employee payroll inquiries

Save money
Many business owners underestimate the cost of processing payroll internally by failing to account for all hours spent and resources allocated to pay employees and maintain payroll paperwork. A thorough cost assessment usually proves that a small business saves money by outsourcing the processing, tracking and filing of payroll documents. To assess your own internal payroll costs, consider:

• How much the time spent is actually worth: consider the cost of your time and the time of anyone who processes or "touches" payroll. Often, many people in a small company are involved in the various parts of payroll processing.


• What savings would outsourcing provide: since an outside provider can handle all the responsibilities involved in managing payroll and answering employee questions, a small business can often eliminate or reallocate an internal payroll resource.

Avoid penalties
Calculating federal, state, and local employment taxes and filing payroll-related tax paperwork can be more than just a hassle. If it's done incorrectly, your small business may face penalties and even interest on money owed since the mistake was made. In fact, it is estimated that one in three small businesses receive a tax penalty costing over $800 each year. Outsourcing payroll does away with the risk of many of these costs and hassles because:

• An outsourced payroll provider calculates payroll taxes, based on its expertise and close tracking of regulation changes


• Monthly or quarterly employment tax reports are managed by the payroll service, ensuring they are submitted correctly and on time


• Payroll providers may assume penalties that come as a result of incorrect tax calculations


• End-of-year paperwork — such as W-2s and 1099s — are handled directly by the payroll provider, so they are sent out on time

NetApp Upgrade - Storage Area Network

From the Life in University Information Technology blog, here is a technical overview of an upgrade of a network appliance:

NetApp 3050c upgrade of DataOnTap 7.0.5 to DataOnTap 7.2.3

Performing a non-disruptive upgrade of our Network Appliance FAS 3050c (clustered filer configuration)

One of the benefits of having the clustered filers (FAS3050c) is that I can, in most cases, perform a system upgrade without having to disrupt services running on either system. The process is a little complex but well worth the payoff as in our environment I literally have thousands of students connecting to the storage at a time. Below is a slightly modified version of my notes from the upgrade (use at your own risk). I followed the directions from NetApp's upgrade guide. Although, I will note that their directions were not exact. I had differing outputs from commands at times which made me a little nervous. All in all the upgrade went pretty smooth and the systems have been running solid since.

Download from now.netapp.com under Download Software – DataOnTap – FAS 3050c

• new Shelf Firmware from now.netapp.com (all shelf firmware updates)
• new Disk Firmware from now.netapp.com (all disk firmware updates)
• newest release of Filer Firmware CFE 3.1
• newest GA Release of DataOnTap 7.2.3
• docs for DataOnTap 7.2.3

Copied and Made backups of files

• Mounted \\filerA\c$
• Mounted \\filerB\c$
• Made of backup of c$\etc\ folder on both systems (minus log files)
  - Copy to c$\backup\etc_8-24-2007
• From shelf zip file to the etc\shelf_fw on the both filerA and filerB
• From shelf zip file to the etc\shelf_fw on the both filerA and filerA
• From disk zip file to the etc\disk_fw on the both filerA and filerB
• From disk zip file to the etc\disk_fw on the both filerA and filerA

Shelf Firmware

• Login to the appliance console.
• Check current shelf firmware version ( > sysconfig -v )
  
• Enter Advanced privileges ( > priv set advanced )
  
• Start the update ( > storage download shelf )
  - This will upgrade the shelf firmware on all the disk shelves in the system. (If you wish to only update the disk shelves attached to a specific adapter, enter storage download shelf adapter_number instead).
• Accept the update, Press y for yes and hit enter.
• To verify the new shelf firmware, ( > sysconfig -v )
  
• Exit Advanced privlieges ( > priv set admin )

Disk Firmware

Disk firmware is automatically updated on reboot if there are updated files in the disk_fw folder. To keep the system from updating too many disks at once set or verify the following option.

• ( > options raid.background_disk_fw_update.enable)
  - if it is set to off, I recommend you change it to on
  

DataOnTap Update

1. Downloaded the newest General Deployment Release, in this case it was Data ONTAP 7.2.3.
2. Verified our system met all requirements for running the downloaded release, updates were required for Disk firmware and shelf firmware (which was done above)
3. Checked known problems and limitations of the new release to see if any would affect our environment. No potential problems found.
4. Compared bug fixes from current version of OnTap 7.0.5 to new version of 7.2.3. There were many bug fixes that could potentially effect our environment which makes the upgrade needed.
5. Downloaded newest documentation for 7.2.3

Update Procedure

With C$ mapped on both filers I ran the downloaded OS install (self extracting zip files) to the respective \etc directories. This is the first step and copies all the needed files over to the filers. Once completed, we preforme the procedure below from the NOW upgrade guide for Windows Clients.

1. start the install on both systems ( > download )
   
2. Checked the cluster status ( > cf status ) to make sure cluster failover was enabled
3. Had filerB takeover services for filerA ( > cf takeover )
   - This causes filerA to reboot
   
4. During reboot of filerA hit ( ctrl-c ) to enter into maintenance mode
5. From maintenance mode type ( > halt ) to do a full reboot
6. Hit ( del ) during memory test to get to the CFE prompt
7. start the firmware update of the filer from the CFE> prompt using ( CFE> update_flash )
   
8. Now reboot, type ( bye ) at console after update was finished to reboot filerA
9. filerA is now in a …waiting for giveback state
10. Now to give services back to filerA we have to force it using ( > cf giveback –f ) from filerB
    - This is required since we are now on different version of DataOnTap between systems in the cluster.
    
11. Giveback successful, checked firmeware and os version on filerA using ( > sysconfig –v )
12. After checking services on both systems it's time to upgrade filerB
    
13. Have filerA take over the services of filerB ( > cf takeover –n )
    
14. Type ( > halt ) from filerB to reboot it
    
15. During reboot of filerB hit ( ctrl-c ) to enter into maintenance mode
16. From maintenance mode type ( > halt ) to do a full reboot
17. Hit ( del ) during memory test to get to the CFE prompt
18. start the firmware update of the filer from the CFE> prompt using ( CFE> update_flash )
    
19. Typed ( bye ) at console after update was finished to reboot filerB
20. filerB is now in a …waiting for giveback state
21. Now to give services back to filerB we have to force it using ( > cf giveback –f ) from filerA
    - This is required since we are now on different version of DataOnTap between systems in the cluster.
22. Giveback successful, checked firmeware and os version on filerB using ( > sysconfig –v )
1. Both systems should now show the updated firmware and OnTap version 7.2.3


23. You should also notice that any out of date disk firmware is automatically updated. In my case I went from NA07 to NA08 on many of the disks.

My final steps were to test system connections

1. We use the following NetApp services: CIFS, FTP, HTTP, FCP via VMWARE. All worked fine. I Also checked our student websites and our web based FTP software that connects to the filer.
2. Checked Domain connection using cifs testdc ( filerA> cifs testdc )
   - appeared fine