Currently, our network at JFBC is about 15% Mac. One of the big ongoing projects I’ve been working on is better integration and management of the growing number of Macs in our environment. We currently leverage Active Directory for single signon, but, beyond that, there are no real management tools in place for Macs.

Some things are possible by extending the Active Directory schema to add some of the apple-specific LDAP attributes. However, this moves the AD environment into a somewhat “unsupported” configuration and still doesn’t provide for full control when it comes to Mac management.

The best way to fully manage the Mac clients - including centralized update management and general settings, including appearance, shortcuts, scripting, etc. is through the use of Apple’s Open Directory system. There was definitely some effort put forth on Apple’s part here, because Open Directory can fully integrate with Active Directory. Basically, AD gets used for authentication, then AD users and groups can be linked to OD groups. Specific management settings can then be applied to the OD groups.

I’ve just ordered a new Apple Xserve to handle this task, which should arrive next week. I’m excited about being able to take integration and management of our Mac environment to the next level.

Other Mac stuff on my radar:

• OS X Leopard deployment (Jonathan has agreed be my next victim beta tester).
• Office 2008 deployment.
• Possible Final Cut Server implementation (Already briefly discussed with our media team, will be exploring this further, including storage requirements).
• Migration of our closed circuit TV announcements from PowerPoint on Windows to Keynote on Mac (Currently working with our communications team on this).

Expect lots of Mac related posts in the coming weeks/months!

I just found this on the net and thought it was an interesting concept.  I don’t drink coffee, but know a lot of people who live on it, so I can definitely see the need

We have had a VMware ESX cluster for a while now, but last night I put together our first diskless ESX server. I’m excited about this because it eliminates a failure point from the environment - the local disks in the servers. I’m using Qlogic iSCSI HBA’s and booting from a 10GB volume on our Equallogic SAN.

I got everything configured and tested last night. Today, it gets racked and added to our cluster in Virtualcenter. Here’s a few pictures:

No disks The machine on the bottom and the Mac are a test environment for our upcoming Windows 2008 and Mac OSX Leopard deployment. The procurve switch is just for testing on the workbench, once racked, it will be attached to our Cisco 6500 core switch.

It doesn’t even know there’s no disks (boots up really fast too)

VI Client showing specs of new machine - 8 x 2.5GHz cores and 20GB of RAM - lots of horsepower

It’s home once I rearrange a few things tonight. The 4 machines at the top are our current ESX cluster. The disk array just underneath is for disk-based backup. The SAN is in another rack.

Tony’s post “Should I pursue unexcellent?” got my mind going. The key here is that excellence does not equal perfection. If we expect perfection out of our ministry, we will fail every time and be miserable in the process.

So what’s the difference? I like to think of it this way: Perfection is the act of being perfect while excellence is striving to be perfect. Perfection is being absolutely flawless, without error, never making any mistakes. Excellence is allowing our God-given talents to express themselves to the max.

So, excellence = mediocrity? Absolutely not! The bible commands us to strive to be perfect (excellence). This is apparent over and over - Philippians 1:10, 3:12-13, 4:8, 1 Peter 1:16. We will not achieve perfection until we are eternally united with God in Heaven, but we are to press on towards this goal. That is excellence.

Here are a few other random thoughts:

• Perfection is a fear of mistakes while excellence sees opportunities for improvement.
• Perfection is attempting to be in control while excellence is allowing god to be in control.
• Perfection is setting unreasonably standards will beyond reach. Excellence is setting high and perhaps difficult to attain, but attainable standards.
• Perfection can lead to misery and failure - it’s simply not attainable here on Earth. Excellence, however, leads to fulfillment and greatness.

Now, we do have to be careful. What we don’t want is to use excellence as an excuse for mediocrity. It’s easy to say “It can never be perfect, so this will have to do.” Sorry, but that “Ain’t gonna cut it.” We should never settle for “Good” when we can have “Great.”

The bottom line is: We must recognize that excellence is not perfection, but it’s also not mediocrity. We are to give our best, but also set attainable goals and recognize out limits.

After a crazy week with almost no free time, I finally got to sit down and continue reading Louie Giglio’s book “i am not but i know I AM.”  Here are a few thoughts that stood out to me:

• Life is not about us trying to be bigger, but about embracing our smallness
• Running our world, no matter how hard we try, is way too much for us. We might succeed in making a name for ourselves here on Earth, but it will fade to nothing when our story comes to an end.  We must remember that God is in control.
• He must become greater, and I must become less (John 3:30).
• Sabbath rest (Exodus 8:9-11) is essential.
• We should wake up each day looking for the story of God.  What is he up to today?
• If we’re not careful, on the way to attempting something great for his name, we can forget that He is in control.

I had a couple of gift cards I got with credit card reward points I need to use, and was running out of places to put stuff in the garage. So, I decided to use the gift cards to get a new toolbox. Did the “order online, pickup in store thing”, which worked amazingly well - first time I’ve tried that.

I think I might have went a little overboard - didn’t realize how big (and heavy) this thing was until I got it home. Thankfully, Matt came over and helped me unload it. Now I just need to get more tools. I think it’s going to be mostly empty even once I cleanup the garage.

I had a battle with this last night after installing Vista SP1 (Apparently TS Web Access requires Vista SP1 or XP SP3), so thought I’d share some details. Why Microsoft waits a year after releasing a new OS to make their remote serer admin tools work on it is beyond me. They did the same thing with XP and 2000.

The Server 2003 “adminpak.msi” kind of worked on vista. Installing it required “Compatibility Mode” be set to XP SP2, then, there was weirdness in some of the tools. For example, in AD Users and Computers, there was no indicator to show an account as being disabled. In DHCP management, you couldn’t do anything except set the “Server Options”. None of the scopes were visible. Since I migrated my workstation to vista, I’ve had to RDP to a server to do AD management more times than I’d like to.

MS finally got around to releasing RSAT, the ADMINPAK replacement. Several new tools are included for managing Server 2008. The download for 32bit Vista is available here and for 64 bit here. I downloaded and installed RSAT last night, after upgrading to SP1, and the admin tools were no where to be found:

Well, it turns out that the download installs all the tools, but places them in a disabled state - seems like a weird way to do it to me. You have to go into “Windows Features” and enable the newly installed tools for them to be available in “Adminstrative Tools:

It took a little while to figure all this out, since documentation is somewhat scarce. Once all of the above was done, I was able to create a custom Management Console with all of the tools I commonly use, and they actually work correctly

David Drinnon posted an interesting quote about Mac users and the IT deparement:

PCs are owned by IT and users use them. Macs are owned by users and IT supports them.

That seems to be the attitude from Mac users in a lot of organizations. BUT, why is it like that? I think it primarily stems from the fact that IT departments have been really slow at accepting the Mac as a valuable tool that has it’s place in their environment.

I am a firm believer in picking the right tool for the job. We run Windows, Mac, and Linux, and each has their place in our environment. When it comes to Video Editing, Graphics, and Music, Macs are king. It’s our job to provide those users with and support the tools they need just like we would for any other user.

Not to mention the fact that I LOVE OUR MAC USERS! They are awesome people and great to work with!

I love being on the bleeding-edge of technology.  In our “wired” world, technology is critical in empowering our staff to more effectively carry out the mission of the church.  We were a relatively early adopter of Exchange 2007 - migrating from Lotus Notes last summer.  Now, we are actively exploring the cool features Windows Server 2008 has to offer as well as beginning to roll it out in our production environment.

Things have gone relatively smooth so far, with a WSUS server, three terminal servers, and a few other miscellaneous apps successfully running on Server 2008.  I’ve recently been looking into migrating our exchange environment to Server 2008.  Since they are both Microsoft Products, it should be easy, right?  NOT!  I wonder sometimes if MS makes it hard for us on purpose.  Here are a few of the stipulations for running Exchange 2007 on Server 2008 (from the Exchange Team Blog:

• RTM version of Exchange 2007 will not install run on Server 2008 (I can understand this, since Exchange 2007 was released way before Server 2008)
• Exchange 2007 SP1 runs on Server 2008 (sounds good so far)
• Upgrading to Exchange 2007 SP1 on Server 2003, then upgrading to Server 2008 is a No-Go
• Upgrading from Server 2003 to Server 2008, then installing Exchange 2007 SP1 = absolutely not
• Clean install of Server 2008 + clean install of Exchange 2007 SP1 is gold.

So, basically, the only way to get exchange onto Server 2008 is to do a clean install of Server 2008 on bare metal, then install Exchange 2007 SP1.  At that point, you must configure all appropriate Exchange roles on the new server, migrate all the mailboxes, and then decommission the old server.  Doesn’t sound like much fun.  And, to think, I have 3 Exchange servers.

Obviously, I’ll survive and it will all get done, but it’s a bit frustrating that a company like Microsoft can’t plan for better integration/interoperability among their own products!

I was just in the Children’s Ministry office installing a thin client and they had a cool sign on the wall. “Stressed spelled backwards is DESSERTS.” Now why didn’t I think of that? That is awesome!