Practical Technology

None of us saw it coming.  I'm still scratching my head about how this is even a problem. APC rack.  2x Tripplite PDUs (managed, metered).  Mounted in the APC toolless 0U panel at the back of the rack, side-by-side. As-is, there is no way to remove rear-facing network equipment that mounts using rack ears.  i.e. Physics prevent you from removing said equipment.  I'd have to remove both PDUs to get anything mounted w. rack ears in or out - e.g. if a switch fails... Maybe you just can't do that - maybe all equipment you want to remove must be mounted from the front.  Did some more looking (to be sure), and both the APC and Tripplite models we can use are pretty much the same physical dimensions. Unfortunately I wasn't able to meet directly with the datacenter manager (flight was delayed), so we came to the conclusion that our only real solution was to dismantle the rack entirely so we could move the vertical mounting flanges.  Doing so would gain...

So you are finally doing it!  Moving everything to a colo site - so exciting! So much redundant input power!  So much reliable A/C! So much latency between sites. It made so much sense to move EVERYTHING over that the only consideration you gave any thought to was DFS/Folder Redirection (which does, indeed, stink over the WAN).  One other small fuzzy area you forgot about was AccPac (Sage ERP 200). DFS/Folder Redirection - at least this was a known potential issue.  It's slow, but users can live with it if they must (and $ dictates wait they must).  But AccPac!  It's so un-useable at this point that immediate measures must be taken. Latency, you ask - how awful is it?  27ms.  (both sites on 100mb fiber) Yep, 27ms is enough to bring AccPac to its knees.  It turns out that AccPac is a rather old application, and has a neat feature called 'DBspy' that displays its age nicely.  If you watch the 'DBspy' monitor screen, simply clicki...

Posting this because as an operations person, this whole 'learn to be a dev' thing is a random and wacky journey, so why not post it for future people to use against me. Rather than learn the Thoughtworks Go Feeds API (I am not a developer and did not have a lot of time), I figured that this wheel must have already been invented. Google search terms: thoughtworks go dashboard github And boom:  https://github.com/LateRoomsGroup/GoDashboard Looks pretty nifty, so thought I'd give it a try.  Cloned it to my local machine, then tried to open the solution.  Error!  "The project type is not supported by this installation" LMGTFY: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2745988/the-project-type-is-not-supported-by-this-installation/8809433#8809433 http://www.codeproject.com/Reference/720512/List-of-Visual-Studio-Project-Type-GUIDs After cross-referencing the .csproj GUIDs with that handy list, looks like his project requires MVC4 to be installed!  Googling ...

It's pretty straightforward once you've googled it, but here's a quick how-to: Speak to management about TFS CAL licensing, because you require one (audit requirement, not functional blocker) - as of this post, MSRP for one CAL is ~$500USD. Install Team Explorer 2013 (this should also install a bare VS)  http://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/download/details.aspx?id=40776 Install VS Power Tools 2013  https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/f017b10c-02b4-4d6d-9845-58a06545627f Open VS Foundations to see Team Explorer, connect to your TFS server Download a copy of whatever project you're working on to a local folder Using Windows Explorer, brows to that local folder - you should see new icon overlays, and have a 'Team Foundation Server' context menu (right-click). If you don't:  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer \ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers Change the order by prefixing (renaming) the TFS keys with 1, 2, 3 - then r...