MacNoob

As much as I love my Macbook Pro and use it at the office for almost everything, there’s no way I could consider converting our site to Apple.  As an IT manager, I have come to love the security and reliability OS X represents, but when I think about the logistics of converting our 120 workstation site to Macs, I hit more than one brick wall.

Let’s suppose for a moment that my servers are fine and I wouldn’t need to change a thing for them to work with Macs.  Lets also suppose everyone on-site would love a new Apple computer and would use it without question.  There are still a number of problems Apple has no solution for.

First, Apple doesn’t make a computer suitable for a managed business environment.  For a company with an IT staff, you must provide a workstation that meet these criteria:

• A small to desktop form factor
• A “tool less” chassis with user-replaceable parts
• $1000 maximum cost (w/o display)

Apple has nothing that fits this model.  A Mac Mini is the only machine less than $1000 and it doesn’t even come close to meeting the other two criteria.  An iMac can be had for around a grand and its’ form-factor is OK, but if its’ hard drive fails there’s no way to fix it.  Additionally, an all-in-one form factor marries the display to the CPU, removing even more flexibility from the IT department.  A Mac Pro has user-serviceable parts, but it is huge and there’s no IT manager in the world (who wants to keep their job) willing to pay $2800 for business machines.  Besides, it’s way too much computer for anyone but a graphic artist or a film editor.

Another gaping hole in Apple’s business offering is service.  Enterprises are not going to designate an employee to make appointments with a Genius Bar at their local mall’s Apple store whenever there’s a service issue with a machine.  Dell and HP offer a next business day, on-site service plan at a nominal fee for enterprise customers.  If Apple wants to make even a small dent in the enterprise market shares of these two companies, they must put a much better service model in place.

What Apple needs to do to be a real enterprise player is build something like Psystar is building.  By that I don’t suggest they make a cheap, flimsy computer but rather build a mid-sized, mid-priced machine that meets the above criteria and add a service plan businesses are willing to consider.  This new computer could also be sold to every day consumers as well.  In fact, I’m pretty sure it would be a hit.  Maybe the reason so many people are willing to roll the dice with an unknown like Psystar is because Psystar is filling a huge vacuum created by a hole in Apple’s product line.

When you look at the “Business” section of Apple’s web site, it’s apparent they’re not serious about providing anything close to an enterprise solution.  Apple devotes its’ web space to small businesses like lawyers, doctors and real estate offices.  That’s all well and good, but contrasting Apple with Dell or HP reveals a huge difference in focus. On their sites you see server farms, floors of endless cubicles and service centers with world-class response and distribution networks.  Yes, it may well be smoke and mirrors, but it does, at least, illustrate their intent and focus.

For now, Dell and HP rule the enterprise roost.  Mr. Jobs is certainly aware of what the other guys are doing.  Maybe that type of low-margin, high volume business is something Apple is just not willing to invest in.  I guess the real reason Apple doesn’t put up bigger numbers in the enterprise market is because they just don’t want to.  Yet.

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Working with tight budgets is a reality in today’s IT environment.  Stretching workstation life from three years to four, purchasing 14” laptops instead of 15” models and reducing staff has become the norm for many IT managers.  All to often, information technology is viewed as just a cost of doing business by executives instead of the productivity multiplier it can be when prioritized and funded properly.  Fortunately, advances in technology often provide new solutions or make existing solutions much more affordable.
Such is the case with storage.  With hard disk prices at less than $0.25/GB and falling, there are more inexpensive ways than ever to provide huge amounts of disk space that would have been unheard of even five years ago.  Disk-to-disk backup has all but replaced tape libraries and an average laptop today has more storage than a new Windows 2000 server in its day.  The RAID 5 SAN (Storage Area Network) that cost nearly $100K five years ago sported 1.5 – 2 TB.  That same money will buy 40TB today.
I (my company) bought one of those 2TB SANs a few years back and have really loved it.  We currently boot and operate five servers from the device and man is it fast.  It is populated with 20 10,000 RPM SCSI disks and communicates via two separate 2Gb fiber channels.
I’m sure no one but real geeks are still reading this after that opening diatribe, but now to the cool part.
With roughly 120 users on my network, I was beginning to suffer from “data creep”.  Every computer user experiences this to some degree.  All of us have said at one time or another, “I’ll never fill up that disk!”  Sound familiar?  I remember complaining about my Delphi environment using 120 megs of disk space a few years back.  Now, I download three of four podcasts a day that are bigger than that.  To my point, what originally seemed like an infinite amount of SAN space has recently become a bit cramped.  I either needed more space or less data.  The latter is always the more unpleasant [if not downright impossible] alternative.
Enter the Drobo.
As I studied what data was using the most disk space on my SAN, I discovered over 100 gigs that hadn’t been touched in over five years.  Another 30 gigs was just junk.  Downloaded video, audio and digital photos made up the bulk of it.  While I’m sure its important to somebody, its certainly not mission-critical data, but I don’t want to be the one to decide whether it stays or goes.  I also didn’t have money in the budget to expand my SAN.  The Drobo solved my problem.  Although its not considered an enterprise device, the Drobo does advertise RAID-like data protection and network connectivity for up to 100 users via their DroboShare.  I’m testing those limits.  I do support over 120 users at my site, but it is a 24/7 operation and there are no more than 90 connected users at any given time.

Setting up the Drobo was a snap.  I immediately noticed how everything about the device is geared toward the consumer.  In fact, I kept thinking I had to be missing some manual or other technical data.  The supplied setup docs are little more than a “1, 2, 3” pictograph like the ones you get with a $99 inkjet from Target.  Unboxing, installing the (4) 1TB WD drives, connecting the DroboShare with the supplied USB cable, powering up and connecting the gigabit ethernet was one of the simplest IT tasks I’ve ever performed.  The whole process took less than 10 minutes.  I remember thinking, “That was all there was to it?”  The install CD for the admin software was straightforward.  It automatically updated the Drobo, DroboShare and itself and guided me through the formatting, partitioning and naming the device on my network. I installed it on my Vista PC and my Mac.  Presto!  I’d just added 2.7 TB of gigabit-connected storage to my network.  (2.7 TB is the usable space you get when you populate the Drobo’s four bays with 1TB drives.)

Once the device was up and running, my first step was to move all the data I considered “junk” from my SAN.  The two partitions I’d created showed up immediately in Windows Explorer so moving the data was a simple “copy & paste” exercise.  The Drobo is as fast as I could have hoped for.  The data copy happened at about 6 MB/sec.  Moving the 30 gigs took just a little over an hour.

My next (and last) step was adding a simple “net use” command to our login script to add the Drobo as the “Z” drive to everyone’s workstation.  That was it. In a little under three hours the Drobo was up and running, serving data to 80+ users.  While it is a bit slower than my SAN-based Novell file server, the speed difference is nothing most users would ever notice.  And for less than $1500 I have over doubled our storage capacity.  Now, I have no illusions the Drobo is going to replace my $100K SAN any time soon, but it does exactly what I need.  It gives me a huge amount of protected storage for data that isn’t restricted to certain users or groups and it frees much needed space on my SAN for more “traditional”  policy-controlled file storage.
So far, I’ve heard no complaints from users and “no news is good news” in my business.  The Drobo has only been up for a couple of days, but it certainly doesn’t appear taxed and I’m a happy camper.  My SAN has more free space, the LEDs on the Drobo and DroboShare are green and by budget is still in the black.

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My oldest daughter recently graduated from college.  We’re all very proud of her and decided to reward her for finishing in four years with a good GPA and two degrees.  When I asked her what she wanted, I was a bit surprised when she said “A Macbook Air”.  She’s always been a PC person and well-versed in Windows XP.  She told me she loved my Macbook Pro and was willing to learn the “Mac” way of doing things.  “Besides,” she said, “the Air is so cute! “  I stopped arguing with that type of logic long ago.  I gladly capitulated.  What the hell, it’s her graduation and the Air is certainly cheaper than even one summer semester.  Also, I knew I’d get to play with it a bit while helping her set it up.

We bought her the 1.8 GHz, 80Gig model with the external “Superdrive” (Apple’s naming conventions are a bit dramatic, don’t you think?).  Everything arrived in a few days in good order.  I called my daughter and asked her if she would prefer to open the packages herself or have me set everything up beforehand.  I was praying for the latter.  I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the “cute” little thing.  My girl, being the pragmatist she is, opted for the free setup service I offered.

I love new, shiny stuff and the Air is the ultimate gadget for a geek like myself.  The first thing I noticed was how solid the machine is.  You have to hand it to Apple, their manufacturing tolerances are second-to-none.  It’s hard to imagine how anything so thin and complex can feel like it’s carved from a block of granite.  The fit and finish of the Air makes my 17″ Macbook Pro (a well-made machine by anyone’s measure) seem almost shoddy by comparison.

I navigated through the normal OS X setup entering my daughter’s information, connected to my home network, installed iWork and created her .Mac account.  I ran the Apple Software Update utility and was pleasantly surprised by how up-to-date OS X was.  I was also very pleased with how snappy the Air felt.  I experienced very little lag time even when its tiny (1.8″) hard disk was accessed.  I really expected it to be a bit more sluggish.  The “Superdrive” worked flawlessly when connected directly to the Air’s one USB port, but when I decided to “sneaker net” her data from her PC I ran into my first problem.

Needing another USB port, I got a portable USB hub I keep in my laptop case.  When I plugged the Superdrive into it, OS X reported there wasn’t enough power to run the drive.  So, I powered the hub and plugged the Superdrive back into it, same message.  I went into my office and got my powered desktop USB hub and tried it.  Still no workie.  So far, the only way I can get the Superdrive to work is by plugging it directly into the Air’s one USB port.  Is this by design?  Am I alone?

So, I finished everything requiring the Superdrive and put it back into its box.  After that, everything else I plugged into the USB hub worked fine and I transferred her data using my flash drive and the wireless network.  The HP printer install went perfectly but I had to download the software from HP so I wouldn’t need to get out the DVD drive again.

Here’s where the fun began.  I got iChat working and my other daughter and I had some fun playing with it room-to-room.  See, I don’t know anyone else with a Mac well enough to play with all the exclusively Mac features.  I shared the Air’s desktop, had a video chat and used “Back to My Mac”.  That was the epiphany.  I need my Macbook Pro for the real “heavy lifting” of audio and video recording and encoding not to mention all the photo editing I do, but with “Back to My Mac” I can still have access to all that when I’m on the road with an Air.  Yeah, that’s it.  I can use it while I’m on my date with Morgan Fairchild!  Yeah, that’s the ticket!

External hard drives have been a challenge for me on my Mac.  I’m pretty well-versed in the Windows “plug and play” methodology, but OS X either hides configuration options from the user or I’m too ignorant to know how to find them.

As you might have read in one of my previous posts, I love the eSATA interface for its speed.  I’m such a backup freak that having an external device working at near bus speed is a real timesaver.  It makes copying large amounts of data almost painless.  It’s such a nice feeling to know that if my Macbook’s internal drive dies, I have a fresh, bootable duplicate ready to use at a moment’s notice.

My problem with external hard drives on my Mac is one of control.  More specifically, how long is the inactive period before the disk spins down to save power?  When it does spin down, how do you wake it up?  I’ve had continual problems with disks falling “asleep” and not being able to wake them.  This leads to all sorts of Finder beachballs and other application errors trying to read or write to a disk OS X thinks is awake but is really in some near-comatose state.  Windows has a nice set of tools for managing these devices in the properties applet within Device Manager.  Even more settings are available in the Power Settings applet in Control Panel.  Between the two you can define in minutes how long a particular external drive is inactive before it spins down and optimize that drive for speed or quick removal.  OS X doesn’t offer this level of control.  There is a single checkbox in the Energy Saver portion of System Preferences.

There’s also an application buried in /Developer/Applications/Performance Tools/CHUD/Hardware Tools called SpindownHD.

It only seems to offer a global setting for all the drives on your Mac.  To try and resolve the MyBook sleepiness, I unchecked the Energy Saver checkbox and the “Disk sleeps after..” checkbox in SpindownHD.  This had no effect on my eSATA attached MyBook Studio.  I tried lengthening the “sleep after” time.  Still no good.  I downloaded and installed the latest firmware from Western Digital, no workie either.

The Workaround
The problem seemed to lie within the eSATA interface.  The MyBook Studio I’m using has a triple interface (USB, Firewire and eSATA) so as an experiment, I ejected the disk and reconnected it using the firewire interface.  After unchecking both the above-mentioned checkboxes, the MyBook doesn’t go to sleep any more, even now after I’ve switched back to the eSATA connection.  I’m still looking for a better solution.  WD and Apple don’t seem to offer one that I can find.  Is there anyone out there willing to help this noob?

First, a confession.  I am an input junkie.  The parts of a computer that most people seldom upgrade when purchasing a new machine, the mouse and keyboard, are the items I tend to spend too much money on.  It has always been a mystery to me how some folks can spend over $2000 on a nice computer and settle for the bare-bones $20 mouse and keyboard most manufacturers supply as “standard equipment”.  Think about it, aside from video there is no part of a computer you spend more time interacting with than the keyboard and mouse.  Almost every computer manufacturer offers a very nice upgrade to these devices for just a few dollars when you purchase a new machine and almost no one takes advantage of it.  Gamers are the exception.  Their special “need for speed” often drives them to spend over $200 for input devices that allow them to do custom key and button mapping or may even be specifically built to accommodate their favorite game.  Most “normal” users, on the other hand just need an accurate and comfortable keyboard and mouse to get their jobs done.  If you’re like me, and are very particular about the feel, function and style of their input devices, Logitech’s diNovo Edge is the ultimate keyboard in all three categories.  This sleek beauty’s smoked glass finish and razor thinness will compliment even the most tasteful desktop.  The built-in touchpad, touch-sensitive volume control and programmable function keys make the Edge as functional as it is beautiful.  The best feature of the diNovo Edge though, is its feel.  The keyboard layout is more similar to a laptop than a standard desktop (eg. no number pad) and the feel of the keys’ tactile response reminds me of the best Lenovo models.  It is a real joy to use, the bluetooth setup is a snap and I highly recommend the Edge to anyone willing to spend a little extra to have the very best.  The list price is $200 but I bought mine on-line for less than $140.  At the time of this post it’s on sale at eCost.com for $120!  WORTH EVERY PENNY!

It is a bit disconcerting that Logitech has not seen fit to make a purely Mac version and the Setpoint software they provide for programming and tuning the device is Windows only.  The Edge’s base functionality (touchpad, volume control, etc.) works just fine with my Macbook Pro and the device looks and feels so good I’m willing to put up with the absence of the “trickier” features.  I’d never been a big fan of Logitech keyboards, feeling they spent too much effort on gizmos and not enough on feel, function and style.  The diNovo Edge changed all that.  If Logitech were to make a Mac-specific model there would be no question, but even without Mac support it’s still my favorite keyboard ever.

I just installed a Silicon Image Sil3132 SATALink express card controller and attached a LaCie 400GB external eSATA drive. I can’t believe how rippin’ fast this thing is. I did a complete SuperDuper backup using the new configuration and the whole thing (90+ Gigs) only took ten minutes! The data rate SuperDuper reported was 358MB per second!! Thats right PER SECOND! Not megabits, megaBYTES! I’ve never witnessed anything so fast on a home setup. I have a 4 TB SAN at work that doesn’t transfer data at these rates. The sweet part about this is how inexpensive it is. The external eSATA drive I’m using was only $35 more than the standard USB model of the same size. I’ve done a little investigating and all the major PC manufacturers offer models with eSATA ports and PCIx cards are typically less than $50 for two port setups that are capable of RAID1 and RAID0. The only drawback is the eSATA cable. All the ones I’ve seen are relatively short (the longest I’ve found is 1 m) and not very pliable. A small concession. I’ll never buy a plain USB or firewire external hard disk again!