Blackberry Storm

A few years ago Blackberry swept over Crossings like a raging storm. It was in high demand and a large portion of our staff decided that this was the answer to all of their problems.

Through these years I've seen the iterations of phones roll through like spring, summer, and fall. It is not uncommon for me to swap out a phone once a month or more. (We only have 15 Blackberry users). I am proud to say I'm still rocking and rolling with the archaic 7920. Don't be jealous, but it does what I need it to and it is as durable as a brick. I should know; I've dropped my phone down the concrete stairs more times than I'd like to admit.

The thing that interests me is how many people are jumping the blackberry ship. Has the SS BES lost its luster? I can't speak for every organization but I think that a few of our staffers finally realized that receiving and responding to email isn't as cool as it first seemed.

Don't get me wrong I don't see CCC going BB free anytime soon. We have several die hards that you couldn't pry their blackberry out of their hands with a rusty crowbar. These people also don't mind the expectations that comes with a Blackberry so it is a perfect fit. I just never thought that I see someone go cold turkey from a crackberry and not go through any withdraws. So far of the people that jumped ship have even mentioned going back to BES.
To me, this is neither a good thing nor a bad thing, it's just an observation.

Exchange 2007: Beginnings

Just to update you on what is keeping me busy. We have our new server and I am working at getting Exchange 2007 installed.

So far it has been pretty straightforward. In theory Exchange 2007 implementation is anticlimactic because there are wizards that do all of the installation tasks for you. So if you can read and install software in a windows environment it should be a snap getting MS Exchange 2007 loaded.

I did have a few issues getting the domain prepared for Exchange. Currently we have a Windows Server 2000 box running Exchange 2003. That machine use be the "everything server" here at CCC which really means he used to do everything.
Here is a list that this server did at one time or another...

• Exchange
• File share
• The only Domain Controller (for 100+ users)
  (which would include all of the FSMO roles)
• DHCP
• DNS
  (inluding WINS)
• Certificate Server
• IIS for Outlook Web Access

Call me crazy or "old school" but I think that is a lot to expect from a server so we have slowly been moving roles off of this workhorse to other hardware.

Here is where thing went a little rough for us.
Exchange 2007 updates the Active Directory Schema and it cannot have an Domain Controllers that are older than Server 2003. This forced me to demote our current server that had exchange on it. Scary! As it turns out she also was the primary DNS Server. After the demotion this server had nothing in DNS and on one could get any where. It took me quite a while to figure out why mail wasn't routing and people could neither get on the internet nor get to their mailboxes. It took a while to get everyone's DHCP changes updated and then there were the static addresses.

My motto is...
All in the name of progress.

The best part is that if everything else goes right no one should notice.

I will, however, notice many benefits for the upgrade.

• Most importantly: hardware that is under warranty and in good working condition
• The hardware is wicked fast (2 - Dual Core Opteron x64 Processors w/ 6GB RAM)
  
• the Exchange 2007 management has simplified many of the views for administration tasks
• All this server will do is be a DC and run Exchange.

It is all simply magic. Now all I have to do is get everyone's mailboxes over to the new server and make sure that BES 4.0 is working with Ex07 since it is not officially recommended.

Server Room Makeover

Our server room, which is actually more of a closet, just got a nice makeover to allow for future enhancements specifically our new email server.

Background: Up until now we have been purchasing tower servers because we didn't have a rack to put them in. Needless to say the floor of our server room is getting pretty crowded. We have ample square footage in the room but it is an odd shape. The area is about 30ft. long by 4 ft. wide which makes it a little difficult to navigate during an emergency. We had cables and crickets everywhere you stepped. If anything ever needed to be moved it took what seemed like an eternity to navigate the rat's nest and figure out what you were unplugging.

Since we needed to order a new server for our new email solution I decided to make the jump and go rack mountable. I had extra money left over because we didn't need as much disk space on the new server so we purchased an open 4-post rack. Now we have the ability to implement new hardware without taking up anymore floor space. It has also organized our room much more and I don't have to stand on my head to access the phone blocks.

I would like to note that the majority of the cables that you see are for our security camera system all of the other cables are bundled nicely and can be easily identified.

During this makeover I was able to remove 3 extension cords, 3 power strips and a myriad of other junk that has been there longer than anyone can remember.

Bring on the new server(s)!