5:37 pm in infrastructure management by Matt Jenkins
This quote from OmniIT is spot on:
Deploying 50 new instances in a cloud is easier than 50 new physical machines. But just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. If it takes hours to install new machines, then you are doing your job wrong. If it takes weeks to get your machines, then you are using the wrong vendor. And most importantly if you suddenly realize that you need 50 new machines, then you simply didn’t do your job well. The cloud is not an excuse to avoid a business model. A business model includes a budget and a solid, implementable plan for growth based on thorough capacity planning. With that, you should see it coming.
source: http://omniti.com/seeds/the-cloud-is-great-stop-the-hype
Tags: cloud, hosting, infrastructure
9:53 pm in miscellaneous by Matt Jenkins
I was writing a post about the new facebook privacy settings, but then I saw Rafe Needlemans post – which says everything I had and more.
3:07 pm in miscellaneous by Matt Jenkins
You want a laptop huh? Well you have 2 basic choices, netbook or notebook.
A netbook is a cheap (around £300) small laptop that is good for basic web browsing and low power apps. The benefit with this is you can replace it every couple of years and it wont break the bank.
If you choose a netbook, you should go for either a Samsung N110 or Asus Eee PC 1005HA
A notebook is all other laptops. You can have a bigger screen, bigger hard drive, more performance, better graphics, etc and all for just more money!
If you choose a notebook, I would recommend:
- either a Intel Pentium Core Duo 2, or an Intel i3 or i5
- at least 3GB RAM (more = better)
- at least 250gb Hard drive
- dedicated graphics card (not integrated)
- At least 1440×900 screen resolution (assuming a 15″ screen)
- Windows 7
HP make some nice laptops around the 750GBP mark.
Tags: Laptop, netbook, notebook
6:34 am in infrastructure management, miscellaneous, monitoring by Matt Jenkins
I read the bbc news story today – which reports that a group at Cambridge University found that the direct URL to uploaded photos on various sites continued to exist 30 days after they deleted them.
Is this news? These sites have several hosting challenges, one key area is caching.
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Tags: caching, cdn, deleting photos, hosting, photos, web
11:47 am in miscellaneous by Matt Jenkins
I’ve been in Germany this week installing a new branch office. The phone system is to be the very capable IP Office 500 from Avaya – which is great for branch offices as its pretty cheap and remotely configurable, and has the capability for small community networking across the VPN.
A couple of things caught me out on this install Read the rest of this entry →
Tags: Avaya, Avaya IP500, BRI Trunk, IP Office, IPO 500, Phone System
4:30 pm in miscellaneous by mjenkins

Google may contain badware!
Earlir today Google flagged every site with the statement “This site may harm your computer” in its search results on both Google.com and Google.co.uk. I saw this issue live, and immediately started using Yahoo for search.
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Tags: badware, Google, malicious, search results, stopbadware, this site may harm your computer