A Beta of Spiceworks 5.0 has been released to the public. This is an exciting release for all of us. I for one have watch Spiceworks grow over the years both as a company and as a software product. This release is one of the best I have seen.  There are several new features that I would like to point out.

Backup device configuration from Cisco, HP, and Dell equipment

(Image from Spiceworks)

How is this helpful?
Now if you have an HP, Dell, or Cisco device, Spiceworks can backup the configuration of that device and save the image for later use or just as a general backup.  This is extremely useful when you are making configuration changes to your network.  Now through Spiceworks, you can make a backup of the configuration before you make changes and add notes as to what you are doing and why the backup was created.  If your changes don’t work the way you want, you can have Spiceworks restore the previous configuration from the backup and reboot the device for you.  This can save you a TON of time and save you money by avoiding a long network outage due to a configuration problem.

General Speed Improvements!

Spiceworks knows that speed has been an issue when using Spiceworks in the past.  Well Spiceworks said back on June 7, 2010 that they hired a new employee (Adam Gashlin) who was going to be working on performance improvements.  Well Adam and the rest of the staff at Spiceworks have delivered in the means of a performance improvement of up to 30% in Spiceworks 5.0.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/16/live- from-apples-iphone-4-press-conference/

Comparing the iPhone 4 antenna problem to other SmartPhones

Steve Jobs said:
10:11AM “The BlackBerry Bold 9700… let’s see what happens when you hold it in a normal way… 5 bars… and now on holding the left side.

Quote from a press member in the Q&A:
10:41AM Q: I can’t get my Bold to drop right now, maybe you can show me how to do it?

Steve: You may not see it in certain areas.

Wait a minute…you can make the antenna problem happen anywhere with the iPhone4 and Steve said that is a problem with all SmartPhones, not just the iPhone, yet here he is saying that it doesn’t happen everywhere on other phones.

Virtualization has been around for a while, but is just now starting to pop-up in the SMB market. Some companies will expand physical servers to assign a single role to each physical server. While that is okay to do, you typical don’t utilize the full power of each server when you do this and you end up paying for more hardware, electricity, and generate more heat in your server room (or IT closet) than necessary. This is where virtualization comes in to play. With virtualization you can logically split a server up to run multiple installs of Windows, Linux, Unix or any combination of those on the same physical server. Each logical install doesn’t see the other logical installs that are on the same server which can help you with software conflicts, virus infections and more.

If you have ever looked in to virtualization you have more than likely come across the company VMWare. While VMWare is one of the biggest and longest running players in the virtualization market, they can also come out to be one of the more expensive. With the price of VMWare’s ESX server, SMB’s typically find it hard to justify the cost of virtualization. That is why I want to tell you about a free alternative from Citrix called XenServer. XenServer is a solid alternative to VMWare’s solutions and comes in three different versions. The version that would best fit a first virtual server for an SMB is free.

If you are thinking that you may need to purchase a new server to implement a new software solution, give me a call to talk about virtualization first. We can talk together to find out if virtualiztaion would be a good fit for you.