VM self-service is good and bad. By self service, people can set up their own VMs. This can be bad. VMs have to be managed, backed up, secured and, when it comes to licensing, paid for (you don't want the software police on your case do ya?).
Self-service is good because a private cloud is supposed to be fluid, which means VMs have to create on an as-needed basis.
And good self-service tools make self-service good by putting controls on when, how and who can create these VMs.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/30/20120 comments
Readers share how they keep tabs on multiple online login info:
I have over 600 passwords and I only remember one of them. I use a password manager (visKeeper -- sort of like Splash Data, except older). The one password I remember is the one I use to open visKeeper and to log in to my computer. All the rest I look up from the database. I use a different unique random password for everything.
I selected visKeeper because it had desktop PC and Windows Mobile versions, and you could sync the database between the two. I could look up, create and edit passwords on my phone when I needed to. When Microsoft dropped Windows Mobile, SFR (the company behind visKeeper) didn't pursue other phones or the successor to Windows Mobile. It may be out of business now -- at least today its Web site doesn't respond. I've lived without the phone version for a couple of years now, sort of miss it, but it hasn't messed me up very much to not have access to my passwords.
One of these days I'll get around to writing a program to convert the visKeeper data to something else, probably Splash Data which has good support for different phones.
The incident which pushed me to this extreme happened a few years ago. I had a login issue with a financial services Web site. I was only using my main password in a dozen or so places that I commonly visited, including this one. When the system administrator who was helping me said 'Can I verify that your password is ….?,' I was shocked. I considered that a compromise of every use of that password. It's also a terrible idea for systems to be designed so that anyone, regardless of privileges, can access your literal password. But you know systems designed like that are out there, so I decided I wouldn't use my master password anywhere else than on my computer, and I would use long random passwords everywhere else.
-Rick
LastPass.
It's my solution on my PCs, work, home and all my mobile devices (available for the $1 per month subscription).
I create one master password for LastPass, and then it will generate pseudo-random passwords for all my Web sites, none the same. It also will import the passwords you already have on your system, secure them, and has quite a few other tools to help you change those passwords to make them secure. Even Wi-Fi keys and other secure data can be stored in LastPass.
I probably sound like an advertisement for the software, but I love it that much. It's my desert island app.
-Kevin
Shhh, I write them down on a sticky note under the keyboard ;) Just kidding, of course. I use Password Safe.
-Anonymous
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/30/20123 comments
Symantec found a bold way to show just how well it can recover data. It bought a server rack weighing a quarter ton, loaded the thing up with Red Hat Linux and Solaris, and built an Oracle database. A second server was built as backup.
The working server was hauled to the top of an 18-story building and, like Kramer's oil bladder, unceremoniously dropped over the side
Despite the trauma, the first server smoothly failed over to the second -- a better outcome than the Kramer bladder, which landed on Jerry's girlfriend.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/30/20120 comments
Microsoft yesterday unveiled the prices it will charge for its Surface Pro tablet. This is the version of Surface meant for real computing as it runs on Windows 8 Pro, includes an Intel processor and can run the library of Windows 7 and other compatible apps. The surface you can buy today is based on ARM and really expects a whole new library of native software.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/30/20127 comments
Microsoft certifications have always been the source of some controversy. When these things were all the rage, a cert in your pocket was the ticket to a hot job, or perhaps a promotion in the current one. Some folks collected them like stamps. A whole industry popped up.
Certs are still around and there is still clear value in them. But just how much exact value is the question.
Redmond columnist and Microsoft MVP Don Jones came across a bunch of new Microsoft certs and took that opportunity to re-pose the question.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/29/20124 comments
We may not technically be in a recession but most of aren't exactly swimming in cash. What a perfect time for Microsoft to raise client access licenses (CALs) by 15 percent, a move that kicks in this Saturday.
I'm not sure if Microsoft reads the papers but there are a ton of alternatives for each and every thing Microsoft produces. That's why in nearly all of these markets competitors are gaining.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/29/20124 comments
Handling passwords used to be simple. In the early days we had one, and the guy in the glass room knew what it was if we forgot. Now how many do you have? And in how many forms do they come? Some for low-security Web sites are simple. Other times low-security Web sites want complex passwords. Even worse, all the easy user names are taken so it's the user name not the password that is inordinately difficult. It ends up that all these things are different.
Then you end up having to change these passwords, making tracking all the more tricky. Ways to keep it all together are a disaster: pieces of paper, unencrypted files on thumb drives -- that sort of thing.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/28/20121 comments
When folks with connections to Microsoft talk about using the Mac it is usually a knock against Windows. Redmond columnist Don Jones just did the opposite in his piece "Why I use a Mac."
Dig this: Don uses a Mac because he likes Windows too much! Within the discipline of having to USE the Mac, Don would spend all of his time PLAYING with Windows.
Jones has none of those feelings for the Mac. It is a tool, and that's it.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/28/20122 comments
Windows 8 is as big of a question mark as predicting next year's Superbowl winner. I've gotten feedback from close to 100 Redmond Report readers and the reviews are decidedly mixed. It's like that biker with love and hate tattooed across both sets of knuckles. Michael Miller, whom I worked with when he was editor-in-chief of InfoWorld, found much the same thing.
A survey by Forrester also backs both our anecdotal findings.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/28/20127 comments
Redmond columnist Don Jones is a big fan of Windows Server 2012. The only problem (and it's a problem for Microsoft, not Don) is that the OS is not terribly exciting. And it's not terribly new or flashy. It doesn't have a fundamentally new user interface that looked like an over-inflated smartphone.
Server 2012 is boring because what it does it kind of boring. And it just works, just like its predecessor, Jones argues. Not exactly marketing gold.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/26/20123 comments
In the very early days of computing most of us stuck with just one password to remember. Now I have a couple dozen. That's because each site or service seems to require a different level of password. And when passwords expire you have to come up with a new one.
Forgetting a password is a fear that ranks right up with spiders, public speaking and meeting future in-laws. That's why so many choose such weak passwords -- weak passwords are easy to remember.
SplashData has been tracking the worst and it recently released 2012's 25 worst passwords.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/26/20129 comments
Tech writer Harry McCracken isn't known for making outrageous statements just to get clicks. This is one smart dude. So when he said that he uses the iPad as his main PC, I took notice.
My take is that the iPad, while built like a computer (OS, memory, display, input, apps), is no PC. Having bought one only reinforced that take -- it's superb for what it does and is one heckuva oversized camera, but I can't get any real work done with the thing. It's a fine e-mail machine for traveling, but so is a BlackBerry.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/26/201212 comments