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As a result of the mounting fear over personal data loss some Nervous Nelly’s can have Norton AntiVirus, Ad-Adaware, Spybot Search & destory, Windows Defender, and Windows Firewall. Is this too much or is this a case of being better safe than sorry?

Networking giant Cisco Systems recently unveiled its new state of the art, energy efficient data center in Allen, Texas. In keeping with Cisco’s green minded approach to technology, the new data center is outfitted with a multitude of energy efficient features and was designed to achieve a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE ) of 1.35!

The most important part of your PC is your data. These are the files you have collected of created yourself - your projects, pictures, accounts, e-mails etc. In the event of a serious system crash or malware infection, you can usually restore the operating system and programs that you use however your personal data may be irreplaceable. Although emergency data recovery options are available, these tend to be expensive and without guarantee that everything you want can be restored. A safe approach and good practice is to start a regular routine of backing up your important data.

You’re excited about a new laptop or desktop you decided to buy. While you may think the decisions are over, there’s still another important decision to make -- the warranty.  Many manufacturers offer a set of warranties including extended warranties, and most big-box stores (such as Best Buy, Target, etc.) offer a third party warranty. In this post I will discuss the various pros and cons of different types of warranties and provide some advice on how to decide which is best for you.   When considering these different warranties, many consumers tend to look only at the price. You should look further as there are some features where your warranty will make your experience with your new purchase much better.

 The best warranty for your computer depends on your situation.  Is this a laptop for your son or daughter to take to college, or a backup netbook used only for traveling?  Can you be without this machine for 3-5 days, or would you need it fixed right away?  Do you plan to keep the computer for a few years? Will there be sensitive data on this machine?  These questions all come into play when determining the type of warranty to purchase, and from whom to purchase.

Malicious software commonly referred to as malware is increasingly being used as a way to make money from illegal activities. Such activities include:

1. Identity theft
2. Extorting money from individuals and or corporations
3. Information & Data warfare against governments

In many cases, the victims are unaware their systems have been compromised and as a result, it is becoming increasingly important to protect ourselves against malware. Over the course of my next two blogs I will be discussing the most common forms of malware along with preventative maintenance and removal of malware.

DaaS

In my last post I discussed taking a look at some of the Hosted VDI Solutions available to you in the marketplace. A hosted Virtual Desktop is known as DaaS or Desktop as a Service.

It’s all about the user experience with desktop access anywhere, anytime, and on any device.

The Virtual Desktop is hosted on a data center server virtual machine and delivered across the network using a remote display protocol. ( RDP, ICA, VNC,EOP, ALP and PCoIP.  I’ll save that for another blog).

Lets start with ThinkGrid [1]. ThinkGrid was named in a Gartner  report “ Cool Vendors in Infrastructure Services” So I wanted to take a look at their offerings. http://www.thinkgrid.ie/hosted-desktop.aspx

We will start with the desktop specifications. They offer Windows XP, but will soon offer Win 7. Some applications come standard, like Microsoft Office 2010 and Adobe Acrobat Reader 9. You can add and install your own applications using your own licensing. Or, take advantage of using their catalogue of applications for a monthly fee. Let’s say you have some temporary workers and really only need some applications for a few months. This is the ideal situation; you pay the monthly fee instead of the full licensing cost. When you are done you no longer pay the fee. It even supports local printing. You can have multiple images just like you normally would have for your different departments. I think when you take a look at the specifications you will find these are probably more powerful devices than what you are currently using in your environment.

Specifications

Fully Isolated Customer Environment - Full Customizable - Fully Virtualized _{(Not like Terminal Services)}

CPU/Processing Power -  Intel 2.2 Ghz Quad Core

Application Memory 1 GB - 32 GB

Disk Space 5 GB Useable Data + OS

Shared Diskspace (File Server) Optional

Resources Upgradeable and On-Demand Performance Burst

With the Group Management Pack and you get 100 GB Shared Fileserver, Active Directory/GP Management, User Permissions Management.

You can connect 24x7 with Windows, Mac, Linux or the iPad and Multi Monitor support is available.

Migrating your users

Not all your users would be a candidate for a hosted desktop. With this type of service, you choose who in your organization should use the hosted desktop and who stays on their regular desktop. This is where planning and testing comes into play. You can use a phased approach moving small or large sections at a time.

Wondering how much you can save by using DaaS?  You can download their Excel calculator.  http://www.thinkgrid.ie/hosted-desktop-info.aspx

There are also some really good whitepapers so you can compare DaaS to Google Apps or Go to My PC.

Go to their website and take a test drive, it’s free!

Samsung Electronics the world’s giant in memory technology recently announced that it has developed an 8 gigabyte registered dual inline memory module design, using Green DDR3 DRAM. 

The new memory modules reportedly deliver superior performance and significantly less power consumption due to advanced 3D chip stacking technology, known as TSV (through silicon via). The technology is coming quick and has already been tested successfully by some of Samsung’s largest customers!

As IT departments begin rolling out Windows Office 2010 I thought I would provide an end user perspective of what is new, keep reading to discover the seven wonders of Office 2010 as I see them.

The Green Grid group, a global consortium of IT companies and professionals, has developed two additional metrics to assist companies in addressing their carbon emissions and water usage in the organization.

Thanks to a new standard from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE, Energy efficient Ethernet or EEE is picking up speed and could soon be coming to a data center near you!

A change in theme for this blog edition as I look to self-indulge; someone who is tech savvy is someone who is known to be knowledgeable about technology. With technological advances being so fast paced and with technology coming in all shapes and sizes and impacting on pretty much everything we do, the question of how someone becomes tech savvy is an interesting one.

We are two months into 2011 and already I personally am seeing and increased demand for services in relation to deployment of Windows 7.

It is fair to say that Windows 7 has streamlined image deployment. Improvements include native compatibility mitigation for a greater range of applications, new and improved image-engineering tools improving the deployment experience and improvements that streamline migration of users’ files and settings.

Although my blog mostly focuses on Greener TechServices, in the past I have been asked by followers for tips on how they can reduce their energy usage costs and thus lower their carbon footprint. in their home. For this reason, I wanted to dedicate one blog to this topic.

Desktop Virtualization is separating the Desktop environment from the Physical machine using a client–server model. The results are a  "virtualized" desktop on a remote server.

This allows users to access their desktops on any capable device, such as the traditional personal computer or  notebook computer, netbook, smartphone, iPad or thin client. Virtual desktop infrastructure, sometimes referred to as virtual desktop interface (VDI) is the server computing model enabling desktop virtualization. Basic Lesson in VDI 101.

On another note, did you know that you can also get hosted virtual desktops from desktop virtualization services provided through an outsourced  hosted subscription model.  Just Google “hosted vdi service” and you will get lots of results you can check out.

The outsourced model will normally include a managed desktop client operating-system configuration. Security could be physical  through a local storage-area network or virtual through data-center policies. Transferring your infrastructure to an outsourced model can shift accounting for the associated costs. ( Disclaimer: check with your own Accounting Experts) LOL, sorry, had to put that in there!

Now according to Gartner, hosted services accounted for more than 500,000 desktop units as of March 2009, but will grow to 49 million desktop units by 2013, and may make up as much as 40% of the worldwide "professional PC market" by revenue.^{1}

Below I have listed the pros and cons to VDI.  Network connectivity is a big issue with VDI. Make sure your infrastructure is well tested before deploying VDI’s. But when you really think about it, network connectivity is a big issue anyway in today’s mobile environment whether you have deployed VDI or not.

PROS: Good End User experience, Scalability, Performance, Cost Savings, Efficiency,  Images easy to update and maintain, Longer refresh cycles for your hardware.

CONS: Learning Curve, End User training, IT Staff Training, Maintaining drivers for printers and other peripherals, Reliance on connectivity to corporate or public network.

The most important thing you want to think about is Security. This could be a Pro or a Con, depending on how well you did your research, implementation and whether not you are maintaining the security of your virtual machines with an ongoing plan for updates to all of them.

Many of your OEM's have introduced VDI Packages. We can explore some of those on my next post.

Have you implemented VDI in your environment? Leave me a comment and share some of your experiences with us.

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References:

1.       http://www.cio.com/article/487109/Hosted_Virtual_Desktop_Market_to_Cross_65_Billion_in_2013/.

IDC recently reported that shipments of non-PC devices (smart phones and tablets) will outpace PC shipments within 18 months, further stating at the end of their report that, “The PC-centric era is over.” 

From experience of having been involved in providing deployment services, I have found that organizations can waste time creating and maintaining images for each device they support. A constant source of frustration for many is the time it takes to find and download all the drivers needed for an image, couple this with decreasing budgets along with resource and time constraints; it is immediately apparent how software application deployment tooling can save time and cost.

When most people think of a data center, certain things come to mind, one being the high energy costs to power it. Certainly one does not think of a cooling not required data center. However, members of the Always on Stanford Summit were asked this very question and whether they thought the future of the data center might no longer require cooling equipment. Their answer will surprise you.

As touched up on during my last blog where we were discussing Deployment best practices, the total cost of owning and using PCs remains high despite PC prices falling.  This is largely due to cost of deploying them. Research has shown that the average deployment cost of a PC can be around $600 per PC with costs exceeding this figure not uncommon.

An effective and well thought our deployment strategy can cut costs by 50%. This translates to a saving of up to $300 per PC.

John Phelps, a leading research vice president in Gartner Research notes the recent upswing in attendance to the conference discussion he leads at the Gartner Data Center Conference. The topic? Green Data Center.