Although the deck has always been a desirable aspect of Applied Trust’s office environment, we felt the space wasn’t being used to its full potential. Some employees said that it was too sunny and got too hot to work out there with a laptop.  Others said it was the lack of acceptable work space and the presence of pigeons that deterred them from working out there.  We decided to make an effort to provide our engineers with a more inviting outdoor workspace that would be fun to use and would add value to our work space for years to come.

After looking into options we decided on some sun shades, some new workspaces, a way of providing music, and deck plants.  The plants were a key element; not only do they add to the aesthetics of the deck, but they also add to the “green” image of the office, by helping to offset our carbon output.  We chose the following plants to fill the planters:

• Carex Albula: These will grow to drip down the sides of the planters.
• Elijah Blue: These will grow gold-colored grass.
• Dragon’s Blood Sedum: These will turn burgundy and produce bright pink flowers.
• Brilliantissima: These will grow red fruit in the fall and produce white flowers in the spring.

We chose sustainably harvested teak planters to house the plants. These products help reforest degraded land and restore ecological productivity. Last, we decided to go with the vine Clematis (Alba Luxurians), which will grow up and over the deck and provide some natural shade.  This should also lower our energy costs during the summer, as the sun shines pretty intensely through those east-side windows. However, until the vines have had a couple of years to cover the deck completely, we’ve installed some sun shades over the deck to provide shade for the workspaces.  The plants really help to provide a welcoming space for Applied Trust’s engineers to work outside and enjoy Boulder’s beautiful weather.

In order to facilitate meetings on the deck we created a meeting location area that could be reserved, and Trent hooked up some cordless IP phones to which we’re able to forward our desk phones while we’re out there.  Rounding out the new deck features are a pair of wireless speakers and some overhead lights.

The new deck also comes in handy for hosting formal and informal gatherings outside of normal hours. In order to properly break in the newly remodeled deck we hosted a “deck warming” party this past June, which was a fun time for all.

In all, we are quite proud of our new space and we encourage folks to stop by for a visit and check it out!

• IPv6 in 2009? Are you kidding me?: It sure looks like Trent’s prediction will be correct (for 2010, too!)
• Save Green – Turn Up That Data Center Thermostat!: Green IT meets real cost savings.
• New HIPAA modifications under the ARRA: Stimulus package implications for anyone who handles health info.
• Black Thursday’s 20 year anniversary: A flashback to the beginnings of network security, from someone who was there.
• Keystroke dynamics: A practical web implementation: Practical?  Maybe not, but certainly interesting!
• Ten IT Infrastructure New Year Resolutions for 2009: Best practices that IT shops of all sizes should follow.
• Debugging Nagios performance problems: Performance tuning advice and insight.
• End-of-year IT checklist: Essential IT housecleaning tasks that you can do any time of the year!
• Poker at the Work Place? Deep insight into computer science/engineer personalities.
• Fend off disaster with preventative maintenance: A stitch in time…

Here’s to lots more entertaining (and hopefully insightful!) posts in the year to come!  Thanks for your comments, feedback, and continued support!

– The Seals at Applied Trust

(photo courtesy hfb under the CC)

One key strategy for reducing cooling load (and thus saving money and the environment) is to crank up the temperature of your machine room - cooling alone uses a third of all the power consumed by the data center!  Back in the days of giant monolithic servers, it really was important to keep the temperature below 70 – with today’s modern hardware, that thinking is history like the Ice Age. Here’s what our server room temperatures look like now: 

So far, we haven’t seen an increase in failures, although we’re monitoring this very closely and will give you an update if we notice any issues!

1. Hold off on Vista.  If your business can survive without the awesome new sound effects and transparent windows Vista offers, stick with XP.  I’m not excited to make predictions about Windows 7, but the general concensus is that most businesses will be able to leap from Windows XP to Windows 7 without ever muddying their feet with the stink of Vista.  Don’t be shy about letting your corporate management know how much your department will be saving them on hardware and software licenses by maintaining the XP installation base another year.
2. Consider additional use of open source.  This is another huge opportunity for savings – you’re likely already relying on more open source software than you know.  Here are three ideas:
   • Upgrading or deploying new web servers?  Consider replacing expensive, licensed Microsoft IIS web servers with Apache servers running on Linux.  You can use the same hardware you’re already comfortable with, and if you have a reasonably simple web site, you can probably do the migration in a day.  Have a really complex web site?  Then you almost for sure should at least be running Linux at the front-end web tier.
   • Still paying for expensive Oracle database licenses?  If you’re heavily dependent on Oracle-specific features, oops – your IT leadership made a mistake!  However, a vast majority of well-written applicaitons can utilize any reasonable RDBMS.  Personally, I have a huge crush on MySQL – I get a rush out of helping companies migrate from Oracle to MySQL for pennies on the dollar.  It’s also fun to see several racks of Y2k-era Sun hardware recycled and replaced with a half-rack cluster of Linux MySQL servers.
   • Did you resolve to start a blog in 2009?  There are literally hundreds of great blogging platforms, but we love WordPress.  If you can manage your own LAMP server, use wordpress.org.  If you just want something quick, non-technical, and solid, try wordpress.com. 
3. Start employing “the cloud”.  If you’re frightened by “cloud computing,” don’t be!  Companies like Amazon, Google, and Rackspace are happy to let you host your applications on their infrastructure, cheap.  These big boys manage hundreds of thousands of servers and know what they’re doing – you pay as little as ten cents an hour for an on-demand server and no longer have to worry about managing cooling, hardware maintenance, or data center space.  Worth a very serious look if you’re currently renting rack space, paying for a colo, or are in the market for cost-effective geographic redundancy.
4. Improve network segmentation.  We all know an Internet firewall is essential, but it is no longer sufficient.  At the very minimum, you should segment your network with firewalls in several places – this architecture has tremendous performance, managability, and security benefits.  Identify where you’re at on the “Network Segmentation Ladder” below, and resolve to move your organization up a rung.
   

   Host-level segmentation	firewalls (or ACLs or port security) between every individual host on the network
   Deparment-level segmentation	additional firewalls between departmental/functional groups of servers and workstations
   Server-level segmentation	additional firewalls between internal servers and internal workstations
   DMZ segmentation	firewalls between Internet, Internet-facing servers, and internal systems
   Internet segmentation	Internet firewall but no internal firewalls
   No segmentation	no Internet firewall, security depends on NAT and luck

    

5. Improve your documentation.  One low-cost activity that will definitely improve availability, managability, and security is creating better documentation.  If your IT team doesn’t have a good, shared documentation repository, try deploying your own wiki.  If you have a secure linux web server around, you can setup PMWiki in less than thirty minutes - our documentation went through the roof when we started using a wiki!  If you don’t have a change management tool, try Mantis – it is an awesome web-based ticketing tool that you can setup and customize in under a few hours… ITIL here you come!  Do you have a server build and security hardening checklist? …a server/service documentation template? …an production change planning/documentation checklist?
6. Start thinking “green”.  If there ever was a time to start saving money by conserving use of energy and IT resources, Q1 2009 is it.  IT is a thorn in the CFO’s side, and you should consider resolving to cut back on IT-related spending right now.  A huge VMWare virtualization project might require a serious up-front capital investment – probably out in 2009… but you don’t have to buy anything to do a server consolidation project, which will make similar use of your spare capacity and result similarly less physical servers to manage (the dirty secret of server virtualization… more on this later).
7. Improve your logging infrastructure.  If you’re not centrally collecting server and network logs, you’re missing the bus.  Using open source and free vendor-supplied tools, you can setup an enterprise-class central logging infrastructure without anything but a little extra disk space.  Having all of your logs in a central location is the first step toward proactive security and availability management.  If you already are logging centrally, this is a good year to start (or improve) automated log analysis.
8. Resist cuts in security resources.  For a number of reasons, now is probably not a great time to lose sight on IT security.  As the purse strings are tightened, do your best to keep security initiatives on track.  Those patches will keep needing to be applied, and those log files reviewed – don’t let short-sighted cuts in security staff result in long-term security headaches for you and your customers.
9. Run a Disaster Recovery drill.  Have an IT Disaster Recovery plan?  You should be exercising it with real-life “practical” exercises at least once a year… schedule yours now.  Don’t have a DR plan?  Schedule a tabletop exercise – we have found that sitting around a table, talking through failure scenarios is a spectacular way to get the DR planning process started.
10. Perform a monthly network patch scan.  After a roughly three-year break from serious enterprise-threatening viruses…  viruses are back in 2009, baby!  We saw a really serious Windows vulnerability in late 2008 that resulted in some frustrating downtime for a number of enterprieses.  Resolve to run the free MBSA tool against your Windows network at least monthly.  Ideally, your IT department should be completing a number of self-assessment tasks on a monthly basis.

Oh… and as a bonus, take a moment to read this post by Guy Kawasaki and resolve to live by the no a**holes rule in 2009.

• Toby Russell from Natural Capitalism Solutions spoke first about the web-based tool they are developing to help small businesses plan their Green initiatives. They plan to have their first module, focused on lighting efficiency and solutions, ready for public consumption in January.
• John Shaw from Bella Energy sat next to me on the panel, and gave an informative introduction on the solar electric options available to businesses today. Solar Electric systems can be cost-neutral in as little as four years, thanks to the many different rebates and credits offered by Xcel and the government. Although almost any Solar Electric system can be profitable in ten years, smaller systems (those under 10kW) qualify for the more generous rebates. It was exciting to hear just how affordable these systems have become! I’ll be looking forward to hearing more from John when he speaks at the next 10 for Change meeting in January.
• The panel wrapped up with John Anderson from Clean Energy Solutions, who provided some good advice on local resources for efficiency and environmental planning. He mentioned the Center for ReSource Conservation, located just up the street. John also had some thoughtful suggestions for dealing with the “split incentive problem,” where building tenants who pay triple-net rent are not incented to conserve energy use. The trick is to negotiate – in John’s words, “it’s only money.”

]]> http://www.barkingseal.com/2008/11/boulder-businesses-meet-for-change/feed/ 0 http://www.barkingseal.com/2008/11/10-for-change/ http://www.barkingseal.com/2008/11/10-for-change/#comments Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:08:52 +0000 ned http://www.barkingseal.com/?p=221 I’m excited to report that Applied Trust is sponsoring the 10 for Change Challenge in Boulder, and that I’ll be participating in tonight’s panel at the St. Julien.  The Challenge, to cut energy use by 10% in 2009, is open to Boulder businesses and will include regular meetings throughout the year.  Tonight’s meeting will be our first after the kickoff, and it sounds like there will be a great turnout.

This is an incredible opportunity for businesses to share their experiences in facilities and infrastructure efficiency — I’m going to talk about our experiences with facilities power monitoring, IT efficency, and off-grid power generation during the panel today.

You can also check out what we’re doing to reduce our ecological impact on the 10 for Change site: Applied Trust thinks and lives ‘green’.  Special thanks to Kevin Afflerbaugh at the City, Adrian Eissler at Hogan & Hartson, and Tim Tetreault at Cleantech for getting this exciting program rolling!

Send your “schwag brag” ideas (with photos) to schwagbrag@atrust.com. Whoever submits the most outrageous story and photo between now and December 31, 2008 wins a 3-day trip for two to beautiful Cozumel, Mexico!

We’ve already received some great submissions – hurry up and get yours in the door!

One of the greatest features of being consulting IT infrastructure engineers is that we have the opportunity to see, touch, and experience a wide variety of technologies and their successful (and sometimes, not so successful) application. We have the opportunity to solve problems that have never been solved before. And, every once in awhile, we make mistakes that provide good lessons. It’s our hope that sharing some of these experiences will better our community as a whole. We’ll probably rant occasionally too; we’re blessed to work with some very rant-inclined folks.

Our goal is for this blog to become one of your trusted sources of useful information about the IT security and infrastructure arena. We hope you enjoy it.