Tech/Horsepower

Browsing around my RSS feeds this morning, I came to The Daily WTF and hit on one story in particular:

The Busy Host (from Blake H.)
Years ago, I worked for a company that sold and supported a restaurant Point of Sale (POS) system named after a furry creature that eats and hides nuts. We had lots of large accounts across the world.

The system was sort of a client-server setup, with a Host Computer in the back office that drove dumb terminals on the restaurant floor. Whenever there was a problem or lost connection, the terminals would usually flash “Host busy, Manager check Host”. Most problems could be cured with a reboot of the host computer.

One day I got a call from a manager of an Applebee’s. He says that they can’t ring up any orders and that the screens all say “Host busy, manager check Host”.

I asked him if he’s checked the host. He says “Yep, I’ve already done that. She’s really busy, seating people as fast as she can!”

I put him on hold while I regained my composure.

I have a problem with this, and I fight it constantly in information technology. Computer speak and technical terms are used far too often. I’m not surprised the manager of a restaurant was confused by the term “host”. The manager clearly isn’t a computer person, as s/he doesn’t have to be. In the restaurant business the term “host” holds an entirely different meaning. The popular POS software company should better understand their clients and use a more intuitive error message. Here’s what I came up with in just a few seconds:

“Please check the main computer.”

I have addressed three issues with the original:

1) “Host busy.” They’re lying to their customers. The server isn’t busy, it’s probably broken. I’m sure the company decided this message would put a friendlier face on a problem, but why lie about it when it’s not necessary to mention at all?

2) “Manager check” The rest of the staff is probably insulted. You know, the other 99% who aren’t managers. It’s not necessary the software demand a manager check it.

3) “Host” A word with an entirely different meaning in the restaurant industry. Main computer, oh the one under the managers desk that runs the POS system!

We need to be better at describing information technology to our clients. With a more intuitive error message, the manager might not have needed to call. This saves Applebee’s time, frustration, and money. It also saves unnecessary help desk overhead as Blake could have better tasks to do.

The POS software was created to help restaurants be more efficient, saving them gobs of money. But just having the software itself isn’t enough – the POS company should focus on the whole software process and how simple bits such as this error message can help their clients be more efficient.

Since I became an IT professional, nearly all of my clients have been non-profit or social service. The people I work with are specifically not technical, which has always challenged me to put IT into layman’s terms. A primary reason people hate IT is because it’s just too darn hard to understand if you’re not technical. We IT professionals must always challenge ourselves to help our clients understand. If they understand, they’re going to be more efficient with technology. This saves both your client and you time and money.

A fun antithesis:

My wife is buying a gift for a baby shower. This morning she says “I need to get on Amazon and order a Pee Pee TeePee. I look at her like she’s insane because I think “PPTP” – a popular VPN protocol.

See, it works both ways.

Then I look at her like she’s insane because she’s buying a Pee Pee TeePee.

Sometimes you just need to get out of that contract. I’ve needed this on a couple occasions, either for my company or a client. Here’s how I do it without much fuss from the provider. Disclaimer: I consider this a “nuclear option” – if it’s abused (like to switch to an iPhone because all the cool people are doing it…) the hole will probably be closed and we’ll all lose out. Don’t abuse it. Your mileage may vary.

1. Use provider coverage maps to search the rural areas around your metro for a decent size dead zone.
2. Find the dead zone on Google Maps and locate roads that run through it.
3. Use a house buying website and narrow down/keyword search the road names until you find houses for sale on them. Check the addresses through Google Maps until you find one in your dead zone. Shoot for something well inside the zone.
4. Call provider. Depending on your situation:

Canceling completely: nicely tell them your “new” address and explain that there is no service available, so you have no choice but to cancel without being charged the termination fee.
Porting your number away: call them before you port the number and explain that you can’t get service at your “new” address, therefore have no other choice but to switch carriers. You’re calling to let them know before you port so they can note the account and call back to have the termination fee waived after the port. After you’ve ported away, call back within a couple hours and have the fee waived.

In either situation, they’ll check your exact distance from the nearest tower, so it’s not fool-proof. But if you’re respectful and far enough away you shouldn’t have a problem. This will work on multiple device accounts as long as all devices are moving to the new address. Example: if your business plan has multiple phones make sure you tell them every device is moving. Otherwise, just the device you call about is subject to the fee waived.

This works equally well on telco contracts (especially 2nd and 3rd tier carriers). Simply check out where your provider doesn’t have service (other cities, states, etc.), find an address, and use the same process.

I caught this fascinating Dell post through twitter yesterday about 2.5″ SAS hard drive density and speed finally rivaling the 3.5″ SCSI standard. SCSI speeds at half the size+performance benefits is awesome, but I believe Bryan missed a major attraction to the 2.5″ form factor: power consumption.

Recently, I’ve been mitigating power troubles in our data center space. We’re in a great center, but it’s older so I’m subject to a 100 watts-per-square-foot limit. Two racks, total 30sq/ft = 3000 watts total. We’re towing that line hard. When I read about the power requirements in Bryan’s post, I was blown away by the wattage comparison: “~6.2 watts for each 2.5-inch 10K 300GB vs ~17 watts for each 3.5-inch 15K 450GB“. That’s impressive. Then I did the math.

In just my heavy-hitting servers and PowerVault arrays, I have 100 3.5″ 10K SCSI drives, most 300G with a handful of 146G. Using a conservative estimate of 15 watts per drive, that’s 1500 watts – half of my power consumption limit. By migrating to the 2.5″ SAS drives at 6.2 watts I could reduce to 620 watts. That’s awesome. Most of my PowerEdge 2U servers (with 3.5″ drives) consume 200 watts, that’s four more servers I could install. Four.

Now think about those reductions if you’re paying the power bill. Replacing your 3.5″ drives with 2.5″ of the same density could generate extraordinary cost savings and improve your environmental footprint. It’s just a shame I can’t plug and play or easily convert SCSI to SAS, but you better believe as we grow I will be converting.

The cloud is all the rage these days. The internet is locked in a struggle of the future fundamentals of technology in our lives. One camp would continue pumping out full feature PC’s with complete operating systems. The other camp would have us buying essentially thin terminals running a web browser – everything we do integrated into the internet. But there are also some people like me. Those who know and understand both sides of the struggle and desire moderation.

I make a great deal of my living from cloud services. The firm I currently work for provides most of our application services over the internet, our client’s information stored with us. This has given me a unique, somewhat insider understanding of what it really means to “live” on the cloud. I’ve felt the pain of downtime through a perspective unknown to many: with the shotgun barrel pointed at me.

Errors, unexpected behavior, and downtime are a fact of life in internet technology. We have learned from our share of mistakes that cause downtime. We will continue to learn from them. But some of the hardest lessons learned have been through no fault of our own, situations outside of our control that caused us downtime. Even the most ironclad 100% uptime guarantee is a mirage, a fantasy providing a false sense of security. Read the fine print, if the SLA isn’t met, what good is a refund of services? You’re likely paying a teeny amount compared to what you’re billing clients. To put it another way: you may get a $500 service credit, but you could owe your clients $5000! Worse, you cannot put a monetary value on lost trust.

However, in much of the business world there is still a “downtime happens” understanding provided data integrity is maintained and it doesn’t happen often and/or for extended periods. Businesses tend to think about all possibilities. They craft contingency policies and collectively think about crisis mitigation. Business prepares.

We, as individuals, do not. Most of us panic. This is why our entire lives in the cloud without balance is a bad idea. The internet isn’t about just having fun anymore; we’re putting more and more of ourselves on the internet. We’re banking, doing our taxes, buying groceries, storing our treasured photos and memories, and files that allow us to make a living exclusively on the internet. Housed in data centers in cities we’ve never visited, countries we’ve never heard of, and on servers we have absolutely no control over or access to.

Many people are surprised when a huge entity has a major service impacting issue because this is not clearly understood by the masses. As our services hum along without issue, questions are not raised and consequences are not considered because of false senses of security. We continue to migrate our most precious and secure information to services we do not control.

Imagine a future where everyone stores their lives only on the internet, and a significant event causes massive downtime. No access to your files, your finances, your way of life. Like becoming stranded in a packed elevator, mid-floor, and your cell phone doesn’t work. Even worse, your information is completely wiped out. Terrifying. So how do we use properly utilize cloud technology?

Moderation is the first key: integrating the cloud into our lives – not putting our lives into the cloud.

There is a happy medium for many between the fully featured PC and the thin terminal. I believe that we can and should reduce our consumption of fully featured PC’s because for most people, they’re overkill. PC’s have reached a point where performance and density vastly outpace most workload. Simply put, most people do not need a quad-core powerhouse to use the internet, email, and manage their photographs and documents. Allow me a bit of the “green” angle: reducing PC features and component consumption will help us conserve energy from manufacturing all the way to individual household power use. It will help us relieve pressure on our earth resources.

But a stripped down thin terminal with a browser for an operating system is not the answer either. If you’ve never used a thin terminal, it’s basically the most stripped down “computer” you can get, often with no processing parts and no local storage designed to connect to a server that does all of the processing. There is a huge body of thought building that thin terminals are the next wave of computing, a toaster with a web browser. All of your information stored on the internet and accessed over the internet. This is bad.

Low-feature computers – part thin terminal, with local processing power and storage – are our answer to the future of technology in our daily lives. You can manipulate and keep your information in two places, on your computer and in the cloud. I believe netbooks have inadvertently kicked off this transition. They have proven very popular for the exact reasons desktops created in their image will be the future of computing: low power, low cost, compact and less wasteful design. A green alternative allowing access to all the cloud will soon have to offer without sacrificing the integrity of local information.

Why Google scares the heck out of me.

Google and I have a love-hate relationship. I love their services, they have revolutionized the way we access information on the internet and they are pioneering cloud-based services that make our lives better, more fun, and efficient. But I hate them because it’s too easy to become complacent and rely on them for everything. I host my email with their Apps service. I use their RSS reader, burn RSS feeds for this website through Feedburner. My wife has switched to Gmail from pop3 and fallen in love with their calendar. Her family is quickly migrating their information to a Google site. Contact info, birthdays, photos, casual conversation.

What happens if Google cannot or will not provide these services anymore? This is the second key to appropriately using the cloud – diversification. The most important part of what I use with Google is email, which I access through pop3 and download into Outlook. If domains went away tomorrow, I would be upset (especially since I lose all of my spam-catching groups!) but I will still have a local copy of my email. When using cloud services, keep copies of important information in multiple places and diversify. Google is rumored soon to launch Gdrive, their own cloud storage for your files. Google is becoming a one-stop shop for the cloud. Of course they are, they are pioneering the future of cloud services and building a business on it. But if you host your email with them, your files on the Gdrive with them, and you lose access – without another copy of important information – it’s all lost.

That’s why Google scares me. They make it so easy to use their services that should something catastrophic happen so many people could be in a very bad situation. As we migrate to the cloud, resist the ease of the cloud.

The fundamentals still apply – keep copies of your important information in more than one set of hands. And never forget that nobody cares more about your information than you.