FireHaus Network

For a variety of reasons the main server room for the firm I support is located in an electrical “closet” in the headquarters building’s basement. There is no AC, only a powerful blower to introduce fresh air to the small space. This has meant that the servers have always been sucking in very warm air, frequently very dusty, and sometimes literally full of small flying bugs.

To make things a little stranger there is an actual properly built server room also in the basement. However, it is a very large room that was obviously set up for the oil company that used to occupy the building in the 1990’s. Currently this “server room” is used for filing storage for client discovery and up until a few months ago the room was quite full of file boxes. I gave my IT Admin the job of figuring out how we could fit in a 4-post server rack inside this room without losing any storage space for the files. Seems difficult since the room was full but when I looked at the way things were in there it seemed like there was a lot of wasted space.

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• If the price seems too good to be true that is because it probably isn’t true.
• The lowest price is not always the best price. Verify shipping charges before the final step of your order and if shipping charges cannot be verified then stop the order process immediately (close your browser if you have to).
• If it isn’t in stock then move on.
• Make sure you get a receipt online immediately, don’t wait for it to come via e-mail.
• Use search tools such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing to find reviews if the online retailer is unfamiliar to you. Try a search similar to “newegg opinions” or “best buy reviews“. You can also check up on a company using the bizrate.com store rating guide, resellerratings.com store ratings, or epinions.com.
• Read the customer reviews–if available–of the product you are buying as this may save you a headache later.
• Follow up afterwards by checking your credit/debit cards statements to make sure what you charged is what you were charged.

Sit back and enjoy the holiday shopping madness from the comfort of home.

There are many situations where a rack mounted 1U or 3U server just doesn’t fit into the budget or specific needs of a business. Many of us Apple IT guys have been using and/or recommending the Mac mini with Mac OS X Server installed as a great way to keep within budget while still retaining full network services.In fact I have an earlier post about using Mac minis in a 24/7 environment.

So Apple finally made it official a few weeks ago an now has a Mac mini server. It fits the bill for many business uses, creative uses, as well as even for a simple home network server.

In fact one business makes it their business to use Mac minis almost exclusively as their servers, providing web hosting and other services to their customers.

I received a brand new Apple Xserve a couple of days ago and I took it out of the box and got it ready for testing. I expect a new server to have some usage on it as part of quality control testing but I guess I just never noticed how much usage is on a new server (at least one from Apple).

13.34 hours of which I can account for only 25 to 30 minutes.

Mostly I find it interesting, assuming this usage is typical, that Apple has the time, both in the factory and in the facility in the US where Xserve orders are put together, to run a machine for 12 hours before shipping it. Even a self-proclaimed IT Guru still learns something new everyday.

I get asked from time-to-time what software and hardware is used in a Mac-only law firm. This is a start that I plan to flesh out shortly.

For case management we use a custom in-house developed Filemaker solution which manages the contact-side and the matter-side. We are able to do nearly 100% perfect conflict checking because of the way ANY contact in the database can be linked up to a client/matter. On the accounting side we do use an “off the shelf” product called Brief Accounting.

I have investigated other solutions and the ones that are out there don’t work for us, because of our size, but might work for a smaller firm with less than 10 attorneys (we have 19). The selection is limited. Frankly, we are planning a complete ground up refresh of our Filemaker solution and expect to have something in 2010 that might cost about $20-30K which would also incorporate document management. This is using local Filemaker developers.

LawStream – this has been around for a long time but there hasn’t been a client/server model which is why it would not work for us.

Hipersoft P.I. Powertool – this is a Filemaker solution.

We don’t have a true document management solution in place–yet–but we are taking baby steps in that direction. We rely heavily on our Fujitsu scanners combined with ScanTango. The ScanTango software allows you to create scanning workflows that help automate (or more accurately semi-automate) repetitive scanning tasks. Mindwrap, the company that makes ScanTango does make a full document management system called Optix. I haven’t fully investigated this as this is really a decision that needs to be made by our records dept.

I have been running a default setup of Apple’s Mac OS X Server as a mail and mailing list server since early March and it has been working well except for some non-critical glitches. The firm I support runs only Mac OS X Server on both Apple Xserve’s as well as on other non-server hardware (Mac Pros and minis).

I found that the Mailman system which is modified by Apple seemed to not be generating any log files. Upon closer inspection I found that the Mailman system was creating logs they were just not where Apple’s server OS was expecting them.

At this point in time I don’t know if this is due to a glitch during the original installation of if this is just the way Apple set it up. Since I have found a few other people with this or a very similar issue I suspect it’s a glitch in Apple’s set up.

I found that the Apple default configs are expecting the logs to be written to

/var/logs/mailman/

but the Mailman* system is configured to write them to

/var/mailman/logs/

I was concerned that a future update/upgrade from Apple might break the logging if I went and changed the Mailman config so instead I set up a symlink for /var/logs/mailman pointing to /var/mailman/logs and this seems to work both from the GUI or the CL. This almost seems like a typo on Apple’s part.

Just thought this might be useful to anyone supporting Apple servers.

* This is not the default Mailman location but Apple’s modified Mailman location

I am a sysadmin, aka “systems administrator”, which means that yes, I manage servers and networks, but I also manage circuit breakers, AC units, desktop and laptop computers, Blackberrys, iPhones, and the occasional audio cassette. I am a guru of technology (or so all the users I support hope I am).

The reality is that I become a generalist and even though I have a few things I am definitely an expert at, with most things I know “something” about them but not everything.

Occasionally, I find that it is simpler and quicker to do something myself rather than hire an expert (in this case an electrician) and because I am a generalist this is often what I do. For example the ancient air circulation fan that was in the telco closet of the firm I support simply died. Without this fan there is no true air circulation in the small closet that hosts the main PBX phone switch. I ordered an industrial blower instead of a fan simply because of the small space the fan has to fit. The blower moves a much larger volume of air per minute compared to a slightly larger fan.

So here’s what the sysadmin had to do to complete this Information Technology related project:

1. Research and purchase the replacement parts (purchasing dept.)
2. Cut a piece of wood to serve as a mount for the blower (facilities dept.)
3. Purchase the mounting hardware and electrical cord (facilities dept.)
4. Connect the AC cord to the blower unit safely and maintaining the ground (facilities dept.)
5. Mount the blower to the board and then attach everything to the wall (facilities dept.)
6. Plug in the blower unit to test (IT dept.)

My dad would be proud of the electrical wiring because it was done properly and I maintained the ground connection of the 3-pronged power cord. In fact all of the skills for this project I pretty much learned from my dad (my dad worked for United Air Lines (UAL) for some 36 years as a mechanic before retiring and before that served as an electrician in the US Army).

This is the telco closet with the blower installed near the ceiling in the center. The Tadiran phone switch is the big white thing near the bottom and the iBook serves as the hold music player.

This is a detailed view of the blower mounted on the board now mounted securely to the wall.

A man in a hot air balloon, realizing he was lost, reduced altitude and spotted a woman below.  He descended further and shouted to the lady “Excuse me, can you help me?  I promised a friend would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

The woman below replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon, hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground.  You’re between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.”

“You must be in IT,” said the balloonist.

“Actually I am,” replied the woman, “How did you know?”

“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you have told me is technically correct but I’ve no idea what to make of your information and the fact is I’m still lost.  Frankly, you’ve not been much help at all.  If anything, you’ve delayed my trip.”

The woman below responded, “You must be in Management.”

“I am,” replied the balloonist, “but how did you know?”

“Well,” said the woman, “you don’t know where you are or where you’re going.  You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air.  You made a promise, which you’ve no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems.  The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my f***ing  fault.”

- Anon (another internet joke with no identifiable source)

Back in late November I tried to get iCal Server running on some older hardware and this is what happened…

I ran iCal Server + iCal in a test environment on a older Xserve–Dual G4 1GHz 2GB RAM Mac OS X Server 10.5.5–in this test environment with only a couple of test users and I noticed a significant increase in CPU activity due to iCal but it seemed that it wasn’t something the server couldn’t handle. A month later when I rolled out the service to 60+ users the server was brought to its knees. It ramped up to 100% CPU usage as more users logged in and by about 11AM that business day it ceased to be functional. Anyone trying to connect timed out before they received updates.

I have not been able to track down any specifics as far as something I can “fix” to prevent this problem as my iCal Server install is Apple default and other than running the CPU load at 100% there was not a single error reported/logged. I’m going to use brute force to work around the issue but I would like to find a better approach.

I am going to try to roll out this service again but hosted on a brand new Xserve 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 16GB RAM (I’m lucky in that I work for a bunch of lawyers).

Now two months later I think I have finally got it working…

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