Glo Networks Technical Blog (Glo Blog)

It seems Apple took the first day of September as an opportunity to make several announcements regarding their new products. Although these aren’t business related as such, here at Glo Networks  we feel it’s our nerdy duty to pass on some of the info!

Apple TV is a new media streaming device which will connect to your TV via HDMI. This device looks set to allow streaming of your iTunes libary, as well as offering HD movie rentals (streaming from Apple) and providing Youtube and Flickr access, all direct to your TV. The device has price tag in the UK of £99.

Also announced were a slew of new iPods. This includes the new Shuffle, a new Nano and a new Touch. All 3 are similar to their predecessors but of course all have improvements.  The Shuffle looks smaller but apparently has bigger buttons and a voiceover feature to help you navigate without a screen, the Nano now has a 1.54” MultiTouch screen and is both smaller and lighter, and the Touch is now ridiculously thin, sports a new Retina display (four times the resolution of previous models) and allows HD video recording (720p!) with the new camera.

iTunes is also getting a update, with the new version being iTunes 10. The biggest new feature is the integration of a social networking element,  which Apple is calling Ping. Think of the social networking capabilities of Spotify, but  this appears not to rely on existing social networks (Facebook etc.).

Apple have been busy indeed and their new products look likely to continue being  some of the most popular of the continuing digital media revolution. For more information on the latest news from Apple see: http://www.apple.com/uk/hotnews/

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Posted by James in Cool Stuff, General | No Comments »

Exchange 2010 has been available for a while now, here at Glo Networks we’ve been using it since the beta testing stage and we’ve found many of the new features to be great, both for administrators and users.

Now SP1 for Exchange 2010 is released today, and not only does it include all the roll-up updates and bug fixes released so far but it also includes some handy new features. Several of the features are to make administrating the Exchange server more efficient (some new features in the Management GUI) but there are a few that users will enjoy.

One big benefit of the SP is it includes the ability for user to share their calendars, from OWA (which has been improved again and looks very nice!), via HTML or iCal. This means when someone asks you when you’re free for a meeting you could simply send them a link to your calendar for them to compare with theirs. Just imagine: no more ‘I can do Friday’ ‘Well I can’t make Friday but how about Monday..’ type conversations!

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Posted by James in Applications, Servers | No Comments »

We’ve been telling our customers that they really can live without printers. Though of course they still disagree, looks like their typical -

http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2010/08/23/uk-office-workers-addicted-paper

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Posted by Chris in General | No Comments »

Recently one of our customers has been playing with Hyper V, creating virtual machines for testing purposes. We have advised them in this and have guided them through using Hyper V, and it’s features and functions. One of the questions asked by the customer was about snapshots. ‘Why not use them for backups?’ they asked.

For anyone using Hyper V, Snapshots can be a very handy tool. Allowing the swift roll back of a VM to a previous state, they were intended to be used mainly for development and testing environments. They do have their uses for production environments too however, for example; if you wished to perform a potentially risky update on software installed on a virtual machine a quick snapshot before would allow you to do so safe in the knowledge you can revert to before the update simply by loading the snapshot.

One thing that snapshots should not be used for is a substitute for backups. Although they may on the surface seem ideal for this purpose there are a few reasons this is not recommended.

• They do not provide protection against problems that may occur on the host server (the one running Hyper-V), such as a hardware problems on the physical computer or a software-related issues in the operating system.
• Programs running in the virtual machine will not be aware of the snapshot and when rolling back they will not be able to adjust correctly. For example a Exchange server on a VM which has reverted to a snapshot would expect to have connections to the same clients as it did when the snapshot was created.
• The snapshot files (.avhd) will not work, or at least not you will easily be able to revert to them, once they have been moved from their original location. This means that copying them away from the host machine (as you may if you were planning to use them as a backup) will essentially make them useless.

Please note: Our method of backing up HyperV VM’s involves the use of volume shadow copy snapshots. These are not the same as HyperV snapshots! For more info please see the following:

Hyper-v Backups on the Glo Networks Technical Blog

Hyper-V Snapshots & VSS Snapshots: the differences on the Backup Assist Blog

Hyper V Snapshots FAQ on the Technet site

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Posted by James in Applications, Servers | 1 Comment »

Take a look at a Macbook Pro, specifically the USB ports. Spot any differences? Anything to suggest one may be hiding a secret? No? Well although the USB ports on the Macbook Pro look identical it seems Apple has a little surprise attached to the rear port (closest to the screen).

The rear USB port actually connects to a hidden (internal) USB Hub, which is also shared by the keyboard, Bluetooth, track pad, iSight camera and the infra-red receiver. While it is still a functional USB port for the most part, certain devices can have problems, caused by the USB hub.

Our attention was brought to this issue when we tried to use a USB hub on one of our own in the rear port. It seemed to be working as expected at first, however we were confused to find that when we attempted to use a USB headset in the external hub we found Skype calls would have quality issues. We also noticed a form of lag when using a mouse in the hub.

We found that a simple swap of the USB hub from the rear to the front USB port on the Macbook cleared all the issues! A little investigating  and we uncovered the Macbook Pro’s secret hub. This explained the problems we’d experienced, considering having a USB hub plugged into a USB hub has never been a recommended setup!

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Posted by James in Desktops and Laptops, Laptop Hardware | 1 Comment »