I am coming up on 6 months of being a “full time” Mac user. By “full time” I mean that a Mac is my primary computer during the work day and I use it around 80% of the time outside of work hours. (On a quick aside, I am working on a Windows 7 laptop now and I am becoming extremely fond of Microsoft’s newest offering.)

One of the things I like about OS X is the astounding number of quality applications that perform one task but perform that task in an sleek, easy to configure and easy to learn way. Some of my favorites are MailPlane, Things and 1Password. In my line of work 1Password had become indespensible.

For those of you not familiar with the app, 1Password manages all of your passwords and sensitive data for your online accounts, can keep track of all of your software serial numbers and lets you store  post-it style secure notes.  The interface is very slick and the data is kept in a virtual vault that you open  with a master password.  Once you have unlocked your vault, all of your usernames and passwords are automatically filled when you go to web pages that require login.  Because username and password fields are auto-filled you can generate very long and complex passwords for your online accounts that you never have to remember.  For example, I use a randomly generated, 16-character password for my Facebook account that consists of numbers, letters (upper and lower-case) and special characters yet I have no idea what it is.  A password of that strength and complexity is going to be next to impossible to crack.  There are only two downsides to the application — the fact that it is Mac ONLY and that comes with a $39.95 price tag. For a mixed OS user like me the Mac-only compatibility is a frustrating issue (but I’m happy to pay for a good product).

Over the past few months, buzz has been growing around a new password management application call LastPass so I thought I would check it out.  The things that drew me to LastPass initially were the multiple-OS support and compatibility with Chrome, Firefox, Safari as well as Internet Explorer.  The next attention getter was that it was completely free.  I spent a little over an hour yesterday setting up and reading all of the details about LastPass and I think 1Password is going to have to take a graceful bow and exit stage right.  This is why…

LastPass is free.  LastPass does everything 1Password does.  LastPass can be intergrated with every major browser.  LastPass works on Windows, OS X and Linux. Your passwords are stored on their servers and locally in an encrypted “vault” and only your master password can be used to open the vault.  Even if someone somehow stole your vault files from LastPass.com’s servers or took your laptop your data would be safe.  Lastpass.com cannot read your vault file stored on their server. I repeat, Lastpass.com cannot read the passwords or usernames in your vault file.  As more and more of our data is stored at 3rd party locations it is vital that the our personal privacy is respected and that even if their servers were breached our data would remain safe.

The average person selects passwords that are easy for them to remember and therefore are generally too short, easy to guess and insecure.  By using an application like LastPass (or even 1Password if you prefer) you can increase your online security and privacy by an exponential amount.  You just have to remember one password, it’s easy to install, it syncs across computers and all major browsers.  What else could you want?  Just do download it and start using it.  You won’t regret it.

The default nature of Citrix XenServer is a little on the “WTF were they thinking” side sometimes.  A good example is setting up notifications for your pool of servers.  By default you get the following screen when setting up e-mail notifications:

This is great if your e-mail server allows relaying (if it does, you are crazy) or if you want to go edit configuration files on your mail server to allow relaying from certain hosts.  If you have a well configured mail server like the one at my organization, SMTP Authentication is enabled for all e-mails accounts that need to send through the server.  You can get XenServer to use SMTP auth as well, you just have to add a few lines to a configuration file to each server in the pool.  If you have a lot of servers, you WILL want to script this.

XenServer (we are talking Citrix here btw, not opensource Xen) uses sSMTP to send mail.  There are two extremely basic configuration files in /etc/ssmtp — only one of which you need to deal with.  With your favorite text editor, open /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf from the command line on your server and add or modify the following lines:

authUser=<receiving e-mail address>
authPass=<password for e-mail>
mailhub=<your mail server>

If your mail server supports it, you can also add these two options:

authMethod=cram-md5
useSTARTTLS=YES

That’s it! Save the file and copy it to all servers in the pool.  Pool notifications will now be sent using SMTP authentication to whatever server you specify.  Maybe Citrix will get their head out of their asses on this one eventually but until then…

Well, I moved the site over to new servers last night. That’s normally not too exciting but seeing that it’s running on top of all the insanely powerful hardware used in my big project, it is.

By running my site on this setup:

• I am protected from ANY hardware failure with seamless and automatic fail over to the backup hardware
• all my files are mirrored to fail over storage AND backed up to a 3rd location. If one fails the 2nd takes over instantly
• all network routes have 2 or more paths (as many as 8 in some parts of the setup)
• all storage is served by a crazy fast, completely private back-end network.
• all links are 1Gbps or FASTER

What I’m trying to say is, outside of a direct meteorite strike on the physical rack this setup is in, this site or any others on the system should NEVER be down.  My boss even moved one of his personal sites to the system because of it’s robustness.

The biggest advantage for “normal” people is that you can have all of the benefits of an infrastructure that would costs many tens of thousands of dollars for around $0.82 per day.  If you run a business or any website that needs to be up 100% of the time and have the peace of mind that all of your data is 3x redundant as well as ready for instant, seamless fail-over, this type of hosting is for you.  Honestly, if you are running any business that doesn’t require the resources of a dedicated server it would be stupid not to move over to a system like this.  The benefit to cost ratio is just unreal.  All of that plus the fact that the network storage back-end makes your sites load WAY faster than straight disk-based hosting accounts, you just can’t beat it.

If you want to check it out, click the little link on the right side that says “Redundant Hosting Has Arrived”.

Sure this is shameless self promotion but the product is solid and I wouldn’t tell you to get an account unless I believed in it 100%.  My job literally depends on it!

I’m wrapping up a BIG, fully redundant VPS hosting project I was hired to setup at my new job. Once the product launches I’m going to write a few pieces on what I’ve learned over the past 6 months. I’ll still be employed by the same company but put on new projects that will also be of interest!

Topics will include system redundancy, storage redundancy, SAN options, Xen, reviews of various software products including XenServer 5.5 and other Citrix Products, NexentaStor, virtualization in general and my thoughts on the future of “Cloud Computing”.

It should be fun, I have tons of stuff waiting to flow from my fingers. I hope you find them interesting and informative!!

I’ve been using Google Voice for a while now.  I’ve tried to make it my hub of calling by following some advice on a website I frequent called Lifehacker.com.  The particular article can be found here: Transition to Google Voice I’ve enjoyed it immensely but that isn’t what this article is about.  It’s about never having to pay for cell phone minutes again.  If you have a cell provider that allows to you have a “circle” or choose particlur numbers you call call unlimited anytime, this will work for you.  Some of you might have just put two and two together if you are familiar with Google Voice but here’s how it works:

1. Get  a Google Voice account.  Currently Google voice is in private beta but you can score invtes by searching Google but I might have a few to share if you contact me on my Contact Page
2. Set up to Google Voice account and add your cell phone as at least one of your routing telephone numbers.
3. Set your Google Voice number as one of your “friends, “circle” or whatever your provider calls it.
4. Call your Google Voice number from your cell phone and initiate you call to over 400,000,000 people for free forever.

The best thing about this is there is really nothing cell providers can do about it.  They don’t know the number you are calling is a Google Voice number, it’s a unique phone number you created.  You can call the entire US, Canada and if I recall Mexico and some other foreign countries with Google Voice.

Enjoy the free minutes!