I have been really busy and not posting much, but I have my home lab pretty much built out and have a bunch of new projects in the hopper, more on that in future posts.  If you have FIOS like I do you probably have a Actiontec router provided by Verizon.  When building out my home lab I wanted to use my Actiontec router as my DNS server, for obvious reasons, the web interface became frustrating pretty quickly.  So many clicks and the ability to only enter a single host registration at a time:

The ability to edit DNS from telnet is actually really nice on the Action tech router.  Commands are petty simple.

1) Enable Telnet on the router (Advanced –> Local Administration)

2) Once telnet is enabled, you can now telnet to your router using the same credentials used with the web interface.

3) After the telnet session is established there are basically three commands you need to be familiar with:

• dns_get:  lists all DNS server entries
• dns_set:  adds a DNS entry
• dns_del:  deletes a dns entry

The syntax is pretty simple:

• dns_get:  used by itself to list all DNS entries
• dns_set: dns_set ID HOSTNAME IP_ADDRESS (e.g. – dns_set 1 host1 192.168.1.100)
• dns_del:  dns_del ID (e.g. – dns_del 1)

This method of adding and removing DNS entries from the Actiontec router is significantly faster than using the web interface.

I use a Google Doc spreadsheet to track my IPs and build the command to add and remove DNS entries.  I have shared my template here:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Alfr2Qqx-moWdE43YTFZLVRtRWM1X3VsdXY2UmFBVUE

I have tested a ton of tabbed remote connection tools.

RDTabs (http://www.avianwaves.com/tech/tools/rdtabs/):  Like it for pure RDP, no SSH, http, etc…

Terminals (http://terminals.codeplex.com/):  Slow and a little buggy IMO

Remote Desktop Manager (http://devolutions.net/):  Over built app, not portable, etc…

I am now using mRemoteNG (http://www.mremoteng.org/):  Love it!

This fits all my needs.  Supports all the protocols that I require, no install portable version available which is perfect for me.  I have the portable version in my dropbox (http://www.dropbox.com/) folder so I can launch on any machine and have all my connections readily available.  I can add connections anywhere and they sync’d via  dropbox.  The perfect solution for me.  The app is light weight and fast, give it a try.

So this may seem like a strange post, as most people will think that I am going to be talking about a an IDE application, a RAD tool, a CRM application or some sort of text-to-speech processor, regardless of what you are expecting I can almost guarantee you will be expecting something a little more sexy than what you are about to see (especially if you are not a parent).

I think this app is so useful I am not only posting to my appoftheday.org blog but also to my gotitsolutions.org blog because it is that good.

Let me provide some background.  I have two wonderful little girls, a 5 year old and a 6 month old, for anyone with children we all we have retooled the human machined (ourselves) to have a CPU that is focused on work and coprocessor that deals with our children while we try to focus (we can flip this paradigm as well).  I have to say my time slicing skills are second to none, you learn how to work in 2 min slices while breaking away for 30 seconds to lend some CPU cycles to an often overheating parental coprocessor.  I often read emails back later that had the same thought double typed, missing words, etc… this is because I am processing too much information, my mental programming is way off.  I have this huge array of things I need to do, things I am doing, things I am being told to do, things my kids want to do, yadda, yadda, yadda…. Let’s just say that the that I often suffer pointer corruption which leads to memory leaks, corruption and eventually a segmentation fault (in non techie lingo this is know as a freak out, but this is a technical blog hence the techie speak).

So to the point of the post.  There is this brilliant lady named Julie Aigner-Clark the founder of The Baby Einstein Company, absolute best videos for kids under the age of one to help cool down the coprocessor (why didn’t I start filming shiny lights and hand puppets 10 years ago).  My 5 year old will even watch the videos.  There is this great website site called YouTube where you can find Baby Einstein videos as well as other great videos like Oswald, WordGirl, Hannah Montana and The Pink Panther (a few of my older daughters favorites) So you are probably asking what relevance does this have.  I will explain, be patient, I know how difficult this probably is because you 6 month old wants to eat and your 5 year old wants you to “Play Barbies” with her.

I am in my office trying to work and my daughter comes in, she wants me to stop what I am doing to play with her, I attempt to stall and concentrate at the same time (very difficult).  I eventually sit her on my lap (applies to 6 month old and 5 year old) and open YouTube in my browser and start playing our favorite Baby Einstein or WordGirl video.  Good so far.  I pop out the video window from youtube.com and resize my excel sheet and attempt to work, here is a screen shot of what I am left with:

So on the left my daughter(s) can sit on my lap and watch the vide while I work on the spreadsheet on the right.  Now here is the issue, I only have 3/4 of the screen which can be a little annoying, if I need to use another app it can be a big issue.  So what is the effect of me switching windows:

Oh no, the video moved to the background, scramble to resize the browser window to avoid a complete meltdown.  Reflexes are not that good so I rarely accomplish the goal.

Now for the introduction of a must have application that dramatically improves productivity, focus and sanity.  The app is called DeskPins and simply it allows you to pin any window to the foreground so lets look at a couple of examples of how I use this.

I follow the same process as before with finding a video on YouTube, popping out the video windows but now I pin the video window to the foreground.

Now I can maximize my spreadsheet (far better) and without the video moving to the background, I can move the video window around as needed.  I can open FireFox and not worry about losing the video to the background.

The app works on 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows (I am running on 32 bit XP, 32 bit Win 7 and 64 bit Win 7) and has become an invaluable tool for me.  Hopefully this post helps with some use case examples and helps other parents occupy their children in times of need.  Enjoy!

• Unified management platform for CLARiiON, Celerra and RecoverPoint
  • Unified look and feel across all aforementioned products
  • Support for all CLARiiON >= FLARE 19
• Release data Q3 2010
• Only functions at the presentation layer
  • Will not impact the CLI so scripts will not be impacted by Unisphere
• Views
  • Dashboard
    • Unified alerting sorted by severity
    • System list in the top toll bar provides the ability to drill down from the domain level to the physical system to view details
  • System View
    • Graphical hardware depiction (finally)
  • Summary Views
    • Storage
      • Bye bye CAP reports!!!!!  (thank you)
    • Replication
  • Note:  View Blocks are widgets that are placed on the screen somewhere that Aggregate data graphically displaying utilization, capacity, etc…
    • Ability to customize views, these views are tied to the client not the user so they will stay on the client not move with the user
• Right-click provides context menu similar to what is currently available in Navisphere
• Array data is cached locally on Unisphere client
  • This will hopefully help out performance
  • Data collection from array is time stamped so you can ensure you are working with the correct data set
  • A refresh (manual) needs to be performed to query the array and refresh the Unisphere cache
  • Once the data is cached it can be manipulated
• Context sensitive help and actions
• Replication Manager (RM) and USM (Unisphere Service Manager) integration (via link and launch)
  • If apps not installed it launches PowerLink and grabs RM or USM
  • Performs the install
  • Launches the app
• USM replaces NST and unifies the ability to perform service tasks on CLARiiON or Celerra
  • USM adds the ability to track FCOs, Support Advisories, etc… via RSS feeds
  • Also provides the ability to launch to the proper location to research things (e.g. – EMC Support Forums), USM remains as the presentation layer, no need to jump around between apps.
  • Service requests can be created directly from USM

Interoperability Matrix

• Navisphere Off-Array being replace by Unisphere client and server
  • Support for Navi Analyzer off-array
• Navisphere manager license supports Unisphere, no need for an upgrade

Overall the app looks really nice considering most of us are used to using a fractured set of tools between CX, NS and RP.  Will be interested in seeing how Unisphere helps us map the use of the array.  It appears to still be a JAVA based application so the jury is out on performance until I see it.

Audience questions:

• Can you get to engineering mode from Unisphere
  • Unanswered.  Translation: Assume access to engineering mode on the CX will still require us to log into Navisphere.
• Support for Centera on the roadmap
  • Answered, Yes.  No timeframe given.
• What is the user experience like on a very large CLARiiON that is busy
  • Answer, it depends.  Translation:  It will likely still be slow.

Anyone interested in technology entrepreneurship needs to watch this video.  As technologist we tend to get wrapped up in the product and how it needs to be the best, needs to be fully baked before it can be sold, etc…  This video will be very enlightening.