I also work for an SMB (Small to Medium Business) focused VAR in the UK. Selling product is not where the money is - it is a means to an end. Make sure you have the right procedures in the business from the word go - investigate things like using MOM (Microsoft Operations Manager) to look after all the servers that you're made responsible for. Get a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system in place that'll seamlessly integrate both technical & sales requirements of customers.
Above all, get in early on quantifying the benefits of working with you. Track customer productivity/revenue before and after they get involved with your business - it'll make a world of difference when you try and approach the next customer.
Finally - best of luck! It is a tough old world out there and if you can't differentiate yourself from the squillions of other IT shops that exist then you're in the wrong game...
This is never likely to happen beyond one sensational marketing ploy. Users play because they want to escape. Not everybody wants to escape to the same place - otherwise we're just in Real Life(tm) Mk II!
I work at an HP reseller in the UK, and you can buy *any* HP ProLiant without any OS at all. Virtually all HP servers are certified to run Redhat, except, frustratingly, the low-end SATA ones (SCSI versions of the same model are fine).
On a seperate rant, the ML110s really are nothing more than a glorified PC. My personal favourite is the ML350, which had hot-plug HDD, hot-plug redundant PSU, redundant fan, dual processor, all good!
For £1,399 you can get an ML350 G4, Xeon 3GHz, 2 x HP 72GB HDD, 1GB PC3200 Advanced DDR, HP redundant PSU & redundant fan. Bargain! And it'll run Redhat!
My thoughts are that the contents of this bill will have the under the carpet intention of screwing up Google's business model. Google is moving closer and closer to a web portal that makes its money providing everything you need with targeted advertising based on those needs.
How would a privacy bill that restricts the kind of information companies are allowed to hold on their customers unless absolute explicit permission is granted?
It might only be slightly more "for our benefit" then current laws, but it might not need tto be much to cause serious problems for Google.
It's going to be a hell of a thing. It won't go perfect. It just won't. And like I said, I'd rather apologize for having an imperfect worldwide launch and not having enough units, than saying, "Yeah we got it right for this set of customers."
Personally, I'd rather be one of the customers that gets it right rather then one of the ones that doesn't...!
Why would you want a cluster? For high availability. Why do you want a server with multiple redundant parts? For resiliency.
If you have an application that requires ULTIMATE uptime, then you need a geographically remote cluster (Cluster spread over two sites with a redundant leased line link to provide the heartbeat). No matter how many redundant parts in a server, if it gets nuked (read power failure, flood, or other, not ACTUALLY nuked) then that application is down.
Active-active clusters are not really ideal, while load-balancing is a nice idea in this instance it means that when half of it fails then the application suffers severe performance issues. Active-active also creates data issues, as you've got two servers writing to their own local storage that also requires real-time replication between sites. Veritas Storage Foundation is about the most cost-effective option here, you don't even need 2003 Server Enterprise.
If you want a nice simple active-passive cluster and its on the same locale, fine, use a SAN. If they are geographically remote, then they will need real-time replication and as one is passive then you can use HP Storage Mirror or similar. HP are the only vendor in fact that do a nice packaged cluster solution with a SAN included all under one part code. FYI.
Having said that, if you're buying a decent server, then you are an absolutle idiot to not put RAID into it. After that, it only costs another £300 or so to add a redundant hot-plug PSU & fan. Plus p'raps a bit for an extra CPU. After that, the only component that will cause a total outage is the mainboard failing - and the only real way to get around that is to... uh... add another mainboard! Well... guess that's another server then...!
It is actually a really good thing(TM), there's some scary statistics out there regarding the effectiveness of tapes as backup - 46% of restores are just never going to get your business up and running - on-line DRS is 100% safe.
Only uploads incremental changes, so you can backup a whole load of data on-going after you've done your original storage dump. Normally you have an on-site server to locally host the files for quick recovery - you only need to courier those disks when the whole place burns down/floods/gets stolen/hacked by aliens.
Microsoft is definitely thinking about bundling AV software with Windows now... In the UK they have started to offer Computer Associates AV software as a bundle with OEM for System Integrators.
Apparently though, in Israel (WTF?) it is proving harder to get Win XP OEM withOUT McAfee bundled then it is WITH...
Imagine a world where every copy of Windows comes with AV - like bundling antidote and poison into the same pill! Perhaps Symantec purchasing Veritas is giving them more branches to follow then just the security arena that M$ is moving into...
Well, better as in their memory controller is on-die and is running at a MUCH lower latency. Better as in easily upgradeable should you wish to change to DDR2 or something else? Not going to happen.
The AMD approach has many benefits though, particularly in a multi-processor system where each CPU has its own dedicated memory bus as opposed to the shared Xeon approach.
I picked up a Mobile Athlon XP (unlocked) 1600+ last week here in the UK. Its now running happily at 2.3GHz, equivalent of a Athlon 3400+, and the best bit?
Only £28+vat (about 50$ total)!
Now that is some cheap processing power... definitely recommend anybody on a budget to pick up one of these babies...
Can't believe still coming back to this, but as I have said, in the market you are talking about, ie a datacentre, focus = storage, then yes, RAID 10 all the way!
But in SMB, price most certainly is a factor, and there are plenty of other things that money can be spent other than mirroring the entire array. And thats the area I was referring too, my apologies if that hasn't been made clear.
Sure, RAID 10 is even more reliable than RAID 5, but at some point budget comes into play and when you've got other points of failure such as CPU, PSU, memory or fans. I've got to be honest, I've seen a lot more RAID 5 installations then RAID 10. Your experience might be different. But its definitely horses for courses - different situations call for different RAID setups.
Raid 0 = striped disks for improved performance. No redundancy. In fact, increasing your chances of losing data because if one goes down, no chance of data recovery. (total storage = total of disks)
Raid 1 = Mirrored disks, writing same data to all disks so if one fails you simply replace it and no loss of data. (Total storage = 1/2 of disks)
Raid 5 = Redundant striped disks. One of the disks is used to store a XOR bit, so that basically any one of the disks can go down and once it is replaced the RAID system will rebuild the data on to that disk. (Total storage = total storage of (all disks minus one))
In RAID 1 and RAID 5, which is used in business servers, you really need hotswappable drives so any drives going kaka will not impact the server in any way, just replace the hard drive under warranty without even rebooting the server and the RAID system will rebuild the drive.
RAID 5 is most effective in a business situation, offering a good compromise of speed, capacity and redundancy.
This article completely misses the real point. Computer Graphics are made to be more lifelike by two things. ANIMATION and GRAPHICS. And in order to look good, or creep you out less, the animation is far more important.
If a character with pretty bad graphics moves perfectly with great animation (whether it be exaggerated cartoon style or realistic) then it'll look good, because it has "life and soul".
If a character looks amazing, but moves like a wooden puppet, one limb at a time, then there's your "creepy" look. It just doesn't wash, the audience is lost, no involvement, wow that looks quite pretty but lets move on.
Problem is that the more complex a character, ie the better it looks (assumption complex=better not necessarily true), the harder it is to animate properly. For Aki they had something like 20 animators devoted to just her hair she was that complicated.
Why do you think everybody in the film was basically bald?;o)
Slashdot Mirror
Above all, get in early on quantifying the benefits of working with you. Track customer productivity/revenue before and after they get involved with your business - it'll make a world of difference when you try and approach the next customer.
Finally - best of luck! It is a tough old world out there and if you can't differentiate yourself from the squillions of other IT shops that exist then you're in the wrong game...
R
This is never likely to happen beyond one sensational marketing ploy. Users play because they want to escape. Not everybody wants to escape to the same place - otherwise we're just in Real Life(tm) Mk II!
On a seperate rant, the ML110s really are nothing more than a glorified PC. My personal favourite is the ML350, which had hot-plug HDD, hot-plug redundant PSU, redundant fan, dual processor, all good! For £1,399 you can get an ML350 G4, Xeon 3GHz, 2 x HP 72GB HDD, 1GB PC3200 Advanced DDR, HP redundant PSU & redundant fan. Bargain! And it'll run Redhat!
How would a privacy bill that restricts the kind of information companies are allowed to hold on their customers unless absolute explicit permission is granted?
It might only be slightly more "for our benefit" then current laws, but it might not need tto be much to cause serious problems for Google.
Personally, I'd rather be one of the customers that gets it right rather then one of the ones that doesn't...!
If you have an application that requires ULTIMATE uptime, then you need a geographically remote cluster (Cluster spread over two sites with a redundant leased line link to provide the heartbeat). No matter how many redundant parts in a server, if it gets nuked (read power failure, flood, or other, not ACTUALLY nuked) then that application is down.
Active-active clusters are not really ideal, while load-balancing is a nice idea in this instance it means that when half of it fails then the application suffers severe performance issues. Active-active also creates data issues, as you've got two servers writing to their own local storage that also requires real-time replication between sites. Veritas Storage Foundation is about the most cost-effective option here, you don't even need 2003 Server Enterprise.
If you want a nice simple active-passive cluster and its on the same locale, fine, use a SAN. If they are geographically remote, then they will need real-time replication and as one is passive then you can use HP Storage Mirror or similar. HP are the only vendor in fact that do a nice packaged cluster solution with a SAN included all under one part code. FYI.
Having said that, if you're buying a decent server, then you are an absolutle idiot to not put RAID into it. After that, it only costs another £300 or so to add a redundant hot-plug PSU & fan. Plus p'raps a bit for an extra CPU. After that, the only component that will cause a total outage is the mainboard failing - and the only real way to get around that is to... uh... add another mainboard! Well... guess that's another server then...!
It is actually a really good thing(TM), there's some scary statistics out there regarding the effectiveness of tapes as backup - 46% of restores are just never going to get your business up and running - on-line DRS is 100% safe.
Only uploads incremental changes, so you can backup a whole load of data on-going after you've done your original storage dump. Normally you have an on-site server to locally host the files for quick recovery - you only need to courier those disks when the whole place burns down/floods/gets stolen/hacked by aliens.
But yeah, it is hideously expensive...
Apparently though, in Israel (WTF?) it is proving harder to get Win XP OEM withOUT McAfee bundled then it is WITH...
Imagine a world where every copy of Windows comes with AV - like bundling antidote and poison into the same pill! Perhaps Symantec purchasing Veritas is giving them more branches to follow then just the security arena that M$ is moving into...
The AMD approach has many benefits though, particularly in a multi-processor system where each CPU has its own dedicated memory bus as opposed to the shared Xeon approach.
I picked up a Mobile Athlon XP (unlocked) 1600+ last week here in the UK. Its now running happily at 2.3GHz, equivalent of a Athlon 3400+, and the best bit? Only £28+vat (about 50$ total)! Now that is some cheap processing power... definitely recommend anybody on a budget to pick up one of these babies...
Can't believe still coming back to this, but as I have said, in the market you are talking about, ie a datacentre, focus = storage, then yes, RAID 10 all the way! But in SMB, price most certainly is a factor, and there are plenty of other things that money can be spent other than mirroring the entire array. And thats the area I was referring too, my apologies if that hasn't been made clear.
Sure, RAID 10 is even more reliable than RAID 5, but at some point budget comes into play and when you've got other points of failure such as CPU, PSU, memory or fans. I've got to be honest, I've seen a lot more RAID 5 installations then RAID 10. Your experience might be different. But its definitely horses for courses - different situations call for different RAID setups.
Raid 0 = striped disks for improved performance. No redundancy. In fact, increasing your chances of losing data because if one goes down, no chance of data recovery. (total storage = total of disks)
Raid 1 = Mirrored disks, writing same data to all disks so if one fails you simply replace it and no loss of data. (Total storage = 1/2 of disks)
Raid 5 = Redundant striped disks. One of the disks is used to store a XOR bit, so that basically any one of the disks can go down and once it is replaced the RAID system will rebuild the data on to that disk. (Total storage = total storage of (all disks minus one))
In RAID 1 and RAID 5, which is used in business servers, you really need hotswappable drives so any drives going kaka will not impact the server in any way, just replace the hard drive under warranty without even rebooting the server and the RAID system will rebuild the drive.
RAID 5 is most effective in a business situation, offering a good compromise of speed, capacity and redundancy.
This article completely misses the real point. Computer Graphics are made to be more lifelike by two things. ANIMATION and GRAPHICS. And in order to look good, or creep you out less, the animation is far more important.
;o)
If a character with pretty bad graphics moves perfectly with great animation (whether it be exaggerated cartoon style or realistic) then it'll look good, because it has "life and soul".
If a character looks amazing, but moves like a wooden puppet, one limb at a time, then there's your "creepy" look. It just doesn't wash, the audience is lost, no involvement, wow that looks quite pretty but lets move on.
Problem is that the more complex a character, ie the better it looks (assumption complex=better not necessarily true), the harder it is to animate properly. For Aki they had something like 20 animators devoted to just her hair she was that complicated.
Why do you think everybody in the film was basically bald?