Jonathan Malek

Autonomy IDOL with a bunch of fetches (especially the file system fetch/connector with a pair of security services each) can amount to a painful deployment when it comes to configuring the Windows Services.

When everything is installed, you can turn to sc.exe (part of the OS in Windows Server 2003, used to be in the Resource Kit) to help automate the credentials change:

sc.exe config "Service Name" obj= "DOMAINUser" password= "password"

Note that the space after the equals is important.  You can also set the startup type with:

sc.exe config "Service Name" start= auto

A bunch of these in a script can help immensely with deployments.  Run sc.exe by itself on the command-line to see a number of other powerful options (including controlling remote services).

I still get a lot of feedback about the Mozy vs. Carbonite posts. I thought I would write up a quick review of how I backup the data that my household produces. Basically, I break down my data into 3 groups:

Must have it no matter what
Must have it even if the house burns down
If the house burns down, I’ve got bigger issues

These are “rings” of data–and yes, that means some data (level 1 data) gets backed up 3 different ways. For the first set of data, I use Mozy (free for 2G or less). I have just under 2G of this kind of data–the absolutely-must-have-no-matter-what-happens type of data. I’ve considered burning some of this data to a DVD and putting it in a safe deposit box at my bank, but I’d probably forget it was there. Mozy encrypts it, stores it in the cloud and does a great job of being fire-and-forget. You literally turn it on, then forget its there. And recovery is great–I’ve had to recover twice now, and while it is a bit slow (at least for large recovery sets, since I lost my entire drive), it works like a champ. For the second set, I use FolderShare (free). While not strictly a backup (the data is just replicated to every machine that I install FolderShare on–that includes deletes, and those happen immediately!), this meets the requirement of being safe even if the house burns down (I’ve got machines in other locations). I put everything in FolderShare, and promptly forget that it’s doing its job. For the final set–that’s everything else–I use a 2TB RAID-5 NAS at our house. With a gigabit network throughout the house, a full backup on weekends takes less than 4 hours. For the backup software, I use the indispensable SyncBackSE. I bought a license several years ago (I think it was $25 at the time–it’s not much more now), and their licensing allows you to use it on 5 computers. I have my eye on Windows Home Server, but I think I’ll wait until the fracas settles. My wife would kill me if I lost her photos. Kill me dead. How safe is your data?

I bought my first Mac laptop the moment they started showing up with Intel chips.  I bought it for my wife, considering all the photo/movie work she does. Within a week, she was positive: she hated it. Nothing worked the way she expected, and while I oohed and aahed over it (wow, look–I can do everything from the command-line again!), she found it unusable. It quickly made its way to wherever MacBooks go when Windows users find they can’t use them.

Fast-forward to the end of this year, I’m in the market for a new laptop. My intention was to replace my Dell M90, a beast of a laptop that I use as a desktop replacement on the road. While at home, it sits on a shelf grinding away, hosting a couple of VM’s that I work on from my desktop, using RDP (with 5120 pixels of screen real-estate across my desk, staring at a laptop screen is criminal). I had high expectations for that machine, and was sorely disappointed at both the performance and the fact that Dell’s name was on this: I don’t know when Dell’s laptop quality dropped, but that’s the last Dell I buy for performance reasons.

Having seen Scott’s post about switching to a Mac (and the ad, and the PC World article), I thought I might try the Mac again–this time for myself. I’m comfortable with the OS (I wouldn’t consider myself an expert user though), it’s really the hardware I was after, and intrigued about the possibilities I might find on the other side of the silly 3G limit in Vista/x86 (I don’t pretend to fully understand why: Jeff Atwood has a good description here). So, with a 2.6GHz 4Gb MacBook Pro in hand (with the 7200 RPM drive), I started exploring.

For this laptop to work for me–to be worth the pain of dealing with something that I haven’t yet mastered–I had several objectives:

1. The laptop should support my job: .NET development
2. I should be able to use the MS Office tools I use on a regular basis: Outlook 2007, OneNote 2007, Groove, Visio, PowerPoint
3. I should be able to remote desktop into Window servers
4. I should be able to remote desktop into the laptop while not travelling, so I can work comfortably from my desktop.
5. I should be able to back up easily using my three rings of defense:
   1. Mozy for critical data (accounting data, personal documents, etc)
   2. FolderShare for (a) + high importance data (photos, etc)
   3. A 2TB RAID-5 NAS for (a) + (b) + everything else
6. I should be able to use a host of applications that I use on a daily basis: KeePass, QuickBooks and so on.

Of course, the easy answer is to simply use BootCamp and install Vista: but what a waste! OSX is such a beautiful OS, I really wanted to keep it (and all the tools, applications and utilities it comes with, or that are only available for the Mac), and figure out a way to achieve those objectives in OSX.

I use VMWare everywhere and for everything. I decided rather than using Parallels, I’d use VMWare Fusion. I downloaded it, installed, and copied over one of the current VMs I’m working on–it started flawlessly. I was shocked at how easy that was; everything worked perfectly. From start to finish, it was about 10 minutes, and I was working on a Windows 2003 VM with SQL Server, MOSS, Visual Studio and all the accoutrements installed. Objective #1 achieved.

A side note here: I do absolutely no development directly on my Vista laptop. Instead, I do all development in a VM on that laptop. I keep a VM for each client, and when I’m done, I archive the VM. I don’t need the host laptop to run Visual Studio. However, I do run all the MS Office applications on the host.

So there’s the kicker for Objective #2–I have an old copy of MS Office for the Mac (that I bought for the first laptop). Having seen the light of Office 2007, there’s no chance I’m going backwards. And really, any alternative that doesn’t work with Exchange is right out. I need Outlook 2007, so I hit my first roadblock. I can work around it by installing Office in the VM, but really–why? That’s information that spans VMs (spans clients). So I’ve got to think about that one a little bit more.

Objective #3 was easily solved with the Remote Desktop Connection from Microsoft. I am running the RDC 2.0 Beta–connecting to windows machines without a hitch.

Objective #4 proved to be an absolute disappointment–let me tell you, the current state of remote desktop connectivity in the Windows world is light-years ahead of everyone else. I’m used to watching video over RDP–in the MS world, RDP is almost indistinguishable from being at the console. What I saw available for the Mac (VNC, Screen Sharing, etc.) was absolute rubbish. More on #4, #5 and #6 next.