Greg Cripe - Systems Administrator
 
Blogger and self-described Renaissance man. Working in Support at BlueLock since September 2009. Worked in the past as a retail manager (who hasn't?), librarian, sportswriter, field technician, network administrator. Married with two boys, ages 6 and 7. IT certifications include MCSE, CheckPoint System Administrator, Security+. Wastes serious time every day trying to explain the concept of professional sports to co-workers.
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Tech TV
Wednesday, July 21, 2010 by Greg Cripe
Although cloud computing is not a staple on television, there are some smart shows currently airing that could feature realistic cloud-based storylines. Showrunners seem to be taking more care in getting the technical details right and there more than a couple of shows that feature technical stories on a regular basis.

Possibly the most obvious is Eureka, which is in its fourth season on Syfy. The show's setting is a fictional Oregon town called Eureka. Virtually everyone who lives there is a scientific genius working to advance technology in some unusual way. It's a decidedly light-hearted look at both the dangers and benefits of rapid scientific progress. It wouldn't be a stretch to think that Global Dynamics, the massive company at the heart of Eureka, uses virtualization technologies extensively.

Covert Affairs is a new show on USA Network that makes good use of technology. It's set in the world of the CIA and follows the adventures of young agent as she learns the ropes of international espionage. I imagine there's more that's virtual at the CIA besides their servers.

On Chuck, the titular character is the ultimate virtual computer. He has the contents of a multimedia CIA database known as the Intersect in his brain. The NBC show doesn't focus entirely on technology, but one of the primary settings is a tech store called Buy More.

The main reality where the cloud and television intersect is seen in services such as Netflix and Hulu. They are essentially clouds themselves, offering end users a wider choice in viewing with few or no advertisements. You can tote your laptop to a friend's house and watch a movie or TV show. Bored while waiting at the doctor's office - fire up a TV show on your phone.

It's clear that as lay people begin to understand more about the technology that drives such services, there will be more acceptance. Who knows, maybe there is a future for BlueLock TV!


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Getting to Know You: The BlueLock Clients
Wednesday, June 23, 2010 by Greg Cripe
As a systems administrator working the BlueLock Support Desk, I handle requests from a variety of clients. As a result, I have an opportunity to get to know our clientele better than other staff. It's a vital role and offers more challenges than standard help desk work. In a typical day, I will handle firewall change requests, virtual machine performance issues, IP address assignment, research, hard drive expansion and other tasks. No two days are the same and the level of activity varies from hour to hour.

Our primary goal is always to provide excellent customer service. One of my goals to that end is to be as pleasant and reassuring as possible. Though I may not be able to find a quick solution for a given issue, I have resources readily available to advance the process. Keeping the lines of communication open between involved parties is a special challenge. If a request is overly complex, I may need to involve the Engineering Team and administrative staff. The support desk acts as a coordinator for these tasks, ensuring progress toward an acceptable solution.

Virtualization and the Cloud are still a part of the wild frontier and I strive to help ease the transition for new adopters. Whether I'm explaining how VMware stores files or detailing the backup process, I consider the comfort level of my audience. I answer many questions over the phone, but others may require exchanging documentation. Our flexibility helps build goodwill and confidence in our offerings.

To help our clients achieve the true benefits of Cloud computing we have to bring something special to the table every day. These roles that I've detailed all go toward creating a special relationship. When a client signs on the dotted line with BlueLock we become a part of their organization start building that relationship immediately. By fostering that common connection we are making a serious commitment to success for all involved.


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Bluelock Support - The First Line of Offense
Tuesday, June 1, 2010 by Greg Cripe
Everyone knows the value of good defense - whether guarding against intruders or providing general protection. At Bluelock, the Support Team prefers to operate in terms of offense. Anticipating problems and adjusting for them beforehand provides much better protection than simply reacting to situations as they arise. It's what puts Bluelock at the top of the cloud hosting game.

We use many tools to help us analyze a client's environment and help them to avoid the time-killing inefficiencies of potential problems. In a cloud setting we can leverage these tools across many client servers to quickly determine where resources may be allocated less than efficiently.

Our monitoring solution takes SNMP and puts it to use providing data for reports on everything from storage to HTTP health checks. We can easily create custom checks that provide information that clients need to be proactive themselves.

Trending is another cloud management feature provided by Bluelock. Graphs that measure historical usage of bandwidth, drive space and CPU are available. The Support Team also monitors this data as part of its proactive approach to cloud management.

Recently, we warned a client that one of the data drives on a virtual server in their environment was nearly full. By combining the monitoring and trending data, we showed them how their space requirements were growing gradually over time. Within a few minutes we had provided a quote for additional drive space, received approval from the client and executed the order.

We make these monitoring and trending tools available to our clients via the Bluelock Vital Portal. Each client has access and can see for themselves how their environment is running at any time.

The Support Team takes managing the cloud seriously and seeks to add as much value as possible for all clients. As always, we are happy to discuss how we can best be of help.
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We Serve to Support, Educate and Blog
Thursday, January 21, 2010 by Greg Cripe
  Support - Done Well

The word 'support' has become cringe-worthy, much like 'Vista' or 'Millennium Edition.' Opinions seem to fall on one side or the other of a distinct dividing line - no vendor's 'support' is merely adequate these days. It's either phenomenal or terrible.

It's crazy to think that vendors strive for an utter lack of excellence. Still, many end users report just such an attitude in their communications with support personnel. Too often, customer support calls are considered unavoidable nuisances in an otherwise productive day. Of course, no one would ever admit they feel that way. But the attitude is pervasive, and it is all too easy for customers to detect, whether in voice inflection during phone calls or while reading hastily prepared e-mail responses. Worse still is getting no response at all.

BlueLock works very diligently to avoid falling into that trap. Working the front lines for a VMware hosting provider is a unique opportunity. Customers can contact us via e-mail or by telephone and all sorts of queries come in which keeps things interesting. Much of our work is generated automatically by our monitoring system. It's important for BlueLock Support personnel to be able to juggle several roles each day and we employ several tools that make it easier to provide top-level service. 

Don't Hesitate, Educate!

We understand that Cloud Computing is a fairly new concept, so one of the primary roles that we perform on the support desk is education. It takes time to become familiar with virtual servers, online disk expansions, and balloon drivers. At BlueLock, we can help make such concepts more clear - and it's as easy as calling the Support Desk.

The most popular topic for education at the BlueLock Support Desk is snapshots. Proper use of snapshots can make an administrator's job much easier. In a nutshell, each virtual machine on our environment is comprised of a file - that's right, the entire server is essentially a file running on a host system. Snapshots serve basically as restore points for those files. This is useful mainly when making major configuration changes or installing new software. When a snapshot is created, what really happens is that a 'change file' is generated. All subsequents changes to the virtual server are written to the change file. When testing is complete, the snapshot must be either committed or reverted. Committing the snapshot merges it with the original server file. This happens on the fly with no interruptions to service. Reverting essentially destroys the change file and returns the server to its state before the snapshot was taken.

The primary drawback of snapshots is that they tend to grow very quickly. Thus, BlueLock has a retention policy of 24-48 hours during which the snapshot must be committed or reverted.

VMware virtual servers are unique entities, especially when backing them up. Backups at BlueLock work much differently than with standard, physical hardware. We perform a combination of snapshots, disk-to-disk and tape backups to protect customer data. The current system is complex enough for its own blog posting, so I'll cover that in more detail at a later date.




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We do love a good disk expansion
Tuesday, January 19, 2010 by Greg Cripe
Having worked in IT for over 10 years, I've seen my share of ugliness. It generally has taken the form of botched configuration files or ill conceived program interfaces. Looking back, though, nothing could top the server hardware upgrade for sheer wretchedness. Coordinating the downtime necessary to start the upgrade required gargantuan effort and endless compromise. Finding the correct parts sent the technician through an endless maze of charts and arrays of compatibility. Performing the actual upgrade was at least interesting and sometimes fun. Praying for the server to power up without a hitch afterwards was not. And still, the job wasn't quite done. Little tweaks were needed here and there, then we had test to ensure the server was ready to reenter the world of the living. All told, a weekend was probably shot and a few gray hairs were earned in the process.

Welcome to the virtual world, where we have left most of that nonsense behind. Businesses can now rely on a well-trained team of engineers to build a thriving environment of servers, each capable of hosting dozens of virtual machines. It's not hard to tout the benefits of cloud computing. Just look at the ease of a disk expansion.

At BlueLock, we can turn around a non-system disk expansion request in minutes. When a client needs more space, the system administrators need only a few clicks to make it happen. No more downtime or worry about compatible parts. Even a system-disk (boot disk) expansion requires only a single reboot and a few extra minutes of work.

Having this kind of flexibility allows a client much more freedom in the planning process for a new server. The focus returns to the core function of the server rather than the hardware, which is Bluelock's concern. With full monitoring in place, our team of administrators and engineers strives to be proactive. A client may receive a call about a potential problem long before they would have noticed any performance degradation. It's about uptime and performance. And that's just the beginning.

The ease of expanding drive space barely scratches the surface of the benefits of working in the cloud. I plan to outline many of those benefits in subsequent posts. Communicating the advantages of virtualization is one of the easiest and most enjoyable jobs I've had since jumping into IT head-first a decade ago.

Our goals at BlueLock include staying in the vanguard of cloud hosting, so we work hard every day to set the bar higher. I hope this blog will help explain some of the nuances, many of the developments, and most of the benefits of life in the cloud.


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