May 2012

I was experimenting with Zero-IT on our new Ruckus Wireless system, and had some glitches.  I wanted to use it so I could see user names that are logged in etc., but for some reason it wasn't displaying them but it was working.  Here it was because I was not using Dynamic PSK.  Thanks to Greg Kamer from Mirazon, for pointing me in that direction.  I truly forgot that I wanted to have an assigned passphrase that was generated by the system so that not just anyone could log in.  Now users will use their AD credentials and based on the group they are in they will be assigned to the proper WLAN, like GTStaff will be in GTAOG-Internal, while CheckIn will be in GTAOG-Checkin.  Works great.

On Sunday I had two kiosk failures at the same time :-(  Not very happy especially with only one backup, a Dell Duo touch.  I had my volunteer, Mike, look at them and found that it was a weird wifi issue on the Lenovo mini (I configured it for Zero-IT and it works like a charm).  The other one Mike removed the drivers, reinstalled new ones and it still didn't work. We swapped USB ports again (which I did on Sunday but the drivers must have been blown up) and it detected it and worked :-).  Now he is doing updates and all will be well again.  Getting all the checkin's on Zero-IT will be good because once we do that we will know which one is on what AP and what is going on.  Ruckus is so cool, I can't wait for 9.4 and more cool updates coming soon.

I'm getting ready for the Switchvox install that should take place either next week or the following. Digium has released the D70 phones so we should be receiving them shortly. I can't wait to get into it.

New for 2012

Well it's been a long time since I posted last.  Where should I start.  Well we have finally redone our wireless network here at GT.  We replaced the SonicPoints from SonicWall with a new state of the art Ruckus Wireless system thanks to Mark Moreno from C&M Support Services Inc.  We now have 11 active Ruckus 7363 APs with an 1125 Zone Director running them and it is GREAT.  Great connectivity, lots of users online etc.

Mark also helped me redo our VLan scheme to take into consideration the new Ruckus Wireless as well as the new VoIP phone system from Digium, Switchvox that we will be installing in May 2012. We will be replacing our old Toshiba system along with the old Amanda voice mail (running on a 486 no less and DOS), with a new Digium Switchvox A355 and Digium D70 phones.  We are using our same wiring infrastructure with Voice VLaning on it.  The Digium D70 phones have builtin Gigabit switches so that works great with our HP Procurve 2848 networking infrastructure.  

We also installed PowerDSine POE Midspans to get Power Over Ethernet to all the Ruckus WAPs and all the Digium VoIP phones as well.  This was a less expensive investment than purchasing new 24 or 48 port POE Gigabit switches.  The midspans are 10/100/1000 capable so they pass thru the gigabit with no problems while still providing POE to the devices.

Also I just got back from CITRT 2012 which was help at Watermark Community Church in Dallas Texas.  What an AWESOME time.  The best Round Table event so far.  Great to see friends that I only get to talk to online or via twitter, and also to network and learn from them too. Can't wait to see what is done for next year.

New for 2011

Well it's been a few months since my last post. Being full time now is great, and there is so much that needs to be accomplished. We made it to Florida for both CITRT 2011 (FANTASTIC event, can't tell you how much I learned and how great it was seeing all the other CITRT'rs there), can't wait for Dallas in 2012 :-)

Being the Technical Operations Manager at GT is awesome. There are so many things to get done that I'm never bored for things to do. I love computers, electronics etc, so it all just works for me.

I'm going to have Mark Moreno back again this year to deal with upgrades to our Intel MFSYS35 chassis (installing 2 more compute modules, converting from total VMWare to VMWare with Hyper-V cluster).