Hello Everyone!
Welcome to the first edition of the Orange County NT User Group Newsletter for 2003. I hope you are enjoying your 4th of July holiday. As your new newsletter editor, I hope to give this newsletter a format that is USEFUL to you. Therefore, if you have ideas or suggestions for articles or items to be included in the newsletter, please email me at rholtzman@netzero.net. All attachments should be .rtf files. If you would like to write an article of interest to the membership at large for inclusion in the newsletter, email it to me. And now, the news...
Of course, the perks...the software, books and other information are available to all members in good standing, meaning members whose dues have been paid up for the year, and who attend the meeting at which the items are distributed. Therefore, if you haven't yet paid your membership dues for 2003, please do so as soon as possible.
Note: You may have heard a rumor that our group was going to change its name to reflect our more central relationship with Microsoft. For the time being, our name will remain the same.
OCNTUG Selects New Slate of Officers
At the May 8, 2003 Board
Meeting, the board selected our new
officers:
President: Ed Roberts ed@ocntug.org
Vice President: Edson Leh eleh@fpfit.com
Secretary: Darrel Kim dkim33@cox.net
Treasurer &
Webmaster: Avram Grossman avramg@e-novative.com
Newsletter Editor: Robert Holtzman rholtzman@netzero.net
Events Coord.&
Bus. Devel. Mgr.: Brad Fischl mailto:bradfischl@quickstaqrt.com
Public Relations: Herbert Wong, Jr. ocntug@singularitytechnology.com
Librarian: Victor Ponce vponce@reivax.net
Project Manager: David Wells davidw@softw.com
Thanks for volunteering, people! Congratulations and good luck to all of us!
QLogic becomes our first Gold Sponsor for 2003
For QLogic, it means
a variety of benefits, such as representation on our web site, and at meetings,
a speaking engagement, and much, much more (see our web page for the benefits of
sponsorship). For us, it means some cash in the treasury, and a regular chance
to meet with their reps. Such a deal! So be sure to visit their web site at www.qlogic.com,
and check out their impressive line of Fibre Channel SAN products, their "SANboxes"!
The Next Meeting
On July 11, 2003 at 6:30 PM, we will have a
presentation from PowerQuest. Tim Chappell will discuss Windows Server Storage
Management - Migration, Backup and Restoration.
Check out their web site at
www.powerquest.com.
For a map and directions goto www.SoCalITPro.org.
Previous Meeting Events
At our June 12 meeting, we enjoyed a
particularly fascinating presentation last evening by Tim Francisco and Bill
Huber of Stonefly Networks. In short, an IP SAN uses iSCSI, which is a SCSI bus
command set encapsulated in IP, to control the Storage Area Network. The
Initiator (either software or hardware) is viewed by the operating system as a
SCSI adapter, and coordinates with the Storage Concentrator, through any
IP/Gigabit Ethernet Switch, to create logical volumes in a storage unit, such as
an ATA RAID array.
I'm tempted to run right out and buy their
storage solution for my chili recipe database, just as soon as I can spare an
extra $30,000, which will be right after I win the Lotto. Now if I can just come
up with a dollar to play this Saturday. All kidding aside, their SAN
demonstration was a net admin's dream. To be able to allocate terabytes of
storage space in seconds with a few mouse clicks... I know all the techies were
drooling over this new IP SAN technology. As a reminder, they did say that the
Microsoft version of the initiator software would be available for download
within two weeks; and that for those still running NT 4.0, IBM has initiator
software available now. For more details, goto www.stonefly.com.
At our May 8th meeting Katie Mital of Dexterra gave a fabulous presentation of their mobile enterprise solution. Dexterra's product line, making use of Microsoft(r) .NET technology, provides real-time access to your corporate databases, directly from the field. This enables field engineers and technicians, not only to update the db as they work on location, but also to become an active part of your sales force, taking orders directly for parts or for new systems as required. For more information www.dexterra.com.
Thank you, Mr. Gates!
I am certain I speak for everyone in saying
how grateful we are to Microsoft for providing us with promotional sample copies
of Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition. I would suggest that either a
special web page or a special column in the newsletter be dedicated to providing
information / help / problem solving for the new operating system. Do we have an
expert willing to write such a column?
I'll bet some of you were wondering, "Since I can put my Enterprise Edition on only one system, how can I set up a full test lab with another computer running Windows 2003 Server?" Well, in case you didn't notice, the Introducing Windows 2003 Server book has an evaluation copy of the Standard Edition in the back! Now go set up your test bench, and have fun!
Random Access Department
Wow! Windows 2003 is IP v6 ready! Are you?
How many of you know how to subnet a 128 bit IP address? Supposedly, you should
never need to! Are there other systems out there that can handle a v6 IP? Are
all the routers ready for it? The switches? Will I have to memorize huge
hexadecimal addresses? 2002:836b:4179::836b:4179 ?! (Actual IP v6 address copied
from
Ipv6 Essentials, by Silvia Hagen, O'Reilly Books) (You can get a .pdf of
chapter 2, free on their web site, www.oreilly.com
to learn some details of v6 structure!) Ya mean I'm gonna havta memorize
addresses like that? Pllleeeeze keep friendly URLs!!!
(Note: You could use the test bench setup I mentioned above to test all your routing equipment with v6, cuz yull hav 2 computers runnin' v6!! And the sw didn't cost nuttin'! Neat, huh?)
Favorite Third Party Tools Department
Fed up with the limitations
of Notepad? Ever wanted to open multiple text or HTML documents at the same
time, and be able to switch between them by just clicking the file index tabs at
the top of the window? You can! NoteTab, by Eric G. V. Fookes, is a cool text
editor with numerous features, the best one of which allows you to hold multiple
documents open, and switch with ease. I have been using NoteTab Light for years,
because it's freeware for personal use, although I know I would enjoy using
NoteTab Professional even more.
This program is so useful, I let it start up after boot, and keep it open in the system tray, with a blank page at the ready, for anything I might need to jot down, or copy off a web page. Since the program remembers what was last used, my most recent documents are still there after reboot, ready for further editing. The application comes with multiple libraries of useful functions, just one of which is shown in the illustration below.
Even the freeware version offers HTML editing features found in the more expensive software, such as converting all tags to upper or lower case for you, checking your code for errors, supplying end tags, or calling the Tidy program directly. True, it doesn't do everything, but it's a quick and easy tool to use. I would highly recommend NoteTab for any tool box. The freeware version will also offer you a 30 day trial of the commercial features of the pro version, and will continue to work without those features after the trial period. You can download the latest version of either NoteTab Light, or NoteTab Pro from the author at www.notetab.com, or get NoteTab Light from www.hotfiles.com.
Do you have a favorite third party tool? Write a brief article on it, and I'll include it in the newsletter!
Future departments...
I would like to include useful information in
the newsletter on a regular basis. One person suggested a Useful Scripts column.
Something else would be a series of articles by club members on such topics as
network security, firewall incursion detection, hacking the hackers, wireless
LAN/WAN security, or even testimonials of products that you really like. Perhaps
we could host some member business cards, or you could give us a brief two-line
resume for a job board. Those with businesses could list employment
opportunities. SIGs and study groups could list their meeting dates and times.
If you send attachments, PLEASE use Rich Text Format, so I don't have to worry
about viruses. This is your newsletter...lets make it useful for you!
Final notes...
We wish to thank our caterers: Johnny B's
(949-458-8195) (substodie4@msn.com). The
sandwiches were great, although, I'm still wondering what happened to the walnut
fudge brownies...
If you know of a company that would like to sponsor our user group, please contact Brad Fischl.
And that's all the news that's fit to print! Enjoy your week! See you at the next meeting, Thursday night, 18:30, at QuickStart Intelligence in the Enfrastructure building, 65 Enterprise, Aliso Viejo!
Robert Holtzman, Editor
OCNTUG NEWSLETTER 07/01/03