Month: December 2006

Exchange 2007 – 64-bit Impact

Jimmy tries to understand ironingStu asked a very interesting question in response to my last post:

The risk for any new product as you mention is that of the unforeseen critical bugs generally addressed within the first few months after wide scale deployments. For Exchange 2007 I’d be interested in reading your views on what the risks are, if any, in this new release from running on 64bit OS through to the new product architecture.

The move to 64-bit clearly has built into it a set of risks of bugs. The key question is whether they are Exchange 2007 risks, Windows 2003 64-bit risks.

If they are Exchange 2007 risks then they are very new.

If they are Windows 2003 64-bit risks then they have been around for a while.

Windows 2003 64-bit has been running 64-bit applications for some time already; SQL Server 2005 was released in January 2006 for instance. Windows 2003 64-bit has been around since the middle of 2005. So the risks of there being a show-stopper in the critical memory and storage subsystems are likely to be quite. They should have probably been uncovered already. Although, having said that, I would be surprised if the Windows 2003 64-bit systems already deployed support anything like the 130 million existing Exchange population.

It is the interaction of the Jet database with the memory and storage subsystems that have given Exchange the biggest problems in recent times.

So if we can have some level of confidence that the memory and storage subsystems are sound, what about the database itself?

I don’t know, but I suspect that the development team have been in the process of removing code here, rather than adding it in. The Exchange database had to perform all sorts of tricks to operate within the constraints of the 32-bit platform, a limitation that is not longer there. If the code has become simpler then it can probably be relied on even more, but now I sound like I’ve taken the cool-aid.

My perception is that overall the move to 64-bit will make life a lot simpler, it does however have a significant set of risks associated with it.

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"Wait for Service Pack 1" – Valid?

Grandad's had a long dayThe release of Exchange 2007 last week prompted me to re-evaluate, again, a long help mantra in IT – "Wait for Service Pack 1".

The basic premise goes like this: New software, especially software from Microsoft, is normally so buggy on its release that it is far more sensible to wait for Service Pack 1 (SP1). This way others have gone through the pain that’s bound to be there.

But is that really still valid?

Does recent history from Microsoft support the premise? Is there any evidence?

The "Wait for SP1" situation can’t be one that Microsoft wants to persist because it delays that adoption of their newer software and potential stifles a revenue stream for them. But perhaps I’m wrong, perhaps they prefer the damper effect this has on demand. Let’s face it, if everyone upgraded fast they would have a problem.

There are a number of pieces of evidence that are available to us, but do they actually answer the question?

Service Pack History

Does Service Pack history help us out here? Is there evidence that the number of fixes in Service Pack 1 is substantially higher than the number of fixes in later Service Packs? Does the number of fixes in a Service Pack change depending on the maturity or generation of a product? Did Windows 2003 Service Pack 1 have less issues than Windows 2000 Service Pack 1, for instance?

Here are some numbers:

Number of Issues Resolved by Service Pack

Service Pack 1 Service Pack 2 Service Pack 3 Service Pack 4
Windows 2000 287 470 1014 675
Windows XP 321 826
Windows Server 2003 1012
Exchange 2000 129 25 25
Exchange 2003 40 131

About the only thing that you can say about those numbers is that there is no correlation between the age of a product or the product generation and the number of issues that need to be resolved.

On these number Windows 2000 Service Pack 1 looked like a safe product, and so did Windows XP Service Pack 1, both of which resulted in a huge number of issues later in their life.

I had wondered about whether there might be some stronger correlation between the number of issues resolved and the time between Service Packs, but I don’t have that much time in my life.

These numbers do highlight one significant issue though, and that is that we are trying to make a judgement of quality based on quantity, and that’s normally not a good thing to do. The quantity of fixes probably doesn’t relate to the quality (or impact) of those fixes.

All it takes is one big issue and the quality is a problem. I suppose I could have gone through and tried to measure the number of "major" issues or something like that, but again, I don’t have the time.

There is some indication of quality in the numbers but you need to understand the back story. There are loads of fixes about the time of Exchange 2000 Service Pack 1 and Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 which demonstrate the first awakening to security as an issue within Microsoft, the emergence of SPAM, SASSER, etc.. The high number on Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 demonstrate the second security awakening within Microsoft and the famous Bill Gates announcement. The high number of fixes in Windows Server 2003 demonstrates a shift towards more continuous update and less frequent Service Packs, this resulted in this particular Service Pack being released a long time after the release of Windows Server 2003.

Testing Process

We’ve already seen that we can’t make quality judgements on the basis of quantity. Perhaps, therefore, we need to look at the way that quality is built. In the case of software this is best demonstrated (in my view) by the level of good testing that occurs prior to release.

In the case of Exchange 2007 the numbers of live testers appear to be as follows:

We’ve bet the company on this product. Here at Microsoft, we have over 120,000 mailboxes running in production on Exchange 2007 – exceeding our SLA of 99.95% availability. Likewise, over 200 Technology Adoption Partners and Rapid Deployment Partners have over 55,000 mailboxes in production operating within their enterprise SLA’s.

You Had Me At EHLO…

Yes, I know I’m mixing quality and quantity again, and that’s the problem. Every time I try to assess quality I get to quantity. But taking these quantity numbers on there own, does 175,000 mailboxes account for enough testing?

There are apparently somewhere around 130 million corporate Exchange users. As a representative community 175,000 represents 0.13% of the user population!

Is that really representative, and if it isn’t what would be? The 120,000 internal users are certainly significant if you are going to deliver Exchange service the way that they have, if you aren’t then I’m not sure what it tells you.

I’ve been involved in a few TAP and RDP and the testing hasn’t really been representative of the real requirement. By this I mean that the testing wasn’t really done in a "production" environment and wasn’t really subject to the corporate SLA.

Continuos Update blunting the Bleeding Edge

We have moved a long way towards continuous update these days, this has the tendency to blunt the bleeding edge. Waiting for Service Pack 1 used to mean waiting for the first set of roll-up fixes; today we are used to an almost constant stream of updates. If a major problem is found people can get hold of it very quickly and apply it quickly too.

In the continuous update world it seems anomalous to talk about waiting for Service Pack 1, because that may be some time away.

My Personal Conclusion

My personal point of view is that there is no point in waiting for Service Pack 1 of Exchange 2007 specifically but there is a value in waiting a few months before actual deployment just-in-case. I would extend this view to other software too.

Likewise, there is no safety in staying with current product. The current product may have more uncovered issues that the new product.

Currys Customer Service

Jimmy gets dried after a shoerToday I decided to use my lunch hour to go and purchase a Christmas present for my daughter.

Against my better judgement I thought that I could quickly travel to the local electrical super market type place (Currys), choose something and collect it.

I walked into the store and found what I was looking for, the price was what I was expecting. So when one of the band of young men asked me if I wanted some help I said “Yes, have you got any of these in stock?”. He looked at the number and left.

I waited where I was.

I waited a bit longer where I was.

I waited even longer; watching my lunch time was rapidly slipping away.

I waited so long that the single track playing on the iPod behind me was now in its forth play (not sure what the point of playing a single track as a demonstration of the iPod’s capabilities is).

Looking around for the young man in question I noticed that he was now in a huddle with other members of the merry band. It looked like they were trying to resolve a problem for another customer. There was five of them helping one customer.

This customer left.

I got home, did a 30 second compare online and ordered from Amazon. There’s still a chance that Amazon won’t deliver on time, but my experience is that they will.

Dear Currys,

I don’t have all day and I expect to be looked after as a customer. If you don’t then I’m not staying around.

Graham

PS: Why is it “Currys” and not “Curry’s” you don’t sell currys so I assume your store was started by a Mr Curry, so it really should be “Curry’s” (yes I do know that the Internet doesn’t help you there).

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Count Your Blessings #90 – The Alarm Call of the Blackbird at Dusk

Sunset over Morecombe BayThe common blackbird has a wonderfully distinctive alarm call which I’m sure it uses all the time but I only seen to here at sunrise or sunset. It’s normally just before sunset actually, at dusk.

At the back of our house there is an old hawethorn hedge. As ire step out of the bad door a shrill cry will break the quiet and then fly off into the approaching dark.

It’s such a distinctive call that it still makes may heart jump, even though I must have heard it thousands of times.

The Bible says that the end of the world will be marked by a trumpet blast, I’m not sure what it will sound like but I’m sure it will do more than make my heart jump.

Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices shouting in heaven:

 “The world has now become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever.”

Revelation 11

The Effect of Measurement

Jimmy plays hide-and-seek with babyOne of the first rules of problem solving is to define a set of measures for the problem. The problem is that creating these measures normally requires you to change something. This then gets you into the problem of the measures and their impact.

I was reminded of this today.

My home router has been dropping connections and generally misbehaving, so I decided to enable logging and to have the logs sent to my e-mail. This way I could get some idea of what the router was doing prior to having problems.

  • Yesterday, without logging, the router dropped more than 10 times.
  • Today, with logging, the router hasn’t dropped once.

IT systems can be very infuriating.

It’s nearly as bad as trying to understand Schrodinger’s Cat and the Copenhagen Interpretation.

PS: While I was writing this post, the router decided that it would drop the connection .

Very Sick Touran

IMG_4480Looks like I’m going to have to get used to the Vectra for a while longer. The Touran has blown it’s turbo.

Unfortunately new turbos are on back order which means a likely delay of 10 day with no guarantees .

Jimmy and Grandad Return

Grandad waits for an exciting callFor those of you who have missed Jimmy and Grandad – they have returned. They’ve always been here, I’ve just been too busy to observe their daily adventures.

For those of you who think the pictures are a bit dark – it is winter here, which means it’s dark most of the time .

Technology Changing Lives – An Experience

Sunset over Morecombe BaySometimes I forget that technology actually changes our lives. I sometimes feel that I spend so long wrestling with it that I forget that progress is being made. Just when I’m getting fed up with the whole thing something will happen that brings it all into focus.

This week I was helping out at a celebration dinner for a lady from our church who is a missionary nurse in Rwanda and has been for more than 20 years. She’s recently been awarded the OBE.

The dinner was followed by the obligatory speeches. Only a few years ago these speeches would have been exactly that – “speeches”. And the PA system would have been not too good either.

With only a moderate amount of equipment that we already had available, nothing specialist, we were able to make this a multi-media event. As a missionary nurse in Rwanda she has worked with people from all over the world so we thought it would be great to have different people’s input. In the past this would have meant reading out letters, but these speeches actually went like this:

  • Welcome
  • Story on video from former colleague now retired to the USA.
  • Digital pictures on video projector of visit to the palace, including pictures of her receiving the OBE from the Queen, taken from the official video.
  • Some scanned pictures of her youth.
  • A DVD of a song which the staff at the hospital in Rwanda had put together. This wasn’t just a bunch of people stood dumb in front of a screen, but was actually a fully produced video with the staff singing in all sorts of places around the hospital.
  • Some words from some important people, all of which had been contacted by e-mail. There was also a reference from a blog that someone who was on a trip to Rwanda with Laura Bush, The First Lady had made. The reference was of course found by using Google.

The sound was great too, because we had access (from church) to good quality audio equipment.

Ten years ago a whole set of this technology would not have been mainstream enough for it to have been usable (video editing, video projectors, blog, e-mail, digital photography, Google), but they all made for a wonderful evening.

We all learnt something, and she was amazed by all of the different inputs.

Sick VW Touran

FerryFirst I had a sick TC1100 tablet, now I have a sick Touran – perhaps it’s something to do with items that begin with ‘T’.

Not to be outdone by JK I have a car story of my own (he used decidedly more technology than me though).

On Saturday Jonathan and I decided that we would go for a walk in the Lake District. We were too lazy to make sandwiches so we called into the local shop and bought some. On our way out of the shop I put my foot down, but the car didn’t speed up. I looked down at all the dials, but nothing looked wrong. Looking out of the rear was a different matter, there was a huge plume of smoke.

I decided to limp the car home because it’s less than half a mile, once home it was time to call on the RAC.

The guy from the RAC was great – I even got to complete the customer questionnaire on his i-mate JASJAR which was interesting from a technology perspective. From a survey perspective it was less interesting, but at least they were trying to get some feedback. The most interesting question was one on cleanliness of the attending operative. I wasn’t quite sure what to put. If he was too clean then he had obviously not been doing his job, you can’t expect someone who deals with cars on roads to look like he’s just got out of the shower.

Anyway, he could fix the car, so he towed me to the garage and gave me a lift home. Then the next piece of technology kicked in, as soon as I left the garage I got an SMS text thanking me for booking my car in with them.

The car has now been at the garage for three days and they have had to call in experts from VW to try and diagnose the fault, according to the reception lady on the service desk.

Fortunately the car is on a managed lease, so I’m driving around a relief vehicle.

Blog Debate – Can we have one please?

Sunset over Morecombe BayIs it me, or do we need a new debate to blog about?

Everything I’m reading at the moment seems to be news that isn’t worth debating. It’s not really worth debating the release of Vista, Office or Exchange we all know that Microsoft have done enough to maintain their dominant position. We also know that there is nothing in Vista, Office or Exchange that will allow businesses to revolutionise themselves just by installing them. We also seem to be a bit bored with the proliferation of Web 2.0 services most of which seem to be delivering incremental capabilities rather than anything really knew.

I haven’t felt obliged to chime in on someone else’s post for weeks.

I’d love to be wrong, but it all seems to have got a bit boring .

Oh that reminds me – “only boring people get bored” .

ITIL Thoughts

Formby BeachLast week I was on an ITIL Foundation course.

If you work in IT and you don’t know what ITIL is – you probably soon will. ITIL which stands for “IT Infrastructure Library” is an emerging standard for the operation of IT, it started in the UK, but is rapidly being adopted as a global standard.

I’ve worked in and around it operations for nearly 20 years now (a scary thought) and the framework that ITIL sets out makes a lot of sense. It’s not dissimilar to the one most organisations operate. What it does do is clarify a number of roles and processes in a way that will help a lot of organisations to assess the effectiveness of their operations. I suspect many organisations will look at the list of processes and know immediately which is the one they struggle with.

If ITIL manages to create a common understanding of roles and processes, or even just a common taxonomy for things like change, problem, incident, capacity then it will have achieved a lot. Speaking as a Solution Architect it will be great to be able to plug into a known set of operational processes during the implementation phase of projects.

The problem with all frameworks is that the problems are in the detail – and I don’t know enough detail to comment on that.

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Windows Live Search for mobile beta

Our Beach (as it became known) La PaludOver the last few days Microsoft have made a Beta available of Windows Live Search for mobile (download). There has been loads of comments on how good it is, so I thought I would give it a go – I’m almost amazed.

It’s one thing being able to see down to minute detail from a PC, being able to do the same thing from a mobile device opens up a whole new set of possibilities. As an example I searched for my church and it returned a whole load of really useful details, great. Clicking on the “map” bar then showed a remarkable combined map and aerial view. I then asked for directions to my house, which were faultless (as you’d expect these days) what I found particularly nice, though, was the ability to click another button and get a map and aerial view of the next turn. It’s not GPS, but it’s still fabulous.

The category searches don’t seem to work for my area, but the beta is only advertised as being a US based beta so I’m not surprised.

I was going to try both Google and Live, but at the Gizmodo review said that it was a clear win for Microsoft so I haven’t bother with the Google offering.

All of my testing (playing) has been done over a WiFi network from an iMate SP5 which I have. I’ve not tried it on GPRS because the person paying the bill is a bit twitchy about data charges. I suspect that it’s not quite as impressive over GPRS because of the bandwidth limitations.

 

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