Ben Tucker
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Homepage: http://www.iphouse.com/
Posts by Ben Tucker
Feature freeze
Jan 24th
Some of us took the time last week to create something new. I chose to challenge myself by designing a system I had not built before and that I am not ready to share… quite yet. :) But I do want to share something about the design process in very general terms.
The lesson I learned: Feature freeze is a good thing. Know when to stop fixing.
Now early in the project, I had a pretty good idea of what pieces needed to go together but I did not have a very good idea of how to get there. I put down a quick design and while I was doing that I started to see problems..
- Pieces did not fit together.
- Some things were missing.
- This was not going to work.
Time to start learning. I love learning.
IIS 7.5 and FTP-SSL
Nov 14th
FTP-SSL is the encrypted FTP type that is supported by IIS 7.5 (Windows Server 2008 R2) and IIS 7.0 (Windows Server 2008). There are some quirks to setting it up this way. This brief walk-through has a couple of warnings about those specific issues.
I am using FTP-SSL in passive mode, with explicit SSL. I do that because most of my users run their computers behind some sort of firewall. This sometimes means that their data channels get blocked by their firewall. The symptom then is that they can connect, but can’t send or receive files or list directories. So I have them use passive FTP in their client software. More >
Electric
Mar 16th
Lots of folks don’t think much about where the power they use comes from, but I do. We can’t do any of the things we do here at all without it and we take it seriously. In this post, I’ll cover the basic parts of how electrical power is delivered to the datacenter without getting too serious.
These parts are: electrical service, backup generator, uninterruptible power supply, automatic transfer switch, power distribution units, power monitoring, and power consumers, such as servers, routers, and switches.
The main difference between power for devices in the datacenter and other types of power service is that a power loss in this situation can be a really big deal. These devices need power that is always on, even in a storm, to function properly. Making the datacenter stay on when the power from the electric company falters takes some special design considerations.
