MS Exchange – 10/30/2007

With 2/3 of the class present, we forged ahead and covered what we should have covered last week: Lab 4. Lab 4 is important because in it we study the difference between regular server clustering and Microsoft’s Network Load Balancing. Remember that NLB is able to see which servers are working harder than the others and can then route traffic to the less busy ones. Clustering is a little dumber (duhrrrrrr) and only splits the loads up in a round-robin pattern.

We also discussed the concepts of Front End and Back End servers, and their relation to an Exchange organization. An easy way to keep these straight is to think of them in terms of fast food employees. You have employees that work the front, and employees that work the back. The ones in the front are the ones that actually talk to customers (or clients) and the ones in the back are the ones with their fingers in the hamburger (gross).

Homework:

• Lab 4, pg 53: Lab questions 1-4

A+ Hardware/Software – 10/30/2007

Today was an interesting day: we first took our first checkpoint exam and then moved onto the software portion of our class.

First of all, great job on the checkpoint exams. Seriously. In most classes I teach this, there is a *massive* curve, and many many failures. No one failed this one. How cool? I’ve had people in the past fail despite a 40 point curve. Yeah, that means that they scored less than a freaking 20% on the test. You could guess and do worse than that!

Anyway, we studied up one how MS-DOS worked and then how Windows 95 improved on that. And, just to make things fun, we installed Windows 95 and played with it. Next week, we’ll install Windows 98 and look at some of the improvements that it made over Windows 95.

Homework:

• Nada. I’m what they call a nice guy.
• Oh, and sorry for taking so long to get this posted. I’m what they call a lazy guy.

Server+ – 10/29/2007

Yikes! Sorry I’m so far behind on the updates guys, it just got away from me!

Tonight we had a nice little checkpoint exam, and most of you did quite well. Great job!

Clay was nice enough afterwards to show us some of his server equipment that he’s aquired and, I don’t know about you, but it was nice to see some real-life examples of what you guys will be working on one day.

Homework:

• No homework!

MS Exchange – 10/29/2007

Today was unit 4, which dealt with network load balancing and clustering. Remember that hte main difference between to the two is that NLB is service-aware and can throw any server requests to the “most available” server, while clustering rotates through each server blindly.

Homework:

• Lab Questions pg 53 1-4.

Strategies for Success – 10/29/2007

Today we did Units 11-13, one of which included the topic of Comfort Zones. Bobbi Steelman made a great performance by coming in and blasting you guys out of your comfort zones. Remember, we all have comfort zones, and we need to recognize them so we can rise above them.

Starting next week, we’re going step up the pace and hopefully get done with class a week early. I’ll keep you posted as we get through.

Homework:

• No negative thoughts for 24 hours!!!

IMAP comes to Gmail

I’m having a nerd-moment.

As many of you know, I use Gmail as my primary e-mail address. It was somewhat reluctantly — I’ve used every version of Outlook since it debuted in 1997 — and Gmail’s web interface just paled in comparison to what I was used to doing in Outlook. But I needed two things that my old insightbb.com account just wasn’t offering me: 1) portability and 2) effective spam blocking. Gmail offered both, so I sold out my need for Outlook’s features. That was in 2004.

Fast forward to October 24, 2007. Google announced today that they would start rolling out IMAP capabilities to their Gmail accounts. Why is this a big deal? I mean, Gmail has offered POP3 access for a while.

If you rememeber back from your CompTIA Network+ class (you do remember that, right?), IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol and works as an e-mail messaging protocol. Simply put, it’s one of the ways we can acccess our e-mail accounts. The other ways are via the web (http) and POP3. POP3 has been the most popular, but it has its drawbacks. The main one for me is that to use POP3, you have to actually download your e-mail off of the mail server down to your client machine. For most people, that’s fine, but I find myself on as many as four different clients during any given week. Which means that once I read an e-mail at say, work, I won’t be able to look at that e-mail anywhere else other than work! That’s been the main reason I’ve had to abandon Outlook as a mail client and use G-mail’s web interface instead. But now, now, grasshoppers, Gmail offers IMAP too…

So, so what? The big deal is that Outlook is an IMAP client as well! And when setup to use IMAP, Outlook won’t be downloading my messages off of Gmail onto whatever client machine I’m using. Outlook instead will be channeling Gmail on the web and showing me my messages while staying connected to the Gmail server. I can use four different installations of Outlook to access the same web information.

Hopefully the calendar will sync up as well.

It’s Peanut Extra Credit Time!

I extended this offer to my A+ students, and now I extend it to you, o student of Ben. Throw me up a one page paper detailing the new 802.11n wireless standard. I want to know speeds, ranges, hardware requirements (is it backwards compatible with b/g? hmm? hmm?), etc. 10 points are up for grabs, and I need this by the start of whatever class you want me to apply the points to.

MS Exchange – 10/23/2007

Ok, so yeah, did the night group talk to the day group (or more likely, read the blog?). 2/3 of you were out tonight (for very good reasons, by the way), so in the night class too, we will be postponing the important chapter four for next week. I’m really wanting you guys to go through this lab because it has us actually setting up clustering & load balancing — very important stuff if you want to call yourself an engineer. And you do.

Homework:

• Get to class next week!!!!!

A+ Hardware/Software – 10/23/2007

Great class today, guys.

We covered Chapters 7 and 8 today. First up was Chapter 7, dealing with printers — different types and how we get them hooked up to our computers. Remember the differences between the different types (of printers and connectors). Chapter 8 was over the portable computer which, somewhat disappointingly, is pretty much like a standard desktop computer, except that it’s more compact. Heat’s an even bigger issue though. Make sure you can tell me the difference between Type I, II and III PCMCIA cards and that you know the basics on how the LCD screen on the notebook computer works.

Next week, we have the first Checkpoint exam, which will cover everything we’ve talked about thus far in the book — pretty much all of the hardware portion of this class. I know that I’ve virtually covered you up with information, and believe me, I understand how overwhelming that can be. Please try not to let the overwhelming feelings bog you down — judging from where I stand, having seen dozens of other students at the same point you are, you’re doing very well. If you really hit the books hard this week, I have no doubt you all will pass the test with flying colors.

Homework:

• No homework, other than to bust yourself silly studying for this crazy test.

Server+ – 10/22/2007

Tonight we covered Unit 5, which dealt with server upgrades. Remember, Checkpoint Exam next week!

Homework:

• Other than study for that checkpoint exam, nuffin.