ADX Technologies, Inc.

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In talking with customers, one of the biggest areas of discussion is increased storage requirements. This is not just the growing quantity of data that needs to be stored, which is a given, but also the different ways it is being used. Traditional storage conversations have revolved around Windows and NFS shares, planning for usage and growth of shared storage, IOPS performance for application access, and backup time/volume. Storage has traditionally been managed much like SANs, networks and servers in that they have been islands, sized for 1-2 specific applications and the entire size purchased at the outset. read more »

So, a lot has changed in the last year. The big news is, Cisco is now in servers! I was going to wait a while, see how the dust settled, and wait to play around with them until Cisco’s voice apps were approved to run on their own servers.
Well, during that waiting period, something exciting happened – Cisco dropped the price on their servers bigtime. They are now competitive with every other major server vendor out there. This changes things!
Sure, they meet all the requirements of an enterprise class server. Good OS support, out of band management, reliability, power, etc. They also have a few unique features. read more »

Cisco 2800 ISR configuration for SIP voice with NAT and Firewall
Posted in Network Security, Unified Communications on March 30th, 2009 by Rolf – Be the first to comment

I had the enjoyable opportunity over the last few weeks to jump in and do a basic Cisco voice install. It was about 110 phones, with the Cisco Unified Communications Manager Business Edition. This is a single box that includes Call Manager 6.1.3, and Unity Connection 2.1. It had to be done fast, and it had to be done right, so I stuck to mostly tried and true configurations.
Since this was a price sensitive design, we used the2800 routerto its maximum potential. The 2800 is an amazingly flexible piece of equipment; it can be configured to do large variety of things. Sometimes known as the Integrated Services Router, or ISR, it can be set up as a router, firewall, VPN, Voice Gateway, SIP session border controller, transoder, conference bridge, and survivable remote gateway, all at the same time, on the same box! read more »

Cisco 2800 ISR Router Configuration Example for NAT and VPN
Posted in Data Networks, Network Security, Unified Communications on March 30th, 2009 by Rolf – Be the first to comment

I recently did a somewhat complex install of a Cisco 2800 Integrated Services Router. I enabled many of the features that come standard in the Advanced IP Services IOS, and thought it would be useful to show what a relatively current configuration would look like.
What made this installation fun was the use of object groups on the 2800 router. That is a new feature in the 12.4.20T version of code that made things interesting. The router has a GUI, but of course everything was set up in command line. I learned some neat things from this install, and based on the experience, I created a clean reference config for discussion purposes. This example is for the NAT and VPN, I will leave the voice configuration for a different example. Also, I did not set up SSL VPN on this box, nor did I use the newer version of firewall – this one is based on CBAC. read more »

It seems like one of the major tasks that I have been doing on a daily basis for the last ten years is creating network designs for people. Since a large part of the business that my company does is put in place a complete IP phone system into organizations that have between 50 and 3000 users, me and the other design guys create a lot of designs.
Most organizations do not upgrade their LAN to prepare for the future – most of them don’t touch the network as long as it is running properly and supporting the user’s applications. When starting the planning process for putting a secure voice system on the network, that takes the network requirements to another level.
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These are the most common, current Cisco products that are used at organizations that have between 100 and 3000 hosts on the system. The links go directly to the datasheets, and bypass all the annoying marketing and obsolete product links that are found on the Cisco website.

People start businesses every day. I live in Georgia, just north of Atlanta, in a part of town where retail storefronts have been multiplying without end. Many of the businesses are branches of larger corporations, or franchises. Some of them are independent stores. Every single one of the franchises and independent stores were opened by someone who had the courage to invest a significant portion of their savings into their dream, then work hard and sacrifice to help it to succeed.
Those are just the visible aspects of entrepreneurship.For every storefront business that opens up, there are just as many if not more businesses started by people in less visible locations.There are office parks without storefronts tucked away around every corner, and home based endeavors like services, multi-level marketing, and online businesses.
I started a business in just about the most unsound way possible. The errors I made were numerous. read more »

Money is tight these days, and only the most essential projects are getting funded. In the data networking realm that means all projects have to show tangible immediate benefits, and save money to boot.
In the Return On Investment discussion, these can often times be split out into hard dollar and soft dollar cost savings. Hard dollar costs are what the organization pays out in cash every month, quarter, and year. For example, PBX lease payments, voice trunk line charges, or call center staffing level, are all examples of hard dollar costs to which savings can be applied. read more »

Get the right IP phones and POE switches
Posted in Data Networks, Unified Communications on February 13th, 2009 by Rolf – Be the first to comment

Last year we learned a lesson about POE switches the hard way. Cisco had some nice new gigabit phones start shipping, and had been shipping gigabit POE switches to power them. One of our customers wanted gigabit ethernet to their desktop, so we specified the gig phones with the gig switches. Since all the switches were going to be in one closet, we recommended four 48 port POE switches, along with 120 POE phones. Everything was going great, until we started putting the phones out on the desktop. read more »

Even though it is very convenient to look up pricing for servers, switches, routers, firewalls and the like online, that is the worst way to purchase. I have been on the inside of IT sales for a long time, and can give you many reasons why you should by from a local Value Added Reseller, as they are known:
1. Best price. If you talk with a local reseller, and either pretend or actually let them help make a recommendation read more »