Well it’s been awhile since I’ve posted on anything I’m doing at the day job.

Because of the usual budget crunch I’m building an Openfiler server to use as a temp solution. It’s amazing how much the lack of space across the board hinders your overall day to day job.

We’ve pretty much settled on VMware ESX 3.5 for our virtualization platform. Virtual Iron really just isn’t up to the table all the way when it comes to the extra features that VMware offers. They may seem like minor features but honestly it’s what makes VMware the best solution for us.

I’m also really looking hard for something to replace our current monitoring solution that is way long in the tooth. A previous administrator had Servers Alive setup for simple monitoring of availability and Solarwinds setup to monitor bandwidth across our VPN concentrators and frame routers. I would really like something open source of course, but something that combines availability and bandwidth monitoring. Alerting is a must, we use email but are considering setting up SMS for emergency alerts. Any suggestions? Please drop them in the comments.

Thanks, and I’ll try to keep this updated a bit more.