April ’08 Monthly Activity Report
Octel Replacement
We have had demonstrations by the top three candidates for replacing the Octel voice mail system. Each one had its good qualities, and each one had its bad. Over all each one will be a good fit with the university. It is hard with today’s technologies to find a comparable workhorse like the Octel, but for a 5 year solution they are all comparable.
Exchange 2007
The Exchange 2007 project has come to the next phase, we are redoing the architectural diagrahm to get more users onto the system. The new architecture will be a mixture of Virtual Machines and Physical machines. This should give the best performance. We are also looking at different types of clustering that would be applicable for a 5,000 user deployment.
Office Communications Server
The requirements for this project have mandated more research on tying this implementation into the current pbx system. There were a couple of options, one is to build a Linux sip gateway, and the other would be to buy a pre-built gateway. Even though the first option gives more flexibility, the second option comes with configuration and pretested compatibility.
Proofpoint New Hardware Deployment
After purchasing new hardware last month, we have spent this month planning out how to implement the new hardware, and get the cluster upgraded to 5.03. This planning is due to the two upgrading attempts that had to be backed out. The new plan takes a cautious, more methodical approach, while getting the new hardware in place as quickly as possible.
Exchange DR
This has been one of the operation issues that have been open for most of the month. RMSE was the product that we were using, we now must upgrade to RM. This is due to a Fliar upgrade on the Clariion. This has had to be coordinated with EMC and their support, due to the different parts that have had to be upgraded. This issue is still open, while engineering works out one of their bugs.
Certifications
I passed the MCSE 2003 Upgrade Exam, Yes, that means that I am now totally certifiable. or is that certified. Now I will be looking to find a more generic Messaging certification to round out my skills.