Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Growth of the CCIE Population

I have always thought that one of the things that propelled Cisco to its prominence was its focus on training. After all, train more engineers and they will recommend your product. Its interesting to see how the number of CCIE's have grown over the years.
















Here is a cool Network World Blog with a more detailed analysis of the numbers.

Network World Blog

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Tool for Calculating Computer Room Power Requirements

Have you ever been asked to calculate how much power you will need for a computer room? Maybe you are opening a new field site, standing up a call center or planning for a data center. I have always found it time consuming to chase down the power requirements of the specific gear I plan to install in order to come up with a reasonable estimate. APC offers a great web based tool for estimating critical IT loads. The tool has the power needs of a plethora of commonly used gear. You can build a solution that will give you your overall power needs. The end result is a recommended APC UPS system (of course) but the power requirements are also handy for estimating generator needs etc. The tool is available at

APC Calculation Tool

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Hey Intermec, show us your back side...

Any IT manager who works for a distribution, trucking or delivery company no doubt deals with ruggedized mobile devices. A big part of daily operations for mobile field workers is the ability to print at customer locations. This is generally accomplished by mounting some type of ruggedized printer inside a vehicle in a secure and safe fashion. So, as an I.T. manager then, it is important that you know exactly how new printer models are built to mount in truck cabs and check-in rooms. Logical then that Interemc (one of the leader’s in ruggedized devices and printers) would make this type of information clear on their product web site. Wouldn’t you think there would be clear photo’s of the rear panel of printer’s clearly showing how specifications have changed? Apparently, Intermec doesn’t think so. I recently had to RMA over $100K of fixed mount printers because the rear mounting panel in the new model had been altered. Had this been clear on the web site this could have been avoided. Hey, Interemc, we mount your printers and really need to see how new model’s will impact our current mounting solutions. So, here is a tip for your web site, show us your rear!