The Systems Engineer

So, we’ve field tested both the Storm and Bold in our IT department. As a matter fact, I’m posting this very topic from outside a grocery store on my Bold while the wife picks up a few odds and ends. We’ve had at least 4 Storms issued out and a few Bolds for a several weeks for test drives. The Winner? Bold – hands down. Storm is slower both on the local system itself and Verizon’s data network is notably slower than AT&T’s 3G network (at least in Tulsa and Houston anyway). The only noted downside to Bold from my perspective is the battery life gives you no mercy for forgetting to charge overnight, but I’m holding out for a Gen 2 battery sometime soon. Other than that, it’s local operations are way fast, 3G rocks and the display is pretty sweet too. The storm just didn’t cut it for what Corporate America expects from a business PDA. In the end, it seems Bold weathered the Storm.

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Provision your VM as normal however use a 1GB disk.
Log into your VMWare server command line via ssh or other CLI and go to the directory that contains the vmdk’s for the VM.

Assuming the VM name is SERVER01 issue the following commands. If the name were different simply replace SERVER01 with your server name.
vmkfstools -i SERVER01.vmdk 1.vmdk -d thin
rm -f SERVER01*.vmdk
vmkfstools -E 1.vmdk SERVER01.vmdk

This will clone the vmdk to a new vmdk but as type thin. Then it will remove the old vmdk’s. Then it will export the thin vmdk to be in place of your old one so you do not have to reconfigure the vmx.

Now log into virtual center and edit the settings for your virtual machine. Set the disk size to the maximum you wish it to be. The vmdk will appear to grow in command line. However if you look at the vmdk in the data store it remains 1G. The space is not actually used on the vmfs volume until needed by the VM.

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If your company is anything like mine, just about everyone has a handheld. I’ll spare you the sales pitch on Blackberry, but if this is your standard handheld read on!

Blackberry’s at my company are everywhere. We are pretty liberal when it comes to giving Blackberry replacements. No real testing or troubleshooting occurs to solve the problem. We simply buy a new one and replace your old one. This has led to quite a few handhelds that allegedly have problems. Some cut out in the middle of calls or won’t make calls at all. Some have been labeled as always having missed calls. Some got wet, some got scratched. Many of these devices are simply old. With no official upgrade policy in place for the software many are running old Blackberry OS’s.

Recently I did some testing with a Blackberry curve. This particular ATT Blackberry 8310 was in decent shape but had been labeled as cutting out during calls. I took this phone home for a few days and sure enough it cuts out in the middle of calls. In this instance the user was correct to complain. These calls dropping during conversation was very annoying. A check of the Blackberry OS showed that it was running a version that was about 2 years old. A quick download later I had the latest Blackberry OS. I loaded the device manager and app loader software on my laptop and updated the 8310. Once finished the device powered on and I quickly began testing.

Much to my amazement this old curve had been granted a new life! No more dropped calls. A simple OS upgrade has fixed this phones problem. The user no doubt got a brand new $400 Blackberry by reporting this issue. Money that could have been saved with a 10 minute phone os upgrade.

We have a box with about 150 Blackberry’s in it. Various models from 8700′s to 8800′s. Users now are getting 9000′s and 9530′s. However if we could began saving by breathing new life into our 8300′s and 8800′s we could save quite a few dollars. If you figure that half of the Blackberry’s in our graveyard box could be restored to full health, we could save $30,000 on replacing them. Thirty thousand dollars!!! At ten minutes an upgrade it would take twenty five hours to do all 150 devices one at a time. That’s $1200 an hour you could possibly save. Who wouldn’t be able to justify an employee performing these upgrades?

So the next time you have a Blackberry come back to your IT department as broken for some reason. See if a code upgrade helps. It’s faster than waiting for a new phone and quite a bit cheaper!

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