For a while now we’ve used other Brother P-Touch printers for labeling equipment… and they worked. But figuring out how they’re going to look with a simple lcd screen was never fun. Then I got my hands on this handy little printer, the Brother PT-1230 “PC Connectable” printer. By PC connectable they mean it has a USB port.  Of course some program needs to be run to design a label, but for PCs with Windows prior to Win7, you can leave the switch on the back in basic mode, and the software’s on the device itself. For Windows 7, you need to download the enhanced version (which you probably want to do anyway for the extra features like barcodes), and throw the switch in the back.

The list price on this little sucker is a bit unrealistic at $79. But it’s often at half that at buy.com  ( Buy.com link ) and sign up for thier daily emails, and every so often (3 or 4 times a year maybe) it will go on sale. It was on sale a few weeks ago for $16.99 with free shipping.  If you want one decide beforehand and wait for the sale. Once you see it, don’t hesitate or it will sell out on you. It happened to me twice, once I “thought about it” and when I went back it was sold out, and the other by the time I read the email it was gone already. But as they say 3rd time’s the charm.

For anyone sending equipment to colo centers this can be a life saver. Label your equipment with hostname, main ip, contact name and phone number. It can really help them find you server in racks of dozens of servers… Also if you have multiple drives label each drive, for example, use /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, etc.  This way if a drive fails, it makes them determining which drive to swap pretty painless. After all you’re paying for their time usually, you want them to be fast about it.  I also suggest using the brother “Extra Strength Adhesive” series of tapes. Be aware that there are multiple sizes (widths) of tape. The largest this will use is 1/2″, so the TZS231 gives you the largest printing area for black on white labels. I don’t recommend the TZS131 (black on clear) as they can be hard to read unless your surface is a light color.

I’m going to do a short review of another Brother label printer but I just got this link to a Brother QL-570 from buy.com for $35 shipped (not a bad price)… This is an address labeler so I was interested but then I read:

The Brother QL-570 Label Printer can print up to 50 labels per minute (faster then one per second!).

Did I miss a memo or something??  When did we change the number of seconds per minute to 50?  Maybe it’s one of those European things like the electricity being at 50Hz instead of 60…  Since last I checked, and until someone sends me a copy of the memo, we still have 60 seconds in a minute. So to be “faster than one per second”, it would need to print MORE THAN (not “up to”) 60 per minute. So does the copy writer for Brother’s specs need to go back to grammar school science class, or are they playing fast and lose with the features list?

I hate things like this… I’m sure they know that it’s not faster than 1 per second. They shove this garbage in there expecting up to just read and accept it without thinking. It’s as if they think we’re stupid… maybe we are, we keep letting them get away with it.

Lower Costs and Increase Differentiation with Cloud Storage
on Tuesday, March 2, 2010 1pm – 2pm EST

Join Jack Norris, VP of Marketing and Business

Development at Parascale, as he presents “Lower Costs and Increase Differentiation with Cloud Storage”. This webinar will provide an overview of how service providers today are using enterprise cloud storage to reduce operational costs. This session will also discuss how cloud storage can serve as a flexible platform for an array of new value-added services for the future.

In this webinar, you’ll learn how to:

Quickly and cost-effectively scale up, without increasing management complexity
Provide a flexible storage platform for internal use, partners and customers
Repurpose fully depreciated hardware into cloud storage nodes
Support a variety of use cases to maximize the value of cloud storage infrastructure
Maintain high availability, replication and security for today’s hosted private clouds
Jack Norris has over 20 years of enterprise software experience with leading virtualization and storage technology companies, both private and public organizations. During this time, he has catapulted start-ups including Rainfinity, the leader in network file virtualization acquired by EMC, to a leader in its respective marketplace and successfully directed the integration of its technology into EMC’s virtualization portfolio.

Most recently, Norris served as vice president of marketing for Wanova, an early-stage desktop virtualization software provider; and previously held senior executive roles with Aster Data, Brio Technology, SQRIBE, and Bain Consulting. Norris holds an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, and a BA in economics with honors and distinction from Stanford University.

Register here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/578972152

This was sent to me in email with no source listed… but I thought it was funny and would share it with you. If someone knows the source, let me know and I’ll gladly give credit and put a link to the site.

After being told “We’re still rolling out Buzz to everyone, so if you don’t see it in your Gmail account yet, check back soon.” , I found a way to get it NOW!

Just go to http://buzz.google.com  then click the “Try Buzz in Gmail” button. Poof, instantly pushed it to my gmail account right then and there. After that it was available in my gmail account. Let me know if it works for you or not too…

http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/web-seminars/display-507.html

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Join us for Part 1 of the MySQL in the Cloud webinar series with Jimmy Guerrero and Mike Frank of the MySQL group at Sun Microsystems. In this presentation we will explore the benefits and some specifics related to deploying and managing MySQL in a “cloud” environment. We will discus several cloud computing platforms suitable for hosting MySQL, including the Joyent Public Cloud, Amazon EC2 and Windows Azure. Included will be a discussion of cloud enabling technologies like VMWare and Xen. If you are interested in learning how to leverage cloud computing with MySQL, this webinar is for you.

WHO:

• Jimmy Guerrero, Sr Product Marketing Manager – Sun Microsystems
• Mike Frank, Sr Product Marketing Manager – Sun Microsystems

WHAT:

MySQL in the Cloud – Part 1: Introduction to Deploying MySQL in the Cloud web presentation.

WHEN:

Thursday, February 25, 2010: 10:00 Pacific time (America)

The presentation will be approximately 45 minutes long followed by Q&A.

So you want to start your own webhosting business… Should you choose “reseller hosting”? And what is it? Numerous options exist to get started selling hosting as a side or primary business. But like everything there are trade-offs, things to consider, and “gotchas” to watch out for… In part 1 of our new Getting Start series, I’m going to talk about what is “reseller hosting”, who it is right for (and not), and what to look for.

Reseller hosting is a shared server setup, meaning your accounts will be placed on the same server as others from other customers. This is probably the number one thing to watch out for with reseller hosting. Since you have no control over the other customers, or their customers, you have to be able to trust that the provider is setting things up properly, securely and and monitoring/maintaining the server and network properly.  Things could go wrong if not done properly… insecure setups can lead to others getting to your data, a spammer could get onto the server leading to blacklisting, or an account could suck up all the bandwidth or cpu resources. These are just a couple examples of what could go wrong. Since you’re not in control of the server, you need to be able to rely on the provider to watch for it and fix it quickly should it happen.

Leaving the server administration is also one of the biggest advantages as well. This is especially true for new hosts who probably don’t have the experience or manpower to administer servers on their own. It is also considerably cheaper to go the reseller route. A decent reseller account can be had complete with control panel, possibly some billing software to handle collections from your customers, installation script, etc. for $10 to $15 per month.

When looking for a reseller account, be aware of the disk space and traffic (often incorrectly call bandwidth) that are included. Some reseller accounts can get so large in these stats that they rival small VPS accounts. When choosing you want to selection on that meets your needs and provides some growth room. You also want to make sure that the provider will upgrade the account without having to migrate and without penalty.

A nice feature, if you can get it, is a dedicated ip address or two for your accounts. This does a couple things for you. One it limits the impact if a spammer gets onto the server. Blacklists usually are at the single ip level unless it’s so rampant on a network that they block the whole network. It also does something else… The larger hosts probably have multiple physical servers.  By having your accounts to a single ip address, migrating the account, say for load balancing the servers, becomes significantly easier WITHOUT changing ip address. If your account shares ips with other accounts, that option is out the window…

If you’re serious about growing your business, a reseller account is a good way to get started with minimal cost.  But be sure to check with the company that they will support you should you need to move up to a vps or dedicated servers. That dedicated ip address can help there too. Once the vps is up and running they can copy the data over and move the ip to the new server. We’re talking minutes of downtime… a lot easier than if you had to backup the accounts, download the backup, upload to the new server and then change dns, and potentially wait hours for dns cache to die.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment here to ask or email me at rob -at- lagniappeinternet.com

On January 12th, a series of earthquakes measuring 6.5 to 7.3 on the Richter scale devastated Haiti. There is now a critical shortage of essential supplies and support personnel to assist the people of Haiti through this crisis.

Although normally fiercely competitive, as members of the hosting community we know that the power we wield as a group is much more than we can wield individually. And so we’ve come together to help assist those affected by this disaster. With the generosity of all our combined customers, we hope to make a difference. And you can too. One dollar helps. One hundred dollars helps one hundred times more.

Please visit and consider supporting the Hosting for Haiti project today – Read more at http://www.hostingforhaiti.com/

http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/web-seminars/display-499.html

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Join us for an overview of various virtualization technologies and how they work with MySQL. We will examine how to best optimize your infrastructure investment using virtualization and explore best practices. We will cover virtualization platforms like VMWare, Xen, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Sun Solaris Containers/Zones, Parallels Virtuozzo and others and how to best leverage their built-in features to make MySQL more efficient, easier to manage and more highly available.

WHO:

• Mike Frank, Sr Product Manager, Sun Microsystems – MySQL Group
• Jimmy Guerrero, Sr Product Manager, Sun Microsystems – MySQL Group

WHAT:

MySQL & Virtualization Webinar Series Part 1: Introduction to Deploying MySQL in Virtualized Environments web presentation.

WHEN:

Wednesday, February 17, 2010: 10:00 Pacific time (America)

The presentation will be approximately 45 minutes long followed by Q&A.

One of the harder things for me is coming up with ideas for articles… I’ve been doing this a long time and trying to put myself back into the mindset of a relatively new webhosting entrepreneur can be difficult for me.  I have to think about what might they want to know. I’m not saying I know it all. That’s just plain impossible. There’s always something new to learn… and I love learning. But what I might be looking to learn might not be interesting to you.

So I was wondering what would some of the readers here want to read about?  What topics interest you?  My experience ranges from programming to building server class systems, from DOS (yeah real DOS I’m that old) to HP-UX, from MySQL & Microsoft SQL to Rocket’s (formerly IBM’s) UniVerse database system.  And I don’t know something about it, all the better… I do love learning and can usually relate 25 years of IT experience to the new information.