Jason Powell - Church IT and Other Musings

sticky post: Church IT Info and Links...

Are you involved in IT for your church/ministry? If so you really need to check out our active Church IT community at http://churchITnetwork.com. Here you'll find other like minded IT peers from across the globe sharing tools and best practices in efforts to push the Kingdom forward.  ALSO MAKE SURE you're subscribed to the Church IT enewsletter. Here are a few select quick links as well:
- Listen/join the Church IT Podcast
- Join the 24/7 Church IT Chat Room

GCC's Servers & Storage have a new offsite home! Part 1

This is part 1 of a multi-part series of blog posts about the COLO move we made last Sunday. Part 1 is just the all staff email I sent to our staff about the change. Normally my all staff emails are pretty brief and to the point, but I decided to be more verbose about this change since it was so monumental. Parts 2 and beyond will have more juicy details and specifics about the project. Happy reading!

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Beloved staff friends,
Just a heads up that tomorrow/Sunday afternoon we're making one of THE largest IT transitions in GCC's history … and hopefully you'll hardly notice it at all :-) What cha doin'? Well, we're moving the bulk of all our servers and storage gear to a state of the art Data Center/Colocation Center (aka the COLO) at Union Station in downtown South Bend! (yes, across the street from The Cove)
Uh, dude? Wha??? It's a long story that started last Spring and has some fun God stories :-) The short of it is we now have space in … get this … the same facility that houses the Notre Dame Supercomputer Cluster, some of the Amazon.com servers, and many other large companies local and US. We also have a dark fiber connection from Union Station to GCC (think of it as a really flippin' long network cable) which will make accessing GCC servers no different really than if they're housed at GCC. Cool eh? You've actually already been using the dark fiber and some of our gear already at the COLO. Our uber fast internet connection originates at Union Station and our email server was moved over there last Weds night. Booyah!
Why do this? We don't really have the type of space we'd like at GCC to house our critical gear. From security access, to backup power needs, to AC, to fire suppression (sprinklers and servers don't mix), etc. Union Station gives us all that and more … and we got a killer deal on it. Basically, we'll sleep better at night when storms roll through and tornado warnings go off knowing our gear and YOUR DATA is in a secure hardened building with lots of redundancies.
So after months of planning, late night work at GCC and Union Station (aka the COLO) we're finally ready to move most of our gear…and yes we are excited!!!
What stays at GCC? A few things will stay at GCC like the bookstore/café server, print server, and filezilla (aka the media drive). These, along with internet access, will remain available while we're moving stuff downtown.
So after the last expo is over (1pm-ish) we'll start powering down all the servers that are moving. You still get email access during this time.We then CAREFULLY unrack, box and load the gear for drive over to Union Station. Installing the gear at the COLO will be the longest part as we have to cable things compactly and neatly due to space constraints. During this time we'll have to drop email access periodically.Then we'll power things back up and start testing systems. Begin the office pool now on what time we actually leave the COLO and head home :-)
We'll be live streaming much of the activity (because we're geeky that way) here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/jpowellcam

Follow @gcctechops on twitter with notifications turned ON if you want up to date info on when we're making changes, stuff that's broken, and when it's fixed :-) DON'T USE TWITTER? No problem! You can get TXT notifications without using twitter:

Just text FOLLOW GCCTECHOPS to 40404

If you have any questions about this don't hesitate to contact me directly. And we'd certainly covet your prayers tomorrow. We've tried to plan this process well and not disrupt activities Sunday afternoon, but there are so many complex moving pieces and we all know technology can be finicky at times.

Thanks,

Jason … No, COLO does NOT mean Colorado! … Powell

Help Desk Stats For 2011 Part 1

I enjoy stats. So when each year ends it's fun to see how our help desk stats have changed vs the prior year. Did we have more or less support requests? What were the variables driving the overall activity each month and the entire year? Were any IT initiatives or improvements reflected in the stats?

All things considered equal, we're hoping to see fewer overall requests each year. If that's the case, one could assume that our systems and equipment are performing well and thus staff are busy getting ministry done instead of needing IT support. However, things are often changing from year to year so it's important to factor in all variables. Opening a new multisite campus, replacing a phone system, upgrading everyone to a new version of X software - all these types of changes usually bring an uptick in support requests.

So how did we make out in 2011? Although I was VERY pleased to see that our overall requests were down from last year, I wasn't very surprised. Why? Our team, which includes several awesome volunteers, has labored hard over the past years to build a very solid IT foundation. And when you build a very solid foundation it will be reflected in things like server/service uptime and accessibility. Last year was an extremely quiet year from a "problem" standpoint … servers and their services did their thing and plugged along without intervention. This was a huge blessing since 2011 was the busiest year we've seen in a long time for other reasons. 2011 was our first year going from a 3 man IT team down to 2. Add to that several LARGE projects like: planning for building expansion that broke ground late 2011, planning to open a new pre-school in 2012, moving our multisite location to a permanent location with staff offices, relocating our main fiber connection into the building, started transition to predominately Mac platform for end users, and prepping to move the bulk of our production IT gear to a new datacenter downtown. There's prob other stuff, but those were some of the big one's that came to mind. So 2011 was crazy busy, but not from helpdesk requests thankfully! If we'd had stuff breaking left and right on top of all the big projects … well, I'm not sure the outcome ;-)

Stay tuned for part 2 where I'll go over more thoughts on our help desk stats and the tools we've used over the years.

Other 'help desk' posts you might like: http://jpowell.blogs.com/.services/blog/6a00d8345325d569e200d8345325d769e2/search?filter.q=help+desk

My 2012 One Blog Post A Week Goal

Well hello there blog! Long time no see.

After severe neglect over the past 2 years, I've decided (after much building guilt and prompting from friends/peers) to revive you again from the ashes of despair. My goal is simple: One blog post for you each week.

I've even asked a few select friends to keep me accountable to you this year :-)

So stay tuned my friend! I look forward to getting to know you again!!!

REGISTRATION OPEN for our Fall 2011 Regional Roundtables

REGISTRATION OPEN for our Fall 2011 Regional Roundtables:  
Below are the sites confirmed with possibly 1 more still TBA.  You'll not want to miss this opportunity of learning from your fellow Church IT peers!
Cost is $35.  Go to http://citrt.org for registration and more details.  Registration closes Oct 15 so signup ASAP.

Austin, Texas - Hill Country Bible Church - October 25th
Albuquerque, NM - Calvary Chapel Albuquerque - October 26th
Ft Lauderdale, FL - Calvary Chapel Ft. Lauderdale - October 26th
Indianapolis, IN - Northview Church - October 20th
Minneapolis, MN - Bethlehem Baptist - October 28th
McLean, VA - McLean Bible Church - October 24th
Nashville, TN - Brentwood Baptist - October 20th
Riverside, CA - Harvest - October 26th
Rockford, IL - Heartland Community Church - October 25th
St. Louis, MO - The Crossing - October 25th
Savannah, GA - Savannah Christian Church - October 25th

I'll be at the IL location ... looking forward to seeing and learning from my Church IT peers. Geeks for Jesus!!!

Dell Technology Symposium for Non-Profits in partnership with Joyce Meyer Ministries and the Church IT Roundtable

If you're not signed up for the CITRT enewsletter you missed seeing the below info ... and shame on you for not being signed up already!  Since this Dell deal is short notice I'm posting the enewsletter here for your viewing pleasure :)

UPDATE 7/7/11 ... if you filled out the survey you should have gotten this email from Dell..
As we draw closer to the Tech Summit, the excitement within Dell is growing!  We are making final preparation for your arrival and have a great agenda we will be finalizing this morning.  I wanted to take this opportunity to send out Dell’s preferred hotels.  We have negotiated rates for our colleagues and guests so please take advantage.  If you have any questions, please let me know.
 
Dell will be providing transportation so for logistical purposes, we recommend the following hotels (Price sheet below):

Candlewood Suites Austin-Round Rock
Springhill Suites Austin-Round Rock
Homewood Suites Austin-Round Rock
Marriott Austin North
 
Note: You will be receiving a formal invite in the next couple of days for this event.  This will be critical to fill out and return as it will capture your flight and hotel information so that we can provide transportation.

FWIW - I know a number of CITRT peeps, including myself, are going to be staying at Springhill Suites.

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Hurry!  Limited time/space left for Dell's Free Technology Symposium for Christian Non-profits July 20-21!
This is a fun long story, but here's the short version - CITRT leadership recently learned of an upcoming meeting at Dell's HQ to foster peer learning among Christian non-proft orgs being spearheaded by Andrea Turek, Executive Director of IT at Joyce Meyer Ministries.  Since this sounded very similiar to CITRT, we reached out to see if collaborating might make sense.  Andrea hadn't heard of CITRT, but was very open to talk with us.  Several emails and conf calls later, we're excited to annouce our partnership with Andrea and Dell and to invite CITRT folks to Dell's campus for this free 2 day event.  Dell will be bringing in their engineering staff to talk with us about various topics many of us are wrestling with.  So while this is sorta last minute, it's an incredible opportunity to network with IT peers and learn about technology solutions to further ministry.  The event is free!  You just need to get yourself to Round Rock and find a hotel :-)

Here's the official invite from Dell:
You are invited to attend an exciting 2 day FREE event July 20-21 at the Dell Round Rock Executive Briefing Center focused on Christian non-profit organizations.  This event will provide content and best practices around the following topics:
Security – How to “plan” and create the best security roadmap solution
Storage -  Object Based Storage
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure – Save your budget by deploying VDI
Systems Management/Automation via KACE
Mobile Management-Apple, Android, Windows
DR and Backup – We all want it, very few have it
Digital Asset Management – Create, deploy reuse
Database /Application Integration- flow data back without hardcoding with Boomi
We hope you will be able join your peers for some exciting learning and fun.  If you would like to participate, please add your information the survey below so that we may send you a formal invite.  We currently have 17 registrations and will only have room for 30 total.  Registration closes July 11th.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/R8XHGF9 - to begin registration process (note: survey was created before we talked to Andrea & Dell so don't fret that there's no mention of CITRT)

OTHER NEWS...

Fall 2011 Regional Church IT RoundTables last week of October: 
The last week of October is our timeslot for all the regional sites to host their events with the exact day of the week up to the host site.  We have 2 sites confirmed but need many many more.  If you're interested in learning about becoming a regional site this fall check out this FAQ http://citrt.pbworks.com/w/page/7717466/hosting-a-regional-event-FAQ
You can also view the list of last year's host sites here http://citrt.pbworks.com/w/page/34816125/Past-CITRT-Events
If you're interested in being a host site this fall please send an email to info@citrt.org .. thanks!
Cost is $35 and once we firm up all the sites we'll send out registration info.

Spring 2012 National Church IT RoundTable:
It NOT too early to start planning for next spring's event!  Based on the attendance this past spring, we anticipate 200 IT peeps will be converging on Dallas next spring :-)
Put this on your calendar NOW and get it in your budget ASAP! 
Spring 2012 National Church IT RoundTable
April 18-20
$75 includes lunch/dinner both days
Watermark Community Church
Dallas, TX

As always, we welcome any suggestions/input you have on making CITRT better. What's working? What's not? How do we grow it? This is YOUR community.

Thanks,
CITRT Leadership Team
Geeks for Jesus!

Server Rack moving ... again!?

I just sent this email to All Staff ... which is pretty funny considering it was almost exactly 6yrs ago that we moved our server rack up to it's current location :-)

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Howdy fellow STAFF-mates!

Tuesday July 12th starting at 6pm we're shutting the entire GCC computer network down … assume nothing will work … internet, printing, file access, nada.  Why???  Cause we're moving our server rack (seen below) from it's home up in the Tech Office space down to the lower level to the communications room … it's down the back hallway behind the farm and garden patch rooms.  Yes, that's 2 levels and NO we don't have an elevator to move a large heavy welded together rack and several hundreds pounds of expensive server gear from our area to the main level :-)

On the plus side we've made this move before, but in the opposite direction back on June 21, 2005 … read about it http://jpowell.blogs.com/jason_powell_church_it/2005/06/a_lift_and_a_wi.html

Why move??  Several years ago we needed easy access to our servers so having them in close proximity to our workspace was necessary.  In the past year or 2 we almost never look at them anymore … gotta love the advances in server virtualization and no longer doing tape backups!  Now, the bulk of our switching gear is down in the lower level comm room so moving the rack down there will make things easier from a cabling/networking perspective, we also believe the equipment down in it's new home won't require special cooling like it does today thus saving electrical costs.  Plus, having the gear on the lower level makes us feel better when there's a tornado warning for our area :)

So there ya have it!  We're moving servers around next Tuesday so expect nothing to work :-)

If you have any questions or concerns please let me know ASAP.

Thanks,
Jason … lift with your legs, not with your back … Powell

REMINDER: LIVE Interactive Church IT Podcast each month!

Being engaged on twitter so much I forget about my blog as a vehicle for sharing info ... note to self to do a better job with that :-)

Anyways, just a reminder to make sure you're scheduling time to join the LIVE Church IT Podcast each month!  So go now, open your calendar, and schedule in the 1st Friday of each month at 11am Eastern to join the phone conference bridge and chatroom.  Info on how to connect is on CITRT.org or quick link is http://citrt.pbworks.com/w/page/34565071/Podcast-Episodes

This Friday one topic of discussion is Google's recent stance on no longer allowing Churches access to the free EDU version of Google Apps. Other topics TBA and of course we'll have some open Q&A time so bring you questions/topics you'd like to discuss.

 

IT-focused missions projects for IT people?

While there’s great value in mission projects that build homes and such, many IT folks would rather use their IT skills in the mission field. For a few years, several of us in the Church IT Roundtable community have discussed how cool it would be to have IT-focused missions projects for IT people. Well, my buddy Clif Guy is turning this into a reality.

Next Friday (April 29th) I’ll be joining Clif and 2 other IT peers to head to Petit Goave, Haiti for 10 days to continue an IT project Clif’s been working on over there for the past year.

The Methodist Church of Haiti (Église Méthodiste d'Haïti or EMH) has a number of facilities in the town of Petit Goave (“petty gwahve”) within 1.5 miles of each other that include a church, school, offices, a medical clinic, a guest house, residences, conference facilities, etc.  Our project is to light up 5 buildings with Wi-Fi via building-to-building wireless Ethernet bridges (Ubiquity Nanostation Loco M900 and Ubiquity AirRouter) and connecting the network to two Internet circuits with failover capability.  One of these buildings is a school where we are also installing a computer lab as part of another IT project.  Here's a Google Earth view of the target buildings with red lines indicating building to building links to be established.

We're also hoping to have installed and working 2 new sattelite ISP links as the local ISP is very unreliable and has massive packet loss. On his third trip to Haiti in March, Clif took a small IT team to start this wifi project and got perhaps 25-30% done.  After our upcoming trip, He expects one more trip will be required in late July to complete this particular project.  When finished, more IT teams will be needed in the coming years to assist the EMH with IT needs in the disaster area and throughout Haiti.  Clif is also in the process of procuring grants to fund these future projects.

Why am I going?

1-    Clif sweet talked me into going. He has a very sultry seductive voice! ;-)’
2-    Gain in the field 1^st hand knowledge and experience setting up reliable building to building wLAN connectivity in about the worst possible conditions for success. Power issues, ISP issues, satellite issues, environmental issues, lack of IT equipment local (you can’t just run to Best Buy and purchase something you need), etc.
3-    Recon to see if this IT-focused missions work is something we could piggy back/reproduce for Granger’s mission efforts in India and elsewhere.

Cool eh? There are over 600 people that are in some way directly connected to our Church IT Roundtable community. Imagine what could be accomplished if small teams took on various IT projects across the globe to further God’s Kingdom!! 

Interested in being part of a future IT Project?  Next trip to Haiti is tentatively planned for July 22-31 and no you don’t have to be affiliated with the United Methodist Church. Leave a comment below or email Clif for more info.

Haiti tidbits I didn’t realize: Port Au Prince, Haiti is only a 2hr flight from Miami, FL. Haiti stays on Eastern Standard Time year ‘round just like Indiana used to :)

I’m very curious (and I know Clif is too) to hear your thoughts pro/con about these IT-Focused mission projects. Why would or wouldn’t you want to join a future IT project?  Are there other IT-focused mission opportunities that you know of?

** Also, wanna help support my upcoming trip?  I'm trying to raise another $500 by next Thursday. Just 50 peeps at $10 would do it so any support would be appreciated. Hit this paypal link. [$345 raised as of 4/24 6pm EDT]

 

2011 National Spring Church IT Roundtable Feb 24-25 - Near Orlando, FL - Be there!

If you haven't already seen the news on the CITRT twitter or facebook page >>> 

Spring 2011 National Church IT Roundtable - w00t! Spread the news! We're Florida bound for spring 2011!

Dates: Feb 24-25, 2011. There will also be pre and post event activities...most notably Wednesday. Calvary Chapel Melbourne is also not far from the Kennedy Space Center so add that to your possible extra things to do before/after the roundtable. More details and registration to follow shortly.  Huge thanks to Chris Kehayias for being our site host.  
Location: Calvary Chapel Melbourne 

Calvary Chapel of Melbourne
2955 Minton Road
West Melbourne, Florida 32904

Follow announcements at http://twitter.com/citrt and http://facebook.com/citrt

Our roundtables are for staff, volunteers and vendors who support the Church in the area of Information Technology without discrimination to the maturity of the technology they use or the size of the congregation they support.  Often we find ourselves with the skills and aptitudes to be successful but lacking in a critical piece of knowledge that may be found in a colleague within the Church IT community.  This is certainly true for those who are part-time staff or volunteers working in church IT.  We need information.  We need inspiration.  Above all, we need a community of like-minded peers.

I strongly encourage anyone and everyone involved in Church IT to make this a priority in 2011.  I've been to every roundtable since 2006 and I've found them to be absolutely invaluable.

Hope to see many of you in Florida this Feb!!

Prayers Appreciated For Ed Buford As One Chapter Ends and Another Begins

Heads up to my friends and church IT peers ... below is a copy of the GCC allstaff communication that went out yesterday about a big change in our TechOps department ...

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Subject: A note from Jason and Ed

Jason here—I’ll go first.

On October 7th 2003, only 2 months after I started working at GCC, I had my first meeting with a fella named Ed Buford.  Ed had his own IT consulting gig and soon after our initial meeting he started volunteering, which lead to contract work here and there, then in June 2004 he joined our staff team as Network Admin.

Back in the day, our technology infrastructure had not kept pace with our growth and Ed walked in to help with a network as stable as a house of toothpicks. Many of you remember. You felt the pain of almost daily email outages. Crashed hard drives with no back-up. Print jobs that mysteriously vanished. Network speeds that made you want to scream. Ahh, the good ole days.

Things have been stable and secure for quite some time now, and much of that is due to Ed’s contribution. He was one of the hands-on gurus who took an extremely overextended, unstable network infrastructure and rebuilt it from scratch. He has brought countless DOA computers back to life and saved us all from impending lost data doom more times than I can count. The projects he has personally influenced over the past seven years has not only gained GCC a reputation of innovative technology leader with churches across the country, but also with marketplace companies. Ed is known personally for his expertise and integrity not only with the people of Granger, but with anyone who has interacted with the ministry here. Today, our network is more stable, secure and efficient than many organizations ever see in the lifetime of operations. We have Ed to thank for a network foundation that is not only serving us well now, but has us well-prepared for the future.

Which brings us to the purpose of this email. Partly due to Ed’s handiwork and partly due to a change in technology strategy, we have come to the difficult realization that our network administrator no longer requires a full-time staff position. This has been tough for all of us—Ed is a loved family member of GCC with a tremendous history. None of us ever pictured an end to Ed’s season on the staff team, yet in many ways, he has worked himself out of a job.

His last day will be this Wednesday, December 8.  If you don’t get a chance to wish him well Wednesday, don’t fret.  You’ll be able to offer a proper farewell and hug Ed yourself at the staff Christmas Party. He and Laura will both be there.

Please join me in praying for Ed, Laura and the boys as they take steps towards a new normal. The first few days and weeks will be the hardest—but the God story has already begun. Through this entire process, they both have exhibited trust in God and love for their church family that is both inspiring and humbling. This is not an easy goodbye, but then again—it’s not goodbye.

Jason

And here’s a note to everyone from Ed …

Friends,

Change is a difficult thing to witness and often it’s more difficult to be a part of.  When I look back to the past seven years, change has been my constant companion at GCC. Even the past year great changes have been a part of my life as I walked my daughter down the aisle and as I walked both of my sons down into the water to be baptized.  In the midst of all this change there has been a constant and that constant is the love that I’ve felt from each of you; it is palpable and it has touched me in so many ways. It is because of so many of you that my family and I are who we are today. Your influence and love are imprinted on the character of each member of my family and for that I cannot express my gratitude.

The changes at hand bring a mixture of sadness and joy, and I would not lie to you and tell you that these changes will be easy. Instead I will tell you that I’m looking at these past seven years with celebration in my heart for these years have been filled with much joy. I have great anticipation for what God has in store for my family. The sadness I speak of has nothing to do with leaving GCC, simply because I’m not leaving GCC. Although I’ll no longer be employed by GCC, my church is GCC and I’m still a part of this church as are my family and we will be here. No, my sadness is because I’ll miss serving each of you in the great adventure facing the staff in the upcoming months.

Please join me in prayer for my family as we embrace the changes God has placed on our horizon and know that I’m praying for each of you as you embrace the changes facing you. Let me also ask that you lift up Jason and Justin as they try to figure out how to move forward and best serve you.

-Ed

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Please join me in praying for this next chapter in Ed's life.  He's a great man and great friend.  If you'd like to ping him personally you can find him at ebuford@gmail, http://twitter.com/ebuford, and http://www.facebook.com/ebuford 

Revamping IT Volunteerism At GCC Part II - Building Community

Continuing from Part I ...

Building Community

Another focus point of our revamp was finding ways to build better community with our volunteers.
Not too many things speak louder than when we invest in our volunteers with time.
So we decided to hit the pause button on Tech Ops tasks the 1st Monday evening of each month and dedicate that time to just hang with our volunteers.

What's that look like?  For starters we're inviting all current and potential volunteers to dinner at an offsite location each month.  Usually it will be "pay your own way", but we'll occasionally hope to make it a free dinner.  The purpose is simply to create space for getting to know each other better ... and what better way to do that with a bunch of geeks than with food!  Occasionally we may use this dinner meeting to share big picture info with the team, but typically the agenda will be ... eat and talk.

We're initially calling this the GCC Geeks Gathering and our 1st event is already scheduled - see http://gcctechops.eventbrite.com
One challenge will be finding places to eat that can easily accomodate our group as we predict it will grow...hence the use of eventbrite and RSVP's to gauge needs.

Other future community time could be tackling a community service project as group, helping each other with home projects, etc.  And of course there's the spirtual aspects of building community.  Praying for each other when times are rough, celebrating when things are rockin', challenging each other to take our next steps towards Christ.

Ripple effects... What if this grew beyond just being an "GCC" IT volunteer thing.  What if our volunteers started inviting their geek friends and co-workers to these Monday nights?  What would it look like to have a community of geeks that gather together to do life together?  What amazing stories could come out of the collision between geeks for Jesus and geeks that don't yet know they need Him?  Oh baby, that makes my heart beat fast and my brain short circuit! :-)

What our you doing to build community in your volunteer teams?

Here's a snippet from our recent Tech Ops Volunteer Info night where I go over some of our new 'community' initiative (audio is weak so crank up the volume) 

 

More to follow in Part III...

Revamping IT Volunteerism At GCC Part I - The Big Picture

Over the past couple months, my team has spent considerable time and energy around revamping our IT volunteer ministry.  Volunteering in our area has gone through many phases in my 7yrs at GCC, but this is our most focused effort to date to find new ways to engage people of all skill levels and build community.  It was a challenging, but rewarding process that has given us a great foundation from which to build upon in the months to come.

As we brainstormed items like new volunteer opportunities, we also went back and refined, “What is Tech Ops?” The goal: give a quick big picture overview of our department from technical facts to team culture to “set the stage” for people interested in volunteering.  Here's the result:

TECH OPS | BIG PICTURE

What we do:

The Tech Ops Department exists to equip the staff and members of GCC to be efficient and effective in the fulfillment of the Great Commission by providing relevant and strategic information, technological tools, technical support, and training.  In our service to the body of Christ, we seek to be positive, humble, approachable, responsive, and solution-oriented.

We care for:

• Network of approximately 200 computers both Dell and Apple
• 30+ virtual servers running on 2 Dell R710 VMware VSphere hosts tied to an EqualLogic PS6000E SAN
• Heavy Microsoft server and applications shop. Gotta love that non-profit discount!
• Server 2008 R2, Exchange 2010, SQL 2008 R2, SharePoint 2010 Foundations
• Windows Vista, Windows 7, OSX
• HP Gigabit to the desktop switching infrastructure
• ATT MetroE 100Mbps down/10Mbps up with backup internet through Comcast Business 50Mbps down/10Mbps up
• Veeam and DPM2010 for backups including offsite replication to DR site downtown
• Full building public and private WiFi access

Who we are:

• Group of Network ninjas, cable-monkeys, CIOs and everything in between who lives to empower people with smart and hard-working technology while simultaneously protecting those same people from technological pitfalls and vulnerabilities (including themselves).
• Technology concierges who serve people—we whole-heartedly understand that how people “feel” about technology is more important than the functionality it has the potential to deliver. At the end of the day we’ve done our job if we deliver a peaceful, easy feeling for users on all every point of the skill continuum.
• A unique and inspiring culture full of sled dogs that are energized, demanding, encouraging and a little weird—we have a deep appreciation for a serious sense of humor when under pressure.
• On-call “IT” doctors with no office hours or geographic boundaries who understand that a good techie has less to do with degrees, certifications, and experience than being smart, passionate, and fearless.
• Team oriented. No matter how great the talent, this is a no-ego fly zone.
• At the end of the day— the why trumps the what—and we work as one every time.
• Dual platform with love for both mac and PC users. We are a bi-partisan team with no annoying fan boys.
• Super talented in a general way, each bringing our own unique blend of skills to the table to get a job done.
• Leaders of people or projects—working together to rally the troops or the tasks.
• Servants committed to supporting and fulfilling the mission, vision, values and goals of the church.

The above is now included our our volunteer interest webform (see http://gccwired.com/volunteer) under Technical and Skilled.

In future posts I’ll go over some of the new volunteer roles we created and other nifty aspects of our volunteerism revamp. If you were interested in volunteering in IT at GCC, what else could we include in our "big picture" to help you determine if this would be a good fit for you?

[update: Part II - Building Community now posted]

Church Techies Biggest Loser #6 Signup

That’s right! It’s time for installment #6 of our Church Techies Biggest Loser contest!  Here are our guidelines/rules based off our prior BL1 , BL2 , BL3 , BL4 and BL5 contests.

Would you believe to date participants have lost a combined weight of over 1600 pounds!  Wow!

Eligibility

Any church IT, Web, AV, Tech/Production Arts staff (full, part-time, or volunteer role).  Church ChMS peeps and other Church tech consultants are encouraged to join as well.

Don't fit the above roles, but want to join too? Shoot me an email and we can discuss.

Reduced price from $25 down to $15 to register ... no refunds … period!

Dates

• Starts Friday Sept 3rd... but you can join ANY TIME after too. Just means you have less time to burn off the flab.
• Ends Nov 23rd (just in time to enjoy Thanksgiving)
• Winners get a split of the total registration pot less paypal transaction fees (~2.5%) ... breakdown of 75%, 20%, 5% ... if any vendors kick in prizes too then those well be in the mix to choose from as well.

Weigh Ins

• Weigh ins should occur each Friday at the same time of day. It's OK if you have to weigh in a day or so late periodically.  Sometimes travel or life just interferes.  No problem.  Just make sure you get your weight recorded each week.  You can only miss a weigh in or 2 before you'll start getting nasty emails from me!
  • Missing 2 weeks in a row IS BAD!! and will most likely get you booted from the contest (no refund). It's not fair to others who are keeping their stats updated, especially once the contest is getting down the wire.
• Participants will record their weekly weight each Friday in our online Zoho Spreadsheet (you'll get an email after you register).
• The same scale must be used for each weigh in.
• The same clothes or lack thereof must be worn at each weigh in.
• Weigh ins will be recorded in whole pounds. If your scale reports partial pounds just drop the fraction...no rounding up or down
• In the final 2 weeks there will be a cap on how much weight you can drop in a given week period ... to keep away from crazy dehydration techniques ;-)

Winning

It's not very fancy, but whoever has the largest weight loss % wins. (max weight - min weight) / max weight

Honor System

The contest assumes that all participants will follow the teachings of the Bible ... you know ... don't lie, don't cheat! If you are dishonest God will deal with you justly.

If you're in ... hit this link to register. If you prefer to send $ another way just shoot me an email (gccjason at gmail) and we'll discuss.

Check out the prior Church Techie Biggest Losers: BL1 results and BL2 results and BL3 results and BL4 results and BL5 results

Fall Church IT Roundtables ... be there!

If you’re not following the #citrt hashtag on twitter shame on you! :-)  Why? because you’re missing out on some great IT content and building community with other IT peeps…

…AND you’ve probably missed some of the recent info about the upcoming Fall Church IT Roundtables being hosted all across the country.  So quit your stalling and follow #citrt hashtag … heck, here’s a simple webpage that will do it for you even if you’re not twitter.  Bookmark it now!

OK, rant over … back to the point of this blog post …

Fall Church IT Roundtable prelim info is now posted on http://citrt.org

Target dates are Oct 25th or 26th, but ultimately up to each host site.

Cost is only $35

Locations all across the country.

Even our CITRT friends in Australia are doing it :-)

So hit the citrt.org site and find the nearest host site to you.  No sites very close?  Consider hosting your own fall event…see the host site FAQ.

And finally … please pass this info along to everyone you know involved in Church IT whether staff or volunteer.

For Sale: Dell EqualLogic PS100E Storage Array

update >>> SOLD!

We just got a brand new 16TB EqualLogic PS6000E array to add to our EqualLogic SAN with the idea to “retire” one of our PS100E’s and use another PS100E for offsite replication.

We’d like to sell the retired array to a church/ministry that wouldn’t typically be able to afford an EqualLogic SAN.  This would be a great starter SAN for someone just getting into virtualization or someone needing higher performing iSCSI vs something like an MD3000i, Drobo, etc.

Specs
*EqualLogic PS100E
*14x250GB SATA 7200rpm = 3.5TB raw (who cares though) = ~2.2TB usable at RAID50 w/ 2 global hot spares (RAID50 is what most EQL customers run)
*Dual Controllers
*Here’s a blog post from when we 1st installed it http://jpowell.blogs.com/jason_powell_church_it/2006/07/san_project_upd.html ... Still has 5+ years of life left
*Just pulled from production environment and will be re-certified upon sale
*$5000 for the array +1 year of Dell NBD service at $2100 = $7100

I’d be happy to give anyone a demo of the interface and setup of the array if you’re interested … the beauty of EqualLogic is how easy/simple they are to setup and manage, especially for small IT shops.  We’ve been an EqualLogic shop since 2006 and still believe it’s the best enterprise iSCSI solution out there.

 

Happy Four Year Birthday to VMware Server! You Rocked For Us!

Since it didn't receive much, if any, news last week ... I thought I'd take a few moments to say Happy Birthday to VMware Server!  Hard to believe you're 4 years old already! 

While we're no longer using VMware Server, it had a monumental impact on our IT strategy and served us faithfully for over 3 1/2 years from Feb 2006 thru August 2009 ... forever changing the IT landscape at GCC.  In those years we were huge cheerleaders for the free VMware Server platform giving several public talks and demos ... culminating with VMware asking us to do a webinar for them :-)

So for fun here's a short look back at some of the VMware Server related "events" at GCC ...

Feb 2006 - GCC begins testing VMware Server Beta on a few lower priority applications like Terminal Services and WSUS.  We're so impressed that in the following weeks we start moving more and more applications into VM's.  Read the blog post

April 2006 - Our physical Exchange server pukes, so we rebuild it onto VMware Server.  We also start researching SAN solutions to take our virtualization environment to the next level.  Read the blog post

July 12th, 2006 - VMware Server 1.0.0 goes live and offers paid support options.  Of course by this time we're already sold on virtualization and VMware Server and have most everything running in a VM.  Read the blog post

July 2006 - I'm asked to give a presentation on our use of VMware Server at the Michiana IT Pro User Group.  Read the blog post

November 2007 - VMware contacts us and Ed does a webinar for them about our use of VMware Server.  Read the blog post

April 2008 - I present on Virtualization and VMware Server at MinistryTECH.  Read the blog post

April 2008 - Overview of our virtualization environment at the time. Read the blog post

August 19, 2009 - We begin saying farewell to VMware Server as we start our 1st Vsphere Install. Read the blog post

Why the switch from VMware Server?  Well, once you get over 20 VM's it becomes difficult to manage them all under the VMware Server platform.  You'll also get a performance increase by moving to a bare-metal hypervisor like ESX/ESXi.  So when I crunched the numbers, paying ~$1000/yr over 3 years to move us to Vsphere Standard was a no-brainer.

VMware Server is still available for free ... if you've not played with server virtualization (you need to be slapped mightly if that is true!) it's still one of the simplest ways to get your feet wet.

I will always have a special place in my heart for VMware Server ... thanks for all you gave to us at GCC ... and happy 4th BDAY!

Recommended Church IT Vendor/Partner List Ideas?

There are more and more churches looking for reputable IT service and product vendors that are ministry focused or at least very friendly towards churches/ministries.  There are also great ministry focused vendors looking to provide a great service/solution to churches/ministries at a great price.  The challenge is how to get the 2 sides together for a win-win?

I know from my own experience that I give a LOT of weight to vendors/products that I know other Church IT peers are using successfully.  Case in point: we’re looking very closely at Ruckus Wireless from Mirazon because of strong recommendations from Daryl Hunter.  I’m not alone, when I asked other’s in the CITRT IRC channel they all had a similar reply:

“I would be more likely to investigate those products and vendors ... especially if i hadn't heard of them or thought of them” – ccnash-scott

So … what’s the best way to create a list of Church/Ministry friendly IT partners/vendors … how/who would submit the vendor/partner … how could others then comment pro/con on their experience with said vendor/partner … maybe give it a star rating? … maybe something similar to Amazon and eBay comments/ratings?  How and how much do you moderate?  Allow anonymous feedback?  etc etc etc!

Does something like this already exist we might want to leverage?  May we can somehow create something inside our upcoming CITRT getshadetree release?  Someone in IRC mentioned this Wordpress plugin http://www.wpreviewsite.com/ Certainly looks interesting.

Already got some good feedback/ideas from a few IRC peeps like “allow anyone to submit a vendor/solution to the list, but require 2 or 3 people to vote “yes” before it gets approved”

Now it’s your turn.  What would be helpful to you from an IT role or vendor role?  Dream big and let’s see what we end up with :-)

Video of Rick Warren Addressing the Church IT Roundtable Crowd

If you missed the recent Church IT Roundtable at Saddleback Church … well, you missed an AMAZING event! 

Just one part of what made it so incredible was having Rick Warren sit down (mostly unannounced) and spend 1.5hrs speaking to us, doing Q&A, and taking pictures if people wanted (and of course most everyone did!).

Rick’s talk was awesome…so much so that we’ve gotten TONS of people requesting copies of the live video we were streaming.  And thankfully the captured stream audio/video turned out great!  So hit the image above to hear Rick’s heart for the church and technology. 

Rick even tweeted about our CITRT event :-)
@RickWarren: We hosted 2 day #citrt nat'l roundtable for U.S. IT/Tech Pastors. Brilliant men & women! I love these guys! Pr.27:23

Pic of my wife and I hangin’ with Rick.

Did you know Rick’s a HUGE hot sauce fan? I did, so during the Q&A I asked him what his favorite was :-) ... I then followed up by asking how he kept/keeps his marriage strong.  He took several minutes to answer and did it in 3 parts: Divert Daily, Withdraw Weekly, Abandon Annually...I think many of us geeks really needed to hear that.  I sure did!

We also got to experience what a funny guy Rick is … he’s hilarious!! 
Thanks Rick for taking the time out of your busy schedule to pour into 80+ Church IT leaders.  You marked us all in a very positive way.  Geeks for Jesus!!!

Veeam Virtualization Backup Software Discounts for Non-profits

Not heard of Veeam yet?  If your organization is invested in virtualization you really owe it to yourself to check ‘em out.  Veeam makes an award winning VM backup product, among other VM tools, and like a number of our IT peers we give it 2 thumbs up!

People continue to ask how do Churches get the best deal on veeam software.  Here’s what I have found so far … and yes, I got permission to post from both sources :)

From Mark at Veeam … find him on twitter @atxtraveler
I work specifically for the Dell relationship, and Dell has a dedicated discount program for non-profits, and Veeam has provided the "Public Sector" pricing which is 15% off list price on top of any of the products we have. So when it ships through Dell, they essentially take list -15% -Dell's Discount (which is completely based off the customer's spend).
So short answer is, all CITRT members can get a significant discount, but they all need to reach out to their Dell Software rep to get the best price from us.

From Craig at Mirazon … find them on twitter @mirazon
Jason, I just got word from Veeam that we can offer public sector pricing (15% off) to non-profits.  Mirazon will add another 5% for mentioning CITRT when requesting a quote if you want to mention that in your blog.

FWIW, we bought our Veeam Suite from Mirazon shortly after they participated and co-sponsored the Church IT Roundtable at GCC in 2009. 

Ruckus Wireless lunch-n-learn at GCC April 1st

Join us at Granger Community Church April 1st for a free lunch and a chance to learn about Ruckus Wireless gear sponsored by The Mirazon Group.  Signup
 
At Granger Community Church, we're currently researching options to upgrade our older non-managed Proxim .11a/g infrastructure to a centrally-managed, high-speed, high-density .11n network throughout our 100,000 square ft facility. After checking out options from the likes of Aruba, Proxim, Xirrus, etc we heard very positive reviews about Ruckus Wireless from other IT peers. Come learn with us about the Ruckus solution and how it could address our needs and yours ... and get some free food :-)

Ruckus Wireless
At Ruckus Wireless, we've been designing, manufacturing, and marketing Smart Wi-Fi products and Smart Wireless LAN (WLAN) systems ever since we first opened our doors back in June of 2004. Our patented, universe-leading Wi-Fi technology was just one reason we were named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum.
We hang our company hat on our Smart Wi-Fi technology, which uses an intelligent, high-gain directional antenna system and quality of service technologies to extend the range of Wi-Fi signals and automatically adapt to environmental changes. This results in Wi-Fi that, for the first time, reaches farther and is inherently more reliable. Our Smart Wi-Fi technology steers signals around interference, obstructions, and obstacles, to ensure unprecedented coverage and consistent performance. We truly deliver on the promise of wireless—no strings attached.

We’ll also attempt to live stream the session for those that can’t travel.