Jason Powell - Church IT and Other Musings

Server/SQL/VS 2008 Launch Event in South Bend

Got some updated info about the upcoming launch event in town April 9th ...

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I just wanted to provide an update on our Community Launch event, which is rapidly approaching.

Registrations – Please continue to make sure that you register if you plan to attend. We need a good estimate of numbers so we can get enough food. We are serving more than pizza at this event.

Needs – It would be helpful if someone could volunteer to take photographs during the event. We could then post these on our website. If you would like to volunteer to bring a digital camera and take photos please contact myself or Chris Dietz.

Prizes – We are still working out a few specifics, but we do plan on drawing for a few nice prizes.

All attendees will receive a voucher for 40% off of certification exams, 25% off of Windows Server 2008 classroom training, 30% off of Windows Server 2008 books from Microsoft Press and additional discounts on Microsoft elearning.

Great Info – Of course you will also get lots of great info on all three products from Microsoft and industry experts. This event is also a great way to network with possible employers and peers in your field.

We look forward to seeing you there!!!

Thanks,

Dustin

Dustin Hannifin

System Services Team

Crowe Chizek and Company LLC

Microsoft MVP - Office SharePoint Server

Blog: http://www.technotesblog.com

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Title:

April 2008 Meeting - Community Launch Event 2008

Body:

April's meeting is the MITPUG & MADNUG jointly sponsored Community Launch Event 2008 !

Topic / Presentation: Combined Community Launch Event (Windows Server 2008, SQL 2008, & Visual Studio 2008)
When:   Wednesday, April 9th, 2008
Where: Crowe Chizek and Co LLC.
            320 East Jefferson Blvd
            South Bend IN 46601

We are planning a combined Launch Event for all 3 Microsoft products. Since we anticipate a large attendance this month's meeting will be held at Crowe.

Please register if you plan on attending at: https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=126008

Speakers:

Angela Binkowski & Paul Hacker - Visual Studio 2008

Dustin Hannifin from Crowe & MITPUG - Server 2008

Dave Paulson - SQL Server 2008

Our House Is For Sale

If you've been following my Twitter you know as of Monday our house in Granger, IN officially went on the market ... sign in the yard and all.

This was not an easy decision, but it finally became the right one.  We're really trusting God with this given the horrible housing market right now.  I'd be lying if I said I wasn't both excited and terrified to see how this unfolds. 

And of course to make things more complex/interesting we're trying to find foreclosure/fix-r-up homes in the same school system which is turning out to be more difficult than originally thought in our price range.

Oh boy!  I'm sure when this roller coaster ride is over we'll look back and smile, but for now the ride is making me a bit nauseous :-)

Speaking of rides ... the black '97 M3 Sedan in the driveway will likely also be for sale .. only 99K miles and she likes to get up 'n go!

Welcome Matt Metzger to the GCC IT Team

Here's a fun email I got to send out to all GCC staff today ... figured I'd share with all of you as well :-)

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Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls ...

Today it is my most excellent happy joy to welcome the newest member of the GCC IT Team ... Matt Metzger!  Matt joins our merry band of geeks as our new IT Project Specialist.  What’s an IT Project specialist do?  Great question!  And I’d gladly tell you, but sadly then you’d have to die.  Let’s summarize by saying Matt will be doing covert work in the cubicle beside Daryl to support behind the scenes IT and web functions.

Matt starts April 7^th and we’re sooooo excited to have him joining our team.

Here’s some insider info on Matt:

• Matt was born as a missionary kid in Haiti, but grew up as a pastor's kid in Ohio. 
  • He's from the same small town as Jeff Myers.
  • they started a Bible study together in high school, and were in a rock band together in college named “Beneath Spreading Trees”
• Matt graduated from Bethel College with a degree in Music, and enjoys playing a variety of instruments.
  • Fortunately, he discovered that he wanted to turn his hobby of computers into his career, and his study of music into his hobby."
• He met his wife, Dana, during college and they married in 2001, as full-time students.
• After graduating, they sold what little they owned and bought one-way tickets to Guadalajara, Mexico.
  • They both earned a TEFL certification and taught at a private school for one year, before returning to the States in 2004.
• Matt & Dana first got involved at GCC because they wanted to be part of a small group, and saw a Starting Point sign-up on gccwired.com.
  • After landing in a group led by Mark Waltz, and attending the Core Classes, they decided to make GCC their church home and have loved being part of this family for a little over two years.
• Matt & Dana have a 2-year-old daughter, Cora, and two high-school exchange students living with them.
• Matt is a self-described huge geek and loves:
  • researching the latest IT developments
  • experimenting with Linux
  • solving Rubik's Cubes (record: 47 seconds).
• He also likes taking road-trips and spending time outdoors with his family.

You can get more Matt via http://mattmetzger.wordpress.com or his Facebook profile http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=5622188

Here Matt is proving his recent Easter attendance … stylin’ !!

Here Matt seems to be overly enjoying a refreshing beverage … mesmerizing!

And here Matt is doing his best impression of which popular celebrity??

We’re so pumped to have Matt coming onboard!

Jason … pictures posted on facebook are fair game for all staff emails … Powell

Hillsong Church IT Manager has a blog

Here's another blog you'll want to add to your RSS reader ... http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheITJuggler

Stephen Ollis is the IT Manager at well known Hillsong Church in Australia.  He just filled out the Church IT Survey and here's a couple stats to give ya an idea of the scope of their ministry.

Web Address : http://www.hillsong.com/
Average Weekend Worship Attendance : 27000
Number of sites/campuses : 18
If your church supports a school, how many students : 1200
Number of staff including part-time : 350
Number of computers supported : 600
How many of those are laptops : 200
How many of those are tablets : 20
How many of those are Macs : 80
Current IT Positions - indicate if part-time : 1 Manager, 2 Engineers (Network, Systems) 5 Desktop

Yup - that's a few items to manage ;-)

So head over to Stephen's blog and tell him howdy ... and that we're sorry for the Crocodile Dundee movies.  "That's not a knife!"

Hmm, Spring '09 Church IT Roundtable in Sydney anyone?  :-)

OKC Hotel

A few people have asked where everyone is staying for MinistryTECH and the Roundtable.  I can't speak for everyone, but several of us will be staying here ...

Oklahoma City North
2945 Northwest Expressway
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73112
405-848-4811
See Hotel Website
View Map and Directions

Mad props to JLee for the hookup.

Church IT Podcast - outsourcing

There was a great discussion yesterday on the Church IT Podcast (episode 26) about the benefits of outsourcing both IT services/apps and staff.

Since last fall I've been gathering info and seriously pondering now and then on this whole idea of outsourcing.  Several of my IT peers that I highly respect rely heavily on outsourcing ... in particular Tony Dye at Perimeter Church and David Drinnon at Second Baptist.

Yesterday Tony shared some of his philosophy on why Perimeter outsources and the benefits they've gained in doing so.  I've heard Tony's thoughts before, but each time I get new nuggets to chew on.  If you oversee IT I'd strongly recommend you take a listen. 

The discussion starts 22mins into the podcast and Tony's comments start 34mins in .. to listen head over to my blog and scroll down on the right to use the talkshoe media player.

I'll try to interview David and get his thoughts Second's outsourcing strategy in the near future as well.

Reminder: Church IT Podcast TODAY at 2pm Eastern!

Hey, don't forget we're doing another live interactive Church IT Podcast Today March 20) at 2pm Eastern.

If you hadn't heard: You can now join the talkcast without downloading the client ... 

"(Jan 8th 2008) TalkShoe released a new version of software highlighted with a Web Based version of TalkShoe live. This new client (see below) requires no download and is a one click option from any web browser. The client enables both participates to join in and host to start and run their calls. Guest do not even have to register to join in the chat or call in on the phone. The download version is still available for use of ShoePhone and more robust chat. See here for other key new features."

Possible Discussion Topics:

- MinistryTECH and spring RoundTable updates

- Kewl Tools ... what tools are you using to make your life (and those you support) easier, better, more efficient ?

- Other topic ideas?  It's an open forum baby!  Bring your questions/topics and let's run them through the mill.

ALSO NOTE: we now have ALL of the podcasts transcribed ... yup episodes 1 to 24 ... please help edit the content for product names, spellings, URL's, etc.  More info here

Interested in joining this live interactive podcast?  You should be!
Want to hear past podcasts?  Of course you do!
Get all the deets on the Church IT Podcast Wiki

Hey, don't forget we're doing another live interactive Church IT Podcast Today March 20) at 2pm Eastern.

If you hadn't heard: You can now join the talkcast without downloading the client ... 

"(Jan 8th 2008) TalkShoe released a new version of software highlighted with a Web Based version of TalkShoe live. This new client (see below) requires no download and is a one click option from any web browser. The client enables both participates to join in and host to start and run their calls. Guest do not even have to register to join in the chat or call in on the phone. The download version is still available for use of ShoePhone and more robust chat. See here for other key new features."

Possible Discussion Topics:

- MinistryTECH and spring RoundTable updates

- Kewl Tools ... what tools are you using to make your life (and those you support) easier, better, more efficient ?

- Other topic ideas?  It's an open forum baby!  Bring your questions/topics and let's run them through the mill.

ALSO NOTE: we now have ALL of the podcasts transcribed ... yup episodes 1 to 24 ... please help edit the content for product names, spellings, URL's, etc.  More info here

Interested in joining this live interactive podcast?  You should be!
Want to hear past podcasts?  Of course you do!
Get all the deets on the Church IT Podcast Wiki

GCC Backup Cycle

A couple peeps along with our auditors recently asked about our data backup routines.  I created the following document last November as part of our budget process and figured I'd go ahead and share with everyone.  We're not backing up as thoroughly as we'd like, but we're doing what we can with our resources.  Like it or not, it's all a matter of acceptable risk.

Like many of you we're doing a Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape routine.

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Subject: GCC Backup Summary

Here’s an overview of our current IT Backup Routine at GCC … note: there are no nightly backups being done on any mac stuff that I’m aware of.

· Monday nights we run full backups on our critical servers … email, files servers, bookstore server, Great Plains, etc. 

· Every night except for Monday we run differential backups on the same servers … this means we capture only the changes to the data since the full backup ran on Monday.  Reasoning is because the full backups can take up to 2.5 days (backing up to disk) to finish with our current backup hardware and the amount of data being backed up … the differentials complete in about 8hrs (backing up to disk).  In other words, we don’t have enough time to do full backups each night even when backing up to disk (backing up to tape takes considerably longer).

· All the above tapes are kept for 2 weeks in the server room.  Thus we can go back to any day in a 2 week window and get a file from that particular date.  After non-Monday tapes have aged over 2 weeks they’re put back into rotation and will be overwritten.

· We keep the Monday full backup tapes for a month.  So we can go back to any Monday in the current 30 day window.

· The last Monday of each month we tag as our monthly full backup.  These tapes are currently being kept for a quarter and I take them (there are many) home with me.  After these Monthly tapes age over 1 quarter they are brought back onsite and put back into rotation and will be overwritten.

· The last Monday of each quarter we tag as our quarterly full backup.  These tapes are kept for 1 year and I take them home with me.  After 1 year they are brought back onsite … yada yada yada

· The last Monday of each year we tag as our yearly full backup.  These tapes we plan to keep forever at my home currently.

Summary:

We can get back to a particular day in the current 2 week window.

We can only get back to a particular Monday after the current 2 week window and inside the current month window.

We can only get back to the last Monday of each month inside a quarter window.

We can only get back to the last Monday of each quarter inside a year window.

If we have a disaster at GCC we can only get back to the latest monthly Monday tapes at my home.  So depending on the timing of the disaster that means worst case we’d lose 4 weeks of data if we got hit at the end of the month window. 

As an example – had the recent Oct 11th tornado hit GCC … best we could do is get the tapes from Sept 24^th at my home.

Certainly, we’d like to have better backups, but this is our current reality based on resources available.

** update as of March 2008.  MozyPro is sending nightly SQL zips and trans logs offsite daily.

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Some links to other parts of our backup solution:

Our backup server and D2D storage http://www.jasonpowell.net/jason_powell_church_it/2007/11/big-cheap-raid-.html

Our CommVault backup software http://www.jasonpowell.net/jason_powell_church_it/2007/02/goodbye_veritas.html

Fellowship Technologies User & Developer Conference

Fellowship Technologies User & Developer Conference

May 15 – 17, 2008 : Dallas, TX

http://www.DynamicChurchConference.com

This year’s conference will be bigger and better. Some of the changes are:

· An optional pre-conference with six different, in-depth, personalized training classes

· 60% more sessions across six different tracks, each clearly delineated between Beginner and Advanced user levels

· 50% more training classes, each clearly delineated between Beginner and Advanced user levels

· Dedicated Q&A time we call 'Ask the Experts' with staff of Fellowship Technologies

· Free wireless Internet throughout the conference facilities

· Free 2 hour live worship concert featuring Lincoln Brewster

· And much, much more!

New "improved" IDF webcam feed ...

GCC Rewired on UStream.tv

We were using EyeSpyFX to stream the webcam Friday and it was pretty sluggish.  Switched to UStream.tv last night and it's MUCH better ... even has audio.  http://www.ustream.tv/channel/daves-cam

 

 

Go sign up for an account and you can chat with us right there on the above site today (Saturday).