Showing posts with label servers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label servers. Show all posts

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Days go by

Tuesday - Traveled to Arch Ford Co-op for the monthly Specialists/Tech meetings and mini training sessions.  Bob Cochenour and I did a session on things you can do in Google Mail.  I had WAY too many things on the agenda, so we hit about half of those.  We may do another session down the road some time.

Wednesday - The techs had a work day to figure out our grant proposals and the state tech plan.  The meeting was held back at Arch Ford, but I attended over videoconference and Jana from Camden joined me here rather than drive all the way to Plumerville (2.5 hours+ drive each way).

Thursday - I've been working on my ISA server and looking at which servers can finally be put to rest.  So far, I shut down two.  I will move some resources from one of the servers and then either shut it down or consolidate resources from other servers onto it.  I have spent any time not working on my servers helping Bradley with theirs.  They have some weird email issue going on and I have been troubleshooting it remotely.  I was supposed to go there today, but with my server acting a little off, I needed to kill two birds from one pond - or something like that.

There appears to be some kind of email spamming/blacklist issue, but they do not actually appear on any public blacklists. It's a mystery.

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For those interested, here are the rough notes of the Google Mail session:

Google Mail Tips and Tricks
Priority Messaging - Mail Settings > Inbox > Inbox Type (Classic, Important, Priority, etc)

Importance Markers - Mail Settings > Inbox > Show/Hide markers

Chat (Hide the Chat box) - Mail Settings > Chat > Chat: On or Chat: Off

Conversation View - Mail Settings > General > Conversation View: On or Conversation View: Off

Labels - Organize your email, can apply multiple labels to same message

Filters - Apply labels and perform other actions based on content, sender, etc (creating rules)

Use Labels, Filters and Archiving to organize your mail:
Create a label (Ex: Director)
Create a filter (Ex: Label all mail from boss as "Director" - from the previous step)
Skip Inbox (Do not show this message in the Inbox, but apply the label to show in labels list)

Archiving is *NOT* deleting!  Archiving just 'hides' the message from your Inbox. Archived messages will still show up in searches and in labels.

Google Labs
Bob demonstrated/discussed several handy Google Labs items for mail:
  • Auto-Advance (automatically move to next message)
  • Background Send
  • Default "Reply to All"
  • Multiple Inboxes
  • Preview Pane
  • Right-side Chat
  • Other Labs were covered as well, but time limitations kept me from keeping notes!

The following items were *NOT* covered in the session due to time, but were on the agenda:
Advanced mail searching:

Use quotation marks-  "meeting agenda" will return mail with those exact words in that exact order

Subject
- subject:Google Calendar *or* subject:"Google Calendar"
-- The first will retrieve subjects with "Google" or "Calendar"
-- the second will retrieve subjects that contain "Google Calendar" together

From (To: works the same way)
- From:<name> or From:<email@address.com> (Can also use quotes!)
-- From:David Henderson (All messages from any "David" or "Henderson"
-- From:"David Henderson" (All messages from David Henderson)

Find UNREAD messages- is:unread
-- Returns all email that has not been read yet!

Labels (Can use quotes!)
- label:<label name> <keyword(s)>
-- label:0_Lindy "pay raise"
-- label:"Disaster Recovery" approval

Filename
- filename:<filename.extension> *OR* filename:<extension>
-- filename:test.doc (all emails with test.doc attached)
-- filename:pdf (all emails with PDF attachments)

Attachments
- has:attachment (can be used with other search terms)
-- from:cooptc has:attachment

Use "AND," "OR," "-"- label:cooptc -has:attachment (all mail from COOPTC without attachments)
- from:"David Henderson" and filename:pdf (all pdfs from David Henderson)

Use "anywhere" to search ALL mail (including spam, trash, inbox, etc)- in:anywhere
-- in:anywhere from:phoebe (Searches all mail, labels, etc for mail from phoebe)

Specify special folders (inbox, trash, etc)- in:inbox
-- in:inbox subject:meeting (finds messages ONLY in the Inbox with "meeting" in subject)

Combine search areas and terms- label:e-rate OR from:becky.smith@somewhere.gov (All E-rate labeled messages plus all mail from becky)
- subject:e-rate from:becky.smith@somewhere.gov OR belinda.jones@somewhere.gov (Subject is E-rate AND the mail is either from Becky or Belinda)

Saturday, August 14, 2010

08/13/2010

8am - 5pm = Moved equipment from old location to new.

Connected T1's to switch and turned on all servers. The power outlet installed does not accommodate the UPS we have, so the electrician will have that fixed on Monday.  The servers are operating on single PSU's for now, which is fine.  The mail server had a small issue, but I believe that was related to the SQL server not being fully booted when the mail server came online.  Once necessary services were started, we were golden!

Work starts on Saturday at 7am!

Friday, August 6, 2010

08/06/2010

Today is the last "free Friday" we have at the office. Well, it's not really "free," since we worked four 10-hour days prior to today, but this is the last Friday the offices are closed.

Later this afternoon, I plan to VPN into the network, perform a bit of weekend maintenance on the servers, and call it a weekend.

Weekend maintenance generally includes system testing that I like to do during the day hours and also some general cleanup on the servers that can't be done while folks are in the office using them heavily.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!