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Conferences

Pass The Hash (No Really Don’t)

by Philip Sellers December 23, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

I attended TechEd 2014 back in May of this year and there was one session that I wanted to share called “TWC: Pass-the-Hash and Credential Theft Mitigation Architectures”. The part from the session that I wanted to focus on was regarding administrative privileges. Credential theft has become a serious problem in today’s world where everyone is doing business online. While the internet has allowed us the ability to be more connected it also puts us at the risk of becoming a victim of cybercrime.

Being an administrator in today’s corporate world you have to make sure that you are doing everything you can to protect your company’s digital assets. You have to defend against every possible intrusion while an attacker only has to be successful at finding a vulnerability one time. The TechEd session provided some good ways of how you can lower your chance of becoming a victim of credential theft.

First, let me give you some background on what Pass-The-Hash is about. The “Pass-the-Hash” phrase comes from the ability to steal a password hash and reuse it to connect to other computers. A hash is created based off your password and is used for authenticating you across the network. It will only change when you change your password. The password hash gets stored in memory and allows you to access other resources on the network without having to type in your credentials every time. If someone is able to obtain this hash then they can potentially authenticate as you.

This becomes extremely dangerous when we are talking about local or domain administrator accounts. If you use the same password for the local administrator account on all your computers then an attacker only has to steal the password hash one time and can then use it to access other computers on the network. A password hash can only be used for a network login. It will not work for an interactive login.

In order for an attacker to steal your password hash using the Pass-The-Hash method, they will have to gain local administrative rights on your computer. If they cannot gain administrator equivalent access then they will not be able use this technique. You should use the method of least privilege and never allow users to have administrative rights if possible. A user can be easily tricked into downloading a piece of malware that can allow an attacker to have access to your network. A domain admin account should never log into a standard workstation that accesses the internet or email. If your domain administrator credentials are captured then you have given the attacker the keys to the kingdom. Don’t make it easier for someone to take control over your network.

Removing admin rights can be a challenging task within a corporate environment. Users most of the time think that you do not trust them or that you are trying to exercise your power. Corporate politics can also sometimes influence security decisions. It is our duty as systems administrators to make our users and management understand the importance of restricting administrative rights. You might not be the most liked person but it is better to know that you are doing what is needed to protect your company or organization.

The presentation broke down computers and accounts into three different tiers. You have Tier 0 at the top which would be your core servers like domain controllers and domain admin accounts. This would be the most restrictive tier. Tier 1 would be your application servers and contain your server admin user accounts. Finally, Tier 2 would be your workstations and users that have access to internet and e-mail. You should never login with an account on a lower tier that has access to a higher tier. For example, an account with access to servers or domain controllers should not login to a workstation that has access to the internet. Microsoft also recommends having separate admin workstations that do not access the internet or e-mail for your domain admin account. This will help prevent your admin machine from becoming compromised.

Microsoft has created a document that discusses credential theft using Pass-The-Hash and ways to mitigate it. Please visit the links below to see more detail since I will not be able to cover everything from the presentation and whitepapers. It is well worth the time to learn more about this problem and ways to address it. They also mentioned in the presentation that this is not a flaw or vulnerability that can be addressed with a patch. Most operating systems rely on password hashes and we as administrators must take the steps to make them as secure as possible.

Link to the presentation:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2014/DCIM-B213#fbid=

Link to document discussing Pass-the-Hash attacks:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36036

December 23, 2014 0 comments

Virtualization

VMware says vSphere + Docker is “Containers without Compromise”

by Philip Sellers August 27, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

During the day 2 keynote at VMworld, VMware CTO Ben Fathi and Raghu Raghuram, the general manage of SDDC for VMware, discussed integrations between VMware’s software and OpenStack and Docker. In particular, they talked at length about Docker’s Container software and positioned it as a complimentary and not a competitive technology, calling vSphere and Docker together a way to run “Containers without Compromise.”

I do infrastructure, why should I care?

If you’re an infrastructure focused person, before you close and dismiss this post, there’s a reason why a sys admin is writing about this. I remember several years ago, Paul Martiz spent a lot of time during VMworld discussing Spring and development software. Frankly, it didn’t resonate with the crowd filled mostly with administrators and infrastructure focused professionals. So, why should infrastructure professionals care about these new API integrations with Docker? Because Docker has the disrupt the way you administer the infrastructure and security that you are responsible for.

As an administrator, you require certain tools in order to ensure compliance and stability for the applications your infrastructure enables. In the same way that vSphere changed and helped you do you job, Docker promises the same for developers. Extending support for Docker running on vSphere is the best of both worlds. Your developers get what they want or need and you get what you require to do your job best.

What do developers want?

For many developers, there is increasing interest in technologies like Docker’s Containers as an enablement software for cloud and service applications. I’m hearing it from some of the developers I work with. While VMware has been enormously strong with traditional applications (client/server), cloud applications are built in a fundamentally different way, utilizing small services and instances across many hosts to form an application. Since there are many instances, it can be a lot of small instances to manage. These small services don’t require an entire operating system to function and Containers allows for the base OS to be shared with many isolated containers running application services. While the concept is form of virtualization, it doesn’t offer many of the features that vSphere offers, like portability between hosts and recovery from hardware failure.

What’s more, Docker is more than just partitioning a Linux machine. Docker is an orchestration and packaging layer for the application. This type of enablement software is critical to deploying applications at cloud scale and Docker has developed an elegant and useful orchestration layer around its containers. It eases the issues that developers face with configuring application software on every instance or server that they run, with updating and deploying the application across multiple instances. Docker delivers on the write once and run anywhere concept.

Best of Both Worlds

The point is that vSphere VM’s bring isolation, security and compliance to the table and Docker doesn’t address these directly. However, Docker hits a major use and need of application packaging and deployment for developers. Marry the two together and you have a great solution that hits IT administration’s need for compliance and security and developers needs for deploying applications. While you can run Docker on physical hardware, I along with many other administrators would be very reluctant to go back to managing physical hardware. vSphere brought massive amounts of consolidation and ease of management that administrators would be reluctant to give up, particularly in small to medium businesses. Bringing in new technologies like NSX can also offer powerful, policy based network compliance that hasn’t previously been available in a physical or virtual environment. vSphere also brought a lot of operational advantages, in higher density, better power utilization, reduction in space and cooling needs.

I remember when the light bulb went off for me about cloud applications and the fundamental differences between them and the traditional applications vSphere virtualized in the past. Cloud applications require completely new architecture, new code, and orchestration. The power of the cloud is all about repeatability, distribution of load, replication of data, and scale. The orchestration and deployment layer is critical in this model but has a promise of easy of management, security and compliance for distributed applications. Docker seems like a great solution for this real problem. And, every software requires patching to stay secure, so a solid orchestration and deployment framework is critical when you begin to scale out applications.

VMware goes on to tout all of the extensibility of vCloud Suite, the hybrid cloud and its vCloud Air service as advantages offering portability of Docker enabled applications wherever the customer wants.

Kit Colbert posted a great blog “Containers without Compromise” on the VMware CTO Blog site with a lot of additional detail.

August 27, 2014 0 comments

Datacenter Storage

HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 drives down flash to cost of spinning disk

by Philip Sellers July 7, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

This is part two of a two part series on enhancements to the HP 3PAR StoreServ platform announced at HP Discover in June.

As I posted in my first part of this series, one of the best benefits to being an invited blogger at HP Discover is the opportunities to talk with HP’s technical staff and product managers about specifics of their solutions. Last month, I had the opportunity to discuss HP’s cost savings announcements around the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 all-flash arrays.

I talked with Priyadarshi Prasad (@Priyadarshi_Pd), product line manager for HP 3PAR storage, about how 3PAR is trying to drive down costs of flash storage in arrays. Its not a single solution that is driving down the cost of solid state within 3PAR arrays according to Prasad. Its a progression of technology improvements that brings the cost of solid state down to $2 per GB and near the cost of spinning disk. And most importantly for customers, each of these capabilities is delivered while never compromising performance. HP 3PAR’s design philosophy has always been to offload as much of the operation to the drive or ASIC level to avoid taxing the CPU, since the CPU will at some point become a bottleneck.

Back in June of 2013, HP announced the 3PAR StoreServ 7450 all-flash array at HP Discover in Las Vegas. At that time, the solution was based around the industry standard eMLC solid state drives at a cost of around $13 per GB. In December 2013, HP announced its adoption of the industry standard cMLC drives and took control of solid state sparing. This allowed HP to drive down the costs of solid state by 50% on a cost per GB. According to Prasad, the cMLC drives was a 30% reduction in cost and the Adaptive Sparing technology brought a 20% savings.

The Adaptive Sparing technology is HP taking control of the spare cells within each solid state disk. Because of how solid state works, each cell of the SSD has a finite number of writes before it degrades and is no longer reliable. To combat this, SSD vendors build in roughly an additional 30% of spare space used when primary cells fail. For a 400GB SSD, there may be approximately 112GB of additional capacity locked on the drive. That additional capacity is used after cells are worn past usability in the primary 400GB area.

The 3PAR OS already included sparing technology across the entire array when it was written for spinning disk. When solid state was added, it effectively double spared that storage – with both the individual drive and the array handling sparing. HP worked with solid state vendors to open up reserved space on the solid state disk and free up an additional 20% of space that was formerly reserved. It instead allocates spares chunklets across this space within the entire pool. When the solid state drive has worn and experiences a drive failure, the array uses the spare chunklets across the other drives in the pool to rebuild and when the drive is replaced and rebuilt it unmaps the space. HP achieves this Adaptive Sparing using custom firmware on standard SSD drives.

That brings us to last month – June 2014 – one year since the 3PAR StoreServ 7450 array was introduced – and HP had several more enhancements to announce. The primary announcement was something HP calls Thin Deduplication. Thin Deduplication uses the zero-detect engine with a hashing capability that was built into the 3PAR fourth generation ASIC. The other major announcement and addition is Express Indexing which allows indexing for up to 460TB of raw capacity. The Express Indexing allows for hash comparison and matching of data. Combining these two capabilities, HP estimates that customers will see a usable capacity of $2 per GB in production use on solid state drives. That estimation includes RAID and metadata in its calculation along with all the savings from the array features.

dedupe

When the fourth generation ASIC was designed, hashing was included and with thin deduplication each incoming chunklet is hashed on a 16K block size. Each block is then looked up in the index, but HP doesn’t’ simply rely on an index match, it goes and looks up the data to compare it to the incoming data. The incoming and read data are then run through an XOR operation bit by bit and if they match, the result of the XOR operation is all zeros. Run that through the zero-detect engine and if it is zero, the index pointer is updated and if not, the new data is written. The deduplication technology is driven by the zero-detect technology that has been a part of 3PAR since the beginning.

As an aside, I’ve been in the room with storage experts who have repeated asked HP’s David Scott and other HP technical staff if the ASIC is really needed and when we might see a 3PAR virtual appliance. As each new generation of 3PAR is designed, HP’s storage managers also asks the team if it is cheaper or faster to design the array around industry standard hardware and handle the advanced capabilities in software without the ASIC. Up to the fourth generation the answer has always been that the ASIC adds considerable value and speed to the array and its operation. This is a perfect example of the value of the ASIC. On the flip side, had ASIC-based hashing not been included with the fourth-gen ASIC, this capability would have inevitably been delayed until a fifth-generation ASIC or software capability was created.

That’s not to say HP is claiming some amazing foresight that led to these incredible outcomes. In some cases, HP’s engineers have been lucky. For instance, the 16K block size which is standard in 3PAR was decided long before deduplication was on the horizon. Most other deduplicating arrays, including the HP StoreOnce backup arrays, use a 4K block size. A 4K block size would increase the overall processing required, but would yield better deduplication rates. When tested on 3PAR, changing the block size from 16K to 4K only yielded about 5% improvement in deduplication but had a performance penalty. So, 16K seemed to be a sweet spot for both performance and deduplication rates and that was already HP’s default.

While HP is talking about $2 per GB on an all-flash array and while its talking about Adaptive Sparing, Thin Deduplication and Express Indexing for the 3PAR StoreServ 7450 arrays, this is all something existing customers will benefit from. I previously explored the power of common architectures on the blog. All existing 3PAR customers with a fourth-generation ASIC will inherit and benefit from these capabilities to some degree if they are using solid state anywhere in their 3PAR arrays. Fourth-gen ASIC arrays are the 7000 and 10000 series 3PAR arrays.

The new 1.92TB SSD drives will be available for all 3PAR customers in September time frame with a list price of $14,000 per drive. That is roughly a native $7 per GB cost. All other savings are driven by the advanced features of the 3PAR arrays.

Thin Deduplication will be delivered in the September timeframe also with a new firmware release that will enable the capability on any SSD tier for 3PAR StoreServ 7000 and 10000 series arrays. Deduplication can be supported cross all levels of disk since its algorithm based, but its yet to be seen if HP will allow it on spinning disk. The deduplication is implemented at a CPG (common provisioning group) level.

Disclaimer: HP invited me to HP Discover as a blogger and covered my expenses to attend the event. I also spoke at a session during the event. As always, the views and opinions stated on this blog are my own. HP was given no editorial control over content or topics for my posts.

July 7, 2014 1 comment

Datacenter Storage Trends

Peer Persistence and Adaptive Optimization interoperation on 3PAR

by Philip Sellers July 7, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

This is part one of a two part series on enhancements to the HP 3PAR StoreServ platform announced at HP Discover in June.

One of the biggest benefits of being an HP invited blogger for HP Discover is the opportunity to sit and talk with architects and executives during coffee talks and importu meetings in the bloggers lounge. This gives me and other bloggers the opportunity to ask our specific questions from really technical or strategic HP staff. During the past two HP Discover events, I have had great opportunities to talk to HP 3PAR storage team members and get some great information about specific issues and some ideas on where things may be heading.

At HP Discover in Barcelona back in December, Calvin Zito (@HPStorageGuy) introduced me to Siamak Nazari, an HP Fellow and chief architect for 3PAR’s OS. I and few other bloggers had the opportunity to talk about how HP develops the 3PAR OS and the evolution of the ASIC inside the 3PAR.

In December, I asked Nazari specifically about things that break with Peer Persistence and the 3PAR advanced features. Earlier in the year, my employer had implemented a pair of 3PAR StoreServ 7400’s in our environment in a Peer Persistence configuration. I quickly noticed that the advanced feature sets didn’t fully support Peer Persistence and I was curious when we might expect that.

Peer Persistence is 3PAR’s flavor of Metro Storage Clustering for VMware. Peer Persistence allows synchronous replication between the two arrays and a seamless failover from one set of LUNs to another between arrays without interruption to the VMware workloads. The primary 3PAR presents its LUNs under a WWN as active storage paths and the secondary/replication array presents its LUNs in a secondary/passive state until the failover occurs. When failover occurs, the replica becomes the active paths and the other array becomes secondary/inactive. The failover and monitoring can be automated with a Quorum Witness to handle the failover in the event of an array failure.

Peer Persistence is the new addition to the 3PAR feature set and understandably, a lot of the other advanced features don’t recognize Peer Persistence. One of the things we realized immediately is that Peer Persistence and Adaptive Optimization do not share data. So while AO is balancing data between storage tiers on the primary array based on the read and write characteristics of data, the secondary array is not receiving all the read operations so its AO will not optimize the same or as well as the primary.

Nazari acknowledged that this is the case in 3PAR at the present time. One of the potential solutions to this is an enhanced federation between 3PAR arrays, which may get delivered in a future 3PAR OS release. There is nothing technically to prevent this type of data sharing between arrays to allow AO to optimize workloads the same across arrays, but presently the arrays don’t share the data. Federation would allow for this type of data and a lot of other data to be shared and managed centrally across multiple arrays.

But one of the things that I’ve realized is that HP, like all companies, has limited resources to apply to a large set of problems to solve. So, they prioritize features based on biggest benefit to customers and other factors.

So during HP Discover in June, I had the opportunity to talk with Priyadarshi Prasad (@Priyadarshi_Pd) about developments announced during the June event, including thin deduplication and HP’s strategy to get solid state storage down to the cost of spinning disk and I also wanted to get an update on my earlier question.

I asked again about any developments for advanced features like Adaptive Optimization interoperating with Peer Persistence. This time, we had a different conversation – one that prompted this post.

Pointing back to the announcements of the latest HP Discover, Prasad talked with me about the total cost solid state disk in a 3PAR array. This June, HP announced the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 all flash array with new 1.9TB Solid State Disks, Thin Deduplication and Adaptive Sparing. As a combination of these announcements, HP estimates it can deliver an all-flash array with usable storage at a cost of $2 per GB – similar to the cost of spinning disk. Prasad pointed out that if HP can reduce the cost of solid state storage to the same as spinning disk, would technologies like Adaptive Optimization even be needed anymore? Spinning disk is adopted for its low cost per GB, but if solid state can be adopted at the same cost, why wouldn’t customers go there instead.

While delivering $2 per GB solid state, until there is another tier of storage that is more costly and better performing than solid state, tiering technologies would become more or less obsolete. One valid observation is that non-volitile RAM (NVRAM) is coming and may present options for another, fast tier of storage, so we may see this come again, but it sounds like today that federated AO may have just moved way down the list of priorities.

As a customer with existing 3PAR with spinning disk, obviously I want to see some sort of federation and central management which also shares AO characteristics between arrays. It doesn’t do anything for customers who have already adopted spinning disk on 3PAR. Most likely, if we adopted all solid state, it will be in a new array or within a tier on our existing arrays. Its not likely for us or many customers to take existing spinning disk offline within existing arrays. So, for this reality to come to fruition, its going to take several years for arrays to refresh all-together or for new arrays to be adopted side by side.

But it certainly warrants more information and investigation to the HP claim of $2 per GB for solid state disk. That’s where part two in this series goes next – investigating HP’s 3PAR StoreServ $2 per GB.

July 7, 2014 3 comments

Datacenter Home Tech

HP Pro 612 tablet aims to replace your work laptop

by Philip Sellers June 13, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

It wasn’t much of a surprise that when the HP Printers and Personal Systems group arrive to the blogger’s briefing, they were showing off a tablet. To be exact, HP’s PPS group brought the Pro 612 tablet to show off.

HP Pro x2 612 detachable The HP Pro 612 is targeted at business users and includes the full range of security offerings that consumer products are missing. Starting at just 2 lbs., the tablet has a range of processors including an Intel i5, offering desktop quality processing inside a tablet. The Pro 612 includes the HP Sure Start BIOS, which offers a primary and backup copy of BIOS in the event of corruption or infection, it includes a smart card reader and an optional finger print reader. It is equipped with LTE and WiFi and features one USB 3.0 port.

The tablet is loaded with Windows 8.1, but has options for running Windows 7 also. This is still in response to customer request who are not ready for Windows 8. On an interesting note, HP staff said that the tablet display also integrates Wacom technology and an optional pen may be used with the tablet for precision needs. Based on prior feedback, the unit includes a ‘garage’ to store the pen.

In terms of accessories, the tablet can be coupled with a travel keyboard or with a power base. The travel keyboard is a very thin keyboard and stand with adjustable positions and includes an additional USB port. The travel keyboard takes the total weight of the tablet to 3.1 lbs.

The power base features a number of connectors including VGA and Display Port for graphics, an RJ45 connector for wired network, and a couple USB 3.0 ports. And best of all, it includes additional battery power – taking the tablet’s 7 hours of battery life and extending it another 7 more hours. HP staff said they expect users may buy multiple keyboard docks – one for work and one for travel or home – just transporting the tablet back and forth.

Bundled with the power base, it becomes the HP Pro x2 612 and is targeted as a laptop replacement and becomes a detachable system.

Retail pricing and availability date for the Pro x2 612 has not been announced and the units we got to see were development demos. For additional details and to sign up to be notified when the laptop is available, head over to the HP Pro 612 page at hp.com.

June 13, 2014 0 comments

Datacenter Storage

Storage Essentials 9.7 shows off performance enhancements and new platform support

by Philip Sellers June 12, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

This week at HP Discover, the Storage Essentials team unwrapped version 9.7 of the product for customers to see. The next release, code-named Castle, features a number of enhancements with support for several new EMC storage platforms, support for Windows 2012 and updates to support a lot of new versions of array code. Storage Essentials 9.7 also focuses heavily on performance improvements and is expected to be released in July.

One of the major shifts in architecture for Storage Essentials is a move away from embedded Oracle database to an embedded PostgreSQL database. The new database platforms appears to be less resource intensive [from my own testing], quicker to install and just as responsive as the previous embedded Oracle. Upgrade and migration from 9.6.1 to the new release migrates the data painlessly, since Storage Essentials packages its own database export utility that pulls out the data from Oracle and pushes it into PostgreSQL easily. The overall installation time is considerably less since the switch to PostgreSQL.

For 9.7, the Storage Essentials team has worked to improve load times and performance of the application. One of the changes made for performance is decoupling the topology calculation which relates elements together after discovery so that it can be run once at the end of the collection process. In my environment, the changes have reduced the time to perform a backup data collection from about an 1 hour and 20 minutes to about 16 minutes, including topology calculation, as a result of optimization in the code. Another performance improvement deals with how the data is loaded into the Java applet of the application. The improvements result in faster loads of the Capacity Manager, Backup Manager and Performance screens.

Storage Essentials is a storage resource management software. It provides topology visualization for storage environments, centralized storage system event logging, performance reporting and a wide array of preconfigured reports for the SAN switches, arrays and hosts. Storage Essentials can collect information from SAN connected hosts, monitor file servers and NAS resources, monitor capacity and performance.

Slides and additional information from the session presented will be made available on the HP Discover website.

Disclaimer: I spoke about the next generation version of Storage Essentials along with Inge De Maere and Kara McMillian during HP Discover. I worked with HP Storage Essentials team as a beta user of the new version and they invited me to share my customer experience during the What’s New session.

June 12, 2014 0 comments

Datacenter Storage

HP introducing Federated Catalyst to StoreOnce

by Philip Sellers June 10, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

b6500 This week at HP Discover, HP announced a new Federated Catalyst feature for the StoreOnce family of disk to disk backup arrays. The new capability will allow backup administrators to make large Catalyst stores on a StoreOnce and allow for data to be striped across all the back-end service sets in the array. Federated Catalyst is available immediately on the StoreOnce B6500 line and will be coming in a few weeks to the StoreOnce B6200 line.

Federated Catalyst overcomes a previous limitation in the StoreOnce family that tied a Catalyst store to a single service set within a StoreOnce device. The same limitation exists for a CIFS store or a virtual tape library store in a StoreOnce array. This is another advantage for HP’s Catalyst technology since it assists administrators who are managing many Catalyst stores.

Previously, within a StoreOnce with 2 couplets and 4 service sets, a minimum of 4 Catalyst stores would be required to use all the available resources in the device. This added additional management points and coordination for the backup administrator within the backup software. By striping the data across all the available service sets, a single large Catalyst store is possible to utilize all the available data.

There are other considerations such as deduplication ratios for stores and the number of backup streams that go into architecting the best possible backup environment but breaking Catalyst stores away from service set boundaries will let IT shops make better decisions about how to lay out stores within StoreOnce for backup. This also provides more scalability for medium sizes shops that may want to purchase a StoreOnce with a smaller initial sizing and grow it over time.

Compared to VTL technology, Catalyst offers a simplified approach to managing backup data. With VTL’s, a library is built and it is populated with emulated tape cartridges. Like physical cartridges, each one has a bar code and media label and other properties that dictate when the data on the cartridge expires and may be re-used. Within a VTL, however, if there are more cartridges than needed, the un-used cartridges will be used before any cartridges are recycled and reused based on backup policies. This leads to inefficiency and extra storage utilization within VTL libraries.

On the flip side, if the VTL has too few cartridges, then the library runs out of space and backups stop. This leads to a big management point for administrators to size and ensure the correct number of cartridges. Catalyst also improves the VTL situation by improving performance. VTL emulates physical tape and so backup software talks with it and expects a certain amount of time before a tape is loaded or unloaded and this adds time to backups. With Catalyst aware software, the D2D backup device is seen for what it really with all of its native capabilities instead of being seen as tape.

June 10, 2014 1 comment

Datacenter Storage

Elitebook Challenge: One week, full time on an Elitebook Folio 1040

by Philip Sellers May 16, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

ElitebookFolio1040 Today wraps up a week of full-time testing of the Elitebook Folio 1040. I survived Microsoft TechEd this week without a Mac. There were some bumps along the road, but the overall experience was a good one with this new laptop. The Elitebook Folio 1040 hardware is very impressive. Some of the highlights for me have to be the battery life, the fingerprint scanner for login and passwords and the resolution of the screen. I also love the weight, or lack of weight actually, for this system. It’s extremely portable.

The battery life of the Elitebook Folio 1040 is one of the best of any computer I’ve ever used. Today, I have gotten close to 6 hours, running VMware Player and a VM and running web. The battery life also appears to be getting a little better after the first few power cycles. The battery is not removable, but coming from the Apple world, that’s a non-issue with me. For many mobile workers, a spare battery is a must-have and a non-removable battery is a show-stopper. I have one consultant friend who doesn’t even bother with a laptop power cable when he’s on-site with customers for engagements. He actually carries two extended life batteries that power him through the day with customers without the need for a cable. This model is targeted at a completely different use case, so the self-contained battery makes more sense, but it may limit its uses some.

The fingerprint scanner is really awesome. I like not having to key a password for login and I really enjoy being able to quickly login to the system. Its not 100% perfect every time, but in general, if it misses your fingerprint, it gives feedback like “move finger left” or “move finger right” which helps to know why it didn’t recognize during the previous read. The HP Client Security suite enables full integration to Windows login for the fingerprint scanner. It also has 3 challenge questions in case you get locked out of the system. I do not know how this technology works with domain user accounts on the laptop. The Elite family of computers from HP sits between the consumer and business user lines – I’ve known people in both camps who have Elite family computers. So, I will take that as an action item to follow up and test in the home lab when I return home.

The resolution of this 14″ screen is really impressive. It is capable of supporting the same 1920 x 1080 resolution – the same resolution I run on 23″ and 27″ monitors elsewhere. In fact, the resolution is so good that it borders on too small at times, but that is an easy, fixable problem – if you even call it a problem at all. I’ve always been a screen real estate snob and I really love having this many pixels to play with. Another beautiful side benefit of all the screen real estate is that my Remote Desktop sessions don’t have to resize to be used from this laptop – unlike every other laptop I’ve used – due to supporting a smaller resolution. i can remote connect to home or work and see the same displays that I would on a 10″ larger monitor. This even beats my Mac in that regard (disclaimer – my current MacBook Pro is a 2008 model, non-retina display).

The processor is pretty speedy on the unit. I have not noticed any CPU constraints or contention for any of the testing that I have done. I’m not doing any video editing or processor intensive applications on the laptop, but for general office or even power user work, the CPU is very good. The RAM could be better. The evaluation unit I have has 4GB of RAM, which I consider the absolute minimum to work. It caps out at just 8GB, however, and I would love to see that doubled for future generations. 8GB is probably my recommended minimum moving forward. I am ordering the additional 4GB SODIMM to install this week. In great news, HP ships the 4GB equipped Elitebook Folio 1040’s with a single 4GB SODIMM and an open slot. This means upgrades don’t require rip and replace to move to the full 8GB it is capable of. But, I’m also a power user and the general user is going to work just fine with 4GB of RAM. Many work today with much less than that. So, 4GB makes sense in an attempt to keep costs in check and offer choice for consumers. And choice is a very HP-centric ideal. They want to offer lots of options for their customers to meet their need the best that they can.

The speed of the storage internal to the laptop is great also. It ships with a 250GB solid state drive inside and that is split out with a utility partition and recovery partition [thank goodness]. The recovery partition saved my bacon on this trip this week and I have been much happier with the system using the system image HP shipped it with, versus my upgrade to Windows 8.1

Sound is one place that really could use work in subsequent generations – audio snobs beware. The speakers on this system are very weak. As a matter of fact, my phone was probably twice as loud as the speakers turned up to full blast on this laptop. Its really soft. I wonder if the lack of thickness contributes to the sound problem – since there isn’t a lot of space in a 1.59 centimeter thick laptop to fit the speakers. But it is really noticeable. In comparison with a similarly thin laptop – a Macbook Air – the sound is still considerably softer at full volume. I was showing off a YouTube video with some friends – with some background noise – and it was inaudible. Switched to my phone and no one had any issue hearing the video – so that was disappointing. But, for personal use and for use with headphones, the audio issues are possible to overcome.

The Forcepad trackpad has given me the most problems. I have not been able to master the click but other gestures work pretty well. I have noticed that when I tap to left click, sometimes it doesn’t register and I have to give it a little more ‘force’ to register [frusterating] – and the right click is gesture based with a one finger then two finger tap in succession doesn’t always seem to work either. Scrolling the page with a gesture, moving the pointer and swiping gestures work all of the time, but the clicks sometimes fail to register. I do seem to get better with practice, though. I have not been able to locate a way to change the Forcepad behavior. As I wrote earlier, I really like the visual design of the Forcepad versus the traditional pointing stick and traditional trackpad with physical buttons. It looks fantastic – I just wish the function matched the form in this case. I also demoed a Toshiba and Samsung ultrabook at a Microsoft Store in Houston. Both of these ultrabooks had a very similiarly designed touchpad – with no physical buttons, but they did not seem to have an issue recognizing when a click or particularly a right click was given. I suspect these issues can be resolved with a firmware update or software fix – I don’t think its hardware related since the pointer seems to go where I direct. But, I’m glad that I had a USB mouse with me. Once I began using the external mouse, my productivity on the laptop immediately increased.

I said in my first post about for this week-long challenge that when I unpacked the Elitebook Folio 1040 that I said this was a laptop I could see myself really using. I stand by that. After a week using it, it really could replace my Macbook Pro. Will it? I don’t know yet. Its an incredibly capable and long-lifed laptop. It is about a third of the weight of my ancient Macbook Pro and its fast, responsive and generally a joy to use. Anyone who is looking for a lightweight, ultra portable laptop should consider this one, especially if you don’t require or want touch and the Windows 8.1 interface. I will be continuing to review and work with the laptop and run it through other scenarios in the weeks to come. So keep an eye for additional posts. But, great job HP – my week with the Elitebook was a success – no failure – and no inability for me to work and do both my primary job when required, blogging and note-taking when needed for the TechEd conference. Success…

Disclaimer: The HP Elitebook Folio 1040 was provided to me by HP for evaluation at no cost. It did not come with any requirements or input on the editorial content of this review. The views and opinions are my own honest assessment of the laptop and have not been dictated or outlined by HP. Nor would it ever – because I want you, my readers, to know you can trust what I write when I write it.

May 16, 2014 0 comments

Datacenter Software Storage

Elitebook Challenge: Day 1 crash, recovery and comparing Elitebooks

by Philip Sellers May 14, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

unrecoverable_error

Sunday was my travel day, so I’m considering Monday as Day 1 full time on the Elitebook Folio 1040. It’s been a doozy of a day with the new Elitebook starting off with an unrecoverable software error from Windows. I cannot blame the hardware – its completely the software and perhaps my botched install of Windows 8.1 to blame. This morning, when I attempted to boot my Elitebook Folio 1040, Windows 8.1 game me an error during boot and auto-repair did not work. I suspect that maybe the drive encryption was to blame – I had not intended to enable drive encryption, but while setting up the fingerprint scanner I enabled it during my time in the airport yesterday. But certainly Windows 8.1 played a part here, so I will have to try it again with Windows 8.1 installed after I return home.

I don’t have a backup system with me this trip and its an incredibly crippling feeling to know that I’m without what I need to both work and attend the conference. But in case you’re not clued in by a new blog post, the Elitebook is working again. I was able to boot the system into HP Recovery and thanking my lucky stars for a recovery partition because I brought no physical media with me. In the end, I’m back to trusty and reliable Windows 7 from the HP image and I’ve already noticed some things working better than when I installed Windows 8.1.

After the reinstall, I was able to quickly recover things thanks to the cloud – Office 365 quickly reinstalled Office, Adobe Creative Cloud quickly reinstalled my Photoshop & Illustrator, OneDrive restored my personal files I needed for the trip and I had an external drive with my VM and VMware Player from their site. So, I’m back in business and so far, the laptop is running much better than under Windows 8.1 It is truly amazing how much difference a functional operating system [Windows 7] makes to getting work done.

Cloud to the rescue. And, I’m hearing a lot about cloud at Microsoft TechEd this week. The mantra is “Cloud First, Mobile First.” But that’s another post…

Comparing to Nerdblurt’s Elitebook 840

The rest of the week has gone without a hitch. The system loaded with Windows 7 is much more usable to me. Its battery life has been excellent. I have noticed with running a VM in VMware Player on the system, it does tend to drain the battery much more than using the laptop on its own. HP’s claims of 9 hours battery life have not quite held up at this point, but I do see myself getting a solid 4 or 5 from my testing – browsing, writing and using less-CPU intensive apps.

One of the things that I do like on this model is the inclusion of HP’s Client Security software. It allows for biometric, fingerprint password control in the system and it allows for drive encryption. I have not re-enabled the drive encryption during this trip, but the fingerprint scanner has been used a lot and its a handy feature – fully integrated into Windows login.

I mentioned the Forcepad in my first post about the Elitebook Folio 1040 – the issue with not accpeting gestures is also resolved with the rebuild from the factory image. Gestures and multitouch seem to work better, though the right click still seems to be an issue for me to learn. I can’t consistently get the system to right-click where I want. I will be watching HP’s Forcepad instructional video again.

I compared my eval Elitebook Folio 1040 to the Elitebook 840 that my good friend Luigi (aka NerdBlurt) was carrying this week. The 840 is a more traditional ultrabook. The 840 includes a touch screen display and the other obvious difference is that the 840 has both traditional trackpad and pointing stick with physical buttons. The Elitebook Folio 1040 definitely looks sleeker in the pointing department, without the extra physical buttons, but there were also no right-click problems on the 840 – just sayin’.

Other than the mouse differences, the Elitebook 840 and Elitebook Folio 1040 are pretty close cousins. The 840 comes in a much lower price point, but ships with a traditional HDD inside instead of the SSD storage in the Folio 1040. The Folio 1040 is about a half centimeter thinner than the 840 at its thickest and the 840 weighs more.

It was a happy run-in to get to compare the two during Microsoft TechEd when I met up with Luigi.

May 14, 2014 1 comment

Datacenter Software Storage

TechEd Session Recap: Future Look at Microsoft Exchange Server (OFC-B310)

by Philip Sellers May 13, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

Microsoft Exchange is the cornerstone for email in many businesses. And a quick poll of the users in the room during this session indicated that the majority of those users are running Exchange on-premise and not Office 365’s flavor of Exchange. So, we were all extremely interested to here where things are going in terms of development in Exchange. This session focused on the future features with previews of some of these feature in Office 365 hosted Exchange and slides showing others. It was intended to be an overview of where things are going for development, but didn’t delve deeply into any one of the features or the technical layers below them.

The development cycle for Exchange has changed some, as many customers witnessed for the first time with Exchange 2013. The newest version of Exchange released to customers on Office 365 before the on-premise version released and our speakers Pavani Haridasyam and Ef Regalado attributed the switch to the nature of cloud and the ability to iterate and release more often on the cloud platform. The development cycle is to first release the newest features internally to Microsoft employees and after getting bugs worked out and feedback from users, those changes are pushed to Office 365 customers and will ultimately be incorporated into a future on-premise version of Exchange. But Microsoft chose to keep all Exchange development, both for the cloud and for on-premise, with a single team in order to keep things consistent for all customers.

Investment in Exchange has not slowed and a considerable amount of effort has been going into creating new features that customers are requesting and that Microsoft believes customers need. This session focused on three major areas of development for customers on Exchange – Security and Compliance, Working Smarter, and Social Email.

In terms of security and compliance, Microsoft has been taking the Exchange compliance views and been working towards creating a unified compliance console for Exchange, SharePoint and Lync. The compliance center aims to be user friendly tool for non-technical compliance officers in companies to perform their job functions – power with usability.

Data loss prevention is also another major focus in the security and compliance area – with the ability to fingerprint documents in Exchange and then pinpoint those to ensure that they do not get sent out of the company. The DLP features are also extended into the OWA apps for mobile devices in attempts to ensure that documents do not leak through email. S/MIME has also been added in the OWA interface, which many customers have requested.

The Exchange team is also working diligently on features that help people work smarter with their email. Admitting that many customers are overwhelmed by the volume of email they receive, OWA has a new People View or Personalized Inbox feature that lets you easily view email with a particular person from an easy People list in the sidebar. This is one of the features making its way into Office 365 hosted Exchange now. In addition to the arranagement by people, the Exchange team has been working to improve collaboration of documents with integration to OneDrive for Business to ‘attach’ files – which are actually stored in OneDrive rather than being attached to an email, which is quickly outdated. It allows for multiple people to collaborate in a document in real time using Office Web Apps and all changes to be stored and updated centrally, rather than having to email multiple revisions between people. Enhanced previews are also a part of Outlook Web App, so that when you paste in a URL, it will give you a Facebook-like preview of the URL and the ability to copy and paste in images is now supported in Office 365 hosted Exchange and will be included in a future on-premise version of Outlook Web App.

Pushing collaboration even further, the Exchange team has been working on a new Groups functionality to allow for social interaction with integration into Yammer. The team is working to unify groups which have existed in various forms in AD and Exchange and in SharePoint separately. The unified approach should allow for things to be logically located and less overlap in features or function to exist between the Microsoft platforms. Azure Active Directory is the mast of the Group identities according to the slides presented and it will be federated with other Office 365 apps. Notifications are sent to groups members when changes are made, but they are not overwhelming in the way that email notifications have in the past – instead they are collected into the unified group. Email conversations and calendars are stored in Exchange. Documents, OneNote and lists are stored in SharePoint and Yammer will be the group feed of activities. The Yammer piece has yet to be implemented.

May 13, 2014 0 comments