In this issue - HOST HP BladeSystem Day - An Invitation
- CompTIA Learning Alliance (CLA)
- A Hidden Cost of Not Training
HOST HP BladeSystem Day - Tuesday 10th February 2009 - An Invitation
HOST Computer Services are pleased to provide you with the opportunity to inspect and have some practical hands-on exposure to the latest HP c-Class BladeServer technologies and associated products. This event is presented in collaboration with QLogic. We are inviting you to view these products in the relaxed atmosphere of our residential training facility at Haughton Hall and share your knowledge and experience with other like minded professionals whilst gaining an insight and practical experience of the HP c-Class BladeSystem. - Overview of HP c-Class BladeSystem infrastructure - Managing the infrastructure with Onboard Administrator - Technical overview of c-Class fibre channel with Virtual Connect - Practical demonstrations The event includes lunch. Tea, coffee and light refreshments are available throughout the day. A limited number of places are available on a 'first come, first served' basis at a cost of only £50.00 per delegate exc VAT. Please contact us right now to reserve your place 01952460551 or reception@hostcomputers.co.uk. To say thank you for your attendance, HOST will provide each delegate with a discount voucher for 10% off your next training course*. We look forward to seeing you on Tuesday 10th February. *Please note that this voucher cannot be used in conjunction with any other offers or discounts and excludes training at our London location.
CompTIA Learning Alliance (CLA) HOST are pleased to have been accepted as a member of The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) Learning Alliance. This membership is their seal of recognition for quality training providers. We have joined the team of CLA training providers in the UK delivering the most comprehensive preparation for the CompTIA certifications.
Our extensive CompTIA portfolio covers Server+, Network+, A+, Linux+, Security+ and PDI+.
For example, PDI+ serves as a solid foundation for entry into a career involving the service and support of Printing and Document Imaging devices and provides the foundation for product specific training.
All training course bookings are protected by HOST's no-cancellation policy.
For more information about CompTIA please follow this link to their website www.comptia.org/about/default.aspx
A Hidden Cost of Not Training
This article was written by one of the instructors here at HOST ... As a professional trainer with many years in the IT industry, a training enquiry arrived into my inbox regarding a requirement for training, relating to the correct procedure for racking computing systems. The information supplied was pretty vague, upon further investigation turned out to be for a data-centre hosting for one of the large financial institutions located somewhere in the South. They had been experiencing a few failures recently and this had resulted, finally, in a desire to invest in a one day ‘on site’ training event provided by yours truly. After agreeing objectives and a desired outcome, I headed South armed with my presentation and anticipation of an interesting day. The attendees were two technical staff, two support staff and the data centre manager. I was not far into the presentation, discussing best practices when some sniggering was heard from most of the group, I subtly attempted to make eye contact with the data centre manager but she seemed reluctant to engage with me. Being a true professional, I continued further into my presentation and embraced the subject of positioning of the racks in the data centre. The sniggering started again. This time I made an obvious conscious effort to connect with the data centre manager. She halted the presentation and invited me to have a look around. Several floors later we all entered one of the data centre rooms by a door at one corner. It was extremely cold, almost a chill. It was full of HP racked equipment, all positioned in neat rows. As we walked past the rows to the far end, the temperature rose dramatically. At the ‘hot’ end there was a number of glass fronted racks housing all communications equipment. I rested my hand on the glass then quickly removed it. The very hot glass door revealed an obvious problem, though I decided to do a little investigation. It transpires that the data centre staff thought they had the knowledge and competence required to design, purchase, and build their own data centre. When I tentatively enquired if any of the staff had received any training the reply was, "We can’t afford training." So what was wrong? Most modern computing equipment cools from front to back, that is, cool air is drawn through the front of the equipment, heated then passed out to the back slightly warmer, so you have to orientate the racks ‘front to front’ and ‘back to back’ creating alternate warm and cool aisles. In this data centre, the orientation of the racks, if you haven’t already guessed, was in neat rows, all facing the same way. Each row of equipment drawing in warm air heated by the row in front. Alternating warm and cool aisles would normally even out the temperature in the data centre, in this case they had the two extremes, cold at one end and pretty hot at the other. Additional, minor configuration issues were completely overshadowed by the daunting task of finding time to schedule shutdowns, reposition and re-cable each row, in order to alleviate the problems caused by the accumulation of heat at one end of the datacentre.
The cost of not training, was now no longer hidden. We thank you all for your business in 2008, and reaffirm that we will be here to help satisfy your training needs in 2009 and beyond.
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