Hyper-V is not hype

But given my current view that “a happy server is a virtualised server” then it’s reassuring to see implementations using Hyper-V deliver concrete results in real-world applications. Careful reading of this report will show that the council received quite a bit of help from Microsoft in return for providing an advanced deployment site for Hyper-V, but no amount of magic Microsoft consultancy dust would have fixed the installation if it had been fundamentally broken in any way. It’s a real thumbs up for Hyper-V.

IP telephony

My adventures into IP telephony continue apace. The most recent change has been an upgrade from version 6 to version 7 of the 3CX server software, which involves a major revision to the web-based user interface. Most importantly, you now don’t have to use the supplied web server engine (which ran happily alongside IIS), but you can just use IIS itself (indeed, this is the preferred configuration). So it’s now possible to have a much cleaner installation of 3CX server software into an existing web server setup.

There are many new features in version 7, including better integration with Exchange Server 2007 for voicemail support. In fact, I’m still walking through the software trying to get to grips with the various changes that have been introduced. For example, many of the hardware configuration wizards have been updated, and the one for my Patton 4114 BT four-line phone line to Ethernet adapter box now has both “hunting” and “non-hunting” options. There’s a lot of new stuff to explore.

I’m still very cautious in my explorations of this whole area of technology. It’s still all much too difficult for civilians, designed with professional telephone engineers in mind, with configuration utilities straight out of Hell. This really will not do. Although 3CX does its best to make the server-side software as simple as it possibly can, with dedicated configuration script builders for all the hardware and phones, the hardware itself is still stuck in a 1980s-vintage, command-line oriented configuration nightmare. It will take only one sensible vendor to bring a solution to market that has a proper plug-and-play line interface and automatic phone configuration, coupled to a one-click server solution, and that vendor will clean up this market. I’d hoped that Microsoft could be that vendor, but so far it seems to be resolutely stuck in the server-side services space. Maybe this is something for Apple to take on, to give even more impetus to the iPhone?

Jon Honeyball

In the Moodle

This month, we’re back with Windows Server 2008, and I’m going to be looking at setting up one of its roles and then installing some popular open-source packages. The reason for this activity was that I wanted to take a look at Moodle, a Course Management System (CMS), which you might also describe as a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) or even as a Learning Management System (LMS). In case those descriptions have you baffled, I’ll quote the Moodle website, which calls it “a free open-source web application designed to help educators create effective online learning sites”. I’m an educator and I want an effective online learning site, so this product seems to fit the bill. I’d looked at Moodle in the past of course, but only cursorily because it isn’t a “bung it straight on and works right out of the box” sort of system. There’s a fair bit to do to set it up and then a stiff learning curve of your own to work out how to use it, and my workload meant there just never seemed to be enough hours in the day to get around to it.