I ordered a couple of spare drive modules for some Sun X4540's I manage. I used the online store at Oracle.com It took a month to get the parts for one, and two, when I tried to get updates on the order, they never could connect me to the right people. I always ended up getting connected to some place in India who told me they were the wrong people to talk to. They gave me the "correct" number, which connected me back to the people who connected me to India in the first place, who connected me to India again. You see the vicious cycle. I ended up emailing store@sun.com and someone finally figured out WTF was going on. Oracle, eat a plate of dick. You suck.

We implemented Apple Open Directory, serving ~400 users, using four Xserves and and two Xserve RAID's. We're using Apple's mail services, file, web, web log, and VPN service.

So far, things have gone better than I expected. We are authenticating Mac, Windows and Linux PC's, all of which can access the same home directory. The Open Directory master server also acts as the Windows PDC and serves up roaming profiles for Win XP clients.

What I've been hounding my Apple rep about is the lack of a real group callaboration suite. The pieces are there; iCal, Address Book, Jabber, Cyrus/Postfix. They need to be brought together in an Exchange/GroupWise sort of fashion. We are still using Steltor Corporate Time (now Oracle Collaboration Suite) for calendaring, task lists, and shared contact lists. I'm watching the Hula project closely. Rumor has it Apple is shopping around for a comprehensive group collaboration system. Hula might be it! Zee dork