SYSADMINS: Need personal paging/alert device

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killerasp

Gawd
Joined
Jul 17, 2001
Messages
963
I am trying to get myself a personal alert device...either 2 way pager or blackberry.

As my fellow network/system admins know, our jobs are literally 24/7. If something goes down, we need to know about it ASAP.

I got a Skytel 2 way msg device, but i canceled it b/c i realize there is a 500 character limit. So that is pretty much useless for me as a email/alert device. But i was chose this b/c it doesnt use your typical GPRS celluar network like a BB or cell phone. But now that 2 way messaging/skytel/pager is out of the question, im left with BB.

My boss doesnt like his BB b/c has problems with his device every so often. He has problems with his device properly syncing for emails. He has to do a power cycle before he can restore the connection. I am sure he has done troubleshooting on the device and still cant get near perfect connectivity.

So my question to you all: what do you use as your personal portable alert device? Is there an alternative to pager/skytel and BB? or is BB my best bet?
 
A lot of people in my company use Blackberry's. I've set up a couple of them. We use a BES server. Works great.
 
I just use my cell phone. It's got a 250 char limit, but I organize my alerts so the most important data is at the front of the message...IP Address/Hostname, time, up/down, then the message. Usually I get enough of the message to determine what the problem is. I have the message CC'ed to a web-based email account so I can just login to it and read the full message if need be. Usually I dont have to. The IP address, up/down status, and the severity of the syslog message tells me if I need to check something out usually.

Blackberry has its own set of security issues you should be aware of. You'd probably want to go read up on them before implementing anything into your network.

We're also going to experiment with having our alert server actually CALL us and use a digitized voice to tell us the entire message using a dial-out only modem fairly soon. You might want to explore that option as well.
 
we use a 3rd party company for our exchange hosting and for our blackberry services (BES).
 
Boscoh said:
We're also going to experiment with having our alert server actually CALL us and use a digitized voice to tell us the entire message using a dial-out only modem fairly soon. You might want to explore that option as well.
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that is so freaking nerdy...but so damn cool.

my school actually had something liek that set up to announce alerts over a loud speaker in the server room.
 
I have a Blackberry 7230 and I love it for work. It's a little "unstylish" to use as a phone in public cuz it's kinda big, but very handy for checking emails. The main problem I have with them is that you can't open attachments.

Another option would be a PocketPC with wireless capabilities. You can receive emails, browse the web and you can download utilities to remotely control your servers. In fact most of the new ones come with a terminal services client included so you can log right into your servers. Of course you'd need a wireless network for that to work though.
 
The Hiptop is a great device for sys admins. It's a cell phone, pager, a keyboard, color screen and internet access. There's also a SSH client built in, so if you get a page about a server being down you'll be able to remotely fix the problem from the hiptop.
 
We use Blackberry but use their webclient address to receive email alerts from an independent alerting system since if your corp. email goes down there goes your alerts :)
 
Boscoh said:
Blackberry has its own set of security issues you should be aware of.
Click to expand...

not if you know what you're doing and have the proper encription systems set up. unless i'm missing something, they've been pretty good as far as i know
 
I use my MPx 200 but just ordered the new MPx 220. They are M$ Smartphones. I'd go with a smartphone like the MPx220 or go with a full PPC phone such as the SX66. The SX66 would be great since it's a full pocketpc + phone.
 
I am a B.E.S. administrator for Cingular Wireless and would say the RIM blackberry is the best when it comes to what you're looking for.

B.E.S. 4.0 and handheld software 4.0 is out!!!
 
damnt, i am so getting a blackberry. im going to write a PPT proposal on why i need a BB instead of a stupid pager. if they company doesnt want to pay for it, F'it, im buying it myself.
 
our company just has Nextel phones, does everything we need.... i love direct connect, very cool.
 
carloswill said:
Worst feature ever! Annoying in public.
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you know there is a button to make it just come through the regular speaker like a normal phone conversation... most people can't even tell when i'm using it.
 
Most people dont use it. I only like Nextel Motorolas because of the durability of their phones. They seem more stable and are not too bulky.
 
carloswill said:
Most people dont use it. I only like Nextel Motorolas because of the durability of their phones. They seem more stable and are not too bulky.
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i have a motorola phone... i530, very rugged. also has speaker phone, which is cool for conference calls and stuff when i'm at the office.
 
Boscoh said:
Blackberry has its own set of security issues you should be aware of. You'd probably want to go read up on them before implementing anything into your network.
Click to expand...

Please elaborate.

Most of the senior executives and senior IT guys (like myself) are given Blackberry 7510's by Nextel (soon upgrading to 7520's). I have very extensive network monitoring functions in place. Once anything goes wrong I get an email on my blackberry right away. I usually find out about network outages even before our ISP notices them.
 
RIM blackberry uses a proprietary PIN to PIN messaging packet to and from the server / desktop re-director software via GPRS. What security issues are you implying? Right now there are no security issues with GPRS transmission via PIN to PIN. I am just curious because we have 3 BES servers with over 5000+ users and is w/o a doubt the best thing since sliced bread. Never had any issues, except users losing GPRS radio signal on their handsets.
 
carloswill said:
RIM blackberry uses a proprietary PIN to PIN messaging packet to and from the server / desktop re-director software via GPRS. What security issues are you implying? Right now there are no security issues with GPRS transmission via PIN to PIN. I am just curious because we have 3 BES servers with over 5000+ users and is w/o a doubt the best thing since sliced bread. Never had any issues, except users losing GPRS radio signal on their handsets.
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Exactly what he said. I'm pretty sure. :confused:
 
We just use cell phones. IPMonitor and I believe Nagios both can send out text messages. All of our messages are designed to be very short and sweet, "SERVER ASP IS DOWN" or "SERVER DRIVE D IS DOWN." Fits nicely on a cell phone screen. And all sysadmins should have cell phones anyway..."I just locked myself out of my account..." :)

Besides, why need more information? If you have good monitoring set up, you don't need to know more than this, and you won't be able to fix anything anyway without getting to a system (laptop, etc) that has more capabilities to see what's wrong and check emails/monitors.

:) Just my opinion on that.
 
shade91 said:
Please elaborate.

Most of the senior executives and senior IT guys (like myself) are given Blackberry 7510's by Nextel (soon upgrading to 7520's). I have very extensive network monitoring functions in place. Once anything goes wrong I get an email on my blackberry right away. I usually find out about network outages even before our ISP notices them.
Click to expand...
Well, Blackberry is a very powerful mobile computing tool...like a miniature laptop. It should be treated as such, that's mainly what I was trying to get across. Most of what I was talking about is really just policy. You dont want weak passwords on them, you want to control what a user has access to (something like VNC on a blackberry would be dangerous in the wrong hands, if there even is such a thing), and you'd want to make sure you could disable access of a stolen unit. From what I've heard and seen, you can do all that stuff with Blackberry Enterprise Server. I don't know nearly as much about Blackberry as some of you guys probably do, as we don't use it. I was just trying to get him thinking about the security that needs to be implemented on these very powerful devices. The things can browse the web, and recieve SMS messages. So potentially that opens them up to future exploits. I know you used to be able to DoS older SMS-capable cell phones and wireless providers sometimes had nothing in place to stop it. I don't know if you still can, or if Blackberry's would be vulnerable to that.

I've also seen some stuff on Bugtraq about buffer overflows and DoS's and whatnot (I think Blackberry denied this?), but just about everything in existence has something on Bugtraq.

The main point: like any other computer, they can be vulnerable. Remember that.

I didn't mean to insinuate that there was a "killer hack" for Blackberry, because I dont know of any. Sorry if it came across that way.

Do you guys run AV software on your blackberrys? I thought I read somewhere that Symantec shipped with Blackberry Enterprise Server...
 
I have a blackberry myself, with e-mail alerts and so-on.

We don't use the BES since there are only 2 people in the company with a BB (myself and the CEO) so it's not a justifiable cost.

I use the web client and just send any alerts to that address (waiting for it to pick up my enterprise mail takes too long)
 
I/we use SprintPCS. It has a feature called "Shortmail" that is limited to 256 characters which we use for most alarms. If that's not enough space to get the message across you can also access "WebMail" which is your basic low-bandwidth Email.
 
Blackberry. That's really all you need to know if you want LAN/WAN messaging. I'd recommend the models with phones and Direct Connect as well as the obvious email functionality. What might be of interest to you however if you are looking at rolling out a Blackberry server and client devices is this article. Might amount to a hand slap for RIM however the implications could be farther reaching.

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,118956,00.asp
 
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