The movement toward blade servers in the enterprise data center has been growing steadily for some time, backed by manufacturers like IBM and HP. But expect to soon see networking giant Cisco Systems enter this market as well, setting themselves up for a tense battle with blade server manufacturers for control of the enterprise data center.

In the long run, the enterprise data center is all about providing computing resources for an organization. Who do you think can provide those resources more effectively -– a blade server manufacturer using virtualization with networking added to the system or a data networking manufacturer adding blade servers and virtualization?

Read the rest of the story Here: http://gigaom.com/2008/03/21/coming-soon-the-cisco-blade-server/

To upgrade the current license of your cisco asa firewall, you need to order a new license key from Cisco at www.cisco.com/go/license. You will receive a new license key in your email after a couple of hours. This license key is a five element hexadecimal string in the form 0xffd8624e (as an example).

To apply this new license key in your security appliance, configure the following:

ASA5500(config)#  activation-key 0xffd8624e
ASA5500(config)#exit
ASA5500#copy running startup
ASA5500#reload

If you purchase a service contract with Cisco, you can have access to the so called TAC service (Technical Assistance Center) which is a technical support team spread all over the world to assist you in troubleshooting and solving any technical Cisco problem you may have. When you open a TAC case, they usually ask you a bunch of information about the problem, a ‘show tech’ output from the device, what kind of network you are running etc. They usually provide useful answers and help you finally solve the problem, but some times their technical experience is limited when you face a really hard and rare technical issue.

On the other hand, the Cisco NetPro forum (http://forum.cisco.com) is a place where many “Guru” Network Professionals meet. There you can find people with actual network field experience that have expertise in almost any network problem that you can imagine. Whenever the TAC support center was unable to solve my technical problems, the NetPro forum guys would usually point me to the right direction to actually solve the problem.

Connecting Your Home
Today’s Internet is quickly becoming as much a part of daily life in the home as water, gas, and electricity. A high-speed, always-on Internet connection is now a fundamental utility in the home, enabling a broad range of applications, solutions, and services that save people time, increase family convenience and security, and build and helps family members maintain personal and professional communications.

Cisco has bought Linksys a few years ago to get into the Home Network market, and since then has dominated the SMB market as well. An excellent resource blog that talks about Home Networking and other network related stuff is www.networkingreviews.com