Can Obama really deliver on his Guantánamo pledge?

In his inauguration address Barack Obama made only one veiled reference to the inmates of Guantánamo Bay promising he would not abandon the rule of law or human rights "for expedience’s sake".

Several hours later, in his first executive order, the new president requested a 120-day freeze in war crime trials at the Cuban base. The delay is intended to provide the incoming administration with time to consider how best to dismantle or reformulate the controversial system of detentions and tribunals.

Online reaction to the move was swift. John Redwood, the Conservative politician, was disappointed. "I can forgive the president for his stumbles with the oath of office," he commented on his blog. "[Obama] was nervous, they were not his words, and his staff had failed to place the words on his prompt screen.

"[But] I felt let down not by the words, nor by the event, but by the actions. If he is serious about closing Guantánamo, why doesn’t he just announce a date or process for closure? Guantánamo became a symbol of a great democracy failing to live up to its own standards. We democrats condemn torture and believe in no detention without charge and trial. Why is he delaying even military justice for its inmates by seeking another 120-day delay in the trials about to edge forward? If he wishes to transfer them to civilian trials then just do so."

The left-leaning US website Daily Kos hosted more positive responses. "This manoeuvre will hopefully buy the new administration 120 days to determine how to proceed with the detainees," wrote mcjoan.

"The best possible course of action, from a rule of law and human rights standpoint, would be what the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is calling for - the withdrawal of charges and an end to the military commissions process, with cases that warrant prosecution proceeding in regular federal criminal courts. Should the military commissions judges refuse this request, unlikely as it seems, the administration should take more definitive action, such as ordering that the charges be withdrawn."

The Guantánamo Blog was confident that decisive action will follow. "I really wanted Obama to say something about Guantánamo in his address to the nation (and the world) today but alas he chose not to," posted H. Candace Gorman.

"However, I believe Obama has said something about Guantánamo with his appointments and that will have to hold me over for now. Last month I had the honour of meeting with members of Obama’s transition team regarding Guantánamo and I have confidence that they are men and women who will try to right the wrongs in the "justice" department … it will take some time to clear out the Bush enablers and I sure hope they start with the attorneys that have enabled Guantánamo. I have my list for them should they ask!"

Members of the ‘100 days to close Guantánamo and end torture’ campaign donned orange jumpsuits at the start of the inauguration celebrations and mingled with the crowds.

"As we continue to try and make visible the men who are in Guantánamo," said Matt Daloisio, "more than 110 people from around the country will end the nine-day Fast for Justice, and Witness Against Torture [and] begin the 100 days campaign.

"On Sunday, eight of us in DC joined the throngs of people going to the Inaugural concert on the Mall. Rather than sporting Obama T-shirts, flags and posters, seven of us wore orange jumpsuits and black hoods, and one wore a "Shut Guantánamo" T-shirt. The reception from the celebratory crowd was quite positive."

The news about Guantánamo provoked a flurry of comments on one of the sites that monitors the micro-blogging site Twitter. "He’s doing something about Guantánamo already? Is he actually real? What a statement of intent," commented one user in disbelief.

My first SBS 2008 deployment

The past few days were rather busy - i’ve spent them revamping the current network and infrastructure of a small business - deploying new PCs and the first SBS 2008.

First, lets talk about the hardware. It’s important to know that small businesses handle their infrastructure completely differently than large businesses, and in my opinion there are some things that require “unusual” thinking.

• Reliability: an SBS server is extremely critical for operation of a small business and they usually do not replace servers after three years
• Maintainability: small businesses do not have dedicated IT personnel. Usually, most “heavy” tasks are done by an IT service provider, and the daily IT tasks are done inhouse by someone as a secondary job
• Functionality: small businesses are sometimes just as demanding as larger companies - the small size requires setups that maximize the productivity of each employee

So, there are three main aspects one should focus on when deploying an SBS server.

Reliablity is a key aspect. An SBS server is critical for the business and this requires hardware that is highly capable and reliable. After all, an SBS server can serve a Business for up to five years without replacing the hardware. This is why it makes sense to buy really good hardware that lasts that long, combined with appropriate maintenance contracts to get it back up in case you run into problems.

In this case, we decided to use the following hardware:

IBM System x3500
Intel Quadcore 2.66 Ghz 12M (leaving 1 slot available)
10 GB Memory (leaving 6 slots available)
8 2.5″ 147GB 10kRPM SAS Disks (leaving 4 slots available)
ServeRAID 8k with 256MB BBWC (for the first 8 disks)
ServeRAID 8s with 256MB BBWC (for the other 4 disks)
Disk configuration:
RAID 1 consisting of two 147GB Disks
RAID 5 consisting of five 147GB Disks
Global Hotspare
IBM SAS HBA (for tapedrive)
LTO4 SAS attached HH internal tapedrive
Redundant fans & power
IBM Remote Supervisor Adapter II
5Y of IBM ServicePac with committed service option

As you can see, the system has lots of storage and redundancy. It’s also important to know that the SBS server does not run any third party applications (except those necessary for operation), the ERP runs on an IBM POWER machine. With SBS 2008, i would not recommend running any third party applications on the SBS itself - if necessary to run third party apps on a server, purchase SBS premium and run the third party apps on the second server.

The second aspect is ease of use, for which we should use software that can be automated as well as possible. SBS handles lots of things on his own, but we opted for a third party backup application because we still see tape backups as the best way to fulfill most of a customers needs. Especially since LTO drives have WORM media, that can help to comply with certain local laws.

As for the software, i’ve installed BackupExec 12.5 to handle the backups to tape. Tape backups are easier to handle for customers, offer superior performance, and make archival and external storage of data easy. Unfortunately, BackupExec 12.5 does not integrate with the SBS Console (yet?).

For virus scan, we’ve opted for McAfee VirusScan Enterprise. A central management application was unfortunately not yet available, so we deployed McAfee manually on each client, and on the server.

Exchange is protected using ForeFront for Exchange, which has served me well in the past.

SBS 2008 has a nice reporting function, but there are other important notifications: the RSA Adapter notifies for all hardware failures like power supplies, fans, etc. independently through e-mail (which can contact external adresses and even works if the failure killed the server), and allows remote troubleshooting in case the machine does not boot. ServeRAID manager and BackupExec also send daily reports to be viewed by the customer.

Last, but not least, is functionality. After all, customers aren’t like me that want an SBS because they like technology - no, they want an SBS to fulfill certain needs their business has.

In this case, there were several unique requirements regarding mailflow - thanks to the included Exchange 2007 server, which offers a very flexible transport rule system i was able to implement these requirements without having to purchase third party software or even program event sinks on our own.

So far, i’ve had zero issues with SBS 2008 - it worked without any problems and hardware support wasn’t a problem either. Looks like IBM got all the kinks figured out since the release of Windows Server 2008 at the beginning of the year.

The System x3500 is also very nice hardware - it looks like a tower variant of the x3650, which i also like very much. The only criticism i have for the machine is that installing the redundant fan kit is total pain in the ass, mostly because the documentation covers both the x3400 and x3500, and some parts don’t apply for the x3500 (but aren’t marked as such).

It shows that IBM can still deliver top notch hardware at affordable prices.

In case you couldn’t figure it out from reading this far, i really like SBS 2008, and it’s ready for action in a production environment. In case you’re thinking about deploying a new SBS, go with SBS 2008!