AIX 5.3 Service Extension

In 2004, the “Opportunity” rover landed on Mars. Janet Jackson had a “wardrobe malfunction”, Google launched gmail, and AIX Version 5.3 was released.

Eight years later, AIX Version 5.3 will officially go out of standard support at the end of April 2012.  AIX 5.3 will probably go down in history as one of the most widely adopted releases of AIX due to features such as support for POWER5, POWER6, MicroPartitions, Virtual I/O, 64 core scalability, SMT2, NFSV4 and a host of other features. But, like all good things, it too, must come to an end.

The reason it has to end is the “N-1″ policy for AIX releases. That means that there are generally only two releases of AIX in the market at any given time. This is done primarily because most independent software vendors (ISV) can only support two operating system levels at any point in time. If you have more than two AIX releases in the market, then ISV support would get fragmented across those releases. As a result, there are only two releases of AIX currently in the market – AIX 7 and AIX 6

Unfortunately there are a lot of clients out there still running AIX 5.3    It’s not that they didn’t have warning, IBM announced AIX 5.3 was going to be withdrawn from marketing back in the spring of 2010. But it is often difficult for clients to move to a new AIX release because they need to coordinate the move across their entire application ISV application stack.

ISVs often release a new version of their application every 12 to 18 months. Many clients don’t update to a later version of the application that often, so when it’s time to upgrade the AIX release, they also need to update to a later version of the ISV application. The need to upgrade the AIX OS and the ISV applications at the same time requires a lot of effort, so it often takes a long time to make the transition.

To help clients that could not make the transition to a later level of AIX from AIX 5.3 by the end of April 2012, we are making available a new service extension for AIX 5.3. This service extension will allow clients to continue to get support for AIX 5.3 even after the end of standard support. (Announcement letter here http://tinyurl.com/aix53extension )

This new AIX 5.3 service extension offering will:

• Provide usage support such as answers to configuration questions and problem determination
• Provide new fixes. This includes fixes for newly discovered security exposures. New fixes availability are subject to the standard “best commercial effort” restrictions. Fixes will be provided via interim fixes and, in some cases via Service Packs
• Be available for three years, May 2012 – 2015. Of course, plans are always “subject to change”
• This service extension is only available for AIX 5.3 Technology Level 12. Earlier AIX 5.3 Technology Levels will not be supported under this offering.
• New hardware toleration. As new hardware becomes available over the next two years, we will provide new hardware toleration when possible. This will not include new hardware that requires architectural changes.
• This service extension offering will be priced per core and will be subcapacity eligible. In other words, if you have 4 cores running AIX 5.3 on a 16 core server with AIX 7 running on the other 12 cores, you only need to purchase the AIX 5.3 service extension for the 4 cores running AIX 5.3
• Minimum term of six months. In most countries you will need to purchase this support for at least six months at a time. In the US, the minimum term is 90 days.
• Normal AIX Software Maintenance (SWMA) required. You will need to purchase this service extension in addition to normal AIX SWMA.

As you might have noticed, this service extension is significantly different from prior AIX release service extensions in three ways:

• New fixes will be delivered via Service Packs for the first two years
• Enablement for some new hardware will added during the first 2 years
• Announced with consistent prices and terms worldwide

For the first two years, 2012-2013 and 2013-2014, we intend to publish two Service Packs per year as part of this service extension.  These Service Packs will include cumulative fixes and new hardware enablement. Note that these Service Packs will only be available to clients that have purchased the service extension.  In addition to the Service Packs, clients will still be given Interim Fixes to address immediate issues. No service packs will be released the final year of the service extension, 2014-2014. In the last year, only interim fixes will be available and those will only be provided only as needed.

As noted above, we intend to provide support for some of the new hardware that is expected to be released after April 2012.  This new hardware support will not include support for any new hardware that requires architectural changes or nor will the support provide any exploitation of new hardware features.

The pricing and terms and conditions for the AIX 5.3 service extension will be very similar world wide, with variations for currency and other country specific requirements.

Some people have asked me about when they should use the AIX 5.3 service extension versus using the AIX 5.3 Workload Partitions product. The answer is pretty easy – if you intend to migrate to a later release of AIX, then use the service extension to bridge you to that point. If however, you believe that you will need to run AIX 5.3 indefinitely for a particular application, then the AIX 5.3 WPARs is the better choice.

Hopefully I have answered most of your questions about this new AIX 5.3 service extension offering. The intent of this offering is to help clients remain supported as they as they move up to later releases of AIX.

Jay

AIX Service Pack best practices

As discussed previously, IBM periodically delivers new function, new hardware support, and cumulative fixes for AIX in software updates called “Technology Levels”.  The name “Technology Level” was created in 2005 to replace the former name “Maintenance Level”. The new name indicated that a “Technology Level” wasn’t just a bundle of fixes, but may also include new functionality.  Technology Levels are now released once per year, and are a way for IBM to deliver cumulative fixes, functional enhancements and new hardware support between new releases/versions of the AIX operating system. Not all Technology Levels include functional enhancements, but all Technology Levels provide cumulative fixes and new hardware support.

Service Packs have a very similar purpose but there are some key differences. First, Service Packs are released about four times per year to deliver cumulative fixes and new hardware enablement on top of an existing Technology Level.  Second, Service Packs do not include functional enhancements. Since Service Packs do not include new function, they are viewed by many administrators as potentially less likely to introduce problems.

The ability to install individual fixes to AIX on a piecemeal basis, called “Selective Fixes”, was introduced in AIX Version 3.2 in 1992.  Selective fixes were a highly requested capability because with selective fixes, clients could pick and choose which fixes to install.

This seemed like a great idea; after all, shouldn’t installing only the fixes that you really needed reduce the risk of an update destabilizing your system? Well, unfortunately, the answer turned out to be “not so much”.

The challenge with selective fixes is how to manage the dependencies, also known as “requisites”, between different functional areas within AIX. For example, fixes to one area (such as NFS) might be dependent on a requisite fix being made in another area (such as the kernel).  The effect if this was that if you wanted to update NFS, you also had to also make sure you also made the requisite update to the kernel.

The knowledge about which fix requires which requisite fix comes from the developer. The developer has to code knowledge about co requisites into the individual fixes so that when you installed the NFS fix in the example above, the corresponding kernel fix was also installed.

Unfortunately, we observed that a number of the problems that clients were experiencing in the field were the result of hidden requisites between code areas. While it was relatively easy for a developer to understand and manage the requisites for code changes that she had introduced, it became difficult to manage the unintentional requisites that naturally occur in a complex environment like an operating system.

The irony is that when an administrator thought he was reducing risk by introducing fewer changes to the operating systems, he was in fact becoming a test pilot – a test pilot that was running a combination of components that had likely never been run before.

To avoid this issue, we came up with only one approach that is guaranteed to work: clients should install all the fixes at the same time. After all, IBM tests all fixes in a service pack (or Technology Level) as a unit so if clients install all the fixes (update_all) , then the client is using the same combination that IBM tested. This recommendation is part of the “IBM AIX Operating System Service Strategy Details and Best Practices” documented at http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/sas/f/best/home.html

While IBM has not disabled the selective fix capability in AIX, we have made it more difficult to use by disabling the ability to download individual fixes from Fix Central – you must download the entire service pack. You can still extract and install individual fixes, but we don’t make that risky behavior easy.

In summary, IBM provides Service Packs for AIX because it is the best way for you to maintain the operating system. While it may be counter-intuitive, periodically installing all fixes in the Service Pack is the best way for you to maintain the AIX operating system between Technology Level updates and it is least risky way to update your AIX system.

Jay

Some “Whys” about AIX Technology Levels and Service Packs

Here are the answers to a couple of “Why” questions that I have gotten recently about how we roll out AIX fixes such as Technology Levels and Service Packs.

The first question:

“Why does a new Service Pack comes out at the same time as a new Technology Level?”

As you might imagine, testing a new AIX Technology Level is a very involved process that takes many months. As with any complex software, it is impossible to get to a point where all problems have been discovered and resolved. The process of releasing a new AIX Technology Level involves testing the code and evaluating the severity and impact of problems found to decide when the code is good enough to be released.

For example, a bug that caused a data integrity issue would be a severe enough problem that it would have to be fixed before the Technology Level could be released. In contrast, a typo in the man page would not be severe enough problem to hold up the release of the Technology Level.

As the testing of a Technology Level progresses, the product team tracks the severity of the new problems and the resolution of previously discovered problems against established quality criteria. Over time, the severity and number of new problems discovered during testing tapers off and most of the problems that have been discovered would have been resolved. At this point the quality of the Technology Level meets the quality criteria and the Technology Level is ready to be released to the distribution channels.

When I say “distribution channel”, I am talking about the two main ways that clients can obtain the new Technology Level: via Fix Central as downloadable update or as new bootable installation media that is physically replicated in multiple IBM distribution centers around the world.

It takes some period of time for new Technology Level to make it’s way through these distribution channels (such as time for the physical media replication), thus the new Technology Level has to be released to the distribution channels before it is actually available to the clients.

The key thing to understand is that we don’t stop testing the new Technology Level even though it has been released to distribution. In fact, there is ongoing testing of AIX going on all the time.

As we continue testing the Technology Level, we also test new fixes for the less severe bugs (such as the ealier example of  the typo in the man page), that we found before the Technology Level was released to distribution. Occasionally we also find new, more severe problems that need to be urgently need to be addressed. All of those fixes get included in the first Service Pack.

The near simultaneous release of the first Service Pack is built into our process of releasing a new AIX Technology Level.

By the way, this policy of releasing a fix at the same time as a major AIX update isn’t anything new. Before 2007 we would roll up all of these kind of fixes into something that we called  “The First PTF”. The First PTF would come out the same time as the underlying Maintenance Level. After 2007 we restructured AIX release support and did away with standalone PTFs which is why we now release these fixes as the first Service Pack.

Another “Why” question that has come up recently is:

“I’ve been running an Interim Fix for a problem for some time, but it wasn’t included in the latest Service Pack. Why not?” 

The key thing to understand is that Service Packs are not simply bundles of Interim Fixes. There is a lot more to releasing a Service Pack.

Let’s work though an example:

1. Let’s say that company XYZ has a problem in AIX
2. The admin for company XYZ calls IBM Support.
3. IBM Support investigates the problem and finds that there is a bug in the code.
4. The Support person crafts an Interim Fix that corrects the problem for that client.

The Interim Fix is specifically targeted at a particular AIX level in that particular client’s environment.  The point of that Interim Fix is to quickly address the problem for a particular client in that client’s specific environment.

The AIX architect responsible for that area will also analyze the bug and the Interim Fix provided as she works on a future Service Pack update. Remember that the Interim Fix for company XYZ that was delivered in step #4 above was tailored for that specific client’s environment. When it becomes time to roll that fix for that bug into the next Service Pack, the architect will look at the Interim Fix in the context of supporting all customers, not just company XYZ.

Sometimes the Interim Fix provided to company XYZ would not be appropriate for other customers. In that case, the architect will have to come up with a fix that would be more generally applicable. Because that process takes some time, that more comprehensive fix may not be delivered in the next Service Pack. Additionally timing and workload issues also affect when fixes get rolled up into a Service Pack. All of these factors may result in a fix not being delivered in the next Service Pack even though it had been made available to a client as an Interim Fix.

I hope this explanation of how we test and roll out AIX Technology Levels and Service Packs has been helpful. If you have other questions about AIX you can post a comment to this blog or drop an email to chromeaix@gmail.com and I might make it a topic for a future blog post.

Jay

Travel stories – Manila

In September of 2006 my colleague and I were on a four country conference tour of Asia. I would speak about AIX and virtualization and my colleague would cover Power Systems hardware.

The first two events in KL and Singapore went off without a hitch but we couldn’t go to the third event # in Thailand because the military had a coup the day I was to arrive. I didn’t know it until then, but I have a firm travel rule : “Never go to a place that has tanks in the streets”

Because we had already canceled one of the four events, we were really determined to do the fourth event, in Manila.

There was only one little problem, and that was that a category 5 typhoon was headed straight towards Manila.

The Manila team assured us that the conference would occur that Thursday morning as scheduled despite the weather. Despite my gut feel that this was a mistake,  we dutifully flew to Manila that Wednesday night.

Well the next morning the typhoon was starting to hit Manila in earnest and the winds were blowing at least 50 miles an hour. Our local country hosts called us and said “Err – we noticed that the wind picked up overnight so we are canceling the conference!”

You can imagine my thoughts. I said a few choice words and then we checked out of the hotel in an attempt to get out of the country before the typhoon struck. We made the drive to the airport in blinding rain and hurried to the counter. Unfortunately by that point the Manila airport had lost power and it was a surreal tableau of desperate people in the dim light of a few backup lights and lightning flashes. All the computers were powered down and the airport was shut down. Nobody was leaving.

After waiting in line for several hours, the airline (Singapore) finally decided to escort us to their lounge past the unpowered security checkpoint. But before we could leave, we had to check our luggage. The clerk HAND WROTE my baggage tag and I remember looking wistfully at that bag as I left the counter. I never expected to see that bag again.

The business class lounge didn’t have electricity but they did have candles, ice and booze. I proceeded to medicate myself in preparation for the typhoon.  I was really concerned about my safety and after the vodka loosened my tongue, I spent a good part of the time giving the local team a frank appraisal of their weather prognostication abilities via my cellphone.

The typhoon went directly over the airport and we watched the typhoon rip pieces off of airport buildings through the big picture windows in the lounge. The lounge was luckily on the leeward side of the storm so none of the lounge windows were broken.

Eventually the typhoon passed and the airport resumed operations. We boarded a flight to Hong Kong about 10:30 that night on an extremely lightly loaded Singapore Airlines plane.

As expected, my bag did not arrive with me (remember the hand filled out baggage tag?) I filed a missing luggage report but frankly thought it was a lost cause. The next day we managed to make the long trip home from Hong Kong, sans luggage.

Over the next few days, when I inquired about my missing bag Singapore Airlines could only tell me that they were searching for it but had no status or information on where it might be.

Three days later, out of the blue, I get a call from American Airlines in Austin – my bag had managed to make it home after all!

That was my first real trip to that part of Asia and it took five more years before I ever got the nerve to return to Manila.

Things I learned on that trip: Go with your gut feelings. Be flexible. Stay at the hotel if there is any doubt about your flight. Don’t worry, it’ll (probably) work out all right in the end and never, ever, ever check a bag.

Searching for software availability for AIX

Many clients that use AIX are moving up to AIX 7 or AIX 6 from AIX V5.3    As a result, I have been getting a lot of questions about whether a particular Independent Software Vendor (ISV) or IBM application is available for a specific version of AIX.

The best place to get a definitive answer is from the software provider, but there are a couple of IBM web pages you should go to first to get a quick idea about which AIX releases are supported by an application. While neither of these pages is complete, they are a good first place to start searching.

The first page, which is for non-IBM software and solutions, is the Global Solutions Directory maintained by IBM at http://www.ibm.com/partnerworld/gsd/search.do

This page allows you to search across all third party solutions including ISV applications. One caveat is that this directory only includes all solutions that have been registered by the Business Partner.

I put the italics there because the entries in this index are completely voluntary and maintained by the Business Partner providing the solution. While is it easy for a Business Partner to include an entry in this directory, some choose not to create entries for their solutions/software.

For example, you won’t find many Oracle and BMC products listed in the Global Solutions Directory. For those vendors, the only alternatives are to either crawl through those company’s web sites or call up your friendly salesperson. If you do contact the ISV, you might want to ask them why all their solutions aren’t listed in the Global Solutions Directory.

There are many IBM Business Partners that do maintain entries for their solutions in the Global Solutions Directory, so it is worth the effort to search there first. The Global Solutions Directory interface is kind of clunky but with some patience, it is possible to find software solutions for a particular AIX level.

I’ll take you through a few screens to show you how to do a keyword & options search in the Global Solutions Directory. In this example, I first specified the Operating System (in this case all “AIX” releases) and the software I am interested in (“SAS”).

The results of the search are pretty straightforward. (There were additional results shown that I truncated for the sake of brevity)

If I click on the “SAS 9” link in the results, I get more information on the solution including a contact name and number.

Although incomplete, the Global Solutions Directory is a good starting point your search for information on non-IBM software and solutions. The key point to remember is that you cannot consider a negative result to be conclusive – you have to check the Business Partner’s web site or better yet, contact the Business Partner directly if the solution you are looking for isn’t listed or doesn’t show support for the AIX release that you are interested in.

The Global Solutions Directory also doesn’t cover IBM software. For that, you need to go someplace else, the IBM Software Compatibility page located at http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/prodguid/v1r0/clarity/index.html     This relativity new web page contains fairly complete information about which AIX levels are supported by IBM software products such as DB2, WebSphere and Tivoli.

There are a number of different searches you can use on this page, but the one I find the most useful is the “Matrix between specific product(s) and desired operating systems”.  This search allows you to build a matrix of specific applications against a table of different AIX levels and is much more powerful than the search engine for the Global Solutions Directory.

For example, in this screen I first specify the two releases of Tivoli Storage Manager that I am interested in.

In the next screen I specify AIX 7.1 as the operating system. Notice that I deselected “Desktop” for the AIX 7.1 OS since that isn’t really relevant to me.

The end result is a report that shows me that Tivoli Storage Manager version 6.1 isn’t supported on AIX 7.1 but that Tivoli Storage Manager version 6.2 is supported.

Since you can specify a number of different IBM software products and levels, it is relativity easy to get a report that helps you to identify potential issues when moving up to a new level of AIX.

The key thing is to follow up with the software provider if the ISV isn’t supporting the level of AIX you need. Many ISVs won’t start supporting a new OS level until they get requests from their customers.

Although IBM has an extensive partner program that works with ISVs to get support for the latest levels of AIX, your voice is the strongest incentive for the ISV to start supporting an AIX level. Things like the AIX Binary Compatibility Guarantee make it easier for ISVs to support new levels of AIX but ultimately the ISV is the one that has to make the support commitment.

Hertz, you’re not Number 1 with me anymore

What are you doing to make your customers feel special?

All successful product managers must be successful at attracting and keeping customers. One tool to assist with this task is a customer loyalty program. All customer loyalty programs provide some benefit to encourage repeat business. For example, American Airline’s AAdvantage program, one of the first such programs, provides miles to earn free trips, early boarding and other benefits to make you feel “special” and continue flying with them. The AAdvantage program is one of the reasons why I almost exclusively fly American Airlines. That’s because there is a reciprocal relationship between my purchases and the quality of the service that I receive.

Recently I had an experience that caused me to think about the reciprocal relationship between provider and customer.

I joined the Hertz #1 Club loyalty program around 1983. One of the key benefits of the #1 Club was that you didn’t have to stop at the counter; you could go straight to your car. At the time, this was an exclusive perquisite of Hertz and I was very happy when my company made an agreement with Hertz that allowed me to join the #1 Club for free (Hertz charged a fee to belong to the #1 Club).

For most of the last twenty-odd years, I was a happy #1 Club customer. I made almost all of my car rentals with Hertz (it was the exclusive provider for my company for many of those years) and I enjoyed going straight to my car under the awnings. I even occasionally got an upgrade to a better car or free satellite radio. I was a complacent customer and I didn’t seriously consider renting from another company (especially after a disastrous personal rental at Alamo.) I don’t rent often enough to make it in to the upper tier of the #1 Club, but I was renting at least five or six rentals a year.

Over the years things changed. First, my company negotiated similar agreements with other car rental companies such as Enterprise, National and Avis. Second, the other car rental agencies started providing similar benefits to the Hertz #1 Club. Third, due to the poor economic conditions, my company mandated the use of compact cars instead of the mid-size cars I usually rented. I largely ignored these changes and continued to rent exclusively from Hertz.

Last month I took a brief trip to Raleigh, NC. Like usual. I rented a car from Hertz. When the bus dropped me off at the rental lot, I hiked to the far end of the lot to the uncovered space where my unassuming compact car waited in the sun.

At that moment I had a revelation: my twenty eight years of loyalty to Hertz wasn’t really getting me much. The relationship was no longer reciprocal.

As I thought about it, I realized that over the past few years, I had had this same experience many times: another crummy Hertz car at the far end of the lot.  I couldn’t remember when I had last gotten any special treatment from Hertz like a complementary upgrade. Part of this is due to the forced move to compact cars as my understanding is that Hertz does not provide complementary upgrades for people renting compact cars. But upgrades aside, I couldn’t really think of any other way that Hertz had let me know that they valued my business. They had gotten complacent and didn’t make me feel “special” anymore.

Now, I’ve been a product manager for many years, so I know the worst thing that can happen is to have an unhappy customer that doesn’t bother to tell you that they are unhappy. So, I navigated the complexities of the Hertz site to open an online complaint.

I stated my disappointment with my perceived lack of reciprocity in my relationship with Hertz. After all, I was loyal for twenty plus years, shouldn’t Hertz be loyal to me?

Mind you, I wasn’t really mad at Hertz, just disappointed. I expected a courteous acknowledgment of my complaint and perhaps a little better attention in the future.

Unfortunately, that’s not the way it played out.

First, was the response to my initial online complaint, or rather the lack there of. I didn’t receive a response, zip, nada, nothing other than the automated response that said your complaint had been logged.

So, after three weeks or so, I sat down and wrote a letter to the CEO. A real letter. Snail mail.  You know, one of those things you put in a physical box and wait for the post office to pick up and deliver it. In the age of email, I usually find that when you send a physical letter to somebody it gets their attention.

Well I did get their attention, kind of. After several days, I received an email from a functionary at Hertz in “Executive Customer Service”. I won’t bore you with her prose, but to summarize, she said:

• We already responded to you
• Upgrades are subject to availability (No mention of the compact car limitation)
• Here’s a twenty five dollar coupon

So, what was wrong with this response? Well for starters it came via email. I went to the trouble of sending a physical letter (after I didn’t get an email response). At that point a phone call (they do have my contact info after all) followed up by a physical letter would have been appropriate.

Secondly, it’s never good form to start out a response to an unhappy customer with “We already responded to you”. At least they could have acknowledged that their response might have gotten lost. So the net effect is that only a couple paragraphs into the response and I getting a little angry.

Next, they didn’t acknowledge my actual complaint about the lack of differentiating service, but instead focused on the lack of upgrades. Since they didn’t acknowledge the limitation in not providing complementary upgrades for clients renting compact cars it just made the discussion about upgrades annoying.

The twenty five dollar coupon however moved me firmly into the “mad” category.

But “wait” you might say, they offered you money-that should make it alright, shouldn’t it?

Well nowhere in my letter did I complain about the cost of the rentals. To be honest I don’t really care that much about the cost as long as the rates are reasonable because my company pays for it anyway.

In fact, I don’t know what I would do with the coupon on a business rental. If I rented a mid-size car and used the coupon to pay the difference I’d be in violation of my company policy to only rent compact cars. And if I just apply the twenty five dollars to a compact car rental, while that is nice for my company accountants but I’d be the one that would have to go through the additional hassle of figuring out how to apply the coupon.

In other words, the response didn’t address my issues and the proposed solution (the coupon) actually would make my travel more difficult. At best, the coupon would benefit my company, not me.

The more that I thought about it, the more angry I got. In my somewhat irrational view, my twenty eight years of loyalty was repaid with an offer for an inconvenient 86 cents a year. Yes, I know that may not be a rational response, but customers aren’t always rational.

My response was to open new customer loyalty accounts with Enterprise, Avis and National. I will be renting my next car (today) from National. We’ll see how special they make me feel. While I won’t rule out renting from Hertz in the future, they are going to have to earn my business back.

So what are the lessons for a product manager?

Well the first lesson is that you need to continually reevaluate the value that you provide to your customers. The unique advantages or benefits for using your product can be eroded over time as the competition provides similar benefits. In the UNIX computer industry we call this “Jacks or Better” (an allusion to playing poker): features that were once clear advantages over the competition become the table stakes to be in the game as your competitors provide similar capabilities.

Second, you need periodically ask yourself. What am I doing to retain my customers – to make them feel special about using my product? What can I do to improve the perception of my product by the people who actually use my product?

If your product is used in a corporate environment, the person using your product doesn’t actually pay for the product, but they often strongly influence which products are purchased. Pay attention to the person using your product.

Finally it’s pretty clear that how you respond to a customer complaint can dramatically color the relationship you have with your customer. A sloppy or callous response can be the nudge that moves your customer to consider trying out one of your competitors.

In my next blog I’ll write about a company that took the right actions to make me a rabidly loyal customer even when their product had some serious flaws.

Gadgets for Geeky Travel

Since I am traveling internationally this week, I thought I would share some of the gadgets I use to make travel as convenient as possible. Gadgets are particularly helpful when traveling to an unfamiliar city, or a foreign country.

My iPhone and laptop provide the core platforms for my travel technology infrastructure. The laptop is not only the principle means for me to do my job, but it also provides a number of USB ports that I use to recharge the other devices. As such, I end up carrying the several t USB cables to charge my devices.

Obviously, if the laptop is the source of power for everything else, you should make sure you have a way to power your laptop. I carry a standard A/C adapter and a Kensington AC/DC adapter. Why two adapters? Adapters break and you can forget them in hotels. It’s cheap insurance against a lot of problems.

I replaced my laptop hard drive with a much higher capacity drive (500GB). I use the extra space to hold movies and TV shows ripped from DVDs. I used to carry the DVDs themselves, but DVDs are fragile and heavy. The 175GB of movies and TV shows I have on my laptop provides a welcome diversion and the lack of physical media makes it really convenient.

My smartphone, an iPhone, is the second most important part of my travel kit. I’ve been carrying a smartphone for many years starting with a Palm but the iPhone is outstanding due to the wide availability of apps that are useful when traveling.

You need to do some preparation to make the most out of your smartphone. First, you should put all relevant events into your calendar on your phone. Flights, appointments, contacts all should be in your phone before you take off for even a domestic trip.

The second thing you need to do when traveling internationally is to set up your phone for international roaming. It’s not cheap to use, but a short, expensive phone call can save the day when you get have a problem. Skype and GoogleVoice can help when you have a Wifi connection but ultimately a real phone connection can provide the best communications lifeline.

Iphones of course, can run apps. There are a number of apps that I typically use when traveling to provide information about the destination. Googlemaps, CityMaps2go, Yelp! and the Kindle reader for the iPhone are some of the most useful for me.

Being able to find your way around is key to having a productive and stress free trip. Gogglemaps are great and I use it a lot in the U.S., but it’s not very useful when traveling internationally unless you want to pay outrageous data rates.

So when I travel internationally I use the CityMaps2go app. It allows me to download the maps to the phone so I don’t need a data connection. The maps also include Points of Interest, so it can be helpful in finding restaurants and attractions.

It makes a trip to a new place a lot more enjoyable if you have some information about the interesting sites to see while you are there. I used to buy paper travel guide books like Fodor’s or Lonely Planet, but now I use electronic travel guides.

The Lonely Planet app on the iPhone is one that I have had good luck with, but I also have downloaded Kindle travel guides to my iPhone and Kindle. The big advantage for me of the Kindle format is that I can read the guide on a larger device like an actual Kindle and have the same information available on my iPhone. To be honest, the paper guidebooks are a lot easier to use, but eliminating the bulk of dragging a heavy book is a good trade off for business trips where you don’t have a lot of time to see the sights anyway.

I use the Yelp! app extensively when traveling to find good restaurants. Unfortunately Yelp! doesn’t yet work many places internationally but it is invaluable in the U.S. I hear that it is expanding into other countries, so hopefully I’ll be able to leverage Yelp on the longer trips.

Rounding out the app space I use the Currency app by Jeff Grossman to understand exchange rates, Google Translate for a language reference and of course the iPod app to provide music.

Insuring Internet connectivity when traveling can be a challenge. Hotels often have bizarre policies that charge you for each device accessing the internet. Or, they may only support wired connections. Or, as is the case in my current hotel, the wireless connection is very unreliable in my particular room. Even hotels that don’t discriminate against multiple devices often have a painful login process.

To get around these problems, I also carry my own pocket router, a Dlink DWL-G730AP. I hook the router up to wired connection in the hotel room and I have a reliable connection for my laptop, iPhone and other devices. For hotels that require a login to access the internet, the router allows me to login via the laptop and avoid having to login with my iPhone because the single login will apply to all the downstream devices. The DWL-G730AP is several years old, so there are probably better pocket routers out there today so shop around.

I spend a lot of time on phone calls when traveling, since the home workload doesn’t go away just because you are in another location. Hotel phones often suck: they are cheap, don’t have a mute button, and maybe don’t have a speakerphone function. I use VOIP for routine calls, but the quality can vary a lot so I don’t trust VOIP for presenting over the phone.

To address this issue, I recently purchased an adapter allows you to use a standard PC gaming headset with a hotel phone. The Headset Buddy PC Headset to RJ9/RJ10 Phone Jack is easy to use – unplug the phone handset (the thing with the curly cord that you talk into) and plug in the adapter. Then you connect a PC headset to the adapter with standard 3.5mm plugs.

Since you are tying into the phones standard RJ9 handset jack, you can use this adapter even with digital phone systems. I can’t guarantee it will work everywhere and you have to fiddle with the hotel’s phone, but it’s a nice alternative to holding the handset for hours. The Headset Buddy is available on Amazon.

The last device I carry when I have to drive while traveling is a GPS. I recently purchased my second Garmin (a 1350T) because the turn by turn driving instructions just make life so easy. In the ancient B.G. (Before GPS) times I remember buying obscure county maps to find my way to a client in a remote part of New Jersey. Now, the GPS makes it all very easy, particularly if you update the maps periodically. I know that I may be able to collapse the separate GPS into a GPS app on my iPhone, but I do like having some physical diversity in case one device is lost or broken.

Well, you can see that I have a pretty geeky travel kit. Other than the laptop, most of these items are small and lightweight and don’t present a big load in my backpack. The whole point of having these gadgets is to help me make my trip as smooth and productive as possible.