Rob's Thoughts

2012-02-25T03:56:00.000-08:00

Computers – Convert a Major Catastrophe into a Minor Inconvenience

How will you handle things when a critical computer, oneupon which you or your organisation relies, ceases to work? This could becaused by something like a disk dying, by the machine being stolen, by fire orflood. All of those things are totallybeyond your control and can happen at any time.

The risk is caused by there being a single point of failure,which is very risky indeed!

“We have backups to handle this situation” is the normal reply. Well, that’s the bare minimum, a startingpoint, for without backups you are deader than dead!

But, how often do you test that these backups will in factallow you attain a fully operational condition?

How long does it take to rebuild the situation?

What is the impact on your business? Is this impactaffordable?

All of the above are critical questions and need to beanswered fully and truthfully. Are youaware, that as a director or partner, you can be held responsible formaintaining good governance? Disaster Recovery is a measurable of GoodGovernance (King II & King III). Makes one think, doesn’t it?

Fortunately there are readily available options which willallow for a fast recovery of the situation.

These are not new and have been in use by the majorcorporate players for a long time. The drawback is that until now, the cost hasbeen extremely high, but this has changed – now there are options based uponthe same techniques and processes, but at a fraction of the cost.

The solution is based on something called a Virtual Machine.Simply put, a Virtual Machine is software which processes a set of disk fileswhich describe a physical computer. The beauty of the solution is that when theVirtual Machine is running, it looks and operates exactly like the physicalmachine it is emulating! In fact thereis a major push to move physical computers to their virtual counterparts,especially where an organisation has five or more machines it its computerroom, but that will be the agenda for a future article.

How does this help me?

Well, if a virtual copy can be made of each of your criticalcomputers, then these Virtual Machines can be used in place of the physicalone.

As a Virtual Machine is simply a set of data files, it canbe stored on an off site disk drive. This removes the risk of a single point of failure.

The Virtual Machine can be up and running with very littledelay. What kind of delay can I expect?This is where the rule “The more you spend, the faster the recovery” applies.The large financial corporate institutions will spend millions to keep thedelay down to thousandths of a second, but a single laptop user can probablytolerate being down for a few hours.

While recovery is a critical part of the process, so ishaving the ability to test the process without risk. For instance, at thebeginning of this article I asked how often your backups were tested. It isamazing how unreliable untested backups are, and, being in the middle of acrisis is not the best time to discover that your backup is inadequate!

If you have a Virtual Machine it is a simple exercise to runa full restore and then to fully test that it has accomplished what wasexpected. This test is exactly the same as if it had taken place on theoriginal machine, but it can be undone and redone as many times as is necessaryin order to guarantee that it works 100% correctly.

In fact a full Disaster Recovery test should be carried out,at least once a year, as a matter of policy.

2012-02-08T01:10:00.000-08:00

Has your laptop become a bit too clunky to carry around?

While the latest smart phones are doing their best to replace thelaptop, they are probably too small and restricted to use as a PC at a meetingor presentation. And, while the normal 15” laptop handles this requirement verywell, maybe it’s just too large and heavy to carry around comfortably.

That’s where the new kid on the block, the Netbook, comes in. These aresmall, light and very portable 10” screen laptops. And they are inexpensivetoo!

Small enough to fit into a handbag/briefcase, they have a full sizedkeyboard, making them very easy to use. Running Windows 7, with 300GB andlarger disk drives, they can easily handle all the information you’d need at a meeting.If needs be, they can also hook up a to larger screen or projector!

So, if you need a computer when are away from your main computer, thisis something you should be considering for those times away from home or on abusiness trip!

By the way, I offer various makes, including Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo and Dell, invarious configurations.

And acomment:

Hi Rob

I have been using the Acer netbookfrom the day they were launched – I am now on my second.

And I totally support your comments.

I use it in conjunction with Dropboxand Gmail (for back up of all emails and diary). All my work on my main PC isautomatically updated via dropbox on my netbook and, via Gmail, I have accessto all my past emails.

I keep the netbook in my briefcaseand then have immediate access to all my data if in an offsite meeting ortravelling.

My Acer has the built in 3G cardwhich I keep regularly charged with data bundle so I have full internet accessat all times.

Greg

2012-01-23T06:58:00.000-08:00

Why the Cloud cannot be the only repository of your data!

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/114803-megauploads-demise-what-happens-to-your-files-when-a-cloud-service-dies

"If you’re only just joining us, late yesterday the US Department of Justice shut down Megaupload, arrested seven employees, and seized assets worth more than $50 million (including three 82-inch TVs, two 108-inch TVs, 14 Mercedes, and other rich boys’ toys). This huge indictment poses many questions, but today we’re going to look at just one of them: What happens to all of those files that people had stored on Megaupload’s servers?

This morning the web is littered with hundreds of millions of broken Megaupload links. There was no warning, no preamble: If you stored files on Megaupload, they are gone ... "

Of course, that's only one of many reasons as to how you can lose your data in the cloud.

Local storage is not going to go away any time soon, especially if the data being stored belongs to a business.

So is cloud storage all bad? Obviously not. Cloud, as a secondary backup to your archival backup, can be very useful, if only because it's universally accessible. But don't forget that the data is stored on a third party site and is accessible to others, others over whom you have no control or knowledge. So, if you do store data on a third party cloud server, do make sure that it is compacted and encrypted so that it's not easy to access.

In the end an external USB is probably a better place to store things.

2011-12-12T02:16:00.001-08:00

Global Warming – Let’s StopDiscussing It

Why?

Well, to be blunt. We aren’tgoing to achieve anything by creating more hot air.

There are various theories aboutglobal warming; ranging from the view that it doesn’t exist to the view thatthe world is going to end in the next 25 years.

There are views that globalwarming is a natural cyclic phenomenon which is going to happen irrespective ofman’s intervention. If global warming is cyclic then man can do nothing aboutit as the natural energy involved will far exceed anything man can generate.

There are views that the energyemitted by the sun, were it to penetrate the magnetosphere, would cause globalwarming on an unimaginable scale. If oneconsiders that a little 600 Watt microwave oven can boil water in a minute,just imagine what happens when Giga Giga watts of microwave energy heats up theoceans. Maybe the impending magnetic pole flip will offer the sun’s radiation away in?

There are all sorts of theoriesand views, the most of which we can spend large amounts of time and moneydiscussing and all of which will not change the situation.

Frankly, all this talk is inorder to find a way in which to save the Human species, not the planet! How arrogant! Were some catastrophic naturalphenomenon to occur, we simply would not have the means to do anything about it.

So let’s stop talking about it.

Let’s rather start talking anddoing things which are immediately doable, the other more esoteric things willfollow.

What?

We should be addressing GlobalPollution, not warming. Minimize pollution and many, if not all, the goalslooked for in addressing global warming will be achieved. By addressing global pollution rather thanwarming we will remove much of the confusion. There will be no need to spendtrillions trying to define what we are talking about.

There are a few areas which canbe easily addressed and I feel that by initially addressing three areas in weachieve many of the short term goals.

Pollution

In order to discuss Global pollution we need to look at theearth in a global fashion. This means that we must look at energy as a globalresource, so, if a specific country/region were to reduce pollution then we allwould benefit.

We need to understand that we are all living in the samecess pool, so we need to work together in order to clean it up.

The Three Areas of Pollution are:

Energy Generation

Overpopulation

Deforestation

Energy Generation

Electricity is de facto our mostuseful source of energy. Electricity can be created in many various ways, electricityis easily transported to the place where it is to be used, electricity can bestored in many forms and released on a just in time basis and electricity canbe used in tiny or huge amounts; so one must conclude that electricity is byfar the best source of energy.

When electricity generation isdiscussed, the emphasis most often tends to be that of alternatives. Obviouslyalternatives need to be invented, after all this is a natural challenge to man’scuriosity, but most alternatives are too expensive, too dangerous or have worseside effects than those currently existing. A further problem is thatalternatives can’t replace carbon or nuclear based generators as they do notprovide sufficient output.

So let’s not concentrate onalternative ways of generating electricity. Let’s rather consider on using less electricity. Probably one of the largest consumers ofelectricity is heating water. Hot water can be used in many ways, ranging fromelectricity generation, to washing, to air conditioning. Reduce the use ofelectricity for the heating of water and we will save electricity.

In many locations we can usesolar heat to carry out this heating. If we live in a hot area with many hoursof sunlight, we can use the sun to warm water. Further, in this type of environment, there is no need for esoteric heatcollectors, a piece of black tube can do good job! Further, by using locallabour to assemble simple collectors, many otherwise unemployable people willhave a source of income.

So, by using sunlight for waterheating, we can free up the electricity which would have been used, for otherthings and create jobs.

In other words, by usingsunlight, we will have generated that amount of electricity!

How can we achieve this? To startwith, let’s take a few of the billions which have been set aside forconferences, talks, research and use the money to install solar heating intoevery building where the climate suggests it. The money is available; all weneed do is to spend it so that there is a global benefit. And, when this impacts on the energy sourcesused for current electricity production, those areas which do not havesufficient natural heat will benefit by the lower prices and greateravailability of those energy sources. Win, win.

Overpopulation

We currently have upwards ofseven billion people living on this planet. Never mind that the number of people is growing at an unsustainablerate, our current resources are not catering for the current of population. Maybe we should be looking at the quality ratherthan quantity of life?

If we are serious aboutaddressing pollution, the first area to be addressed is that ofpopulation.

Simply, if mankind does not do somethingto address it, nature will. Whether by way of catastrophic events in whichmillions at a time are killed or whether it’s because there is insufficientfood and millions starve to death, it is going to happen.

By the way, with people migratingto cities and thus creating massive population densities, even a relativelyminor event has a good chance of wiping out millions at a time.

Deforestation

Earth uses forests tobreath.

Plants eat carbon dioxide anddefecate oxygen.

Remove the plants and we are leftwith the carbon dioxide and man is left suffering all the bad effects caused bythe carbon dioxide excess.

In the global scheme of things,forests, like oil, uranium and other minerals, are not the possessions of aparticular person or country, they are global resources and need to be treatedas such.

Lately I have attended a few seminars extolling Cloud Computing, but is there another side?

2011-07-06T03:36:00.000-07:00

I wandered lonely in a cloud ...

Make no mistake, I do like clouds. Computing clouds, that is.

I mean, that instead of a data centre full of whirring things and flashing things, making lots of noise and heat and taking up expensive floor space and requiring hoards of blue-jeaned geeks muttering their incomprehensible mutters such as “cache, lun, ipv6”, I now had two boxes called routers, each with a few flashing lights and a fibre cable connected to different exchanges via different sides of the building, plus a UPS or two.

You see I had done MY homework, I wasn't going to accused of corporate recklessness; my solution was redundant.

Wow it’s cold in here.

Then this man in a suite, wearing a funny wig was again asking “Where was your data centre located?” I knew the answer to that one too!

Jacques had knowingly told me the answer, with a smile, at that cloud computing seminar I’d attended, in what seems an eternity ago now.

“Not here” I answered emphatically, a suggestion of a smile on my lips as I assumed a confident pose. “Not here” I repeated.

“If ‘Not here’, then where” persisted the wigged one.

Jacques, the cloud guru, had given me the answer to this one too: “Not here” I repeated confidently.

The wigged one looked a little puzzled, made a note on his yellow pad and looked at me over the top of the pince-nez precariously clinging to his nasal bridge.

“You do have data centres, don’t you?” he asked.

“Of course” I replied, “all multi-trillion corporations have data centres” I added.

“I see” he said knowingly, “It’s just that you have mislaid yours?” a raised eyebrow enquired.

He was trying to trap me, but I knew this answer too. “Oh no, I know exactly where they are; they’re in the cloud!”.

“Cumulo nimbus or cirro stratus?” asked the brow.
I had no idea of what he was talking about, so I remained silent.

“But your data centres did go floating away, all on their own, to never never land, somewhere in the cloud, for a period of three weeks, did they not?” he asked without eyebrows or smiles, but just a steely glint.

“Well, no, uhm, not floating, uhm, they just weren’t there” I muttered, not really liking where all this was going.

“But your business ceased to operate for three weeks and this inoperability cost your clients all of their money?” persisted the glint.

No reply. It was beginning to get a little hot in here and my collar had inexplicably shrunk by two sizes.

The wig ambled over to his desk, rummaged in the untidy pile of dusty looking books and emerged triumphantly, a large red tomb clutched in his right fist.

He flipped through the book marks, found one that seemed to satisfy, adjusted the precarious lenses. “You have met Judge King?” he stated. “If not in person, then his report into corporate governance” he clarified.

“Let me assist you memory” he said without waiting for my answer and began to quote from said book, the words fading in and out of the annoying buzzing noise which attempted to drown them out. He went on and on.

Suddenly the buzzing stopped replaced by a cold sweat started as I recognised:

‘3.2.6. The board should disclose:

That it is responsible for internal control systems and risk management, which are regularly reviewed;
That an ongoing process for identifying, evaluating and managing significant risks is and has been in place.
An adequate system of internal control provides reasonable, but not absolute, assurance exists to manage risk and to achieve business objectives;

A documented and tested disaster recovery plan exists;

Material joint ventures have been:

· dealt with as part of the group risk management; or

· by other means: details of which should be provided.

Any additional appropriate information on the risk management process should be provided.’

“But that was no longer our responsibility, we were in the cloud!!” I shouted in desperation.

I can’t bring myself to describe the board’s crying children, nor how some members, less strong than others, succumbed to the temptation of own hand.

I conclude by reminding you, that, as was stated by a wise United States president, ‘the buck stops here’.

The cloud takes no responsibility, how could it? After all, it is only vapour.

Is a pamphlet enough?

2010-12-01T05:25:00.000-08:00

So I'm looking for a microwave. I whip out Google and start my search. Up pops a bunch of sites, excluding the furnisher place just down the road.

Because they would be so convenient, I search for their site, open it up and find a pamphlet! No exciting gems of information which make me hotfoot it down there in order to find myself a miriad of ways to buy a bunch of stuff I can't justify. Just a pamphlet!

Not a list of products or a way of searching for my needs. Just a pamphlet!

What a let down. Which got me wondering, how can a store which labels itself "the largest independent furniture and appliance dealer in the Western Cape" so miss out on a sales opportunity? Why on earth did they bother to create a web site?

How can they have totally missed the point that business has changed? People no longer go window-shopping on a Saturday afternoon. The Internet is replacing brick and morter.

You want to buy something? You Google (or Bing or Yahoo) the product and are promptly presented with a list of products available from suppliers near you. Most of these suppliers even give you an opportunity to make the purchase without leaving your desk, with the product being delivered to your door.

Even if a site does not offer online purchasing, most present an overwhelming richness of interactive information for each of the models they can supply; I click here for a rotatable picture; I click there for a comparison of makes and models; I'm shown how many are in stock in each branch.

But what does the "largest appliance dealer" give me? A pamphlet! A pamphlet which didn't even include any microwaves, even although they do sell them.

It's not as though designing a site which provides a basic product catalogue would be beyond the abilities of a grade nine web designer, or that keeping it up to date will break the budget.

Even a downloadable PDF document generated from their stock database would be better than nothing. But I guess one can't generate a PDF from an abacus.

Is just a pamphlet enough? No. They lost my custom and probably that of many others for whom the search engine passed them by. I wonder how many others are also missing out.

Is local still lekker?

2010-11-01T21:28:00.000-07:00

With Mweb's cancellation of its Internet peering with Telkom, Telkom ADSL users who do not have international bandwidth are in for a rude surprise when they try and access sites hosted on Mweb's servers as they will no longer have access to them!

The sites affected include the two very popular sites News24 and DSTV.

Telkom's Internet packages include a large portion of free local bandwidth. And once capped, a Telkom user can only access via the local bandwidth, a feature many used to download DSTV movies, probably the only usage that makes local bandwidth interesting.

Well guess what. Now that peering between Mweb and Telkom has been cancelled, traffic between the two ISP's is routed internationally, which means no more News24 and DSTV downloads for Telkom ADSL clients using local only bandwidth.

I'm guessing that a large number of Telkom ISP clients are going to move over to Mweb's uncapped offering.

Interesting times!

What is Peering?

International traffic has historically been very expensive so, in order to cut down on unnecessary traffic across the international network, various peering points have been created.

These peering points allow ISP's to enter into an agreement whereby traffic between their sites is routed via the peering point rather than the international Internet; a sort of short circuit if you like which means that the ISP's save a bundle of cash, cash not always passed on to their clients.

Unfortunately peering is not always a free lunch. Some of the larger ISP's, Telkom included, have reaped a large bonsella therefrom. Mweb has gotten tired of paying out for a non value-added service and has decreed that it will only peer with ISP's if peering is free. This means that not only will Telkom not get income, it will have to purchase international bandwidth. Double whammy!

So. What's so good about Win7 XP Mode?

2010-09-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

In an earlier posting I extolled the virtues ofusing the inbuilt Win7 virtual PC, XP Mode implementation as a way of managing the user space. This post serves to explain what XP mode offers.

Microsoft has included a free virtual machine, running Windows XP, for the Windows 7 Pro and Ultimate versions.

What is a Windows XP Mode? XP Mode is a way of allowing you to run multiple Windows environments from your Windows 7 desktop. It does this by using a Virtual Machine, which is, in fact, a copy of Windows XP running at the same time as Windows 7. This Windows XP looks, acts and feels exactly the same as does a copy Windows XP running on its own PC without Win7.

Why? This is done primarily in order to offer a way of supporting applications which run on XP but don’t run on Win7. This, in turn, means that you can continue running your old versions of software until such time as there is a good business reason to spend on upgrading.

A second and perhaps more important advantage, is that users can continue operating using the same comfortable screen look and feel. No new learning curve!

So why not just continue with Windows XP? The two most obvious answers are that new PC’s will be only supplied with Win7 and the other is that Microsoft is now only offering minimal support for Windows XP. By supplying XP Mode as part of Win7, one gets the best of both worlds; the choice of the XP or Win7 interfaces.

But wait, there’s more!

XP Mode integrates tightly with Win7 and apps installed on the XP machine are directly accessible from Win7. The apps can even be pinned to the start menu in the same way as any Win7 app! And you can choose which disk mappings are propagated from the Win7 PC to XP Mode, where the mappings can be used transparently, in addition to mappings unique to XP Mode. All of which provides huge opportunities for customization!

If you haven’t looked at Win7 yet, now’s the time to do it.

Why you should be looking at Windows 7 XP Mode

2010-09-23T08:27:00.000-07:00

So, the latest buzz is desktop virtualisation. And it's all about how to run your thousands of desktops on a few virtualised servers located in your data centre and how much you are going to save. Really? Are you?

Is replacing your cheap desktop disk by a hugely expensive SAN datastore really going to save anything? Then, of course, there's the performance hit your poor datastore is going to suffer when hit by thousands of desktops rather than the few servers it was designed for! Which probably means that it had better be divorced from the SAN datastore you use for your servers, so now you need two SANs. Is it still going to save you?

Maybe desktop virtualisation needs to be looked at from a totally different point of view.

Maybe retaining your desktops and running Win7 is a better way to go? Maybe we can make a really good business case out of using the XP virtual machine which is built in to Win7 pro.

The big problem with the thousands of desktops is that of management. In particular it's a real pain maintaining those specialised apps needed by the business. It's of no consequence bemoaning the fact that they are badly designed and written; nobody is interested in your carping. What you've have is what you live with.

But wait, if you only needed maintaining a few desktops would life still be so bad? You can easily cope with the weird requirements needed by the apps if you only have maintain a single desktop. And with Win7 that wish is easily implemented!

The answer is to build an XP virtual machine which answers the business's requirements and then to run a copy of that virtual machine at each desktop. By so doing, you need only maintain a single desktop no matter how many times it is used.

And it just gets better! Because your users are living in a virtual machine rather than a native one, the implementation is completely divorced from hardware dependence. The solution is a virtual machine, which means that all users run on the same hardware platform; irrespective of chipset, make and model of workstation upon which is actually deployed - you have achieved total hardware independence! It's even exactly the same platform for your developers and your QA site. No more surprises! NOW we are talking REAL savings!!!

And then there's even more! By starting with the same basic virtual machine, you can build the special variations which are required by specific departments. OK, so now there's more than one version to maintain, but it definitely isn't the thousands you had before moving to this paradigm.

And roll out is simply a matter of copying a few files. No installation. Rollback? Yup, just copy the old files back or rename a folder or two. Like the man says: 'Easy peasy'. And inexpensive!

Now isn't this a better way to go?