Backups – Are They Working The Way You Think They Are?

April 24, 2011 By Andrew McLean Leave a Comment

There is a term the IT industry uses to define a hard drive crash: disaster. Backups are the primary tool for disaster recovery.

I try to address backups at every site I visit, mainly because in my experience, in the vast majority of cases, backups are not configured (or not behaving) the way they are expected to. This can be due to a hardware failure or a misunderstanding about the way backups were configured from the outset. On the flip-side of the coin, backups may be configured in such a way that it may not be immediately intuitive as to how to restore files from it if a disaster ever did occur.

I’ve seen situations where an external drive is attached to facilitate backups and it may have worked for some time, but after a few years, the drive no longer functions – but the backup software gives no warning indicating the failure. The user continues on with their life, blissfully unaware that their backups no longer back up.

Still others will install an external drive but mistakenly configure backups to store on the internal drive, which obviously defeats the purpose of the activity.

Simple, intuitive backup software is available – free in many cases even in enterprise applications. Hard drives are cheaper and have higher capacity than ever before.

For homes or businesses, options such as offsite storage can address issues that local backups cannot — issues like fires, floods or earthquakes. For the price of a couple of cups of coffee (or one expensive one) each month, you can have the peace of mind that comes with data redundancy.

Take a good look at your backup designs and verify that they do what you think they do. Don’t find yourself on the wrong side of a disaster.

For those of you who wish to have managed or at the very least monitored offsite backup solutions, McLean IT Consulting offers great and affordable storage packages for homes or businesses, and we are notified of any failed backup jobs, enabling us to respond to issues in a timely manner and keep your data safe.

iPhone Security Issue? Maybe…

April 23, 2011 By Andrew McLean Leave a Comment

If you’ve been watching the news recently, you may have heard a story regarding the fact that the iPhone stores logs on the phone and computer documenting locations where your phone has been. It is being called a security issue because this information is not encrypted and is easily accessible, and because no one was made aware of the fact that this information was being collected.

Frankly it strikes me as sensationalism. Cell phone carriers frequently log this sort of information to improve coverage and analyze usage patterns. The fact that forensic investigators can pull this information from my device means nothing to me as a law abiding citizen, and the geographic coordinates contained therein are typically so inaccurate that I wonder what one could even do with such information. I might even go so far as to call the iPhone location tracking a feature, if logging accuracy was improved. Lots of companies pay good money for GPS tracking devices on fleet vehicles, all the better if that information could be extracted from existing company phones.

In the strictly IT sense, yes, Apple should have disclosed what information is being logged on the iPhone, especially in this day where privacy is such a sensitive subject for people. But personally I think people are getting a bit carried away over it.

Case Study: ABC Mediation

April 10, 2011 By Andrew McLean 1 Comment

The following is an analysis of a recent local project that migrated a client to cloud systems in order to address a large number of operational inefficiencies.

Case – ABC Mediation – “Pamela”

Pamela operates a legal mediation consultancy. She delegates day-to-day responsibilities to her assistant who performs said work from her own home remotely.

Documents are passed back-and-forth between mediator and assistant for data entry, revisions, editing, etc. before being organized in a file system structure on the Pamela’s Windows PC.

Contacts and several calendars are synced frequently via a well-known cloud service.

Pamela travels frequently and communication falls to her Apple MacBook and iPhone.

Challenge

Storage

The amount of documents requiring adjustments is increasing, and miscommunication between her and her assistant are confusing both of them as to which document revisions are the most recent. The assistant is forced to regularly “clean up” the file structure of document storage on Pamela’s hard drive. To enable this, a remote interface is required which cannot be shared and time must be scheduled so as not to interfere with Pamela’s daily operations.

Organization

The popular cloud service in use is buggy and unreliable. Sync settings must be removed and reconfigured regularly to re-establish the sync. Many calendars are unused altogether. There are multiple contact lists for no good reason and it is becoming hard to find some contacts.

Email

Neither her phone nor her laptop are configured with her email account due to security concerns. Previous IT advisors have configured a secondary business account that she may email from so as not to send business email via a private account, but managing multiple accounts is becoming unwieldy. Email software as it is currently configured will only send messages via networks using the same ISP – in this case Shaw. Primary email is theoretically accessible from a web interface but all of her email client software is configured to download and remove messages from the server, leaving no messages to be seen. Emails cannot be left on the server due to a restriction on her web hosting package which limits inbox size to 50 megabytes. Messages sent from one device will not show up on other devices, making it difficult to look back to see what was said and when, which are important features in a legal practice. Sorting rules are in place to manage flow of email coming from many clients – rules are managed by the assistant during regular remote desktop connection (which is itself buggy and unstable).

Solution

Configured a cloud storage service package using Amazon’s S3 service of 10GB and mounted the space to the file system of both Pamela and her assistant. Transferred business file structure to this storage space.

Consolidated calendars and contacts into one single respective items. Synchronized the calendar and contact list with Google Apps and granted modification privileges to Pamela’s assistant. Configured desktop, laptop and phone to access online calendar via CalDAV protocol.

Migrated primary email account to Google Apps hosted business solution. Configured PC to connect via IMAP protocol. Configured iPhone and MacBook mail clients with custom accounts – enabled sending from primary account but receiving messages from a dummy account. Configured outgoing messages to be sent via Google’s SMTP server. Uploaded old messages to new mail server.

Impact

Pamela and her assistant now both have direct file access to all documents without relying on email (and conversely each-other to send them) as a transmission medium. Files can be opened, saved, moved and organized from a single location, making it easier to manage changes and identify most recently updated documents. If both users attempt to access a single file simultaneously, the second user will open the file in “read only” mode. This “cloud storage” folder behaves as if it were a drive plugged directly into each computer, but this drive is in fact distributed across many fault-tolerant servers, providing the data with redundancy.

Calendars and contacts now sync live whenever a change or addition is made from the web or any device including the phone. Synchronization is reliable and stable.

Pamela’s iPhone and laptop can now send email from the single business address, but not receive because the dummy account in effect does not exist (thus no confidential information is present on the phone). Messages sent from anywhere will show up in the “sent” folder on all other devices and on the web. Email can now be sent from any geographic location and from inside any ISP. Mobile devices can access the inbox via webmail interface, which contains every message ever sent or received, thanks to the massive 7.5GB mail storage space. Messages deleted from web will also delete messages from email client software and vice-versa. Email can now be sorted from the webmail instead of relying on Outlook or a remote desktop connection.

Workflows are drastically streamlined since they no longer depend on unstable remote connections or inefficient email. New options and abilities are adapted and taken advantage of, further leveraging the new technologies present. A massive amount of time and money is saved every day because of improved functionality, performance, and efficiency. Aside from the labour involved in provisioning the overall migration and a $4/month service fee for the cloud storage, the remaining technologies were free to implement.

When Should You Upgrade Your Computer?

April 5, 2011 By Andrew McLean Leave a Comment

As an IT consultant, I am frequently asked for either an opinion or a judgement call regarding whether or not a system is a better candidate for upgrades, or for replacement. The answer is never absolute, but there are general guidelines and variables to consider.

Hardware

CPU and motherboard technology has advanced greatly in recent years. The last generation of Intel processors nearly doubled the performance of every processor preceding it. The first easy question is a matter of speed and performance: does your current system provide sufficient processing power to accomplish day-to-day tasks?

The answer to this question will create spinoff questions. If yes, then congratulations, your computer still has life in her, but more questions must be asked. If no, then one must identify where the performance bottleneck is taking place. If the system is several years old and is consistently struggling to keep up with daily demands, then CPU is the likely culprit. If the system suffers only when running multiple programs at a time, then this is due to limited memory.

Any desktop computer consists of the same core parts: processor, motherboard, and memory. Devices such as hard drives, DVD-ROM drives and the power supply can typically remain in place after an upgrade, assuming the power consumption has not dramatically increased. When core parts are upgraded, in most cases it will require other core components to be replaced as well. For example if you were to upgrade a processor from 2008 to a current-generation model, you would also be required to replace both the motherboard and ram to support the upgrade. When replacing these components, replacing the power supply should be considered, but may not be necessary.

Hardware obsolescence and security are a big part of why large enterprises have established system life cycles – usually this cycle lasts about four years. Sometimes less for laptops.

Laptop systems are engineered to be integrated devices and as such, the only user replaceable parts are the hard drive, memory, or battery, which limits the upgrade options available and is another reason why they have a shortened life expectancy.

Hardware prices have come down considerably in recent years. At the time of this writing, Intel has recently released a new processor, codenamed "Sandy Bridge", and the most expensive chip weighs in at about $300, but it outperforms Intel’s own chip from the last generation at well over $1000.

Software

Beyond the hardware limitations, it should be noted that upgrading to a current-generation system will often mean moving to a newer and more secure operating system. In the case of Microsoft, Windows XP is an extremely popular operating system and has been around for nearly ten years. However, the age of the system and the limitations of the software have strained Microsoft to maintain support for it. XP and many technologies contained therein are no longer secure and will not be patched to secure them. Some businesses will require XP because of internal business software requirements, but measures should be taken to ensure security is tightened. Special attention must be paid to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6, which even Microsoft is pushing people to stop using. Despite the much-discussed flaws of Vista, security wasn’t one of them – and Windows 7 has successfully erased the bad taste left by its predecessor.

Apple’s OS X enjoys similar upgrades to its systems. Those who are still using OS X 10.4 do not enjoy the benefit of Apple’s Time Machine backup software, better spotlight search performance, and security among hundreds of other features added. Apple hardware is famously more compatible with their operating systems and do not usually require a hardware upgrade to enjoy an updated operating system.

Another question that might be asked is if there are any recurring issues that would add to the cost of ownership of the older computer.

Compatibility

Some looking to upgrade will ignore a vital part of the process. Will a current-generation system support your peripherals? Many old printers and scanners or other legacy hardware are no longer supported by the manufacturer, especially in light of the push to 64-bit from 32-bit operating systems. 64-bit systems require 64-bit drivers and will not function without them.

As previously mentioned, some applications will only work with older operating systems, for example anything based on DOS or old, unsupported .NET Runtime engines cannot be used in current systems. This has also contributed to software being pushed to "the cloud" since web applications work with any browser or operating system (multi-platform or OS agnostic).

Transition

Of course purchasing a new system will usually require a transition or migration. The length of time involved is directly related to the speed of the old system. If the old computer is a circa 2001 Windows 2000 or XP relic, expect things to drag on for a few hours, so the cost of having a technician do this should be considered as part of the bottom line. Even speedy systems will generally take two hours. Every workstation is different and so are their needs, but a minimal migration involves moving files, and configuring email. Using new software will also come with a learning curve – a large one if moving between Mac Linux or Windows PC.

Conclusion

The choice, of course, is up to the owner. Is the system just a play computer or a mission-critical workstation? Does the value of a new computer outweigh the value of upgrading the old? Does the cost outweigh the benefits? The same basic principle of car insurance companies applies here: if the cost of upgrading or repairing the current model is greater than half the cost of a new model, it’s time to write off the old one.

Homepage feature image courtesy of datamancer.

Buying Or Selling A Business? Perform Due Diligence Technology Audit

March 20, 2011 By Andrew McLean Leave a Comment

When purchasing or selling a business, one largely overlooked procedure that is perhaps equally important as a financial and legal review (and often one effects the other) is a technology audit. This should be performed by a third party and never by the staff of the business to be audited – for obvious reasons. Most would agree that businesses rely heavily on computer systems to perform daily operations, so ignoring this vital part of the equation would be a mistake. Here I will discuss questions that should be asked and answered as part of the discovery process.

Step 1: Hardware

Taking inventory of technology assets such as PC hardware, printers, and network equation is the first step. How old is the hardware? Are all the systems different? Were they purchased at different times or all at once? Are they on a life cycle – and if so, are they reaching the end of that cycle? What kind of fault tolerance do the systems have? Are there proper backups? Is there a server? Is it being utilized efficiently? Is there a high failure rate of existing hardware? What network hardware supports the environment? Is it secure both physically and from the internet?

Step 2: Software

Software audits may be even more important and if rushed can be disastrous. Are all systems the same OS or is the environment mixed? Are they updated consistently with security patches? Are they protected by antivirus and antimalware systems? Does the business run behind a firewall? Is access to sensitive information limited to specific users or groups, or is information security loose and trusting? Is the server properly maintained? Is all the on-site software licensed correctly? This last question is especially important for mid-sized businesses that have experienced rapid growth, as they typically struggle to maintain IT compliance to match business expansion, and Microsoft notoriously audits these types of enterprises.

Step 3: Other Assets and Liabilities

Does the business in question have outstanding contracts or obligations to IT professionals? This goes hand in hand with a financial audit, but it should still bears mentioning. The business website, if applicable, should also be considered. Does it look good or is it abhorrently ugly (thus driving away potential clients)? Is it maintained properly? Does it adhere to modern web standards? Are their security risks associated with it (i.e. private client information accessible online)? Are there broken links or functions?

These are just a few examples of questions that should be asked when looking at a purchasing or taking over a business.

Even a short investigation will reveal a clearer picture of the true assets and liabilities involved, and can at the same time identify possible improvements and cost savings before acquisition.