Keeping up with technology has to be one of the hardest things to do. There is a point of diminishing return, that is to say, when the cost of a project far outweighs both the benefit and the need. Here are a few cases in point, and how we work to keep your dollars working for you.

In reviewing this methodology, these are the components to consider:

Evaluate the useful life of the hardware platform. We see server hardware lasting from five to seven years on average. A little extra RAM. CPU and disk may make the difference between an ‘early retirement’ and a full life.

Look at the number of major software releases in the useful life of the hardware platform. What we mean by major is fairly intuitive to us, but not to all. Here are a few examples:

In employing the ‘Every Other Upgrade’ methodology, just follow either the Orange or Blue tracks, but not both.

Common Sense Factor. We now apply some serious common sense.
Reasons to upgrade are as follows:

• I need the new version because it will help my business andit is worth the cost
• I am replacing the hardware and it only makes sense to bite off the upgrade as the old hardware gives me a great fallback position for transition
• IMPORTANT NOTE 1: If we are talking PC operating systems, you MUST make certain that ALL necessary applicationsare supported
• IMPORTANT NOTE 2: If we are talking Server Operating systems or SQL versions, you need to ensure that the applications and databases will support the newer versions.

The ‘other’ costs to always consider are the business interruption time, new software relicensing costs, and the labor – both in house and outsourced. In other words, there may be a ‘better’ time to do this from the cash flow and business cycle (slower time) that may make more business sense.

If you need any help in your decision-making, give us a call!

 

What this means to you is simply being able to do more and sleep better for less. More peace of mind is gained by knowing that folks that have been around more than ten years in the technology sphere with over 100 years of experience collectively have your back. At the end of the day, better value and data protection is what the advancing technology brings. This Plan B thinking also raises a few questions to you which you need to have the answers and be quite comfortable with those answers.

• What would happen if a fire consumed your current location?
• What would you wish you had access to, like e-mail, database, files, programs?
• Where are your backups and how current are they?
• What if you had to recover from backups – what’s your confidence level?
• How long can you go without access to systems before losing clients?
• Are you working with technology folks that are seasoned and will have your back?

Answering these questions will likely help you identify possible gaps in your business continuity plan. It’s also about ensuring that the business is well-protected, no matter what! Protecting the business also means to protect those loyal folks that you employ, and trust in me when I say; these folks are your best asset. Long ago, I used to think that getting customers was the hardest thing. It’s not easy, but it pales in comparison of finding great folks that will carry out business execution consistent with the vision that is laid out, as it’s the only way a business can scale.

Now you’re probably wondering about what all this must cost. The good news is that it’s probably not as expensive as you might think. What’s key in any business enterprise is economy of scale and this is no different. At Roundbrix, we accomplish this by buying bandwidth in greater quantity and leveraging physical hardware using virtualization with all devices arranged in a high availability (HA) array. The true beauty of this solution is in the simplicity of mature technology. It couldn’t be more logical!

So whether you need to securely host an entire front and back end web solution, want to replicate a database or web presence to limit your data loss exposure, or are in need of a private managed cloud, we can be that solution for you!

Leverage newer proven technology. It’s just smart, plain smart.

Make no mistake, it’s truly prime time here. We’re actually having fun moving numerous old physical machines to a single physical machine partitioned with VMWare. Look, virtual machines are not necessarily for every application, but the fact of the matter is, an average server only utilizes 15% of its CPU. Okay, that’s like an eight-hour-per-day employee working just over an hour a day. You wouldn’t put up with this in the world of people, why would you with the technology? This makes little sense. But exactly where are the savings you say? Ah, I was hoping you would ask!

Savings is where this technology excels. It’s about economy of scale as much as economy of smart. So where exactly would you save the money? Here’s the short list:

1. SERVERS.      Buying less hardware is just plain smart. Less is the new more. So      you have three or four aging servers. Say they are $8k a piece to replace      including a 5-year maintenance contract, which is $2k of it. Buy one      slightly beefier box for $14k including the $2k maintenance. Using      three-server-to-one consolidation model, your savings on hardware alone      here is $10k! If you did four-to-one, assuming you kicked up the specs a      notch and spend another $1k for another processor and more RAM bring it up      to $15k total, your savings is $16k!
2. ELECTRICITY.      If you have one machine instead of four, all things being equal, you would      only use one forth the energy in powering the machine.      Additionally, the larger savings may be in the COOLING aspect, as it’s one      fourth the BTU’s of generated heat.
3. REDUNDANCY.      This always an important, no      critical, component when designing infrastructure. The “What      if’s” and “Plan B Scenarios ” need to be covered out of the gate. So      how does VMWare stack up? Welcome to RAID 6, that is RAID 5 with a second      parity stripe. Read performance is unaffected and write takes a wee bit      longer, but the plus side outweighs the overhead. You can lose not one      disk, but two and still be running. This extra level of redundancy is      important and should always be couple with redundant power supplies, one      going to a reliable UPS unit and the other going to the local power grid.
4. MANAGING.      Yet another area where this technology excels. There is little easier than      managing the pool of resources. You give the resources to VMWare and it      manages it all. I suppose it might be easier, we just haven’t figured out      how that would even be possible. It’s all easy and on the fly with no      reboots. Meet the nirvana of management, VMWare.
5. DOWNTIME      during MIGRATION. This has historically been both a painful and costly      thing. But if you’re simply moving an old server to new hardware, you do      it all without incurring downtime and switch over when ready. Likely your      only change will be the static IPV4 address on the NICs as it will grab      from the DHCP pool during the migration. But remember also, that this is not      for every machine, but we can help you figure out what makes the most      sense here.

In summary, this technology makes sense for most servers, except heavily utilized database servers and other machines that truly require dedicated hardware, but in most cases, pooled resources are more than adequate if the virtual machine host is properly-sized.
Also, this video (hyperlink to below) from VMWare may help you better understand as a picture and a movie are easily worth a thousand words! http://www.vmware.com/virtualization/

Many to one, now we’re talking!

Rerouting ‘My Documents’ to a Server: At the end of the day, if a PC crashes or a laptop is stolen, what happens to the documents on it? If they were not rerouted to the server, you had better hoped they were backed-up, although this is not the case. This tends to result in some angst and anxiety as folks grapple with data loss or worse yet, possible exposure of confidential company and customer data. Had ‘My Documents’ been rerouted to the server, no such exposure would have resulted.

Mapping a Share: This can be done on individual or global levels. It means that you can maintain uniformity in your outfit, so that “Drive K” on one computer actually refers to “Drive K” on anyone else’s computer that has permissions to this share. Additionally, you can have folks that can “view only” separate from those that can “Edit, Create or Delete”. The name of the game here is to give permissions as required, but not excessively as that creates exposures.

Assigning or Replacing a Printer: Say 50 people are individually mapped to an “All In One” machine that performs copying, printing and faxing. But alas, it’s at “End of Life” and they gave you a smoking deal on a new one that does twice as much in half the time! You have two choices here. You can visit 50 desktops or you can push out the new machine with a few clicks and voila, everyone has it nearly instantly.

Preventing Unauthorized USB Devices: These USB drives are great. But when trying to contain internal security and folks taking confidential data offsite, these are among the greatest of liabilities. You can lock it down so that no USB mass storage devices are allowed, perhaps except for a few authorized individuals. Again, it’s not looking for bad, it’s about protecting the mother ship.

Forcing Password Changes: We see more Post-It notes than you can imagine with passwords. Moreover, these passwords are rarely changed. These should be changed either every three to six months or when a security breach is encountered, especially if you have systems that are accessible remotely. Group Policy makes this automatic.

Forcing New devices to have Anti-virus Software before allowing Network Access: We love this one, as folks tend to accidentally bring in infected devices, including MACs, which sometimes are not affected, but are quite effective as ‘carriers’. Regardless, we have the ability to ‘force’ compliance to ensure that those new devices requesting access to your network are compliant before they are allowed to touch any data.

Distributing New Application Versions: A new version of a client/server application is released, but now comes the laborious task of loading on 30 PCs or so. Never fear. If there is an install package, often times referred to as a MSI (Microsoft Installer) package, it likely can be distributed automatically.

At the end of the day, there’s a reason you’re on a Microsoft Network. What is key is to leverage that the functionality so it earns its keep – like the rest of us!

Ed

In reviewing our own credit card bills, I am finding myself getting annoyed with these monthly hits. I see them nearly every month and am left wondering “What is this one for?” These costs are adding up like HP ink cartridges – or worse!

So I turned to looking at a few items and asking myself a few questions so that I felt I was in control again.

1. Do I need all the domains I have?
2. Am I paying more for things than I should?
3. Are auto-renew settings dinging my card without a notification?

To me, there are two major players out there. The incumbent, Network Solutions, also affectionately known as NetSol , was the safe choice in the early days. Now there’s GoDaddy and they offer up a plate of value and some friendlier busines practices, so I decided to share a comparison we performed this week.

As with any comparison, there’s got to be some text that fills in items that just won’t fit into the matrix. One item of extreme annoyance is that Network Solutions automatically renews 60 days ahead of time, whereas GoDaddy is only 30 days, which I believe to be a more reasonable business practice. Paying for something two months before you use it just seems plain wrong.

Also, domain management is far simpler with GoDaddy as well as shorter phone wait times. And always be on the lookout for those ‘Specials’. GoDaddy offers free private registration when registering five or more domains, whereas Network Solutions offers private registration using a ‘phone only’ special, which seems a bit backwards on the self-service model. Phones, really?

As with every service, the big ‘gotcha’ on either of these is to review domains that you want to drop periodically, to ensure they are not set to ‘auto renew’, otherwise, you’ll be chasing your own tail trying to get your money back. Good luck on that one as even if you do get your money back, you’ll lose on the time and frustration end of things.

At the end of the day, as I have many domains I own and forward, I’ll save a few hundred bucks a years, and get to hold on to my money another month.

For my money, it’s GoDaddy!

Ed

Network Solutions and GoDaddy are registered trademarks.

Do you want your server in house or hosted with true oversight?

Do you need dedicated hardware and bandwidth?

Do you want to manage your servers or do you want them managed?

Although there are many flavors of hosting out there, the two types of I think most often are Basic Hosting and Managed Hosting. But at the end of the day, we feel another option is necessary that significantly completes the entire picture, and that is Complete Hosting, which Roundbrix offers to its clients. You’ve heard the term you’re in good hands with Allstate. The same applies with Roundbrix‘ Complete Hosting offering. Let’s review the options in more detail.

Basic Hosting is defined as providing air conditioning, electrical, Internet access and a secure space where you can place your equipment. You are responsible for all hardware, software, backups and network security issues. You’re also responsible for all failures and remediation. Think of it as an empty apartment with utilities. The biggest downside to Basic Hosting is that those very same resources that are shared to give you the most bang for buck can also swing the other way. An example might be that some hosting providers put too many customers on a single server in an effort to maximize their profit, but you may experience intermittent performance problems as a result. Another example is they may pool too many customers on a smaller internet connection, providing a lackluster experience for those trying to access your systems, whether it is an end client trying to access your website, or your employees trying to access a hosted application.

Managed Hosting is defined as looking after the hardware (if it is provided) and ensuring it’s up 24 x 7 x 365. It provides you with the same climate-controlled, clean power, internet circuit and physical security as Basic Hosting. The difference really comes into play by providing additional services of value, like providing dedicated hardware (at a cost), system backups and providing the option for dedicated bandwidth. If hardware is being leased or provided, it’s up to you to clearly understand when things break, who fixes it. Some outfits may monitor performance, but again, the name of the game here is no assumptions. When there’s an issue here, it may be that it’s not ‘their’ issue, leaving you with a bitter taste or scrambling to find a resource to help resolve the issue. Unfortunately, we see this a lot more than you might think. Your issues are important to us and we will always address them in a timely manner.

Complete Hosting includes the remaining pieces, many of which can hurt or cause unexpected stoppages or risks. This becomes a matter of total ownership. Additionally in my mind, Managed Hosting should also include managing the backups, disk space, looking at network and server performance including RAM and CPU, staying on top of maintenance contracts and other expirations and renewals, anti-virus, strategically planning for replacement of firewalls, switches, and servers at the core of your infrastructure. With complete hosting, you also have more flexibility at every level.

Due Diligence for Managed Hosting. At the end of the day, it’s important to weigh your options wisely and make the right choices. For the ultimate peace of mind, Complete Hosting is the best way to go, but know who you’re dealing with and where your data is, including backups. Remember, your customer lists and financials are likely very sacred and need to be held close to the chest. Ensure you know the answers to these five questions before moving forward with anyone:

1. Where are my servers and systems and are they shared, if not customer provided?

2. Where exactly is the actual call center and what are the hours of operation?

3. If they perform backups, where are the backup stored? And for how far back?

4. Is the bandwidth dedicated or shared? How much dedicated or bursting up/down speed?

5. Am I notified promptly when there is an issue?

With computing infrastructures, much like life itself, nothing is perfect, but stacking the cards in your favor clearly lessens your risk. At Roundbrix, we are unique in that we will manage the entire enchilada and work with you to stay on the correct strategic path, allowing you to focus on your business. From our shop to yours, you’re in good hands!

Ed

Allstate and “Good Hands” are a registered trademark of Allstate Insurance Company.

1. Know Where Your Data Lives. This may sound silly, but what if you had nightly backups running, lost something, and went to restore the data only to find out you weren’t backing it up? Folks, this happens more than you would ever want to know. Often times data is on desktops when it should really be on a server where it gets backed up. Good company policy and procedures with occasional QA here is best practice.

And remember, if you install a new program on the server, create a new volume on a server or a new database, know that it has to be selected to be backed up. Just because it’s on the server doesn’t mean it’s backed up!

2. Backup Nightly with a Verify Pass. This is key to ensure that your data is restorable from the media. We used to call this “read after write” as it simply verifies that what is believed it wrote is indeed what can be read back. A simple check box verifies that all is well come ‘restore‘ time!

3. Take a Backup Offsite at Least Weekly. This is where you have to think through your pain threshold for data loss. In other words, if you’re building burned down, would losing a week’s worth of data make it even more painful? If the answer is an emphatic ‘YES’, then that means you need to take a tape offsite more frequently than weekly. Do remember a couple of things about taking tapes offsite. First rule is they don’t survive well in heat or moisture so get a proper transport and storage container. Second rule is ensure it is secure as the tape includes all your company information and if misplaced, creates a liability. You’ll want to account for your tapes periodically to ensure one didn’t ‘fly the coup’. If you’re a Roundbrix client, you can use our secure biometric-secured facility to store your backup data as frequently as you would like.

4. Periodic Reviews of What is Being Backed Up. This little step that we like to do every quarter to catch new areas created. Face it, we get busy and things fall through the cracks as we’re only human. Also, we occasionally find new databases that not only aren’t being backed up, but not set up properly for maintenance, safety and controlling growth. To know how to set up a database maintenance plan, see the article we previously wrote here.

5. Redirect My Document Folder to Server using Group Policy. Desktops and laptops will fail, but what’s important is that it does not take sensitive company data with it. Also, if it gets stolen or misplaced, has this just put your entire company at risk? Folks, keeping autonomy between the company data and the desktop/laptop device any more than absolutely required is simply good business. One of these failing should not send dangerous ripples through an organization like “Oh, Ed had all the company financials and client lists on his computer and now they are gone!”

6. Know How You Would Restore From Scratch. In a crisis situation, this is not the time to “figure things out”. We have “been there and done that” so rest assured we can get you back to where you need to be is short time. After all, the name of the game is first prevention, and secondly restoration. If the restorations took a month, what would be the point?

Current Projects

• Access to SQL Database Conversion
• Server upgrades
• High Availability Firewall upgrades
• Network Engineering and Performance Monitoring
• - MAS Migrations

Having a good solid maintenance strategy as part of your SQL Server database is a necessity for any company with a business critical application. It can be the difference of being down for a few minutes vs. being down for an entire day or several days. It can also manage space on the server better and if done correctly, can improve performance of the database dramatically.

The first part of a good database management strategy is to plan your backups. For a database that is frequently used and important to the company we recommend the following standard maintenance plan. In general it’s a good idea to do a full backup twice a day and transaction log backups hourly so you can easily restore the database up to the hour within minutes.

1. Back Up Full Databases Twice Daily

There are three Recovery Models

a. Full Recovery Model   -   What Roundbrix mostly uses. Safest mode of operation for production systems.

b. Bulk-Logged Recovery Model   -   Has minimum logging for bulk import operations. Space allocation and deallocation is only logged for bulk import operations. Basically a few limitations.

c. Simple Recovery Model   -   No transaction log maintenance needed. Recoverability of the database is very limited to a specific time frame.

If a database doesn’t change often, Simple Recovery Model may be an option. (i.e. a database that imports all the data from Quickbooks from previous day, etc.). The data is only used for reporting, so the Simple Recovery Model would work fine if timed properly. (after data is inputted from QB).

2. Back Up Transaction Log Files Hourly

A database has two components, data file(s) and transaction logs. A transaction log captures the modifications made to the database. A SQL server must have at least one transaction file.

With the Full Recovery Model, it is important to backup the transaction logs frequently so the database can be restored up to the point in time when the problem occurred. A transaction log backup will truncate the inactive portion of the transaction log.

The transaction log can get large and the file size will not be reduced when it is truncated after a transaction log backup. This simply shifts the pointer within the existing file as to where the space is to be freed up.

3. Rebuild Indexes Weekly

Rebuilding indexes should be done weekly during off-hours as this can sometimes be intensive and slow down the database. It is important to rebuild the indexes to optimize performance of the database. You can think of this like defragmenting your hard drive. After it is completed, everything runs just a little smoother and faster because space is optimized properly (doesn’t take as long to figure out where a record goes during an insert or update).

4. Update Statistics Daily

It is also a good idea to create a maintenance plan to update statistics daily. This optimizes space in the tables and can have an impact on improving performance of the database. If this never gets done (which sometimes happens in databases that are not maintained) performance can slowly degrade until it becomes a serious problem, adversely affecting application performance.

TYPICAL BACKUP PLAN FOR A DATABASE THAT IS BUSINESS-CRITICAL:

PROPER AND OPTIMAL DATABASE DESIGN:

One of the most common problems we’ve seen is applications where a query takes over 30 seconds only to find that one of the fields in that query has not been indexed. Beyond looking at the queries in your application to make sure the fields that are in your “WHERE” clauses are all indexed, there are some tools that can help. Using Microsoft SQL Server Profiler in combination with Database Engine Tuning Advisor is the easiest way to find slow queries and see what indexes may be missing, which could help improve the performance of your application.

For SQL Server Profiler first, select “Tuning”. Next, select the “Events Selection” tab, and then the “Column Filters…” option and “Duration”. Select the Greater than or equal to 3000, as we want to see queries taking over 3 seconds.

After about an hour of running the profiler, stop it. You should save the file to one that can be imported into a “Database Engine Tuning Advisor”. Run it to have the tool point out what can be optimized. Usually you can accept most of the suggestions from Database Engine Tuning Advisor and see a dramatic increase in performance.

The other important thing to look at in a database is how well normalized it is. Normalization is important so that information is not duplicated. One example is a company we worked with used 12 different excel sheets to keep track of similar information. However data that was supposed to be consistent throughout the different excel files was spelled differently and listed multiple times where it should have referenced by a table with a unique ID and one consistent value. We moved these 12 excel sheets into one database and created separate tables for the columns so information was normalized. This allowed the customer to do more sophisticated and accurate queries on their data.

The information above, when properly normalized, should be put into three tables as shown below. This way, “Hardy Boys” only needs to be updated once.

PROPER NAMING CONVENTION IS ALSO IMPORTANT:

Naming a foreign key differently from the primary key that it references can be very confusing to programmers. If the fields are named properly and referenced properly, it can save countless hours of confusion. I typically name the primary key as the table name with “ID” after it. So if Book is the table, BookID is the primary key. This is a pretty common way to name primary keys which will make it easier for programmers to understand more quickly.

It is also important to make sure you keep an ER (Entity-Relationship) Diagram. This is very easy with SQL Server by right clicking on Database Diagrams and selecting “New Database Diagram”. Then you can link the primary/foreign keys here and also add/update fields to the database-making database management tool very easily. Make sure all the tables are in the diagram and connected properly to the other tables that they should be connected to.

By following the tips above, you should have a solid robust database that will allow your company to grow without having to worry about database issues. For a free database analysis call the experts at roundbrix at 949.273.5200.

Ed

Internet Circuit – Important to know is which carriers provide service to your building and their transport offerings. For reliability, fiber rules the roost. But some areas have more than one carrier so you need to compare offerings. Also realize that you don’t have to wait for one contract to expire to re-up at a better rate, if you plan on staying with the same carrier. Additionally, know what offerings are available as a change in architecture may make doing business more cost effective. For example, using offerings like Cox’s Metro-E offering which connects one site to another via Layer 2 Ethernet.

Unused phone lines – Go through the bills and call every number on there. Remember you’ll have a few lines that may be dedicated to your burglar alarm, elevator, or fire notification system. Other than that, you need to know where they all go and lose the ones that are not in use.

SIP Trunks or Voice PRI versus CO Lines – On the telephony side, if you have more than 10 lines, you may want to compare the cost to see what SIP trunks or a dedicated PRI may cost. If you have to add a piece of equipment, often times the carrier has a promotion and will chip in here. Remember, their goal is to get you off of analog lines as we move to the all-digital world.

Server Warranties – Deciding out of the gate when purchasing a server how long you will keep it will always benefit you, as opposed to extending at a higher price a couple years down the line. Face it, when cutting the initial deal to get the server, it’s more aggressive discounting. But once you’re on it, you lose the leverage on price negotiation as they know it would always be less expensive to renew a contract for server maintenance then bite-off another server deployment.

Deployment Turns – Getting these reduced makes a ton of sense. Let’s look at a 10-year period. If you replace servers every 3 years, it’s three turns in that ten-year period, but every 5 years, it’s only two turns. If you push a server to seven years, it’s only one turn every ten years for the first couple decades. Exchange servers, as one example, are typically goof for 5-7 years.

Printer Consumables – Face it, the cost of the printer is rarely an issue. This day in age, with paper reduction a strategic initiative, it makes sense. The goal should be have fewer, strategically-placed printers going forward and limit color. And it’s not just the cost of the paper and paper-handling printers, it’s the ink and the time for finding that one piece of a paper in our paper jungle. Time to kick this paper habit.

Multi-Year Domain and SSL Renewals – Instead of doing this every year, do it every so many. You not only get a break for multi-year, you’re not revisiting the same task every year. SSL certificates should only be extended until the end of the useful life of your Exchange server.

Buy Second Hand Equipment – Yep, you heard me right. Often times, we run into situations on two-to- three-year old hardware. We had an APC environment monitoring system that crapped out. We probably spent $1,500 on the unit, $500 on different probes for water detection, humidity, and others, plus programmed it meticulously, saving the configuration file of course. It simply crapped out. To replace it would cost me about $2k plus the time to learn a new system, and reprogram/fine tune it. Instead, I found a used one on eBay for $100 and voila, the out-of-pocket cost to get back to where I was came to a couple hundred bucks, labor included and we simply had to reload the our configuration. Also, try the folks at MetrolineDirect.com for used phone equipment.

Electricity – All the newer UPS and Servers can run on 208VAC. This will save about 15-20% on your electric bill as it pulls down half the amps or less. Also, if PC’s can be turned off, especially on weekends when interior air conditioning may not be operating and interior office temperatures can soar, causing PC failures. Printer and copying machines nearly all have a sleep mode as well that can save a bit.

Labor Smart – Often times, I see a high-end IT tech pulling cables, or doing more menial tasks, even though their backlog is huge. This just does not make business sense. Reviewing to ensure you have your most cost-effective resource, even if that means getting someone outside to perform the task. Face it – you don’t use a pickup truck when a Prius will do!

We also hope you will all enjoy a great Fourth of July weekend!

Ed