In the world of IT, there are a number of maintenance activities that need to be performed regularly in order to keep a network running smoothly. Much like changing the oil or rotating the tires on a car, system updates, backups, hard drive defragmentations and other processes are important for maintaining the overall health of a network or server. Many of these processes require system resources or even system down time, so a certain amount of planning and organization is required in order to minimize impact on end users or overall system performance. In addition, running too many of these tasks at the same time can cause these processes to slow down or even conflict with each other, further complicating the issues associated with system maintenance.
For these reasons, we have strived to maintain a proper schedule when it comes to system maintenance tasks. Most of these services happen during off hours when end users will be impacted least. In addition, they are set up to run at specific times in order to minimize conflicts, such as updates causing the system to reboot while a backup is in progress. It also allows for greater troubleshooting. For instance, if we know all system updates occur on a specific night, it makes it easier to assess whether or not those patches are related to a specific issue that a system may be having. This kind of organization not only allows us to provide better service, but is also essential to ensuring proper system health while minimizing system down time.
Posted by: Phil Robinson in Tech, PC, hard drive on
Mar 20, 2009
Here is an impressive demonstration by Samsung that shows you how slow your hard drive really is, and how fast solid state drives are.
The only catch? This demo is using about $20,000 worth of hardware. A bit pricey, by with computers, what is $20,000 now might be $2000 in the future.
Posted by: Phil Robinson in Tech on
Mar 04, 2009
Hello, my name is Craig, and I am addicted to Google Analytics. I feel better having said that. If you aren’t using Google Analytics for your website, you are missing out on all the fun. Why might you ask? Well, what’s the point of having a website if you don’t know how people are using it?
Google Analytics is a free service that keeps track of all visits to your website. It keeps track of an amazing amount of data—how many people access your site, what pages they visit, how long they spend looking at your site, what site referred them to you, what they typed into Google to find your site, all the way down to where (geographically) they are coming from. All you need is a Gmail account and access to the HTML code of your website. In fact, as I was typing this post, my wife laughingly asked “do people even read your guys’ blog?” After half an hour of showing her pie charts and bar graphs and maps, she regretted asking me the question. I guess she doesn't share in my addiction.
When I first heard the term cloud computing, I thought it was just putting your server in a data center and accessing it from anywhere. This is a similar concept, and has its benefits. About a year ago we lost power in our office for about 3 hours. All of our servers were in-house, connected to a big UPS battery backup that lasted all of about 20 minutes. We rely heavily on our servers to report the status and health of our clients’ networks, and to provide remote support and maintenance. It was an awful feeling. I started sending people home where they at least had internet access, but without our servers, it did us no good. It was then we decided we needed to make some changes. We started pricing power generators and special air conditioners. These just weren’t realistic, and still had limitations. We moved all of our critical servers to a datacenter. Redundant power, cooling and internet are just what we wanted to be able to work from anywhere. Even if our office has no power, we can find an internet connection and get to work. Now we host several client servers at our datacenter, so they can have the same benefits.
Cloud computing takes server hosting to a new level. You don’t need to buy a server, you don’t need to buy rack space, you don’t even need to buy software. It’s all on-demand, pay as you go, or paid for by advertisers. Chances are you’ve already used it if you have a Gmail or Hotmail account. All your data is stored on-line, even the program is on-line. All you need is a web browser. Everyone uses a word processor, why buy Microsoft Office for every single PC? Why not just go to a web site and start typing a letter? Google has apps you can run online—word processors, spreadsheet programs, and calendar programs. Yahoo has used cloud computing for years, “renting” out hard drive space for programs to store files or backup data. Microsoft’s CTO Ray Ozzie is pushing cloud computing apps heavy this year, announcing Microsoft Azure. A Microsoft hosted environment for developers to write applications that run online.
But is all this a good idea? You’re giving up control of your data, it’s not on your computer any more, who has access to it? And won’t hosting fees exceed the cost of just purchasing the programs and hardware up front? I say yes, it is a good idea. Most people do a horrible job of backing up their data. Having it online means if your hard drive crashes, you have nothing to worry about. As long as the source is reliable, like Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo, chances are they’re doing better backups than you are. Most servers are obsolete in 5 years and workstations 3. Cloud apps don’t need powerful workstations or servers locally, just a fast internet connection. You could use inexpensive thin client workstations to run programs. Keeping programs up to date can be a challenge. New versions come out, patches need to be installed. All this happens automatically. Being able to run your programs from anywhere with all your data accessible from any machine seems pretty appealing. Don’t throw all your hardware away yet, cloud computing is coming, but it’s not ready to replace every program you run today.
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