Shadowfax Technology Limited

Shadowfax Technology Limited blog has moved

2009-08-04T11:01:00.000+01:00

We are now at http://blog.shadowfaxtechnology.co.uk/

Adam

Working on holiday

2009-07-13T09:32:00.005+01:00

It still amazes me how many support calls we get from people on holiday.

Don't get me wrong, I do take a laptop away with me, and do understand the need for the small business owner to keep in touch whilst away, but some people can't seem to drag themselves away from work!

So for those that absolutely can't switch off from the office here are some tips for successfully working on holiday.

First of all preparation. Check what Internet access you will be able to get. If you are using a 3G card then check the providers coverage map. If they don't have coverage it might be worth getting a Pay as You Go card from another provider. They are very inexpensive now, and will save having to drive around trying to find a signal (I have a contract on T-Mobile and a PAYGO on 3 just in case).

http://www.three.co.uk/_standalone/Coverage_checker_mbb

http://maps.vodafone.co.uk/coverageviewer/web/default.aspx

http://www.webmap.o2.co.uk/

http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/services/coverage/street-check/

http://web.orange.co.uk/coverage/

Remember that if you want to get on the Internet then it is the 3G coverage that you probably want.

Check Roaming charges. If you are going abroad check roaming charges. These are coming down for voice and text, but data is still high.

Take data with you. Just because the brochure says Internet Access available don't rely on it. If there are a few files that you know you will need to work on then take them with you. That way you can still do a bit of Off-Line working. And take it securely, encrypt it if you can.

Prepare in advance. Remember that if you cannot connect from home the week before, then the chance of being able to do it from the Seycelles is next to none.

Schedule your day. More for your family's sanity, I find it best to schedule the work you are going to do as part of the day, so you don't miss out on the fun, and they don't have to sit and watch you plugging away at a Blackberry for the whole day.

Enjoy yourself. No point going on holiday if you sit in front of the laptop all day long. Enjoy the downtime and deal with any problems when you get back.

Bridging with your Neigbours (wirelessly)

2009-07-09T11:43:00.003+01:00

Yesterday I went to visit a client on a small estate whose broadband has been playing up intermittently. BT have been extending the dealine for fixing the line fault, and it is now obvious that it is going to be a long term problem. The client is very dependent on their internet connection to access their accounts software that is hosted in the cloud

So I had a chat with one of their neighbours - another of our clients - and set up a wireless bridge using two Linksys access points between their networks. The link is the WAN side of both their firewalls, so their networks aren't talking to each other. It just means that my client can now use their neighbours internet connection whilst theirs is flaky.

It is working very well, they now have a stable route out to the internet.

My generous client is also safe in the knowledge that should they have a problem with their internet, a backup solution is already there for them.

Differences between POP3 and SMTP E-mail

2009-07-08T09:41:00.001+01:00

SMTP is a long established Internet protocol that is used for the delivery and receipt of e-mail. POP3 is also an Internet protocol but is used only to collect e-mail.

When configuring your e-mail software (e.g. Outlook or Outlook Express) you always need to specify the name or IP address of the SMTP server for outgoing e-mail. This name or address is normally provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Note, that it is perfectly possible to have one ISP just for Internet access and another service provider to host your e-mail. However, many ISPs include e-mail as part of their Internet access package.

To collect e-mail you have a choice of POP3 or SMTP. However, you can only use SMTP with software that is SMTP aware such as Microsoft Exchange. Outlook and Outlook Express cannot on their own receive e-mail using SMTP.

With SMTP you need to have a static IP address on the computer that is running your e-mail software. Whoever is hosting your e-mail domain name will attempt to deliver e-mail to your e-mail server as and when e-mail arrives and regardless of who the e-mail is addressed to. Your e-mail software is responsible for organising which e-mails go into which inboxes. If your e-mail server is off then your e-mail service provider will store the e-mail for you until your e-mail server can be contacted again.

The main advantages of using SMTP to receive e-mail are that e-mails arrive more or less immediately at your server and that you do not have to set up individual mailboxes with your e-mail server provider.

With POP3 you need to set up an account, with your e-mail service provider, for each e-mail address that you wish to use called a mailbox. When e-mail is sent to your domain the e-mail will be stored in the appropriate POP3 mailbox until you collect it. Your e-mail software has to actively connect to the your e-mail service provider's server to check if there is any e-mail and then download it. This must be done separately for each mailbox. Most e-mail clients can be configured to automatically check for new e-mail every few minutes.

E-mail service providers use a variety of charging schemes for SMTP and POP3 Mail. Some charge to provide SMTP mail, others charge for each POP3 mailbox. Some ISPs include a specific number of POP3 mailboxes for free as part of a package.

In general, businesses that use an e-mail server such as Exchange should use SMTP for incoming e-mail.

Why you should have you backups off-site

2009-06-26T15:15:00.003+01:00

It feels like I am always telling people to take their backups off site.
One of the reasons we love our Live Backup BDR (Backup and Disaster Recovery) service is that we know that our clients data is off site.

We got called to a company yesterday. Their office had been burnt to the ground by an electrical fire.

Their backups were in a fire proof safe in the office. Fire proof safes aren't as fireproof as you might think. All their data was burnt to a crisp.

We set them up with a loan PC and a router with a 3G connection to get them back on-line (all the phone lines had been burnt out), which is something. But they have lost all of their data. They seem a resilient enough lot that I hope they will survive, and fortunately no-one was hurt in the fire, but it is going to be a stressful time for them to get back up to speed.

If you are still backing up with tape or disk, are they going off-site? Is the member of staff in charge doing it?

Time to check!

Bing

2009-06-01T16:17:00.003+01:00

Bing is the new search engine (sorry - Decision engine) from Microsoft.

I've been using it today. Better than Google? No.

But not to worry, apparently Microsoft are no longer trying to beat Google at the search engine game. They now have their sites firmly set on Yahoo! instead. Yahoo! only has about twice the market share of searches that Microsoft's engines have.

So if you are using Yahoo! as your default search engine take a look at www.bing.com. If you are using Google, have a look by all means, but don't expect to be blown away.

Employees own equipment

2009-05-27T08:02:00.003+01:00

We don't recommend that companies allow their employees to use their own PCs and Laptops at work.

Many reasons why, but we had an example of one yesterday. An employee who was allowed to use their MacBook was leaving a client company, and we were asked to log on and remove all their data from the machine (they are particularly sensitive to data loss). In this case the employee was leaving through voluntary redundancy, and was completely compliant.

However if the employee had left under a cloud there would have been a bit of a sticky situation. The client company may well have owned the data on the Laptop, but would have no rights to seize it or remove it. I've no idea what the legal consequences would have been, but the simple solution is to supply all your employees IT. That way if someone leaves you simply remove it from them.

More Cloud Computing fun

2009-05-21T17:49:00.004+01:00

Had great fun the other day playing with Amazon's EC2 cloud computing service.

This service allows you to rapidly provision hosted servers. Mostly this is aimed at the big boys. The idea is that if you know that your web site for example is going to have a huge spike in activity, the EC2 cloud has tools that allow you to provision and boot extra servers on demand to cope with the rush. Once the rush is over you decommission them, and you only pay for them whilst they are running, for a minimum of 1 hour.

The sort of development that would go into scripting web services to do that kind of thing automatically is not small.

So what is the benefit to smaller companies? Best thing I can see is for playing. If you need to test a new service or piece of software then you can rapidly provision a new server out on the Internet, do your testing and then kill it off. As prices start at $0.135 for European hosting for short term rents it is probably cheaper than buying an in house server for testing (keep in mind electricity, air con, space, licensing etc).

I need to demo hosted Sharepoint for a client soon, and I'll definitely consider spinning up an EC2 server to install and run it on for the duration.

Spares

2009-04-23T10:44:00.003+01:00

When we talk about disaster recovery it is easy to get carried away with the big picture - servers, routers, Internet connections and all the expensive bits.

But sometimes it is important to also look at the small things. We've been in this situation ourselves. We've allocated our spare PCs to new users until we have no spare machines. Then one of the PCs fails and we have a user out of action. In our case we had the PC repairs fairly quickly (as you would hope!), but I still had a member of staff out of action for half a day.

We took the opportunity to buy new spare. The out of action staff member had this as a new PC and their old one now sits on a shelf set up and ready and waiting for the next time one of our PCs fail.

This scenario is duplicated at a lot of our clients. Even to the point where we've been told that they don't want us to fix a problem on a machine, because the user needs it all the time, and can't face being without it for a few hours whilst we work on it. A spare PC won't be perfect, but it will keep the user running, and reduce the stress of having someone unable to get on with their work.

Internet Explorer 8

2009-03-19T16:01:00.003Z

IE8 is due to be released shortly.

As an IT Support professional I'm probably supposed to be telling people to hold off of downloading, and to investigate its effects first of all.

But new browsers are fun. I say download now, and bug your IT support company if everything breaks. Of course you have to be prepared for the downtime, and the disappointment if they uninstall it for you.

Be an early adopter and don't let the nay-sayers get you down!

http://www.microsoft.com/ie8

The importance of Internet Connectivity

2009-02-12T15:05:00.004Z

Internet connectivity is becoming increasingly important for businesses. There is still though a tendency to forget about its importance.

Like everything with your Internet access you get what you pay for. If you have a single broadband connection then you cannot expect 100% uptime and a lightening fast response to any faults.

So what is the solution? Leased lines are great, they have guaranteed SLAs, compensation for downtime, and little downtime to boot. They are of course expensive, but if your business cannot trade without the Internet then it becomes as essential an item as anything else in your office. Below that in cost there are Bonded ADSL and SDSL solutions that combine multiple lines and present them as one.

Then you have load balanced lines where two or more lines are present, but fail over is possibly a more manual process. Then we have to start thinking about different ways of connecting to the Internet. We have had great success with 3G routers that give Internet access over the wireless network, and don't rely on a working telephone line.

Snow is over - now floods

2009-02-10T15:58:00.003Z

Working from home again today, the snows have gone, but now my village is pretty much cut off due to floods.

It is proving to me that the best business continuity plan has to be exactly that - a plan. I can work nearly entirely at home, with email and files easily accessible, and voicemail messages emailed to me (preferable to me than having my phone diverted), but that doesn't stop that print out or post it note (generally banned in our office) from being left behind.

It makes me think that we don't have a plan for continuity or backup of paper documents. Not that we have many, but it should still be written in our plan - even if just to say we don't have them and need to understand the risk of losing them.

Internet Explorer Security flaw in the news

2008-12-18T20:39:00.000Z

We’ve had a few calls about the Microsoft security flaw in Internet Explorer that has been making headlines over the last few days.

Microsoft have released a patch, which needs to be installed on all PCs.

The simple way to make sure you have this patch is to simply leave your PCs on overnight, and Windows Update will download and install the patch for you.

If you have our PC Management Service on your support contract then your PCs will report back to us so we can chase up on any stragglers. If you wish any PCs to be updated manually the please call the helpdesk and the guys will schedule a time to do it. If you wish to update your own home PCs you can do so from the Windows Update site, http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/

Please note that this security risk, although potentially severe, is not likely to have much of an effect. Most of the web sites that use this exploit have only been used to capture peoples gamer tag details, so unless you update your Xbox scores from the office you aren’t likely to fall victim!

If anyone is interested in the official Microsoft word, then the security bulletin can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-078.mspx

Backups

2008-12-10T17:16:00.002Z

I hate backups. My heart always jumps into my mouth when I'm asked to restore something. Generally backups are very reliable (especially systems like our Live Backup), but I always have a slight panic that we might not be able to restore something that someone needs.

I write this as I try to restore the server of a client who didn't heed the warning. Despite having a meeting about backups a few months ago, no action was taken at the time, and now their server is down. In a way they are lucky, they will not lose any data from this, but they have lost a day (and counting, not fixed it yet!) of work in the office, and I don't know how much that has cost them.

Fortunately we did find a backup - but it was about 6 months old. This should be enough to restore their server, but if there was a current backup the server could have been restored in about half an hour, done remotely and been covered by their support contract.

Migrating to Small Business Server 2008

2008-12-08T23:15:00.000Z

Attended a one day conference on Friday (SMB Nation). My reason for attending was to find out a bit more about migration techniques from Small Business Server 2003 to Small Business Server 2008.

This is the first time Microsoft have put some proper effort into a system for migrating from one system to another, but there are still plenty of challenges.

Partly this is because SBS2008 is 64bit and SBS2003 is 32bit. In simple terms it means you cannot just upgrade one to the other, you have to set SBS2008 up on seperate hardware (or a virtual machine) and migrate data and settings from one to another.

The other main complication is that Exchange 2007 uses a different database format from Exchange 2003, which means it isn't a simple case of copying data from one to another.

Microsoft's migration techniques also do not allow you to preserve the address space. In other word the new server will need to have a new name. No big deal, just something for users to get used to.

I still need to run through some test migrations, the bad news for business owners is that it simply looks like the migration will take longer to run. The time scales that were being mentioned seemed to me that it might not be possible to complete the migration over a weekend, meaning work time downtime.

SBS Migration on Hyper-V server

2008-11-27T18:22:00.000Z

Spending the evening migrating and SBS 2003 server to a Hyper-v platform.

So far Hyper-V has put up enough resistance to make me wish I'd plumped for ESXi. It isn't a bad product, but I can't get over its lack of integrated management. I made the mistake of joining it to our domain whilst it was in the workshop and then trying to manage it on the clients site. It flatly refused.

I've now got it se in its own workshop and set up a Vista VM on my notebook, also in the Workgroup, to manage it. That is working but I can't help think there is a chicken and egg thing going on if you are trying to install a fresh domain on it.

Performance seems fine, but I've not bench tested it.

I'm having to backup files from the old SBS server across the LAN to a USB disk plugged into a workstation as the USB ports on the old server are somewhat fried. Still not bad performance though.