MJ's Business IT Blog

Happy New Year!

As we close out 2008, it seems a perfect time to thank you reading my blog over the past year.  I'm looking forward to a great 2009 and hope you are as well.  It seems like the tide may be turning and the conventional wisdom seems to be embracing the idea of hope and positive change all around.  Let's hope this materializes into improved times for one and all.  The past few weeks have been amazingly busy for our team at Jenaly and I hope this is a small reflection of the hope and positive vibes coming in to the new year.  I hope to get back to more regular postings next week and as always, welcome your feedback and suggestions.  So to you and your loved ones, my very best wishes for a Healthy and Happy New Year.  Welcome to 2009!

The Best Backup, Period!

This past week has been an excercise in disaster recovery from natural events.  If you missed the news New England was hit by a massive ice storm last Thursday evening, December 11th.  To put this storm in perspective, throughout the States of Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, around 1.2 million lost power.  The State of New Hampshire accounted for a little over 424,000 of those.  There are still many locations without power.  As of this morning, one of our staff is still without power.

I am absolutely thrilled to report that all of our clients came through the storm unscathed.  All systems came back online as they should, gracefully and safely thanks to proper uninterruptable power supplies that properly managed the power loss and more importantly, the return of power.  As of Monday morning, December 15th, only one client was without power and projected to be that way for the entire week.  Our Jenaly VSA Backup and Disaster Recovery service came to their rescue.  We retrieved their VSA BDR from their office and brought it online at an alternate site, in this case, our office.  We virtualized their servers and mapped their mail and other remote services and had them back in business.  Any employees that had power and Internet access were able to remotely work off the server and keep the business alive and in touch with their clients.  All their remote smartphone users began to get their mail.  When power came back on sooner than expected, we were easily able to extract any new data they had worked on and return it to their main server.  We reversed the process and returned their VSA BDR to their office and they continued working.

I've spent 20 years of my life working with a variety of technologies.  Many of them have been backup technologies and I can sincerely say, without a doubt, that I am incredibly proud of our Jenaly VSA BDR service.  I love this business because we can provide innovative services like this and help our clients deal with unplanned events gracefully and without the added stress that could exist.  Jenaly VSA BDR delivers continuity capabilities that simply weren't available for our clients even just a year ago.  It just plain works.

Snow and Ice and a Good UPS

As we move into the heart of December and the official beginning of winter, this seems like a good time to remind you of the need to maintain more than just a basic UPS for your computer network.  With regard to your servers, hopefully they are in a rack with a properly sized rack mounted UPS in the bottom of the rack.  Even if your server is not rack mounted, it still need a proper UPS.

Hopefully you know what a UPS is, but just in case, I'm talking about an Uninterruptable Power Supply, a battery backup power supply that protects your computer systems against brown outs, power spikes and power failures.  The key to a proper UPS is that it not only provides power protection and runtime during a power failure, but they also interface directly with your server or PC to properly shut it down in the event the battery cannot keep the equipment running until the power returns.  There is typically software that gets installed on the computers that manages this via an interface cable between the computer and the UPS.  These days, these are usually either a USB cable or via the network over the existing network connections.

With the ice storm and blizzards of the winter season, you can be sure that your office will lose power a few times this winter.  The last thing you want to deal with is a crashed server or corrupted data that could have been prevented by proper power protection.  A UPS is the answer.  Also, don't forget to protect your critical PC's.  Most notebooks will obviously have an internal battery, so they will have their own battery backup, but should still be connected to a proper surge protector.  Critical PC's that will need to remain functional during brief power outages or need to remain available should be connected to a proper desktop UPS for the same reasons as previously stated.

Functional New Smartphone

For those of you that travel extensively, Verizon Wireless has just released a very interesting new smartphone, the Samsung Saga.  What is interesting about this device is that it is one of the few Verizon Wireless devices that is global.  It works on Verizon Wireless' CDMA network here in the US and also on the GSM international network through a partnership with Vodafone.  When you order this device, you get your standard cell number, but the device also ships with a SIM card for global compatibility.  This is a Windows Mobile Professional smartphone, so it is a touchscreen device and also has a nice full size keyboard on the front as well.  Because it has Windows Mobile as it's operating system, it is ready for wireless push syncrhonization with Microsoft Exchange Server, the business standard for e-mail, calendaring, contacts and tasks.  If you find yourself in the market for a new device, the Samsung Saga is worth a look.