I have posted before about Backups and their importance in the world. The subject has inspired me to write a whole article on the subject of Backups, Disaster Recovery and Mitigating Downtime in the hopes that I can explain a few things, share some ideas and observations, and maybe help you understand the different aspects of data protection that go into the subject of backups. I hope it will prove helpful!
Mechanical Computers Rise Again?
Here is an interesting article I ran across, talking about new designs for mechanical computers for use is high stress situations where normal computers can’t quite take the abuse. Kind of interesting how the pendulum seems to be swinging back now. I have seen this many times over the years, where one technology fades out in favor of another, only for it to come back in one form or another in the future.
One example (in my opinion anyway) would be mainframes that got replaced by minis, and commodity servers. These are now getting consolidated and replaced by virtual servers, which is one big server or many servers that act as one to run all of the virtual servers. Isn’t that pretty much what mainframes did? Aah, the cycle continues!
New article on chkconfig!
Ok folks, for anyone that might be interested, I have written an article on the Linux chkconfig command, and how to use it to manager services on your system. There’s even a little background info on System V and how we got here. Check it out, and I hope you like it.
Great Whois tool for Windows
It’s getting on to Friday, and I thought I would post another Cool Tool for your enjoyment. For anyone who dabbles in domain names, or does much with networking, you have undoubtedly used the Whois command. Whois is a tool for querying domain name information, like who is the owner of it, the DNS servers, and more. It’s very handy when you want to see if that domain name you always wanted is taken or not. Why not just type it into the browser and see if it comes up, you ask? Well, just because a domain doesn’t show up in your favorite browser, doesn’t mean it is not registered. Sometimes the domain owner hasn’t done anything with it yet, or they might use it for email but not a website, or it could simply be that a domain squatter has it, and therefore only owns it to resell it.
Aside from that, I have been in troubleshooting situations where I needed to find out some info on a particular domain name, like mentioned above, the DNS servers for example. Or one time, I was getting spammed to death from one domain, and we determined it was a virus with a little research, so we looked up the domain owner and were able to tell him that his server had been infected. He didn’t even know!
Regardless of what your needs are, if you need a good, fast, and free Whois client, check out win32whois from gena01.com. It’s a kicking little program, that I have made sure to add to my trick bag. It appears to be very well written, fast, and best of all it’s free. Check it out and happy Whois-ing!
Backup Your Data Now!
Greetings to all you surfers out there. I wanted to visit a topic that I most likely will not only visit often as time marches onward, but write about a bunch too, and that is backing up your data. Most folk don’t like to think about the bad things that might happen to your precious computer(s). This applies to home users and big time data center folk alike. I have found backups and the true art of backing up data to be one of the most mis-understood, under utilized and under appreciated art forms out there.
Lots of people don’t think about backups for one thing. Another is they have that “it won’t happen to me” mentality. Well, I have seen more than my share of drives fail, and brothers and sisters, it dang sure can happen to you. In fact, I have seen two statistical anomalies/impossibilities in the last couple of years alone, and that was two separate servers, made by two separate vendors, that at two separate times, had two drives fail at the same time. This took out a RAID 5 array on one server, and a mirror on the other. Luckily though, my team knows and understands backups so it was really a non-event, we pulled the data off of tape and were back in business. Aaah, but if there wasn’t a good backup!!??
Another thing, I see folk (usually management) that don’t “get” backups. They think it’s some automagic thing that just happens because the backup operator pressed a button marked “Backup Your Stuff Now By Pressing This Button”. Well kids, it ain’t that easy. There are lots of factors and hurdles to think about and overcome when it comes to backing up your data, again that’s true whether it’s your home PC or a whole server floor full of machines. I’ll get into all of this later, but for now I just wanted to get the topic out in the lime light, and try to remind everyone that they need to backup their stuff!
One quick tip that I have for desktop users, like folk at home or in small offices. Go grab you an external hard drive, one that connects to your PC with the USB interface. That way you can turn it on when you need it, and simply copy all of your important stuff onto it. You can get software even, that will do the copy jobs for you. Some have nice features that track changes, compress and sort your files. That’s all well and good, but it’s not required. As long as you have a copy of the stuff that you need somewhere, you will be doing much better, and be much more worry and stress free when (notice I said when, not if) your main hard drive decides to go belly up.
Computer Buying 101
I have posted a new article where I talk about some basics of computers, buying computers, what all the acronyms and abbreviations mean and what they mean to you. Also, I talk about some observations and trends that I see, and in general try to give those not familiar with computers, especially hardware, some ammunition for talking to that sales person somewhere. It’s a long article, so it will take a few minutes to read, but it took several hours to write so maybe it’s a good trade. As I think of more things to add, I’ll update it, just like any other article on this site. Technology keeps changing, and so does information, so I am not afraid to update the information I am collecting here as I see fit. Feel free to check it out, and let me know what you think. It’s in the Library section, along with our other articles.