February 2007 - Posts
I'm increasingly convinced that tape backup has had its day. Here's a graphic example of why:
USB 2.0 Hard Drives (3 in rotation) assembled from low-cost drives and USB caddies. Cost, approximately £40 per drive. Success rate: close to 100%
SCSI Ultra-160 AIT-1 4-tape changer. Approximate cost when new (c.2000), £4000 plus £40 per tape. Success rate: less than 25%.
They say a picture paints a thousand words. The picture here is clear. As many as 80% of tape backups fail to restore. There are a few objections that people put up against disk-based backup solutions, so let's look at a few of them.
If you're going to be comparing tapes vs HDD make sure you compare fairly. unless you only plan on purchasing 3 tapes, and rotating them, then you can't compare it against a 3 disk solution.
I don't think that's a valid argument, but even if we suspend disbelief for a moment, the tapes I use cost about £40 and the hard drives I build cost me about the same. The lifetime of a tape is probably shorter than that of the hard drive and the tape is slower and more error prone.
Why don't I think that argument is valid? Simple. Tape rotation schemes are based on two factors: backup resolution and backup horizon. The resolution (frequency of backup) determines how much data you might lose in a disaster. The horizon determines how far back in time you can retrieve a lost file. A typical Grandfather/Father/Son rotation scheme balances these two factors against the cost of the media, with a resolution varying from typically one day for a few days worth of history, tailing off over time to a resolution of a month or so. The horizon is extended by sacrificing the resolution or by increasing the cost. A minimum GFS rotation would use about 12 tapes (5 daily, 4 weekly and 3 monthly). People who use tape backups typically argue that the same number of hard drives would be required - but they are wrong. Even if they were right, 12 hard drives would still cost less and be more reliable, but I think this is a case where simplicity trumps ideals.
In a hard drive backup scheme, the high-resolution backup history is typically kept online on the live hard drives, using Volume Shadow Copy (aka Previous Versions). For one of my typical customers with 10 users and an 80Gb RAID array in the server, the volume shadow copy goes back almost 1.5 months with a resolution of two snapshots per day, protected by the RAID redundancy. This has a higher resolution for a longer time than the equivalent tape backup scheme.
To get a reasonable backup horizon, three or more USB drives can be used, with one of the drives being rotated offsite weekly or monthly. The customer can choose to keep a drive for archival purposes at any time by simply removing it from the rotation, so again it is possible to balance the backup horizon against the cost of media. I typically recommend 3 drives with one rotated off site weekly. Any more than that is likely to be defeated by complexity.
Hard drives are fragile and can break. Tape media is much more robust.
This is true, but tapes can break too. I would contend that hard drives are inherently more reliable than tape. If a hard drive breaks - probably in transit while you are rotating it offsite - you're still protected. Only one drive is affected. You still have a month or so of 'previous versions' online. So what if a drive breaks? Just replace it and carry on, the same as you would if a tape became damaged. If a server is protected by a 2-drive RAID mirror and 3 backup drives, the chances of all 5 drives failing simultaneously are vanishingly small. Given that 80% of tape backups fail to restore, I think you're actually better off overall taking the risk of a hard drive breakage. Worst case scenario, if you really needed the broken drive, you can pay someone like OnTrack to recover it for you at a cost of about £1K, which is less than you'd have paid for a decent tape drive.
I'm going to stick my neck out here and make a prediction. Using Moore's Law, I estimate that within 5 to 6 years, hard drives with moving parts will start to be replaced by solid state memory devices. Backup will take a few seconds instead of a few hours. Whatever happens, with the cost and reliability of tape failing to keep up with hard drives by orders of magnitude, I think the days of tape are numbered. In terms of cost and performance, hard drive based backup is unbeatable.
If you think otherwise, I'd love to hear from you. Submit your comments below.
Acer has released an update kit for Windows Vista that covers most of its desktop and notebook computers. About time too! I've been running Vista for several months now and have lost much of the functionality of my soft buttons and automatic screen rotation when using as a tablet. Using some of the old Window XP drivers has get me back some of the functionality so that I've been able to limp along, but it is a relief that the final driver kit is now available. In Europe, you can find the upgrades at the Acer support web site (warning: it's under a lot of stress at the moment).
Next time Microsoft does a major release like this, it would be useful if, before alowing OEMs to use the "Vista Ready" logo, they make them promise to have their drivers ready on the release day.
Answering my own question, "I do". And I hope you do too. Here's why.
I have received feedback through various channels from people who may not have read past the deliberately-contentious title of my original post. The article was designed to provoke reaction and it has certainly done that. But the feedback I've received from a few people is along the lines of "why are you criticising the SBSC programme?".
Well, to set the record straight, I *love* the SBSC programme. On a personal level, my business has benefitted greatly from it - not all of that benefit has been monetary, much of it has been personal and business development. I've gone from an unknown nobody in the IT business to someone with links to many of the top people in the IT field in the UK and worldwide. I have reciprocal agreements with other SBSC partners that we cover each other's backs when we have to be away from our respective businesses and I do occasional work for some of them when I can plug a skills gap. Some of that is down to Microsoft and some of it happened despite Microsoft, but without the SBSC programme, I doubt any of that would have come about. So, make no mistake, I am a big fan of the SBSC programme and I wear my blue-badge lapel pin with pride.
There is one area where I think Microsoft could make the SBSC programme work even better and this was the real reason - if you read beyond the title - behind my previous post. That is to provide 'air cover' marketing to end users of small business related products to let them know about Small Business Specialists, why they exist and how to find one.
If you measure results in terms of sales figures, then you'd be forgiven for thinking that I'm just asking Microsoft to hand me sales leads on a plate. But you'd be wrong. While additional sales leads might indeed be a nice consequence, the real reason I want to see this happen is to create a perceived value that will encourage more partners to become Small Business Specialists. I've heard a few partners ask why they should bother to become SBSC qualified. A lot of people can only see value in something if it translates to increased sales. If you are used to thinking in those terms, then I think it is difficult to see the true value in the SBSC community at first. Marketing the blue badge to end users would help two ways. First, it would seduce more partners into becoming Small Business Specialists, joining their local SBS group and discovering the true value of The Community. Second, it would close the relationship-building loop that is currently missing:
I believe that if this happens, we will have happier users, happier partners and ultimately a happier Microsoft. Being happier doesn't pay the stock holders but I believe that customer satisfaction does ultimately lead to increased sales. Someone who buys Small Business Server FPP on eBay, blunders through the installation and has a bad experience with it is unlikely to buy much Microsoft stuff in the future. A business who doesn't understand the full potential of SBS is unlikely to appreciate its value to their business. I have customers that did exactly that. They run MySQL on their small business server because they didn't see the benefits of paying extra for SQL and ISA server. They wrote custom web applications rather than rely on SharePoint, because they didn't understand what SharePoint could do for them. They had no idea that they could work from home using Remote Web Workplace and Outlook RPC-over-HTTP. Consequently, they are all still running Office 2000 because they did not understand the business benefits of Office 2003 or Office 2007. This is what I mean when I say there has been a missed opportunity. Not for increased sales, but to build better relationships. More involvement from SBSC services partners inexorably leads to increased technology adoption and more software and hardware sales.
That same technology-agnostic business, given a leaflet inside the SBS box that told them how to get help from a local Small Business Specialist might have made different decisions. They could have had an excellent experience with Small Business Server and as a result been much more likely to consider investing in products like Office SharePoint Server and CRM. Everone wins when we build better relationships.
David Overton blogged on this subject and he has a quote from another partner: Not all our prospects have heard of "Certified Partner" or "SBSC". It was not important to them. It is our job to make it important to them. Yes, I agree 100%. It is my job to convince a customer of my value to them. The customers who buy SBS on eBay have not heard of SBSC and they are probably never going to hear about it. Unless someone tells them. How do we reach those customers? How about the inside of the SBS product box? How about a leaflet that says "We want you to have the best possible experience with this product and to understand its full potential for your business - so we recommend you contact a qualified Small Business Specialist by going to bCentral"?
As SBSC partners, we might wait forever for Microsoft to do something like that. Even if the political will exists within the company (and I'm not sure it does) there is still a lot of inertia. So returning to the real theme of my original post: What can YOU do to raise the profile of the Blue Badge?
I've noticed the last couple of months that Exchange IMF suddenly got very aggresive about filtering HTML messages with images in the signature block. I first noticed this on messages I sent to Microsoft UK then on other servers. Susan Bradley posted today advising caution when using HTML format messages and not to 'over do it', advice I agree with, but IMF was filtering my signature block which I don't consider in any way 'over the top':
So I have a small image and three hyperlinks, but I think that's reasonable. I chose to ignore the problem and deal with it, rather than change my signature. When I received an NDR from the remote system, which would typically state "You don't have permission to send to this recipient" then I would just use Outlook's Send Again feature and change my signature to a plain-text version.
I'm pleased to report that things seem to be changing. I've noticed the Microsoft UK is accepting my email again and one of my customers who I just patched over the weekend is now also accepting my signature block once again. So it looks like IMF has been "adjusted" to make it more tolerant.
Make sure you install those IMF updates!
What is a small business specialist and why should you care? In Microsoft's words:
Small Business Specialists are IT consultants that have demonstrated they understand - and can deal with - the needs of UK small businesses. They have passed an advanced technical exam and have access to support, training and resources from Microsoft. They can help you maximise the return on your IT investment - and, of course, ensure you only invest in IT when it is the right thing to do.
By and large, our Small Business Specialists are small companies themselves. That means they understand the pressures you face when running a small business.
For about a year now, I've been feeding back to the Microsoft UK small biz team that they need to raise the profile of the blue badge. Currently it has no relevance to our potential customers. Vijay from iQubed has raised the idea of a viral marketing campaign to spread the word about the blue badge. I have no idea how to start a viral marketing campaign, but in writing this post, I am hoping that as many people as possible in the SBS Community and elsewhere will see it and take one or more of the following actions:
- Add a page to your company web site explaining what it means to be a small business specialist and why your customers should care.
- Add the blue badge logo graphic to your web site, as I have done.
- Create a blog entry. Include the 'blue badge' logo. Link back to this message, to the bCentral web site in the UK or to your country's equivalent. Try to link to other blogs or materials that promote Small Business Specialists.
- Make sure you are using the SBSC 'blue badge' logo on your business card and promotional materials.
- If you attended the SBSC symposium, you may have received a lapel pin - make sure you wear it when visiting your customers. Make sure you know what to say if they ask you about it.
- Contact at least two of your SBSC colleagues and ask them to do the same.
This may go nowhere, but at least I tried something. Please let us (me or Vijay) know if you have any better ideas.
In a previous blog post I mentioned that the demo showcase for SBSCs had been delayed. Chris Parkes promised me that he would look into it. Sure enough, he's come back with an answer that we should expect it with the next Action Pack shipment mid-March.
It seems to be our lucky day for publicity. We got a mention in Tim Kimber's webcast on Office Live today. We're also quoted in a CRN article covering Microsoft's new Business & Technology Assessment Toolkit.
After the theft from an employee's home of a laptop computer last year containing confidential customer data, the Nationwide Building Society has been fine £980,000 by the Financial Services Authority (FSA).
"The failure to manage or monitor downloads of very large amounts of data onto portable storage devices meant that Nationwide had limited control over information held in this way or how it was used, " said the FSA.
What information do YOU have on YOUR laptop computer that could affect YOUR customers if it were stolen? It is not impossible to prevent loss of equipment but, when it happens, your customers will expect you to have taken reasonable steps to protect their information. Not everyone is regulated by a watchdog like the FSA but your business could certainly suffer immeasurable damage to its reputation were you to leak confidential customer details. Have you considered hard drive encryption such as that provided by Windows Vista's BitLocker technology?
Full story from the BBC.
I just announced on the TiGra company blog that our new web site, based on MOSS 2007, has gone live. I thought it would be interesting to say a few words about how it is all implemented.
The site is based on the new content publishing feature of MOSS 2007 that replaces the old Content Management Server product. The system is complete overkill for what we need, but the experience gained in deploying our own site has been invaluable as a learning exercise and proof-of-concept.
Physically, our SharePoint 2007 web server and SQL 2005 database server are installed on two separate virtual machines running under Virtual Server 2005 R2. The whole thing is running on a book-sized PC with a 3GHz hyperthreaded Pentium 4 and 2Gb of RAM. While this isn't an ideal configuration nor is it server-class hardware, it enabled us to get up and running cheaply and because the servers are virtualised, we can easily move them to new hardware at a later date without having to reinstall or reconfigure anything.
That naturally segues into a discussion about backup and restore. Backup is much easier than it was in the prior version of SharePoint. A backup of the entire farm or a single component, web application or content database can be started from the Central Administration console. Full and Incremental backups are supported. In addition, because everything is virtualised, a point-in-time snapshot of the whole infrastructure can be taken at any time just by copying the virtual hard drive images. When rolling out configuration changes, we can enable undo disks and revert to our previous configuration if we do anything silly.
If you are interested in SharePoint technology, you might care to check out the UK SharePoint User Group.
I have a great idea for how you can get a free copy of Windows Vista. Just visit your nearest branch of PC World, pick up a copy off the shelf and walk out without paying for it!
At this point, you are either considering doing something illegal (in which case you're on your own - go get yourself arrested) or you think I'm a blithering idiot. I hope it is the latter, because I was being ironic. You wouldn't seriously consider stealing software from PC World, would you?
So it is quite worrying that someone can write an article like this in The Register:
Microsoft is running an unadvertised sale on Windows Vista. For the price of an upgrade edition requiring an existing copy of Windows, anyone can have a stand-alone version of Vista that will run on any PC.
Apparently, the author is advocating the notion that you can avoid paying the full price for Windows Vista by using an upgrade license to do a full clean install.
There are a few things wrong with that article that I want to point out.
- Just because something is possible does not mean it is ethical or legal. If you paid for an upgrade license, then that is all you are licensed to do. Note that does not prevent you from doing a clean install, but you have to start the clean install from your previously installed operating system.
- You can do a clean install of Windows Vista even from upgrade media, by choosing to do an "advanced" install.
- Getting a full install by using the vista-on-vista trick doesn't really leave you in a substantially different position from doing the "advanced" install starting from Windows XP. This rather dubious workaround has no real value and might just leave you failing the Windows Genuine Advantage verification. Then you'll look really smart, won't you? It's true that you could defraud Microsoft by using an upgrade license to perform a clean install, but most computers these days come with the OS preinstalled so the number of people who genuinely need to purchase a full install license is probably vanishingly small.
- Windows XP Professional to Windows Vista Home Premium is not an upgrade - it is a downgrade. That's why Windows Vista will not allow you to do an upgrade install in that situation. Windows XP Professional can join a domain, has remote desktop and IIS built in. Windows Vista Home editions do not. It is nothing to do with whether you get media center - you can upgrade from Windows XP to any Windows Vista edition by choosing the advanced install option. Many people think that XP Pro -> Vista Home Premium is an upgrade because they get media center. That's fine, but you must use the "advanced" installation to do a clean install.
So, like my compadre Vijay from iQubed, I was quite shocked to see that article in The Register which I felt was really quite misleading. The acceptable upgrade paths are documented on the Microsoft web site and also by the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor. If your options are not clear, talk to a professional who will be able to give you good advice - someone who holds the Microsoft Small Business Specialist qualification would be a good choice.
Remember: a lock only keeps honest people honest. It has always been possible to work around Microsoft's upgrade compliance verification - but that has never made it ethical or legal. If you are in doubt, read your EULA (that thing where you always click "I Agree" without reading it) and you will discover that it clearly documents what you are allowed to do.
Well, I bet you haven't heard that question before!
There is a nice little video (~5 mins) by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University that I discovered courtesy of Scott Hanselman. The video the nicely demonstrates what Web 2.0 is all about. It begins with someone writing on a piece of paper, then works through a heap of concepts from hyperlinking, html, xml and finally concludes with the sentiment "we will have to rethink a few things..." in a closing sequence that gives me goose bumps. OK maybe I'm being a geek... what do YOU think?
Microsoft's Office Live service delivers a quick and cost-effective solution for small businesses and organizations wishing to create an online presence. One example is the Entrepreneuse Live web site, which showcases female entrepreneurs and was developed in association with TiGra Networks (other examples). Office Live is currently in beta, during which all the services are free. The basic service will remain free after the beta period and includes:
- Free domain name registration
- 25 email accounts with 2Gb storage each.
- 500Mb of web space
- 10Gb data transfer allowance
- Web reporting tools to track visits to your site.
The two premium subscriptions provide more email accounts, more web space and business applications: Office Live Business Contact Manager, plus online applications for managing customers, employees, projects, and critical business data.
For those who are not yet ready to buy a server, Office Live is a great alternative. TiGra Networks offers free advice and assistance getting your business online quickly with Office Live. Later, when you're ready to upgrade to your own server, we'll be ready to help you select and install your server and migrate your business data.
Try it today. With TiGra Networks and Office Live, getting online with email and a basic web site will cost you absolutely nothing.
Vijay linked to this article where the BBC's business editor has written an open letter to Bill Gates complaining that his new Windows Vista installation stops him doing his job.
I have a certain amount of sympathy with people experiencing upgrade pains, but I'm not sure it's really fair to blame Microsoft. This is just another case of "me too journalism". Windows Vista itself actually works pretty well and does the job it was meant to do. Robert's complaints center on poor driver availability and that's hardly Microsoft's fault (at least not directly).
Robert, if your laptop was business-critical, don't you think you should have run the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor and done a little bit of research about what drivers were available, before jumping in with both feet? Windows Vista is no different to any new operating system in history. It takes time for third party vendors to get their game on track. As a business editor, you should understand that they are driven by what the market demands. Device manufacturers are reluctant to spend money developing new software until it starts to hurt their bottom line. How about you writ to Olympus and ask them why they haven't released Vista drivers? How about you write an editorial about how Olympus let you down?
There is a lot of "me too" journalism going around at the moment where the reporter will show off all the nice features of Windows Vista then, at the last minute, will say something like "oh, but its not worth upgrading for now". It somehow reminds me of Martin Bashir's interviews with Michael Jackson, where he's seemingly sympathetic to Jackson then, just as you expect him to say "he's a bit odd but really not such a bad guy" he rounds on Jackson in a vicious attack that could only be calculated to improve ratings. It's like the press has already made it's mind up that the cool thing to do is to chuck rocks at Windows Vista even though they can't help admiring some of its features.
Some of the trouble is that Windows Vista is an operating system. A lot of what it does is invisible but necessary. Things like SuperFetch and ReadyBoost that speed up your system. The improvements in power management and suspend/resume. It is hard to measure or sell those things. There is also a lot of good stuff that is very obvious - like the search infrastructure that runs right through everything like a stick of Brighton Rock. I've recently heard a prominent Microsoft spokesperson refer to a user interface as the emotional connection to the software and Windows Vista has certainly made an impact in that area. This is one area that I think commentators often assume doesn't matter. In fact, I suspect that how the software looks and feels is actually very important to the people who have to use it day in day out, rather than just reviewing it for fifteen minutes. Finally, there are a lot of changes to the way the OS is deployed and the management tools available to IT professionals have all be given a much needed revision - things like the event viewer and the brand new reliability and resource monitoring tools. All in all, there is a lot of new stuff (I'm basing these comments on Windows Vista Business).
So here is my advice, which flies in the face of the press: Upgrade Now! (*). I've previously written an article on why I think early adoption is a good idea - in summary, you have to take a little bit of pain when you upgrade. Think of that pain as being amortized over the lifetime of the product you upgraded to. You will have to take this pain eventually and it will be about the same amount of pain whether you upgrade earlier or later, so it's better to get it over and done with and benefit from the new features for the longest time possible.
(*) The inevitable asterisk: Upgrade now, provided your hardware is fully supported in terms of device drivers.
Based on the Small Business Technology Assessment toolkit, Microsoft has released a new version of this useful partner sales tool, renamed Business & Technology Assessment Toolkit. TiGra Networks took part in pre-release testing to review the question bank and beta test the application. The new version uses ClickOnce deployment, so it installs from the web then keeps itself up-to-date automatically. The application is built on top of (and requires) InfoPath 2007 and is compatible with Windows Vista.
There are 11 standard templates provided, covering various technologies and different sizes of business. You can create your own assessments using an existing assessment as a template or create a new one from scratch. You can add your logo to the assessment and print a copy to give to your customer.
If you haven't looked at this tool then I highly recommend it. I find it very useful for ensuring that I capture all the important business details, which then leads naturally into some deeper questions about business objectives, pain points and the business' attitude towards IT. If, like me, you have a technical background, you might find this a big help with talking to your customers about their business in non-technical language. In addition to the toolkit itself, there is lots of supporting information and resources at the partner web site.
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