Don’t underestimate the power of Windows Backup

Hi folks, so with all the crazy and cool software packages out there, we often overlook some of the simplest things right in front of our noses.

In this case I’m talking about NT backup, or Windows backup as it’s commonly referred to. This is the built-in backup into every Windows operating system that people can use to backup their systems.

Often, putting in an enterprise backup solution can be very expensive. Sometimes you only need this type of solution at the head office, and for small branch offices that aggregate backups to head office, you only need a cheap, quick and dirty solution. Windows backup is great for that!

You can easily configure it and then configure a script to email you the results of whether it failed or succeeded. The next time you are planning backup for a small business this is worth looking into!

-RP

Cisco Live! 2010

Hi folks! So coming up this year again is the North American version of Cisco Live! This is Cisco’s yearly conference that contains all the great stuff that is Cisco!

Cisco Live is a great place to learn about all the new and current things Cisco as well as to meet like minded individuals in the Cisco community. You can also do technical training and try and earn some certs while you’re there.

This year I shall be attending and hope to see you all there. The dates for Cisco Live! this year are June 27 – July1, 2010 in Las Vegas. The conference will be at Mandalay Bay.

You can read more about it here.

-RP

Usings Kaseya, random instances of server slow?

Hi folks, here’s an interesting problem I ran into. I recently had some complaints about something causing some slow server issues. Having never seen this before I decided to investigate further.

After investigating I found that there were a bunch of snmpget.exe requests running on the server that was pinning the cpu. Upon further investigation I found that it was the Kaseya agent spawning the process. Kaseya is a monitoring package that is commonly used in the Managed Services industry.

After finding the problem I was able to trace it to a computer audit being run by Kaseya during the day. I cancelled the tasks and then rescheduled the audit to run on the server during off business hours. This fixed the issue. Happy monitoring!

-RP

QNAP update

So I’ve been using the QNAP NAS for quite some time now as per my previous blog posts. I just waned to post an update for you guys.

This device is great! If you need a cheap san for secondary storage or for a home lab environment it is great! The device does take some time to initially provision and configure when crreating the luns but once everything is setup, it is good to go!

I did some performance tests to it by shuttling backups to and fro via iSCSI and I was getting great speeds. This is definitely one of my favorite small business storage devices!

-RP

Veeam SureBackup!

Hi folks, as you know I’m a big fan of virtualization, and for backups I love Veeam which is great at backing up my virtual machines.

Well recently announced from Veeam is Veeam SureBackup which contains a lot of the same features from Veeam that you have grown to know and love, but also contains the ability to check backups without going through a lengthy restore process.

You can basically do a recovery verification by starting up the virtual machine from the backup file and verify that it works. Now that’s cool! You can learn more here.

-RP

EPIC Technology day!

Hi folks, that time of year is here again. EPIC Technology day!

For those of you that don’t know, twice yearly our company holds an IT conference here in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada with tons of people in attendance. This conference consists of presentations from all sorts of vendors in the industry from virtualization to security.

I will also be presenting again this year. This year I will be presenting on virtualization in an SMB environment. If you have a chance to show up, please drop by and check it out!

Tech day is on Tuesday, April 13th and you can register here.

-RP

BlackBerry Bold 9700!

Hi folks! For all you BlackBerry fans out there, RIM has come out with a new BlackBerry Bold called the 9700! This device is roughly the size of my current favorite BlackBerry the 8900.

What’s so great about the 9700? Well like I said before, it’s much smaller so it’s easier to carry around and it contains new features such as 3G and a new trackpad which replaces the trackball!

Those of you that are used to using the trackball know of the problems that can arise from it’s use. The trackball can get all gummed up and get stuck and fail. With the trackpad we’re moving to an option that should technically be more resilient than the trackball, but I guess we will see in the months to come.

The Bold 9700 also supports is more media friendly as it supports more media formats than before. You can read more about it here.

-RP

What do you do with unsupported storage?

Hi folks! Now here is a problem that is plaguing few people with the introduction of vSphere 4. A few people who bought SAN iSCSI storage in the past with their old VMware 3.5 environments find that their hardware is no longer supported in vSphere 4 on the HCL. The hardware might still work, but it isn’t officially supported so it’s hard to get support when running on unsupported hardware.

What do you do with this storage? After all you spent some serious coin to put this storage in your environment and you don’t exactly want to kick it to the curb. In this situation I would recommend repurposing it as secondary storage.

A lot of iSCSI SAN hardware can make for great archival storage and can be repurposed as a destination point for network attached storage backups. Of course then you are faced with replacing your primary storage with something else. I would recommend always purchasing storage from a reputable vendor that stands behind their products and has a good track record of VMware certification for their hardware.

-RP

Another software storage offering

Hi folks, in the last few posts I’ve been focusing on virtualization and storage. This brings to mind another great option and that is the LeftHand VSA option from HP.

Recently HP acquired the company LeftHand which specializes in storage. One of their products is a software offering called the LeftHand VSA. Now with the HP acquisition it is referred to as the HP StorageWorks P4000 virtual appliance.

You can try it out from HP on a 30 day trial to get a feel for it and to see if it meets your needs. Some of the great features you get with it are the ability to turn local storage into SAN storage and leverage the advanced features of VMware that require SAN storage.

I encourage you to try out all these products and see what works best for you.

-RP

Are your physical servers ready to be virtualized?

Hi folks, one of the common questions in virtualization is, are your physical servers ready? Also how do you tell if they are ready? Luckily VMware has the answer.

VMware offers a feature called guided consolidation that comes with vCenter. You can install this from your VMware vCenter installation media. What it does is install a collection service that gathers performance data on your existing environment and then makes recommendations on whether to consolidate or not.

Then you can pursue virtualization with the confidence that your environment is ready. Guided consolidation is ideal in smaller environments. If you would like to find out if an enterprise environment is ready for consolidation then you might want to go forward with a VMware capacity planning engagement. You can do this by contacting your local VMware partner.

-Cheers, RP