Monday, October 24, 2005

Virus Scanner Solution


Yeah, a few weeks ago I realized we were running on a very old virus scanning program, Inoculate 6.0 by CA. It's been a great program since my boss bought it but I right away noticed some limitations on this program. It had no email scanning abilities! It is about 5 years old right now, the kinda cool thing about this program is that it never expires, you do not need to renew the license at all, just keep updating the virus definitions. Though of course this does not mean its all good. In order to keep up with virus attacks and newer methods, you need programs with updated virus scanning abilities and engines. Obviously, something 5 years old can prove to me primitive in the computer world.

So I begin to scout out for possible new software. I checked out mainly Symantec and Trend Micro. After checking them both out, features, pricing and abilities, I decided to go with TrendMicro, they usually have hourly updates and also have a few more features. Such as, server level spyware scanning and other filters. Not sure if I will use them, since I already have a solution in place for that, but still probably going to try them out, it is always better to consolidate anyway.

It came out to about $1,900 dollars instead of the $2,400 dollars that Symantec was going to cost me to cover my network. I went ahead and bought 50 licenses, I probably only need about 40...but we've been growing steadily...might as well get the 10 extra I may need. Anyway I went ahead with the "SMB" solution, Small Medium Business solution. This package gives you everything you need to deploy a respectable anti-virus solution.

Friday, October 21, 2005

Damn Sales Reps =0

Charlie MacInnis says:
dude
Me says:
what?
Charlie MacInnis says:
No mention of my name??????
Me says:

Me says:
nah
Charlie MacInnis says:
Was up with dat??
Me says:
i wouldnt burden anyone with you
Me says:
lmao
Me says:
bah, ok, you cry baby.
Charlie MacInnis says:
lol

What a homo ^_^

Ok, Charlie is my Sales Rep at PC Connection, over all he is a pretty good guy, as long as you hit him with a club every so often.

cmacinnis AT pcconnection DOT com
Phone: 1-800-800-0014 ext: 33158
Fax: 603-683-0544

*rolleyes*

Verizon Wireless Internet


Yeah, I remember last year when we could not get online wireless without it being a butt-load of cash or very slow. One way we did implement wireless internet from a laptop was by hooking up a cell phone to it. Then it would work like a dial-up access, only with no wires. It was cool, but expensive and slow, 14.4KB.

Now, for about $60.00 a month, you can have a device called "Verizon Wireless PC 5740". There are a few variations of them, they all do the same though. Anyway, it offers Broadband access to the internet, wow! Just one year later and it is kick-ass now! We have two of these now, mainly for our VPN users that work remotely or that travel a lot with a laptop. We love it, its fast and cheap. I will admit, I did not like the idea at first, but now I see how it has given us benifets in a few areas, pretty much, lowering costs and ease of use. It is not DSL, but its way better than Dial-UP. This really helps for those admins that are looking for a solution that will keep their users connected at acceptable speeds. Where as before I used to worry about users being able to open up an Excel document because of slow internet speeds now that has been remedied because of the fast connection this device provides. Also, wi-fi came out where it allowed users to find a "hot-spot" where they were at and it would allow them to connect to the internet from there, though there are a few draw backs I see with that solution:

  1. First you have to find a hot-spot
  2. Using one, either means you are using someone else's internet or a public internet, which can lead to catching a virus or getting hacked. Note, I said "could."
  3. It is hard to find them at times

The Verizon wireless PC card though allows you to connect anywhere with your own connection, no more searching for "hot-spots." There is one drawback though. It will pretty much work in areas it is currently supported in. Since it is a new network, it is still expanding, meaning in some locations you may not be able to connect to the network because of range. That should be cured in time though, making this device a must have for remote workers.

Dell Sales Reps and NikNaks?


Our current primary server and client provider is Dell. Mainly because they have great pricing and the machines are very scalable, at least for now is my guess. Opposed to some IBM machines which are expensive and not as scalable. Whatever, I won't get into an IBM vs Dell discussion, just get what works!

Anyway, my ADR tape drive finally broke rofl. The face came off and it is no longer capable of backing up all my data, even in compressed mode. We are a small business so we are only backing up about 40 GB of data, but our databases are growing quickly. Anyhow, apparently, the company from which we bought this device from is now out of business. The devices are no longer supported or made anyway, so I'm screwed.

So next it is time to look for a new backup solution. I have not made a real backup for about 3 weeks. *shame shame* So I finally get a quote from Dell, and one from IBM. The Dell NAS won in my opinion by means of scalability which really is my primary focus. Here is an article on it if you are interested, we went with a PowerVault 745N. We are a small company, but we are growing, so we can not afford to upgrade an entire server on a whim in future events. So this Dell solution seems to fit for us very nicely, it is upgradable enough that it should take care of us for about 5+ years is my estimate...maybe even longer. So yes, I get the quote, I persuade the CEO to go for it. I brought out to him a few points that helped me persuade him, otherwise he would have just said, "just buy an external hard drive and backup to it!" Here are my points:

  • NAS always online, no need to wait for connections
  • It acts as a file server on its own
  • It comes with a RAID configuration, level 5 (then explained how that worked)
  • It uses SATA, instead of SCSI
  • Hotswappable Hard drives (specific config)
  • This one in particular is a "true server" aka rack mount type, so this means, we use less space, less power and less heat from it, saving money in all areas

I added a few more points, but you get the idea, he right away leaned toward the solution. Then since I already had him going I was able to bring up some "future investments" that we may be looking to soon meet. A new primary server running our main services, such as Exchange 2003 for email, Active Directory for our authentication and things alike. My plan is to separate our services, we currently run the following on the Primary server:

  1. Exchange Server 2000 - Email
  2. Active Directory - Authentication/Object Access/Group Policies etc
  3. DNS
  4. ISA Server 2000 - Proxy/Firewall
  5. IIS 5.0 - FTP
  6. GFI SPAM Filter
  7. SUS (Systems Update Server, currently broken *boohiss*)

Then we have another server, running the following:

  1. DHCP - Auto IP Addressing (moved it from the primary server^)
  2. Anti-Virus Server software
  3. RIS
  4. Backup Exec 10 (as discussed earlier, the ADR tape device is broke)
  5. Printer Spooling
  6. Misc

So I have my servers pretty well balanced, I also have a Fax server and a voicemail/directory server for our phone system, and a video surveillance server which hosts for two hi-quality cameras from Axis, namely the PTZ 213 and a 210 model.

Anyway, I show him and literally draw out for him what I plan to do with our network. I say, "We need to strongly give consideration to seperate our file sharing from our primary server. If the server crashes, like it does at times, people lose access to their data which causes downtime for employees. If we separate the data into another NAS we eliminate that problem. So we will have two NAS servers, one for backups and one for file sharing. Then we would logically consider to buy another server to handle our primary services. This would be 3 rack servers, all consolidated into one space, one rack. Currently we have two big and bulky tower servers taking up much space, they are noisy because of the fans and create much heat. We can eliminate all that by slowly transisting over to rack mount servers."

This information would have overwhelmed him before, but I have been slowly educating him on how the network and servers run everytime we have meetings (without him even knowing it *chuckles*), in order to prepare him for big technical talks that could not be made into "laymens terms" any further. So he got the point and understood what I was trying to do. Save money and resources, which always rings sweetly in a CEO's ear.

I get the "OK" to do the purchasing. I call Dell, and of course they are very happy to assist me in buying a server. Though, lately I have noticed a few things which I was not paying attention to with my Dell Sales reps previously. They kept changing. Also, with every change of rep, their quality of service got worse! WTF?!

I went through my archived emails to actually read what they were saying, *shame shame* and everytime they gave me a new sales rep they mentioned how my "purchasing has not met the requirements" to be in their 'Gold-Business' level of service. How do you like that? Basties! *waves fist*

See, when we first "hooked" up with Dell we purchased about 30+ PCs from them, we were doing a PC Rollout. Scrapped out all the old crappy PCs and replaced them with new Optiplex towers with P4 CPUs and legal software. Whoops. So we put about 25-26 thousand dollars in one day into our Dell account. So I assume, they considered us 'big spenders' aka 'Gold-Bussiness' level. So because of that, they gave us a very good and professional Sales rep. Her name was Deon, and she sounded hot too *shame shame*. Anyway, after that purchase, we did not buy much from them since we were all set, for a while. Small purchases for software and maybe some Memory upgrades we went through another company, PC connections. So over the months and years, Dell kept notifying me that since I had not purchased or "spent" as much money as I did the previous years, my business purchasing level was dropped to "small-business" from "medium-business." So I said, "well ok, I'm not going to buy a lot of crap just to keep that status, *shrugs*." Little did I know though, the lower I was put in their "status" I was given a crappier Sales Rep. *misses Deon* *chuckles*. Now I got some other nitwit that half the time tells me incorrect information! So yes, I figured it out, the less you spend, the lower you are in this Dell "status" and you get worse service LOL. You'd figure though, if you are not purchasing much, they would give you a better sales rep, perhaps to persuade you to purchase more, right? I guess not.

[/rant]

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Welcome to AdminAlive.blogspot.com

Edit update: Okay I looked at my first original post and it royally sucked. I should have just not said anything. . .

*kung-fu--edit*