Archive for May, 2009
Netfirms is currently experiencing a DoS attack on one of their web-servers. This is affecting 30-40 websites hosted on this one server. It just so happens one of our clients has their website hosted on the server that is being attacked. We spoke with Netfirms yesterday and they had no indication as to when things would be fixed. This is totally unacceptable as we submitted a ticket yesterday before noon and still have not had a ticket update. I know that certain things are out of their control but we question what type of security measures or staff they have in place? Can’t they just bring down the server that is being attacked and migrate the existing websites to a different server? What about banning the range of IPs that is perfmorning the attack? Something has to be in place to circumvent this scenario as lot of people run their business through their websites. We will keep you posted on this…
Cloud Computing, Hosted Services, SaaS? These are terms you are probably hearing a lot about these days. So what is all the fuss about? These terms define a new way of implementing strategic IT solutions for small business. It goes against historical trends of purchasing a small business server, acquiring expensive software licenses, and then paying someone to regularly maintain and update this server and software.
The cloud computing approach for small business has many benefits compared to a traditional centralized local setup. With a local setup, all of your corporate resources are generally tied to one physical location and on one physical server. What does this mean? Well it means that if this server goes down, if there is a flood/fire in your suite, if there is a break-in, your corporate data is lost. Even if you have an off-site backup strategy, the time to recover and be fully operational would be days. This is where hosted services can be your saviour.
By leveraging the power of the internet, you can access and store company resources in the ‘cloud’. This means that your corporate data is stored off-site in a secure location across multiple servers with multiple internet connections. It is impossible to achieve this level of physical redundancy in your own local environment and is one of the biggest advantages of provisioning a SaaS application. Another great feature of a cloud computing setup is that all you need is a web-browser to access the application. You do not need to install and configure software packages on your local computer, you just need to launch internet explorer, navigate to the appropriate page, and then login. You can do this from any computer in the world, which means you do not need to be sitting at your work computer to access corporate data. This also eliminates the need to setup expensive and cumbersome VPN & Remote Access solutions.
These are just some of the benefits of moving your IT infrastructure into the ‘cloud’. There are a lot of other features and benefits and we would be happy to talk to you about your options and how best to implement a cloud computing strategy for your small business. Contact us today to learn how SaaS, Cloud Computing, and Hosted Service can be applied to your environment.
When we received a batch of Asus Laptops, we were a little dissapointed to find the drive partitioned in half. We then thought, no problem, we can just use our favourite partitioning program, Partition Magic, to modify the partitions. One problem, Partition Magic isn’t compatible with Vista! It’s sad to see a great product stop being developed after it gets acquired by a big company (Symantec bought out PowerQuest years ago). Luckily we found out that Windows Vista allows you to resize/modify partitions, and this is how you do it (remember, it’s always safe to have a backup before you start ‘playing’ with partitions):
1. Click on the Start Menu (Windows icon in the bottom-left corner of your screen)
2. Now Right-click on Computer and choose Manage (you will most likely get a UAC popup message, choose Continue)
3. This will open Computer Management, select Disk Management from the left-hand side
4. You should now see the partitions in your computer, right-click on the partition you want to modify and choose extend or shrink
If you are having issues using the built-in features in Windows Vista, you can try a 3rd party tool such as Paragon Partition Manager which is fully compatible with Windows Vista.
By default Windows Vista saves your downloads to User/Documents/Downloads if you want to change this you just have to do a few minor tweaks:
1. Open your Documents folder
2. Right-click on Downloads
3. Choose Properties
4. Click on the Location tab
5. Specify the path you want downloads to be saved
Internet Explorer will recognize this change and save any files you download to this location. However, if you use Firefox, you will need to manually make the changes in Firefox as well:
1. Open Firefox
2. Select Tools
3. Select Options
4. From the Main tab, changes the ‘Save files to’ location
For some reason your Outlook shortcuts will dissapear or any shared items through public folders will no longer appear within your Outlook profile. We’ve only seen this issue in Outlook 2007 but it may happen in Outlook 2003 as well. You have two options to fix this issue:
1. You can create a new email profile. This will reset everything you’ve customized within Outlook so it is a last resort option. The next option is your best bet
2. Navigate to the folder in which Outlook stores its settings. In Windows XP it defaults to:
o C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook
o In this folder you will find a file called Outlook.xml
o Exit Outlook completely, check taskmanager to ensure outlook.exe is not running
o Rename the file to Outlook.xml.old
o Open Outlook and you will notice all of your favorites and calendars are gone, you will need to re-setup your shared calendars and contacts
Do you backup the information off your home computer? About half of you will have answered “No” to this question. Historically, backups were an expensive solution to maintain and implement. Due to the evolution of the internet and web-based applications, you now have the ability to backup your home-office desktop or laptop to a secure offsite location at an extremely affordable cost.
A lot of companies market external backup devices which are essentially an external hard drive that plugs into your computer which comes with a software package you need to install. This software then backs up your information to the external drive. Ok, so if you’re desktop or laptop dies you have a backup on this external drive, however, what if the external drive dies? What if you accidentally drop this drive? What if you experience a flood or fire? The external hard drive backup solution does not provide a truly redundant solution. This is where the power of the internet comes into play
There is a reputable company called Mozy that provides off-site backup solutions via the internet. All you need to do is download a small piece of software, install it on your desktop or laptop, and run through the configuration wizard. All of your information is then backed up to Mozy’s servers via the internet and is stored in a secure off-site location. You can schedule your backup to run in the background while you work or at night when you sleep depending upon how much information you need to store.
At under $5/month for an unlimited amount of storage, Mozy provides an extremely redundant backup solution as you are not relying upon the integrity of a single external hard drive, you are safe knowing that your personal data is stored on multiple servers at an external location.
Blackheron is technology solutions company focused on providing affordable/efficient IT solutions to the SMB segment. We’ve been turning away a lot of business over the months for those that need help with their home computers. Therefore, we’ve added a senior technician to our ranks who specializes in this area of computing and who has extensive experience dealing with home office environments. We are pleased to announce that we now offer the following services to those of you that don’t fall into the small business customer category:
1. Hardware and Software troubleshooting
2. Hardware upgrades
3. Spyware and virus removal
4. Backups and imaging
5. Data Recovery and military-grade disk wiping
6. Operating System installations
7. Software installations
8. Dual-booting including Linux
We do not provide on-site servicing for home-office equipment, instead we offer a depot facility for you to drop-off your equipment. This allows us to perform the diagnostics, repair, and maintenance in our lab where all of our parts and tools are at our fingertips. If you are a home-office user and need help with your computer, please contact Adam directly: adam@blackheron.ca
If you’re a small business owner looking for an easy method to track time, manage projects, and send invoices to your customers, you may want to take a look at Freshbooks. It is a 100% online/web-based solution that can address multiple administrative tasks for small business owners. It also provides direct integration with Paypal which allows your customers to pay their invoices via Credit Card or through their Paypal Account.
It provides the following:
1. Customer management
2. Invoicing
3. Estimates
4. Expenses
5. Time Tracking
6. Reporting
It also gives you a bunch of other features and functionality and is fully customizable. If you’re looking for a Quickbooks alternative this may be your answer. Since it lives in the ‘cloud’ you do not need to install any software on your computer and all you need is a web browser. It’s extremely fast and easy to use, and best of all, it’s affordable. Signup for a free trial of Freshbooks and you will see right away how it can make your life easier.
Windows Vista 64-bit and the standard SonicWALL GVC (Global VPN Client) do not get along! SonicWALL released a beta version of their client Q3 of 2008 but a lot of people who signed up (including myself) have not received a copy of the beta client. I was able to find the client via digging online and the beta client for Windows Vista 64-bit is valid as of January 10th, 2009. Download the client -here-
* Please keep in mind that this is a beta version and it may not be stable or could cause issues with Windows – it’s always best to use a testing environment first.
* This is an older post but we ran into this issue once again.
We recently migrated a client to Kaspersky BusinessSpace Security and part of this migration was to remove Trend Micro for SMB from their Windows Small Business server. The suite also included the messaging security agent for Exchange. We removed the security server through Add/Remove programs and of course it seem to stall near the end and said not all components could be removed, reboot, and manually delete the program folder under C:/Program Files…After we did that we still couldn’t install Kaspersky as it said it could still see the Trend Micro installation. After a bit of googling, we found a KB article from Trend Micro’s support database that described the process to manually remove ALL components. After stepping through the pages of instructions we still could not install Kasperky. Frustrated, we decided to check Kaspersky’s forums just to see whether someone was having the same issue, and sure enough, we stumbled upon these instructions:
· Delete this folder : C:\program Files\InstallShield Installation Information\{E0CA6191-52E8-41E0-96B2-05E A08E6869C}
· Pay attention you should enable display of hidden files and folder to see it.
· Then reinstall the product.
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