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I n f o B u l l e t i n
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March 2003 |
coopsys.net |
CO-OPERATIVE SYSTEMS
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| **** NewsBytes **** NewsBytes **** NewsBytes **** |
Trustworthy accountants
Accountancy firm Trustient won the Accountancy Age "small firm of the year" award for 2002. Despite focusing newly on the NGO sector, changing its name and its IT systems, Trustient more than held on to its closest clients, it actually boosted its business, showing an 80% increase in profit per partner during the year. Co-Operative Systems is pleased to have helped this particular client enjoy a successful year. You can find them at www.trustient.co.uk
Good value audio conferencing
Community Network provides an affordable telephone conferencing service to the voluntary and not-for-profit sector. A simple booking procedure enables you to log your participants and all their calls are billed to them at a local rate. You can decide whether you prefer to let participants do the calling in or have Community Network do it for you. Details www.community-network.org
Only one's a winner babe!
Congratulations to Alison Jones of Interrights (www.interights.org) who won our give-away Philips 6G3B11 that converts a standard 17/15" monitor into a multi-media unit. Alison correctly deduced the answer to our simple question by reading through IB. Well done!
Support for Windows NT4 Server extended
Microsoft is to extend support for Windows NT 4 Server platform until January 2005. Delays in rolling out Windows 2003 (previously named Windows .NET server) and customer pressure seem to be the likey causes. Read the full story at CNN.
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Competition gets personal
We have another give-away competition (restricted to customer of Co-Operative Systems) and because the stakes are a little higher, we want you to work a bit harder. You could go trawling the Internet, but a good first step would be to dip into our new FusionBot search engine on the InfoBulletin archives site - and we hope you'll learn something about network security along the way.
The first customer to email infobulletin@coopsys.net with the correct answer will win a
 Lexmark E210 Mono Laser printer with a street value of £166.84 ! This personal A4 laser delivers 12 pages per minute, connects via USB or parallel ports and is compatible with any Windows 9x upwards PC. So here's the question:
"Which two protocols are commonly found in firewalls ?"
Hint: most broadband routers use one or the other and both are identified with 3-letter acronyms.
Email us when you have the answer.
New factsheets Find our guides to health and safety issues surrounding the use of computer screens on our downloads page. Useful links to HSE and London Hazards Centre publications are included. A second factsheet on theft prevention helps you keep a hold on those recent valuable purchases.
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| **** end of NewsBytes **** |
^ Back to contents ^
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1. Backup to basics
Got it all taped?
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Why do we backup ?
Your organisation's most valuable asset lies in the brains of its staff, volunteers, contractors, consultants and so on.
Trying to capture and protect that knowledge is a ceaseless and arduous task and it's worth understanding exactly why and how we do it. Fortunately the path to this process is smoothed enormously by two simple facts:
- humans spend a lot of time pouring their knowledge into computer systems;
- computers are very, very good at copying information.
The vast majority of organisations have chosen to exploit these facts by copying data in a series of stages, each stage being less volatile than the last - namely from :
| "Equipment is replaceable, content isn't" |
- computer memory to ...
- computer disc to ...
- computer backup tape.
See Analysing the transfer of data.
The continual goal is to grab your hard-won knowledge and lock it in a safe - day in, day out.
This 3-stager isn't the only method of capturing data securely, but the evolutionary 'shake-down' of the last 2 decades has shaped this method as the most cost-efficient, a factor dear to the hearts of those earliest of computer users in the not-for-profit sector - accountants.
How much effort are backups worth ?
Just as with insurance, there is no simple answer. How much time and, crucially, expenditure do you put into a backup system?
After all, it's the 'essence' of your organisation - it's very content.
Here is one way of looking at just the labour involved :
15 people x 1 year's work =
a quarter to half a million pounds
On the face of this, the average £1000 to £1500 spent on a tape backup system looks like excellent value, but when you consider it will probably sit in your server whirring away for 3 or 4 years, that's a bargain!
Once again, just as with insurance, backup should be a virtually 'fit-and-forget' solution, so it's worth getting the daily tapes backups right, because once they are ticking over nicely, they demand little of your attention.
Ultimately, you're looking to prevent the "what if you lose it all" nightmare. It all boils down to the fact that while the equipment is replaceable, the content isn't.
To test it do a simple backup and restore of a small set of files.
Practice now - you don't want to be learning it in an emergency!
Here's a quick example using BackupExec on a typical installation of Windows 2000 Server :
A 60-second guide to Backups and Restores with BackupExec
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Simple Backup
Jobs | New backup job
Selections tab, Tick an appropriate selection of folders
eg F:\work\accounts\
General tab, Tick "Overwrite media"
Wipes the tape instead of appending what's on it
Advanced tab, Select "Eject tape"
Saves minutes waiting for the rewind in the morning.
That's it!
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Simple Restore
Jobs | New Restore job
Selections tab, Tick an appropriate selection of folders
eg Monthly Backup 31/03/2003
Redirection tab, Tick to redirect (restore) to another location
Don't overwrite what's on your server disc if you are just testing
Advanced tab
What to do about existing files (Skip, Overwrite, Skip if more recent). Not usually relevant if you redirect to a new folder.
That's it!
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BackupExec version 9 now has a single console in its NetWare implementation (instead of the separate client and job manager windows of yore) and the GUI Windows versions have plenty of tabs and wizards, taking the frustration out of creating backup and restore jobs. A new feature is a "partial verify" which decreases the time taken by the verify cycle by randomly checking backed up files instead ploughing through the whole lot - a real overnight timesaver that also reduces drive wear.
Backup Regimes
The simplest backup regime of all is one tape. You leave it in the drive, it wipes and re-records the whole server every night. Nuff said.
This has the overwhelming attraction of being simple to understand and operate, but doesn't exactly afford us an abundance of comfort in the security department!
Backup Regimes -
the Grand Daddy of them all
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The so-called Grandfather - Father - Son regime requires at least 13 tapes.
- Monday1
- Tuesday1
- Wednesday1
- Thursday1
- Monday2
- Tuesday2
- Wednesday2
- Thursday2
- Friday-Week1
- Friday-Week2
- Friday-Week3
- Friday-Week4
- Friday-Week5
- January
- February
- etc
- Year dot
- Year dot plus one
- etc
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A commonly-employed step up from the never-used "one tape" scheme is 5 tapes, labelled Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or a fortnightly 10 tape scheme labelled ... well, you can guess.
The eternal compromise here is "effort versus security".
The full "Grandfather - Father - Son" regime (see panel) not only means a lot more scribbling on tape labels, but requires someone - or some people, if this is a shared duty - to be on the ball about changing tapes.
You can even alleviate the daily task of changing tapes and make it a weekly affair by employing a tape loader, but this bit of gear and its installation will ramp up the cost by a few thousand pounds.
Choosing a scheme is all a question of how far back you want to be able to go. Some companies are still keeping their 1999 tapes to this day in case they discover unforeseen ramifications of Year 2000 updates and have to fold back some data. More typically though, you just want to restore a file somebody edited last week or recover a project document from a month ago.
By contrast, restoring a database from anything older than a week back is likely to mean a lot of human data input all over again, especially where the database is multi-user.
What to do about backup errors
Occasionally, a backup may fail. If the problem starts recurring, it becomes a frustration, because - another parallel with insurance here - you don't feel you're getting much in return.
It helps to remember the big picture. On the whole you are trying to preserve the most recent data.
Yesterday's tape will nearly always be
ten times more important than last weeks' which in turn will be
ten times more important than last months' which in turn will be
ten times more important than last years'.
Hence, random errors aren't too much to worry about; in 24 hours that day's backup may well be obsolescent.
Regular or repeated errors are more serious. Track them down or get us in to help sort them out. They are typically :
- a duff or ageing tape (most common, replace it),
- an erratic drive (more worrying - check the drive or software drivers),
- corrupted data files (repair the server disc).
Analysing the transfer of data
... from brain cells to fire safe.
- When you have composed, say, a letter in your word processor, it resides in memory and stays there only as long as power is applied to the computer's memory chips. Those of us who have experienced the trauma of a major mains power failure at this point can now understand why our carefully crafted words are lost irretrievably, though it's no consolation!
- The instant you click Save As, you enter a new level of security. The power could fail, but your letter remains relatively secure on the hard disc. While older discs occasionally suffered damage from unscheduled power-downs, or the memory chip could fail, such occurrences are rarer these days.
Now you are safe for 'a while' longer, but beware - it's not uncommon for a PC's hard disc to fail between shut down and the next start up. Better to save on a more reliable server hard disc.
The reliability of desktop hard discs is poor, especially on cheaper models where sudden failure can be catastrophic. This is why we choose to store only the bare essentials (the operating system) on the hard disc to keep the machine running and the valuable data on the server.
| Levels of volatility
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| Device |
Access time |
Duration |
| Memory RAM |
nanoseconds |
only while powered |
| Hard disc HDD |
milliseconds |
months/years |
| Tape |
minutes |
years |
| CD or DVD |
seconds |
tens of years |
- Thinking about even longer-term causes of danger - server theft, building fire, accidental damage, collapse of server components - it now makes sense to take regular copies of your data (including everyone else's), usually once a day. Because of the large capacity and relatively low cost combined with high speed, we choose film-based tapes. Tape cartridges won't last a human lifetime, but they are comparable to the active life of a server.
[CDs and DVDs might appear to be an alternative, but the high cost or quantities needed would be prohibitive; such media are however excellent for smaller archiving.]
The final resting place
To complete the transfer, you need to store the tape cartridges securely - so where are they?
Sitting on the server shelf just won't do - a fire or theft will mean your backup strategy costs will simply have compounded your organisation's eventual liquidation debts!
An in-house safe (£200-£500) offers the best trade-off between security and access, particularly if users are prone to 'losing' files. A good place for the petty cash tin too.
A weekly swap into a deposit box held at your local bank is an alternative if you are operating at least a fortnightly backup regime. However the deposit box access costs (usually £10 a go) would pay for a fire safe within a year.
Entrusting a (full-time) member of staff to take tapes home every night enables a daily swap with good off-site security at almost no cost, but can run into problems during sick leave or holidays.
The nocturnal life of the backup
Why do we confine our tape activities to the small hours?
- Backing up server files works best when nobody is accessing them. Backup software can typically be set to work around open files by closing them forcibly (undesirable) after a set period, say 30 seconds. This may be fine for workstations that have been inadvertently left logged in after hours, but slows down the backup time considerably. In general, it's but best to encourage staff to shut down their machines at night anyway, if only as an energy-saving measure.
- Backups are still relatively slow. A typical 40GB server can take 2 hours plus another 2 hours to fully verify. A daytime backup would take even longer.
- Daytime operation slugs server performance, hindering other users.
Restoration? It's no comedy!
Ultimately we are looking to get a high integrity backup at the end of each day, that is to say, with no files missing. It's fairly essential to guarantee a good restoration should you ever need one.
Spend a little time building a disaster recovery plan - it will cut down the chaos when the real emergency arrives.
Related articles
-IB-
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2. Interpreting Tape Drive Technology
It sits tucked away in the corner of server obediently plugging away its nightly backup performance, but even this 'bass player' of the band is assimilating bigger and faster technologies. We look at what's to come and how to choose it.
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What size do I need ?
In choosing a tape drive, the size of tape drive is one choice that you may already have made, unconsciously or not.
Often, this question will arrive at the point you consider purchasing a new server and, very broadly, you ought to allow at least 3 times the disc capacity of the server you have just outgrown. So now it's a simple matter of backing up that maximum disc capacity, isn't it?
Well, yes and no.
| Calculating compression ratio
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Example:
Your old server has a (now full) capacity of 22GB.
The size it records on to tape amounts to 13.2GB.
That's a compression ratio of: 13.2 / 22 = 60%
Your new server needs to be 3 times as big, ie 66GB. Allowing for your existing mix of files, the tape drive size should be :
66 x 60% = 39.6GB
A 40GB drive, say a DAT DDS4 or a DLT should cover this nicely.
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Tape drives use compression to squeeze more data on to their media and thus
are frequently measured by their 'compressed capacity'. A 20/40GB tape or drive has a native capacity of 20GB that can store up to 40GB when compressed.
But the actual ratio varies depending on what mix of files you have on the server. Executable files like office applications, DTP and drivers compress poorly whereas databases, picture files and documents contain large quantities of repeated information (like spaces) that can be coded and 'compressed out'.
So how do we calculate this compression ratio?
Well, a good rule of thumb is to say "it's 60% to 70%" and have done with it. So a 50GB server disc would only require a maximum tape drive size of 30-35GB.
However, we can be more exact because you already have the answer to your particular compression ratio buried in the logs of your existing tape backups. Simply look them up and find out what total size of data is being committed to tape each night; it's commonly stored at the end of the daily log. Then follow the calculation in the panel (right).
Is DAT all there is ?
It's clear from the comparison of formats below that DAT technologies are now at the low, but more affordable, end of the range.
| Tape drive formats
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| Format |
Capacity |
Drive cost
| Media cost
| Transfer rate
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| DAT DDS3 |
24GB |
£500+ |
£15 |
7.2GB/hour |
| DAT DDS4 |
40GB |
£700+ |
£25 |
21.6GB/hour |
| DLT |
40-80GB |
£900-£2000 |
£25-£55 |
21.6-40GB/hour |
| AIT |
90-130GB |
£750-£1800 |
£65-£90 |
37-56GB/hour |
| LTO Ultrium |
200GB |
£2500-£3000 |
£140+ |
54-108GB/hour |
| Prices are approximate ex-VAT and assume drive electronics are internal versions |
However, we see a huge leap in price as moving upwards from the 40GB mark. What we are paying for is not only the sheer capacity but the transfer speed to get a clean backup in the relatively short time available, usually overnight. From 9pm to 7am the next day, you have a whole 10 hours, but once you have done a full server virus check (say 4 hours), a large database transfer from the database server (say 1 hour), that leaves 5 hours max to do backups and the last thing you want is to come the following morning and find your previous day's backup is still struggling to finish.
Inside or outside ?
Tape drives are often available in two housing formats:
- Internal: mounts insides the server case
The cheaper option and benefits from faster interaction with the server electronics
- External: plugs into an external server socket, typically SCSI
Good for mobile between machines, but loses out on transfer speed
A low-down on the technologies
- DAT(Digital Audio Tape)
Currently the best for low-end systems. Tape wraps around a helical-scanning rotating recording head à la home video, thus employing cost-effective technology. Some HP DAT drives feature 'One Button Disaster Recovery' (OBDR) enabling a reboot-and-restore from the backup tape in one go.
- DLT(Digital Linear Tape)
As the name suggests, the tape weaves past a static head, but achieves a much higher data transfer due to writing/reading multiple tracks simultaneously. A kind of built-in index speeds up data searches.
- AIT
A proprietary tape standard developed by Sony using another helical scan technology generating one of the highest recording capacities on a single cartridge. More details here.
- LTO Ultrium
A open standard developed by HP, IBM and Seagate working jointly, LTO Ultrium's capacity will eventually stretch to 1600GB (1.6TeraBytes) on one cartridge by 2006, but is currently only appropriate for fast high-end (read "expensive") systems.
Media
Finally, don't forget the cost of the actual tapes. Ten of these (ultimately consumable) cartridges can set you back the equivalent of a new workstation and may well need replacing after a year or so of constant wear, so remember to budget for them.
-IB-
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3. Deleting an email backlog
What's bigger than your PC and has tens of thousands of heads?
Answer: three months' backlog of email!
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The last thing you need is another email, right? Worse still, tens of thousands of them!
A series of mass mailing viruses at the beginning of 2003 may well have been responsible for the simultaneous failure of ISP mail servers at the end of January.
Just as you might restore the contents of your internal fileserver after a serious crash, so did some ISPs.
Imagine emptying the entire contents of a dam on to the village below without warning and you have some idea of the consequences!
Our poor little (comparatively) mailserver was on continuously struggling to cope with the torrent of tens of thousands of emails we had already downloaded 3 months before and tying up our Net bandwidth.
The main server processor started to overload, slugging internal network performance too.
Dealing with the email backlog
Various utilities exist for examining your mailbox at source and each have different levels of suitability depending on how much time or how many mails there are waiting the queue. All of them work principally by downloading only the headers of emails, instead of the whole message, saving vast amounts of time and bandwidth and normally offering up enough information to decide which emails might be causing a jam, for instance.
A typical Telnet session
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Follow this example to TELNET into your POP3 mailbox
Click Start | Run | type "Telnet"
Give your username and password
open mail.yourISP.com 110
user thunderbirds
pass 54321
Check which msgs are new or old by looking at top 10 lines ...
top 1 10
top 999 10
Now delete 999 msgs ... takes about 15 seconds!
mdele 1 999
That's it!
More tips:
To retrieve a whole message, type ...
retr 1
To delete one msg, type ...
dele 1
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Up to 500 messages
Webmail interfaces are becoming increasingly common and many ISPs who provide email accounts have built such an interface on their own web site. Although the look and feel may vary, the essentials are the same, comprising a basic viewer into your POP3 mailbox before the messages are downloaded to your in-house system. These simple tools may have drawbacks like only being able to display and clear up to 50 messages at a time.
A secure login (via the https protocol) is provided on some sites and will keep your mail transactions private, but has the side-effect of slowing them down and could be unnecessary if you are just going to delete them anyway.
Obviously the proprietary ones listed here only give you access if your POP3 box resides with that ISP - you just need to fill in your username and password:
Up to 5,000 messages
- Mail2Web
Rising up the popularity stakes is a more generic version of these propietary interfaces called "mail2web" reviewed before in June 2001 and which has now added further features like sorting (by From, Subject, Date, etc) in ascending or descending order. You can also customise your 'account' if you're going to use this neat utility a lot.
- Pegasus Mail
Install Pegasus Mail and use "| File | Selective Mail Download" option.
Requires some configuring of the POP3 options
More than 5,000 messages
For really large numbers of messages, a better solution is to Telnet into your POP3 mail account. While this requires a few command line skills and some careful checking of the order of messages (don't forget they continue to come in because you are working on a live system), Telnet doesn't suffer from sluggishness and unreliability of graphical user type interfaces (GUI) that can either crash or take hours. With Telnet (available on just about any machine) you can delete thousands of messages in a few seconds or minutes, using an little-documented command called "mdelete", abbreviated to mdele if you wish.
Check the session in the panel.
-IB-
Paul Craig
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4. Double-checking spreadsheets
Two out of ten - must try harder. More creative accounting required.
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How many times have you built a spreadsheet only to find it doesn't add up correctly?
Our everyday spreadsheet tables - designed to take the hard work out of simple maths - often end up creating work, by requiring us to fix or 'debug' computational or formula errors, inherent in our basic design. (See Spreadsheets on Trial, Raymond Panko).
Many surveys reveal that as many as 90% of common spreadsheets may contain such fundamental flaws.
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A |
B |
C |
D |
| 1 |
Item |
Budget |
Spent |
Remainder |
| 2 |
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| 3 |
CD-RWs |
20 |
10 |
10 |
| 4 |
Router |
400 |
400 |
0 |
| 5 |
PC |
600 |
300 |
300 |
| 6 |
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| 7 |
TOTALS |
1020 |
710 |
310 |
| 8 |
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Crosscheck |
310 |
A simple strategy
At the heart of the problem is not spending time designing a simple model (the structure of the formulae), which can highlight or forestall errors later on.
The double-check method is a trivial device for adding up figures twice to ensure they correlate.
In the example panel here, the "Remainder" cells are clearly the "Budget" values minus the "Spent" values. Thus, the final TOTALS might be obtained with the usual cell formulae:
=sum(B3..B5)
=sum(C3..C5)
=sum(D3..D5)
However, by just creating one further but crucial cell, budgetary disaster can be avoided.
Cell D8 contains the verifier:
=B7-C7
More tips
- Keep your structure as uniform as possible.
- Resist the temptation to add in a 'rogue' cell formula - best done on a separate worksheet
- Employ graphs to observe the data and spot dubious trends or mistakes, especially where dense groups of numbers make for difficult viewing.
Contacts
Spreadsheet Development using peer audit and self-audit methods for reducing errors
Chadwick D., Sue R., University of Greenwich
-IB-
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5. End of year budgets - what to buy
So little time, so much to buy! Opportunists take the initiative to try something new.
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The end of March is looming and unless you've completely blown the IT spend, you're still likely to have a few notes to rub together.
Here's a rough-n-ready cost-sized guide to work wonders and help move your organisation forward on the remaining cash.
£1000 up
OK, not many of you may have a grand 'left over', but if you can't carry this forward to next year, you might consider splashing out on:
- A high-end DTP machine
loaded with Adobe Pagemaker and Acrobat
- A switch-over from ISDN to xDSL connection
| Per month |
Per annum |
Speed |
Type of connection |
| £22 - £30 |
£360 |
512Kbps |
ADSL SoHo |
| £55 - £75 |
£900 |
512Kbps |
ADSL networked business |
| £270 |
£3240 |
2Mbps |
ADSL networked business |
| £275 |
£3300 |
2Mbps |
SDSL networked business |
| All prices approximate |
A tricky one to cost, because you may end actually saving money depending on the deals available (including a current waiver of setup fees) and what ISDN tariffs you have in place currently. What's more you will also save a big chunk of staff time. Suffice to say it works out roughly like this (see panel).
Remind me, What is ADSL?
- Start looking at VPN
A virtual private network joins up separate office locations on to a single network and allows you to communicate quickly and securely, but minus the costs associated with dedicated leased lines.
£100 to £1000
- A flat panel monitor
More deskspace, lower electricity consumption, excellent daylight viewing. See our review of the LM-700A 17" LCD screen. Why not buy one on evaluation and take it from there?
- Digital camera
Better value and specifications than ever, last year was the hottest ever for purchasing one, so refinements and value are now coming to the market. See our guide to choosing a digital camera.
- Mobile PDA devices
Use mail synchronisation to be int ouch with your email on the move. Ask us about setting this up under a Facilities Management contract. See our January review of SmartPhone devices.
- Retire any PC earlier than a Pentium II
Knowing how much staff time an older PC can waste is frightening. Go on then, shock yourself!
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| "Small organisations should be taking the opportunity to try out at least one of these small projects. Larger groups should really be buying one in each category as an experiment."
Phil Anthony
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£10 - £100
- A KVM switch
Control all your central servers, firewall PCs and gateways from a single keyboard, video monitor and mouse combination. Learn more about KVM switches.
- A CD rewriter
A hassle-free method of sending large publications for print or to members is write them electronically to CD-RW. Portable devices are handy for backing up data and small workstations. Learn more about CD technology.
Less than a tenner
- A new mouse
It's fairly trivial to check and maintain your invaluable rodent, but you never do, right? Just as easy to order another from us here and then you'll have a spare too.
- A pack of CD-RWs
Contacts
Make it happen!
Contact us here.
-IB-
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6. Daylight robbery - inside and outside the office
Now you see it, now you don't!
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What is it ?
You have heard plenty about data theft and are probably well aware of the top security issues and how to protect your network , but are you neglecting your network's physical needs?
Police report server theft is on the increase, so now might be the time to take another look at how well your hardware is tied down.
Reviewing security arrangements
Patrol borders - check office security first:
- alarms,
- doors,
- windows locks,
- sky lights
Dig deeper: concentrate on key assets:
- keep servers preferably in secure rooms out of public view and/or easy access,
- label servers indelibly with your post code and organisation name, though the trend for rough finish black boxes doesn't help,
- consider secure frames or rack mounts to lock servers down
New kit is the most desirable kit:
- deal with deliveries of new equipment a.s.a.p. and hide or remove the boxes
Related articles
-IB-
Philip Anthony
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Clicks of the Trade
Generation-X
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Make your own backups
When you are doing a lot of intensive computing work - whether it's typing or layout or whatever - you are generating a lot of data.
Tip: Do make "generational copies"
eg
REPORT1.DOC at 10.30,
REPORT2.DOC at 10.45,
etc
It's partly to save yourself from your own editing!
Continue saving to the same file, you may well come unstuck - and a backup tape won't help you because it won't have run yet.
Examples: long press releases or multi-chapter reports
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-IB-
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Overview of InfoBulletin
InfoBulletin is written and published by Co-Operative Systems and contains Information Technology tips that we come across during everyday research and support activities and which may be useful in improving your IT operations, either internally or on the Internet.
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