1-800-HOSTING Blog » apple

The Truth Will Make it Free

Jonathan Curry — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:00:58 +0000

A few weeks ago at lunch I dropped my beloved iPhone 4 and shattered the back side glass. Fortunately I already knew the cost to replace it, as I had just been to the Apple Store the previous weekend with a friend who committed the same act of violence against his phone.

At $29 I thought he got away cheap – but I didn’t understand why my friend fabricated a ridiculous story about how the glass shattered on his phone. Later he told me it was to try to get sympathy from the Genius in order to replace the glass for free. Of course this lowered my opinion of him (not the lie, the fact that it was a terrible lie) and I knew it wasn’t going to work for me.

After recovering from my phone-dropped-glass-shattered induced heart attack, I scheduled an appointment with the Genius Bar online & was served by the very same Genius as my friend:

“How did this happen?” he asked.

I replied, “I dropped it in a parking lot.”

At that moment it felt like you could hear a pin drop in the store. All of the surrounding Apple employees looked toward me in shock & awe, not because I dropped my phone – but because I told the truth.

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

~George Owell (or not)

Unbeknownst to me, a store manager was standing right behind me, came up to the service desk, and asked for more details about my phone tragedy. It seemed as if nobody ever told him “Yes, it’s my fault & it hit the pavement.” The manager took my phone with him to the back of the store & came back minutes later letting me know the glass was replaced and that the repair cost was on him.

Nothing more than the truth made it free.

Workstation Backup Solutions Pt. 3: Redundancy

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 17:00:33 +0000

No backup project would be complete without considering redundancy. As I mentioned in my first article (Workstation Backup Solutions Pt. 1: Having One), there are situations you have to consider such as hardware failure, natural disasters, theft, and a few others.

Redundancy What?:

When we think of redundancy, we care most about having multiple replication points in backups (discussed in my second article Workstation Backup Solutions Pt. 2: Methods & Retention), and then about replicating that data to other hardware or even geographically different locations. Let me elaborate in the next section.

Redundancy Where?:

With local redundancy (Raid arrays, replicating to multiple physical hard drives/hardware, etc.) you ensure that the information is copied across multiple pieces of equipment, which should minimize data loss in case of hardware failure. The issue with this is that even if you have 10x replication of a single piece of data, unless you live in a bomb shelter with the ultimate fire/flood suppression setup, you can’t really be sure a natural disaster won’t destroy the hardware.

Geographical redundancy is a little bit harder to implement on a budget because of expense involved in keeping multiple sets of hardware in other locations. If you have a friend who can keep a machine elsewhere in the state/province/country/continent/world, it’s good to be you, and the redundancy world is your oyster. For uncool people like us however, buying/renting or collocating a server elsewhere is the best bet. Of course, there are companies that offer remote backups that you can use instead of hosting your own hardware, but with these services come some amount of risk, and you will need to choose wisely in order to avoid a headache.

Redundancy How?:

Firstly, you will have to determine whether you want to simply use raid arrays or local replication, or go with a remote backup option.

With raid arrays, you have the option of software or hardware raid. Software raid, though somewhat reliable, will crash and burn if anything happens to your OS, whereas hardware raid uses a raid controller and is less prone to operational failures. Using raid brings up the problem of whether an additional point of failure such as software glitch, or a hardware controller is worth it. If you buy a good raid controller, you should be better off when considering both raid options. But keep in mind that raid cards fail too. Ultimately, if choosing to use raid, I’d go with the hardware raid option always.

Local replication is as simple as moving already backed up data to another hard drive or piece of hardware. This can be done using either a drag-drop method, or setting up a script to move it for you. In Windows, simply creating a network share folder and setting up a routine to move the files over works pretty well. In Linux, a cron that runs an rsync or sFTP script works well too. For Mac, a similar procedure can be ran as in Linux environments to move data.

Some backup software may have remote options available for backing things up. It is totally dependent on the awesomeness of the software developers, but this feature is also very often associated with a larger dollar amount for the software. So beware.

For true remote backups, you will need a server or hardware of some sort in a different geographical location to your system. In all honesty, maybe having it at a friend’s house a few lots over isn’t going to be enough space. Think broader. If a natural disaster has the likelihood of hitting both locations around the same time, maybe it’s wise to keep it elsewhere.

A few things to consider when retaining hardware elsewhere is:

1. Uptime/Relative Network Speed
2. Remote hands capabilities
3. Hardware guarantees on rented machines

All three points are there to minimize headache. If you can’t connect to the remote server, replication is going to be difficult and a lot of hand-holding over the process will take place. If you collocate, you will need to maintain your hardware, and having competent remote hands to install new hardware/fix issues will go a long way. If you rent a server, a hardware guarantee of some sort is a wise idea as well. If you need to rely on a backup, and the remote server has failed without you knowing about it, you can kiss sanity goodbye; there is no going back.

I hope these articles help. There are a lot of options I didn’t cover, and in redundancy no two setups are usually exactly alike. Just remember that a backup plan is better than nothing, multiple sets of backups are better than just a single backup, and a geographic redundancy scheme even better still. Also remember that Google is your friend. You can find a lot of backup articles for workstations and servers from other contributors there.

Cheers!

Workstation Backup Solutions Pt. 2: Methods & Retention

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 16:53:48 +0000

In my last article Workstation Backup Solutions Pt. 1: Having One, I loosely talked about some methods to use for backups, and brought up retention. If you’ve taken into consideration anything I’ve said thus far, you would probably already be considering both. But, for the sake of delving more thoroughly into all the possibilities, let us continue with this premise.

Methods and retention vary from OS to OS, as does retention jargon. In fact, even the software within an OS may use different terminology for retention methods depending on their architecture and marketing prowess. Because it can get so confusing, we will stick with generic terms, and keep it light.

Methods:

Manually – Nothing beats good ol’ fashion drag/drop backups. They’re reliable, you know what you’re moving over to your backup space, and you can do it at your leisure. The issue with this is they’re not automatic (As you’ll find going to the movies instead of moving files, is much more fun.) If you don’t like the movies, and instead like this option, more power to you, I think movies are overpriced anyway. But, this option isn’t for everyone.

Commands/Scripts – This method takes a little bit more know-how. The good thing is, most everything you need in regards to this are available on Google, or other search engines/sites. You don’t have to get out your Shell Scripting for Dummies and learn shell script or DOS to do this. Instead of reinventing the wheel, read about how other people did, and use the extra time to go see that overpriced movie.

Software – Software will do just about the same thing as commands/scripts, as that is pretty much what their back-end is, but it will be presented in jelly buttons, and cool progress bars that aren’t accurate. The good thing about this option is that it makes things easy, and usually encompasses both the method, and has retention policy options. The downside is that software not laced with adware/virus, or advertisements costs money, and sometimes quite a bit of money.

Overall, compression and retention are going to be more involved on the first and second option. The third usually has a compression option built in. When you look for software, or are going to develop your own backup scripts, you will want to take into consideration these things.

Retention:

Yearly/Monthly/Weekly/Daily/Hourly/Minutely – When writing this, I didn’t think minutely was a real word as it sounds silly, but I was wrong. When choosing a method, you will want to think about how long you want to keep your data, and how it is backed up. Some software allows you to backup on the minute basis, others only allow less frequent backups, such as daily, or weekly. This can be a game changer if you need a twice daily solution (Every 12 hours) or need multiple schema, such as a backup daily, and also a backup hourly of say, a highly written to file.

Full – There are two major types of full backups. One that retains the filesystem structure, and the other retains all of the necessary components to restore the entire OS. Whatever the type, it will retain a full backup of all of the files/folders and structure of your system. Most backup software will just retain the filesystem structure, but won’t be able to do a bare-metal restore. This means you will need to reinstall the OS, then restore the files accordingly. Keep in mind that you most likely will lose your installed applications, though the files for them will still be intact.

Incremental/Differential – When we talk about incremental and differential ,there are very technical differences between the two. Know however, that typically differential are backing up only files that have changed since the last full backup. Incrementals are files changing since the last backup, whether it be full, or the last incremental. Both are designed to save time and diskspace when backing up and restoring, but are also difficult to construct without very in-depth knowledge of the OS you’re trying to backup. In other words, it’s easier to use software that has this option than try to create a backup scheme from coding yourself, that is, unless you’re a super-supremo-awesome coder. In that case, go for it, let’s team up and market that. I could always use more money…

Continuous – If this wasn’t self explanatory enough by the name, I really can’t help you understand it better than talking about its technical aspects. A continuous backup basically backs up your data…well…continuously, but references your first full backup the same as incremental/differentials do to determine what has changed. Some are as specific as will backup even a draft save on your latest Word document, others wait until you’ve saved a copy and a write to the hard drive is made. Either way, it can be very beneficial to have this in case a revision to a file was a mistake, and you need the previous version.

In conclusion, as your backup needs change, you can evaluate these options more. Always weigh out the benefits of going for a more feature filled software first instead of having to buy whole new software later on. If you think you will grow into it, and the price point isn’t that much higher, well….I don’t even need to tell you. Just use logical judgment. As for making your own schema, the same rule applies. A little more work while creating the setup will go a long way in terms of you not needing to touch it for awhile. Grow as necessary though, and project slightly into the future.

Workstation Backup Solutions Pt. 1: Having One

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 21:53:52 +0000

In a world of ever increasing data, those of us who don’t backup our precious files are downright insane. I’ve had instances where I could have backed up my data, a failure/accidental deletion/unintended alteration occurred and I was kicking myself for a long time. The reality is, that backups sometimes seem difficult to perform on a regular basis, and effectively. But what I’m here to say is that even if your backup policy seemingly dry-heaves in comparison to other’s, it is still backing up something.

Sometimes, the difference between my desire to destroy my computer, or kiss it and whisper sweet binary to it has been the ability for me to retrieve past data. And that starts with, you guessed it, some sort of backup routine.

Now, if you’re Apple users and use Time Machine already, I loath you for your self-sustainability, and you can stop reading now (J/K). For those of us who regularly use Windows or Linux machines, and are strapped for cash and can’t afford expensive software, a simple secondary hard drive is the first step.

For the sake of simplicity, we will continue to discuss simple work/home computer backups, but if you really need a server backup schema, we can always sell you a solution.

With that shameless plug out of the way, let’s go over a few different drive options.

1. An internal hard drive, or an external USB option (I suggest a USB powered model as backup failures can occur if the hard drive power cable fails, or is inadvertently unplugged.)
2. A USB flash/jump drive.
3. A compact flash or other media card.

Depending on the type of data you’re backing up, the amount of time you want to retain it, and the depth of your wallet, these options should suffice for most backups.

An internal hard drive poses a lot of very beneficial characteristics. You wouldn’t need to worry necessarily about it unplugging, it is powered intrinsically, and you don’t have to look at it. An external hard drive has the benefit of being unplugged and moved around, but can then unfortunately be accidentally unplugged.

A flash drive and CF/Media card are quick and reliable options if you are just doing periodic snapshots, but eventually their read/write life-cycle will be met, and you run the risk of losing data or encountering data corruption more quickly due to hardware failure than you do with a good brand of hard drive. Also, for more than 16GB of data, most reliable brands get unreasonably expensive.

The simplest way to backup things is just to categorize your data, and pull it over to the hard drive. Creating folders with titles in date form will organize your data as well. The thing to remember is that at the onset of a backup routine, keep it simple. If pulling over files once a week is your routine, than stick to it and add components later on as necessary.

There are a few options for creating a routine if you can’t be at your computer at the same time every day. Windows has a backup routine in the Accessories area you can use, you can get tech-savvy and research how to code your own .bat script, or you can purchase a one-time fee software that allows you to setup routines as well. For Linux users, a script that runs a copy command of selected data to the secondary drive and is scheduled by a cron will work as well.

Ultimately, after you get started backing up your data, you will notice certain caveats to the backup process itself, mainly, data retention equaling too much space usage, local backups not saving your data in case of a fire/natural disaster/theft, and other encumbrances. At that point you’re ready to move onto the next level, and we can discuss that in the next article. But keep in mind, the first step in the journey of a thousand gigabytes starts with the backup of the first gigabyte. Knowing this, you will go far, my young padawan.

The new iPhone brought to you by Gizmodo

John Cunningham — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:51:29 +0000

If you’ve lived in a bear cave with the Hip Hop Kids this past week, you might’ve missed the leaked announcement of the next-gen iPhone.

Gizmodo.com, a CNN for geeks, enthralled the Apple fanboy nation with the latest edition of the highly coveted iPhone series yesterday. Reportedly lost at a bar in Redwood City, Gizmodo broke coverage doing what they do best, a gadget review.

Though it may resemble the original iPhone at first glance, it looks as though Apple may have answered many recurring gripes from the growing number of users.

Along with a front facing camera (Chatroulette, here I come), the new iPhone seems to be sporting a higher resolution display and a larger camera lens.

The redesign itself has yet to be tested in the field; I will be curious to see how it survives the rounds users will put it through. I’ve seen instances of running, clubbing, toddler tantrums, and bathroom readings with these mini iPads. Hopefully, the new casing will endure the elements my original first gen iPhone could not.

So how did Gizmodo get their hands on this newest piece of tech porn?

Much like any American worker after a hard day’s grind, Gary Powell, an Apple software engineer, left his cellular device at the bar after a few beers.

With the nation still feeling the wake of iPad madness, this new development out of Cupertino has certainly kept Apple in the headlines. I hope Steve Jobs is kind to Gary and his momentary lapse of contractual agreements. And on that note, I’m off to the local watering hole to research ‘upcoming emerging technology.’

Cheers!

More iPhone pictures and videos at Gizmodo.com

Apple’s new iPad

John Cunningham — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:48:47 +0000

“Last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments on it.” – The Wall Street Journal

This long awaited tablet has been speculated since the first waves of netbooks swept the world in 2007, leaving Apple and their intrepid leader, Steve Jobs, with no answer to the mini notebook domination.

Today, Apple finally announced their answer to the netbook call, officially named The iPad.

The Hardware – Almost a Macbook
With an iPhone-esque interface, the iPad will sport the same look and feel as a flattened iPod Touch. At 9.7 inches and a familiar capacitive multi-touch screen, the overall viewing size is significantly smaller than the smallest Macbook, but noticeably larger than the iPhone. The silver finish bevel also mimics the iPhones, a mistake in my opinion. Be prepared to buff out scratches for the entire short life of your device.

Much like the iPhone/iPod Touch, screen orientation auto adjusts to portrait or horizontal using the built-in accelerometer. More of a 4:3 aspect ratio than 16:9, a widescreen would have been nice, but understandable for the various types of media it will be equipped to handle (pdfs, e-magazines, e-books, etc).

At 1.5 pounds and a half-inch thick, this tablet will be quite easy to carry. And with a battery life of 10 hours during constant use (says Apple), I feel this will be an appropriate hybrid for students and business people alike.

Apple touts that the 1GHz A4 chip will process HD video seamlessly. Okay, but 16gb, 32gb, and 64gb are the only options? This sounds very familiar. Apple has the capability of going bigger, but delaying the size bumps for a couple months to reignite interest in July Apple? Dirty. Very dirty. This won’t be replacing my iAnything anytime soon : \

Data – the iPhone pitfall
The 3G equipped models, have both 3g and WIFI, unlike their sans-3g counterparts. How much is connectivity worth to you? $15/ month for 250MB or $30/month for “unlimited” data via AT&T. The upside? No contracts. If you’ve sold your car and engagement ring to get your geek fix, you can cancel your service whenever you want – right after apologizing to the spouse and weeks on the couch.

The Software – An iPhone on steroids Vitamins
With a beefed up iTunes, browser, and OS, the iPad will be a middle-of-the-road device placed in between a full fledged notebook and the ultra portable iPhone. Even the Email adds a couple of neat features like message previews and pull-down menus.

The touch screen keyboard is almost life size, but only time will tell if it is tactile enough for the power users out there. The iPhone did a decent job with predictive type, but a real keyboard seems to be a deal breaker for most netbook users. Naturally, there will be a keyboard dock to add to your purchases during your next Apple store visit.

The Apps are really what makes this device robust. With plans to develop specifically for the iPad, this tablet will come to life because of the power of the people, not Apple. The original iPhone SDK has been expanded for tablet development and can even run current iPhone apps, though crudely expanded to fit.

Ebooks will continue to flood the market and has now entered the iTunes arena. iWork will be updated and designed specifically for tablature. Expect new versions of the entire suite to hit stores soon.

Things I would’ve liked to see:
- Front facing camera
- Smaller bezel
- Flash?!
- Multitasking
- Live music performance by The Roots featuring Steve Jobs

The iPad ships in 60 days for the WIFI only version, and 90 days for the WIFI/3g version.

Watch the official iPad video at Apple.com. (Notice how they use their index finger to hit the space bar. Weird)

Apple’s iPhone and Microsoft Exchange

Mark Kraus — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:03:30 +0000

Several of our employees and I own iPhones. Being techie, we are often drawn to new and exciting gadgets. There is certainly no comparison in new gizmos out there that are as intriguing as the iPhone. I was an early adopter and stood in line the day it came out to be one of the first to own one. As a Windows Administrator I’m not even a large fan of Apple, so the draw was all in its technology.

The original firmware for the iPhone was disappointing in the way of business use. The email application offered no form of push technology and Microsoft Exchange had to be configured using pull IMAP. There was also no way to sync contacts or calendar events with exchange over the air. I wrote a personal blog at the time addressing the need for more business friendly applications and that until it could be integrated with common business infrastructures, the iPhone should only be considered for personal use.

In June of 2008, Apple released the iPhone 3G, the successor to what I call the iPhone Classic. With the release of the new hardware, Apple also released the much coveted 1.2.0 firmware more commonly known as 2.0. The 2.0 firmware is available for the iPhone Classic and the iPhone 3G. This firmware includes greater functionality, but more importantly to me as an IT professional, it includes the ability to use Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync for over-the-air push email, push contacts, and push calendar from an Exchange server.

I was also an early adopter of the new iPhone 3G and upon getting it home my first plan of action was to get it working with our Microsoft Exchange infrastructure. I wasn’t able to get it working right away. It turns out there are some tweaks that had to be made to our Exchange IIS configuration in the way of NTLM authentication. After making the correct changes to IIS and correctly entering my near 20 character password correctly on the iPhone keypad, I was up and running.

Setting up the iPhone for Exchange ActiveSync is fairly straight forward. On the iPhone Home screen, go to settings and then choose “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”. Now choose the “Add Account…” option. This will bring up a screen to enter your account information. The password can be the tricky part especially if you use a secure password with all kinds of character types. After the account information is entered, hit the next button and wait for the confirmation. Our mobile device policy requires a pin be set and entered when ever unlocking or waking up the device. Automatically after the account is verified, a screen prompts for the input of a new pin. After entering the pin and verifying the pin it may take up to five minutes for all the contacts, calendar events, and emails to sync. On a 3G connection it took less than 3 minutes to sync 100 email messages, 2 months of calendar events and all of my 100 plus contacts.

The push technology works perfectly. When I’m sitting at my desk I often receive the notification of a new email on my phone before my Outlook has a chance to report it. If I make a change to emails, contacts, or calendars on either my desktop or my iPhone the change is near instantly available on the other. Remote wipes via Exchange MobileAdmin works perfectly too. Within seconds of pressing the wipe link in MobileAdmin the iPhone shuts down and wipes its data. This is handy should the phone ever be lost or stolen.

There are, however, some short comings. The first of which is that the push email only pushes the inbox where as Blackberries can receive push email to any folder. This is ok for some people, but I use a lot of rules to filter emails to separate folders especially for system alerts. I can still check them manually, but it would be nice to not need to flood my inbox with priority 1 alert emails. In addition, there is no access to Public Folders. This isn’t too vital to me at this point; however, our spam processing does use a public drop folder to process spam. Without access to the public folders, I’m unable to move a spam email to the processing folder from my iPhone.

Another shortcoming is in the calendars application. I can create events, but I can’t schedule meetings and assign attendees like I can from my desktop. That would be a handy feature to have when I’m out of the office and receive a client request for a conference call. I could setup the appointment then and there and not have to set a reminder to set it up when I’m at my desktop. In addition, there is no separating your personal entries from your exchange entries. It can be a little uneasy to enter private non-work related calendar events knowing they will be on your work calendar as well. The same annoyance exists for the contacts as there is no way to set personal contacts without them being added to your exchange contacts.

A final shortcoming is in missing some other exchange features. Tasks and Notes could easily be integrated into the iPhone. I’m a huge fan of using the tasks and assigning them to others. I use the exchange notes to keep important tidbits of information readily available. The iPhone doesn’t have a native tasks or to-do list though several third party apps are available. None of the third party applications make use of push tasks from Exchange. The iPhone does have a native Notes application, but there is no integration with Exchange.

In lieu of the shortcomings, the iPhone does work well for business email now. The greatest simple feature Apple added was the ability to delete multiple emails at once instead of having to delete one at a time. The email is always timely, even when I’m on EDGE or standard cell connection. With a little more tweaking, the iPhone may become good competition with Blackberry as an enterprise mobile communications solution. For now, it is good enough to get the job done.

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The Truth Will Make it Free

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