Managed Services Pretenders

Posted on May 3, 2012 by matrixforce

This customer was in extreme pain. It was hard to understand how they were so patient – for the last year! The Exchange Server was recently down for 4 days. Now there was a new Exchange server with a fallout of a myriad other issues. Apparently, a new hire was made and a request submitted for user credentials and a mailbox 30 days prior. After the fact, it was disclosed that there was some issue preventing the creation of the user account and mailbox. Rather than tell the customer immediately and work proactively to resolve the problem, the big hardware sales company wanting to be a managed service provider did nothing until the system crashed. The customer looked very inept as the new hire couldn’t do their job the first week, not to mention no employee could communicate with their customers or the outside world. Since the system was virtualized, it’s still not understood what the 4 day delay was as no additional hardware was required and any new software could quickly be downloaded.

It seems the managed services pretender had promised the customer a lot and delivered very poorly. When asked what type of system and how it was configured, the customer complained that the documentation they were promised was non-existent. The remote monitoring and alerting that was promised last year was supposedly just coming online, so the pretender would know surely know ahead of time on the next problem. Things had been so bad that the customer met weekly with the management of the pretender – and had done so for a year! When asked what kind of non-critical issues the customer had last month, all they could do was forward the e-mail requests. Apparently, the pretender didn’t use a case management system or didn’t provide any feedback about it. 25% of the cases were repeat requests on a previous issue that had been left languishing. 35% of cases were lacking or misconfigured connector issues on the new mail server. The remainders were 15 minute tasks that seemed to take days to add an icon or printer or unblock this site on the firewall. Clearly, no one else had categorized the problems or begin to analyze how to reduce or eliminate these issues in the future. However, the pretender promised this too was soon coming. For certain, the pretender that was still driven by product sales, just threw in some new servers and software with offbrand or third-party virtualization and remote access software to increase licensing and maintenance costs. No plan had been conceived and the experts the customer trusted to help simply pushed more product as the answer to everything at higher margin than their ill-conceived managed services. You just know the whole system is under-sized to ensure a required refresh or additional equipment in three years or less.

The following weekend after this meeting, we had our own hurdles. Insight Remote Monitoring, alerted us that several virtual servers had stopped responding late Sunday afternoon for one of our Guardian Managed Services accounts. Some virtual temporary files had grown suddenly leaving limited disk space on the host. A save state on the virtual servers corrected the space problem, but because space was temporarily limited deleted some required snapshots for the current state of the server. As best practice, data was separated from the virtual machines on a Storage Area Network (SAN), so two of the servers were simply rejoined to the domain in a few minutes with no further issues. However, a domain controller and the Exchange 2010 mail server were damaged and would not start. The second DC was handling logon and DHCP request with the other half of the scope, so the domain controller could be temporarily ignored.

Unfortunately, mail was down. We contacted the customer notifying them of the situation and related that it will likely best to simply rebuild the mail server than try to restore over the Internet using online backup. We used Insight again, which also had current statistics on IP address, OS version and Service Pack, Exchange version and Service Pack, and hard drive size. The customer was texted each hour as we built an exact duplicate of the previous mail server and then performed an Exchange 2010 Server Recovery, that automatically put back the previous Exchange software configuration from Active Directory. Again, since the mail database was separate from the virtual server on the SAN, databases started right up and mail was flowing. Using our System Plan for the client, we activated Exchange with the recorded software key and updated some custom settings per the Exchange Configuration table. By Monday morning, it was business as usual for the customer with only the main contact ever knowing there was a problem. The case was closed overnight, with the customer receiving a detailed follow-up e-mail on the problem and resolution, along with the phone call first thing in the morning to verify with the primary contact that everything was functioning satisfactorily.

It would have been a vastly different story without the System Plan for configuration, Insight for alerting and inventory, and over 30 years of best practice Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). Review of the previous year of cases for Exchange from our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) showed some significant growth and an upgrade was likely looming in the next 12-24 months. The customer was further advised that moving Exchange to cloud computing could lower their monthly maintenance cost, and escape server upgrade service projects and related hardware/software costs in the future. A win-win for us and the customer with less stuff to worry about at less cost.

Talk is cheap, statistics can be manipulated, and anything you say positive about your company can be taken as bragging and may be parraoted by pretenders. So far, we’ve simply shown the customer in pain our secret sauce and proprietary methodology, Delta. They’ve seen a System Plan, Insight, CRM, and SOPs. They know they would have documentation, real-time inventory and alerting status, and most importantly an unbiased and service motivated analysis of cases and strategy. So beware of pretenders and evaluate upfront their processes, business acumen, and motivations.

Filed under: IT Outsourcing, Managed Services, Matrixforce, Oklahoma, Tulsa | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Claim Your Blog in Technorati

Posted on April 25, 2012 by matrixforce

The whole reason you started a blog was to educate, entertain, and motivate your audience. You picked some categories for topics that fit with your marketing strategy and knew blogging was an easy way to add content and links for your website. Now you need to publicize it:

  1. Browse to Technorati.
  2. Create an account and verify via your e-mail.
  3. Select Claim Blog under Profile at upper right.
  4. Enter the blog information with the most crucial of copying the RSS feed URL from your blog page and entering your blog tags/key words.
  5. Technorati will generate and e-mail a claim number or token such as 3FMPY4UKHM4Y.
  6. On your next post, paste in the claim number.
  7. Then return to your Technorati profile and click the Claim Status button followed by Verify Your Claim.
  8. It’s a manual process, but typically within a few days Technorati staff will verify the claim number is in your blog RSS Feed.
  9. At this point, you’ve greatly increased exposure for your blog.
  10. Keep writing as your audience wants more and the more content you add increases your credibility and the likelihood of organic user links to your site.

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Firewalls and Cloud Computing

Posted on April 2, 2012 by matrixforce

One of the great things about cloud computing is that it lessens the cost and difficulty of protecting the perimeter network security with a firewall. Rules for SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) can often be eliminated, along with web publishing for corporate websites and SharePoint. Businesses can now use the power of the Internet outside of physical facilities to have web presence, messaging, data, and line-of-business applications at one or more online providers.

This shift in security impacts the type and configuration of your firewall. The 3 common issues we find with firewalls and cloud computing are:

  1. Failure to eliminate unnecessary rules or holes in the perimeter and lower the attack plane of a business. Why leave the possibility open for malware to SPAM the world from your location and not disable unnecessary SMTP rules? The corollary is all protocols should not be allowed from the internal network outbound to the Internet.
  2. Utilizing firewall caching is generally not recommended because in this real-time world, content continues to move and change regularly. Firewall caching should not be enabled with online services, as underlying cloud computing IP addresses may change with failover or normal service provider growth. If caching is enabled, then access to online services may be blocked and prevent users from working until the cache is cleared or disabled.
  3. Inability to change or disable flood mitigation is also a common problem, that in some cases requires replacing the existing firewall solution. Since the bulk of corporate web traffic changes to numerous encrypted SSL connections to and from the same address, some firewalls may treat the traffic as an attack and intermittently block communications to online services. Before implementing cloud computing, verify if your firewall has the ability to change or disable flood mitigation. If not, you should replace the existing firewall or risk intermittent and unknown disruption to online services.

The bottom line is that as you narrow the cost and maintenance funnel of on-premise technology infrastructure, you should change your security strategy to eliminate legacy protection and provide maximum access to cloud computing services.

Filed under: Cloud Computing, Matrixforce, Network Security, Oklahoma, Tulsa | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

High Cost Apple Switch

Posted on March 1, 2012 by matrixforce

It’s now local legend, but really a sad story for former employees and an important lesson for business. The number one trucking firm in Oklahoma, Arrow Trucking, ran it’s business on a Unisys mainframe. Everything else (like e-mail) ran on traditional servers, but until a few years ago, they used the powerful and reliable “big iron” for accounting and operations. As the story goes, the new president, Doug Pielsticker, couldn’t believe the company still used a mainframe and mandated an immediate switch to modern server systems. Two years later, the company went broke leaving employees without a final check. This outcome had nothing to do with mainframe versus servers, Apple vs. Microsoft. The bankruptcy came from ego, blindly following marketing hype, and poor decisions.

Of late, it is becoming vogue for CEOs to consider switching their entire technology infrastructure to Apple because they love the iPhone and iPad so much. The iPhone connects to Exchange for e-mail, plus it has all those shiny apps. The iPad gives you a larger form factor than the iPhone to browse the web and check e-mail with a crisp, sharp display. Then the hype kicks in and suddenly, “Mac has no viruses, the PC is dead, and we’ll all be cool and trouble-free!”  The iPhone and iPad are great products, but many folks are stunned and in disbelief when they hear:  Droid and Windows phones had ”Siri-like” features for years befor the iPhone figured it out; “Mac Defender/Protector” is a significant malware threat that Apple support cannot deny; and there is a $1,000 crime toolkit for ready download, designed specifically to target Americans with a disproportionate install base (approximately 10% of Americans versus the less than 5% worldwide Mac marketshare).

There are 5 main things to consider in going all Apple:

  1. What runs the business today? Unless you can do everything with Quickbooks for Mac, you’re going to have traditional Windows servers to run that accounting package, customer relationship management package, or other line-of-business applications. If there is no Mac client available for your main application, then you would have to double up and force everyone to either dual-boot to Windows or switch back and forth between virtual Windows – thus, slowing down the Mac considerably.
  2. Are you ready to change everything and what do your customers use? If you have to use the same systems as your customers or interact with their files, you’ll want to use what they use to make things simple and easy for both them and you. Beyond iPhone and iPad, it’s still a Windows-dominant world. There is an Apple equivalent (not version) of most applications. The problem is understanding what works together and wading through the myriad of unknown and untested software manufacturers.
  3. What kind of training does your staff need? While colleges have had dual Windows and Mac labs for years, unless you have a very young staff, they aren’t going to know how to use a Mac. Even the switch from PC Mac 101 has over 25 lessons to learn before knowing only how to do the basics.
  4. How often are you willing to upgrade? The warranty on all Apple products is just 1 year.  One year.  And Apple only officially supports the current shipping OS. The equipment obviously lasts longer than a year, but the push is always to stay current with the latest and greatest. OS upgrades often require application upgrades that require more powerful hardware. You get the picture. Now, isn’t that 3 year warranty on PC workstations plus Windows Servers with 10 years support on software sounding pretty good?
  5. Who is going to support you? There is only one Apple store in town in the middle of the mall. Geek Squad at Best Buy can setup your home theater, but aren’t equipped to handle your business support beyond basic repairs. That little 2 year-old startup with the neat smartcars that instantly converts everyone to me.com e-mail addresses only has two people in town.

For the fanboys on both sides, we prepared a comparison of hardware cost but decided not to include it. Apple servers were actually less than traditional servers (but what applications would they run?), while Apple iPhone, iPad, and Macs cost more than their Windows counterparts. However, you can always find a cheaper price of various commodity products somewhere to skew the results either way. The real difference and major cost are the 5 points above.

Mr. Pielsticker ran with the perception that mainframes were antiquated, not understanding that even Apple and Microsoft both use them today. He believed the hype of his day and purchased the hottest transportation package that had 37 different applications all with custom integration. No one knew how to run the new systems, which totally changed decades of proven business operations. Worse yet, IT had no way to support the myriad of new things that often didn’t play well together. Finally, Arrow couldn’t find the trucks or ensure delivery and the rest is history.

Most of our engineers cut their teeth on Apple. Many of our staff carry iPhones, and all of our board members have iPads. We regularly join Macs to domains. The technical stuff is easy to master, but what our customers look to us for is also business acumen. Use what you like; we don’t care one way or the other. We’re agnostic, as the profit margin on hardware is miniscule and not our focus. However, make smart decisions. The high-cost apple switch is also very high risk. Remember the story of Mr. Pielsticker, and after you change everything in your business for marketing hype, how will that help your customers or your profitability?

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Transparent Cloud

Posted on February 1, 2012 by matrixforce

When you talk about cloud computing, customers want transparency first and far most. Business customers want to know managed service providers focus on the cloud, use the services internally, and have more than just a few month’s experience. Then they want to know it’s true cloud computing and not legacy hosting.

We’re constantly amazed at the “we do it too” crowd. They seem to fall into a few main categories:

  1. Race car team that have every manufacturer logo on their website, because they’re all about selling hardware and software and really know very little about cloud computing.
  2. Dabblers that have a retail computer store, really do phone systems, or the main business is staffing.
  3. Braggers that have every vote-for-me award or testimonial, actually have a consumer business complete with BBB logo, and don’t run any mainstream cloud services internally.

The ugly truth is that cloud is hot and everyone in the channel is pushing it hard to compete, but most simply use the topic as a trojan horse to redirect to their true business. Gardner also predicts that one third of small service providers will fail in the next 5 years. The reason is that even if they convert their entire customer base to cloud, the revenue stream is less than 50% of on-premise products and services.

Besides the warning signs above, customers should investigate the following when looking at the cloud:

  1. Where is the provider’s website and e-mail? If it’s housed internally or the servers are simply at Rackspace or some other legacy hosting company, then there is no belief or use of cloud internally. Worse yet, the provider is only marginally better off and unlikely to help during a disaster.
  2. What is the business continuity plan of the provider? If it is dependent upon local hosters with the two buildings downtown or sites separated by just 100 miles, then these solutions are unlikely to meet demand or be reachable in emergent situations. Complex failover to the sites in Baltimore and Philedelphia hosted by the bankrupt India corporation should also be avoided.
  3. How many cloud subscribers do they really have? There is a simple independent third-party way you can verify if they are honest – contact us and we’ll tell you.
  4. What do they really know about business? Sure AT&T can provide Exchange Online, but how about streamlining web lead generation, sales, operations, accounting, and marketing? The real value is business process moving forward and any infrastructure player can migrate e-mail online.
  5. While there may be results in Google search, how many pages - not reprinted blogs from Tech Advisory – about cloud are on the website? If they are the experts, why just one page about the topic?

Matrixforce is there for you during normal business or disasters. Web, communications, documents, and line of business applications are all online and provided by the world’s leading manufacturers with several billion dollar facilities throughout the world. We don’t provide staffing or build computers or simply push the logo product of the day. Our business and customer focus are exceedingly transparent. The website has cloud features, benefits, demos, trials, pricing, knowledgebase articles, blog posts, definitions and terms, myths, and frequently asked questions. Whether it’s better productivity or improved operations, we can provide all of the above as validation and proven effectiveness.

You’re going to the cloud to escape data loss, maintenance/upgrades, and have better security and availability. Don’t be taken by cloud pretenders.

Filed under: Cloud Computing, IT Outsourcing, Managed Services, Matrixforce, Oklahoma, Tulsa | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

2012 Technology Predictions

Posted on January 1, 2012 by matrixforce

2011 was another great year for technology with a continued explosion of smartphones, tablets, cloud computing, online backup, and managed services. The following are some intriguing possibilities for 2012:

  1. Apple failure in the enterprise. 2012 will be the start of a general decline for Apple. While it will be subtle and not a function of revenue, the stock price cannot remain so high. Windows and Droid offer better features and more choice at a fraction of iPhone. With no tools to manage iPads in Active Directory, Microsoft will have a distinct advantage in the enterprise for Windows 8 tablets (without the need for the problematic iTunes) at less cost, and easier to use for consumers as well. The huge gamble with digital publishing will face stiff resistance from government, Google, and Amazon.
  2. Windows will have 35% of smartphone market share, mainly because of choice of manufacturers (addition of Nokia worldwide), easier to use Metro style interface, and more productivity without third-party apps. Apple will still lead, followed closely by Droid, and then Windows. 2012 will be the swing year because of the high cost of iPhone with no foreseeable advantages in features.
  3. Windows 8 Tablet takes the enterprise. Manageability will be key with Active Directory, along with integration for on-premise and online services from Office 365 to CRM and Dynamics (all without downloading apps).
  4. SEO for everyone. You’ve been hearing the XM spots about the top 5 things all business owners should know to dominate the competition, but 2012 will mark an exponential explosion of content on the web. For those wanting to compete, the 10 page brochure site will be replaced by the average 125 page site for customers.
  5. Big data forces storage recognition and online backup use. The average small to medium-sized business will have 2-3 terabytes of data in which technology like Storage Attached Networks (SAN) must be used for quick restore from snapshots and cheap replication for off-site backup. Tapes will take days for backup and failure rate and cost will be too great.
  6. Social media rules as content marketing. Video will be a key differentiator along with learning the ins and outs of the major platforms. Don’t join the conversation. Listen to customers, monitor competitors, and broadcast useful content for visits to your site.
  7. Software as a service or cloud computing will overtake on-premise options. Whether it is Office 365 or Google Apps, that business continuity thing that everyone wants but was too complex and expensive is now in reach – not including at less cost than on-premise with no upgrade concerns and better availability and security.
  8. IT jobs are changing and many will be lost. Mamas don’t let your babies grow up in IT. That huge area of infrastructure need will be decimated by online services and everyone in the industry must bring true business skills to the table and do brain work to help your organization.
  9. Managed Services will handle the majority of most business IT needs with more knowledge and resources at less cost than training, retaining, and growing full IT staffs.
  10. Mayan Calendar will start over. Or maybe it won’t, but the world is definitely not going to end.

Filed under: Cloud Computing, IT Outsourcing, Managed Services, Matrixforce, Network Security, Oklahoma, Online Backup, Tulsa, Unified Messaging | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

2011 Cloudy Recap

Posted on December 1, 2011 by matrixforce

It’s time again for Matrixforce to earnestly thank and congratulate our clients for their loyalty and business savvy. We all endured blizzards, severe storms, tornadoes, sweltering heat, and now earthquakes – with the pattern seemingly poised to start again in 2012. A matching pattern happened for the economy with deep recession to limited recovery and now flat uncertainty with the pending Presidential election. 2011 was defined by 3 key trends:

1) Cloud Computing doubled over last year making Matrixforce one of the world’s leading cloud providers. It takes a user base of more than 5,000 users before cloud computing is a viable business, but this model showcases our business productivity expertise beyond just technology infrastructure and offers a win-win for lower cost for us and clients. Our Matrixforce Orbit clients have escaped the upgrades, maintenance, and backup and recovery of critical communications and key data for an average of 50% savings versus on-premise infrastructure. Start a free 30 day trial today.

2) Online Backup also increased several nearly three-fold versus last year as clients scrambled to get critical data offsite for less cost and better security. Organizations no longer need a secondary site for failover with the dual maintenance, cost, and risk. Maybe it’s time to review your specific needs?

3) Managed Services again grew nearly 25% this year as some clients decided to take control of IT and others decided to give existing IT staff much-needed help. The first group enjoyed an average 46% savings over existing support and the latter enjoyed a win/win of reducing cost and having internal IT staff focus on brain work of helping move the organization forward with more time for end-user customer service. Unlike other competitors, these clients enjoy a 34 year firm history of providing some of the world’s leading IT strategy and consulting along with Matrixforce Delta proprietary methodology resulting in over 3,000 successful client projects.

2012 looks to be more of the same as customers continue to look for savings in operations. Please contact Matrixforce at (918) 622-1167 Option 3 or sales@matrixforce.com to schedule a meeting and demo to review your specific savings.

Finally, no recap would be complete without review of last year’s predictions. Looking back now, maybe these were fairly safe:

  1. Microsoft Office 365 did add more than 15 million users.
  2. Google Apps only added approximately 7 million.
  3. Verizon hasn’t quite caught AT&T with iPhone sales, but competition, new feature mis-steps, and the death of Steve Jobs may stall sales next year.
  4. Droid is still comfortably number 2, but even with a big increase Windows Phone 7 has only approximately 17% market share.
  5. RIMM did not decommission proprietary Blackberry messaging in favor of Microsoft ActiveSync and its stock is now below book value with the future looking increasingly bleak.
  6. VMWare still holds 58% of the virtualization market, but anger over new licensing prices may tip the scales to Microsoft Hpyer-V next year.
  7. It’s official. Flash is dead and Windows 8 will only support HTML 5.
  8. Droid has suffered a great deal with malware and more virus scanners for iPhone/iPad seem to be released daily.
  9. It seemed obvious, but neither Apple or Google have moved on the gaming front.
  10. Just go to Dell and you’ll see Windows 7 x64 is the default for workstation operating systems.

Filed under: Cloud Computing, IT Outsourcing, Managed Services, Matrixforce, Oklahoma, Tulsa, Virtualization | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Future Phone

Posted on November 1, 2011 by matrixforce

Zander goes into Best Buy. One of the 5 phone sales people pounces immediately. Before “I need a phone” was out of his mouth, it was some crap literature shoved in his hand and wait here in the iPhone line. Ok it finally has voice integration, but the iCloud is too new and behind even Microsoft Live by like 10 years. It’s also too much like the Blackberry infrastructure that is not too big to fail. Plus, it’s still the same small tiles and all the clutter, swiping, and downloading. Been there, done that – not bad quality, but it’s like buying a consistent Big Mac at steak prices without fries or a drink. Where can Apple go after Jobs anyway?

Here we go. Geek Squad guy’s next answer is the wall of Droids. At least you don’t have the whole iRobot thing and have some choice of hardware and form-factor. The problem was each of the devices had various versions of the OS and some ran well while others were visually very slow to react. Plus, it simply followed the Apple paradigm of download this app, get some more clutter from who knows where, and we all want to look foolish counting like the fair pony going through screens. The experience is really hit and miss.

“Dude. How about those?” Huge eye roll with some kind of stoner shudder and a weak comment about hating those phones and not even knowing how to call someone they are texting. “Seems like you press the name or number at the top.” The look of astonishment on his face said it all. Typical Generation Whatever that ran up their parents’ cell bill in the previous 4 years texting and calling more than the local tower could handle. Now he’s graduated to adding a Gmail account and whatever feels easiest to add contacts and update Facebook. Beyond Angry Birds and the latest app there is little or no understanding of how a smartphone really works.

So let’s see. The tiles are much bigger and have active changing displays. Click the People hub and you have all the status updates from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Group button is just like Google+ so you can e-mail or text any group in one shot. Third generation voice makes Siri look as foolish as it sounds, especially with the recent edition of voice to text. Me tile to hit all your configured Social Media in one swoop. Built-in Office integration for Exchange and SharePoint along with direct posting from the phone. Post to your Sky Drive and find, wipe, or ring the phone all from Live.com – hmm no apps to download so far. And you get the latest games including favorite Xbox titles along with an excellent quality quick-draw camera and favorite music without the clunky iTunes?

The catch must be price. Nope. Superior technology and much cooler for $49 – $99. This looks like the phone for the future. Hell of a lot better than being a lemming at $400 an iPop. “Listen, Slick. Toke a little less wacky weed and start people with these first – and what’s with the white socks?”

Filed under: Cloud Computing, Matrixforce, Oklahoma, Tulsa, Unified Messaging | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Cloud Computing Security

Posted on October 1, 2011 by matrixforce

This is your story for October which is National Security Month. It is based upon real events, but the events are dramatized and the names have been changed to protect the innocent:

Marcus now got it, but of course it was too late. The number of attacks at the same time was astonishing. His mind was still reeling on how employees - not thieves, hackers, or competitors – could do such a thing. The problem was what could he do? There was no hard proof for a civil action, the DA was gridlocked dealing with the meth epidemic, and killing the SOBs would just land him in prison. The dagger was many lost customers thought these pirates were the bomb. Few remembered his knowledge started the relationship or that Marcus trained and managed the staff that gave them service. He also couldn’t cry foul to the press, on the Internet, or to customers because of legal exposure and he would be perceived as the bad guy.

Marcus had brought Joey up in the business from ground zero. Eagle Scout Joey had no college education, but learned fast and worked his butt off. A couple of years later, Joey convinced Marcus to hire his other Eagle  Scout pal, Nick. Same drill, except Nick was in IT. The company prospered and things seemed to be going well, until one day Joey and Nick decided they could do better than old man Marcus. The plan was simple. Joey would run off the good people and tell others the company was going bankrupt, while approaching customers with his concerns and that he was starting a similar venture. Meanwhile, Nick had full access to all files, e-mail, and backup. By the time Joey and Nick quit to start their pirate adventure, Marcus’ business had been run into the ground with some customers buying products and services from the pirates while they were still employed by Marcus. Just for spite, Nick also gave an external hard drive to a competitor to try to fully destroy Marcus.

So, Marcus decided to hire a managed services company with an emphasis in business productivity and security. They were cheaper than Nick with a full staff and their only motive was protecting the company. Marcus was shocked to learn that the external hard drive backup could be restored to any workstation with a free trial copy of the backup software. It was also an eye-opener that Nick had full access to all files and could even read his e-mail and the e-mail of the other sales people. So then Marcus took the recommendation to move to online backup and cloud computing.

The backup was encrypted and keyed to a system that only matched one vendor, even though the software was widely used. Marcus could restore any files himself and better yet, the files were not in a readable format for even the vendor staff to access. Moving critical documents online meant only Marcus was the administrator of the site and access to all files was recorded by date/time and user.  Marcus eliminated a file and mail server and all the associated software and technical services to maintain and upgrade going forward. Better yet his costs were lower and he gained business continuity, regardless of disaster or harm to the physical brick and mortar of the company. Now 5 years later, Marcus is more prosperous and taking back customers from the pirates, after being forced to change virtually all business tactics and strategy.

Filed under: Cloud Computing, IT Outsourcing, Managed Services, Matrixforce, Network Security, Oklahoma, Online Backup, Tulsa | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Bungled Unified Messaging

Posted on September 1, 2011 by matrixforce

We’ve done more than our share of firefighting over the last 30 days. While there are a lot of acceptable approaches to technology, straying from or outright ignoring best practices is just a disaster waiting to happen.

The call came in early Friday morning. The customer was in a panic, fed up with their current support, and we were referred by one of their suppliers. E-mail was down and it was costing the business plenty. We were able to do a remote session within minutes and access the Exchange server. The customer had explained the environment was HyperV and it was a virtual Exchange 2007 server. The most common cause of e-mail failures is low disk space or a large message hanging the queue. With virtualization, recovery is usually easier. Should be just a walk in the park, right?

No, wrong. Exchange was 2 service packs behind. We didn’t need them, but couldn’t get help from Microsoft anyway because unified messaging was installed – which flat isn’t supported in a virtual environment. It didn’t make sense either as the customer had a Cisco Unity system that performed the voice mail to e-mail function. Exchange had not been given enough RAM and had just one processor. There were two storage groups: one for executives and the other for the remaining staff. The exec database was only about 18GB, but the staff was over 200GB. Why hadn’t all 5 storage groups been used to make the staff database 4 manageable files? We mounted and started the executives storage group and they had communication, but the staff database was corrupt and everyone else had no e-mail.

When a system is down, you don’t want to waste valuable time removing unnecessary components or installing needed service packs because the likelihood is more problems will be introduced and recovery will be more complex. While the big dogs temporarily had e-mail, we had to take them offline to run a repair utility. The customer only had one virtual host and one Exchange server or we could have left executives working and run the repair on the other machine. The databases also were not on any storage and simply part of the virtual hard drive. Because of the poor configuration, file access was slow and the repair was calculated to take more than 72 hours.

The customer was also paying an outrageous fortune for a Zenith Infotel store and forward system billed as online backup, that just simply copied files to a NAS. In the best of scenarios with a properly functioning Exchange, many seasoned veterans don’t know how to restore an Exchange database and merge the recovery storage group. A copy of a raw Exchange database would be corrupt too and require repair, after taking an initial 4 hours to copy across the network from the NAS.

So 90 minutes after the initial call, the customer is informed that she has a costly and extended outage of e-mail until mid next week or switch to cloud computing and have e-mail flowing within minutes. All of her problems could have been avoided by:

1) Giving the virtual machine more memory and at least two processors.

2) Utilizing storage so data access is fast and cannot get corrupt by being part of a virtual hard drive. Also, snapshots can be restored in minutes rather than hours.

3) Having a second virtual host and virtual Exchange server so maintenance or backup/repair functions can be done on  one machine while the other is servicing the rest of the organization that is functional.

4) Using a valid online backup solution that doesn’t simply copy raw files, but utilizes the Microsoft API to properly backup the databases.

5) Investing in managed services to keep current with maintenance by applying service packs and monitoring disk space.

Filed under: Cloud Computing, Managed Services, Matrixforce, Oklahoma, Online Backup, Tulsa, Unified Messaging, Virtualization | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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