Geeklog Site

Outlook's Auto Accept functionality

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 20:38:55 -0800

There seems to be a great deal of confusion as to the intended functionality of Microsoft Outlook's "Auto Accept" of meeting and task requests. Some clarification might be in order. The point of auto-accept is to make the job of moving other people's requests to your calendar or tasks easier while you're using Outlook, not to circumvent the person requesting the appointment or task knowing whether you got the request or not. This, plus the best practice of logging off periodically when not at one's computer, explains why Outlook's auto-accept functions as it does: it only works when Outlook is running.

Microsoft recommends direct booking when the burden of responsibility for one's calendar or tasks is left to someone else, which you do when you open their calendar or tasks from your Outlook and place an appointment or task on it.

the Importance of Periodic Maintenance

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 10:13:37 -0700

Starting November 2007, I'm insisting on periodic maintenance for clients with servers. Read on to understand why. In order to lower your total cost of ownership, I need to ensure that preventative measures are taken regularly rather than only responding to issues as they arise unexpectedly. To keep things running smoothly, servers require security updates and regular monitoring. Event logs need checking for signs of trouble, updates need to be applied to maintain both functionality and security, backups need to be tested, a baseline performance metric should be logged and monitored, antivirus software needs monitoring. The list goes on. If one hour per server per month seems excessive, we should discuss the cost/benefit of outsourcing the applications hosted by the servers in question, but in most cases this has already been done. Please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have about this. I send out bills in advance for periodic maintenance, because as a system administrator, I know it needs to be done. When your monthly maintenance invoice is paid, you can expect a full report available by logging in to this website, in addition to system administrator's notes pertaining to the network's configuration and backup regime. If services are required before periodic maintenance is performed, it will be the first thing on your next invoice, since many of the things normally done as part of periodic maintenance should be or must be done before other issues can be attended to. For most of my clients, this means fewer surprises and a lower bill over the course of the year, as well as the peace-of-mind of having vital statistics on-hand in one place. For those clients who prefer not to have me perform periodic maintenance on their servers, this at least ensures that the act of opting out of this service is a deliberate one on the part of the client, rather than anyone's oversight. An ounce of prevention is truly worth a pound of cure, particularly when the network you depend on is concerned. Clients who opt not to maintain their servers historically have paid much more for service when it has been required as a result, and it is my hope that those who have been coasting with fingers crossed will take a moment to consider the value of this proposition before it becomes clear in hindsight. As a system administrator, I am expected to do what is best for my clients and their networks. Both your satisfaction and my reputation are at stake; I will do what I can to ensure the safety of both. Thanks and best regards, Ken

Your Backup Regime

Tue, 15 May 2007 20:18:00 -0700

You know backups are important - but have you thought much about how you're making them and what you'll do when the time comes to use one?

Everyone needs to think more about backups. This is not to say that everyone needs to obsess over the security of their computer systems. Far from it. The simple fact, however, is that most people do not think about their backups until the moment they are desperately needed.

The most common misconception about the need for backups is that they are primarily needed because a hard disk might someday crash. It's true: the odds of your hard disk crashing on any given day aren't that great. Unfortunately, hard disks do crash - and eventually, your hard disk will crash. Far more likely is the very commonplace scenario of you or someone on your staff making a mistake that either modifies or deletes something important. The vast majority of people who suffer from the lack of a good backup suffer not because something broke, but because someone made a mistake, and this is a very important distinction, as we'll soon see.

Safeguarding Against Hardware Failure

The first thing we want to protect against is hardware failure - since it's the easiest. Hard disks are cheap, and hard disk controllers that keep two or more drives mirrored are relatively cheap. What would it cost you in downtime if you had to replace a hard disk right now? Think about it! Would it cost you $250 or more? If it would, you need to strongly consider a hardware RAID controller and a second hard disk. If not, skip to the next section. Let me clarify: a hardware RAID controller is a device that controls two or more hard disk drives and makes them appear to your computer as though they were one hard disk. Should one drive fail, another may be installed in its place. The system will meanwhile continue to run on the hard disk or disks that remain. Various refinements include hot-swappable hard disk enclosures that allow all of this to happen while the computer remains turned on, and various levels of RAID (which means "Redundant Array of Independent Disks") that allow for the burden of keeping your data online to be distributed amongst more disks. While you may have seen RAID capabilities being advertised more and more frequently as of late, the important distinction between true hardware RAID and software RAID is an important one: software RAID is far less reliable because it relies on the computer to keep the disks in sync with each other, whereas hardware RAID controllers typically dedicate an onboard computer to the task. As often as I've seen software RAID fail, I cannot recommend it. I've even seen it corrupt data with horrific consequences. Do yourself a favor and get a decent hardware RAID controller and a hot-swap enclosure for your disks. It's well worth the added expense.

Safeguarding Against Human Error

While hard disk drives are all going to crash eventually, you will almost certainly delete or modify something by accident first. This brings me to my next point: the importance of off-line storage cannot be overstated. It is not, as some might think, enough to have an external hard disk plugged in, to which you copy your files. The same lightning that strikes your computer senseless will in all probability simultaneously destroy the backup drive. Secondly, making a mistake and proceeding to overwrite your last good backup with that mistake doesn't solve any problems. You must be making a separate backup as often as the value of your work dictates. If you can't afford to lose a day's work, you must back up every day. If you can't think about this every day, you must get in the habit of making a backup every day so that the consequences of your not having thought about it are minimized. Most importantly, it must be a backup that is removed from the computer every day or it will not save you when saving you is what you need it to do.

Backing up the Windows-based PC

The best way to back up your Windows-based PC depends to some extent on your particular operating system and applications, but some things hold true in any case: you need a backup that is kept offline and out of harm's way, is easily accessible in the event of a failure, and that goes back in time as long as you need it to. It needs to be reliable, and it needs to be made as automatic as possible since we all have enough to worry about without adding unnecessary tedium to our daily routine. Generally you want the system to automatically perform a full backup of everything on one interval - typically monthly - and then create smaller backups of everything that has changed since the last backup on a more frequent interval - typically daily. You need to have access to any special software you used to make the backup in case you need to restore to an empty hard disk, and you need to be sure that any dependencies your system may have on hardware - like the disk controller it needs to boot from - are going to be replaceable in the event of a catastrophe.

The vast majority of my clients are now using portable hard disk drives to hold their backup images. A good example of an inexpensive, ultra-portable solution that fits in your pocket and only needs one cable is the Western Digital Passport. You can use DVDs to archive your backups, but this can be time-consuming since it takes 10-15 minutes to fill a disc on average, and odds are you'll fill a great many discs at least once a month. If you do use hard disks to archive your backups, please don't rely on just one - hard disks can and do fail, and portable hard disks need special care to keep them from undergoing debilitating drops or extremes of temperature.

This question comes up often enough that I've committed the explanation to the website. Should you require assistance, it is available - I will be more than happy to set up your backups and provide any level of assistance in keeping them operating, but the ultimate responsibility rests with the person with physical access to the computer, and that person is you.

Happy (and safe) computing!

--Ken Greenlaw GQIT LLC