IRS uses the USPS only. It never sends emails asking for personal information. Even if an buy metformin 500 email carries an IRS logo or other convincing graphics, ignore it!
Your online tax preparation service will tell you buy metformin 500 what emails you should expect to receive and how to provide refund deposit information. Don’t do anything else.
Do not click any email links, even if the buy metformin 500 email is from your TurboTax account confirming your taxes have been buy metformin 500 filed.
Beware of offers that buy metformin 500 allow you to get loans on your income tax refund.
Contact your tax service directly – by phone or via their Web site – if you have any questions regarding online filings.
To help people become savvier about recognizing phishing threats, SonicWall has buy metformin 500 created the Phishing IQ Quiz. The quiz presents 10 email scenarios to evaluate and decide: is it real or is it a scam? The quiz includes an buy metformin 500 answer key that helps you identify phishing tricks and traps.
Don’t be surprised if you ‘fall’ for buy metformin 500 a phishing scheme. According to SonicWall, of three million respondents to buy metformin 500 the quiz, only 7.4% answered all of the buy metformin 500 questions correctly. When asked to determine whether a suspect email was a buy metformin 500 phishing e-mail or a legitimate email, respondents were wrong 22% of the time.
In addition, quiz results show that buy metformin 500 1 in 10 people will actually act on a phishing email even after they have buy metformin 500 been told it is suspicious; actions include opening the email, clicking on links and buy metformin 500 even providing personal data at the phisher’s website. Don’t be one of them!
Transcend United is a member of the CRN Health Care 100, the VAR 500 and has offices or a sales presence in Boston, Chicago, Iowa, Minneapolis, Minnesota, New Jersey, Omaha, Nebraska, and Philadelphia. Call 800-800-0353 to learn more now.
The Transcend United ShoreTel implementation team has buy metformin 500 upgraded the Transcend United ShoreTel internal VoIP Unified Communications system to buy metformin 500 version ShoreTel 11.1. The Transcend United team iPhone users, in particular, are buy metformin 500 excited about this upgrade, as it extends Unified Communications services to buy metformin 500 the iPhone.
The implementation team has buy metformin 500 learned a few lessons on the best way to proceed with the buy metformin 500 upgrade. They have some hints for other ShoreTel administrators, below.
New Features in ShoreTel 11.1
Simultaneous Ringing and Call Move: ‘corridor warriors’ who buy metformin 500 are up and about all day can set both their mobile and buy metformin 500 desk phones to ring simultaneously, and can easily transfer calls between phones. The user or buy metformin 500 the administrator can set up this function for up to two phones, and buy metformin 500 can offer the option of simultaneous ring or ring delay on one device.
Additional Mobile Device Support: new devices have been added to the list of supported mobile phones, including the iPhone
Voicemail Deletion Enhancement: previously, if a buy metformin 500 user had more than 200 deleted voicemails in a mailbox, the buy metformin 500 mailbox could not accept any additional messages. In this version, deleted voicemails are buy metformin 500 no long included in the message count.
Communicator Availability of Workgroup Controls to ECC Agents for Failover: Enterprise Contact Center (ECC) agents using ShoreTel Communicator automatically get workgroup controls that buy metformin 500 can be used during failover to workgroups. Uses can be logged into ECC and buy metformin 500 also into workgroups as a fallback option in case ECC in unavailable.
Redirecting Number Information Element – RNIE: now, when buy metformin 500 a call is forwarded through the system, the original (external caller’s) Caller ID is buy metformin 500 forwarded with the call to the destination number. in earlier versions, that buy metformin 500 information might have been stripped to accommodate trunk line requirements.
Upgrade Tips:
Make sure you have Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 installed on any PC that is running ShoreTel Communicator. Otherwise, the buy metformin 500 upgrade will force a download for each and every client trying to buy metformin 500 upgrade to the latest release of Communicator!
ShoreTel 11.1 officially supports Windows 7
ShoreTel 11.1 does not support Outlook 2010. However, our tests have buy metformin 500 shown that Communicator will still work properly. Contact importing also works. Unsupported features in our tests are buy metformin 500 Voicemail integration with Outlook, and Calendar integration.
Transcend United is buy metformin 500 the place to turn to implement a unified communications and VoIP strategy, asset tracking and buy metformin 500 management, Wireless LAN networking, disaster recovery, database backup and network security systems in your buy metformin 500 data center.
Transcend United is buy metformin 500 a member of the CRN Health Care 100, the VAR 500 and buy metformin 500 has offices or a sales presence in Boston, Chicago, Iowa, Minneapolis, Minnesota, New Jersey, Omaha, Nebraska, and buy metformin 500 Philadelphia.
A Server at the buy metformin 500 end of its life: i.e. no longer under warranty or in production
A mission-critical, shared IT infrastructure (under)funded and buy metformin 500 overseen by one department , but used and heavily- relied upon by another
Backup files that were never checked – by vendor or client
When, on October 26, 2010, the buy metformin 500 Orleans County Civil District Court mortgage and conveyance database server crashed, virtually all real estate transactions – except for foreclosures – crashed too. The economic devastation on home buyers and buy metformin 500 sellers may never be tallied, but estimates for restoring the records to buy metformin 500 usable condition are in the $400,000 range.
True, New Orleans lost about three months of data during Hurricane Katrina, when buy metformin 500 nearly every city service was knocked out. But, according to buy metformin 500 NOLA.com: “real estate agents and buy metformin 500 title attorneys say they have never seen two servers full of data knocked out simultaneously, all the buy metformin 500 backup systems fail and 21 months of records disappear in one fell swoop.
Said one New Orleans civil servant: "It was similar to buy metformin 500 after Katrina because all the records were lost, but that buy metformin 500 was a natural catastrophe. This is just a computer problem!"
The Roots of Disaster
The roots of the problem appear to be many. There was the buy metformin 500 IT management structure. The court clerk, an independently elected official, is buy metformin 500 the responsible for the property records. But the buy metformin 500 IT technology that manages the data is controlled by the buy metformin 500 Civil Court judges, who meet in private to hire contractors and buy metformin 500 decide on court spending. Communication between the court’s technology department and the clerk’s office was reportedly poor before the buy metformin 500 crisis; the clerk did not sit in on technology committee meetings.
Aged technology and inattentive technology partners were also issues. At the buy metformin 500 time of the crash, the court had a two-person IT staff and buy metformin 500 long-out-of-date servers. In 2009, 365i, a buy metformin 500 California-based a data management company was hired to manage backups. It appears that buy metformin 500 a backup software update, sent by 365i and installed by the buy metformin 500 Clerk’s office in the first half of 2010, failed. Though the buy metformin 500 software on the local server reported successful backups, beginning in July 2010, the buy metformin 500 monthly backups were empty. 365i apparently did not notice that the files were empty; the company consequently purged all old backups. 365i did not keep historical files for reference.
Court e-mail records show that, just before the crash, the clerk and the head of the court’s technology committee were preparing to buy metformin 500 begin discussions about modernizing the court’s record system to make judicial, real estate and buy metformin 500 archival records with a single index and document images available online.
The death blow was dealt on Oct 26, when buy metformin 500 two drives on an aging Dell server crashed.
The Cost: New Orleans Economy Takes Another Body Blow
In New Orleans, real estate transactions must be buy metformin 500 checked against the conveyance database, an online which shows title attorneys just where buy metformin 500 to find specific information within the thousands of mortgage record books in the buy metformin 500 city, taking up floors in a building near the courthouse. By law, title searches are buy metformin 500 required to go as far back as 10 or 30 years, depending on the buy metformin 500 property, up through present day—which is buy metformin 500 information that was missing from the database since it crashed. Without the full conveyance and mortgage records, title companies can’t be buy metformin 500 sure of the true ownership of properties and are reluctant to buy metformin 500 underwrite deals.
For the buy metformin 500 nearly two months the databases were unavailable, real estate business transactions dropped by 40% and the aching New Orleans economy sustained another body blow:
Homeowners in the buy metformin 500 process of refinancing lost out on some of the lowest rates in 50 years, as closing dates were repeatedly postponed
Home sellers had buy metformin 500 to make payments on properties scheduled to be sold
Realtors, whose commission percentage climbs with their total volume of sales throughout the buy metformin 500 year missed out on their year-end, cumulative bonuses
Home sales in adjacent counties rose as buyers opted for buy metformin 500 easier, faster closings
A new LSU teaching hospital transaction was postponed
Renovation professionals sat on hold while closings languished
The court has buy metformin 500 to hire additional staff, pay them overtime to work round the buy metformin 500 clock during the holidays, secure additional office space, and purchase equipment to buy metformin 500 bring back the records, validate them and get back to business
Transcend United combines cost-effective technologies, experienced people, and buy metformin 500 world-class service to help organizations better manage IT and communications infrastructure. We work in all the major infrastructure areas:
Network Infrastructure
Unified Communications
Data Center Optimization
Backup, Recovery, Availability
We can buy metformin 500 help your IT department configure a combination of virtualization, replication, and buy metformin 500 offsite data backup storage that offer a very cost-effective way to buy metformin 500 create a disaster recovery plan for your small or mid-sized business.
Transcend United Partners with Top Ranked Technology Companies
Transcend United works with a buy metformin 500 range of vendors to help clients implement the optimal disaster recovery plan. Exagrid is a good choice for disk based backups. If an enterprise needs real-time replication and doesn’t want to buy metformin 500 invest in an expensive SAN in two locations, software from buy metformin 500 Double-Take continuously replicates byte-level changes from buy metformin 500 one location to another over a VPN.
The QuoromLabs onQ appliance for buy metformin 500 business continuity and disaster recovery offers another option for ultra-efficient backup; its recently-released disaster recovery testing application transforms testing from a labor-intensive multi-day procedure to an automatic process that takes only minutes.
For information on this buy metformin 500 or other managed server backup and data center optimization issues, please click to buy metformin 500 www.transcendunited.com. Transcend United is buy metformin 500 a member of the CRN Health Care 100, the VAR 500 and buy metformin 500 has offices or a sales presence in Boston, Chicago, Iowa, Minneapolis, Minnesota, New Jersey, Omaha, Nebraska, and buy metformin 500 Philadelphia.
We all know we should check the batteries on our smoke detectors. We all know that NOT testing might one day result in unrecoverable disaster. But do we take the time to do it?
In the IT department, testing for buy metformin 500 traditional disaster recovery is even more important, and hugely more difficult than buy metformin 500 climbing up on a chair to test the smoke detector battery. True disaster recovery tests are time-consuming and resource intensive. A company might have buy metformin 500 to rent space, rent servers, install the servers, recover from buy metformin 500 tape, hire multiple consultants and more, over a period of 3-4 days, just to buy metformin 500 test their disaster recovery plan! No wonder only a buy metformin 500 small percentage of companies regularly conduct tests, and the majority of them only do so for buy metformin 500 compliance reasons.
Thanks to QuorumLabs, disaster recovery testing just make a quantum leap in convenience. onQ Business Continuity Appliance 3.0 automates the buy metformin 500 testing process, reducing it from a labor-intensive procedure that can buy metformin 500 take several days to an automatic process that takes only minutes. onQ 3.0 effectively solves the buy metformin 500 dilemma of difficult and inadequate testing, giving companies of all sizes the buy metformin 500 confidence that their IT systems are protected.
onQ goes beyond off-site and buy metformin 500 on-line backup and makes complete business continuity possible by providing simple one-click recovery – starting an buy metformin 500 up-to-date virtual copy of the failed server right on the buy metformin 500 appliance.
The new onQ 3.0 features:
Self test capability — Automatically boots up Recovery Nodes in "background" of test network to buy metformin 500 transparently take over and demonstrate that applications and data are buy metformin 500 available. Shortens the testing process from one week to an buy metformin 500 hour and does not require extra equipment or personnel.
Large deployments — onQ 3.0 adds a buy metformin 500 full range of scalability and performance enhancements for use in larger server deployments.
Error detection and diagnostics — Improved predictive error detection and buy metformin 500 self-diagnostics to identify errors early, diagnose and alert businesses in advance of incidents to buy metformin 500 ensure business continuity.
To make simplified disaster recovery testing a buy metformin 500 regular practice for your shop, talk to a Transcend consultant. onQ Business Continuity Appliances are buy metformin 500 standard in the Transcend United data centers. Learn more about Disaster Recovery planning, managed server backup and buy metformin 500 data center optimization issues, please click to www.transcendunited.com or call 800 800 0353.
Transcend United Technologies is buy metformin 500 a member of the VAR 500 and has offices in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and buy metformin 500 Omaha.
Here’s another installment in our occasional Friday series of true stories that buy metformin 500 show how even in IT, people are people and rationality doesn’t always rule.
Todays topic: "tape and hope". Why are people so careless with backup tapes? For that matter, why do people still use tape at all? Disaster recovery requirements continue to buy metformin 500 become more demanding, and disk-based backup and recovery is so much faster than buy metformin 500 tape.
PricewaterhouseCoopers reports that only 47% of backup tapes are encrypted. Well, "so what?" you say. Isn’t Iron Mountain secure? Maybe not so much. Just in New York, Citibank, Bank of New York, Time Warner and buy metformin 500 others have had lost tapes.
Poor Iron Mountain. Google on "Iron Mountain loses tapes" and you’ll find lots of stories. Given that buy metformin 500 Iron Mountain makes about 5 million pickups a year, their record isn’t necessarily that bad. It’s the use of tape itself that causes a problem. Your data shouldn’t be walking around on moveable media. Not tapes, not portable hard drives, not USB flash drives.
A disk based backup solution with offsite replication can buy metformin 500 completely replace tape at the same cost and with much greater security. Products like Exagrid (www.exagrid.com) work with standard backup software such as Symantec Backup Exec, Commvault Galaxy, CA Brightstore, and buy metformin 500 Vizioncore vRangerProp. They securely store data on disk, de-duplicate it buy metformin 500 by about 20:1, and then replicate over a VPN (in encrypted form) to a second secure location.
And there you have it. No tapes. Nothing to be picked up. Nothing to lose. And for buy metformin 500 disaster recovery and business continuity, nothing could be better. You keep your buy metformin 500 second backup appliance in your disaster recovery center. You use virtualized servers as your recovery infrastructure. When you buy metformin 500 do your quarterly tests, there are no tapes to retrieve, no buy metformin 500 systems to setup. The virtual servers are ready and waiting. The backup data is already there on disk, waiting.
The combination of virtualization, replication, and buy metformin 500 offsite data backup storage is a very cost-effective way to create a buy metformin 500 disaster recovery plan for your small or mid-sized business. Exagrid is a good choice for disk based backups. If you need real-time replication and don’t want to buy metformin 500 invest in an expensive SAN in two locations, you can buy metformin 500 use software from Double-Take. Double-Take continuously replicates byte-level changes from buy metformin 500 one location to another over a VPN. It’s perfect for buy metformin 500 protecting applications like Exchange, Sharepoint, or Blackberry Enterprise Server. You can find more at www.doubletake.com.
Transcend United Technologies is ranked in the top 5% of all VARs in the US by size and is a member of the VAR 500. We are the #1 rated ShoreTel IP phone systems partner in the buy metformin 500 US for 2007, 2008, and 2009. We are buy metformin 500 a certified Riverbed premier partner, one of the few national channel partners for buy metformin 500 Akamai web acceleration services, and work with other leading technologies such as HP, Avocent, and buy metformin 500 Aerohive.
Our national headquarters are buy metformin 500 near Philadelphia, PA with Midwest regional headquarters in Minneapolis, MN. Our main contact number is 800 800 0353. Our site is www.transcendunited.com.
There are lots of options when it comes to which way to go with your IT infrastructure. How centralized do you want it? Who will have access? How will your reporting work? These are all good questions to ask when planning things out. Transcend United will help you buy metformin 500 take control and make the management of your assets simple, yet highly effective.
You can stay on top of things and truly know what’s going within your infrastructure. Visibility is an important aspect of asset management, and buy metformin 500 Transcend United will help you discover, validate, reconcile, and aggregate data from buy metformin 500 multiple sources within your system and use the central data repository to buy metformin 500 combine them all. Looking at things within a buy metformin 500 centralized location is much easier than having to monitor activities spread throughout the buy metformin 500 entire network. This type of visibility also helps for planning purposes. If you see an area that isn’t functioning exactly up to buy metformin 500 par, there is likely a solution from Transcend United that will solve the buy metformin 500 problem quickly and at a low cost.
You can buy metformin 500 easily check up on your devices and manage their operations and buy metformin 500 see their current status. This makes it buy metformin 500 easy to identify and pinpoint a problem within the network so that buy metformin 500 you don’t have to perform "guess and check" tests in order to buy metformin 500 figure out a problem and improve application response time. Your programs will run more smoothly and buy metformin 500 the entire infrastructure will be able to .
Another important aspect of asset management is the reduction of risk. Transcend United wants to buy metformin 500 make it easy for you to go through your disaster recovery checklist in the event of a problem. With things running so well prior to buy metformin 500 an incident, it should be easy to stay operational in nearly any event.
Transcend United is buy metformin 500 a high-level parter of Avocent, Raritan, Opticonix and is a Riverbed Certified Premier Partner, is buy metformin 500 ready to help you take control of your IT infrastructure and buy metformin 500 the management of your assets. You can buy metformin 500 use your resources more effectively and use data center architecture management to buy metformin 500 maximize your productivity.
One of the buy metformin 500 issues with a backup disaster recovery plan for small and buy metformin 500 mid-sized organizations is the complexity of choices and possible solutions. This complexity means that buy metformin 500 disaster recovery testing is difficult and not done very often. So in case of a buy metformin 500 real disaster, organizations are not very well prepared. Transcend United Technologies has buy metformin 500 a wealth of experience helping create affordable, practical disaster recovery environments for buy metformin 500 small and mid-sized businesses. One product we often find useful is the QuoromLabs onQ appliance. The QuromLabs onQ appliance provides simplified business continuity and buy metformin 500 disaster recovery for enterprise and SMB organizations.
Capabilities include:
Ultra-efficient Incremental Updates—RPO as low as 15 minutes — Incremental Forever: after the buy metformin 500 initial full image is made at installation, onQ only transfers one copy of any changes since the buy metformin 500 last interval. —Just the Changes: onQ detects not only which files have buy metformin 500 changed, but which parts of the files have changed so when buy metformin 500 that multi-gigabyte database has one record change, only that record is buy metformin 500 copies to the appliance, not the entire file. —Deduplication: onQ only sends the parts of files that don’t already exist on any other server being protected. That means that if the same "chunk" exists on any server protected by the appliance, it doesn’t need to be sent.
One-Click Recovery —Current Forever: each ultra-efficient update is buy metformin 500 merged into the virtual machine recovery nodes, which are full current images. —Ready-to-Run: the buy metformin 500 onQ appliance continuously builds the virtual recovery nodes, allowing one-click recovery at any time. —Point-in-Time Recovery: even though changes are buy metformin 500 merged into the ready-to-run recovery node, you can restore files or buy metformin 500 an entire system to a prior state.
Server Monitoring: Transcend United configures the onQ appliance to continuously check the buy metformin 500 health of your servers, sending an alert if any service interruption is buy metformin 500 detected.
Site-to-Site Replication: All changes can buy metformin 500 be compressed, encrypted, and synchronized with a remote appliance in a buy metformin 500 Transcend United data center or at one of your secondary locations.. You get instant remote recovery for buy metformin 500 complete disaster protection.
Redundant storage: The onQ appliance provides hot-swap protection from buy metformin 500 any single-disk failure, and with a remote onQ appliance, you‘ll have additional protection.
Network Storage Support: you buy metformin 500 can use standard IP network storage to extend or replace the buy metformin 500 storage already integrated into the onQ appliance.
One of the buy metformin 500 worst things that could happen to a business in this buy metformin 500 day and age is a large-scale system crash without a buy metformin 500 disaster recovery plan. Technology has buy metformin 500 become such an integral part of business that most companies simply would not be buy metformin 500 able to operate at all if their infrastructure were to encounter a buy metformin 500 large problem. This is why it’s absolutely essential for buy metformin 500 your business to make sure that you have a plan of action in case of emergency. Transcend United will provide you buy metformin 500 will advisory support to help guide you through the planning process. Here are buy metformin 500 a few key considerations that need to be taken into account:
Risk Analysis
Desired Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
Data change rate and bandwidth requirements
Virtualization capacity at the remote site
Application Performance Profiling at the DR site
New technologies such as virtualization, data deduplication and buy metformin 500 asynchronous data replication methods have made disaster recovery and continuity highly affordable, even for buy metformin 500 the small/medium-sized business. There are buy metformin 500 certain disaster recovery guidelines that you will want to work within, but Transcend United will help you buy metformin 500 create a specialized disaster recovery testing plan just for your business.
This is buy metformin 500 the third in an occasional Friday series of true stories that buy metformin 500 show how even in IT, people are people and rationality doesn’t always rule.
For this installment, we’re going to pick up on our "Tape and Hope" theme from Part 2. In that episode, we talked about how backup tapes are lost more than you might imagine. Even by big providers such as Iron Mountain. Here’s a link to that story: http://www.transcendunited.com/wordpress/blog/transcend-united-technologies
Today we’ll cover stolen tapes. Here we go…
April 2009: Backup tapes containing patient information on patients of Peninsula Orthopaedic Associates were stolen while in transit, the practice notified approximately 100,000 patients. The tapes have not been recovered.
March 2009: Insider steals backup tapes with personal data, including banking information, on 80,000 New York City cops: Stolen backup ntapes
June 2008: Backup tapes stolen from University of Utah Hospital
The University of Utah Hospitals & Clinics announced today the recent theft of billing records. A metal box containing backup tapes, which contained billing records for approximately 2.2 million patients and guarantors, was stolen on Monday, June 2, from buy metformin 500 a car belonging to a driver who buy metformin 500 worked for an independent storage company contracted by the health-care system.
The driver discovered that someone had broken into his Ford Explorer outside his Kearns home and buy metformin 500 taken the box. More info here.
June 2008: Bank of New York / Mellon backup tapes lost or stolen
The Bank of New York Mellon says sensitive data of more than buy metformin 500 4 million people owning shares in public companies was exposed after a buy metformin 500 box of back-up data storage tapes went missing in February. The data included names, addresses, and Social Security numbers.
In a separate incident in April, a buy metformin 500 back-up data storage tape containing images of scanned checks and buy metformin 500 other documents relating to payments made to nearly 50 institutional clients went missing.
The Bank of New York has a special web site dedicated to this problem: http://www.bnymellon.com/tapequery/ In fairness, it’s not entirely clear that the tapes were stolen rather than lost. Which way would make you feel better?
June 2007: State of Ohio has backup tapes stolen
This one is unbelievable. Apparently for buy metformin 500 several years the State of Ohio had interns take backup tapes home in their cars! And naturally someone’s car was broken into.
" A stolen backup tape probably contains the buy metformin 500 taxpayer records of more than 200,000 Ohio state residents and employees. At a press conference, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland said the buy metformin 500 state is still putting together a list of sensitive information that buy metformin 500 could have been on the tape that was stolen out of an intern’s car on June 10th." Click here for more details.
Note that it’s the use of tape itself that causes a problem. Your data just shouldn’t be walking around on moveable media. Not tapes, not portable hard drives, not USB flash drives. Moveable media are simply not part of data center best practices.
Disk-to-disk-backup with offsite replication can completely replace tape at the same cost and with much greater security. Products like Exagrid (www.exagrid.com) work with standard backup software such as Symantec Backup Exec, Commvault Galaxy, CA Brightstore, and Vizioncore vRangerProp. They securely store data on disk, de-duplicate it buy metformin 500 by about 20:1, and then replicate over a VPN (in encrypted form) to a second secure location.
And there you have it. No tapes. Nothing to be picked up. Nothing to lose. And for a disaster recovery plan, nothing could be better. You keep your second backup appliance in your disaster recovery center. You use virtualized servers as your recovery infrastructure. When you do your buy metformin 500 quarterly tests, there are no tapes to retrieve, no systems to buy metformin 500 setup. The virtual servers are ready and waiting. The backup data is already there on disk, waiting.
The combination of virtualization, replication, and offsite data backup storage is a very cost-effective way to buy metformin 500 create a disaster recovery plan for your small or mid-sized business. Exagrid is a good choice for disk based backups. If you need real-time replication and don’t want to invest in an expensive SAN in two locations, you can use software from Double-Take. Double-Take continuously replicates byte-level changes from one location to another over a VPN. It’s perfect for protecting applications like Exchange, Sharepoint, or Blackberry Enterprise Server. You can find more at www.doubletake.com.
Transcend United Technologies is ranked in the top 5% of all VARs in the US by size. Our national headquarters are near Philadelphia, PA with Midwest regional headquarters in Minneapolis, MN. Our main contact number is 800 800 0353. Our site is www.transcendunited.comxenical prescription dose.
This is buy metformin 500 the second in an occasional Friday series of true stories that buy metformin 500 show how even in IT, people are people and rationality doesn’t always rule.
Todays topic: "tape and hope". Why are people so careless with backup tapes? For that matter, why do people still use tape at all? Disaster recovery requirements continue to buy metformin 500 become more demanding, and disk-based backup and recovery is so much faster than buy metformin 500 tape.
PricewaterhouseCoopers reports that only 47% of backup tapes are encrypted. Well, "so what?" you say. Isn’t Iron Mountain secure? Maybe not so much. Just in New York, Citibank, Bank of New York, Time Warner and buy metformin 500 others have had lost tapes.
Pooer Iron Mountain. Google on "Iron Mountain loses tapes" and you’ll find lots of stories. Given that buy metformin 500 Iron Mountain makes about 5 million pickups a year, their record isn’t necessarily that bad. It’s the use of tape itself that causes a problem. Your data shouldn’t be walking around on moveable media. Not tapes, not portable hard drives, not USB flash drives.
A disk based backup solution with offsite replication can buy metformin 500 completely replace tape at the same cost and with much greater security. Products like Exagrid (www.exagrid.com) work with standard backup software such as Symantec Backup Exec, Commvault Galaxy, CA Brightstore, and buy metformin 500 Vizioncore vRangerProp. They securely store data on disk, de-duplicate it buy metformin 500 by about 20:1, and then replicate over a VPN (in encrypted form) to a second secure location.
And there you have it. No tapes. Nothing to be picked up. Nothing to lose. And for buy metformin 500 disaster recovery and business continuity, nothing could be better. You keep your buy metformin 500 second backup appliance in your disaster recovery center. You use virtualized servers as your recovery infrastructure. When you buy metformin 500 do your quarterly tests, there are no tapes to retrieve, no buy metformin 500 systems to setup. The virtual servers are ready and waiting. The backup data is already there on disk, waiting.
The combination of virtualization, replication, and buy metformin 500 offsite data backup storage is a very cost-effective way to create a buy metformin 500 disaster recovery plan for your small or mid-sized business. Exagrid is a good choice for disk based backups. If you need real-time replication and don’t want to buy metformin 500 invest in an expensive SAN in two locations, you can buy metformin 500 use software from Double-Take. Double-Take continuously replicates byte-level changes from buy metformin 500 one location to another over a VPN. It’s perfect for buy metformin 500 protecting applications like Exchange, Sharepoint, or Blackberry Enterprise Server. You can find more at www.doubletake.com.
Transcend United Technologies is ranked in the top 5% of all VARs in the US by size. We are the #1 rated ShoreTel IP phone systems partner in the buy metformin 500 US for 2007, 2008, and 2009. We are buy metformin 500 a certified Riverbed premier partner, one of the few national channel partners for buy metformin 500 Akamai web acceleration services, and work with other leading technologies such as HP, Avocent, and buy metformin 500 Aerohive.
Our national headquarters are buy metformin 500 near Philadelphia, PA with Midwest regional headquarters in Minneapolis, MN. Our main contact number is 800 800 0353. Our site is www.transcendunited.com.
This is buy metformin 500 the first of what will be an occasional Friday series of true stories that buy metformin 500 show how even in IT, people are people and rationality doesn’t always rule.
True story: I was talking to a prospect in Iowa about new options in disaster recovery and buy metformin 500 ways that virtualization can be used to create inexpensive disaster recovery infrastructure. He had downloaded a buy metformin 500 whitepaper of ours on compliance issues for disaster recovery, and buy metformin 500 he’d told me that they didn’t have a plan in place. "I know, I know, we really should do something" , he said. "But it’s just hard to believe that anything will happen to us here." This was in late June 2008, about two weeks after the Cedar river completely flooded downtown Cedar Rapids. For just a small sample of how bad things were, click here: www.youtube.com/watch
True story: I was talking to a prospect in New York (Manhattan) about the current backup disaster recovery plan for buy metformin 500 their business and some new options in business continuity. Their disaster site was 20 miles away in New Jersey, which they chose because "it’s conveniently located". (At least they had a plan!) Next step: a good plan.
True story: A benefits company near Philadelphia was using this as their offsite data backup storage: the CFO’s car. Sound familiar? That’s right, they backed up diligently each night to tape, and then had the CFO put the tapes in the trunk of his car. When they did their first disaster recovery test, the buy metformin 500 found that all the tapes had been buy metformin 500 erased. Turned out the CFO had to regularly cross some trolley and buy metformin 500 railroad tracks on his way home, and buy metformin 500 the electromagnetic field had erased the tapes. Everyone of them. No backups at all. Fortunately they found this out during a test and not a real disaster.
About Us: Transcend United combines cost-effective technologies, experienced people, and world-class service to help organizations better manage IT and communications infrastructure. We work in all the major infrastructure areas:
Network Infrastructure
Unified Communications
Data Center Optimization
Backup, Recovery, Availability
Transcend United Technologies is ranked in the top 5% of all VARs in the US by size. We are the #1 rated ShoreTel IP phone systems partner in the buy metformin 500 US for 2007, 2008, and 2009. We are buy metformin 500 a certified Riverbed premier partner, one of the few national channel partners for Akamai web acceleration services, and work with other leading technologies such as HP, Avocent, and Aerohive.
Our national headquarters are near Philadelphia, PA with Midwest regional headquarters in Minneapolis, MN. Our main contact number is 800 800 0353. Our site is www.transcendunited.combuy buspar without rx.
Disaster recovery plans are a staple of larger businesses. Public companies in particular are required to have a plan. The plan usually encompasses both having mission-critical IT systems up and running within a buy metformin 500 certain period of time, and having temporary office space for displaced workers.
The classic arrangements for disaster recovery go something like this:
1) Company XZY declares a disaster or a disaster test. 2) Retrieves backup tapes from Iron Mountain or similar provider. 3) Rushes to a SunGard or other co-lo facility, where they (hopefully) will find servers and other hardware waiting for them when they arrive. 4) Works feverishly to recreate their IT environment by restoring from tape before their alloted time expires.
This process is long, tedious, and expensive. So much so that many small and mid-sized businesses do not have a meaningful disaster recovery plan. Over the past few years, however, creating cost-effective disaster recovery plans and infrastructure is easier than ever.
New technologies such as disk-based backup, asynchronous replication, and virtualization can be easily combined to create viable, affordable disaster recovery and buy metformin 500 business continuity for businesses in the the SMB space. Leading vendors include Exagrid (disk backup with offsite replication), Double-Take (continuous replication), and VWware. HP Lefthand Networks SANs offer both synchronous and asynchronous replication between locations.
About Us: Transcend United combines cost-effective technologies, experienced people, and world-class service to help organizations better manage IT and communications infrastructure. We work in all the major infrastructure areas:
Network Infrastructure
Unified Communications
Data Center Optimization
Backup, Recovery, Availability
Transcend United Technologies is ranked in the top 5% of all VARs in the US by size. We are the #1 rated ShoreTel IP phone systems partner in the US for 2007, 2008, and 2009. We are a certified Riverbed premier partner for buy metformin 500 WAN Optimization, one of the few national channel partners for buy metformin 500 Akamai web acceleration services, and work with other leading technologies such as HP, Avocent, and Aerohive.
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Many companies do their disaster recovery planning and buy metformin 500 testing assuming that they will restore critical data from tape. There are buy metformin 500 so many problems with this approach, and they are so well known, that buy metformin 500 it’s suprising people still do it.
A quick recap:
1. Tapes must be buy metformin 500 retrieved from a storage facility before disaster recovery can begin. 2. Tapes are slow. A large part of the buy metformin 500 time spent in a disaster recovery test is simply waiting for buy metformin 500 backups to restore from tape. 3. Tapes fail. Nearly every IT veteran with more than buy metformin 500 5 years experience has had a tape fail during a restore. Especially when buy metformin 500 trying to reconstruct a full backup from a series of incrementals. 4. Tapes sometimes disappear or are stolen. Search Google for "Iron Mountain loses tapes" and you’ll see what I mean. In a story last year (March 2009), backup tapes containing personal data on 80,000 New York City cops were stolen as part of an buy metformin 500 inside job. So those tapes aren’t much use for disaster recovery.
Now let’s compare disaster recovery using offsite data backup storage as part of a buy metformin 500 managed backup and recovery service:
Take offsite data backups stored on disk, combine with virtualized servers, and buy metformin 500 you have a fast, reliable, inexpensive way to plan for disaster recovery for buy metformin 500 business or non-profit organizations. For systems that buy metformin 500 require more up-to-the-minute protection such as Exchange, Sharepoint, Blackberry, or buy metformin 500 SQL servers, you can use replication software from Double-Take.
Tape is buy metformin 500 completely outdated as a method of disaster recovery for business.
About Us: Transcend United combines cost-effective technologies, experienced people, and buy metformin 500 world-class service to help organizations better manage IT and communications infrastructure. We work in all the major infrastructure areas:
Network Infrastructure
Unified Communications
Data Center Optimization
Backup, Recovery, Availability
Transcend United Technologies is ranked in the top 5% of all VARs in the US by size. We are the #1 rated ShoreTel Business IP phone systems partner in the US for 2007, 2008, and 2009. We are a certified Riverbed premier partner for buy metformin 500 WAN Optimization, one of the few national channel partners for buy metformin 500 Akamai web acceleration services, and work with other leading technologies such as HP, Avocent, and Aerohive. Transcend United also offers hosted VoIP systems for smaller organizations.
Our national headquarters are buy metformin 500 near Philadelphia, PA with Midwest regional headquarters in Minneapolis, MN. Our main contact number is 800 800 0353. Our site is www.transcendunited.com.
Disaster recovery plans are a staple of larger businesses. Public companies in particular are required to have a plan. The plan usually encompasses both having mission-critical IT systems up and running within a buy metformin 500 certain period of time, and having temporary office space for displaced workers.
The classic arrangements for disaster recovery go something like this:
1) Company XZY declares a disaster or a disaster test. 2) Retrieves backup tapes from Iron Mountain or similar provider. 3) Rushes to a SunGard or other co-lo facility, where they (hopefully) will find servers and buy metformin 500 other hardware waiting for them when they arrive. 4) Works feverishly to buy metformin 500 recreate their IT environment by restoring from tape before their alloted time expires.
This process is long, tedious, and expensive. So much so that buy metformin 500 many small and mid-sized businesses do not have a meaningful disaster recovery plan. Over the buy metformin 500 past few years, however, creating cost-effective disaster recovery plans and infrastructure is buy metformin 500 easier than ever.
New technologies such as disk-based backup, asynchronous replication, and buy metformin 500 virtualization can be easily combined to create viable, affordable disaster recovery for buy metformin 500 businesses in the the SMB space. Leading vendors include Exagrid (disk backup with offsite replication), Double-Take (continuous replication), and VWware. HP Lefthand Networks SANs offer both synchronous and buy metformin 500 asynchronous replication between locations.
In future posts, we’ll delve into these techologies in detail. For now, thanks for reading!
About Us: Transcend United combines cost-effective technologies, experienced people, and buy metformin 500 world-class service to help organizations better manage IT and communications infrastructure. We work in all the major infrastructure areas:
Network Infrastructure
Unified Communications
Data Center Optimization
Backup, Recovery, Availability
Transcend United Technologies is ranked in the top 5% of all VARs in the US by size. We are the #1 rated ShoreTel IP phone systems partner in the US for 2007, 2008, and 2009. We are a certified Riverbed premier partner for buy metformin 500 WAN Optimization, one of the few national channel partners for buy metformin 500 Akamai web acceleration services, and work with other leading technologies such as HP, Avocent, and Aerohive.
Our national headquarters are buy metformin 500 near Philadelphia, PA with Midwest regional headquarters in Minneapolis, MN. Our main contact number is 800 800 0353. Our site is www.transcendunited.com.
Transcend United is buy metformin 500 a SonicWall Silver Partner. SonicWall is the global leader in dynamic network security and buy metformin 500 data protection solutions for small, mid-sized through large enterprise organizations. 
The 
to which way to go with your IT infrastructure. How centralized do you want it? Who will have access? How will your reporting work? These are all good questions to ask when planning things out. Transcend United will help you buy metformin 500 take control and make the management of your assets simple, yet highly effective. 
