Volume 6 Issue 3

April 4, 2006

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Welcome to the March edition of QTS QuikNews, our monthly e-mail newsletter. In this monthly e-mail, you will receive an update of what's new at QTS - new products we support, new patches and upgrades, solution ideas and promotions to save you money, and information about our company and our clients.

In this issue:

• QTS and Partner News
• Events
• President's Corner
• QuikSecure Tip of the Month
• Patches and Upgrades
• Product Support Lifecycle Watch
• Solution Spotlight
• Special Offers
• Partner Spotlight

QTS AND PARTNER NEWS

WELCOME TO NEW CUSTOMERS
QTS offers a “welcome aboard” to the following new customers:

·         Alliance Benefits Strategists

·         C.R. Bard

·         Darby & Darby

·         Maquet, Inc.

·         Riker Danzig Scherer Hyland Perretti, LLP

QTS IS HIRING!
QTS is recruiting for senior level technical personnel, as well as an entry to mid-level sales/service support specialist.  If you know anyone who might be a good fit, please have them submit their resume to Liz Meechan, our Office Manager. Liz can be reached at lmeechan@QTSnet.com, or (973)984-7600 x223.

QTS SUCCESS STORIES

EAST AIR CORPORATION
QTS helped East Air Corporation complete a migration from Windows NT Server and Exchange 5.5 to Windows Small Business Server 2003 with Exchange Server 2003, then implemented a secure remote access infrastructure leveraging Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server, Citrix Secure Gateway with Advanced Access Control and RSA Authentication Server.
http://www.qtsnet.com/about/success stories/east air success story.pdf

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PRODUCT NOTICES AND ADVISORIES

TERMINAL SERVICES CAL TRADE-UP EXTENDED!
Due to a change in the way Microsoft licenses Terminal Services as of April 2003, customers may be eligible for free Terminal Services Client Access Licenses (CALs).  With the release of Windows Server 2003, the “built-in” CALs under Windows 2000 were eliminated.  However, customers owning Windows XP Pro receive a free Terminal Services CAL for each XP license.  This offer has been extended, but we strongly recommend processing this promptly.  For more information, visit http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/ howtobuy/licensing/tscaltransfaq.mspx.

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EVENTS

Please note that QTS seminars are open only to customers and prospective customers, and not to other vendors, partners and consultants.

MICROSOFT SOLUTIONS BRIEFING

QTS and Microsoft are hosting an Executive Solutions Briefing for small and medium business customers (25-500 user environments).  Join us for this informative, 3 hour event to learn how your organization can benefit from new Microsoft technologies and solutions, and what tools and resources are available to you from Microsoft.  Microsoft and QTS will also review the benefits of Software Assurance, discuss available promotions that can save you money, and review the roadmap for upcoming product releases and features.  We will also present on key Microsoft initiatives such as Trustworthy Computing (Microsoft’s security efforts), the Dynamic Systems Initiative and the integration of Microsoft’s Business Solutions offerings.  This event will provide valuable information to any Microsoft customer! Join us on Tuesday morning, May 11^th at Microsoft’s Iselin NJ office or on Thursday morning, June 1^st at Microsoft’s New York City office.  Contact your QTS Account Manager to register for these events, or follow the web links above.  Note that a signed Microsoft Non-Disclosure Agreement is required for attendance at these events. 

SECURE & WELL-MANAGED INFRASTRUCTURE

QTS, New Horizons and Microsoft are hosting a half day seminar on Tuesday, May 2^nd at New Horizons in Iselin, NJ on how to implement a Secure and Well-Managed Infrastructure.  In this event, QTS will present on how Windows Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2003, combined with Microsoft’s management and security technologies, can help to provide a reliable and secure platform for employee productivity.  Microsoft and New Horizons will discuss how employee training can enhance productivity and effectiveness, and how to leverage Software Assurance benefits, including training vouchers.  For more information or to register, contact your QTS Account Manager, click here, or visit www.clicktoattend.com and enter event code 104167. 

CXO SEMINAR: DISASTER RECOVERY SOLUTIONS

On Tuesday, May 9^th, join Microsoft, Citrix, NSI Software and QTS at the Microsoft NYC office for an informative seminar on how to develop a Disaster Recovery Plan and build a Hot Site Failover Solution for your business leveraging technologies from Microsoft, Citrix and NSI Software.  Businesses are challenged more and more each year with the need to maximize systems up-time and availability, amidst an ever-increasing range of threats.  IT management is often tasked with responsibility for developing and implementing Disaster Recovery Plans to protect the business and ensure continuous access to key business systems.  In this seminar, we’ll discuss how to build the plan and what the key elements are, and discuss the various options for Cold, Warm and Hot Site solutions.  We’ll then drill down into how to cost-effectively build a Hot Site leveraging technologies from Microsoft, NSI and Citrix to enable access to your applications and data, and conclude with tips and best practices.  For more information or to register, contact your QTS Account Manager, click here, or visit www.clicktoattend.com and enter event code 104272. 

CxO SEMINAR: PREPARING FOR WINDOWS VISTA

Join Microsoft and QTS for this informative seminar on how your organization can get ready for Windows Vista, the successor to Windows XP Professional as the desktop operating system of choice for businesses.  In this seminar, we will discuss some of the features and capabilities planned for Windows Vista, and how your business can benefit from this next release of Windows, as well as the upcoming releases of Microsoft Office and Microsoft Exchange Server.  We’ll explore how these new products can improve user productivity and collaborative capabilities, as well as how Windows Vista can improve systems’ reliability, security and performance.  We will also discuss how to deploy Windows Vista across your organization, leveraging tools such as Remote Installation Services, the Business Desktop Deployment Accelerator, and Systems Management Server.  We’ll also discuss best practices in desktop management and patch management. The next sessions are Wednesday, April 19^th  at the Microsoft NJ office and Thursday, May 18^th at the Microsoft NYC office.  For more information or to register, contact your QTS Account Manager, or visit www.clicktoattend.com and enter event code 104308 for NJ or 104305 for NYC.  Note that a signed Microsoft Non-Disclosure Agreement is required for attendance at these events.

CxO LUNCHEON SEMINAR: SECURING YOUR MICROSOFT NETWORK – VULNERABILITY MANAGEMENT

Join Microsoft, Symantec and QTS for this informative lunch seminar on how to properly manage security vulnerabilities on your network.  With the increasing complexity of networks and technology, vulnerabilities are a fact of life.  However, as businesses become increasingly reliant on their networks and IT assets, managing these vulnerabilities becomes more and more critical.  Join us to learn strategies and best practices for managing security and for optimizing the security and reliability of your network and infrastructure.  The event is being held on Tuesday, April 25^th  at the Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in Parsippany, NJ and on Thursday, May 4^th at the Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in New York (midtown).  For more information or to register, contact your QTS Account Manager, or visit www.clicktoattend.com and enter event code 105690 for NJ or 105692 for NYC.  Note that this event is open to customers with 100+ computer users only.

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PRESIDENT'S CORNER

This month, we will look at some of the current trends and issues around storage management.  We’re seeing this become a more and more important issue to most IT administrators, largely as the volume of data that they need to manage, secure and back-up continues to grow.  This, combined with regulatory constraints such as SOX, HIPAA and GLB, is changing the landscape of storage technologies as well as approaches to storage management. 

The most pressing issue for most network administrators is controlling “backup window,” or the period of time during which tape backups are running.  Often backups start late at night, and run into the morning.  If backups run over into business hours, then the CPU and disk I/O impact of the backup on the servers being backed up can be seen by users, in the form of slow response time on these servers.  More files will be open, resulting in less complete backups. 

So, as backups start to creep into the morning hours, administrators often try to start the backups earlier in the evening, or resort to incomplete backups.  Shops that were doing full backups every evening often move to incremental backups (delta backups each night versus prior night), or to differential backups (delta backups each night versus the last full backup, resulting in fewer tapes to need in the event of a restore).  The impact of this is subtle, but important.  By moving away from full backups every evening, the business’ exposure to data loss increases significantly, since offsite tape rotation is impacted and now the best case scenario is restoring data that is a week old, versus a day old under the full backup scenario. 

Users’ expectations of IT to provide them with storage, help them find relevant data, and to restore the data when needed, continues to grow.  Users understand the power of search technology based on simply using tools like Google themselves.  They increasingly want, and expect, the ability to apply this on their own networks, to their own data.  Users increasingly resist storage limitations, as they see their own consumer technologies have more and more capacity and understand that the cost of disk space is cheap (but don’t realize or consider the cost of managing storage).  The demand for restores is also growing, as users are increasingly savvy about the ability to have files restored, again based on their own use of backup technologies at home (sometimes). 

All of these considerations are putting pressure on IT to come up with better ways to operate, and to manage their storage.  Applying the same old approaches does not work in a rapidly changing environment of new technologies, changing business requirements and higher user expectations.  New approaches are needed. 

The most pressing challenge is the backup window challenge, and the increasingly popular solution is Disk to Disk to Tape (“D2D2T”) backup.  Under this approach, data is backed up from disk to a high capacity/low cost disk array, and from there can be backed up to tape.  The last step of backup to tape is still critically important, as it is critical that backups of your data be taken offsite. 

This approach has several important advantages, albeit at an added cost (for the added layer of disk storage).  Backups are much faster, as writing to disk is always faster than writing to tape.  This solves the backup window challenge, and also improves the speed of restores (both due to disk speed and also through eliminating the need to find, change and journal tapes).  Also, disk is a more reliable medium than tape, so IT will be able to spend less time worrying about successful backups and troubleshooting media errors (still a prime source of backup failures today).  Overall, the benefits of backing up to disk before backing up to tape can be significant, and although the added cost of this layer of storage can be considerable, the value of the data to the business needs to be considered when weighing the pros and cons of this approach. 

That’s the “D2D” part – now, we need to return to tape for the last “2T” component of the solution.  I still need to take my data offsite, for disaster recovery scenarios.  So, since I won’t be rotating disk arrays back and forth I will still need a media format that is easily transportable – tape.  So, my tape backups will still need to occur, as will offsite rotation of tapes.  However, under the D2D2T scenario my tape backups can now occur during business hours.  Furthermore, the direct-attached (or SAN-attached) tape drive can back up data much faster when the data is traversing the server bus when going over an Ethernet network, enhancing backup speed and reliability.  And, backups on a dedicated backup/storage server will not impact production network operations. 

Most storage vendors have begun supporting this model.  Veritas/Symantec, CA and other tape backup software vendors have begun supporting D2D2T operations in their software products (Backup Exec, ARCserve/BrightStor, etc.), allowing for this tiered approach at no additional software cost.  Hardware vendors are coming out with reasonably priced storage array solutions, often based on SATA or SAS drives to lower hardware cost – HP has several models at varying price points, most of which are in effect recycled NAS (“Network Attached Storage”) platforms.  Microsoft has also jumped into the D2D market with its Data Protection Manager software, providing a Disk to Disk backup solution that leverages and is based on Volume Shadow Copy technology, with the noteworthy benefit (or negative, from some perspectives) of allowing users to be able to perform their own restores of data without IT intervention.  We can expect further enhancement of these technologies as they continue to develop. 

D2D backup should not be confused with replication technologies, where changes that are made on the source drive get replicated automatically to the target system.  With replication, which is typically applied to high availability scenarios like disaster recovery, there is no way to restore old versions of the data when needed.  When a file is deleted or changed on the source server, the same action is taken on the target server.  So, backup is a complementary solution area to replication technology, and having a replication solution does not in any way change the need for a backup solution. 

Another major landscape change we are seeing is in the SAN arena, where iSCSI (SCSI over IP) technology finally seems to have matured and be making a run against Fibre Channel technologies.  Fibre Channel is still the way to go where rock-solid, proven and mature technology is needed for “multiple 9s” levels of availability.  However, business that wish to begin centralizing storage on a SAN (“Storage Area Network”) platform to improve storage management, as well as implement higher availability through server clustering, virtualization and other approaches, can leverage iSCSI to do so at a lower price than would be possible using more expensive Fibre Channel technologies.  Instead of Fibre Host Bus Adapters, iSCSI leverages Gigabit Ethernet cards.  Instead of fibre cables, iSCSI leverages standard patch cables.  Instead of Fibre switches, iSCSI leverages standard Gigabit Ethernet switches.  This lowers the hardware costs associated with implementing a SAN, although the same fundamental concepts apply. 

SAN technologies empower increased virtualization in storage management, to mirror the increased trend in server and application virtualization.  Under this approach, storage becomes a commodity that is no longer tied to specific servers or even storage arrays, and can be moved from SAN to SAN without any user impact or disruption.  This is still a relatively new and leading edge approach to storage management, but over time will find its way down from the enterprise to the mid-market just as SAN and virtualization technologies have started to do. 

We’re also seeing a definite increase in use of email archiving technologies such as Symantec’s Enterprise Vault technology (EMC and others have solutions in this area as well).  This is often driven by, and seen in organizations impacted by, regulatory compliance requirements for data retention.  However, this trend is being mitigated by the continued drop-off in the cost of disk storage and the realization that managing a multi-tiered storage model is more complex and time consuming than simply throwing disk at the problem – the same fundamental dilemma that prevented Hierarchical Storage Management from taking off in the 90s. 

All of these approaches are “tools in the toolbox” that can be used in building a more effective, 21^st century storage management strategy as we all deal with changing business challenges and requirements, and I hope this column was thought-provoking and useful as you formulate your strategies for dealing with these increasingly common challenges.

As always, feel free to email me your comments or thoughts at nrosenberg@QTSnet.com. Thank you.

Neil Rosenberg
President & CEO
Quality Technology Solutions

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PARTNER SPOTLIGHT

This month’s QTS partner spotlight is on Axispoint, Inc., QTS’ partner for IP Telephony and Voice over IP solutions.  The company’s consultative approach to their customers has helped Axispoint achieve one of the highest growth and customer retention rates in the industry.  Axispoint was recently selected as Cisco Systems “Mobility Partner of the Year,” an award that demonstrates both technical expertise and specialization in wireless networking and a top customer satisfaction rating. 

Axispoint’s Convergence Group offers a complete, end-to-end solution to customers who look to benefit from the significant cost savings and added functionality associated with IP Telephony, with a focus on Cisco VoIP solutions.  Network management duties and costs are simplified, while enhanced applications like electronic fax solutions and unified messaging (mail can be received via the desktop or phone) are offered.  Converged networks generate significant financial savings to corporate customers by increasing employee productivity and reducing telecommunications expenses, while maximizing the company’s current data architecture.

The Axispoint Software Solutions Group is experienced in developing and implementing custom and off-the-shelf software applications for document management, workflow, information dissemination, data translations, sales processing, commission calculations, licensing, content management, reservations, accounting, and e-commerce.  The Axispoint Software Group has worked across multiple industries using their customer-centric approach to technology development, and is a Microsoft Certified Partner.

Axispoint’s Networking Solutions Group supplements QTS’ Cisco networking expertise by offering extensive experience installing both building-to-building and enterprise wireless solutions.  The company serves as a key Vocera partner, providing voice-activated technology to hospitals and retailers throughout the area.  In addition to being named the Cisco Mobility Partner of the Year, Axispoint is a Cisco Premier Partner, with specializations in wireless and in the ATP Wireless Mesh Product Suite.  QTS and Axispoint work together to provide advanced wireless infrastructure solutions to our common clients.

For more information on Axispoint, and how they can offer a complete technology solution, please contact Mike Waresk at 212-920-2670, or via email at mwaresk@axispoint.com.  Or, contact your QTS Account Manager.

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