Quality
Technology Solutions, Inc.
QTS
QuikNews � October 2001 � Issue 2001.10
October 13, 2001
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Welcome
to the October 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
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IN
THIS ISSUE
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1.
QTS News
2.
Events
3.
Patches & Upgrades
4.
President�s Corner: Disaster Recovery & Business Contingency
Planning II
5.
Special Offers & Featured Solutions
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QTS
NEWS
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COMPAQ
ANNOUNCES AC ADAPTER RECALL ON SPECIFIC NOTEBOOKS
In
cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Compaq
Computer Corporation announced a worldwide voluntary recall and
replacement program for approximately 1.4 million AC adapters used with
certain commercial notebook computer products.
Compaq customers affected by this recall and replacement program
will be eligible to receive a replacement AC adapter for each recalled
adapter. These AC adapters were distributed worldwide in notebooks, as
separate options, and as replacement spares for the following notebooks:
*
Armada M300, M700, 100s, 110, E500, E500s, V300, 3500
*
Notebook 100
This
recall and replacement program involves AC adapters made by only one of
the multiple manufacturers used by Compaq; thus, not every notebook
computer listed above will be affected by the recall.
The affected AC adapters can be identified by the adapter Model
Series Number located directly under the Compaq Computer Corporation name
on the AC adapter label. Your
AC Adapter should be replaced if it is:
*
Model Series PPP003SD
*
Model Series PPP003
*
Model Series PP2012
This
recall and replacement program only affects AC adapters with the above
listed Model Series Number, not the notebook computers themselves.
Notebook users who ordered an affected notebook, option AC adapter,
or spare
AC
adapter between September 1998 and July 2001 may be eligible for the AC
adapter replacement program. Compaq
is making it easy for customers to receive replacement adapters at no
cost. Please see the
following website for more details: http://www.compaq.com/products/notebooks/adapterrecall/
+++
FROM THE WEB +++
QTS
ANNOUNCES SUPPORT FOR NETWARE 6
10/15/2001: QTS today announced
that it will be supporting Novell NetWare 6, and NetWare 6 Small Business
Suite, upon shipment by Novell.
Read
more at http://www.qtsnet.com/stayinformed/l3_stay_pr20.htm
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EVENTS
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STRATIS
GROUP SEMINAR: B2B E-COMMERCE � REAL SOLUTIONS WITH IMMEDIATE IMPACT
QTS�
partner Stratis Group, along with Microsoft and Intel, are hosting a
seminar on B2B E-Commerce on Wednesday, October 31st from
8:30-12:00 at Microsoft�s Berkeley Heights, NJ office.
The focus will be on using the Internet for supplier enablement,
with real-world examples of successful implementations, and discussion of
best practices and things to avoid. We
recommend this event highly for QTS customers considering how to get
started down the B2B path. You
can register at www.stratisgroup.com/events
or call (908)790-9400 x33
QTS
TECHNOLOGY ROUNDTABLE SCHEDULE � OCTOBER & NOVEMBER
QTS
continues its Technology Roundtable series through the fall, with focused,
small group technology roundtables for its customers and active prospects
(upon invitation/approval by the account manager).
The roundtables will be held on Tuesdays from 12:30 to 1:30, over
lunch. The current roundtable
schedule is:
*
October 23rd � Citrix MetaFrame XP and NFuse: New Features
and Benefits
* November 6th � Introduction to Microsoft Windows XP
* November 20th � Introduction to PKI and Digital
Certificates (with RSA Security)
See
our web site at http://www.QTSnet.com/roundtables
for any changes or updates, and to register.
QTS
SEMINAR SCHEDULE
QTS
will continue its seminar series this fall, with a focus on educating our
customers on hot technology topics. QTS
seminars are held from 9:00AM to 12:00PM, at QTS unless otherwise noted.
The current seminar schedule for September is:
* October 18th �
Fundamentals of Internet Security: VPNs and Authentication (with Check
Point Software and RSA Security), second of a three event series
* November 15th � Fundamentals of Internet Security:
Bandwidth and Content Management (with Check Point Software and Aladdin),
third of a three event series
* November 27th (New Jersey) and November 28th (New
York) � Secure Remote Access (with Cisco, Citrix and RSA Security)
See
our web site at http://www.QTSnet.com/seminars
for any changes or updates, and to register.
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PATCHES
& UPGRADES
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Call
the Customer Support Center to have us apply QTS-standard patches and keep
your systems current. The
following patches have been recently released and are recommended by QTS:
*
Novell BorderManager 3.5 Support Pack 3
* Novell
BorderManager 3.6 Support Pack 1
CA
InoculateIT 4.x signature files are currently at version 28.44
(10/11/2001) and McAfee VirusScan/NetShield is at version 4165
(10/10/2001), and Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition is at version 31012g
(10/12/2001). Please keep your antivirus signatures current!
If you do not have your system set up to automatically distribute
updates from your server to your PCs, please call your QTS Account Manager
or the Customer Support Center.
Some
patches can cause problems, especially in combination with other software
programs or patch levels. Please
talk to us to verify whether we see any possible problems in your
environment before patching your systems independently.
We make best efforts to test patch combinations but cannot
guarantee compatibility between software and hardware manufacturers�
products.
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PRESIDENT�S
CORNER
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Continuing
on the subject of Business Contingency Planning (see http://www.QTSnet.com/stayinformed/QuikNews/QuikNews_September2001.htm
for last month�s article on this subject), I would like to discuss what
is involved in establishing a disaster recovery plan and a �hot site�
for recovery. There are a
variety of chilling statistics that all generally say that for businesses
impacted by a disaster (natural or otherwise), 80% of those organizations
are out of business within five years.
There are a wide range of reasons for this, including loss of
customer confidence, the uphill struggle of rebuilding an organization, or
complete inability to reconstruct business records and capabilities.
The
good news is that this statistic does not need to be this high, if proper
time is invested proactively in developing a plan to deal with the
situation should it ever occur. This
planning needs to include documentation, assignment of responsibilities,
and testing of the plan periodically to ensure its ability to work when
needed. This is not unlike
last months� column, where I noted that many organizations never test a
restore, only to find in a moment of crisis that their backups had been
failing or that their tapes had demagnetized.
Proper planning, and discipline in managing a process, can prevent
these situations.
The
first stage in looking at these issues is developing a Business
Contingency Plan. The
fundamentals of this are pretty basic � start with defining what you
want or need to protect. This could include your computer systems and data, your paper
records, the ability to use your phone system, etc. Once you have defined your assets and their value to the
business, the next step is determining who within the organization is
responsible for these assets. This
is important when it comes to developing and testing the action plan for
reacting to a disaster. This
is also important for buy-in, and presentation to management of the
proposed solution.
Once
you have defined everything that needs to be protected (which is primarily
a business decision/issue, not a technical one), a value should be
established for these corporate assets.
The owner of the asset should be able to help in calculating its
value. What would be the cost
of having to reconstruct or rebuild these assets (assuming they even could
be). Some of our law firm
clients can easily recreate litigation related paperwork by asking the
courts or opposing counsel to copy the paper files, whereas some
information is unique and could not easily be recreated.
The same is true with your computer systems� data.
With
the appropriate personnel involved in the process, and with the value of
the assets defined, you are now in a position to make intelligent
decisions about how to proceed. Spending
$50,000 to protect a $5,000 asset does not make business sense, but
spending it to protect a $5 million asset, or an asset that will drive the
company out of business if lost, will be.
You need this business definition of cost, risk and benefit because
this is not a technology or technical decision � it needs to be based on
business value, not unlike determining the proper level of insurance
coverage to purchase based on business risks, liability, revenues and
other factors. We�re
talking about insurance to provide for the continuance of business
operations in the event of a disaster.
Developing
a business contingency plan � for the business as a whole � involves
looking at the required functionality, or subset of complete
functionality, that is necessary to sustain the business.
For a 500 person business, this subset could include 50 employees
in key functions working at a hot site for several weeks, with other
employees working from home or without computers and records (or not
working at all). Defining the
required minimum of personnel, information, access and resources allows
for a plan to be set up. Requirements
can be defined, in terms of space, telecommunications, furniture,
computers, etc. for the area where business will resume (the �hot
site�). Remember, the more
elaborate the requirements, the more expensive the solution will be � so
develop multiple layers of capability/protection, ranging from the most
basic to the most elaborate, and then you can determine a cost for each
level.
The
plan needs to include actions for each type of event � including clear
definition of responsibilities and back-up plans in the event of personnel
not being available. Each
role should have a responsible person, and two backups.
Home and cellular phone numbers should be well known, and everyone
should have a list of employees or partners they are responsible for
contacting to either give instruction or assistance to � including key
customers and partners who need to be notified of your status and your
plan for resuming operations.
There
are a number of organizations that provide hot sites, with two of the most
established being Sungard (http://www.sungard.drexperts.com)
and Comdisco (recently purchased by Hewlett Packard - http://www.comdisco.com/index.cfm/13/).
These organizations can help with preparing a plan, but more
important, they specialize in providing hot site facilities, and have
processes in place for running tests and guaranteeing space and
availability of resources. It
is important to ensure that the facility and resources will definitely be
available to you when needed, whether you outsource this function or try
to do it yourself. If you
prepare the hot site yourself, you need to account for the same factors
these people would � equipment, space, etc.
You want to be in a position where if a disaster occurs, you have a
place to go to where key employees can report and where appropriate
business and computer systems are ready for the employees to resume
operations and serve your customers.
On
the technology side, the solutions can range from the ability to restore
backup tapes to new or pre-purchased spare servers, to having data
mirrored in real time from your data center to the hot site � whether it
is another office of yours or an outsourced location.
Data mirroring technologies are improving each year, and are
increasing their performance and capabilities, but these solutions are not
for the faint of heart, or the light of wallet.
They often require specialized software, and sometimes specialized
hardware, as well as high speed communication links (anywhere from
dedicated T1 connections up to high speed ATM connections).
The software is intrusive to the server operating system, and
depending on the product or configuration can slow performance or even
cause server crashes. Like
any other major technology project, it requires careful planning and
testing, and building a suitable budget, to ensure that the solution will
work properly when you need it to. This
includes even the most basic plan � using backup tapes from offsite to
restore onto your hot site server.
With
a clearly defined plan, and clearly defined responsibilities, and with
proper resources allocated, the next stage is to actually test the plan.
You will want to do a �fire drill� with your employees, to see
what happens. Are the phone
systems at the hot site adequate and working properly.
Is your data there for use, and do the computers function properly.
Are your communication processes defined, and do they work? The time spent in a test of your plan will pay itself back
many times over if you ever need to play out the real thing.
Once tested, schedule a re-test once every 6-12 months.
You don�t want to find out in the middle of a disaster that your
backup tapes won�t work because you never purchased a new tape drive for
the hot site to match the one you got for your new server.
We
can help you with developing the plan, and choosing the technologies to
best meet your objectives. But
before you call, take some time to think through the items at the
beginning of the article � it will help you focus on what is most
important, and provide a foundation for whatever discussion you have and
planning you do.
Feel
free to email me your comments or thoughts at nrosenberg@QTSnet.com.
Neil
Rosenberg
President & CEO
Quality Technology Solutions
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SPECIAL OFFERS & FEATURED SOLUTIONS
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QTS
�QUIKWIN� WINDOWS 2000/XP MIGRATION SERVICE � ASSESSMENT REBATE
QTS
is offering customers the ability to conduct an assessment of your
computers and network, for upgrading to Windows 2000 or XP Professional,
and to have a portion of the assessment cost credited to your
implementation project. This
offer expires on November 15th, so contact your QTS Account
Manager for more details!
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Copyright
2001 Quality Technology Solutions, Inc.
This site last updated 08/31/07
� 1999 Quality Technology Solutions, Inc.
76 South Orange Avenue Suite 302, South Orange, New Jersey
07079
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