With the upcoming release of HELIOS server products as a Virtual Appliance, it's time for a few words in the top-up section to explain what that means. Revisit out previous article on Virtual Machines for some background.
One of the fileservers in our office (we're slightly embarrassed to say) is a Power Mac G5, circa 2003, that has been sitting in the corner of our server-room for nine years. It's kept out of trouble and not drawn much attention to itself. Before the G5 we ran on an Apple Network Server (ANS).
We don't think about the server much. We all have the shared volume mounted on our desktops and use it every day. It's being backed up to tape, so there's not much that can go wrong.
Why is it such a big deal to the Apple community that Apple dropped the Xserve, and the future of the Mac Pro is being debated so hotly?
We hope our IT-savvy users all appreciate that a disaster-recovery (DR) plan is essential to surviving a major data-loss. Having a backup of data, having tapes / disks off-site in case of fire or floods are pretty commonplace in our experience, but there are a couple of areas where there's room for improvement, so let's investigate:
HELIOS and Archiware have recently added support for Virtual Machines (VM's) which are changing the face of computing, but do you really know what a VM is? We'll attempt to explain in our usual fast and efficient manner.
If you've played with video cameras recently you'll know that they now use solid-state flash storage - just like your digital-stills camera. Of course, not long ago they used little digital tapes which had the advantage that you could keep them forever on a shelf. Without any additional effort, you could keep the tapes somewhere safe and know you had an 'Archive' of your digital video. Flash storage, on the other hand, is wiped and reused many times.
Many of the companies we deal with are in the business of creating documents of one form or another. Whether it's financial reports, newspapers, advertising or video - files are being created on servers. These files have a lifecycle and money can be saved by managing them sensibly.
Apps really are big business nowadays. But you probably thought that only skilled developers could create those stylish little apps for the 
To find out how long it will take to transfer a file on your computer from one place to another, you need to know two things: how big is your file, and how big is the 'pipe'. The pipe analogy is often used when discussing bandwidth and is a good one. 
To maximise interest in a new piece of hardware or new software, companies will often announce products before they go on sale. This can stimulate media interest and slow down competitor sales as customer's hold out to see what the new product will offer. However, it is not unusual for release dates to be missed and so disappoint an eagerly awaiting IT press.
Irrespective of whether you are an IT Administrator by choice or are someone that was press-ganged into the role, one of the key pressures you face is lack of time! Time is precious and more than ever, system administrators are pulled in many directions at once. Managers need quick fixes to immediate problems but still demand that long-term projects are completed on-time and to budget. Users interrupt constantly with requests and all those every day tasks still need to be completed.
If a business wants to expand, it's important that it looks after its existing customers. However, some companies are so concerned about obtaining new business, they forget how important it is to maintain the customer relationships they have established already. Simply by holding on to your existing customers you can get new sales through a variety of channels - direct sales calls, online sales, promotions, partnering with other companies to provide new services, etc. However, the more channels you open the greater the need to manage this relationship.
If you live in London and fly to New York City, it will typically take you 10 hours from door to door. The flight is about 6 hours, so you loose 40% of time on less than 1% of your journey distance. This is because progress from your house onto the plane is slowed by commuter traffic, customs, security and the airline's wish to see you well before your journey starts. This "lost" 4 hours is called "latency" and it is a major factor not just in airline networks but computer networks too.
There's a lot of buzz around 'Cloud Computing' currently, so lets look at what the phrase means and more importantly how you can benefit from it.
Image licencing is as complex as any other area of product or brand licencing but images are probably one of the most difficult areas to police, in fact many would say it is virtually impossible. For those who do have the time and the means, there are many ways of protecting images; the most common being, physical watermarks, digital watermarks and embedded metadata detailing copyright and usage information.
At JPY we specialise in servers. This Top-Up-Your-Knowledge is the second in a series we are dedicating to explaining different types of server. This time we cover something a little less familiar, 
At JPY we specialise in servers. This Top-Up-Your-Knowledge is the first in a series we are dedicating to explaining different types of server. So, lets start with 
Apple recently 
If you have an analogue business phone system, you may be wondering if you can go 'digital' and make use of your existing data network. With so many phone system vendors and options in the market, you may also be wondering if you can "do-it-yourself". Well, we did this, and here is a quick summary of the things you should consider.
There was a time when nobody would have any printing done without first seeing a "hard proof" copy. Not only could there be typographical mistakes, but problems could occur with colour, layout and registration (how the different colours line up) as well. Hard proof copies were fine when your friendly printer was down the road, but with the Internet, your printer is just as likely to be in China as in Chingford.
Most iPhone apps are pretty much stand-alone - in other words, you don't need anything but an iPhone to get value from them. Yet many iPhone apps that 'interact' rarely see the light of day. There isn't much point in trying to find an iPhone app in the iTunes Store for displaying the status of nuclear reactors. Even if you have your own nuclear power station, you can't expect iPhone developers to get a lot of sales that way.
Quality is an evocative word conjuring up different meanings for different people. In business, there are generally two areas which are bought straight to mind: 
Most people have heard about "clients" and "servers". What's the big deal? Why do we have them?
Whether your consultancy is an architectural practice, a bespoke software development house or a PR firm, the bottom line is your customers are buying your time. You therefore need to be accountable for the hours you are charging.
Most of the websites created for small to medium sized businesses tend to be 'static' websites rather than 'dynamic'. What is the difference between a 'static' and a 'dynamic' website?
Companies that require software solutions are usually faced with the choice of buying an "off-the-shelf" product or paying programmers to develop a "bespoke" solution. A bespoke solution has traditionally been much more expensive, but can, in theory, meet 100% of the customer's requirements. An "off the shelf" solution must suit many companies' needs and in the process, will rarely suit one company, 100%.
To answer the question, you need to understand the differences and benefits that data backup and data archive deliver.
Who would have thought a mobile device like the smart phone would spark such a phenomenal increase in application development? From the release of the iPhone and similar phones, an industry has evolved to pamper everyone from personal gamers to scientists; travelers and even the shopper on the street.
Many customers ask us whether they can use a Windows file server to store their Mac files. Well, the answer is "yes". Although Mac OS X workstations are best connected to file servers using the Apple method (protocol) called AFP, Apple does support the Windows file sharing method (called SMB) too. Furthermore, if your budget doesn't run to Windows file server, you can use an Open Source product called Samba running under Linux.
When an IT manager purchases software, the decision is generally linked to resolving a major issue within their organisation. But are these organisations missing an opportunity to gain an even higher level of return on their investment?
Backing up your data is important, but ask yourself where the backups are going. Most companies keep backups on-site to insure against accidents and hardware failures. But to protect against data-loss in the event of catastrophic building damage, backups need to be stored off-site. Off-site backup might be cheaper and easier than you think.
If you are in business, is it possible your company has been approached about SEO? No? Well, in this instance, SEO stands for... Search Engine Optimisation. There are many tricks and tips consultants use to improve an organisation's ranking on the web. But the main trick is to know what people are searching for and how to make it easy for them to find you! Simple isn't it? 
It might seem a bit strange to want to restore a Mac to PC (or vice versa) but when disaster strikes, you may have to use whatever is to hand. Although the basic content of files may be the same, Mac and PC file servers store files differently. Macintosh files contain two parts, the data fork and the resource fork . Unless the resource fork is treated properly, the restored file may loose some of the information stored.
We all search the web, using google or other search engines to visit web sites, and once there, we often download a document, a PDF or an image. But how often do we question the validity of the file we download, is it the most current and does it provide us with the correct information?
Everyone knows it's good to back up your files, but it's just as important to know where the backups are going.The problem is that 99.99% of backups are never used and so its easy to forget what happens that 0.01% of the time - when your business may depend on it. Many companies never simulate a complete data loss to see if their backups are what they think.
Well, no actually it isn't - as many Mac users of PC backup systems have discovered to their cost. Mac and PC (Windows) systems don't store files in the same way, so if you back up a Mac file as though it was a PC file, then you may lose information when you come to restore it.
From time to time, even the best of us delete files we didn't mean to. It's so irritating when there seems no way of getting the file back and, if the file is on a server, there rarely is.
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