2011年3月21日星期一
Redesigned Users Page
Showcase Of Creative Typography In Modern Web Design
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Stack Overflow and the Computer History Museum
Disappearing items in Outlook and Exchange
I came across what looks to me like an unusual bug, most likely in Microsoft Outlook. Background: I have used the Notes folder in my Exchange mailbox for all sorts of information going back several years. This morning, I looked at the folder and found it empty, except for one solitary item. Normally there
...continue reading Disappearing items in Outlook and Exchange
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2011年3月20日星期日
Stack Apps and Scripts
Engine Yard Cloud Out Loud S01E14: SolutionSet
Create Pivot Tables With OpenOffice Calc
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Create Pivot Tables With OpenOffice Calc
Joyent?s Cloud Infrastructure Consistently Outperforms Amazon?s EC2 in Independent Benchmarks
fog 0.7.0, 0.6.0 and 0.5.0
Adoption
Adoption continues at an amazing pace. We went from 40 contributors two short months ago up to 60, crossed 80,000 downloads from rubygems.org and 1,000 followers on github [ed: Wes was very giddy on that day]. All the extra attention has helped to weed out even more bugs and grow the available services to meet ever more diverse use cases.New Providers and Services
Once again, several new services have joined the fog family, as well as a few notable additions to the existing services:- AWS Cloudformation basics allow for configuring whole clusters at once (tests)
- AWS IAM has been fleshed out considerably from it's humble origins in 0.4.0 (tests)
- AWS RDS basics add the ability to manage hosted database servers (tests)
- AWS S3 gained static website support (tests)
- AWS SES basics support for cloud email delivery (example)
- DNSimple DNS service was added (examples)
- VirtualBox basics support managing local virtual machines (example)
- Voxel Compute service was added (tests)
Contribution Overhaul
I am always looking for ways to make it easier for people to get involved, so let me know if you have suggestions. First off I made the standing t-shirt offer more explicit, but that didn't have too much impact.
After that I decided I ought to better groom the issues so that they would be more accessible. The clearest thing is that must issues are now labeled as either easy, medium or hard. Rather than just plucking these values out of thin air I consider each issue and add notes on what needs to be done to accommodate them before adding the label. So if you would like to help out you can pick a difficulty matching the time you have available and familiarity with the code and feel confident that everything you need to complete the task will be available. You can also feel free to skip the non-categorized tickets, since I either haven't figured out how to do them or they will require my attention directly (i.e. accepting pull requests).
Integrations
In addition to working inside fog I have been working to help others better use it. Both carrierwave and paperclip have received patches with fog support. Both of these libraries provide ways to handle files for users in your web apps and by adding fog support they no longer have to worry about supporting numerous different providers and they can focus on their specialties. We will have more details about these integrations and how you can take advantage of them in future posts.On the Road
I have also been privileged to be accepted to speak at a number of conferences and meetups. I spoke in January at Silicon Valley Ruby on Rails Group (recorded talk video here) and in February at Magic Ruby. Yesterday I presented at MountainWest RubyConf, and next month I'll be at Ruby Nation April 1-2, and Red Dirt RubyConf April 21-22. If you are out and about at these conferences come say hello and let me know how you use fog.Toward 1.0
With all these improvements and bug fixes I can't help but feel like we must be nearing 1.0. It will be great to reach that point but I still have a couple things I want to sort out along the way. Although DNS and storage provide fairly universal access across providers, compute still has a few rough edges. One key focus will be smoothing differences between the compute providers. Another goal is to better sort out testing. There is a working set of tests now, but it is split between rspec and shindo and there are some discrepancies between style and usage throughout. I'd like to solidify how these will work, as well as making it easier for contributors to run them without have credentials for everything. Last, but certainly not least is a stronger focus on documentation. There is a bit here and a bit there currently and I'd like to consolidate things on fog.io and make them easier to explore, as well as reworking the generated in-code documentation to be more accessible. Over all I see 1.0 outside of that as being more of the same great stuff, from bug fixes to new services as things are released and the needs of users change, and beyond 1.0 will be no different. It is just a stepping stone for us to acknowledge the great level of support and stability we have already reached.wholesale computer parts free malware removal computer network repair
Announcing Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials
Now that Kinect has stopped stealing all of our thunder around announcements (although I have to admit I can?t wait for mine, it looks awesome!), we can continue rolling out announcements in the Small Business space. This morning, building on the Windows Small Business Server 2011 Announcement, we are announcing a new edition targeted at Small Business called Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials.
What is this Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials? It?s an answer to what the community have been begging for. Today we see a lot of partners put WHS v1 into small business for the PC Backup integration. WHS v1 only backs up 10 of those computers, and is a stand-alone machine you have to manage on it?s own. Breckenridge fills this gap for businesses allowing you to Domain Join Breckenridge to your SBS 2008/SBS 2011 Standard domains to allow backup for up to 25 computers, and additional storage for up to 25 users.
As you can see, it looks a lot like the Windows Home Server Codename ?Vail? Edition and the Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials Edition. That?s because it is! It shares the same underlying architecture, which means all the same add-ins work on WSS 2008 R2 Essentials, as they do on the other products.
So what is the differences?
| Home Server ?Vail? | WSS 2008 R2 Essentials | SBS 2011 Essentials |
| 10 user limit | 25 users limit | 25 users limit |
| 10 computer limit | 25 computer limit | 25 computer limit |
| 1 CPU Socket | 1 CPU socket | 2 CPU sockets |
| 8GB RAM Maximum | 8GB RAM Maximum | 32GB RAM Maximum |
| No Domain Join | Domain Join | Domain Controller |
Aside from the ability to Domain Join, and the user limit increase, there are some subtle differences you?ll notice throughout the product that have more of a business ?tint?, like if you choose to use WSS 2008 R2 Essentials for Remote Web Access, you?ll notice the same defaults you see in SBS 2011 Essentials, instead of what you see in Home Server. There are also some changes to HomeGroup defaults as well. The last thing to note is while you can install WSS 2008 R2 into an SBS 2011 Essentials, or WHS Vail environment, the client connector from each of these products cannot be installed on the same PC.
So why should you consider WSS 2008 R2 Essentials for your small business or customer?
- PC Backup for up to 25 PCs in your SBS 2008, 2011 Standard network. And yes, you can run multiple devices in the same network, and choose who has access via a domain group
- Server backup ? backup those PC Backups and other critical data on the WSS 2008 R2 Essentials server. (no, you can?t include the backup of this into your SBS backup)
- Similar console management as our other products. But if you domain join, you don?t manage users from this console, and the password policy is inherited from the domain (even for local users left on the WSS 2008 R2 Essentials box)
- If you are installing it into a standard server environment, enjoy the Remote Web Access functionality
- Additionally, monitor the health of computers in your network
- Media streaming in the business (training videos, etc)
Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 essentials should be released in the first half (H1) of next year (2011). While it can work as a stand alone NAS device, it?s primarily targeted at Small Businesses with an Active Directory in place and the need for PC Backup and media streaming functionality. When it?s released, it will be available through multiple OEM channels with multiple form factors.
To see the official announcement on the SBS Blog, navigate here.
To learn more about Windows Storage Server, and the new addition, navigate to their blog.
Specifically if you want to read more from the Storage Server Family on WSS 2008 R2 Essentials, they have published a post here.
View Slideshows of Your Facebook Friends Photos
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Engine Yard Cloud Out Loud S01E15: Chicago Ruby
This week on Cloud Out Loud we talk with Ray Hightower of WisdomGroup. Ray tells us about how he got into doing Rails development while he was doing networking with Novell and Microsoft Windows NT. He is very active in the Chicago Ruby community and is an organizer for Chicago Ruby, WindyCityRails, WindyCityDB, and WindyCityGo. Ray gives us some insight into how he orchestrates great events that people are excited to attend, and that continue to grow in size each year. We found out there is even a github repo created by the people at Chicago Ruby to document how they organized the conference. They've got their event execution and planning down to an art.
If you want to experience the Chicago tech scene for yourself, WindyCityGo is coming up April 9. There are some great talks lined up. If you register by Monday, March 21 you can snag a ticket at an early bird price and save yourself $80! Check out the lineup and register before the discount expires here. Now, just think how many Chicago hot dogs you can treat yourself to with that 80 bucks you saved...
Load PodcastWindows Small Business Server ?7? Released to Public Beta
This morning Microsoft released the Windows Small Business Server ?7? release to Beta. This marks yet another major milestone for the Windows Server Solutions Team, now releasing both the Windows Home Server ?Vail?, and Windows Small Business Server Hybrid Edition ?Aurora? into beta.
SBS 7 marks a major release in the *next* set of all-on-premise solutions. Updates include:
- Base OS is updated to Windows Server 2008 R2
- Exchange is updated to Exchange 2010 SP1
- SharePoint is updated to Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010
- Windows Software Update Services is updated
- The new Remote Web Access (RWA) experience is newer (and matches Aurora!)
- Bug fixes
- etc
You can try out the new SBS ?7? beta by pointing your favorite browser to the SBS Connect site, or jump straight to the downloads page. Don?t forget if you need help, or find an issue to give us feedback, or talk about it in the Newsgroups.
More details can be found on the Official SBS blog.
2011年3月19日星期六
GigaOM ? After a Big Quarter, Dell Should Make a Big Data Buy
Engine Yard Cloud Out Loud S01E15: Chicago Ruby
This week on Cloud Out Loud we talk with Ray Hightower of WisdomGroup. Ray tells us about how he got into doing Rails development while he was doing networking with Novell and Microsoft Windows NT. He is very active in the Chicago Ruby community and is an organizer for Chicago Ruby, WindyCityRails, WindyCityDB, and WindyCityGo. Ray gives us some insight into how he orchestrates great events that people are excited to attend, and that continue to grow in size each year. We found out there is even a github repo created by the people at Chicago Ruby to document how they organized the conference. They've got their event execution and planning down to an art.
If you want to experience the Chicago tech scene for yourself, WindyCityGo is coming up April 9. There are some great talks lined up. If you register by Monday, March 21 you can snag a ticket at an early bird price and save yourself $80! Check out the lineup and register before the discount expires here. Now, just think how many Chicago hot dogs you can treat yourself to with that 80 bucks you saved...
Load PodcastOnline Backup using Proxure?s KeepVault for Windows Home Server 2011 and Windows Small Business Server 2011
As I?ve mentioned before, being a photographer, my photos are my most critical piece of data that lives on my Home Server. When using Windows Home Server v1, I had found an Online Backup solution that I previously reviewed on this blog. While I still think it?s a good solution, it has some draw-backs depending on the Amazon S3 back-end. Like the cost of Amazon S3 is about as expensive as it gets, and signing up for Amazon S3 was probably one of the more confusing processes I have ever done.
While at SMB Nation 2010 in Las Vegas, I had ran into a company called Proxure who build a solution called KeepVault. I watched a demo of their solution run and it seemed reasonable, at least to check out. I thought it was pretty cool that they offer versions for Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Standard Server (03 & 08 via their Professional version), and most importantly for me: Windows Home Server.
While this blog covers KeepVault on Windows Home Server 2011 (codename ?Vail), the same add-in offers cloud storage to both the Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials (codename ?Aurora?) and the Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials. However, for these business products, you need to get KeepVault Pro. The steps and UI, aside from the color of the dashboard, is identical. KeepVault Pro can also be used on Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard (codename ?SBS7?), although that UI is not shown in this blog post.
Back to the review: The first thing I notice was KeepVault doesn?t bill you for what you use, they bill you for storage space in chunks (40Gb, 80GB, 130GB, 200GB ? 3.5TB!). So if you?re only backing up a very small amount of data, you could end up over paying, but if you compare to Amazon?s 15cents/GB (up to the first TB), you really see a cross over at about 15GB. Once you get over 15GB, Proxure seems to win hands down on cost. Plus when you hit the top mark, you click a link and you can bump up your storage.
The Setup Process
Using the AWIECO Drive Info add-in, I determined I wanted to back up my Pictures and Documents, the things that I really care about. That came out to about 117GB, so I signed up for the 130GB plan from Proxure. You don?t need the AWIECO add-in, but it made it a ?glance? to compute.
Installing the add-in is just as painless as installing any add-in. Just double click on it on the server, or on any server-joined client, read and accept the EULA, and then Install it. You?ll have to re-start the Dashboard to have it appear in the global tabs.
The initial page doesn?t look intimidating at all. Simply click on the Order a KeepVault Backup for Windows Home Server Subscription Now button and sign up. I thought it was pretty slick you could pay via PayPal or with a standard credit card. I?m all for yearly payments too, so I got to save my 10%!! Within 5 minutes I was emailed my subscription ID. Typing that in, with my email ID and I?m good to go.
Choosing an encryption key I can type one in myself, or KeepVault will randomly generate one for me. If you generate one yourself, you have a risk that you forget your key and now your cloud backup is useless. If you?re like me, you?ve installed WHS 2011 on new hardware and it?s probably a while before that fails, so you might forget it. If you don?t want this cumbersome task, you can let KeepVault choose one for you. The interesting thing here is that they generate the key based on your ID and subscription numbers (as its computer agnostic). To me that means that someone at KeepVault *could* decrypt your backup. Although my suspicion here is that you are still safe because our data is stored in blobs and because KeepVault has more than one customer, it?ll be hard for the lay-man IT person at KeepVault to match this up to your backup. For what it?s worth, I went with ?Let KeepVault choose one for me?.
I like how KeepVault really focused on the simplicity of the solution. With the previous solution I reviewed I could create multiple backup jobs and multiple schedules, which was nice, because parts of my collection barely every change, I just wanted them backed up. But it was overwhelming at first. KeepVault?s ?Always/Real Time? schedule by default and the single ?Job? configuration removes any daunting thoughts you might have. The only confusion on the whole page for me was enabling the protection on the shares. I didn?t realize the grey bar across the page were actually buttons, as most of the WHS 2011 console they are just ?headers? of columns. So once you realize that you can just click on Enable Protection to add that shared folder to the cloud backup, it was all good. As any good add-in, you can also right-click on a Share in the list and select to enable or disable it from the context menu.
Using the Add button you can also add any folder you wish on the system, so it doesn?t have to be shared out to the network in order for you to back it up. You?ll also notice in the screenshot above that I have changed the schedule to be between midnight and 6am. This is because I am uploading 115GB of data, and I work from home, so from 8am-6pm I use my bandwidth for work, and from 6pm-midnight, I use it for entertainment. By default, KeepVault will Encrypt and Compress your data on the box before it sends it over the wire. Nifty?
The only feature that I think is missing from the Job scheduler is the ability to run 24/7 but use less bandwidth during the day, and all of it at night.
Looking at the other options, you can always pause the backup, view and delete your protected files online (ie. if you want to permanently delete some files, you can delete the file locally, and use this task to delete it from the cloud as well), view the protection/upload history, configure a proxy if your ISP requires one, and most importantly (the reason we all do backups), Recover Files.
The Event Log is KeepVault?s own list of events (like service start/stop, etc events). Messaging (while somewhat confusing of a name, maybe ?Job Notifications? or ?Job Alerts? might be better, is actually really well done. You can receive emails or SMS alerts (via your carriers E-Mail to SMS service) based on your backup failure rates. KeepVault obviously has some mail service on the back-end that they allow you access too, because unlike the WHS 2011 Built-in Alerts, they don?t ask you to configure an SMTP service.
When the backup eventually kicks off, if you?re backing up as much data as I am, even with the 1900kbps as advertised in my standard version of KeepVault, I?m in for a long wait? This is the same with every cloud solution the first time you back-up. The progress is good, you get both global progress as well as file level progress
From 5pm to 9am (~16 hours) on a Thursday night over my cable connection, I backed up 5.1GB to KeepVault?s cloud. Not quite as fast as the Amazon S3 solution, but then again, I don?t have a Pro account with KeepVault.
Once your data is uploaded, it lives in Proxure?s Data-Center, encrypted for only you to download in the event of a disaster. Fingers crossed that this is just an insurance policy, and never used.
KeepVault Local Backup
You may have noticed in the above screenshots there was another sub-tab called My Local Backup Job. Yes, KeepVault can back up to a local disk. In the Standard version, it?s similar to the built in WHS 2011 Backup in the fact that it can only backup to hard drives attached to the system (the recommendation is still for USB for offsite storage). If you have KeepVault?s Premium version, you can also back up to SMB Share (i.e. \\NAS\Share), so if you have another device on your network, you can back up to another share on your network.
Also, you?ll notice that this tab also allows you to compress or encrypt. So if you?re taking that disk offsite, the encryption piece might be something you want to consider for safe storage of that disk should it be compromised. If you don?t encrypt it. Files are stored in ?explorer friendly? format so a restore on any computer without KeepVault installed is possible. In comparison, WHS 2011 backup is stored in VHD format, which requires you to first mount the VHD before you can actually do the restore of files.
Recovery of Files
The One-Click Recovery, really is just that. Let?s say that you have a little child at home, and their favorite past time was to go into your prized photo library and use the delete button, just randomly through your collection. Or maybe you were searching for your favorite files, and then miss-clicked and deleted your favorite files across your 100GB collection. Restoring that can be painful. This One-Click Recovery makes that a breeze. As *soon* as you click next (i.e., one click), the service will compare the cloud to the local box, and recover all missing files. If the file exists, the restore will be skipped, preferring the local file over a recovery. So you can recover all those files our child deleted randomly, yes with one-click. Obviously this is how you would go on a new server, because none of the files exist.
This way is not a single-click restore, but a selective restore. On the left-hand side if you select a folder, you can select files and folders on the right-hand side for restore. So if you?re restoring a whole folder, select the folder above it, and then check the box next to the folder you want to restore. If you?re restoring all but a few files in a folder, that can take a few extra clicks. Thankfully you can use the CTRL or SHIFT Keys to multi-select as you need (similar to Windows Explorer). Before moving on, you need to select if you want to over-write existing files. This was weird to see on this dialog, because I figured it would be a sub-option on the recovery location which is next.
Once you?re comfortable with the set of files you?re going to restore (and if you want to over-write files), you next choose if you want to restore the files to the original location, or another location. Unless I?m restoring a completely new server, I?d probably always choose another location to make sure that I?m getting what I expected. Once you?ve chosen the folder for the location of the restore, I hit ?Recover?, and just wait for the software to download the files and put them in the appropriate place.
The restore is in fact pretty painless, and yes, my photos came down in-tact?
Why Go Pro?
As you saw above, KeepVault has two versions, Standard (which they just call ?KeepVault?) and Professional (or ?KeepVault Pro?). As a home user, you might not ever need the Pro version, but it?s certainly something you need for businesses. So what do you get if you go Pro?
- Support for Server solutions (aside from the WHS). For example, the Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, Standard and Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials. Also, if you have additional servers in your environment, you can back them up to the same account (Standard Server 2008 and Standard Server 2003).
- A much faster upload rate (5250kbps instead of 1900kbps). This comes in handy with that first backup. The faster you get the files to the cloud, the sooner you are protected!
- Local Backup to UNC share. Meaning you can back up your server to a local server share as well.
- Higher encryption levels (256-bit encryption can be chosen instead of 128-bit)
- This reminds me. If you backup a file with the pro version, and then downgrade, your standard client can?t understand the 256-bit encryption and thus can?t restore the files. It does work the other way around though. So just be careful which way you go!
- More Access to your data (Web Access, cross device access for restore) and other administration features. Notice my screenshot under ?Restore? above, if I had the pro version, I could backup files and folders from other computers, right to this single computer. This means I could support cloud backup on my client computers, and then restore this to the server in the event that the client was dropped while out on a trip! Another brilliant business feature.
- If you?re using a management solution, error notification includes system events, so you can track errors in your online backup with your monitoring tools.
- 5 version retention policy. If you are with KeepVault standard, you only have the latest version stored on the internet, with Pro it keeps up to 5 versions so you can go back in time when you wish to restore.
As a business user, you?ll have to use the Professional version to get the add-in installed. As a Home User, you should review the features above and gauge how critical they will be for you.
If you?re still debating having a Cloud Backup solution for your most prized data, you should approach it like an insurance plan. You have one for your house, you have one for your car. You cross your fingers every day that you don?t need to use it, but when you do, it?s there for you. If your hard-drive fails, recovery of such drives can often cost $1,000s, with no guarantee you can get your data back. If you?re house burns down, like my uncle?s, this sort of thing is priceless.
I?m using KeepVault, what are you using?
UPDATE: Want to learn more about KeepVault Pro? Check out my Going Pro with Proxure?s KeepVault blog post.
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GigaOM: Is Feature vs. Performance the New Cloud Battle Line?
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PEER 1 Hosting ? Making your data center more awesome!
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Presentation on SBS 2011 Essentials and Standard on top of HP hardware, by yours truly!
I?ll be visiting the Vancouver Island Computer Experts(?) User Group at the beginning of February for a presentation on Small Business Server 2011 Essentials and Standard running on HP hardware.
- Date: February 2, 2011
- Time: Welcome at 6:30, kick off at 7pm, runs until approximately 9:30pm
- Location: Camosun College Lansdowne (3100 Foul Bay Road, Victoria, BC)
More Details & Registration can be found here
Learn about:
- Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, formerly known as ?Aurora?
- Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard, formerly known as ?SBS7?
- HP?s Small Business Server line, such as the ML330
Come to see what?s new in the new versions of Small Business Server, ask some questions, check out two different pieces of Hardware from HP, the Intel based ML 330, or the HP MicroServer hardware so you can make the right choice for your businesses between which version of Small Business Server you should get, and which hardware you should get to match that solution.
Abstract:
Join Sean Daniel, Senior Program Manager from Microsoft Corp. as he talks about small business server solutions coming from Microsoft and HP. See what?s new with Small Business Server 2011 Standard and Essentials and learn about HPs offerings for Small Business server hardware. As a Small Business program manager for 10+ years, he?ll talk about the new servers as well as be able to answer questions on the old servers from Microsoft. Come with questions on the new or old products, with his experience in the field, he?s perfect to bounce questions off.
If you are an IT support shop, your companies "go to IT person", an independent IT person, the manager/implementer for your small business, or interested simply interested in small business technology, this evening is for you!!
Online Backup using Proxure?s KeepVault for Windows Home Server 2011 and Windows Small Business Server 2011
As I?ve mentioned before, being a photographer, my photos are my most critical piece of data that lives on my Home Server. When using Windows Home Server v1, I had found an Online Backup solution that I previously reviewed on this blog. While I still think it?s a good solution, it has some draw-backs depending on the Amazon S3 back-end. Like the cost of Amazon S3 is about as expensive as it gets, and signing up for Amazon S3 was probably one of the more confusing processes I have ever done.
While at SMB Nation 2010 in Las Vegas, I had ran into a company called Proxure who build a solution called KeepVault. I watched a demo of their solution run and it seemed reasonable, at least to check out. I thought it was pretty cool that they offer versions for Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Standard Server (03 & 08 via their Professional version), and most importantly for me: Windows Home Server.
While this blog covers KeepVault on Windows Home Server 2011 (codename ?Vail), the same add-in offers cloud storage to both the Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials (codename ?Aurora?) and the Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials. However, for these business products, you need to get KeepVault Pro. The steps and UI, aside from the color of the dashboard, is identical. KeepVault Pro can also be used on Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard (codename ?SBS7?), although that UI is not shown in this blog post.
Back to the review: The first thing I notice was KeepVault doesn?t bill you for what you use, they bill you for storage space in chunks (40Gb, 80GB, 130GB, 200GB ? 3.5TB!). So if you?re only backing up a very small amount of data, you could end up over paying, but if you compare to Amazon?s 15cents/GB (up to the first TB), you really see a cross over at about 15GB. Once you get over 15GB, Proxure seems to win hands down on cost. Plus when you hit the top mark, you click a link and you can bump up your storage.
The Setup Process
Using the AWIECO Drive Info add-in, I determined I wanted to back up my Pictures and Documents, the things that I really care about. That came out to about 117GB, so I signed up for the 130GB plan from Proxure. You don?t need the AWIECO add-in, but it made it a ?glance? to compute.
Installing the add-in is just as painless as installing any add-in. Just double click on it on the server, or on any server-joined client, read and accept the EULA, and then Install it. You?ll have to re-start the Dashboard to have it appear in the global tabs.
The initial page doesn?t look intimidating at all. Simply click on the Order a KeepVault Backup for Windows Home Server Subscription Now button and sign up. I thought it was pretty slick you could pay via PayPal or with a standard credit card. I?m all for yearly payments too, so I got to save my 10%!! Within 5 minutes I was emailed my subscription ID. Typing that in, with my email ID and I?m good to go.
Choosing an encryption key I can type one in myself, or KeepVault will randomly generate one for me. If you generate one yourself, you have a risk that you forget your key and now your cloud backup is useless. If you?re like me, you?ve installed WHS 2011 on new hardware and it?s probably a while before that fails, so you might forget it. If you don?t want this cumbersome task, you can let KeepVault choose one for you. The interesting thing here is that they generate the key based on your ID and subscription numbers (as its computer agnostic). To me that means that someone at KeepVault *could* decrypt your backup. Although my suspicion here is that you are still safe because our data is stored in blobs and because KeepVault has more than one customer, it?ll be hard for the lay-man IT person at KeepVault to match this up to your backup. For what it?s worth, I went with ?Let KeepVault choose one for me?.
I like how KeepVault really focused on the simplicity of the solution. With the previous solution I reviewed I could create multiple backup jobs and multiple schedules, which was nice, because parts of my collection barely every change, I just wanted them backed up. But it was overwhelming at first. KeepVault?s ?Always/Real Time? schedule by default and the single ?Job? configuration removes any daunting thoughts you might have. The only confusion on the whole page for me was enabling the protection on the shares. I didn?t realize the grey bar across the page were actually buttons, as most of the WHS 2011 console they are just ?headers? of columns. So once you realize that you can just click on Enable Protection to add that shared folder to the cloud backup, it was all good. As any good add-in, you can also right-click on a Share in the list and select to enable or disable it from the context menu.
Using the Add button you can also add any folder you wish on the system, so it doesn?t have to be shared out to the network in order for you to back it up. You?ll also notice in the screenshot above that I have changed the schedule to be between midnight and 6am. This is because I am uploading 115GB of data, and I work from home, so from 8am-6pm I use my bandwidth for work, and from 6pm-midnight, I use it for entertainment. By default, KeepVault will Encrypt and Compress your data on the box before it sends it over the wire. Nifty?
The only feature that I think is missing from the Job scheduler is the ability to run 24/7 but use less bandwidth during the day, and all of it at night.
Looking at the other options, you can always pause the backup, view and delete your protected files online (ie. if you want to permanently delete some files, you can delete the file locally, and use this task to delete it from the cloud as well), view the protection/upload history, configure a proxy if your ISP requires one, and most importantly (the reason we all do backups), Recover Files.
The Event Log is KeepVault?s own list of events (like service start/stop, etc events). Messaging (while somewhat confusing of a name, maybe ?Job Notifications? or ?Job Alerts? might be better, is actually really well done. You can receive emails or SMS alerts (via your carriers E-Mail to SMS service) based on your backup failure rates. KeepVault obviously has some mail service on the back-end that they allow you access too, because unlike the WHS 2011 Built-in Alerts, they don?t ask you to configure an SMTP service.
When the backup eventually kicks off, if you?re backing up as much data as I am, even with the 1900kbps as advertised in my standard version of KeepVault, I?m in for a long wait? This is the same with every cloud solution the first time you back-up. The progress is good, you get both global progress as well as file level progress
From 5pm to 9am (~16 hours) on a Thursday night over my cable connection, I backed up 5.1GB to KeepVault?s cloud. Not quite as fast as the Amazon S3 solution, but then again, I don?t have a Pro account with KeepVault.
Once your data is uploaded, it lives in Proxure?s Data-Center, encrypted for only you to download in the event of a disaster. Fingers crossed that this is just an insurance policy, and never used.
KeepVault Local Backup
You may have noticed in the above screenshots there was another sub-tab called My Local Backup Job. Yes, KeepVault can back up to a local disk. In the Standard version, it?s similar to the built in WHS 2011 Backup in the fact that it can only backup to hard drives attached to the system (the recommendation is still for USB for offsite storage). If you have KeepVault?s Premium version, you can also back up to SMB Share (i.e. \\NAS\Share), so if you have another device on your network, you can back up to another share on your network.
Also, you?ll notice that this tab also allows you to compress or encrypt. So if you?re taking that disk offsite, the encryption piece might be something you want to consider for safe storage of that disk should it be compromised. If you don?t encrypt it. Files are stored in ?explorer friendly? format so a restore on any computer without KeepVault installed is possible. In comparison, WHS 2011 backup is stored in VHD format, which requires you to first mount the VHD before you can actually do the restore of files.
Recovery of Files
The One-Click Recovery, really is just that. Let?s say that you have a little child at home, and their favorite past time was to go into your prized photo library and use the delete button, just randomly through your collection. Or maybe you were searching for your favorite files, and then miss-clicked and deleted your favorite files across your 100GB collection. Restoring that can be painful. This One-Click Recovery makes that a breeze. As *soon* as you click next (i.e., one click), the service will compare the cloud to the local box, and recover all missing files. If the file exists, the restore will be skipped, preferring the local file over a recovery. So you can recover all those files our child deleted randomly, yes with one-click. Obviously this is how you would go on a new server, because none of the files exist.
This way is not a single-click restore, but a selective restore. On the left-hand side if you select a folder, you can select files and folders on the right-hand side for restore. So if you?re restoring a whole folder, select the folder above it, and then check the box next to the folder you want to restore. If you?re restoring all but a few files in a folder, that can take a few extra clicks. Thankfully you can use the CTRL or SHIFT Keys to multi-select as you need (similar to Windows Explorer). Before moving on, you need to select if you want to over-write existing files. This was weird to see on this dialog, because I figured it would be a sub-option on the recovery location which is next.
Once you?re comfortable with the set of files you?re going to restore (and if you want to over-write files), you next choose if you want to restore the files to the original location, or another location. Unless I?m restoring a completely new server, I?d probably always choose another location to make sure that I?m getting what I expected. Once you?ve chosen the folder for the location of the restore, I hit ?Recover?, and just wait for the software to download the files and put them in the appropriate place.
The restore is in fact pretty painless, and yes, my photos came down in-tact?
Why Go Pro?
As you saw above, KeepVault has two versions, Standard (which they just call ?KeepVault?) and Professional (or ?KeepVault Pro?). As a home user, you might not ever need the Pro version, but it?s certainly something you need for businesses. So what do you get if you go Pro?
- Support for Server solutions (aside from the WHS). For example, the Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, Standard and Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials. Also, if you have additional servers in your environment, you can back them up to the same account (Standard Server 2008 and Standard Server 2003).
- A much faster upload rate (5250kbps instead of 1900kbps). This comes in handy with that first backup. The faster you get the files to the cloud, the sooner you are protected!
- Local Backup to UNC share. Meaning you can back up your server to a local server share as well.
- Higher encryption levels (256-bit encryption can be chosen instead of 128-bit)
- This reminds me. If you backup a file with the pro version, and then downgrade, your standard client can?t understand the 256-bit encryption and thus can?t restore the files. It does work the other way around though. So just be careful which way you go!
- More Access to your data (Web Access, cross device access for restore) and other administration features. Notice my screenshot under ?Restore? above, if I had the pro version, I could backup files and folders from other computers, right to this single computer. This means I could support cloud backup on my client computers, and then restore this to the server in the event that the client was dropped while out on a trip! Another brilliant business feature.
- If you?re using a management solution, error notification includes system events, so you can track errors in your online backup with your monitoring tools.
- 5 version retention policy. If you are with KeepVault standard, you only have the latest version stored on the internet, with Pro it keeps up to 5 versions so you can go back in time when you wish to restore.
As a business user, you?ll have to use the Professional version to get the add-in installed. As a Home User, you should review the features above and gauge how critical they will be for you.
If you?re still debating having a Cloud Backup solution for your most prized data, you should approach it like an insurance plan. You have one for your house, you have one for your car. You cross your fingers every day that you don?t need to use it, but when you do, it?s there for you. If your hard-drive fails, recovery of such drives can often cost $1,000s, with no guarantee you can get your data back. If you?re house burns down, like my uncle?s, this sort of thing is priceless.
I?m using KeepVault, what are you using?
UPDATE: Want to learn more about KeepVault Pro? Check out my Going Pro with Proxure?s KeepVault blog post.
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2011年3月18日星期五
Google opens up discussions on docs
I attended a briefing today on Google Apps. Google is celebrating over 1 million business customers in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) since the launch of Google Apps just over 4 years ago, and over 3 million worldwide. An unknown proportion of those customers are small businesses using the free edition; but there
...continue reading Google opens up discussions on docs
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Online Backup using Proxure?s KeepVault for Windows Home Server 2011 and Windows Small Business Server 2011
As I?ve mentioned before, being a photographer, my photos are my most critical piece of data that lives on my Home Server. When using Windows Home Server v1, I had found an Online Backup solution that I previously reviewed on this blog. While I still think it?s a good solution, it has some draw-backs depending on the Amazon S3 back-end. Like the cost of Amazon S3 is about as expensive as it gets, and signing up for Amazon S3 was probably one of the more confusing processes I have ever done.
While at SMB Nation 2010 in Las Vegas, I had ran into a company called Proxure who build a solution called KeepVault. I watched a demo of their solution run and it seemed reasonable, at least to check out. I thought it was pretty cool that they offer versions for Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Standard Server (03 & 08 via their Professional version), and most importantly for me: Windows Home Server.
While this blog covers KeepVault on Windows Home Server 2011 (codename ?Vail), the same add-in offers cloud storage to both the Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials (codename ?Aurora?) and the Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials. However, for these business products, you need to get KeepVault Pro. The steps and UI, aside from the color of the dashboard, is identical. KeepVault Pro can also be used on Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard (codename ?SBS7?), although that UI is not shown in this blog post.
Back to the review: The first thing I notice was KeepVault doesn?t bill you for what you use, they bill you for storage space in chunks (40Gb, 80GB, 130GB, 200GB ? 3.5TB!). So if you?re only backing up a very small amount of data, you could end up over paying, but if you compare to Amazon?s 15cents/GB (up to the first TB), you really see a cross over at about 15GB. Once you get over 15GB, Proxure seems to win hands down on cost. Plus when you hit the top mark, you click a link and you can bump up your storage.
The Setup Process
Using the AWIECO Drive Info add-in, I determined I wanted to back up my Pictures and Documents, the things that I really care about. That came out to about 117GB, so I signed up for the 130GB plan from Proxure. You don?t need the AWIECO add-in, but it made it a ?glance? to compute.
Installing the add-in is just as painless as installing any add-in. Just double click on it on the server, or on any server-joined client, read and accept the EULA, and then Install it. You?ll have to re-start the Dashboard to have it appear in the global tabs.
The initial page doesn?t look intimidating at all. Simply click on the Order a KeepVault Backup for Windows Home Server Subscription Now button and sign up. I thought it was pretty slick you could pay via PayPal or with a standard credit card. I?m all for yearly payments too, so I got to save my 10%!! Within 5 minutes I was emailed my subscription ID. Typing that in, with my email ID and I?m good to go.
Choosing an encryption key I can type one in myself, or KeepVault will randomly generate one for me. If you generate one yourself, you have a risk that you forget your key and now your cloud backup is useless. If you?re like me, you?ve installed WHS 2011 on new hardware and it?s probably a while before that fails, so you might forget it. If you don?t want this cumbersome task, you can let KeepVault choose one for you. The interesting thing here is that they generate the key based on your ID and subscription numbers (as its computer agnostic). To me that means that someone at KeepVault *could* decrypt your backup. Although my suspicion here is that you are still safe because our data is stored in blobs and because KeepVault has more than one customer, it?ll be hard for the lay-man IT person at KeepVault to match this up to your backup. For what it?s worth, I went with ?Let KeepVault choose one for me?.
I like how KeepVault really focused on the simplicity of the solution. With the previous solution I reviewed I could create multiple backup jobs and multiple schedules, which was nice, because parts of my collection barely every change, I just wanted them backed up. But it was overwhelming at first. KeepVault?s ?Always/Real Time? schedule by default and the single ?Job? configuration removes any daunting thoughts you might have. The only confusion on the whole page for me was enabling the protection on the shares. I didn?t realize the grey bar across the page were actually buttons, as most of the WHS 2011 console they are just ?headers? of columns. So once you realize that you can just click on Enable Protection to add that shared folder to the cloud backup, it was all good. As any good add-in, you can also right-click on a Share in the list and select to enable or disable it from the context menu.
Using the Add button you can also add any folder you wish on the system, so it doesn?t have to be shared out to the network in order for you to back it up. You?ll also notice in the screenshot above that I have changed the schedule to be between midnight and 6am. This is because I am uploading 115GB of data, and I work from home, so from 8am-6pm I use my bandwidth for work, and from 6pm-midnight, I use it for entertainment. By default, KeepVault will Encrypt and Compress your data on the box before it sends it over the wire. Nifty?
The only feature that I think is missing from the Job scheduler is the ability to run 24/7 but use less bandwidth during the day, and all of it at night.
Looking at the other options, you can always pause the backup, view and delete your protected files online (ie. if you want to permanently delete some files, you can delete the file locally, and use this task to delete it from the cloud as well), view the protection/upload history, configure a proxy if your ISP requires one, and most importantly (the reason we all do backups), Recover Files.
The Event Log is KeepVault?s own list of events (like service start/stop, etc events). Messaging (while somewhat confusing of a name, maybe ?Job Notifications? or ?Job Alerts? might be better, is actually really well done. You can receive emails or SMS alerts (via your carriers E-Mail to SMS service) based on your backup failure rates. KeepVault obviously has some mail service on the back-end that they allow you access too, because unlike the WHS 2011 Built-in Alerts, they don?t ask you to configure an SMTP service.
When the backup eventually kicks off, if you?re backing up as much data as I am, even with the 1900kbps as advertised in my standard version of KeepVault, I?m in for a long wait? This is the same with every cloud solution the first time you back-up. The progress is good, you get both global progress as well as file level progress
From 5pm to 9am (~16 hours) on a Thursday night over my cable connection, I backed up 5.1GB to KeepVault?s cloud. Not quite as fast as the Amazon S3 solution, but then again, I don?t have a Pro account with KeepVault.
Once your data is uploaded, it lives in Proxure?s Data-Center, encrypted for only you to download in the event of a disaster. Fingers crossed that this is just an insurance policy, and never used.
KeepVault Local Backup
You may have noticed in the above screenshots there was another sub-tab called My Local Backup Job. Yes, KeepVault can back up to a local disk. In the Standard version, it?s similar to the built in WHS 2011 Backup in the fact that it can only backup to hard drives attached to the system (the recommendation is still for USB for offsite storage). If you have KeepVault?s Premium version, you can also back up to SMB Share (i.e. \\NAS\Share), so if you have another device on your network, you can back up to another share on your network.
Also, you?ll notice that this tab also allows you to compress or encrypt. So if you?re taking that disk offsite, the encryption piece might be something you want to consider for safe storage of that disk should it be compromised. If you don?t encrypt it. Files are stored in ?explorer friendly? format so a restore on any computer without KeepVault installed is possible. In comparison, WHS 2011 backup is stored in VHD format, which requires you to first mount the VHD before you can actually do the restore of files.
Recovery of Files
The One-Click Recovery, really is just that. Let?s say that you have a little child at home, and their favorite past time was to go into your prized photo library and use the delete button, just randomly through your collection. Or maybe you were searching for your favorite files, and then miss-clicked and deleted your favorite files across your 100GB collection. Restoring that can be painful. This One-Click Recovery makes that a breeze. As *soon* as you click next (i.e., one click), the service will compare the cloud to the local box, and recover all missing files. If the file exists, the restore will be skipped, preferring the local file over a recovery. So you can recover all those files our child deleted randomly, yes with one-click. Obviously this is how you would go on a new server, because none of the files exist.
This way is not a single-click restore, but a selective restore. On the left-hand side if you select a folder, you can select files and folders on the right-hand side for restore. So if you?re restoring a whole folder, select the folder above it, and then check the box next to the folder you want to restore. If you?re restoring all but a few files in a folder, that can take a few extra clicks. Thankfully you can use the CTRL or SHIFT Keys to multi-select as you need (similar to Windows Explorer). Before moving on, you need to select if you want to over-write existing files. This was weird to see on this dialog, because I figured it would be a sub-option on the recovery location which is next.
Once you?re comfortable with the set of files you?re going to restore (and if you want to over-write files), you next choose if you want to restore the files to the original location, or another location. Unless I?m restoring a completely new server, I?d probably always choose another location to make sure that I?m getting what I expected. Once you?ve chosen the folder for the location of the restore, I hit ?Recover?, and just wait for the software to download the files and put them in the appropriate place.
The restore is in fact pretty painless, and yes, my photos came down in-tact?
Why Go Pro?
As you saw above, KeepVault has two versions, Standard (which they just call ?KeepVault?) and Professional (or ?KeepVault Pro?). As a home user, you might not ever need the Pro version, but it?s certainly something you need for businesses. So what do you get if you go Pro?
- Support for Server solutions (aside from the WHS). For example, the Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, Standard and Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials. Also, if you have additional servers in your environment, you can back them up to the same account (Standard Server 2008 and Standard Server 2003).
- A much faster upload rate (5250kbps instead of 1900kbps). This comes in handy with that first backup. The faster you get the files to the cloud, the sooner you are protected!
- Local Backup to UNC share. Meaning you can back up your server to a local server share as well.
- Higher encryption levels (256-bit encryption can be chosen instead of 128-bit)
- This reminds me. If you backup a file with the pro version, and then downgrade, your standard client can?t understand the 256-bit encryption and thus can?t restore the files. It does work the other way around though. So just be careful which way you go!
- More Access to your data (Web Access, cross device access for restore) and other administration features. Notice my screenshot under ?Restore? above, if I had the pro version, I could backup files and folders from other computers, right to this single computer. This means I could support cloud backup on my client computers, and then restore this to the server in the event that the client was dropped while out on a trip! Another brilliant business feature.
- If you?re using a management solution, error notification includes system events, so you can track errors in your online backup with your monitoring tools.
- 5 version retention policy. If you are with KeepVault standard, you only have the latest version stored on the internet, with Pro it keeps up to 5 versions so you can go back in time when you wish to restore.
As a business user, you?ll have to use the Professional version to get the add-in installed. As a Home User, you should review the features above and gauge how critical they will be for you.
If you?re still debating having a Cloud Backup solution for your most prized data, you should approach it like an insurance plan. You have one for your house, you have one for your car. You cross your fingers every day that you don?t need to use it, but when you do, it?s there for you. If your hard-drive fails, recovery of such drives can often cost $1,000s, with no guarantee you can get your data back. If you?re house burns down, like my uncle?s, this sort of thing is priceless.
I?m using KeepVault, what are you using?
UPDATE: Want to learn more about KeepVault Pro? Check out my Going Pro with Proxure?s KeepVault blog post.