As oppose to explaining this topic from the technical point of view which most technical people would prefer to, I would give some examples on how hackers could steal your information the low-tech way.
The most common method of a hacker to steal your data the low-tech way is by using social engineering. It does not require any technology at all to do it this way. Scary, isn't it?
Have you ever thought that by calling your credit card company in the public could lead to data theft? Well, while you are in the airport sitting at the lounge awaiting for your flight, you decide to call your credit card company to inform them that you will be going abroad and would like to increase your credit temporarily. The most common information that you would need to provide for verification would be your credit card number, full name, address, phone number, mother maiden name and etc. Most of you would not realize that the gentlemen sitting beside or near to you have been taking notes or memorizing on all those information to be used against you. That is one example of social engineering.
With a little use of technology, a hacker could get all the sensitive information in your PC by using a bait. The technique could be as simple as placing a pen drive with the label "Financial Report xxxx" loaded with virus/trojan within the vicinity of your company. An unknowing curious employee from your company would pick it up and try to open the file in your company PC. By clicking on the "Financial Report" file, this would create a chain of event leading to information theft. The virus or trojan would infect the PC and start transferring all the targeted files to the hacker. All of these could happen in the background without you even realizing it.
These are some of the examples of the low-tech hacking technique and we have not even talk about the high tech hacking topic yet. You could always consult your technology consultant to protect yourself even better in the cyber world.
Monday, October 15, 2012
High Availability
High Availability means eliminating the possibility of single point of failure. It could mean by having redundant hardware, nodes, networks or even a data center across different geographical locations. As a result, you would get a better data and services uptime.
High availability could start as simple as having your data in multiple pen drives so that you could still continue to perform your work if any of the pen drive fail or it could be as complex as having multiple servers on different geographical locations so that your application could work even if one of the node is down.
Do not be mistaken that high availability would provide perfect or 100% uptime, remember the Murphy Law.
High availability hosting for your website and email would mean having your application running in more than one node/server at any time. This is a complex setup and you would have to consult your hosting provider if they have this services.
High availability could start as simple as having your data in multiple pen drives so that you could still continue to perform your work if any of the pen drive fail or it could be as complex as having multiple servers on different geographical locations so that your application could work even if one of the node is down.
Do not be mistaken that high availability would provide perfect or 100% uptime, remember the Murphy Law.
High availability hosting for your website and email would mean having your application running in more than one node/server at any time. This is a complex setup and you would have to consult your hosting provider if they have this services.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
SPAM!! I had enough of it!
SPAM or electronic junk mail are the worst nightmare of all email users. Most of the SPAM consist of commercial advertising and the worst out of all, virus or malware.
Most of email users spent the first few minutes of the working hour to clear out spam to make way for the real email.
What could be the problem with SPAM?
Lost of productivity:
- Spending 15 minutes each day in the office to filter out SPAM from valid email would translate to about 7 hours a month of productivity wastage at work. If you multiply this with the number of people in the company, it would be a serious problem to tackle.
Virus/Malware
- A small portion of SPAM come with a deceiving attachment which usually contain virus or malware. This will be a problem if the security software in your workstation or email server does not catch it. Virus or Malware have the potential of crippling your system or to the extend of stealing the important data from your workstation.
Phishing
- Have you ever receive an email from your local bank requesting you to click on a hyperlink to perform a task with your online account? Well, most local bank does not practice this, only the bad guys do it. Phishing email has causes the industry and people to lose million of dollars.
Bandwidth charges
- This would be a problem if you are on a limited bandwidth Internet connectivity esspecially on a mobile line. Each email including SPAM uses bandwidth to transmit to your device.
How do I get ride of SPAM?
To be frank, even the industry most best spam filter would not promise total SPAM annihilation. Anti-spam solution would help to reduce the amoun of SPAM that you will receive. Most of the anti-spam softwares are based on algorithm provided from the threat center. Each spam criteria/algorithm would have its specific point and an email would be considered as SPAM if the point reaches the threshold.
Software
Computer is dumb and it will treat every email as legitimate data. You would need to subscribe or purchase additional security software to minimize SPAM. Most of the off the shelves computer security software come together with anti-spam feature. Most probabably it will work out from the box or it might require minimal tweaking on your workstation to integrate.
Email Host
A good email host would already has an anti-spam gateway at the server level and filter out most of the SPAM before it could reach you. A very popular anti-spam software on the server level is SpamAssassin and most of the expensive security appliances are built based on it. Talk to your email hosting provider to get a more information.
Email Address
Use a unique email address username which is not a single word in the dictionary. Most spammers would launch a dictionary spam attack to your domain and hope some of it would reach your mailbox. Alexander@domain.com would be a spam magnet while Alexander.st@domain.com would be spam deterrent.
Posting Email address on public website
One of the most common way for spammers to retrieve the victim email address is to crawl the world wide web for possible email addresses to be included in their spam list. Try your best not to publish your email address on a public website and if you have to, you could include your email address as an image.
I hope the simple steps above would save you countless of time and resources battling SPAM.
Most of email users spent the first few minutes of the working hour to clear out spam to make way for the real email.
What could be the problem with SPAM?
Lost of productivity:
- Spending 15 minutes each day in the office to filter out SPAM from valid email would translate to about 7 hours a month of productivity wastage at work. If you multiply this with the number of people in the company, it would be a serious problem to tackle.
Virus/Malware
- A small portion of SPAM come with a deceiving attachment which usually contain virus or malware. This will be a problem if the security software in your workstation or email server does not catch it. Virus or Malware have the potential of crippling your system or to the extend of stealing the important data from your workstation.
Phishing
- Have you ever receive an email from your local bank requesting you to click on a hyperlink to perform a task with your online account? Well, most local bank does not practice this, only the bad guys do it. Phishing email has causes the industry and people to lose million of dollars.
Bandwidth charges
- This would be a problem if you are on a limited bandwidth Internet connectivity esspecially on a mobile line. Each email including SPAM uses bandwidth to transmit to your device.
How do I get ride of SPAM?
To be frank, even the industry most best spam filter would not promise total SPAM annihilation. Anti-spam solution would help to reduce the amoun of SPAM that you will receive. Most of the anti-spam softwares are based on algorithm provided from the threat center. Each spam criteria/algorithm would have its specific point and an email would be considered as SPAM if the point reaches the threshold.
Software
Computer is dumb and it will treat every email as legitimate data. You would need to subscribe or purchase additional security software to minimize SPAM. Most of the off the shelves computer security software come together with anti-spam feature. Most probabably it will work out from the box or it might require minimal tweaking on your workstation to integrate.
Email Host
A good email host would already has an anti-spam gateway at the server level and filter out most of the SPAM before it could reach you. A very popular anti-spam software on the server level is SpamAssassin and most of the expensive security appliances are built based on it. Talk to your email hosting provider to get a more information.
Email Address
Use a unique email address username which is not a single word in the dictionary. Most spammers would launch a dictionary spam attack to your domain and hope some of it would reach your mailbox. Alexander@domain.com would be a spam magnet while Alexander.st@domain.com would be spam deterrent.
Posting Email address on public website
One of the most common way for spammers to retrieve the victim email address is to crawl the world wide web for possible email addresses to be included in their spam list. Try your best not to publish your email address on a public website and if you have to, you could include your email address as an image.
I hope the simple steps above would save you countless of time and resources battling SPAM.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Help! My website got hacked
Internet security has been one of the most important component in our everyday life but most people is taking it lightly.
We have been hearing website got hacked on a daily basis but what could be the possible cause. In the recent weeks, there is a sharp increase in web site hacking cases by a group of local hackers targeting WordPress website. The victim's website would be defaced with a hacked "Hari Raya" page.
With more than 12 years experience in the web hosting industry, we see most of the hacking cases were caused by insecure and outdated source code in the website itself. This is amounting of up to almost all of website hacking causes.
Possible causes of website hacking:
1. Common Web Site framework (Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal and etc.)
- The most common website framework being used is Wordpress as it is mature, easy to use and it offer a lot of useful free plugins. On contrary on the popularity of Wordpress, it come with a big security issue. Wordpress is an open source platform which means everybody could download the code including the bad guys. This would mean that the bad guys know the in and out of your website.
2. SQL injection
- The bad guys could launch an SQL injection on your website as they know how does your website work. You need to remember that they have the codes of your website. Upon gaining access, they could deface your website and steal your data.
3. Password leak
- Do you save your password in your Internet browser? That is a very bad habit and you need to remove all of it. A virus, malware or Trojan infection on your workstation could cause your website got hacked. The bad guys will be able to retrieve all your password and launch an attack. Use a secure password, save it on the safe location and only share it with the needed person.
4. Easy to guess password
- abc123 and qwerty would be an easy password for you as well as the bad guys. Stop using easy password! Your password should have a combination of upper/lower case, number and symbols.
5. Plugins/Themes
- You have updated your Wordpress but still got hacked, what is happening? We see many cases of intrusion from the plugins and themes. Remember to update all your plugins and themes. Only install the necessary trusted plugins on your website.
6. Compromised host
- The hosting server could be compromised or have bad security policy. From our experience, this would be the last to happen as most good hosting companies secure their servers from attack unless you are getting inferior low budget services from your host. There would be more bad guys trying to hack on website level instead of server level due to the difficulty differences.
10 Simple Steps to secure your website
1. Secure and update your framework all the time whenever there is a new update
2. Choose your plugin and theme carefully. Keep it updated regularly.
3. Hire a good developer to customize and secure the website for you.
4. Inspect your web site logs to trace the possible hacking attempt.
5. Subscribe to a third party security scanning service.
6. Remember to have a local backup copy on your workstation all the time. Usually, your host will do the backup for you.
7. Monitor your Wordpress with plugins. My recommendation would be:
9. Talk with your developer or host on how to improve your website security.
10. Subscribe to Web Firewall services if the budget allow.
Are you totally safe from the bad guys now after securing your website? My answer would be NO! Government website with million of dollars security investment could be hacked so there would be no exception for yours. There is no guarantee that your website is safe from hacking but at least you have reduced the risk by making it difficult for the hacker.
We have been hearing website got hacked on a daily basis but what could be the possible cause. In the recent weeks, there is a sharp increase in web site hacking cases by a group of local hackers targeting WordPress website. The victim's website would be defaced with a hacked "Hari Raya" page.
With more than 12 years experience in the web hosting industry, we see most of the hacking cases were caused by insecure and outdated source code in the website itself. This is amounting of up to almost all of website hacking causes.
Possible causes of website hacking:
1. Common Web Site framework (Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal and etc.)
- The most common website framework being used is Wordpress as it is mature, easy to use and it offer a lot of useful free plugins. On contrary on the popularity of Wordpress, it come with a big security issue. Wordpress is an open source platform which means everybody could download the code including the bad guys. This would mean that the bad guys know the in and out of your website.
2. SQL injection
- The bad guys could launch an SQL injection on your website as they know how does your website work. You need to remember that they have the codes of your website. Upon gaining access, they could deface your website and steal your data.
3. Password leak
- Do you save your password in your Internet browser? That is a very bad habit and you need to remove all of it. A virus, malware or Trojan infection on your workstation could cause your website got hacked. The bad guys will be able to retrieve all your password and launch an attack. Use a secure password, save it on the safe location and only share it with the needed person.
4. Easy to guess password
- abc123 and qwerty would be an easy password for you as well as the bad guys. Stop using easy password! Your password should have a combination of upper/lower case, number and symbols.
5. Plugins/Themes
- You have updated your Wordpress but still got hacked, what is happening? We see many cases of intrusion from the plugins and themes. Remember to update all your plugins and themes. Only install the necessary trusted plugins on your website.
6. Compromised host
- The hosting server could be compromised or have bad security policy. From our experience, this would be the last to happen as most good hosting companies secure their servers from attack unless you are getting inferior low budget services from your host. There would be more bad guys trying to hack on website level instead of server level due to the difficulty differences.
10 Simple Steps to secure your website
1. Secure and update your framework all the time whenever there is a new update
2. Choose your plugin and theme carefully. Keep it updated regularly.
3. Hire a good developer to customize and secure the website for you.
4. Inspect your web site logs to trace the possible hacking attempt.
5. Subscribe to a third party security scanning service.
6. Remember to have a local backup copy on your workstation all the time. Usually, your host will do the backup for you.
7. Monitor your Wordpress with plugins. My recommendation would be:
- Exploit Scanner
- WordFence Security
- WordPress Sentinel
- WP Notifier
- VIP Scanner
9. Talk with your developer or host on how to improve your website security.
10. Subscribe to Web Firewall services if the budget allow.
Are you totally safe from the bad guys now after securing your website? My answer would be NO! Government website with million of dollars security investment could be hacked so there would be no exception for yours. There is no guarantee that your website is safe from hacking but at least you have reduced the risk by making it difficult for the hacker.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Simple steps to secure your email account
Email services with collaboration is a norm nowadays and most users keep critical data on the cloud. With this great power that you get
from your email services, it would come with a greater responsibility to
protect your account.
As a continuation from the previous topic of identity theft with domain name, the same thing could also happen when somebody hijack your email account. The hacker could cause a lot of damage if they could gain unauthorized access to your email account. Your email account could contain your password, top secret email, password retrieval email and etc. The last thing that you need is nasty emails being sent out from your email account to your contacts. Is this enough to scare you off from having an email account? You do not have to worry and delete your email account now, I will provide few simple measures that you could do to secure your email account so that you would not have to fall back to pigeon post.
With 12 years experience in the web hosting industry and numerous encounter with email account intrusion, you could follow these recipe to secure your email account:
1. Password
This is the most crucial and first line defense of your email account. A weak password is a recipe for disaster. Password such as 'abc123', 'qwerty', '123456' and etc. are too common and these are the first few combinations that a hacker will attempt. A strong password would consist of upper case, lower case, numbers and symbols. If your name is Michael and you would want a password that is easy to remember, you could try something like 'W1cH@3LM2012'. The strength of this password would definitely turn the hacker off. A good password is a strong password and easy to be remembered by you.
2. Email Service provider
Depending on your email hosting package, a good provider will enforce minimum password strength policy and having at least a brute force attack firewall to fend of unauthorized access.
3. Choosing a unique email username
david@domain.com, mary@domain.com, peter@domain.com and etc. are too common and it is based on the word from dictionary. I would recommend you to use firstname.lastname@domain.com as these words are not from a single line in the dictionary. Aside from increasing your account security, you could also reduce the amount of spam coming to your account.
4. Check your PC for virus
A badly infected machine could contain virus that is able to manipulate your email client (Outlook, Thunderbird and etc.) as well as your browser's saved passwords. Most of the time, the user would not aware that the virus is actually exploiting your email account as the process is always running on the background. A virus could be a medium in your machine to relay your account information back to the hacker or it could be a spambot which reside in your machine and turn it into a spamming gateway. Always get a qualified technician to scan your machine periodically and get a good antivirus software.
I hope these few simple steps will save you from the misery of experiencing email account exploitation.
As a continuation from the previous topic of identity theft with domain name, the same thing could also happen when somebody hijack your email account. The hacker could cause a lot of damage if they could gain unauthorized access to your email account. Your email account could contain your password, top secret email, password retrieval email and etc. The last thing that you need is nasty emails being sent out from your email account to your contacts. Is this enough to scare you off from having an email account? You do not have to worry and delete your email account now, I will provide few simple measures that you could do to secure your email account so that you would not have to fall back to pigeon post.
With 12 years experience in the web hosting industry and numerous encounter with email account intrusion, you could follow these recipe to secure your email account:
1. Password
This is the most crucial and first line defense of your email account. A weak password is a recipe for disaster. Password such as 'abc123', 'qwerty', '123456' and etc. are too common and these are the first few combinations that a hacker will attempt. A strong password would consist of upper case, lower case, numbers and symbols. If your name is Michael and you would want a password that is easy to remember, you could try something like 'W1cH@3LM2012'. The strength of this password would definitely turn the hacker off. A good password is a strong password and easy to be remembered by you.
2. Email Service provider
Depending on your email hosting package, a good provider will enforce minimum password strength policy and having at least a brute force attack firewall to fend of unauthorized access.
3. Choosing a unique email username
david@domain.com, mary@domain.com, peter@domain.com and etc. are too common and it is based on the word from dictionary. I would recommend you to use firstname.lastname@domain.com as these words are not from a single line in the dictionary. Aside from increasing your account security, you could also reduce the amount of spam coming to your account.
4. Check your PC for virus
A badly infected machine could contain virus that is able to manipulate your email client (Outlook, Thunderbird and etc.) as well as your browser's saved passwords. Most of the time, the user would not aware that the virus is actually exploiting your email account as the process is always running on the background. A virus could be a medium in your machine to relay your account information back to the hacker or it could be a spambot which reside in your machine and turn it into a spamming gateway. Always get a qualified technician to scan your machine periodically and get a good antivirus software.
I hope these few simple steps will save you from the misery of experiencing email account exploitation.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Samsung Galaxy
Few weeks ago, my faithful phone, HTC Desire-Z got stolen during a commotion in a restaurant. It was late at night and I could not get a replacement until the next evening. I was without my phone for almost 20 hours and life was so meaningless.
Office hour ends and it's time to shop for a new phone. I was in Digital Mall, PJ walking around for look for a replacement. Initially, I wanted to get a phone with QWERTY but the option was so limited. Phone manufacturers are not focusing in making phone with keyboard anymore. The one that caught my attention is the Droid 4 from Motorola but nobody is selling it over here.
After strolling for while and given up hope to get a keyboard Android phone, my choices boiled down to either HTC One X (RM1899), Samsung Galaxy 2 (RM1499) or Samsung Galaxy 3 (RM2199). Obviously, the Samsung Galaxy 3 is the hype and the most handsome of the lot. The 4.8" HD Super AMOLED make it stands out among the competition and it has with a quad core processor! It has 2 more cores than the notebook that I have been using for work. If the iPhone 3 is more powerful than the computers used to launch Apollo to the space, the computing power in Galaxy S3 could send the same shuttle to the far end galaxy.
To cut the story short, I ended up with a used unit of Samsung Galaxy 2 due to budget constraint. In fact, the older Samsung Galaxy 2 is not too far behind the newer Galaxy 3. It has a 4.3" Super AMOLED Plus screen and a dual core 1.2GHz processor with sleeker body design.
It got me quite a while to get comfortable with the soft keyboard. I have tried Swype which is the best soft keyboard but I still prefer to have a QWERTY keyboard. For the first few days, I was having fun navigating the gorgeous screen with tremendous level of smoothness. Then problem came, the phone hung once in a while, overheating and the battery life was so bad. The phone consume half one the juice when I was sleeping for 6 hours!
Life was so meaningless again as I thought I have gotten a lemon this time. Not giving up, I tried to troubleshoot the phone and found an official software update. It is the Ice Cream Sandwich! Ran a last backup and press the "update" button. Everything was done in about half and hour. Hooray!
I observed the phone performance for the next few days and it does not give me anymore problem. The ICS upgrade has fixed the battery life problem, overheating and the stability issue. I have not rebooted my phone for the past few weeks.
There are temptations to get the newer Galaxy 3 but it does not make a lot of difference in user experience at the moment. The Galaxy 2 is still a good all rounder. It is not a big upgrade for somebody that already has a Galaxy 2. Perhaps if you have an older phone and looking for an upgrade, the Galaxy 3 is a good upgrade. The telco company is running a lot of promotion for the S3 and you could get it as cheap as RM699 from Maxis with a 24 months lock in period.
Office hour ends and it's time to shop for a new phone. I was in Digital Mall, PJ walking around for look for a replacement. Initially, I wanted to get a phone with QWERTY but the option was so limited. Phone manufacturers are not focusing in making phone with keyboard anymore. The one that caught my attention is the Droid 4 from Motorola but nobody is selling it over here.
After strolling for while and given up hope to get a keyboard Android phone, my choices boiled down to either HTC One X (RM1899), Samsung Galaxy 2 (RM1499) or Samsung Galaxy 3 (RM2199). Obviously, the Samsung Galaxy 3 is the hype and the most handsome of the lot. The 4.8" HD Super AMOLED make it stands out among the competition and it has with a quad core processor! It has 2 more cores than the notebook that I have been using for work. If the iPhone 3 is more powerful than the computers used to launch Apollo to the space, the computing power in Galaxy S3 could send the same shuttle to the far end galaxy.
To cut the story short, I ended up with a used unit of Samsung Galaxy 2 due to budget constraint. In fact, the older Samsung Galaxy 2 is not too far behind the newer Galaxy 3. It has a 4.3" Super AMOLED Plus screen and a dual core 1.2GHz processor with sleeker body design.
It got me quite a while to get comfortable with the soft keyboard. I have tried Swype which is the best soft keyboard but I still prefer to have a QWERTY keyboard. For the first few days, I was having fun navigating the gorgeous screen with tremendous level of smoothness. Then problem came, the phone hung once in a while, overheating and the battery life was so bad. The phone consume half one the juice when I was sleeping for 6 hours!
Life was so meaningless again as I thought I have gotten a lemon this time. Not giving up, I tried to troubleshoot the phone and found an official software update. It is the Ice Cream Sandwich! Ran a last backup and press the "update" button. Everything was done in about half and hour. Hooray!
I observed the phone performance for the next few days and it does not give me anymore problem. The ICS upgrade has fixed the battery life problem, overheating and the stability issue. I have not rebooted my phone for the past few weeks.
There are temptations to get the newer Galaxy 3 but it does not make a lot of difference in user experience at the moment. The Galaxy 2 is still a good all rounder. It is not a big upgrade for somebody that already has a Galaxy 2. Perhaps if you have an older phone and looking for an upgrade, the Galaxy 3 is a good upgrade. The telco company is running a lot of promotion for the S3 and you could get it as cheap as RM699 from Maxis with a 24 months lock in period.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Protect your online Identity
Finger printing identification has been innovated more than a hundred of years ago to give each person a unique identity. As the innovation continues to the modern era where everybody has a hand in the virtual world, the importance of having a unique online identity is as important as having your finger print identity.
You would want your friends, acquaintance, business partners, clients and families to be able to reach you in the cyberspace all the time.
One of the way to create and protect your online identity is to register a domain name for yourself. Just like finger printing technology or even better, a domain name is unique and nobody would have the same one as yours. Some people would purchase domain name to protect their real identity, business, nickname so that nobody could steal their online identity. I am sure you would not want to have a bad write-up on your identity by somebody else that has hijacked your online identity.
Your online identity become more prominent as the day goes by as people would build a picture of your based on what they could search online. It could be your personal or business identity.
Securing a domain name is much easier and affordable now comparing with the older days. There are thousand of providers out there offering the same product with different level of service and package. Depending on your requirement, you could secure an international domain name (gTLD) which require minimal fee and processing.
If you want to secure a domain name within your locality, you would need to contact your local domain name registration provider as the process could be a bit more complicated as you would need to prove your local presence. Trust me, it would not be a rocket science. A good provider will walk you through the entire process just like a walk in the park.
You have purchased a domain name to secure your online identity, what is next? You might want to direct your domain to a website and have email account within your domain with a web hosting package. I would not discuss much on web hosting in this article as I have wrote it previously.
You would want your friends, acquaintance, business partners, clients and families to be able to reach you in the cyberspace all the time.
One of the way to create and protect your online identity is to register a domain name for yourself. Just like finger printing technology or even better, a domain name is unique and nobody would have the same one as yours. Some people would purchase domain name to protect their real identity, business, nickname so that nobody could steal their online identity. I am sure you would not want to have a bad write-up on your identity by somebody else that has hijacked your online identity.
Your online identity become more prominent as the day goes by as people would build a picture of your based on what they could search online. It could be your personal or business identity.
Securing a domain name is much easier and affordable now comparing with the older days. There are thousand of providers out there offering the same product with different level of service and package. Depending on your requirement, you could secure an international domain name (gTLD) which require minimal fee and processing.
If you want to secure a domain name within your locality, you would need to contact your local domain name registration provider as the process could be a bit more complicated as you would need to prove your local presence. Trust me, it would not be a rocket science. A good provider will walk you through the entire process just like a walk in the park.
You have purchased a domain name to secure your online identity, what is next? You might want to direct your domain to a website and have email account within your domain with a web hosting package. I would not discuss much on web hosting in this article as I have wrote it previously.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
How running a gigantic home office is a no-no
Most of the younger generation is equipped with basic computer knowledge. I believe most of you that is reading this post would not have a problem setting up your own computer and home network, or getting help from your friend.
Most of these setup will work almost flawlessly with small amount of users. End users will be more likely to be exposed to Small Office Home Office (SOHO) technology where you can purcahase an off the shelves solution from your nearest computer shop.
However, problem will start when you try to use the same setup and solution to cater to a bigger group of people. For example, if you are starting off a company with 50 people. Whilst it will be cheap, a SOHO solution might not fit the bill in this case as the equipments that you are using at home would not be able to support the exponential increase of users.
Let's take example of a Wifi AP, the basic SOHO unit might be able to provide signal coverage for your house and few of your family members. To some people, to cover bigger space and more people would mean adding extra Wifi AP of the same type. Logically, this solution might work as you are adding more equipments to cater more users and coverage area.
However, there are few factors that most of us have left left. By adding more Wifi AP, you are adding more radio interference to your environment which might cause a lot of problem if you do not have an expert to configure it for you. On top of that, you need to consider of having a single SSID or multipe SSIDs in your environment. If you choose to have a single SSID, the configuration would be more complex as you need to choose your wifi chanel precisely to minimize interference and this also does not guarantee that you Wifi network will work flawlessly as your equipments are still subjected to external inteference such as other radio equipments from your neighbors.
Some of the more robust solution to this scenario would be deploying more powerful Wifi AP to reduce the number of equipment needed in your environment. Alternatively, you could use a solution with WLAN controller which is very robust but it come with a higher price tag.
Another example would be to streamline your workstation users. In a home environment with few users, it is easy to control the policy of each workstation manually. You still can afford to access each workstation to check the policy manually.
What if you have 50 workstations? It would be inefficient to spend few hours a day just to make sure that your users are adhering to the workstation usage policy (eg. not allow to install 3rd party software). How can you be sure that all of your workstation are free from third party software or even illegal software all the time?
You might want to consider using Active Directory in your environment to centralize the policies control for all your users. Your IT administrator could set a single policy for all or customize policy for each workstation from the server. By this way, you can be almost certain that all your workstation users are adhering to your company policy and you do not have to sweat if the authority knock at your door.
Most of these setup will work almost flawlessly with small amount of users. End users will be more likely to be exposed to Small Office Home Office (SOHO) technology where you can purcahase an off the shelves solution from your nearest computer shop.
However, problem will start when you try to use the same setup and solution to cater to a bigger group of people. For example, if you are starting off a company with 50 people. Whilst it will be cheap, a SOHO solution might not fit the bill in this case as the equipments that you are using at home would not be able to support the exponential increase of users.
Let's take example of a Wifi AP, the basic SOHO unit might be able to provide signal coverage for your house and few of your family members. To some people, to cover bigger space and more people would mean adding extra Wifi AP of the same type. Logically, this solution might work as you are adding more equipments to cater more users and coverage area.
However, there are few factors that most of us have left left. By adding more Wifi AP, you are adding more radio interference to your environment which might cause a lot of problem if you do not have an expert to configure it for you. On top of that, you need to consider of having a single SSID or multipe SSIDs in your environment. If you choose to have a single SSID, the configuration would be more complex as you need to choose your wifi chanel precisely to minimize interference and this also does not guarantee that you Wifi network will work flawlessly as your equipments are still subjected to external inteference such as other radio equipments from your neighbors.
Some of the more robust solution to this scenario would be deploying more powerful Wifi AP to reduce the number of equipment needed in your environment. Alternatively, you could use a solution with WLAN controller which is very robust but it come with a higher price tag.
Another example would be to streamline your workstation users. In a home environment with few users, it is easy to control the policy of each workstation manually. You still can afford to access each workstation to check the policy manually.
What if you have 50 workstations? It would be inefficient to spend few hours a day just to make sure that your users are adhering to the workstation usage policy (eg. not allow to install 3rd party software). How can you be sure that all of your workstation are free from third party software or even illegal software all the time?
You might want to consider using Active Directory in your environment to centralize the policies control for all your users. Your IT administrator could set a single policy for all or customize policy for each workstation from the server. By this way, you can be almost certain that all your workstation users are adhering to your company policy and you do not have to sweat if the authority knock at your door.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
IT outsourcing: Do I save cost?
The term outsourcing refers to procuring services or products from a supplier in order to cut costs.
Why and what to outsource?
Most businesses’ core functions are supported by smaller business divisions or cost centers. For example, if you are running a manufacturing business with 50 staff, your core business would be producing your own product. The supporting arms would be the IT, human resource, administration departments, etc.
A conventional way of running a business would be keeping everything in-house which includes the supporting business division. While you are comfortable with this model, the likelihood is – it will cost more in the long run.
Outsourcing your supporting business division would save you the headache of managing it whilst enabling you to focus on your core business. An outsourcing company would usually specialise in their core business to support you.
To keep your IT operations running smoothly, you would need a fair amount of assistance. Consider the following options:
Fixing your own computer
Employees are required to fix their own computer problems. Those who are unable to do so would need help from colleagues or outsiders.
While this model saves you computer-fixing costs, the intangible cost incurred is – employees spend more time fixing their computers instead of working. If you factor in the loss of productivity due to the computer downtime, it will cost you even more.
Hiring an in-house IT specialist
While this might sound like a good idea and most organisations adopt this way, let me tell you about the disadvantages…
In a 50-strong working environment, the budget for an IT position would usually allow you to hire only one person. Additionally, you may only be able to afford somebody who is still raw in the industry as experienced IT personnel will demand higher salaries and better career paths.
In this environment, the career path for the IT specialist is limited as your core business would be manufacturing while he works in a different division. Isolated and disconnected from the crowd, the turnover for this position could be very high. As such, you may need to factor in getting a replacement and re-training.
With this model in place, you would also need to take care of training, annual leave, sick leave and other miscellaneous human resource hassles, e.g. what if this guy goes on a long medical leave?
Outsourcing
IT outsourcing companies have one focus; relieving work stress by taking care of the computer issues in your organisation. They’re experts in this department, just as you are in your core business.
While the hourly cost per man is more than that of hiring an internal IT guy, you will be surprised that it will save you more in the long run.
Human Resource
When outsourcing, it is essential to hire a good and reliable vendor, pay them well and keep tabs on their work. You do not have to worry about training, certification, staff turnover, annual leave, sick leave, etc., as the outsourcing company will cover these areas for you. Depending on the contract, the outsourcing company will provide a back-up for you if the designated engineers do not show up at work. If the staff resigns, they will find a replacement for you and train them accordingly.
Another benefit of outsourcing: You can terminate the contract with a non-performing outsourcing company easily compared to getting rid of a non-performing internal staff.
Policies
Outsourcing companies usually have a set of IT policies that can be implemented in your organisation to improve the effectiveness of your operations. For example, they have a preventive maintenance policy that can be implemented in your organisation to detect a problem even before it happens. This will reduce downtime cost due to a server or workstation failure, e.g., you need to send your car in to the workshop for servicing/preventive maintenance regularly and not just wait till a problem crops up to fix it.
Documentation
A good outsourcing company would usually provide detailed reports and documentation of your IT assets. Documentation is important if you need to appoint another vendor or IT staff to take over the job in the future.
Resources
As IT is the core business of your outsourcing company, they will have sufficient resources to get your problem fixed and provide advice on how to maximise your IT infrastructure. To help you run your “business at the speed of thought” (as Gates puts it), they can advise you on the best IT tools to employ for your organisation. Plus you can save time on testing out different tools like a lab rat!
You are working with a team
Most outsourcing companies have a team of experts to take care of your IT infrastructure instead of depending on an individual. Established outsourcing companies usually consist of junior and senior engineers, IT managers, account managers, and other experts. They work together as a team to support your business.
Savings?
With the absence of all the above-mentioned worries, you can save more on operation costs in the long run while focusing on what matters most: your core business. Any problem with your computers? Just report it to the vendor and they will take care of it for you. A good vendor is able to detect potential problems before they happen. Computer problems don’t have to be your problem, anymore!
Why and what to outsource?
Most businesses’ core functions are supported by smaller business divisions or cost centers. For example, if you are running a manufacturing business with 50 staff, your core business would be producing your own product. The supporting arms would be the IT, human resource, administration departments, etc.
A conventional way of running a business would be keeping everything in-house which includes the supporting business division. While you are comfortable with this model, the likelihood is – it will cost more in the long run.
Outsourcing your supporting business division would save you the headache of managing it whilst enabling you to focus on your core business. An outsourcing company would usually specialise in their core business to support you.
To keep your IT operations running smoothly, you would need a fair amount of assistance. Consider the following options:
Fixing your own computer
Employees are required to fix their own computer problems. Those who are unable to do so would need help from colleagues or outsiders.
While this model saves you computer-fixing costs, the intangible cost incurred is – employees spend more time fixing their computers instead of working. If you factor in the loss of productivity due to the computer downtime, it will cost you even more.
Hiring an in-house IT specialist
While this might sound like a good idea and most organisations adopt this way, let me tell you about the disadvantages…
In a 50-strong working environment, the budget for an IT position would usually allow you to hire only one person. Additionally, you may only be able to afford somebody who is still raw in the industry as experienced IT personnel will demand higher salaries and better career paths.
In this environment, the career path for the IT specialist is limited as your core business would be manufacturing while he works in a different division. Isolated and disconnected from the crowd, the turnover for this position could be very high. As such, you may need to factor in getting a replacement and re-training.
With this model in place, you would also need to take care of training, annual leave, sick leave and other miscellaneous human resource hassles, e.g. what if this guy goes on a long medical leave?
Outsourcing
IT outsourcing companies have one focus; relieving work stress by taking care of the computer issues in your organisation. They’re experts in this department, just as you are in your core business.
While the hourly cost per man is more than that of hiring an internal IT guy, you will be surprised that it will save you more in the long run.
Human Resource
When outsourcing, it is essential to hire a good and reliable vendor, pay them well and keep tabs on their work. You do not have to worry about training, certification, staff turnover, annual leave, sick leave, etc., as the outsourcing company will cover these areas for you. Depending on the contract, the outsourcing company will provide a back-up for you if the designated engineers do not show up at work. If the staff resigns, they will find a replacement for you and train them accordingly.
Another benefit of outsourcing: You can terminate the contract with a non-performing outsourcing company easily compared to getting rid of a non-performing internal staff.
Policies
Outsourcing companies usually have a set of IT policies that can be implemented in your organisation to improve the effectiveness of your operations. For example, they have a preventive maintenance policy that can be implemented in your organisation to detect a problem even before it happens. This will reduce downtime cost due to a server or workstation failure, e.g., you need to send your car in to the workshop for servicing/preventive maintenance regularly and not just wait till a problem crops up to fix it.
Documentation
A good outsourcing company would usually provide detailed reports and documentation of your IT assets. Documentation is important if you need to appoint another vendor or IT staff to take over the job in the future.
Resources
As IT is the core business of your outsourcing company, they will have sufficient resources to get your problem fixed and provide advice on how to maximise your IT infrastructure. To help you run your “business at the speed of thought” (as Gates puts it), they can advise you on the best IT tools to employ for your organisation. Plus you can save time on testing out different tools like a lab rat!
You are working with a team
Most outsourcing companies have a team of experts to take care of your IT infrastructure instead of depending on an individual. Established outsourcing companies usually consist of junior and senior engineers, IT managers, account managers, and other experts. They work together as a team to support your business.
Savings?
With the absence of all the above-mentioned worries, you can save more on operation costs in the long run while focusing on what matters most: your core business. Any problem with your computers? Just report it to the vendor and they will take care of it for you. A good vendor is able to detect potential problems before they happen. Computer problems don’t have to be your problem, anymore!
Monday, October 31, 2011
Saving on Mobile Charges when Travelling Abroad
Mobile Internet refers to Internet access via a mobile device, such as the smartphone or laptop. Heard of people being charged for expensive roaming calls and mobile internet when they are abroad? Real case scenario: one of my clients received a 5-figure mobile phone bill after a 2-week overseas business trip.
How can you avoid sky-high bills while still making calls and staying connected throughout the trip?
To stay online in another country, I do not have the luxury of using my local number as the primary line to make calls and surf the internet as the charges would have been exorbitant!
That is why I bring a second phone with me when I am abroad – a small basic phone with extraordinarily long battery life to save the hassle of carrying the heavy charger everywhere. It might cost between RM70-100 for a decent set and you could borrow if you do not want to buy one. Remember to turn off mobile data on your phone if you are overseas to avoid extra charges.
Many airport terminals, or at least the ones that I have been to, have a mobile phone kiosk at the arrival hall giving out free SIM cards. Don’t think twice, take it as you will need it later. I swapped my SIM card from my smartphone to the secondary phone and used the new SIM card on the smartphone.
Why?
Because I will only be receiving calls and texts on my primary number but I need the mobile data from my new SIM card. These cards do not usually come with usable credit and you need to top-up at the nearest convenience store or at the kiosk itself. The only settings you need to configure is the mobile internet to get online. For this, read the instructions on the package, call the hotline or get the person from the kiosk to help.
For inbound travelers to Kuala Lumpur, AirAsia has taken a step further to market their Tune Talk mobile package. They will hand it to you on the flight itself and you can top-up upon arrival at LCCT.
How much would it cost?
In Sydney, I subscribed to Virgin Mobile and it cost me AUD19 for approximately AUD10 worth of call/text credit and 1GB of Internet!
While in Phuket, I paid 350 Baht for a postpaid package from AIS for
150MB data and 150 Baht calling credit… if I remember correctly.
How does Mobile Internet help when travelling?
One of the most important apps that I need when travelling to foreign soil is the default GPS app (Maps) on the phone. In Sydney, I walked a lot in the city centre and the GPS guided me without missing a single junction. In Phuket, it saved me from being lost in the middle of nowhere late at night when I travelled alone to another beach on a motorcycle. Trust me, you do not want to lose your way on a remote island in the middle of the night when you can see nobody for the next few kilometers.
As for lodging, the Agoda app helped a lot in searching for hotels nearby. I like to experience different atmospheres at different places in the city, so I quite enjoy changing hotels, as if a nomad. With Agoda, I can view hotel information, reviews, prices and even book a room from my mobile phone. As a result, I moved to 3 different hotels in 4 nights.
Trying good food is a must when I am traveling. The recurring question in my mind is, what is good here? Would they charge me more because I am a foreigner? Besides reading the menu and getting recommendations from the stall owner, I usually use my assistant, FourSquare. With it, I am able to read tips from others and this can almost certainly guarantee a satiating meal within my budget.
Enough about Mobile Internet. How about phone calls? No doubt, calling home to speak to your loved ones on the new line can cost a lot. I use the Skype VOIP service and it costs as low as USD0.023/minute which is less than RM0.10/min after conversion. Inexpensive enough? There is a catch to use Skype calls, though; you need a very good mobile Internet connection. Besides that, I also stay in touch with my friends on WhatsApp, email, etc.
Well, I hope my article can improve your next traveling experience and save you a little. If you have any other tips, do let me know in the comments section. I would love to hear from you!
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Unifi : How do I save by paying more?
I have been using TM Streamyx RM66 package for about 5 years before switching to Unifi when I moved in to my new house early this year. At first, it is a no brainer decision to jump from RM66 to RM149 per month on internet fees.
How much does the Internet packages cost:
Streamyx Package (512kbps):
Internet Fees: RM66/month
Phone line rental charge: RM26
Taxes: (few dollars)
Total: ~RM100
Unifi (5Mbps):
Internet Fees: RM149/month
Phone line rental charge: RM0
Taxes: 0
Installation: RM200 one time (some lucky chap got it for Free during the promotion)
Total: RM149/month
From the price comparison, it appear that I am paying 50% every month on Internet.
Let's look at how I can save by spending more:-
What do I get from Unifi?
Having said all these, my Astro subscription still has to stay on as my media center (desktop) is too high tech for the old man to operate.
So, how much do I save?
Extra charge on Internet fees: RM50
Total Savings (230-50): RM180
Now, you save RM180 by spending extra RM50
How much does the Internet packages cost:
Streamyx Package (512kbps):
Internet Fees: RM66/month
Phone line rental charge: RM26
Taxes: (few dollars)
Total: ~RM100
Unifi (5Mbps):
Internet Fees: RM149/month
Phone line rental charge: RM0
Taxes: 0
Installation: RM200 one time (some lucky chap got it for Free during the promotion)
Total: RM149/month
From the price comparison, it appear that I am paying 50% every month on Internet.
Let's look at how I can save by spending more:-
What do I get from Unifi?
- IPTV
- 10 times the download speed and 20 times the upload speed
- Unlimited Free Calls to landline and RM0.10/min to any Mobile operator.
- DECT phone (worth RM100)
Having said all these, my Astro subscription still has to stay on as my media center (desktop) is too high tech for the old man to operate.
So, how much do I save?
- RM30 for Astro on Demand
- RM30 for phone calls
- RM20 for Astro Beyond (for HD content)
- RM150 on Astro (assuming I can terminate this)
- TIME factor (faster Internet speed = more things can be done on the net at a shorter duration)
- Less stress with faster Internet speed
Extra charge on Internet fees: RM50
Total Savings (230-50): RM180
Now, you save RM180 by spending extra RM50
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
How to install web management for HP P212 RAID controller
If you have bought a HP server with P212 RAID controller and installing CentOS, you will need to install HP System Management Homepage (SMH) to monitor your health status of your array from the OS. Else, you will only be able to know the RAID status by rebooting the server and look the boot up message.
Here are the steps to install HP SMH on CentOS 5.6:-
1. Login as root and perform all below actions as a superuser (either su/sudo or root login). To start, we create a directory called HP to store all our downloads:
mkdir hp
cd hp
2. Download the PSP now. We will also download the latest binary version of HP-ACU-cli and SMH. The PSP includes only the source RPM for an out dated version:
wget ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/pubsw-linux/p414707558/v63381/hpacucli-8.70-8.0.noarch.rpm
wget ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/supportpack-linux/p323971208/v66272/psp-8.63.rhel5.x86_64.en.tar.gz
wget ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/pubsw-linux/p1507410135/v64330/hpsmh-6.3.0-22.x86_64.rpm
3. We now extract the PSP archive. Delete the outdated HP-ACU-cli and SMH RPMs.
tar zxvf psp-8.63.rhel5.x86_64.en.tar.gz
rm -rf hpacucli-8.60-8.0.noarch.rpm
rm -rf hpsmh-6.2.2-2.x86_64.rpm
4. Now we install the RPMs. Please note to keep the same order of installation, otherwise it might fail due to dependencies.
yum install net-snmp
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck hp-health-* hpacucli-* hponcfg-*
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck hpsmh-*
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck hp-snmp-agents-* hp-smh-templates-* cpqacuxe-* hpdiags-*
5. Configure SNMP to be accessible by HP System Management Homepage. It is necessary that you enter the passphrase for the Read/Write and Read-Only
access via localhost, otherwise SMH will not function properly. Also
set the snmptrap passphrase.
/sbin/hpsnmpconfig
6. Enable the ACU to connect and be accessible via the SMH. This is the RAID controller’s information.
cpqacuxe --enable-remote
7. Start all services:
service hp-asrd restart
service hp-health restart
service snmpd restart
service hp-snmp-agents restart
8. Secure your System Management Homepage installation to be accessible only by your IP address (replace 127.0.0.1 with yours):
/opt/hp/hpsmh/sbin/smhconfig --autostart=true --iconview=true --ip-restricted-logins=true --ip-restricted-include=127.0.0.1
9. Start the HP System Management Homepage service.
service hpsmhd restart
Visit http://Your-Server-IP:2301/. This should automatically start the HP SMH server and redirect you https://Your-Server-IP:2381/. Use your root user and password to gain access to SMH.
Here are the steps to install HP SMH on CentOS 5.6:-
1. Login as root and perform all below actions as a superuser (either su/sudo or root login). To start, we create a directory called HP to store all our downloads:
mkdir hp
cd hp
2. Download the PSP now. We will also download the latest binary version of HP-ACU-cli and SMH. The PSP includes only the source RPM for an out dated version:
wget ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/pubsw-linux/p414707558/v63381/hpacucli-8.70-8.0.noarch.rpm
wget ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/supportpack-linux/p323971208/v66272/psp-8.63.rhel5.x86_64.en.tar.gz
wget ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/pubsw-linux/p1507410135/v64330/hpsmh-6.3.0-22.x86_64.rpm
3. We now extract the PSP archive. Delete the outdated HP-ACU-cli and SMH RPMs.
tar zxvf psp-8.63.rhel5.x86_64.en.tar.gz
rm -rf hpacucli-8.60-8.0.noarch.rpm
rm -rf hpsmh-6.2.2-2.x86_64.rpm
4. Now we install the RPMs. Please note to keep the same order of installation, otherwise it might fail due to dependencies.
yum install net-snmp
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck hp-health-* hpacucli-* hponcfg-*
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck hpsmh-*
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck hp-snmp-agents-* hp-smh-templates-* cpqacuxe-* hpdiags-*
5. Configure SNMP to be accessible by HP System Management Homepage. It is necessary that you enter the passphrase for the Read/Write and Read-Only
access via localhost, otherwise SMH will not function properly. Also
set the snmptrap passphrase.
/sbin/hpsnmpconfig
6. Enable the ACU to connect and be accessible via the SMH. This is the RAID controller’s information.
cpqacuxe --enable-remote
7. Start all services:
service hp-asrd restart
service hp-health restart
service snmpd restart
service hp-snmp-agents restart
8. Secure your System Management Homepage installation to be accessible only by your IP address (replace 127.0.0.1 with yours):
/opt/hp/hpsmh/sbin/smhconfig --autostart=true --iconview=true --ip-restricted-logins=true --ip-restricted-include=127.0.0.1
9. Start the HP System Management Homepage service.
service hpsmhd restart
Visit http://Your-Server-IP:2301/. This should automatically start the HP SMH server and redirect you https://Your-Server-IP:2381/. Use your root user and password to gain access to SMH.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
SSD vs SATA
This is my review after swapping the Hitachi 500GB SATA on my notebook with the Intel 160GB SSD X-25M. A picture paint a thousand words, so let's look at the images below:-
Boot up time to the login screen on Windows 7 64bit was 44 seconds on SATA and it has been slashed to more than half at 20 sec on SSD.
I paid about RM700 for this X25M as it is an OEM unit which come with one month warranty only. You can get it from our most popular tech website at http://lowyat.net .The retail pack would set you back to around RM1400 which is double the price.
I don't see any reason not to upgrade to SSD if you can afford it. Cut down on the budget for your new notebook and use the balance to get the SSD. As SSD does not have any mechanical parts, I do not have to worry about dropping my notebook or knocking it on a hard surface when it is still operational.
From the comparison, we can see that the SSD has an average read speed of 172.1MB/sec while the SATA can only write at 59MB/sec which is about a third of the speed of the SSD.
Battery life on my notebook has increased by about 20% to make it to 6 hours usage time from 5. On the weight, the SSD is lighter by a few grams.
Battery life on my notebook has increased by about 20% to make it to 6 hours usage time from 5. On the weight, the SSD is lighter by a few grams.
Boot up time to the login screen on Windows 7 64bit was 44 seconds on SATA and it has been slashed to more than half at 20 sec on SSD.
I paid about RM700 for this X25M as it is an OEM unit which come with one month warranty only. You can get it from our most popular tech website at http://lowyat.net .The retail pack would set you back to around RM1400 which is double the price.
I don't see any reason not to upgrade to SSD if you can afford it. Cut down on the budget for your new notebook and use the balance to get the SSD. As SSD does not have any mechanical parts, I do not have to worry about dropping my notebook or knocking it on a hard surface when it is still operational.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Shopping for my new notebook
My current notebook, BenQ S32B has been serving faithfully to me for 36 months and it is time to change as I need to pass it to another colleague in my department.
It's time for new notebook shopping!!! My requirements are as below:-
Light
Long battery life (>4 hrs usage time)
Fast
With Dedicated GPU
Priced at around RM3000 (USD1000)
With these new requirements, my first choice would be Mac Book Air 11”. It look good, light and the aluminium chassis is nice to hold. It was weekend and I decided to head down to the nearest Mac store to have a look a the real thing. The first impression was good as the Mac Air is really a looker. After toying it for few minutes, I realize that the screen is too small for daily usage, limited USB slot (2x), no HDMI out and no Ethernet RJ45 out! I know that we can purchase the Ethernet adapter and USB extender separately but I don't like the idea of having RJ45 Ethernet adapter externally. My job require me to perform a lot of network troubleshooting and RJ45 Ethernet adapter is important to me. On top of this, I can't play my favorite HD file on my big screen due to the absent of HDMI. The screen is just too small to my liking for daily usage. I need to have an external monitor in my office and at home if I decide to go with this Mac Air 11”. Out of budget for these extra gadgets and it's time for alternatives.
My colleague, Ben suggested that I have a look at Acer TimeLineX and my first impression was, “An ACER again? A student's notebook again?”. After looking for more information on the unit, my perception for Acer has changed once again. The TimelineX offer up to 8 hours of battery life, dedicated RADEON HD6550M 1GB GPU, an i3-380 processor and 2GB of memory and a 13.3” HD LED LCD. The weight is about 1.7kg with battery....Impressive and it's priced at RM2200 (USD750) which is very reasonable for the specs. The downside of this notebook comparing with the Mac Air is the absence of the fast hard drive, SSD. So, I've decided to replace the HDD with an Intel X25M 160GB at the cost of RM700 and upgrade the RAM to 4GB. After all these upgrade, it still cost me
I am a happy man now with a decently fast notebook at a reasonable spending :)
SSD review in on the way..............
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
iPad 3G, do I need this?
Due to the uprising trend and consumer interest towards Apple's gadgets, I have decided to get myself an iPad 3G 32GB last week to catch the wave and the decision burned a big hole in my pocket. I have included the Marware Evo-Cue and a matte screen protector in the package with a total cost of about SGD1200 (MYR 2800) before the 5.5% GST refund. It is selling like hot cake in Singapore with 300-400 units sold over the weekend from a single outlet.
Well, this is my first gadget from Apple as I have been using Windows and Linux all these while. At first glimpse, the iPad is a COOL product. Booting up was a charm, ohh wait...I think there's no boot up because it booted up instantly because it doesn't has a Hard Disk. The aluminium chassis made it feel "good" on hands and the screen is nice too (no complain on this). Setting up the iPad was a charm as most of the critical settings are easily accessible via the "Settings" tab.
My iPad is being delivered with the following pre-installed apps:-
- Calendar
- Contacts
- Notes
- Maps
- Videos
- YouTube
- iTunes
- App Store
- Safari
- Photos
- iPod
After getting the iPad from the town, I was stranded in the airport for 4 hours due to a flight delay (Tiger Airways sucks). I've decided to burn the time with the new iPad. First, I try to connect to the available Wifi AP and none of them are offering free internet services :(
So, the iPad is pretty useless without an Internet connection as I do not have apps to play with.
Then, I tried to pair the iPad up with my phone (HTC Wildfire) over bluetooth. The pairing was successful but the it can't connect to each other...Gosh...I can't transfer the photos and videos from my phone to the iPad for viewing. There are so many issue with bluetooth on the Iphone and iPad. I attempted to pair the iPad to my friend's HTC HD2 but there was no luck as well (sad). The iPad was useless for the entire duration.
I managed to hook the iPad to the Internet when I reached home. It asked me to create an iTune account before I could download any apps whereas my Android does not require me to do this. Signing up the iTunes account is quite a pain as it require a lot of personal information (data mining). They should have make the signing process as simple as signing up on Twitter, that's the standard of today!
Done with iTunes account and I downloaded Skype and eBuddy, there were no iPad version for it so I have to use the iPhone version :( Sad.........the resolution and keyboard doesn't really fit the iPad.
Next, the Safari web browser. It was nice for the first page but not after you open additional tab as the iPad does not support multitasking :( The additional tab will open but the page will reload again whenever you switch back to the previously closed tab :(
The Mail is good for iPad. Setting up Gmail, Yahoo, AOL and exchange is easy as you just need to key in your username and password. The Mail will take care the rest for you. No complain on the Mail for iPad.
Conclusion:-
In my humble opinion, this is just an overpriced luxury gadget. It doesn't really help me much in work, so I will give low scoring on practicality but it will score high on the cool factor.
I would rather spend the money to buy a small and lightweight notebook which would offer much more functionality than the iPad.
I like:
- Cool factor
- Slim
- Light
- Fast boot up
- 10 hours battery life
- Nice display
I dislike:
- Overpriced
- No multitasking
- Almost everything need to be done with iTunes
- Need to jailbreak to get extra functionality but it will void the warranty.
- Money pit as you will spend a lot of apps.
- Feel like a bigger iPhone
- No card reader slot
- No USB slot
- Non-replaceable batteries
I will provide a new update if I decide to jailbreak it later.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Hardware RAID vs Software RAID
On the recent few server launches, we have acquired one of the latest hardware RAID card from LSI (LSI 3ware SAS9750-4i). So, it's time for a test.
Server specs:-
1 x Intel Xeon 5504
4GB DDR3 ECC RAM
RAID hardware: LSI 3ware SAS9750-4i
Configuration: RAID5
Hard Disk: 3 x 500GB WD RE3
[root@localhost ~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=test.img count=300 bs=10M
300+0 records in
300+0 records out
3145728000 bytes (3.1 GB) copied, 106.22 s, 29.6 MB/s (writing speed)
[root@localhost ~]# dd if=test.img of=/dev/null bs=10M
300+0 records in
300+0 records out
3145728000 bytes (3.1 GB) copied, 1.18725 s, 2.6 GB/s (reading speed)
And it's time to test the rebuild speed. HOT pull out one of the Hard Disk and insert it back to rebuild. The rebuilding time was about 2hrs for 500GB drive
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RAID hardware: None, mdadm
Configuration: RAID1
Hard Disk: 2 x 500GB WD RE3
[test@localhost ~]$ dd if=/dev/zero of=test.img count=300 bs=10M
300+0 records in
300+0 records out
3145728000 bytes (3.1 GB) copied, 30.1198 s, 104 MB/s (writing speed)
[test@localhost ~]$ dd if=test.img of=/dev/null bs=10M
300+0 records in
300+0 records out
3145728000 bytes (3.1 GB) copied, 10.175 s, 309 MB/s (reading speed)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Configuration: RAID0
Hard Disk: 2 x 500GB WD RE3
300+0 records in
300+0 records out
3145728000 bytes (3.1 GB) copied, 13.5305 s, 232 MB/s (writing speed)
[user@localhost ~]$ dd if=test.img of=/dev/null bs=10M
300+0 records in
300+0 records out
3145728000 bytes (3.1 GB) copied, 1.0086 s, 3.1 GB/s (reading speed)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comparison:
From the result, it show that RAID 0 has the best performance but the trade off is the reliability as it has a single point of failure comparing with RAID1 and RAID5.
Write performance is poor on RAID 5 due to the parity bit calculation and this setup is not recommended to host application which require intensive write operations. If you need good read and write performance with redundancy, consider RAID 10.
RAID1 is my favorite setup as it has the balance on all factors (space, reliability, performance) due to its simplicity, reliability and performance. RAID1 setup is recommended for simple and basic server setup.
iostat
One of the client's news portal has a surged of visitors due to a very interesting local news. The traffic doubled up overnight and the server was struggling to cope with it. The specs of the server is as below:-
Dual Xeon 5405
16GB DDR2 ECC RAM
2 x 320GB SATA 7200 (s/w RAID1)
I have tuned the webserver and mysql to allow more connections but the load was too high. The average load can go up as high as 40 during peak hours. The webserver can accept up to 352 concurrent connections now, up from 152 before the tuning. Memory usage should be still fine as only about 30MB swap being used as shown from "top" and "free".
The output from iostat is as below:-
Linux 2.6.26-2-amd64 (zz) 09/15/2010 _x86_64_
avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle
23.95 0.00 4.44 0.80 0.00 70.82
Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn
sda 28.06 1000.72 1154.44 1459026910 1683138720
sda1 28.05 992.46 1154.38 1446969730 1683053488
sda2 0.00 0.00 0.00 4 0
sda5 0.01 8.27 0.06 12056864 85232
sdb 30.07 1078.20 1154.44 1571984044 1683138720
sdb1 30.04 1069.93 1154.38 1559927008 1683053488
sdb2 0.00 0.00 0.00 4 0
sdb5 0.04 8.27 0.06 12056720 85232
md0 163.84 1221.37 1143.97 1780718146 1667876624
md1 0.01 0.01 0.05 16216 79440
Is this bad? or normal for a 3 years old server and hard disk?
Is a hardware upgrade an imminent solution for this problem? I'm thinking of an upgrade to the latest Nehalem with SAS (Hardware RAID 10), what do you think?
Spent 3 hours fixing PHP SMTP mailer
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Thursday, June 17, 2010
5400rpm vs 7200rpm Hard Disk Drive
I got my first touch with a computer during the 386 era in my school computer class. I was being exposed to the basic programming (BASIC) and gaming from a 5.5" Floppy Disk drive. My dad bought me my first computer back in 1995 which run on Intel Pentium MMX and Windows95 with a 1.7GB Hard Disk (pathetic! my SD card can store more data than this HDD).
Many years down the road and after few PCs change, I finally own my first notebook in 2002. With a notebook, I feel that the data redundancy is getting more important as I put almost all my work data inside 1 single Hard Drive. Then I started to realize the importance of doing a more regular backup on the notebook comparing with my desktop that run on 2 x HDD. Even a regular backup would cause a havoc on critical day if the Hard Drive decide to die.
What is the next step?
I change Hard Drive every 2 years, it's for better reliability, performance and space upgrade. My current notebook came with a Fujitsu 160GB 5400rpm Hard Drive. The performance was adequate when I just got it that time as I do not store a lot of data especially emails in my notebook. Now, I have more than 100,000 emails in my hard disk itself and it's a pain whenever my email client (Thunderbird) trying to load that particular folder and compact it. This also affect other applications that try to load huge data from the disk.
2 years are up and I've decided to change the Hard Drive. After looking around, I have narrowed down my option to Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB 7200rpm. My options were Intel X25M 80GB SSD and Seagate Momentus Hybrid XT. SSD were too expensive per GB and Momentus Hybrid was not in the market yet.
Here is the screenshot of the benchmark test on HDtune on both of the Hard Drives, do the judging.
Friday, April 9, 2010
What is web hosting?
In a simple definition, web hosting is taking your web pages (for example html,php,asp and java files) and placing them on a web server which will be stored inside of a data
center. Web servers are simply computers or servers designed for web hosting. Data
centers are constantly connected to the internet with high-speed connections with multiple backbones and backup lines so that the world can access your web files through the internet. "Virtual hosting" or "Virtual Host" allows more than one web site to be run on the same server on the same IP address. This makes web hosting very easy and affordable compared to running your own dedicated web server whereby you would need to pay few hundreds of dollars per month to maintain it. With virtual web hosting your site shares server resources with many other sites on the server. This is why it is important to choose a host that utilizes powerful equipment and high standards of security. Almost all of the web hosting server now combine database server and email server under the same physical server for easy administration by both the users and administrators.
center. Web servers are simply computers or servers designed for web hosting. Data
centers are constantly connected to the internet with high-speed connections with multiple backbones and backup lines so that the world can access your web files through the internet. "Virtual hosting" or "Virtual Host" allows more than one web site to be run on the same server on the same IP address. This makes web hosting very easy and affordable compared to running your own dedicated web server whereby you would need to pay few hundreds of dollars per month to maintain it. With virtual web hosting your site shares server resources with many other sites on the server. This is why it is important to choose a host that utilizes powerful equipment and high standards of security. Almost all of the web hosting server now combine database server and email server under the same physical server for easy administration by both the users and administrators.
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