Draconis Software Blog

It’s backup week at the Draconis blog! We all know the importance of keeping our files backed up (and us at Draconis spend a lot of time planning for disasters), but it can often be a tedious task to ensure backups run properly. Often, we put off setting up a good system until it’s too late. This week, I’ll be posting a new installment each day, showing you how to get your backup system implemented using rsync, a free, cross-platform file transmit tool.

Numerous commercial and free solutions exist for backing up your hard drives – some are even cross-platform. Many are great for the job they do – especially when it comes to burning DVDs or CDs of your important files. But if you’re like me, and you have multiple computers you use on a regular basis (each of which has files you’d like to save), then an automated backup solution, sent to a single computer, may be in order. I happen to have four different platforms to support: Linux, Solaris, Windows, and a Mac laptop. I’ve set up a system where I can sync all my important files to my Linux computer (which has copious amounts of disk space) and burn CD/DVDs on a regular basis. This article will explain how I set it up.

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Today is System Administrator Appreciation Day, which (sadly) comes about only once per year.  Take a minute to think of the sysadmins who you work with (if you aren’t one yourself!) and be sure to let them know how much you appreciate the hard work they do for you.  And if you’re a sysadmin: Thank you!

There are a number of things going down across the web to commemorate the day.  Digg is sponsoring a contest, called Sysadmin of the Year, which seeks to honor the most amazing sysadmin.  Be sure to check it out and nominate your amazing sysadmin (or yourself, if you’re amazing).

Of course, you’ll want to check out the sysadminday.com website (check out the gallery – I’ve been there!).

Boingboing.net has several links up to some great sysadmin day-inspired stuff (be sure to check out the UK Unix Users Group song).

Unfortunately spam has become one of the most pervasive problems in the Internet age. It seems that as spam filters improve, spam evolves along with it in order to avoid the latest blacklists and checks. Like many people spam had become a real problem for me, and I tried a number of different filters with no avail. Many of the “top” filters suffered from either letting too much spam through, or worse yet classifying real mail (”ham”) as spam where it can often get missed. However recently I’ve begun using a spam filter called Bogofilter which I’ve found to be a big step above the other filters out there.

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Thought this was pretty cool (and a long time coming): the Linux NTFS kernel driver has now added write capabilities.  If you’ve ever used this – as many people have – than you’ve no doubt noticed how frustrating it can be when you can look at your files, but not touch them!  Check out this post at nixCraft with all the dirt.

The goals of the Linux-NTFS project are to develop reliable and full feature access to NTFS by the Linux kernel driver, and by a user space filesystem (ntfsmount), and to provide a wide collection of NTFS utilities (ntfsprogs) and a developer’s library (libntfs) for other GPLed programs. We have achieved already a lot, with high quality results.

I’ve been a big fan of using Linux-based rescue disks for repairing just about any computer, including Windows.  Having the capability to now edit an NTFS file system to help repair the system is great news.

There’s an interesting article in the NY Times about Google’s infrastructure strategies.  As it’s been the talk of many folks for a while now, Google has spent a lot of time and brainpower creating their own infrastructure more or less from scratch: they build their own computers, they have their own file system, etc.  From the article:

In many ways, it still has the head of an graduate-school project grafted onto the body of an multinational corporation. The central tenet of its strategy is that its growing cadre of world-class computer scientists can design a network of machines that can store and process more information more efficiently than anyone else.

Mr. Reynolds estimated that Google’s computing costs are half those of other large Internet companies and a tenth those of traditional corporate technology users.

Interesting, but before you start thinking of building your own servers and file systems, remember that Google can benefit greatly from economies of scale: the extra time spent building those thousands of servers translates into greater savings; for most organizations, you might save a few hundred or thousand bucks going the DIY route, but you’ll be spending even more money in researching/building the five or so systems yourself to not make it worthwhile.

Anyway, a good read if nothing else for the WOW factor.

Microsoft has published a paper called Microsoft Solutions for Security and Compliance, that’s designed to “help IT managers and Microsoft customers meet specific IT compliance obligations that directly relate to major regulations and standards.”

As the regulatory requirements become increasingly complex, a “big-picture” guide such as this, with ideas on how to implement them, can be a very useful resource for those in the SysAdmin business. The document discusses five major regulations and standards that are likely to affect your buiness:

• Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX)
• Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA)
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
• European Union Data Protection Directive (EUDPD)
• ISO 17799:2005 Code of Practice for Information Security Management (ISO 17799)

In addition to giving a succinct overview of the law you need to be aware of, Microsoft Solutions for Security and Compliance discusses what IT controls are and how they might be implemented in your organization. “IT controls regulate and guide the operation of IT in the organization, including all of the processes, and systems within it. These controls focus on processes that concern IT managers, including availability, change management, user provisioning, security, and so on. It is these controls that are the focus of this planning guide.”
Another useful guide from Microsoft is their Security Risk Management Guide, which gives a useful overview of the process IT departments often implement to minimize organizational risk to data theft and other issues.

If you’re in the IT biz, be sure to check these out.