Three Ps of Protecting Your IT Infrastructure against Hurricanes.

Hurricane shutters? Installed. Two weeks worth of food and water? In the pantry. Playing cards and Johnny Walker Blue? Locked and loaded.

It would be nice if the above items alone satisfied the hurricane preparedness checklist, but alas, they do not.
Businesses must prepare in advanced for unplanned outages, hurricanes, and tropical storms. As this year's hurricane season is drawing to a close consider yourself lucky and take the opportunity to prepare for next year. Spending time in the IT world, we see firsthand how severe weather can disrupt business continuity for weeks and even months on end; if not shuttering less cash healthy businesses entirely.

Any time this topic is raised I am reminded of an old light-manufacturing client of ours whose failure to back-up properly left them without invoices, receivables, and even the strategy on how to create their products. While it is easiest to simply blame Mother Nature, most weather-related business interruptions are, at least somewhat, caused by lack of preparation and planning. The saying “Plan, Prepare, Practice” will help small and medium size business owners ride out The Big One in case we see another Andrew-strength any time soon.

Plan
A written natural disaster plan should be in place and shared with all staff members. Your plan should document important contact details (employees, insurers, vendors, and government agencies), system administrator passwords (in a safe place), and actual steps each employee should take during the time of crisis. Delegation is important, but redundancy is just as vital. Many employees will leave town, so be sure to adjust for this. Keep several paper copies on-hand both off-site and at the office as well as in everyone’s inbox.

Although geared toward nonprofits, I am a fan of the template and checklist found at www.npccny.org/info/Disaster_Planning.doc. The SBA also offers resources at http://www.sba.gov/services/disasterassistance/disasterpreparedness/index.html.

Prepare
Physical and electronic preparations are a must. Much of the physical preparation falls outside the scope of IT planning, but generally includes items such as using hurricane shutters, securing doors, and taking precautions against water damage. On the IT side of things all business should:

•    Inventory hardware and software: Create a list that documents every single piece of hardware and software your organization owns along with serial numbers. Include copies of purchase receipts. Store these in a safe off-site location.
•    Diagram your network structure: We can’t recreate your network without knowing what it looked like in the first place.
•    Invest in a UPS. A UPS, or uninterruptible power supply, keeps your electronics alive for the minutes (or longer) after power is lost. This gives critical time to save your files and power down devices. If you anticipate conducting business in the immediate aftermath of a hurricane then consider a diesel generator as well.
•    Forward your business numbers to cell phones or off-site numbers. Even during a disaster, that great sales lead may be calling.
•    Back up your data: Important data should be backed up both locally and remotely. Run regularly scheduled backups and test to make sure your backup is working properly.

Practice
Test your plan to make sure it fits your business model and to ensure familiarity with it. Keep contact and vendor info updated. Every six months or less your system should be rebuilt from the backup (on a staging server) and your employees should practice disaster drills.

Hopefully you will never have to enact your IT recovery plan. In case you do, documenting your hardware and software, keeping contact information handy, and taking backups will save your business time, energy, and money in case disaster strikes.
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The above article contains helpful hints that may work. It is not a substitute for one-on-one professional advice.

Installing IIS 8 on Vista 64 bit Servers: Home Edition

We are all now well aware of the compatibility issues that working within Vista can entail. From explaining to clients how to find the mail icon by switching to classic view to a near complete lack of driver support, a lot of workarounds have been created by savvy I.T. professionals. A local Miami IT support client of ours needed a solution to run IIS 8 on a Vista 64 bit server, which is not usually supported, and we rose to the occasion. Without further ado:

Virtual directories in IIS are hosted in an application pool. An application pool is the host process for one or more Web applications. When you deploy a 32 bit application to IIS 7, the application is deployed to the Default AppPool. By default, this application pool uses the Integrated managed pipeline mode, where managed code is integrated into the request processing pipeline.

Although you can configure the DefaultAppPool to use the Classic mode, changing the setting will affect all applications running in that application pool. A better option is to create a new application pool for each website. Please follow the simple steps below to do so. It can be a tricky process, so feel free to contact us networking support team if you want us to take a look.


Creating an application pool

If you choose not to create a new application pool, you must complete step 4 in the following procedure for the application pool that hosts your application.

To create and configure an application pool:

1. In IIS Manager, select Application Pools.
2. In the Actions pane, select Add Application Pool.
3. Provide a name, such as myweb, for the application pool.
4. Set Managed Pipeline Mode to Classic and click OK.

Enabling 32-bit applications on 64-bit Vista

On 64-bit Vista, you must enable the application pool to run 32-bit applications.
To enable 32-bit applications on 64-bit Vista:

1. In IIS Manager, select Application Pools.
2. In the list of Application Pools, select the application pool you have configured for use i.e. myweb.
3. In the Actions pane, select Advanced Settings under Edit Application Pool.
4. Expand the General settings, set Enable 32-bit Applications to True, and click OK.

To move an application into a different application pool:

1. In IIS Manager, expand Web Sites and Default Web Site.
2. Right-click the virtual directory for your application and click Advanced Settings.
3. Select the drop-down list next to the Application Pool property, select the application pool you created, and click OK
4. Reload the application.

To create ODBC conection for 32bit application:

There are two copies of odbcad32.exe on Windows Vista x64, one is stored at c:\windows\system32\ and one is stored at c:\windows\syswow64\.

We need to use c:\windows\syswow64\odbcad32.exe that will have all our access data providers.


Hope this helps. Please let us know if we can be of any help. For more about us please visit SDSol's website at SDSol.com: Custom Software Development, Online Development, and Miami IT support.

Best,

SDSol

About online solutions: SDSol Technologies is providing the above information as a service to our customers and online visitors. Please note that it is by no means foolproof. This should simply be seen as a reference of our findings when we encountered the same issue. To make sure your server and networking tasks are done right, please contact your local IT processional.

Custom Software Applications: Where Productivity and Convenience Meet

Custom software solutions provide a level of utility and customization that simply can’t be found in retail boxed software. From the online merchant who is tired of doing double data entry between her store and QuickBooks, to the wholesaler needing an inventory management system that actually works the way he desires, custom software has an answer for everyone. From the small, such as a quick script to “do the undoable” in Excel, to larger products such as collaborative solutions for business intelligence, private label software is finding a home on the networks of businesses of all sizes.

Custom software isn’t just for the big guys anymore either. Medium and small businesses are turning to custom applications in record numbers. Software development is more affordable than ever, and that savings is transferring into:

• Increased productivity
• Fewer headaches and redundant tasks
• Applications with a custom-branded look and feel

SDSol Technologies, South Florida’s leader in custom software is the epitome of this business model. Clients of SDSol enjoy solutions that meet their needs and fit their budgets. Previous projects include online parts ordering systems, mission critical flight monitoring systems, CRM suites, and state-of-the-art task management (TMS) systems. Feel free to contact SDSol Technologies today at (305) 274-2147 to see what we can do for you. Our knowledgeable developers will work with you to define what your needs are, develop specific project requirements, and leave you with a product that offers increased functionality and custom branding.

SDSol Technologies offers a high level of understanding throughout the development process. Whether it be ASP.net, PHP, AJAX, C++ or a wide variety of other languages and standards we have you covered.

In short, businesses of all sizes can benefit from custom software solutions. No task is too small, no project too great. Stop struggling through generic applications and get software that is tailored to your unique business needs. Next time you are frustrated with the limited functionality of off-the-shelf software give SDSol a call and see what we can do for you.

SDSol Technologies, Miami-Dade’s leader in custom software solutions and programming is reachable by their website, www.sdsol.com, by email at info@sdsol.com, or by calling (305) 274-2147.