SoCalITProAssociation Newsletter                           Volume 3  Number 2
Southern California Information Technology Professional Association        February 1, 2005

Welcome Members, Visitors and Friends!
Wasn't that a fascinating by Hewlett Packard, last month? I just know everyone is going to want to rebuild their server farms using Blade Technologies. Before I do that, I need to check the budget appropriations for this quarter...darn, a quarter is just about all I have left in my pocket. But anyway, I know, this year is gonna be so exciting! I can hear all the Sys Admins are singing:
This LAN is your LAN.
This LAN is my LAN,
>From California
To the VLAN islands,
>From the Server Forests
To the bitstream waters.
This LAN was made by you and me.
Inside this Issue:
Starting the new year with a fresh batch of Viruses...
Microsoft Cracks Down on Piracy...
Meeting Announcement:
Previous Meeting:
Opinions and Commentary Department:
Favorite Third Party Tools Department:
Final Notes…
Email the Editor

And Now, The News...

Starting the new year with a fresh batch of Viruses...

Oh, you didn't think the vi-writers would forget about you, did you? Robert Lemos of CNET News.com reported January 27, 2005 of "A worm that takes advantage of administrators' poor password choices has started spreading among database systems." The new bug is "MySQL bot", or SpoolCLL. Of course, you'll only have to worry if you're using MySQL instead of Microsoft SQL, right? Read the article at ZD Net to find out.

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Microsoft Cracks Down on Piracy...

Ina Fried, of CNET News.com reported, January 25, that Microsoft is testing a tool that will verify whether a system's copy of Windows is legal before permitting download of patches. During the past few months, the test has been voluntary, but as of February 7, test verification will be mandatory for people downloading in China, Norway, and the Czech Republic.

It is expected that by mid-year, Microsoft will make verification mandatory in all countries. To read the full article, go to Microsoft: Legit Windows or No Updates

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Meeting Announcement: Thursday, February 10, 2005: Stonefly Networks presents, More Bang For Your Buck: Midrange D2D Solution Rivals Enterprise Feature Set

You need an advanced disk-to-disk backup/recovery solution, but don't have the budget or resources of a huge conglomerate. Now, disk-to-disk backup systems based on low-cost IP SANs can provide the same enterprise-class features as most high-end SANs. Features such as media management, split-mirror backup, synthetic full backups, and data replication provide intelligent data management and unparalleled protection including simpler and faster backups and restores and local or remote data mirroring for disaster recovery.

StoneFly Backup Advantage(TM) (SBA) is a complete disk-to-disk backup solution based on the award-winning CommVault Galaxy software that provides a cost-effective way of offloading backup and restore operations from the company LAN onto a dedicated StoneFly IP SAN. With this integrated approach, the typical constraints imposed by the LAN are removed from the backup process and the burden of backup traffic placed on the IP SAN. Disk-to-Disk backup using an IP SAN resolves the conflict between data backups and shrinking backup windows. Instead of backing up data one server at a time, users can backup data from multiple servers simultaneously onto a central disk storage repository, slashing backup times. Moreover, SBA provides a zero window backup options so users can backup servers while they are still running.

Advanced New Features:
  • Uses disk for fast, near-term backup and restore with a lower cost of ownership, ease of use, and higher performance
  • Offloads LAN-attached backups to the IP SAN creating a "LAN-free" backup environment
  • Replicates backup data to a remote IP SAN to provide effective disaster recovery and rapid business resumption at a minimal cost
  • GridStor leverages advanced data movement and provides transparent redundancy, failover, storage pooling, provisioning and load balancing of StoneFly disk-to-disk storage
  • Synthetic full allows users to build full backups from incrementals, saving time and money
  • Intelligent restart lets administrators resume backups from the point of interruption, rather than the beginning
The presenter, Bob Boggan, Vice President, Sales & Marketing, has over 20 years of successful sales and management experience in the information technology industry and brings with him an in-depth understanding of data storage networking. Boggan has built and managed sales organizations for several well-known storage companies. As Director of National Sales, Bob lead TrueSAN's indirect sales efforts, working with national and regional SAN solutions providers. He also managed major storage accounts at BMC Software and held the position of Regional Vice President at Articulent, a storage management services company. Bob also served as Regional Sales Manager at EMC Corporation, where he was responsible for growing its CLARiiON storage systems business through direct sales and channel partners SGI and StorageTek. He received his Bachelor's degree from the University of Houston.

For more information, visit http://www.stonefly.com/

As always please RSVP on the http://www.SoCalITPro.org website. The link is on the lower left hand side of the home page.

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At the Previous Meeting...

Fred Velijanian, of Hewlett Packard presented an overview of HP's new modular Blade Server Technologies. For further details, visit http://www.hp.com.

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Final Notes…

Of course, at the back end, the Security Admins are singing:
This LAN's NOT your LAN!
This LAN is my LAN!
Firewalls will block you...
Virusscans will stop you...
Your spam won't get through...
And we will $UE you!
This LAN is PRIVATE PROPERTY!
>Submissions: If you any ideas for an article that you might like to write for this Newsletter, or about any third-party software that you would like to share with our members, please submit your article to the Editor, contact information below. Please use the Rich Text Format (.rtf file) for your article, and in the subject line of your email, put the word, Newsletter, so I don't accidently delete your email. (I tend to delete emails from people I don't know unless the subject line clearly indicates something important.)

See you at the meeting on Thursday, February 10, 2005, enjoy!

Robert Holtzman, Editor
rholtzman@socalitpro.org

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SoCal IT Pro/OCNTUG Newsletter                                     Volume 3 No. 2                               02/01/2005

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