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Requirements: 100% Wireless signal penetration throughout the entire 3 story floor plan, as well as a wine vault and an outdoor terrace. Secure, separate Wireless network for Payment Card Industry PCI Compliance. Additional Wireless network for operating the sound system and use by the General Manager, Assistant General Manager, and Executive Chef.
Solution: 5 Lightweight Cisco Access Points with a Cisco 2106 Wireless LAN Controller placed strategically throughout the floor plan.
The construction of the building and the unique floor plan of the Wine bar led to some interesting design challenges for us Real IT guys. The layout of the restaurant includes 3 floors, separated by a floor of nearly 3 foot of concrete, stone, and rebar. The design of the restaurant dictated a need for the wireless point-of-sale handheld units to be connected anywhere in the restaurant. The basement has offices, dishwashing, customer bathrooms, walk-in coolers and freezer, storage, and a private party room and wine vault, with an impressively thick steel bank vault door. The main floor is mostly customer seating, the bar, and the kitchen. The 3rd floor is a mezzanine with wait-staff rooms, bathrooms, and an outdoor patio. Getting the wireless signal through the exterior walls was another challenge!
After conducting a site survey, we were able to tentatively place 5 Cisco 802.11A/G/N Lightweight Access points throughout the building: 2 in the basement, 2 on the 3rd floor, and one on the main floor. This allowed every square foot of the floor plan to be accessible by at least 2 access points. Indeed, after the installation we found we were able to access 3, sometimes 4 of the access points from the majority of the high-traffic areas. The redundancy and signal strength met all the client requirements.
After the installation, we were met with an additional challenge: A new requirement. All the initial designs of the wireless network called for a single wireless network that would be secure and used only by the Point of Sale system to enable compliance with the Payment Card Industry’s PCI certification. However, the customer surprised us with the requirement of some additional equipment that would require wireless access. The fun thing about the solution we put together is the Cisco WLC2106 – Wireless LAN Controller is that it allows you to create and manage multiple virtual wireless LANs from the same physical infrastructure. So after some additional configuration – we were able to meet this new requirement with no additional hardware or software.
I’d like to share a recent and ongoing experience I’ve had with a vendor. The backstory is this: we designed (what we thought was) a pretty cool solution for a customer. We bought 2 Buffalo Technologies TeraStation Pro III, 4 Terabyte Rack Mount Storage Units. We put one of them in their main office, joined it to the domain, and set it up as a destination for Backup Exec’s Backup to Disk devices. The 2nd unit we put in the manufacturing plant across the street. The plant is connected via Fiber to the same LAN as the main rack. The idea is, that Backup Exec will run daily backups to the 1st NAS unit, and then via Replication – the 2nd NAS unit would also have a current copy of the backup: an inexpensive and effective offsite backup that’s up-to-the minute current. Obviously, the big selling point to these particular NAS units was the ability to do realtime replication. After installing and configuring the units [I'll tell you about THAT particular nightmare some other time], setting up the backup jobs in Backup Exec, and configuring Replication, everything ran perfectly as designed for about 4 days. Then we got an email from the 1st NAS unit telling us that replication had quit working. I spent a few hours searching the forums, blogs, posting a request for assistance on ServerFault, I decided to turn to Buffalo’s Email support system.
Here’s where it gets interesting: The following is a true story. I’ve re-arranged the emails to make for easier reading, and I’ve changed the names of the individuals involved to protect(?) them from whatever…
Initial Request:
To: Buffalo Tech Support
From: Matt
Sent: 8/2/2010
RE: NAS Replication
Customer has 2 TeraStation Pro IIIs. We have replication setup between the main share on each device. It works fine for a day or two, and then we get this message:
“Replication error notification: Failed replication.
Please confirm replication destination power status, network condition and HDD free space.”
“Replication source file : /mnt/array1/share/Daily/B2D000069.bkf
Replication destination file : Buffalo-02:/mnt/array1/share2/Daily/B2D000069.bkf”
After manual resynchronize (which works fine), replication works ok for a few more days, and then the process repeats. Is there a way to handle this so we don’t have to manually resynch every few days?
5 days later (The following Friday) I got this response:
Matt,
What firmware are you running? current firmware is available at http://buffalotech.com/support/downloads/
Thank you,
Steve
Buffalo Technical Support
Visit The Buffalo Forums – http://forums.buffalotech.com/buffalo
I was probably a bit peeved, so here was my dissapointed response that same day…
It took you 5 days to come up with this reply? Your technical support is not up to par guys.
The first thing I did upon unboxing these 2 units was update the Firmware to 1.32.
Can you be any more helpful?
Steve, to his Credit – didn’t get upset or snarky with me… He even replied the following Monday (8-9-2010). Albeit a very un-helpful reply…
Matt,
Is this physically local or over a VPN? Are both units on static IPs? If not Static IPs would be recommended.
Thank you,
Steve Z
Again, Suuuuper helpful. Thanks Steve!! I quickly answered his question, hoping we could get a little dialogue going and reach some sort of solution for my customer.
Yes. Both units are local and on the same subnet. The destination unit is using the 2nd NIC as per your documentation. Both units have static IPs.
————–
So… here we are on Monday, August 23rd, and still no reply from Steve or anyone over there at Buffalo. The customer has been having this issue for over 3 weeks now, and we’re pretty tempted to return both of these units and try something different.
Storing data is cheap because disk space is cheap. One of the causes of this is the move from data organization in directories or folders to indexing and searching. The Google-age model is to never delete anything and not waste any time organizing it. Instead, let your search software or appliance take care of that for you. If you haven’t already bought into this model, I suggest you do. You can stop worrying about how many e-mails you save and how many documents you dump on the server because it’s simply cheaper to buy more storage than the cost of managing your ever-increasing amount of data. So what’s the downside? Backup.
By ignoring the amount of data you’re storing and refusing to spend the time it takes to organize it, you’ll quickly surpass the capacity of your backup system. Suddenly the nightly backup has returned to the dark ages and you’re doing daily incremental or differential backup jobs instead of a nightly full backup. Your full backup job that used to happen every night now only runs once a week and it takes at least 2 tapes to accommodate the data. You’re walking a thin line when your full backup relies on more than 1 tape to successfully restore your server(s). You’re already worried about the reliability of 1 tape when you attempt a restore so the last thing you need or want is to rely on 2 of them.
The initial investment required to backup 500 GB of data to tape is fairly substantial. We’re talking around $2000-3000 for tapes and the tape drive. This doesn’t include software, and if you’re backing up more than 1 server, that can get pricey FAST. If you bought a server in the last couple of years, you have this kind of capacity and you didn’t pay an arm and a leg for it, thanks to larger and more reliable SATA hard drives. There has to be a better way, right? There is.
Invest in some inexpensive external hard drives. eSATA, USB or Firewire, whatever your current hardware can or will support, with capacity equal to (or preferably at least double) the capacity of your server(s). For around $800 you can get (8) 1 TB drives. Using Windows built-in backup software (Windows 2003 or 2008), you can easily script a backup routine that meets or exceeds the fancy features of any of those pricey backup software packages and you’ll probably increase the amount of restore points in the process. If you already own backup software and it has backup-to-disk capability (most do), the solution is even easier to implement.
Now you’re back to running a full backup every night at a fraction of the cost of tapes and you’ve even increased the amount of restore points by backing up to each drive two or more times before old data has to be overwritten. There’s still 1 more gotcha to be aware of when dealing with this much data. You may eventually find your backup is running when you get to the office in the morning. So how do you decrease the time it takes to backup that much, or more, data? We’ll save that for my next article.
This article is part of the IT Manager series.
Management science has a favorite saying: ‘What gets measured gets managed.’ While the universal application of this saying is debatable, we’re going to apply it to the life of your average IT Manager or IT Director, or for the smaller organizations, the ‘guy or gal who does the computer stuff’. There are a number of key statistics that can seriously impact your success. We’re going to examine five of those statistics.
One of the most important statistics is the Uptime statistic. If you don’t have one, go get a tool to monitor the uptime statistic for all your critical systems. There are a number of excellent products in this space, and we review a couple of these tools in an upcoming article about tools to help you do more with less. Make sure that whatever the tool might be, it has the capability of excluding a maintenance window from its monitoring statistics. Every IT Manager should be able to say with accuracy that there were no unplanned outages during the month of February. If there are outages, make sure you document the causes and effects, resolutions and remediation steps necessary. This can help during your annual budgeting process by providing empirical evidence of the need to upgrade certain systems.
User Satisfaction is probably statistic 1b for any IT Manager or Director. The role of technology in an organization is generally to help the organization perform its function in the most effective and efficient manner possible. Usually this entails providing the ‘Users’ with the tools, techniques, and training to do their jobs. Most I.T. Managers gather this statistic in an informal way; getting a high-five in the hallway, or getting thrown under the bus when accounting doesn’t get their quarterly reports on the boss’s desk in time. While conversations with the user population are important, there’s no substitute for hard evidence. We recommend an annual or bi-annual survey, using the same set of questions each year in order to measure progress. We also recommend sharing the results of the survey with the rest of the organization. They need to know what the rest of the company thinks, and if necessary, what the plan or steps are to improve any given area.
Data Usage: Ok, this might seem a bit trivial, but we see it over and over again – Mary in accounts payable got an iPod from her son-in-law this Christmas, so Bob in account receivable hooked her up with his music collection by copying it to the shared network drive. Later that night, the server downloaded a Windows Update that filled the hard drive to capacity. The Server crashes and you’ve got a headache. One obvious way to deal with this scenario is using quotas. Most server operating systems allow you to configure an allowance of disk utilization for individual users, which hopefully prevents the ‘Mysterious case of the Magically Growing Music Collection’. Additionally, you need to know your organizations overall data footprint, which is: How much data does your organization need online or immediate access to on a regular basis? This footprint includes data in databases, email archives, shared network folders, and even archived security camera footage. You should also be aware of the rate of data growth in your organization. How much data is generated daily, weekly, quarterly, etc? How much of that data needs to be kept, and for how long, to ensure you meet all regulatory requirements? Accounting for your organizations data needs is one of the most important functions any IT Manager / Director performs.
Another very important and perhaps self-evident statistic is Budget – vs. – Actual. The importance of tracking what you’ve spent in comparison to how much you planned to spend cannot be overstated. If you were supposed to buy replacement UPS batteries in March, but you didn’t, and then in July your UPS fails during a power brown-out, you’ve only got yourself (and your lack of attention to the budget) to blame. Most IT Managers are also responsible for the communications budgets; cell phones, WAN connections, Internet bandwidth, & long distance. This recessionary time is a good time to pay attention to those dollars because there are often deals to be had from your carrier. It’s a good idea to track your progress against the budget simply to keep a close eye on where those dollars are going. If you need help deciphering those telecom bills, we can help with our Telecom Audit.
Network Capacity: Similar to data capacity, the Network Capacity statistic refers to your organizations utilization of your network. Some of you may have multiple offices, in which case you need to make sure the transmission capacity between the offices is sufficient, but there’s also a local component. One of our customers recently complained of their backup taking too long. It turns out the network card in the backup server was incorrectly wired to the hub, so it was only operating at 100M, instead of 1000M. Correcting this problem (a 5 minute fix) almost doubled the speed at which their whole network was backed up. Doing some research for another customer led us to the finding that a significant portion of their remote users had started using Remote Desktop to upload and download the large pictures and video files they work with, instead of using the VPN software they had been given for this task because they were running out of VPN client licenses. This forced an undue amount of traffic through their Terminal Servers, which were not configured to support this amount of bandwidth, and affected other users who needed to run applications in that space. The point is, ensuring that the correct amount of network capacity is available where and when it’s needed is a critical function of the successful IT Manager.
So if you are on top of your organizations Network and Data Capacity and Usage, you know how your users feel about their ability to perform their jobs with the tools they have, you know how much money is going out and how quickly, and you know how reliable all your services are, you’ve done a pretty good job. The other major tool you need for success is the ability to align the technology & the I.T. Department with the organization’s overall goals, but we’ll save that topic for another day.
This article is part of the IT Manager series.
As I’m writing this, it’s early March 2009 and the Dow is trading at just under $7,000; less than half of its’ high in late 2007. Unemployment numbers are getting worse with every announcement. Those of us lucky enough to live in a manufacturing state (MI) are feeling the global recession especially hard in relation to the rest of the US. (I won’t begin to compare our tough economic times to the hardships that are suffered in the poorer parts of the world.) In any case – many managers are faced with a mandate to cut their budgets for the year. I’d like to look at a few intelligent ways to cut the budget without seriously impacting effectiveness.
Telco: One of the largest budget line-items for any IT Manager is communication costs. The larger the organization the bigger the number gets. Data connectivity to the other offices and to the Internet is but a portion of the communications budget. Add in Cellular Phones, WIFI subscriptions, and Edge Cards. Then add in Local, Long Distance, and Toll calling charges. Depending on your organization and budget structure, you may also consider maintenance agreements and lease charges on PBX equipment, firewalls, and routers as well. So, how do you reduce this? First (shameless plug alert!) let me say our company has had some success in drastically reducing communications costs for a number of organizations via our Telco Audit product. [PDF] I’ll let you in on a couple of our secrets: Negotiate with your Telecommunications Carrier. Often times there are promotions or discounts to be had simply by asking. If you have multiple carriers for different services, consider combining onto a single strong-performing carrier – they often give discounts based on the amount of services or ‘Commitment Level’ you have with them.
Equipment: One of the first line items in the IT budget that gets examined is capital expenditures. One of these items is typically new computers. Depending on the industry, we generally recommend replacing 1/3rd of your PCs every year, which means no PC in the organization is older than 3 years. If you are currently using this model, it may make sense to extend that cycle to 4 years. This is easy enough to do if you plan and prepare properly. Having a spare PC (or 3) on hand to quickly replace any older, failing unit is one often overlooked and cheap way to maintain peak operational capacity. This allows you to address the failed PC at your leisure in a less stressful environment and without impacting the user too severely. This process can be enhanced even further by implementing a combination of roaming profiles, redirected folders, PC software images, and even Terminal Services. Take a quick look here [PDF] if you’d like help with this process.
Licenses: Another significant capital expenditure item is software licenses. For many large organizations, software licenses can easily exceed the costs of the hardware. Consider delaying that major upgrade, or negotiating with your software partners to extend their maintenance or reduce your licensing costs in exchange for a longer term commitment.
Staff: The elephant in the room. In times like these it’s difficult to split the emotion from the job requirements. In my personal experience, nearly every time I’ve had to terminate an employee it’s been an extremely emotional event for me. These are people that I work with every day; they have families and mortgages and it can be very hard to sit across that desk. Dealing with that part of the job is outside the scope of this article, other than to say I don’t take this topic lightly. So… given a mandate to trim staff, what do you do? First off, I recommend being honest with your staff. Full disclosure is against some people’s policy, but I’ve always found that letting everyone know what’s happening and why goes a long way to minimizing F.U.D. (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt). Next, make sure that you don’t have other options: can you cut back on hours, expense accounts, bonus dollars, or other costs to ensure no-one gets cut? Secondly – in a large organization there are typically a couple of poor performers, who may already be on probation or on their way out anyway. Finally, remember to ALWAYS consult your HR and Legal departments to ensure you are following the applicable laws and regulations.
Our next article in this series focuses on tools for helping the IT Staff be more effective and efficient.
Thanks for visiting! We’re excited to get started with the new Blog. We’ll mostly be posting and discussing the content of our biweekly email newsletter, The Real Advisor. The Real Advisor will contain in depth articles on various aspects of Information Technology and how it impacts your businesses and organizations. Every other issue will contain a point/counterpoint discussion between Adam and Myself, usually presenting different opinions regarding the same topic. This space will also include some general posts/topics about the issues we encounter with our customers, solutions we have provided, and hopefully some game discussions with YOU.
We hope you enjoy!!
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