Friday, August 31, 2012

SOP Friday: Backups Part 4 - Changing Technologies

I am pretty bad at trivia. But once in awhile I come through. Over the summer, our company had a Game Night at the office and we played Trivia Pursuit 90's Edition. I got a question about a technology that combines magnetic and optical technologies to store data. I stunned the crowd with the answer: Floptical.

In case you don't remember Floptical technology, it was kinda like a floppy, but stored an amazing 21 MB of data on a single disc. Holy smokes, Batman! Slap in a SCSI card and with only an hour's worth of configuration, you've got a fast, fat backup!

But Floptical technology was replaced in the mid-90's with Zip Disks. Zip Disks could hold 100 Mb of data. That meant you only needed TEN discs to hold a Gigabyte. In fact, they used to sell a ten-pack called a Giga-Pack. The ad on the right is from an eBay auction that ended Saturday, August 25th, 2012. But don't fear! There are other Zip Disk auctions going on right now, so you can still get yours.

As you can imagine, it was not uncommon for people to use these technologies to back up their data. In fact, I knew someone whose job included two hours a day of swapping Floptical discs to back up a software development machine. Again: Not uncommon.

Old technology is not uncommon. After all, we're in an industry that changes at a dizzying pace. Many people run to whatever's new. New monitors, new processors, new memory, new storage. But when it comes to backup, you need to be very careful.

From the various backup articles (noted at the end of this), it is clear that we back up data for several reasons. Simple backups help us recover the file that disappeared yesterday. Better backups help us recover the files deleted six months ago. Thorough, well documented backups are the basis for a Disaster Recovery Plan. So think about it: Why do you do backups?

The answer to your "Why" question will help you pick the right backup medium.

I get a lot of grief from people because I have advocated tape backups for so long. Remember, I come from the world of mainframe and mini computers - IBM 370s, Amdahl 3090s and HP 3000s. Tape was and is king when perfect recovery is a requirement and not an option. But even tape is not perfect.


Backup Media Limitations


Every medium has limitations. And all of the limitations are intertwined with one another. The primary limitations are:
- Capacity
- Speed
- Media lifetime
- Form factor lifetime
- Cost
- Ease of use
- Custody and access to media

Capacity speaks for itself. If you have a medium that stores 10Mb of data, you better be backing up a 386 computer with a 20 Mb hard drive! In the world of "big data," we don't expect a backup to fit on one disc or one tape. But in small business, the ideal is that a full backup will fit on one medium. When a backup starts going to a second tape or disc, you see failed and incomplete backups increase dramatically. That's because the user doesn't swap media. As simple as it is to change discs, you have exceeded the ease of use requirement for the client.

Speed is another obvious variable. If a backup does not finish by 8:00 AM, it probably interferes with business operations. So you need a medium that will hold a full backup and you need the speed to complete that backup within the window allowed. Many of us kick off backups at 10 PM or 11 PM. When backups go long, we can start them earlier. But with small business, we find lots of owners and managers logged on at nine o'clock at night, so our window is pretty limited.

Media lifetime refers to the time span in which you can safely retrieve all data before the media begin to degrade. For example, a cheap CD-ROM will only last two years. A good CD-ROM written by a poor-quality device will only last ten. Archive quality media with high quality hardware will theoretically last 50 or 100 years. See
http://www.audioholics.com/education/audio-formats-technology/cd-and-dvd-longevity-how-long-will-they-last

But in the real world, how many clients (and consultants) have used the cheapest media available and the cheapest hardware to write it with? Maybe 90%? Maybe more? It's another example of the Paradox of Simplicity: I can create a CD. I can read it from another machine. Therefore, I have a good copy/backup. Well, there's good and there's good enough. If that cheap CD written with that cheap CD burner lasts five years, is that good enough?

Form factor lifetime refers to the time period when you can expect to find the specific media and related hardware/software available for use in restoring data. Floptical technology had a very short lifespan. Zip disks had a longer lifespan, but are nonetheless hard to find today. Reel to reel tape may be perfectly capable of recovery, but you still need a tape player! DDS and various kinds of DLT/SLT tapes have enjoyed a very long lifetime. The key to their success has been a commitment to reading older tapes. A DDS5 drive will read a DDS4 tape even if it can't write to it.

Cost is partially self-explanatory. There's the obvious cost of buying the hardware, software, and media. Then there are the hidden costs of operation and recovery. How much labor does it take to manage backups regularly? Note that reliability will have a significant effect on this. A less reliable system will require more labor . . . and probably be more expensive in the long run. The cost of recovering data could also be significant, especially if pieces of the system are obsolete.

Ease of use is critical to success. Of course you need to be able to configure, monitor, and test backups. Likewise, you need to be able to restore data and entire systems as needed. When technology is new this is much easier than when it gets old. Restoring from old or obsolete backup systems can be extremely time consuming and expensive. And, most importantly, you have to be very careful not to damage the backup at any time.

Remember Truth #4 from the Ten Core Truths About Computer Backups: You must absolutely master the backup technologies you sell and use. When you stumble across older technologies, you will need to come up to speed before you start messing with media. That involves one of the great rules of success: Slow down, get more done.

If you start a sloppy recovery, you might end up repeating work, starting over, and wasting a lot of time. If you do something wrong, you might destroy backup data and mess up the recovery altogether. Systems that are easy to use are not necessarily lower quality or less effective. The easier a system is to use, the more effective it will be in the long run. Of course, all of these things are relative. You need to balance the variables.

Custody and access to media have generally not been an important concern until remote backups and cloud services became popular. After all, whether you're backing up to Floptical discs, tapes, or hard drives, you maintain custody at all times or your backups are moved to and from a secure off site storage facility by a bonded agent. It's really only with cloud-based backups that we lose control of our data. If your data storage company violates your company or industry standards, moves a copy of your data out of the country, or simply doesn't document where your data are stored, you have no control over that. You may never know these things are happening.

And when something goes wrong, you may have no recourse. I believe the horror stories on this point will continue to grow. The laws governing this technology are made by legislators who can't set up an external USB drive and disputes are settled by judges who have their emails printed out by secretaries and placed in their in-box each morning. Talk about the wild west! The point here is that Cloud Backups may be the ultimate backup in terms of flexibility, reliability, timeliness, etc. - But you have to address the issues of custody and access to data more seriously than ever before.


Picking Media and Form Factors


In an ever-changing world, how do you decide which technology to invest in? To answer that question, you need to define the kind of backups and archiving you need. For many businesses, the longest you will ever have to worry about a financial audit is seven years. In some industries, you're required to keep records for ten, twenty, or more years. Some records need to be maintained for the lifetime of the patient. Some records need to be retained forever.

You need a process and technology to fit your needs.

If all of this data exists as "live" data in some format, then you can continually modify your backup systems, never letting the current system become obsolete. At some point, you might add an entire archive of data to the "live" data, thus guaranteeing that that archive will always be included in the current backup. That takes a lot of disc space and time, so you'll need to balance cost and time requirements.

More and more industries are requiring lengthy or permanent backups of specific data.
Just make sure that you are an informed adviser to your clients. Make sure they understand that all of this takes money. And then proceed to design, build, and maintain systems that are as reliable as needed for as long as needed. Again, you're balancing all of the factors discussed.


Cloud and Disc Backups


Tape is finally fading within small businesses due to cost and speed. And, to be honest, many technicians have never made the effort to master SCSI technology and tape backups (those used to be tied to one another). At this time, various kinds of disc-based backups are in play. Most of them are great for simple backups. But for longer-range backups, they are as expensive as tapes because the media need to be taken out of circulation.

Interestingly enough, most disc-based backup systems fail on several levels with regard to creating fast, reliable backups with significant restore points. They are easy to use, but not great at creating reliable backups or disaster recovery systems. Again, the Paradox of Simplicity. They're "good enough" for simple backups. But are they good enough for long-term archives and disaster recovery?
I am afraid, for many reasons, that this period of disc-based backups will become an era of failed recoveries. Fifteen years from now, technology schools will teach the lessons of poor backup designs and point to this time period for lots of examples. Luckily, like Floptical drives, this era appears to be short-lived.

I exclude from this discussion the well-designed disc-to-disc, disc-to-disc-to-tape, and disc-to-disc-to-cloud backup systems. Good systems of this kind tend to use SAN technology, redundant arrays, and high speed data lines. That necessarily puts them outside the budget constraints of most small businesses.

Cloud backups - or disc-to-disc-to-cloud backups - appear to be the answer to many of the most difficult challenges of reliable backups with multiple restore points. Cloud backups have virtually unlimited capacity. Some systems have virtually unlimited versioning. Point-in-time snapshots have been a weakness, but that has more to do with personal habits than technology. A few good lawsuits will bring that behavior back in line. Just give it time.

Speed is still a major concern for many cloud-based backup systems. But if you backup to disc on site and then backup from disc to cloud, speed becomes less relevant because the disc-to-disc piece is fast and can be completed overnight and then the cloud component can trickle up as needed. You still have bandwidth considerations, so cost can still play a big role.

Is cloud backup the ultimate, perfect backup? No. It scores very well on many variables, but the variables are always a mix.

Cloud backup certainly has capacity. Media lifetime is kind of irrelevant since the cloud storage company takes on the responsibility of making your data available. They have to worry about media, form factor, and media lifetime issues on their end. Your job is to choose the right vendor so you can feel comfortable that these things are being taken care of!

Speed and cost are still significant variables. Microsoft seems to be betting the farm that Internet connectivity will be super-fast and super-cheap in order to make their plans work. But we're certainly not there yet. If you want simple file recovery, then there are many options. If you want versioning that goes back 12 months, you have fewer options and higher expenses. If you want true snapshots or images - not "snapshots" reconstructed from versions - then costs go way up and options are slim.

In all of this, ease of use can be very deceptive. It's the ultimate Paradox of Simplicity: Anyone can create a backup to the cloud that makes them feel good and safe but provides no real security for the data. It seems so simple. And if you have very little technical knowlege, all the systems seem good and reliable. As a result, people are placing the entire future security of their businesses on technology that is often inappropriate for their needs.

More than ever, businesses need good advisers to help them make the right decisions regarding backups. If that's you, please see Truth #4 again: You must absolutely master the backup technologies you sell and use. You need to have a philosophy about backups and disaster recovery. You need to have a "system" you prefer and sell. You need to train your team on YOUR way of building, maintaining, and testing backups.

You can't be lazy about this. Every single time you build and sell a new server or storage system, you need to build and document the backup and recovery strategy that works best for THIS client and THIS data.

Your Comments Welcome.

This is the fourth article in the mini-series on backups. See Part 1: Defining Your Client Backup, Part 2: Backup Philosophies and Client Communication, and Part 3 - Backup Monitoring, Testing, and Management.

Also see earlier articles on Documenting Backups and Daily Monitoring Procedures.

- - - - -
About this Series

SOP Friday - or Standard Operating System Friday - is a series dedicated to helping small computer consulting firms develop the right processes and procedures to create a successful and profitable consulting business.

Find out more about the series, and view the complete "table of contents" for SOP Friday at http://www.smallbizthoughts.com/events/SOPFriday.html.

- - - - -

Next week's topic: Final Friday Training

:-)



Life After SBS: Making Order Out of Chaos

Please join us October 11th in Las Vegas, NV for a special all-day training on Life After SBS.
October 11th, 2012
9 AM - 4:00 PM
 Price includes lunch, snacks, and drinks.

More Info

 Live Seminar - One Day Only With Karl W. Palachuk (CEO Small Biz Thoughts, author, blogger) and Manuel Palachuk (CEO Conceptual Age Consulting, author, blogger). In addition to writing The Network Migration Workbook, we have worked together for seven years and developed some great "best practices" that are serving us well as we prepare for the SBS End of Life. 

This seminar is part of the SMB Nation Preday Events. SMB Nation's Fall Conference is October 12-14 at the Rio in Las Vegas. Early bird pricing is now in effect at http://fall.smbnation.com/. This event is not associated with SMB Nation itself, but we have worked with Harry for eight years to put on some kind of preday event. 

This year's topic is extremely timely and important: What do next! The clock is ticking on SBS and you need both a business plan and a technical process for moving from SBS to the Next Big Thing. 25% of this seminar will be on business model considerations for moving to stand-alone servers, cloud services, and hybrid combinations. 75% cover the technical click-by-click of moving to other services. 

And OF COURSE we'll show you how to do this with Zero Downtime. More details are at www.smbpreday.com. This is a $399 seminar - and we think you save WAY more than that with the first client you migrate off SBS. 

But we also have some special pricing for you. Here's the run-down:

If you register during August, you pay only $199

September Registration is $299 And October Registration is full price at $399 

Do yourself a favor: Register today!

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Save $200 Right Now on "Life After SBS" Seminar

Life After SBS: Making Order Out of Chaos


Please join us October 11th in Las Vegas for a special all-day training on Life After SBS.
October 11th, 2012
9 AM - 4:00 PM

Price includes lunch, snacks, and drinks.

More Info

Note: The price of this seminar goes up September 1st!

You can register right now for only $199. Register Now!

Live Seminar - One Day Only With Karl W. Palachuk (CEO Small Biz Thoughts, author, blogger) and Manuel Palachuk (CEO Conceptual Age Consulting, author, blogger). In addition to writing The Network Migration Workbook, we have worked together for seven years and developed some great "best practices" that are serving us well as we prepare for the SBS End of Life.

This seminar is part of the SMB Nation Preday Events. SMB Nation's Fall Conference is October 12-14 at the Rio in Las Vegas. Early bird pricing is now in effect at http://fall.smbnation.com/. This event is not associated with SMB Nation itself, but we have worked with Harry for eight years to put on some kind of preday event.
 
 

Migrating OFF Small Business Server . . . Click by Click

 
This year's topic is extremely timely and important: What do next! The clock is ticking on SBS and you need both a business plan and a technical process for moving from SBS to the Next Big Thing. 25% of this seminar will be on business model considerations for moving to stand-alone servers, cloud services, and hybrid combinations. 75% cover the technical click-by-click of moving to other services.

And OF COURSE we'll show you how to do this with Zero Downtime. More details are at www.smbpreday.com. This is a $399 seminar - and we think you save WAY more than that with the first client you migrate off SBS.

But we also have some special pricing for you. Here's the run-down:
- Everyone who registers during August pays only $199
- September Registration is $299
- And October Registration is full price at $399

Do yourself a favor: Register today!
 
:-)

Friday, August 24, 2012

SOP Friday: Backups Part 3 - Backup Monitoring, Testing, and Management


This is the third article in the mini-series on backups. See Part 1: Defining Your Client Backup and Part 2: Backup Philosophies and Client Communication.

Also see earlier articles on Documenting Backups and Daily Monitoring Procedures.

Those articles walk through the basics of monitoring backups. Here we're going to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. When you manage the backups for several companies, you should have a systematic way of keeping track of what's going on - and documenting it.

Monitoring backups can be totally manual, totally automatic, or somewhere in the middle. I strongly favor somewhere in the middle. A totally manual backup monitoring means that you either sit down at the server or connect remotely and verify that the job ran, job finished, and job was successful. This is a very old-school way of doing things.

Totally automatic monitoring means that you trust some system to verify that a job started, job finished, and job finished successfully. This sounds like the super-cool future we all want. But it's very dangerous. Last time we talked about how How Pixar Almost Lost Toy Story 2. That was possible because they had a super-cool automated backup system . . . that failed for a month and no one noticed.

Backups (and restores) are absolutely critical and therefore need more attention than that. Good enough isn't.

We highly recommend that you use a professional backup solution such as Backup Exec, which has rich reporting. We have never relied on the backup system built into Windows Server, but you could use that. Just make sure that you check those backups! If you're running SBS, you can get reports on backups via the built-in backup but not other solutions. Other solutions need to provide their own reporting.

If you have an RMM (remote monitoring and management) tool, you should find a backup that integrates with that tool so you can monitor backups automatically and remotely. As strange as it sounds, you will get false positive and false negative reports from all these tools. Backups will report a failure because they couldn't open a temporary file that just happened to be in use when the backup occurred but is unimportant and has since been removed by the system. Grrrr. And backups will report success even when they don't finish. Happily, this is rare.

The bottom line is: You need to actively monitor these systems. In truth, a well-designed backup system with good hardware and good software will work very well. Human error is the culprit 99% of the time when there's a failed backup. So you're monitoring your clients as well as their systems.

Create an automated system, but check it regularly. Trust but verify.

We recommend the process defined in the article Daily Monitoring of Client Machines.

We certainly do not do a test restore every day, but we DO schedule a test restore every month along with monthly maintenance. As mentioned before, we restore the system state, something from each drive that was backed up (e.g., C:, D:, x:), something from each medium used (e.g., disc 1, disc 2), and from within key databases (e.g., a few mails within the Exchange database).

This takes time. And it may mean that you're on site to perform these tasks. It's good for the client to see you doing some work rather than being 100% remote. It's also good for them to see you when it's not an emergency. It breaks them of the habit of saying "Oh no" every time you walk in the door.

The Big Picture

Your overall management of backups is arguably the most important thing your company does. It is the one thing that is guaranteed to keep your clients in business when disaster strikes. Maintenance is critical, but backups are more critical. Clients don't always see the importance here, but they will assume you're taking care of it when something goes bad.

In the big picture, managing backups is really a big sub-system of your managed service operation. That's why you need an overall philosophy that can be applied across all your clients. That's why you need standardized processes and procedures. That's why you need to train all of your staff to understand your philosophies and how they're implemented. That's why you do regularly daily monitoring and monthly restores.

If you have enough clients, you might actually have one or two technicians who specialize in monitoring and managing client backups.

I know it's easy to put this off. After all, the backup does seem to work most of the time and other things break. But you have to keep in mind that the backup is more important than almost anything else. So spending a few minutes (per client) per day is a great investment of your time. Remember, one of my mantras is

Slow Down, Get More Done

This is a great example of that. Af few minutes spent on backups every day can save many hours and dollars when something goes wrong down the road.


Your Comments Welcome.


- - - - -
About this Series

SOP Friday - or Standard Operating System Friday - is a series dedicated to helping small computer consulting firms develop the right processes and procedures to create a successful and profitable consulting business.

Find out more about the series, and view the complete "table of contents" for SOP Friday at http://www.smallbizthoughts.com/events/SOPFriday.html.

- - - - -

Next week's topic: Backups 4: Changing Technologies

:-)




Life After SBS: Making Order Out of Chaos

Please join us October 11th in Las Vegas, NV for a special all-day training on Life After SBS.
October 11th, 2012
9 AM - 4:00 PM
 Price includes lunch, snacks, and drinks.

More Info

 Live Seminar - One Day Only With Karl W. Palachuk (CEO Small Biz Thoughts, author, blogger) and Manuel Palachuk (CEO Conceptual Age Consulting, author, blogger). In addition to writing The Network Migration Workbook, we have worked together for seven years and developed some great "best practices" that are serving us well as we prepare for the SBS End of Life. 

This seminar is part of the SMB Nation Preday Events. SMB Nation's Fall Conference is October 12-14 at the Rio in Las Vegas. Early bird pricing is now in effect at http://fall.smbnation.com/. This event is not associated with SMB Nation itself, but we have worked with Harry for eight years to put on some kind of preday event. 

This year's topic is extremely timely and important: What do next! The clock is ticking on SBS and you need both a business plan and a technical process for moving from SBS to the Next Big Thing. 25% of this seminar will be on business model considerations for moving to stand-alone servers, cloud services, and hybrid combinations. 75% cover the technical click-by-click of moving to other services. 

And OF COURSE we'll show you how to do this with Zero Downtime. More details are at http://www.smbpreday.com. This is a $399 seminar - and we think you save WAY more than that with the first client you migrate off SBS. 

But we also have some special pricing for you. Here's the run-down: Everyone who registers during August pays $199 September Registration is $299 And October Registration is full price at $399 

Do yourself a favor: Register today!

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Backups . . . OMG People . . . Test!


Maybe it's because I've been doing a series on Backups (See this post, this post, this post, and this post), but I've heard some horror stories this week.

- The backup that was never tested until after a hard drive crashed
- The backup that couldn't be retrieved from off site
- The partnership dissolved after one person didn't test backups and the company paid the price

This morning, one of my coaching clients told me about a prospect who has consistent disc errors on their server. He doesn't know whether the backup images are any good because the IT support company that "manages" the system only shows up when something breaks.

Wait. Stop.

So . . . the sequence will be 1) Drive fails, and then 2) We test to see whether we have good backups. If good, then 3) We restore the data.

I'm not kidding. This stuff keeps me awake at night. As my friend reported, "This guy doesn't know that he has an imminent hard drive failure on his hands." Luckily, he gets to meet with the prospect tomorrow and report these findings. Let's home the hard drive doesn't crash in the next 24 hours.

Luckily for this small business, my friend called him to offer a free network health checkup. With a little more luck, they can save this business and put a good system in place before it dies.

The funny thing is, businesses should care about the system that keeps them in business. And at some level they do. But too many businesses have never taken this seriously. And year after year, businesses fail due to data. There's no excuse for this!

You can't take care of all the people out there who haven't invested in protecting their own businesses. But you CAN make backups - and testing backups - a high priority in your business. You CAN audit every client backup in the next month and give them a report on their systems. And you CAN make regular testing part of your monthly maintenance process.

Remember the mantra: If you don't test your backup, you don't have a backup!

:-)



Life After SBS: Making Order Out of Chaos

Please join us October 11th in Las Vegas, NV for a special all-day training on Life After SBS.
October 11th, 2012
9 AM - 4:00 PM
 Price includes lunch, snacks, and drinks.

More Info

 Live Seminar - One Day Only With Karl W. Palachuk (CEO Small Biz Thoughts, author, blogger) and Manuel Palachuk (CEO Conceptual Age Consulting, author, blogger). In addition to writing The Network Migration Workbook, we have worked together for seven years and developed some great "best practices" that are serving us well as we prepare for the SBS End of Life. 

This seminar is part of the SMB Nation Preday Events. SMB Nation's Fall Conference is October 12-14 at the Rio in Las Vegas. Early bird pricing is now in effect at http://fall.smbnation.com/. This event is not associated with SMB Nation itself, but we have worked with Harry for eight years to put on some kind of preday event. 

This year's topic is extremely timely and important: What do next! The clock is ticking on SBS and you need both a business plan and a technical process for moving from SBS to the Next Big Thing. 25% of this seminar will be on business model considerations for moving to stand-alone servers, cloud services, and hybrid combinations. 75% cover the technical click-by-click of moving to other services. 

And OF COURSE we'll show you how to do this with Zero Downtime. More details are at http://www.smbpreday.com. This is a $399 seminar - and we think you save WAY more than that with the first client you migrate off SBS. 

But we also have some special pricing for you. Here's the run-down: Everyone who registers during August pays $199 September Registration is $299 And October Registration is full price at $399 

Do yourself a favor: Register today!

Friday, August 17, 2012

SOP Friday: Backups Part 2 - Backup Philosophies and Client Communication



The Ten Core Truths About Computer Backups


This is Part 2 in four part series on backups. See Part 1: Defining Your Client Backup.

This week the topic is backup philosophies and client communication. As you can imagine, I encourage you to have a standard philosophy with all of your clients. Oddly enough, if a client has a strong alternative philosophy - That's Good! Most clients sort of vaguely know that they should have a backup. But they can't really articulate why, or what a good backup looks like.

What is a philosophy about backups? Quite simply, it's a standard set of beliefs or approaches you take. Here are the Ten Core Truths from our backup philosophy (Note: You might not like them all.):

Truth #1: Backup is not a disaster recovery plan.
A good backup is one component in a DRP (disaster recovery plan), but it is not a DRP. It is necessary but not sufficient for a DRP. Therefore, it is more important than a DRP.

Truth #2: We build all backup systems with Disaster Recovery in mind.
This goal keeps us focused on creating robust backup systems.

Truth #3: Good backup technologies don't fail on a regular basis; lazy and untrained technicians fail.
Whenever we look at a technology developed by the "big boy" companies and used widely across the globe, we know that technology is solid. Tape backups, for example, are absolutely the most reliable backup. They fail because hardware is set up wrong, software is configured wrong, technicians don't know how to use the systems they're selling, or human beings fail to switch the tapes.

Tape backups aren't perfect. They are expensive compared to current hard drive technology, and they are slow. But if I drop a ten year old tape off the top of the Empire State Building into a puddle of mud, I'm going to be able to recover 100% of the data. That's not true with a hard drive.

Don't get me wrong: We're moving away from tape. But it's not because tape doesn't work. It's due to speed and price. We know we are moving to less reliable technologies (given that tape is the most reliable). Therefore, we have to be even more careful about the backup systems we create.

Truth #4: You (the technician) must absolutely master the backup technologies you sell and use. 
That means at the hardware level, software level, media level, and the process level. This is one of your muscles of success. You need to exercise it and build up muscle memory so that you make good decisions in a crisis and have a good sense of the resources available to you.

Truth #5: Backup media must be rotated to permanent off site storage for several reasons.
Permanent off site storage means that they never come back. They sit on a shelf or in a vault essentially forever. Why?

a) Backups make a great snapshot in time for legal, financial, and H.R. reasons.

b) Each media should only be used a certain number of times. If they are used continuously forever, the media become less reliable. This is true of tapes and hard drives equally. So that's why we take them out of circulation.

c) Backups go off site in case the office systems need to be recovered in a disaster. This might include a fire, water damage, or another event that makes it impossible to get to the office.

d) The goal of backups -- including monthly off site backups -- is to provide the ability to restore the client systems and data. Our normal preparation is for today, yesterday, and the last week. But it is also important sometimes to go back in time a month or two, or even a year or two.

There are no limits to the good reasons for storing media off site long-term. Theft, fire, flood, and all kinds of things can happen to your office. If they happen to your home or off site storage facility on the same day, then you need to have a good business insurance (and maybe a good lawyer). How can you plan for that?

Truth #6: You should have as many "points in time" as feasible.
This is critical. A basic backup will get you the file you deleted yesterday. A good backup will get you a file from last week or last month. A great backup will get you a file from several months or years back. A perfect backup will get your every version of every file ever created. (That perfect backup hasn't been invented yet, but it's good to think about.)

More than most technologies we deal with, backup systems have a very clear cost-quality relationship. You want something that kinda works? That's cheap. The perfect example is the USB drive brought home from Office Depot for $49. You plug it in and use whateverthehell software is included. You kinda sorta think you can recover a file if needed. But if you can't access that software . . . um . . .?

At the other end of the scale are systems that cost millions of dollars and are the key components of zero-downtime, instant fail over systems. In the middle, and much closer to the low end, are the $1,000-$2,000 systems we tend to put into client offices. From there you can move up to BDRs and cloud backups.

Create a simple checklist for your backup systems. Which points in time do you need to recover? Select ( Yes ) or ( No ) for each:

- One hour ago
- 12 hours ago
- Yesterday
- Three days ago
- Last week
- Two weeks ago
- Last Month
- Last Quarter
- 6 mos back
- End of last year
- 12 months back
- 24 months back
- 5 years back
- 10 years back
- 20 years back
- Other ?

Now consider what your media rotation looks like. What must it look like in order to create the restore points you say you want? Now think about #4 above: You must absolutely master the backup technologies you use. Let's say you're backing up to disc. After three months of backups, what exactly is on each of your backup discs? Are they full images? Copies of files? Versions of files? How many restore points do you have?

(Note: In Part 4 we'll talk about hard drive media and other technologies, their pros and cons.)

If your backup system does you the favor of eliminating duplicate files, does that mean file names or file versions? How exactly does it work? If you have bad sectors on your hard drive, have you lost every version of a specific file? Master the technology.

Note: Many cloud backup systems fail horribly when it comes to restore points. Before you spend your money, learn what really goes on up in that cloud. Verify for yourself. Master the technology. If the only thing you can restore is the latest version of each file, is that good enough?

Truth #7: Use enough media to guarantee the restore points you want.
Ideally, we would like to see at least 6-12 long-term storage media off site in addition to media for the current week. If you have a safe place to store the older media on site, you could bring them back to the office.

Let's say you backup every business day. That's five times a week. Ideally, those are all full backups (we haven't used incremental backups since we moved away from reel-to-reel backups in 1995). So we have five "current" backups off site, plus end-of-month backups permanently off site for the last 12 months. That's a total of 17 media off site. If you have end-of-year backups, then you will have additional media off site.

Remember: The driver of this discussion is the number of restore points you need. Yes, it costs money. It's cheaper than going out of business.

Truth #8: The first media will fail.
This philosophy is true far more often than we'd like to believe. Basically, it amounts to this: Assume that whatever media you use to restore from will be bad. The first hard drive, the first tape, the first cloud backup. Assume something will go wrong.

Clients don't change tapes/discs. Power supplies go out. Discs get corrupted. Databases get corrupted and then backed up. You need to restore from way back before the corruption happened.

Once you assume that you need backup plans for your backups, then you begin to plan at a higher level. Set up the Department of Redundancy Department within your office. Plan for failure; then plan around it. This is your job.

Truth #9: If you don't test your backup, you don't have a backup. If you can't restore from backup, you don't have a backup.
These are together because they're really the same thing. In addition to designing an awesome backup system, you need to design a process for restoring and testing that backup.

You don't need to perform a full restore in order to feel good about your backup. But you do need to restore from each drive that was backed up (e.g., C:, D:, x:), from each medium used (e.g., disc 1, disc 2), from the core O.S. area (system state on Windows machines), and from within key databases (e.g., a few mails within the Exchange database).

That's not trivial. Just like the backup, you need to craft a test restore that verifies you can get the data back where it belongs. This keeps your technicians tuned up on the process and verifies that you don't have hardware or software failures.

We recommend a test restore every month. If you can't do it remotely, plan to go on site.

Truth #10: We can't care more about the client's backup than they do.
Really, we do care more. But we have to tell ourselves that there's only so much we can do. If the client won't buy new media, won't take bakckups off site, won't let us get in to test restores . . . well, that's their choice. They get to decide how to spend their money. If they want the office manager to backup the data for a $12 MM company onto DVDs once a month, that's their decision.

We need to try to communicate to our clients, their employees, and our own employees about the importance of backups. We need to check them daily. And we need to push the client to take them seriously. But if they simply refuse to participate in the protection of their network, there's not much we can do.
See http://blog.smallbizthoughts.com/2012/07/sop-friday-daily-monitoring-of-client.html

On rare ocassions, we have sent a memo to clients saying that we cannot be responsible for the success of their backups because they are not doing the things we outlined. We offer to do those things for them (including change backup devices every day) for a price. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. But when clients just don't care, we have to try not to worry about it.


Client Communications

When you discusss all this with clients, you need to step back from the geekspeak quite a bit. At the same time, you need to thoroughly understand your company philosophy and make sure the client understands.

We get push-back on taking tapes out of circulation from some folks. We get lots of resistance to switching media (tapes or discs). Interestingly enough, we rarely get resistance based on overall price.

It is extremely helpful to have stories you can use to illustrate your points. Collect backup stories. Believe me, I have one or more for every point above. Stories help them connect your philosophy with the world that matters to them.

Remember, most clients see backups as a necessary evil. It costs money but has few tangible rewards 99% of the time. Of course on the day you recover a database from six months ago, it is worthwhile. When the office burns down, a back is worthwhile. When an employee sabotages a system, a backup is worthwhile.

I highly recommend that you write up a one-page memo on your backup philosophy and distribute it to clients and prospects. It might all be "background noise" to most, but it is a real selling point - especially if you emphasize competence. Clients really want a good reason to justify the money they spend with you. Put yourself up against a $60/hr trunk slammer when it comes to backups.

It also helps to get client endorsements. I've got a great one from my long-time client Hank: "Karl saved my business - twice in one year!" That kind of stuff goes a long ways.

Also, here's a great video: How Pixar Almost Lost Toy Story 2.


That's the story about how Pixar lost the Toy Story 2 movie due to bad backups. Pixar. Bad backups for a MONTH. The lesson is: If it can happen to them, it can happen to you.

Take this seriously. Create a philosphy about backups that gives your clients rock solid backup plans that work.


Your To-Do List

First, you need to write out your philosophy about backups. Believe me: Most of your competition has NO philosophy about this critical function. AND almost no one who reads this will actually follow through either.

Use my discussion above as a starting place, but really make it your own. Who do YOU like to see with regard to processes, procedures, off site media, etc.?

Second, you need to go over this with your technicians and make sure they all understand it. This might lead to some discussions or debate. That's fine: It means they're thinking about backups!

Third, you need to implement whatever pieces you do not currently have in place. This might include selling clients additional media in order to make sure they're in compliance with your philosophy.

Fourth, you need to communicate this to clients in some form (as discussed above). Handouts are good. The more professional looking the better.

Fifth, everyone on your team needs to support one another around this policy.



Your Comments Welcome.

- - - - -
About this Series

SOP Friday - or Standard Operating System Friday - is a series dedicated to helping small computer consulting firms develop the right processes and procedures to create a successful and profitable consulting business.

Find out more about the series, and view the complete "table of contents" for SOP Friday at http://www.smallbizthoughts.com/events/SOPFriday.html.

- - - - -

Next week's topic: Backups 3 - Backup Monitoring, Testing, and Management
and then . . . Backups 4 - Changing Technologies

:-)

Now Available: 


Seminar on MP3 Download 

Two hours of audio training - Plus two slide decks in .pdf format. 

Agenda: Project Management in a Managed Service Business and Zero Downtime Migration Strategies.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Life After SBS: Making Order Out of Chaos

Please join us October 11th in Las Vegas, NV for a special all-day training on Life After SBS.

October 11th, 2012
9 AM - 4:00 PM

Price includes lunch, snacks, and drinks

Live Seminar - One Day Only

With Karl W. Palachuk (CEO Small Biz Thoughts, author, blogger) and Manuel Palachuk (CEO Conceptual Age Consulting, author, blogger). In addition to writing The Network Migration Workbook, we have worked together for seven years and developed some great "best practices" that are serving us well as we prepare for the SBS End of Life.

This seminar is part of the SMB Nation Preday Events. SMB Nation's Fall Conference is October 12-14 at the Rio in Las Vegas. Early bird pricing is now in effect at http://fall.smbnation.com/.
This event is not associated with SMB Nation itself, but we have worked with Harry for eight years to put on some kind of preday event. This year's topic is extremely timely and important: What do next! The clock is ticking on SBS and you need both a business plan and a technical process for moving from SBS to the Next Big Thing.

This seminar is all day -- 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM -- and includes lunch, snacks, and coffee.

One session will be on business model considerations for moving to stand-alone servers, cloud services, and hybrid combinations. Three sessions will cover the technical click-by-click of moving to other services. And OF COURSE we'll show you how to do this with Zero Downtime.
More details are at http://www.smbpreday.com.

This is a $399 seminar - and we think you save WAY more than that with the first client you migrate off SBS. But we also have some special pricing for you. Here's the run-down:

The First 10 people to register pay Only $99

After that, everyone who registers during August pays $199

September Registration is $299

And October Registration is full price at $399

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- - - - -
About Karl:

Karl W. Palachuk has been an I.T. consultant in Sacramento, CA since 1995. He has built several successful companies, including a managed service business. He is currently the Senior Systems Engineer at America's Tech Support. He has experience running support services for companies from one person to some of the largest companies in the world.

As a leader in the development of network documentation and managed services, Karl is a very popular speaker in the SMB Consulting Space. Karl is the author or co-author of nine books and several blogs.

About Manuel:

Manuel has over 25 years of business, management and training experience in the computer and electronics industries. He is an expert of process, systems, and their efficiency who is driven toward continuous improvement in all aspects of business. He is a well-known author in the IT consulting community for Small and Medium Businesses. He is an experienced speaker and trainer at industry conferences.

Manuel is the co-author of the Network Migration Workbook, an expansive 530 page document covering the complete processes and checklists required to migrate your network with zero downtime. Manuel is currently writing Getting to the Next Level: A Blueprint for Taking Your Managed Service Business to the Top.

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:-)

Friday, August 10, 2012

SOP Friday: Backups Part 1 - Defining Your Client Backup

Sometimes you have to cut through all the hundreds of things you do for clients and get to the absolute basics. The most time consuming "basic thing" we do is to maintain computers and networks. That maintenance is probably the second most important thing we do. The most important thing we do is to prepare for something that almost never happens: Building and testing backups.

Clients rarely understand the importance of backups. If they did, the number of new clients with working backups would be much higher. Until a client has experienced a truly catostrophic data loss, they just don't put much emphasis on backups. And of course backups are completely useless without a good restore from backup!

As with most modern technology, backups have what I call the Paradox of Simplicity: It's easy ENOUGH that anyone can create a bad backup system that appears to be good enough. When a client (or an incompetent technician) creates a half-baked, "good enough" network, it will be a slow network that has more equipment failures than a professional network. Maybe that's good enough.

But a "good enough" backup is not good enough. If you can't recover data, or can't recover all data, the client is likely to go out of business! If you need scary stats on this, read the excellent report by HP and SCORE entitled "Impact on U.S. Small Business of Natural & Man-Made Disasters." This is a great report to hand out to clients as it does not push any solutions, but merely raises awareness of the potential consequences of data loss.

We have always made backups an extremely important part of the service we offer. In earlier discussions of priorities within the service department, you saw that failed backups are the task guaranteed to raise the assigned priority of a service request. And testing backups are part of every monthly maintenance for every client.

Given the importance of backups, we're going to do a little 4-part series on backups. This is the first article - Defining Your Client Backup. The other articles will be:
- Backups Part 2 - Backup Philosophies and Client Communication
- Backups Part 3 - Backup Monitoring Testing and Management
- Backups Part 4 - Changing Technologies

- - - - -

Defining Your Client Backup


(Note the earlier SOP on Documenting Backups.)

There was a time when a backup was very simple to define: Backup everything every day. That might have been a challenge when you were using 8 GB tapes and wondering whether you were going to have to go to a larger-capacity tape drive.

Now we have gargantuan databases and monster hard drives that seem to just show up. It's not unusual for clients to have multiple terrabyte drives. And we all know that data expands to fill the space available. Whether it's log files, streaming media files, on-the-fly backups, vacation photos, or serious business data. It gets bigger and more diverse every year.

Inventory the Data
As you can see, you need to define the data your client has. In a perfect world, nothing important is kept on the desktop. But you need to find out for sure. After that you can turn to the server(s) and catalog all the resources that need to be backed up. Databases, directories, system state, etc. List out everything that's on the server and the format it's in (SQL, EDB, flat file, etc.).

Consolidate the Data
I know this is easier said than done. Basically, you need to get that data off the desktops, stray USB drives, etc. and onto the server where you can back it all up as part of the backup job.

Define the Backup Job(s)
Defining a backup means exactly that: What will you backup? When will you back it up? Onto what medium will you back it up? For example, let's look at three fictional clients.

1.
Client: Able Baker Charlie
Backup: Full backup of server "Obiwan"
When: Every workday (M-F) at 11:00 PM
Medium: DAT 160 tape with Symantec Backup Exec Software

2.
Client: Cousin Larry's
Backup One: "Public" data on server SBS2008
When: Mon-Wed-Fri at 11:00 PM
Medium: Disc-to-Disc to SAN - then SAN to cloud

Backup Two: System and user data on server SBS2008
When: Tue-Thu at 11:00 PM
Medium: Disc-to-Disc to SAN - then SAN to cloud

3.
Client: KPEnterprises
Backup One: Full backup of server "Tommy"
When: Every workday (M-F) at 9:00 PM
Medium: Disc-to-Disc to Elvis

Backup Two: Full image backup of server "Tommy"
When: Every workday (M-F) at 10:00 PM
Medium: Acronis

Backup Three: Full backup of server "Elvis"
When: Every workday (M-F) at 10:00 PM
Medium: DAT 160 tape with Symantec Backup Exec Software

Backup Four: Full image backup of server "Elvis"
When: Every workday (M-F) at 11:30 PM
Medium: Acronis


Why don't we simply backup everything every night for every client? Well, some clients don't need it. But more likely than that, you may be working with two limited resources: Time and capacity. Depending on the hardware and network involved, you may not be able to move all of the data to the backup device in a reasonable amount of time. Or the medium (whether disc or tape) may not be large enough to hold all of the data.

In either case, you have to decide what to backup and when. The system state probably doesn't change much. Line of business databases, Exchange, and core data files change every day. You have to calculate what goes where, how long each job will take, and how much will fit on a given medium.


Why Document This Way?

There are many reasons to document what you do. They pretty much all apply here. You need to be able to assure the client that everything is being backed up, and that it's on a schedule consistent with their restore requirements in case of a disaster. You need to be able to send various technicians to the job site and know that they will be able to figure it out when they need to restore a file. And if you get hit by a bus, this stuff needs to be written down so it can be carried out while you're recovering in the hospital.

One of my rules for life is Slow Down, Get More Done. Restoring a server from backup is a perfect example of that. Think about how you will restore a server. The first medium you'll need is the O.S. and system state. Ideally, that will have everything you need to boot onto that server and finish the restore. So what's the next medium you need? And the next? If you have separate media for the system state and data, which is the most recent of each?

Think slowly. If you get this wrong, you'll double the time for your restore, or worse.

How exactly will you restore this server?

Once you can precisely define the restore process, then you'll be able to verify that you have a good backup process, and that it's properly documented. Now take yourself out of the picture. Can a qualified technician look at your process and properly restore this server? If the answer is "no" or "I don't know" then you need to keep working on it.


Implementation Notes

As I mentioned in the earlier SOP on Documenting Backups, your backup documentation is primarily a narrative. It's easy, but technically precise. If you get it wrong, you'll end up over-writing a backup you need. If that happens, the restore will be troublesome.

Precision matters - a lot.

The main thing you need to do is to educate your team about your company's approach to backups (and restores), and then make sure everyone who might be involved in a restore has an opportunity to put their hands on a backup. They need to be comfortable with this so they can be successful after a disaster.

You may have only one or two people on your team that would ever be involved in an emergency restore. But every technician should be involved with monthly tests and setting up backup jobs. That ensures a high level of knowledge across your team. This is literally insurance for you. If one of your technicians ever needs to make a decision about a medium to use, you want to do everything you can to make sure they make good decisions.


This kind of policy requires that everyone on the team

1) Be aware of the process

2) Practice the process

3) Correct one another's errors

4) Support one another with reminders

Your Comments Welcome.

- - - - -


About this Series

SOP Friday - or Standard Operating System Friday - is a series dedicated to helping small computer consulting firms develop the right processes and procedures to create a successful and profitable consulting business.

Find out more about the series, and view the complete "table of contents" for SOP Friday at http://www.smallbizthoughts.com/events/SOPFriday.html.

- - - - -

Next week's topic: Backups 2: Backup Philosophies and Client Communication

:-)

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Friday, August 03, 2012

SOP Friday: The Tech on Call for The Day - Managing Daily Work Flow


There are several roles that need to be performed within the service delivery department. Obviously, there are technicians. When you get a few techs, you'll eventually have a service manager. We've already discussed Service Manager Roles and Responsibilities as well as Technician Roles and Responsibilities.

Now let's talk about the "Tech on Call for the Day" role. This discussion can also be applied to a service coordinator role. I will use the terms Service Coordinator and Tech on Call interchangeably. Notice that I'm very careful to refer to this as a role, because this role might be performed by almost anyone in the company. When you're just starting out, the owner will wear this hat along with the technician hat, service manager hat, front office hat, and all the other hats.

I like to call it the Tech on Call for the Day because that's a very good way to transition into having levels of responsibility in your service department. You can rotate this role between each of the techs on a schedule that makes sense for you. You might rotate every day or every week.

Rotating this role takes these responsibilities away from the owner or service manager, allowing that person to be more productive in higher level activities. Rotation has other benefits as well. It allows you to "test drive" each of the techs to see how they might do with additional responsibility. And it's a great way to make sure each of the techs understands the rules of service board management, setting priorities, scheduling work, etc.

Of course you have to decide who will and who will not rotate into this position and how frequently. In the beginning, the owner or service manager will have to spend a lot of time with the Tech on Call for the Day.

The list of duties is essential to your daily procedures and as such they are to be reviewed and changed periodically in order to fit your policies better. Please do not consider this list static. In addition, be open to input from anyone who rotates into the Tech of the Day position. This will help you continue to fine-tune your processes.


Tasks to be performed by the person assuming the Service Coordinator / Tech on Call For The Day role:

a) When you are "on point" for the day, you will be monitoring the Service Board and updating it at least every hour.

b) Take over the phones. This means that you will catch incoming calls. The actual process for this will vary depending on your phone system.

Remember, the Coordinator role is there to accept new requests from clients but you are not there to answer billing or service related questions. If that happens, simply explain to the client your role is there to take down the issue and then enter it into the system. For further questions please refer the client to management.

Also remember: This is not a "help desk" position. The Coordinator is not authorized to answer the phone and start solving the client's problem. Nothing in this position eliminates the need to enter service requests into the PSA system, prioritize them, and work them from highest to lowest priority and from oldest to newest. Tickets have to get into the system; but we are not interrupt-driven with regard to work priorities.

c) You will be managing the outsourced monitoring and help desk (e.g., Continuum) and therefore need to be the designated coordinator in their system.  Log into their system and make this change, or call them to notify them. In general, follow whatever process they need.

d) You are in charge of letting the remote monitoring service know when we are doing maintenance on a server that would require either downtime or reboots. Use the message board and post a message accordingly. Again, follow their process.

e) Perform the daily monitoring duties as described in the Standard Operating Procedures document.

f) Process the new Service Requests that come into the system. To do this follow the guidelines established in the Standard Operating Procedures with the following changes:
- Service Ticket Updates
- Ticket Statuses to Use and When to Use Them
- Setting Job Priorities
- Massaging the Service Board
- How Do Service Requests Get Into Your System?

g) Work on Priority 4 Service Tickets. This is one way we make sure that the P4 tickets get attention. You need to be interruptible enough to take phone calls and perform all the little tasks above. Working low-priority tickets is a perfect combination as you can switch tasks fairly easily.

h) Unless the service manager has a reason to do otherwise, you will work service tickets that involve working with line-of-business tech support, shadowing them as they access client machines, and generally making their support work as successful as possible. Ideally, this work is scheduled at a specific time. And since our primary responsibility is simply to monitor the vendor's access, it fits well with the coordinator role.

i) As higher-level tickets enter the system, you will coordinate with technicians to make sure that they are working on the highest-level, oldest tickets in the queue. If technicians are scheduled to be out at client offices, you will keep track of who is where and how they will proceed through their day. Sometimes, jobs are finished faster than expected. At other times, they drag on longer than expected. The "coordinator" piece of this job is to balance all the resources (people) available to your and tickets that need attention.

In general, the Service Coordinator role will help to move tickets through the system. In a perfect world, this role would not be needed because the process of prioritizing tickets and then working them from highest to lowest priority and from oldest to newest will always keep everyone doing exactly what they should be doing. But since you are also dealing with human beings, there is a good portion of "art" in addition to the science of managing tickets.


Implementation Notes 

First, you need to define the specific duties to be performed by the Tech on Call for The Day. These will be some subset of duties already being performed by one or more people already. In fact, it may include some things that should be getting done but aren't. Write out the duties in a manner similar to the list above.

Second, you need to determine a rotation schedule. Who will rotate through this role? How often will you rotate? Will the service manager or owner be on the rotation list?

Third, once you've written out the duties and rotation, you need to do some training. All the technicians should be familiar with the basic tasks required for this position. But very often, we don't pay close attention to the details of jobs that are not our own. So they might know the broad outline but not the details of performing the tasks. Training of some kind is in order.

Fourth, set a schedule and begin the rotation. Do some debriefing after one day, three days, and one week. Accept lots of feedback, give lots of feedback, and fine-tune the process in response to the realities of your business.


Benefits

The most obvious benefit is that this process is an evolutionary stage as your business moves from one-tier to a multi-level service department. It is a good way to transition to having a full-time service coordinator, but it allows you to see how each technician will do without making permanent changes.

The rotation will also increase the efficiency of your team as each technician learns a higher level of detail about the flow of tickets through the system and the fine points of service coordination. Setting priorities, coordinating schedules, and working with clients. When everyone on the team has a higher level of understanding for these functions, they will all be better at supporting and reinforcing one another. That takes your team and your service delivery to the next level.


Your Comments Welcome.

- - - - -


About this Series

SOP Friday - or Standard Operating System Friday - is a series dedicated to helping small computer consulting firms develop the right processes and procedures to create a successful and profitable consulting business. Find out more about the series, and view the complete "table of contents" for SOP Friday at http://www.smallbizthoughts.com/events/SOPFriday.html


- - - - - 


Next week's topic: Backups 1: Defining Your Client Backup 


 :-)



by Erick Simpson 
Covers: 
Deliverables - Pricing and Positioning - Staffing Requirements 
Hiring, Managing and Training - Technical Roles and Responsibilities
Processes and Procedures - Target Markets - Customer satisfaction and Loyalty 
. . . and More!

Wednesday, August 01, 2012

The Paradox of Simplicity


About twenty years ago I made money helping corporations get connected to the thing we now call the Internet. Before the world wide web. Back when people used telnet and gopher. At that time, you could get a T-1 from the local Baby Bell, but you had to know where to connect the other end in order to access a network connected to the global Internet. Then you had to find a working BIND server (for DNS) and request an IP range.

Back then you needed to know how to configure a device called a CSU/DSU (channel service unit/data service unit) in order to create the actual T-1 connection over which you would run a routable protocol such as SNA, XNS, DECnet, or TCP/IP. After you configured the CSU/DSU, you had to configure the router with a set of configurations we rarely worry about today.

Finally, when all that good stuff was in place, you had to actually know what you wanted to connect to over this network! Depending on the service providers and companies involved, this process could take months.

Today it's a little different. You can go online and order service for your house or office. In many cases, you can order a do-it-yourself kit. You plug it in and it works. Period. That's it.

Don't worry, this isn't just another "when I was a kid" story. The point is this: It used to be really hard to get connected to the Internet. Now anyone can do it.

It used to be hard to configure a network. Now anyone can do it.

It used to be hard to configure a backup! Now anyone can do it.

It used to be hard to secure a network. Now anyone can do it.


Really? Can anyone do it? 

Yes. Anyone can do it poorly. Anyone can set up an insecure Internet connection. Anyone can set up a network that performs poorly. Anyone can configure a backup that fails frequently. Anyone can "secure" a network full of holes.

Anyone can do it wrong and think they've done it right. We all have stories!

The Paradox of Simplicity is this: Technology becomes easier over time until the non-professional can perform the technical task well enough to get by, but not good enough to rely on for business purposes.

It's easy ENOUGH that anyone can create a bad backup system that appears to be good enough. When a client (or an incompetent technician) creates a half-baked, "good enough" network, it will be a slow network that has more equipment failures than a professional network. Maybe that's good enough.

But a security configuration that's "good enough" is still full of holes. A backup that's good enough will probably fail when it comes time to restore. A battery backup that's good enough will not protect your server when it's most important.

You've all heard the saying: Good enough isn't.


Causes and Effects of Simplicity


Manufacturers of hardware and developers of software know that they will sell more if their merchandise is easy to set up, configure, and maintain. Ease of use is an obvious driver. Ease of support is less obvious but also important. If you can support a system with fewer people, and less technically exerpienced people, then the cost of maintenance goes way down. So buyers drive simplicity because it translates into happier users and lower maintenance costs.

In addition, the never-ending advance of technology always results in simplifying older technology as more complicated new technology is introduced. Things get small. More pieces are included together, and therefore pre-configured to work together. A perfect example of this is the integrated motherboard. It wasn't so long ago that network cards, modems, video cards, and sound cards were all sold separately . . . and had to be configured. Now they're just built in.

There are many, many positive results from simplification. I know it's made our job easier!

But there's also a dark side. This simplification allows less-qualified technicians to pass themselves off as consultants. It allows the more-technical business owners to believe they can do our jobs. Manufacturers and developers encourage this belief. So more and more business owners, or their less-than-competent staff, try to do as much as they can themselves.

A perfect example is Small Business Server. SBS (any version) is complicated. There are lots of things going on all at once. The whole point of SBS is to make all these disparate systems dance the cha-cha in perfect rhythm. Microsoft has always had the dream that a small business owner will someday be able to buy an SBS system like an appliance, plug it in, and it will just work. That will never happen.

I assume that everyone reading this knows that SBS is too complicated for most business owners to configure and maintain by themselves. The SBS team has never controlled the development of SQL, Exchange, SharePoint, or Server. The SBS team had the very difficult task of teaching all those components to dance together nicely through a series of wizards and registry entries crafted after each of the component services was delivered to them.

The SBS team attempted to create a much simpler system. What they created, of course, was a simpler-seeming system that was actually more complicated because it had this very sophisticated super-structure built on top of all the other components.

As with so much technology today, you can say that it's really easy to do it wrong. In fact, you can set it up very wrong and think you're right! More than once I've heard a technician say that he makes money fixing botches SBS setups or SBS networks. I know we've acquired more than one client because we started by fixing up a botched SBS install.

When we look forward, simplicity will always continue. The paradox of simplicity will always continue.

You need to be aware of this and decide what you're going to do about it. You need messaging around it.

And you need to accept it because it's not going away.

The primary role of a consultant is to consult, to give advice. Working with clients to help them understand that many things that seem simple are still too complicated to do themselves. If you're just a technician, you'll be simplified out of a job. If you're a consultant, you will help your client build even better, cooler, faster, more secure systems with evolving, simpler technology.

:-)