A business continuity,disaster recovery,disk storage,disk recovery consultant!So boring?

Data center management - should I quit the profession?

2010-12-10T22:10:00.000-08:00

Data center management is such a tireless profession- should I quit it?

Should I quit this data center management profession and get a more "normal" job? This data center management job implies waking up at odd hours to answer the cell phone and have my family curse me every day

The only thing that seems to have changed in my data center management job is the move from beepers to rickety Motorola phones to a sleek IPhone. But irrespective, there is always a crisis situation that needs resolving

Data center management is simply not worth it

I started as a data center engineer specializing in Unix servers, and now head the entire data center but life hasnt changed much. My data center management job dominates my life and my family has been urging me to change my job for quite a while, but "job inertia" and the fear of going to another profession hold me back.

Do you think a data center management guy like me has any chance in another profession

All I long for is a 9x5 job and no production breakdown calls at night..

Data centers to turn green,3 steps to green data centers

2008-08-24T00:08:00.000-07:00

Data centers should turn environmentally friendly soon

There is a generally global corporate awakening of corporates to ensure that data centers turn environmentally friendly and consume less power

As soon as the green data center movement started, corporate boardrooms and conference rooms have been filled with corporate honchos blowing hot air and consuming endless MWs of energy and generally doing nothing about making their data centers environmentally friendly!

Data storage virtualization holds the key to clean data centers and low power consumption

Virtualization simply means less servers, resulting in lower power consumption at data centers. Data centers can then exponentially reduce their power consumption, resulting in greener data centers

Server consolidation is another option for greener data centers

Server consolidation is obviously a great option for greener data centers. By using server consolidation, one need not invest in the technical expertise of implementing virtualization for the entire data center

An ideal option is to start with server consolidation, and then slowly move to virtualization, ensuring that the power consumption is minimized even when the virtualization project is underway

Inventory of your servers at your data center with their power consumption may lead you to some interesting insights for creating a green data center

You may be surprised, or rather will be surprised by the good old 80/20 rule in your data center- just replacing one bad server that consumes too much power or using server consolidation with one of your larger servers may save you thousands of dollars worth of electricity bills

Just remember, a data center not only looks good on your boss' s next appraisal,but is also good for the environment and also your company's bottomline

Kraken- the mother of all botnets strikes

2008-04-10T06:30:00.000-07:00

Kraken is apparently the mother of all botnets and has spawned over 300,000 bots

Rumors in computer network security circles & antivirus forums including SearchSecurity.com suggest that Kraken is probably the world's most successful botnet

Kraken,the infamous botnet, has apparently infiltrated Fortune 100 companies across the world

Kraken is a botnet allegedly designed to evade popular antivirus programs such as Norton & McAfee antivirus software. Antivirus programs have failed to detect and control the Kraken botnet and the malicious bots are apparently spreading in huge numbers across the corporate world

How Kraken,the botnet, evades common antivirus programs such as McAfee and Norton

Kraken uses complex obfuscation techniques, by altering its binary regularly so that antivirus programs such as McAfee antivirus are unable to detect Kraken.

How Kraken appears to the unassuming user

Kraken infiltrates computers in the following way : Users see an image file,which doesnt load,causing the exe to load malware into the unsuspecting user's machine. The Kraken .exe then stays on the computer as a bot, ready to infiltrate the entire LAN

Kraken botnet has built-in redundancy features that prevent easy detection and damage control

The Kraken botnet has a redundancy feature wherein once the command servers shut down, the child botnet communicates with a new domain name,preventing damage control by shutting down a few servers

Kraken botnet is far worse than Storm, the original infamous botnet

The Kraken botnet is apparently potentially more dangerous than the Storm botnet and has infiltrated more computer servers than ever thought before. The Kraken botnet may spread slowly but its redundancy and binary rebuilding features make it more difficult to detect and control Kraken's damage

Network administrators need to wake up to the Kraken menace and put pressure on antivirus software makers for an early resolution to the danger posed by Kraken botnets

Virus hoaxes,beware of virus hoaxes

2008-03-11T03:53:00.000-07:00

Virus hoaxes probably cause more damage to the antivirus software researchers than the viruses themselves

What are virus hoaxes? Virus hoaxes are messages/emails about viruses that are sent to innocent nice people who think they are doing the antivirus world a favor by forwarding the virus information to the rest of the world

Well, it usually turns out that it is not a virus after all, and the "virus hoax" is actually doing more damage than the real viruses by taking up the time of antivirus software researchers and network administrators and even taking up a lot of bandwidth

Watch out for virus hoaxes- its not your JOB to let the world know about viruses!

The altruistic nature of people who fall for virus hoaxes is appreciated- but people dont realize the damage done by the virus hoaxes. There are obviously more qualified people who are monitoring and dealing with viruses on a real time basis.

As any antivirus software maker's research department or your own friendly network administrator will testify,please do not try and be the nice guy and forward any information you hear about viruses to either the antivirus software websites or your network administrator

In summary, watch out for virus hoaxes and please do not forward any virus related mails

Amazon Web Services' Elastic Compute Cloud,ideal for startup technology companies

2008-02-09T00:55:00.000-08:00

Amazon Web Services has introduced the "Elastic Compute Cloud" for easy access to bandwidth and data storage

The " Elastic Compute Cloud " is a new innovation from Amazon Web Services that includes inexpensive storage and bandwidth that can be used for small startups.

The best part of "Amazon Web Services is that it is pay per use- you only pay when you use the server space or bandwidth. As a startup technology company, this is fantastic as the startup companies do not have to pay for expensive fixed cost servers

The Elastic Compute Cloud offered by Amazon has competitors but is definitely provided the best value price proposition especially for storage services

For example, the Simple Storage Services as part of Amazon Web Services cost just 15 cents for a Gigabyte of data for data storage services. The data storage services offered by Amazon are inexpensively priced compared to Akamai,Terremerk,IBM and Sun Microsystems and will probably be adopted even by major corporations,apart from technology startups

A cool innovation from Amazon, the Elastic Compute Cloud or EC2 will revolutionize the data storage industry and wipe out a lot of small data storage companies

Amazon's Elastic Storage Cloud or EC2

Kansas Disaster recovery

2008-02-03T03:08:00.000-08:00

Kansas disaster recovery-President Bush announces a disaster recovery package

In the aftermath of the Kansas disaster, Bush has announced a disaster recovery package for Kansas

Interestingly, this Kansas disaster has prompted an early response from President Bush- the earlier poor response to the Katrina disaster in Florida has obviously alerted President Bush in this election year,where a poor Government response could have meant bad publicity for the Republican party

Anyways, irrespective of the reasons, a great response from President Bush to the Kansas disaster

Interestingly, the Kansas disaster recovery package also includes over 75% support from the Government for future disaster recovery mitigation plans for Kansas city

Data centers electricity consumption-Amazing facts

2007-02-26T02:20:00.000-08:00

Data centers electricity consumption-Amazing facts from AMD

AMD has released some amazing data center facts- servers,data center infrastructure and cooling infrastructure consumed around 1.2% of the electricity consumption of the entire US market

Alternatives to lowering electricity consumption in data centers

Data centers need to seriously look at data center options such as server consolidation and virtualization, in the aim to use data center server CPU as a service

Data center server consolidation:In a survey of data centers across the US, I can state with confidence that 80% of servers are operating at below 20% capacity. Data center server consolidation will not only save money for data centers in server cost but also help in reducing precious energy resources such as electricity consumption

Data storage server virtualization:Data storage server virtualization assists data centers in optimally switching between blade servers to create a true CPU and data storage as a service data center. This server virtualization will also mean that optimal electricity consumption is taking place in the data center

Full AMD data center electricity consumption findings

Google publishes hard drive expose!

2007-02-20T16:24:00.000-08:00

Hard drive expose by Google-A hard drive white paper study from Google

Google has published a document on hard drive failure rates based on the study of hard drives at Google's data centers

Google's hard drive study makes for very interesting reading-and cannot be taken lightly since the sample size of Google's data centers is very huge

Google's hard drive collapse surprise finding 1:Hard drive failure not correlated highly with temperature

Google's hard drive failure study finds that there is no one on one correlation of temperatures with hard drive failure

Per Google's hard drive research,new hard drives prefer higher temperatures and older hard drives prefer lower temperatures and are susceptible to reverse temperatures

Google's hard drive research is in short suggesting that we shouldn't assume that all drives are equally susceptible to manufacturers

Google uses cheap and a variety hard drives from various manufacturers

Google operates one of the largest data centers in the world, and amazingly uses cheap hard drives with a combination of serial and parallel hard disk drives, with speeds from 5400 to 7200 rpm.

Incredible, that Google's large data centers uses hard drives that may be obsolete elsewhere

Google's hard drive research suggests that SMART hard drive parameters are not the only symptoms that aid in preventing hard drive failures

Firstly,Google extensive use of SMART hard drives (self-monitoring drives) is interesting

Further,Google's conclusion about SMART hard drives is a signal to SMART drive manufacturers that the data monitored is not good enough

Google's hard drive research summary

Get rid of hard drives after the

Hard drive first scan error

First hard drive sector reallocation error

The first hard drive probational count error

Disaster recovery-Should disaster recovery centers be local or geographically dispersed?

2007-02-13T19:34:00.000-08:00

Should disaster recovery center be local or geographically dispersed

Disaster recovery centers are typically near shore-close to the geographic region where the core operations data centers are located.

Is this near-shore disaster recovery location a good idea?

Disaster recovery centers at near shore locations to data centers have the disadvantage of being used for actual data center operations as a supplementary data center site

The typical data center scenario: More and more normal operations data center stuff gets pushed to the disaster recovery data center and as a result, the disaster recovery data center begins to resemble a supplementary data center

Disaster recovery disaster-This supplementary data center scenario defeats the very purpose of having a separate disaster recovery data center

Funny disaster recovery job posting

2007-02-12T17:59:00.000-08:00

Funny disaster recovery,IS security job posting

An unintentionally funny disaster recovery , IS security job posting,I came across today

Great job for Manager,Disaster recovery,IS security.Great compensation.Bonuses based on number of disaster recovery systems handled through the year

Organizations reward "creating" IT disaster recovery situations

As you can see on the disaster recovery job posting above,organizations reward people for "creating" IT disaster situations and handling the disaster recovery operations as a result

Wonder why there are no IT disasters and disaster recovery situations on Fridays?

There are no IT disaster recovery situations on Fridays :-)

All IT disaster recovery situations tend to occur on Mondays/Tuesdays so that the disaster recovery can be completed by the end of the week. IT Security and disater recovery managers can then "claim credit" for resolving the IT disasters before the weekend and of course celebrate with a blast

No business continuity,disaster recovery situations in December

Do you wonder why there are no IT disaster recovery situations in December and all the IT disasters converge in the second week of January? Well, its after all a question of priorities,would you rather spend time with your family or save the organization millions of dollars due to IT disater recovery,business continuity situations?

From a cynical business continuity, disaster recovery consultant

Spam Thru botnet threaten data centers

2007-02-05T23:52:00.000-08:00

A recent article,titledSpam thru Botnet- Biggest threat to cyberspace security talks about the threat to data centers due to the Spam Thru botnets

Botnets are now universally recognized as the biggest security threats to data centers. What is intriguing about the Spam Thru botnet is apparently Spam Thru botnet's own antivirus system. The Spam Thru botnet's antivirus system ensures that Spam Thru remains the dominant botnet on the compromised computer and is not susceptible to other botnet attacks

This Spam Thru botnet story is quite incredible and as fascinating as science fiction

Tackling botnets such as the Spam Thru botnets-Where are the antivirus and antispyware vendors?

Its rather sad that the antivirus and antispyware vendors dominating the market are incapable of detecting and destroying botnets such as the Spam Thru botnet which mock the commercial antivirus vendors by having their own antivirus systems

Data centers are now really vulnerable to cyberspace security issues due to botnets such as the Spam Thru botnet

The only people who will rejoice with the new botnet based internet vulnerabilities are the internet security consultants who will make a fortune 'advising' companies on dealing with botnets such as Spam Thru

Wifi vulnerability- Watch Out-Wifi Networks are very vulnerable to security attacks.

2007-01-16T22:27:00.000-08:00

WIfi network are very vulnerable to security risks

WiFi Networks are very vulnerable to security attacks- Recent surveys show that almost 80% of Wifi networks are not even WEP encryption enabled.

Wifi network security carelessness

Why are people so careless when it comes to Wifi vulnerability? Its quite incredible that so-called intelligent people can be so dumb when it comes to Wifi security

Casual survey of Wifi network security vulnerabilities

I did a casual survey of people in my data center department and found that the awareness of Wifi vulnerabilities is incredibly low. In fact, 30% of my data center team did not even know what WEP encryption was. If this is the state of awareness for Wifi network vulnerabilities and security risks among so-called IT-savvy data center professionals, God forbid, the level of knowledge about Wifi security risks among non-IT guys must be incredibly bad.

Why bother locking your doors when you are going to expose your home or office Wifi network to the outside world?

Will Vista destroy the antivirus software industry?

2007-01-11T01:05:00.000-08:00

Will Microsoft Vista destroy the antivirus software industry?

A rather interesting antivirus software article suggests that antivirus software such as McAfee and Norton coule be made obsolete after Microsoft Vista's launch

Which antivirus software is worse?

Will you choose bad quality antivirus software such as McAfee or Symantec protection that is expensive or bad quality antivirus software from Microsoft Vista
that is free?

I think its a question of which antivirus software is worse- antivirus software protection provided by software such as McAfee and Norton or Microsoft Vista. Though Microsoft does not have a great history of providing desktop security and good antivirus protection, Microsoft Vista has seen significant investments in information security and can definitely do better than Norton or McAfee antivirus software.

Entire antivirus software product industry is a racket

I have a poor opinion of the antivirus software industry and the quality of antivirus software products- so I would rather get free antivirus software from Microsoft of the same quality as the more expensive antivirus software products from so-called industry giants such as McAfee or Symantec antivirus

Data storage backups - The biggest security hazard and waste of money

2007-01-08T22:43:00.000-08:00

Data backups are a security hazard and redundancy causes a huge waste of money

Sounds surprising to see a data storage guy talk bad things about data backups and their security implications,right? But its true,data storage backups are taken once,twice and many times over with no track of how many Gigabytes of data are stored in backups,how much of that data storage backup is redundant etc

Typical corporate data storage backup scenario

Redundancy of data storage backups- Its kinda fashionable to take data storage backups, and preferably repeated backups? Nobody takes incremental data storage backups anymore, its just fashionable to take more and more backups

Data storage backups are so redundant that data storage backups are nowadays not even catalogued- every data storage backup is categorized by the ubiquitous file name - 'Backups' :-) Nobody has a clue what those data storage backups are about

Data storage backups are a huge security risk- data storage backups are not catalogued and very often, openly available and not even under lock and key.

In summary, data storage backups are a huge security risk and a redundant data storage through avoidable data backups are a huge waste of corporate money- imagine if corporates used the extra money to pay more to employees :-)

Google Desktop - Dont download? Security Paranoia

2007-01-02T22:59:00.000-08:00

You allow Google Desktop downloads ? Google Desktops are a huge security risk and should not be allowed in any organization. Dont you take your data center security job seriously- you actually recommend Google desktop searches?

Google Desktop evokes this common response among data security experts. But I think it is simply security paranoia to not allow Google Desktop downloads. Google Desktops are not a huge security risk at all- True,Google Desktop does communicate to home base and allows for the controversial 'Search across Computers'

But,Google is a large corporate now, and any potential disclosures on misuse of Google Desktop search data by Google would harm Google's interests far more than any potential gain of using the data from Google Desktop searches.

Anyways, when we allow free Kazaa downloads with the omnipresent spyware and downloads of any unauthorized downloads from the internet with no security checks, why should we get paranoid on Google Desktop? Its just security paranoia and fear of Big Brother Google.

Data center crash call at 11:45 pm,New Year's eve

2006-12-31T09:56:00.000-08:00

Data center crash on New Year's eve

There was a time in the bad old days, when I used to be an on-call data center support consultant. That essentially meant that as an on-call support person,I was like a criminal on parole,who had to report back to the cops whenever they felt bored and wanted even more boring company.

Call from Burlington data center at 11:45 pm

I once got a call from the Burlington data center at 11:45 pm, on New Year's eve. I usually think better when ethlyl is under my belly- and I asked the data center operations guy what the problem was.

He said that he just wanted to make sure I was around (in case) the scripts I was responsible for failed. After all, it was New Year's eve,and it was difficult for the data center guys to find anyone and our over-zealous pal at the data center desk wanted to make sure he was covered.

The moral of the above data center story is that you find idiots everywhere, even on New Year's eve! Happy New Year to you!

2006-12-19T07:25:00.000-08:00

A funny tech support video I recently came across- Well, Its Christmas time and lets be nice to everyone, even tech support people :-)

Data storage virtualization requires a mindset change

2006-12-19T00:14:00.000-08:00

Data storage virtualization requires a mindset change.

Before data storage virtualization come into the picture, programmers across the world have been used to abusing the hardware with direct calls to the operating system. In fact, before data storage virtualization was introduced in data centers,Unix programmers have taken the operating system abuses to a different level

To be honest, I was one of those Unix programmers :-) The proudest day of my life was when I extended the kernel for the first time and later downed five beers alone in celebration.

Data storage virtualization,of course, cuts short such cowboy behavior. Different applications in the organization can adopt a different operating system,running on the same hardware- a different slot on the blade servers is all thats needed

Kaspersky's antivirus software has rootkits-Highly disappointed!

2006-12-14T02:10:00.000-08:00

We recently reviewed Kaspersky's antivirus software engine for a potential client and were highly impressed. Kaspersky antivirus has a technologically superior antivirus engine compared to competitors such as Symantec

But even before we had stopped applauding Kaspersky for their superior antivirus software, we realized that Kaspersky antivirus had a rootkit that monitored the antivirus software user's activity and reported back to home base.

How utterly disappointing! How can an antivirus software major such as Kaspersky antivirus stoop to such ridiculous depths..

Post note:-Not surprisingly,Symantec antivirus has also been caught including a rootkit in their antivirus software - when caught , the Symantec spokesman call the rootkit a bug in the Symantec antivirus software- Wonder which is worse, having a rootkit in your antivirus software or having buggy antivirus? :-)

Do antivirus software companies create viruses?

2006-12-11T02:45:00.000-08:00

Are antivirus software companies responsible for creating and spreading computer viruses?
I know this is a loaded controversial subject but I am sure this is perfectly true.

It is common knowledge in tech circles that some antivirus software companies hire ex-hackers ostensibly for ethical hacking- to check out the potential vulnerabilities of any system in advance.

But is that the only work the antivirus software companies use these hackers for? I strongly believe in the conspiracy theory that antivirus software companies are responsible for creating viruses in the first place.

These antivirus software companies use a simple marketing technique - create a fear psychosis and then make people pay for it! Anyone who has read Philip K Dick's 'Foster You are Dead' can definitely understand what game the antivirus software companies are playing!

Should you download Windows Defender?

2006-11-26T23:15:00.000-08:00

The verdict on Microsoft's Windows Defender is clear- you need to download Windows Defender today.

Microsoft's Windows Defender is expected to address at some of the spyware and virus loopholes in the Windows operating system family. Though some (including me) would object to Microsoft releasing the Microsoft Windows Defender as a separate product, I am happy to get at least some security updates to the vulnerable Microsoft Windows operating system

Benchmarking tests for Microsoft Windows Defender :

I have downloaded Microsoft Windows Defender and run it on a Sony Vaio laptop running Windows XP Professional. As part of the benchmarking test with Microsoft Windows Defender,I have deliberately installed some spyware,complicated rootkits and good ol' viruses on the laptop.

Results of the benchmarking test for Microsoft Windows Defender: (Microsoft Windows Defender is still in Beta)

The antispyware benchmarking test had Microsoft Windows Defender doing almost as good as McAfee and Norton antivirus products. However, none of the products including Microsoft Windows Defender, McAfee and Norton antivirus did a good job of identifying the rootkits on the computer. In comparison, Kaspersky antivirus seemed to do a better job at at least identifying the rootkits on the benchmarking test.

A more complex benchmarking test spanning various Windows vulnerabilities will be done next week at a Fortune 50 client- I will let you know the results of the benchmarking test and how well Microsoft Windows Defender performed in comparison to the commercial Windows antispyware products

Download Windows Defender at http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

Why does Norton antivirus make your PC a tortoise?

2006-11-22T02:47:00.000-08:00

Norton antivirus is (in)famous for making your PC run (or rather crawl) like a tortoise. Why does Norton antivirus really consume so much disk space and memory?

I really fail to understand why Norton antivirus and to some extent McAfee antivirus software are such memory hoggers. I mean the antivirus logic is entirely heuristic based and uses standard registry entries to identify antivirus threats.

I can understand intention based antivirus software as being memory hoggers. But the intention based antivirus software I have reviewed consume less memory and even less disk space than commercial antivirus software such as Norton and McAfee antivirus software.

Onion routers- Tor onion routers-a solution to the unsecured internet?

2006-11-16T22:19:00.000-08:00

An article evangelising the benefits of onion routers at http://www.tech2.com/india/topstuff/networking-tools-internet/anonymizing-the-net-the-onion-router/2268/0

However, the current use of onion routers is primarily as a gateway for hackers :-) I need real commercial support, funding and more research is needed to make the equivalent of onion Tor Networks used in the right way.

Onion Router

2006-11-16T21:34:00.000-08:00

Onion routers are in the news again these days. While onion routers really help in developing secure networks- they also are misused by hackers all around the world.

As with any technology, if onion routers are used well, it could go a long way in developing a secure internet , but onion routers could also be an invitation for hackers to use the untraceable IP feature to hack other networks.

EMC data storage to buy Avamar Tech

2006-11-04T17:06:00.000-08:00

EMC is rapidly expanding its offerings beyond data storage to include information security and data backup competencies.
Obviously, storage software, network data security and data recovery software services are growing way faster than the traditional physical data storage business of EMC and EMC, the data storage guys,want to rapidly get into this space.