Blog Archives
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Syndication
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September 2, 2010
A Real Life Lesson in the Importance of Testing IT Systems
Some of you may have read the Washington Post article “Crash of Va. computer network has implications for tech world, state politics” by Rosalind S. Helderman and Anita Kumar published on Thursday, September 2, 2010. The quick summary is that a redundant data storage unit failed in a warehouse outside of Richmond last week, wreaking havoc in the computer networks of a number of Virginia agencies for more than seven days. Now, sometimes even if you do everything right, technology just fails. This is a sad reality and the disaster in VA may simply be a case of very bad luck.
Having said that, I suspect the disaster in VA more likely is an example of an all too common problem in IT: the lack of testing systems after installation and more importantly the lack of regular testing of systems to validate proper function.
I am going to hypothesize that the redundant storage system was installed and everyone just assumed it would work because they bought an expensive system and that no one ever bothered to test the failover process. You can see this attitude in the quotes in the Washington Post article, “This is surprising — it’s a selling point for them (EMC) when they talk to a major organization, that this stuff never goes down,” said Bill Kreher. This attitude to trust that a system is going to work and not take the time to test is a common problem in any field (see the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster), but it happens a lot in information technology especially.
The all too often made assumption is that you don’t need to test a product because the vendor says it will work, and because it is hard and complicated to test. So in-house IT teams and IT consultants take the easy way out and don’t go perform the initial or ongoing quality assurance that they should. Then when a real world event occurs and lo and behold the system doesn’t work and now the organization is in real trouble.
At New Signature we live by the mantra that you should regularly test information technology systems to validate that they are fully operational and perform as expected. This is one of the reasons we institute a quarterly maintenance process for our clients. Part of this maintenance process is to perform real world tests of key critical components with careful planning and during scheduled downtime (e.g., unplug the UPS and make sure it works, take one of the servers offline and make sure the redundancy kicks in, do something unexpected to the system and see how it responds, etc.). Without this regular quality assurance organizations more easily find themselves in the very bad place that the state of Virginia has been in over the past week.
If you have an IT system that hasn’t been tested or hasn’t been tested lately, please contact us at New Signature. We can help you develop a plan and execute to ensure that your information technology systems are being regularly tested and that important maintenance is being performed.
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August 26, 2010
Using OpenID with Drupal
One of the concerns that many website administrators managing member-based websites have is losing potential new members during the registration process. All too often, registration is a tedious and lengthy process for users that is bound to send some percentage of them away from the site, never to sign-up again. Other times, users get frustrated when they are forced to create a new registration profile for each website they’d like to be a member of.Enter OpenID. OpenID is a decentralized and open standard for authenticating users, allowing them to log on to different websites and services using a single login. As with many 3rd party services, there is a Drupal OpenID module available for use: http://drupal.org/project/openidurl (more…)
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August 25, 2010
Josh Cohen Blogs About New Signature’s Click2Call Jalapeno App for DIA Salsa
New Signature’s Click-to-Call Jalapeno app for DIA Salsa makes it easy for your supporters to use the power of their voice to advocate for change. The app connects your supporters directly to their legislators via phone and the actions stored in Salsa. We have been excited to have a bunch of organizations already using C2C Jalapeno and recently came across this great blog post by Josh Cohen on Split Atom entitled “Get more supporter action with click2call”. It provides some great detail on the power of click to call actions and specifically discusses Salsa and C2C Jalapeno. Excerpt is below and you can read the full post here.
Automate your supporters’ “call your legislator” actions.
Do you work for or with an organization that sends out action alerts for supporters to call their legislators, a company or anyone else to ask for their support for LGBT equality? When you do, how many supporters actually take action? I’m guessing the answer is “not enough.” Do you want to increase that number? Is your organization using Salsa / Democracy In Action? Yes? Read on…
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August 22, 2010
The “Salsa Scoop” Blog: Salsa Weekly Highlight: Click2Call Actions
Posted on the “Salsa Scoop” Blog on Sunday Aug 22 2010 @ 12:17:54 EDT.
It’s the “Salsa Weekly Highlight,” your quick hit on what’s new in Salsa to help get the most out of your online program. As always, you can find plenty more news, updates, and conversation throughout the week on SalsaCommons.org.
Ready to bump up the impact of your online actions?
Our friends (and Salsa partners) at New Signature have added an amazing tool to the Salsa Market: Click2Call Actions. Read the full post here…
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August 16, 2010
Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1: Microsoft Dynamic Memory
As promised, this week we’ll go through the improvements in Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 with respect to “Dynamic Memory”. For the more technically-minded among you, I encourage you to bust out your reading glasses, and head over to read the epic six-part blog miniseries Jeff Woolsey penned recently.
Finished? Good.
Now that your eyeballs have glazed over from the technical wizardry, it’s time to focus on a high-level why Dynamic Memory makes sense for your business, and how it integrates well with RemoteFX and Microsoft’s Virtual Desktop Infrastructure VDI platform. (more…)
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August 2, 2010
Microsoft RemoteFX: Delivering a Rich, Connected User Experience to the Virtual Desktop
Many businesses have, in the past, waited until the first service pack is released before implementing a new client or server operating system. Microsoft’s latest operating systems: Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 have a new service pack that is scheduled to be released shortly. As a Microsoft Gold Partner New Signature receives early access to these betas and we enthusiastically take advantage to experiment, learn and gain real world expertise with the improved products.We have been extremely excited to be using two of the newest features that SP1 enables: dynamic memory and RemoteFX. Both are game-changing software technologies that expand the functionality of Windows Server 2008 R2 in major ways. Both are meaty topics, so today we are going to tackle RemoteFX.
RemoteFX is the Microsoft terminology for a series of technologies they purchased two years ago and have been refining since. To get a feel for what RemoteFX enables, it’s helpful to examine the history of virtualization and how companies are looking to maximize their investment. (more…)
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June 17, 2010
New Signature Labs Releases WordPress Easy Post Types Plugin
New Signature Labs released the WordPress Easy Post Types plugin today. This plugin allows publishers to easily build complex websites using WordPress 3.0. The Easy Post Types plugin extends WordPress and provides a GUI interface that combines and leverages the power of custom post types, custom taxonomies, and meta tags. Publishers don’t have to hack code to take advantage of the new powerful features of WP 3.0. Easy Post Types is distributed under the GNU General Public License.Features
- Ready to Use. Use standard WordPress query rules to quickly list content in your page templates, no need for any custom PHP coding.
- Pre-Packaged. Create custom content types on the fly through the WordPress backend.
- Themable. Available out of the box with the base theme or quickly override using your own.
- Robust. Add unlimited fields to your content types.
- Extensible. Many out of the box field types available, or create your own through the plugin API.
- Customizable. Fields can be ordered in the template to allow better input workflow for the user.
- Pluggable. Simply create a field and it’s plugged into your content type automatically.
- Simple. One single call to display any field in an output.
- Advanced Users. Access to the plugin object for advanced users at the post level.
Features
Ready to Use. Use standard WordPress query rules to quickly list content in your page templates, no need for any custom PHP coding.
Pre-Packaged. Create custom content types on the fly through the WordPress backend.
Themable. Available out of the box with the base theme or quickly override using your own.
Robust. Add unlimited fields to your content types.
Extensible. Many out of the box field types available, or create your own through the plugin API.
Customizable. Fields can be ordered in the template to allow better input workflow for the user.
Pluggable. Simply create a field and it’s plugged into your content type automatically.
Simple. One single call to display any field in an output.
Advanced Users. Access to the plugin object for advanced users at the post level. -
May 21, 2010
Book Review: “Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 Resource Kit”
In the Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 Resource Kit, authors Mike Volardsky, Olga Londer, Bret Hill, Bernard Cheah, Steve Schofield, Carlos Aguilar Mares, Kurt Meyer and the Microsoft IIS Team all contribute. The result is mixed.IIS 7 is a completely different product than its predecessor, IIS 6, and the book covers the improvements in modularity, security and configuration well. Even the relatively short overview of the features was comprehensive enough to warrant purchasing the book. By the time the team digs down into the xml configuration files, I was super-excited about the changes. As a long-time user of Apache, htaccess and mod_rewrite, I’ve always wished IIS would move into a more granular level of configurations from the old registry and metabase system. The new xml files should prove a boon to IIS admins the world over. By providing a series of simple steps to secure the server from the start, Microsoft has always significantly focused on security in this revision. The new logging functionality also greatly improves the ability of IIS admins to rapidly diagnose faulty components that are affecting web apps negatively. (more…)
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May 16, 2010
Using Drupal’s Domain Access Module for Multi-site Implementations
For organizations looking to manage more than one web property with a single Drupal instance, there is a great set of modules available to make the job entirely doable on a modest budget. Unlike some of the other Drupal multi-site modules available, the Domain Access Module uses one primary website and database that you can then add any number of affiliated sites to. Each website may run on its own domain, and content can be shared across one or more of the affiliated sites.
One time-saving benefit of this approach is that website administrators and editors use one administration back-end location to manage all affiliated sites. And because all custom and contributed Drupal modules are shared across all affiliates, maintaining and updating the Drupal installation requires no more effort than maintaining a single installation of Drupal.
Some other benefits of the Drupal Domain Access Module include: (more…)
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May 14, 2010
Book Review: “Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) Administrator’s Companion”
As network threats have become more complex, every node in a network has become a potential target, from routers to switches to workstations. Enter Microsoft Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010. The successor to Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server, TMG 2010 offers a more robust set of features than its predecessor. In the book, Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) Administrator’s Companion, authors Yuri Diogones, Jim Harrison and Mohit Saxena guide you through the features and functionality of TMG.The writing style, typical of a team effort, is somewhat dry and technical. On the plus side, the book assumes a basic knowledge of most networking protocols but doesn’t come across as patronizing. Sections detailing the history of TMG were especially interesting, as the past critique of ISA server has typically been that it’s running on a Windows platform. Despite the historical notes, however, one glaring area is a lack of context and comparison to other equivalent products. Forefront TMG is currently going up against a large number of SMB firewall products (and a few enterprise ones) and addressing the strengths and weaknesses would’ve been a good addition. Unlike most of Microsoft’s other products, TMG needs to deal with a strong anti-software-based-firewall sentiment among many network administrators. (more…)
