Tools:

All of the management tools need to mature, in the mean time Xen again has them beat in our opinion.  One interface for all Hosts and Guests, ESXI seems to have that going for it too, but the interface on the free versions (which is all we are covering here) is much more limited.

Performance:

Xen server’s performance is unmatched.

The best way to describer a virtual server is to imagine you’ve taken a full snapshot of your entire server and then you boot it inside another system.  There are many tools that help you do this, even free tools.  These technologies range from VMWare to Xen server and even tools you might use on your Mac, like Fusion and Parallels, are virtualization tools.

We have identified two basic situations when it’s obviously and unarguably time to go virtual:

1) Your servers hardware is over 4 years old.

2) You want high availability.

In both cases there’s no complicated logic-tree to traverse to conclude what you need to do.  Any network admin will tell you that in both cases above the virtual route must be seriously considered, and here’s why:

If your server is old then there are several problems:

a) it’s not safe, you can’t trust the hardware, too risky.

b) It’s going to run much slower than the newer server hardware, so consider it slow.

c) it’s time to take a full snapshot and recover it (virtualize) so you can sleep better knowing it’s safe.

If you want high availability you’ve probably priced-out of using the clustering options years ago.  An Extra 30K in operating system and software licenses, yet alone the shared disk and power requirements.  This is why now is the time to re-think your disaster recovery, high availability needs, because virtual servers are far easier to work with, and can be setup to be moved from server to server with ease.

Consider purchasing a new, low-end server (which is going to be higher than your four year old “high-end” server ever was).  Now consider taking a snapshot of your old server and placing it inside this new hardware.  Now double it.    That’s right, buy two new servers, and place your old one inside both.  That’s a simple “active-passive” cluster, you’ve got it setup on both, now just boot one of them and keep the other up-to-date with current snapshots on a regular schedule and your set.

So now you have high-availability without the price tag.  Not only that but you’ve justified the move by also having a faster more stable server, and better backups.

We specialize in virtual servers, you can take a snapshot of your old server, even your firewall.

Other great uses:

It’s perfect for development environments where you are hoping to spin up new QA servers for testing, and doing version control on the entire server (not just the code).  Sometimes a snapshot of how the server is configured, the website the database, the random third party app you had to deploy that you forget about when it’s time to go live.

Benefits:

• You can easily run multiple operating systems on one system.
• You can save on your power bill.
• You can go green, less resources.
• Training your Staff.

Products we support:

1. Create a Customized Tab on the Office 2010 Ribbon

A brand new feature for Office 2010 is the ability to custom-tailor the ribbon interface by adding customizable ribbons. It’s simple and really helps users get going in Office 2010 who might be more comfortable with older versions of the office interface. All you do is right-click on the ribbon interface and select “Customize the Ribbon”. From there we add a new tab, label it whatever we like, and add any features we want. If you want  to have some tools from the “Insert” tab and other features from the “Review” tab all lumped together to make your work-flow easier, you can.

2. Find Office 2003 Commands in Office 2010

Customizing is great, but what if you just want to get up to speed with the new design? Microsoft has thoughtfully designed really useful how-to guides for getting used to their user interface changes. It’s called the “Office 2010 interactive guide”, and it can be located at this link: http://office2010.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/learn-where-menu-and-toolbar-commands-are-in-office-2010-HA101794130.aspx

3. Bring Office 2003 Menus Back to 2010 with UBitMenu

If  learning about or customizing the new ribbon interface doesn’t make you or one of your worker’s comfortable, or you just don’t want to use it, there’s actually a great option for bringing back the old look. It’s not exactly Microsoft-sanctioned, but it’s called UBitMenu. It’s a small utility you install after you’ve installed Office 2010, and it automatically inserts an old style menu into the ribbon interface. Find the utility here: http://www.ubit.ch/software/ubitmenu-languages/

4. Crop Pictures in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

It’s an old problem. Inserting images in Word or Excel is pretty simple and straight forward, but getting them to fit right can be a real time suck. That’s mostly because it was impossible to crop the photo at all. You simply select the “Format” tab in the ribbon, and click the “crop” option. This will allow you to select any of an inserted image’s four corners and drag the border in to where you need it. Select “crop” again, and voila, your image fits. Handy.

5. Center Pictures and Other Objects in Office 2007 & 2010

This used to be another big pain in older versions of Word. Getting an image to be right where you want it in a document used to be endlessly fussy, but now you can center an image easily. After inserting an image, change it’s “word wrap” setting to anything BUT “In Line with Text”. This will free the image up to be aligned however you like.

6. Take Screenshots with Word 2010

Some more advanced users know how to use the inefficient “print screen button”, but for most users, taking a snapshot of something on their PC is a little beyond them. Office 2010 makes it dead simple. You just select “Insert” tab and click the “Screenshot” button. It will present you with the available windows, and you can select which program you’d like to snapshot. It will then automatically insert that snapshot in to the document. Neat.

7. Add Security to Your Important Documents in Office 2010

Working on a document you want to make sure stays away from prying eyes? Office 2010 has a built-in encryption feature that allows you to password-protect individual documents. All you have to do is click the “File” button, click “Info”, click “Protect Document” and then select “Encrypt with Password”. There are several other options on that menu as well for other types of file security.

That was just a basic sample of what Office 2010 can do to improve workflow and security.

There are  a number of videos out there that show the inner workings of a data center, but we thought we’d highlight a couple of the more interesting, better-prduced oens to give you an idea of the incredible engineering and design that goes in to making the cloud stay up in the air:

A Look at Microsoft Datacenters:

Google Data Center Security:

DigiNotar, a Dutch certificate authority (CA) that was acquired earlier this year by Chicago-based Vasco, said it was unaware of the breach for more than a week and had overlooked the in-the-wild Google certificate for over a month.

Multiple SSL (secure socket layer) certificates were stolen in the July hack, said DigiNotar.

“On July 19, 2011, DigiNotar detected an intrusion into its Certificate Authority (CA) infrastructure, which resulted in the fraudulent issuance of public key certificate requests for a number of domains, including Google.com,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

“At that time, an external security audit concluded that all fraudulently issued certificates were revoked. Recently, it was discovered that at least one fraudulent certificate had not been revoked at the time,” said DigiNotar, referring to the certificate valid for all Google properties.

The company did not provide any additional information about the intrusion, such as the origin of the attack or the number of certificates that had been issued to the intruders. DigiNotar has not replied to Computerworld‘s questions.

Today, however, a DigiNotar spokesman told Jeremy Kirk of the IDG News Service — like Computerworld, part of IDG — that “several dozen” certificates had been generated by the hackers.

DigiNotar’s timeline shows that the company was unaware of the hack for over a week: The Google certificate was issued July 10, according to information posted to Pastebin.com last Saturday. DigiNotar did not revoke the Google certificate until Monday, Aug. 29.

Fraudulently-acquired certificates are dangerous because they can be used by criminals to conduct “man-in-the-middle” attacks targeting users of legitimate online services and websites. The fake Google certificate, for example, was used by attackers to target Iranian users of the Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant’s services, Google said late Monday.

The DigiNotar hack was the second breach of a certificate-issuing firm since March, when Comodo admitted that hackers had used an account assigned to a company partner in southern Europe.to acquire nine certificates for some of the Web’s biggest sites, including Google and Gmail, Microsoft, Skype and Yahoo.

Initially, Comodo argued that Iran’s government may have been involved in the theft. Days later, however, a solo Iranian hacker claimed responsibility for stealing the SSL certificates.

On Monday, Google pointed a finger at Iranin the DigiNotar hack, saying that attacks using the ill-gotten certificate had targeted Iranian users.

Over the past 24 hours, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla have taken steps to block the rogue certificate.

Google will update Chrome “very soon,” said a company spokesman today, to block all DigiNotar-issued certificates “while investigations continue.”

Why are they moving so quick? Because even people like me, a staunch tablet-denier (“What’ll I use it for?” being the common refrain), found that new price point to be irresistible. I ventured out in to the retail world early Saturday morning and picked one up (the 32 gig model for $149, in case you were wondering). Considering that reviews of the device were tepid to say the least, and that HP has now pulled the plug on WebOS development, I may end up regretting my purchase, but for now, it’s actually kind of fun. The browser is fast enough, it checks e-mail, it reads e-books, it surfs through Twitter feeds, and there’s even a handful of games available on the App Market.

So, for $150, it was an impulse buy that I probably won’t regret. It was a cheap way to see what all the fuss was about having a tablet computer in your life. But what about that dead-in-the-water OS? Here are 3 lessons that can be learned from this debacle about the mobile technology space:

1. The mobile market is far from stable.

The product that launched this new tablet market segment – the iPad – is only two years old.  It has had phenomenal success, certainly, which certainly seems to suggest that the tablet form factor is one that can be functional and useful. That said, the marketplace has wquickly become flooded with a variety of mobile operating systems and a plethora of devices, all fighting for the same space. The problem with this approach is that if companies like Acer or RIM don’t see a return on investment in to this segment, they’ll cut ties and run, just like HP has with the TouchPad. That means uncertainty, which makes for market volatility.

2. Early user adoption defines the mobile landscape.

Android, iOS, WebOS, Blackberry OS, Windows Phone 7, even Windows 8 and OS X at this point. These platforms are in competition with one another, and each has a different philosophy when it comes to relationships with hardware vendors and software developers. But the one thing that HP just learned the hard way with WebOS is that without early user adoption, the developers won’t come, and if the developer’s don’t show up, your device is doomed. People don’t buy iPads just because of the slick commercials (though they certainly don’t hurt), they buy iPads because they already have iOS apps from their iPhone that they can port over. Developers don’t develop for iOS because Apple has the best policies for developer relations (they certainly do not), but because that’s where the users are.

3. Apple’s lead is not insurmountable.

It might seem odd to say this in the wake of the capitulation of one of Apple’s competitors in the mobile space, but just because Apple has the lead doesn’t mean they can hold it. And it is in HP’s failure that this becomes apparent: WebOS offers a better, more functional and user friendly UI scheme than Android Honeycomb or iOS for iPad. So why did it fail? You can blame lack of early adoption, but perhaps WebOS was simply caught in the crossfire of one CEO’s vision for transforming his company away from the “low margins” of consumer technology.

Of course, “low margin” is all in the eye of the beholder. Apple has become the world’s largest publicly traded company through offering these “low margin devices”, so take that phrase for what it really means: lack of vision. And it just that, vision, that will be needed to compete with Apple. WebOS could have been a real contender, with firm support from its parent company with significant investment in resources. The fact that WebOS was deemed a failure so early in its life is not a death sign for competing with Apple, just an indiciation for the kind of fortitude this market segment will take to compete effectively in. That kind of fortitude was no better demonstrated than by Apple’s chief competitor Google when they purchased Motorola’s Mobility division last week.

So, for now I’m going to enjoy my cheap tablet, and who knows? Maybe someone will port Android to it. At least I know that Google is in this game for the long haul.

If you’re looking for advice on whether or not you should pick up the Touchpad (if you can find it) for $99, here’s Tested.com’s take: http://www.tested.com/news/the-pros-and-cons-of-snagging-a-99-hp-touchpad/2769/

1. E-Mail is not as secure as it looks

Email remains a common vector for malware, although these days it’s more a vector for phishing messages–those emails that attempt to trick you into giving away your information. The first rule of email is to use a provider who scans incoming messages for infections. This is crucial, as almost everyone’s mailbox is constantly inundated by infected attachments. The good news is that your provider is probably already doing just that–especially if you’re using one of the big webmail providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Windows Live Mail) or email provided by a major ISP, like Comcast or AT&T. That said, you won’t get infected in email if you simply don’t open unexpected attachments. If you’re not sure if something’s legit, ask the sender via IM or email before you open it. And never, ever open those “Please forward to everyone you know” emails.

With the rise of email filtering, phishing attacks have become the more serious email threat today. Phishing emails pose as missives from trusted sites–like your bank, eBay, Facebook Paypal, or Google–and ask you to log on to fix your account. Unfortunately, the links in the email aren’t to the sites you trust, they’re to sites that look like your trusted site, but are really just fronts to harvest your information. The most insidious of these phishing sites will actually harvest your info, then forward you on to the real page you’d expect to see on the site, if you’d actually logged on. To avoid phishing emails, don’t click links from trusted sites in email–instead open the browser and type the site’s URL in manually.

2. Learn How To Manage Passwords

Passwords are a pain in the butt, but they really don’t have to be. Every site requires a separate password, and it’s nearly impossible to keep track of them all without using some external software. It isn’t recommended to trust your passwords to an app though, because that app represents a single point of failure.  But using just one password on all the sites you visit would be dangerous as well. So what to do?

The happy medium for passwords is to remember a handful of good ones and use a strategy to keep managing them simple. Have a generic low-security password to use for sites you’ve just signed up for that don’t seem very prominent (or don’t have an https:// connection option), and essentially any site you aren’t sure if you completely trust. Then it’s a matter of not using that password for sites that store more personal or financial data.

Now, develop a second password unrelated to the first one. Use it for sites you trust and that have sensitive data on it. Make sure the password is secure: that is, it’s not just a dictionary word. Toss some numbers in there, capitalize the second letter, etc. it should be more than eight characters long.

Now, the final password, and it’s for your e-mail. Why is your e-mail separate from the others? Because nearly all sites, even secure ones, allow a user to reset their password if they have access to the e-mail account that was used to sign up for it. As with the second password, make sure this password is unique, is at least eight characters long, and has numbers and letters in it.

Phew. That’s a lot of work for passwords, but it’ll keep you safe, and three passwords aren’t that hard to remember. Oh, and for goodness sake, don’t keep them in a document called “passwords.txt”.

3. Keep Your Eyes Open on the Web

Every modern browser includes tools that will warn you away from known dangerous sites. Google Chrome is particularly good at warning users away from sites that have been reported to be spreading malware.

That’s a good start, but you need to pay attention to sites that your browser thinks are safe too. After all, even the best browser needs a few of its users to get infected before it knows a site is bad. Don’t be the guinea pig for others, and if you know what to watch out for, you should be fine.

First off: train yourself to not click “Approve” or “OK” on every dialog you’re presented with. I know every piece of software you’ve ever installed has all of those useless dialog boxes, and malware developers know it too.

This applies to sites like Facebook and Twitter too. The fewer apps you give access to your account, the less likely it is that you’ll be exposed to malicious software or have your private info harvested as a result. This is especially important if you’ve entered your contact info into your Facebook profile. Do you really need to have fifteen Farmville clones tied to your Facebook account? Do you really want to give your Twitter password to some stats tracking site you’ve never heard of before? Always think before you click. You can see all the apps you’ve authorized to connect to Facebook  here and Twitter here.

4. There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

For some reason, the web seems like a magical place to people, where deals abound and you’re going to get lucky. Well surprise: the same rules of capitalism apply in the digital world as in the physical one, and there is no such thing as a free lunch. So be very skeptical of free or heavily discounted offers. Unless they’re from a source you know and trust, they’re probably not legit.

Not sure about a deal that seems to good to be true? Well, Googling the company name might not help much. Companies practicing shady SEO practices know that more savvy users will try Googling their company, so they make sure the first page results are stacked in their favor. Just because some blog post says that it is legit doesn’t make it so. Try asking around on Twitter or Facebook for other people to check it out as well before you start sending any site your information, no matter how good the deal appears.

There’s a lot of great free software available on the Internet, but there are an even greater number of malicious apps disguised as helpful free software. Only download software you trust, and only download that software from the developer’s page or a trusted repository–like Sourceforge or Download.com.

5. Run the Latest Versions of Software

Keep all of your software updated.  No, really, do it. With all the threats attacking Flash, Acrobat, OS security holes, and browsers, you need to keep your software up-to-date or risk attack. It’s simple, it’s easy, and it’s necessary.

If you have any questions about how to keep your enterprise environment free from security vulnerabilities, give the IT experts at Phoenix Synergy a call.

This laptop, recently released by Sony, allows for a slim profile, great battery life, and decent performance when on the go. But when you get back to your desk, instead of just plugging it into the wall and maybe an external monitor, you can also plug in some extra muscle. The Vaio Z interfaces with an optional add-on box that includes a beefy graphics processor, an optical disk drive, and a plethora of ports to make this laptop a true desktop replacement, while maintaining its portability.

The concept isn’t entirely new. Older computer users perhaps remember the days of external storage drives, power bricks the size of actual bricks, and lugging around a few batteries as well. But Sony re-treads and this historic route with the help of the new connection protocol “Thunderbolt” (which Sony stubbornly calls “Light Peak”, but that’s another story for another day). This new connectivity allows for lightning-fast communication between the  internal and external components of the laptop, thus marking the first truly innovative use for Thunderbolt technology to reach the market yet.

The box itself is called the Power Media Dock, and is obviously an optional addition. It is what makes an otherwise very nice but unremarkable laptop noteworthy though. The box contains an AMD Radeon 6650M GPU graphics card with 1GB RAM, an optical drive, and finally a collection of USB ports, and VGA and HDMI out for external monitors.

This solution is clearly not the right fit for everyone. But for those users who need power and  portability to get the job done, the Vaio Z looks like a great choice. Unfortunately, the laptop is currently only available through the Sony UK Store, but if you’re in the mood to import what looks like a very elegant and effective solution to a vexing problem, then click here.

Now I think a similar paradigm shift is occurring. The PC is quickly losing ground to new models of computing. Most working professionals use advanced mobile devices to keep in constant contact with their clients and coworkers, as well as keeping their thumb on the pulse of their business sector. Touch-screen interfaces, cloud computing, and social networking have supplanted so many aspects of what I once considered the normative computing experience.

At home, work, or on our way in between (or maybe working from home), there is a true revolution occurring in mobile technology, and it is changing the very fabric of our lives. IT professionals like me are encountering new challenges, and meeting them with vigor. With excellence and excellence, combined with observation and analysis, I want to share with you how Phoenix Synergy is positioned to deliver best-in-class IT management experience in this new mobile world.

Digital pickpockets abound, and you never know if that frowning hipster in the corner is actually trying to snoop around inside your PC. (Free hotel Wi-Fi might be even more dangerous, where the thief could be down the hall or three floors up). So, in the interest of keeping you safe as you browse on open connections, here are three steps you can take to lockdown your computer from unwanted intrusions:

1. Security and Sharing Fundamentals

Working in the security sector, it really is rather frightening just how many people have file sharing turned on and firewalls turned off. Come on folks, these are the bare essentials. If you have a firewall, turn it on. The one that came with your operating system will do just fine, just turn the darn thing on.  And check your file permissions too. Just because you want to share a folder on the office network doesn’t mean it should be set the same way for any other location, you know.

For Windows users: go to the Control Panel and seek out the System and Security Center and the Network and Sharing icons. Use the security center to get that firewall back up and the Network options to make sure you’ve turned off any and all file sharing on any networks you don’t trust. Easy enough, right?

For Mac OS X users: just as straightforward here. Use the “Sharing” panel to kill file sharing, and use the “Security” panel to set up your firewall.

This first step isn’t all there is to security though. All these actions have protected is what’s already on your computer. If we want to protect what we’re sending out, then go to step 2.

2. HTTPS Connection

You’re drinking your over-priced coffee-and-sugar confection when you decide to check the Twitter feed. You’re e-mail and password are already saved, so you just lcik sign-in and you’re off, reading Ashton Kutcher’s latest deep insight about being rich and famous. Not so fast! You just sent your e-mail and password out on an unprotected connection that anyone with a little tech know-how could scrub out and use. If you’re like most users, the thief can use that password and e-mail combo to get in to just about everything. (You really should be using different passwords at each site, but who does that?) This can easily be avoided. Any site you want to log in to on the web should provide a secure connection through a protocol called HTTPS. You know that http:// thing you ignore on the front of every URL? Toss an “s” in there, and voila, your log-in (as well as any other information you send to that server) is now securely encrypted. No more Wi-Fi snooping. You can also set that as an option in your profile of many of these sites (gmail, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) to default to the HTTPS setting.

If you’re a Firefox user, then check out the free extension “HTTPS Everywhere”, which automatically checks if HTTPS is available every time you visit a website. Chrome users have a similar option as well, with the KB SSL Enforcer extension.

Now most of you should be good to go. You’ve protected what’s on your computer and the important stuff you’re streaming out, but there is one last step to take to ensure you’re absolutely secure:

3. Make your own Network

Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? You’re going to make your own little cone of silence for your computer by ginning up what’s called a “virtual private network”, or VPN. A VPN works by sending every outbound bit of data through a separate machine, encrypting it there, and then sending t off to its destination. Sounds really techy and difficult, but setting up a VPN is actually really easy. A comprehensive walkthrough has been written by the popular blog Lifehacker, and it couldn’t be any simpler. Check it out here.

There you have it. Three steps to data security. Now you can sip that mochaccino in peace. Any other private browsing tips? Let us know.