Archive for June, 2010

ARCHIWARE PresSTORE 4 Released

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

Last week, German software company ARCHIWARE released version 4.0 of its enterprise backup solution, PresSTORE. This version is for new installations only – version 4.1, planned for release in October, will support upgrades from existing 3.x deployments.

The new features of PresSTORE 4 can be found on the company’s website, but here are some highlights:

  • New interface to simplify management
  • iPhone app for remote monitoring of jobs
  • New desktop notification system to alert users of actions
  • Progressive backup – “backup without full backup”

Aaron Freimark also wrote a post about the new version on the Xsanity site that talks more about the Xsan-specific features.

As before, PresSTORE is supported on Mac OS X (10.4 and higher), Windows (2003, 2008, XP, Vista and 7), Linux and Solaris. Backup2Go Server is only supported on OS X and Solaris.

PresSTORE support is great – during testing of the new version, the iPhone monitoring app was crashing. Within a day, a new version was available in the App Store that addressed the exact issue. Bravo!

To learn more about PresSTORE (including pricing options), please contact your 318 account manager today, or email sales@318.com for more information.

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Posted in General Technology, Mass Deployments, Xsan | Comments Off

iPhone iOS 4 Software Update

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010


The newest release of the iPhone operating system, the re-branded iOS 4, launched last week from Apple’s busy servers. According to Apple, iOS 4 works with iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G (but not all new features are supported on older hardware). The update will also install on second and third generation iPod Touch devices.

As with all major software upgrades, be sure to backup your current environment using iTunes before proceeding with the installation. This Apple knowledge base article describes the process in detail.

The upgrade process is also managed in iTunes and took a fair amount of time to complete on an iPhone 3GS. Reports of slowness and instability on older hardware were confirmed on one test 3G unit we tried, but others report no issues.

So what do you get after upgrading? Some key features:

  • Folders – works as advertised and helps reduce the number of pages you need to scroll through to find the app you need.
  • Mail Improvements – welcome options for combined inbox and threaded discussions.
  • Multitasking (3GS and 4 only) – double-click the home button to reveal a row of other running apps you can switch to right away. Might take some time to get used to this one.
  • Home screen wallpaper (3GS and 4 only) – purely cosmetic, but nice in day-to-day use.
  • iBooks app – just like the iPad version, only smaller. Bookmarks are supposed to sync between the two versions, but it doesn’t seem like one knows what the other actually holds as far as books go.
  • Camera – older hardware gets the digital zoom feature, but quality is, well, like a digital zoom.
  • Bluetooth keyboard support – haven’t tried this, but could be useful.

The new iPhone 4 hardware enhances some features of iOS, such as FaceTime video conferencing, improved camera performance, HD video support/editing and the high-quality retina display.

To find out more about how to utilize the iPhone platform in your organization, call your 318 account manager today, or email sales@318.com for more information.

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Posted in General Technology, iPhone | Comments Off

WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious” Now Available

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

As we wrote back in March, version 3.0 of WordPress was coming soon. Soon happened last week, as thousands of people starting downloading and upgrading (more than 1 million downloads the first week!).

Our first site upgrade went smoothly, although the automatic upgrading of certain plugins still fail and must be done manually. As always, it’s a good idea to make complete, tested backups of your site files and database dumps before starting the upgrade process.

WordPress 3.0 offers a lot of new online publishing options – call your 318 account manager today, or email sales@318.com for more information.

UPDATE: Our second site upgrade had to be reverted to version 2.9.2 temporarily due to an issue with the WP Events Calendar plugin. Since we had our site backups readily available, this was a quick and easy process.

In other WordPress community news, Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com) announced a beta program for VaultPress, an online, automated method of backing up and securing your WordPress-based website.

The beta plans start at $15/month and include protection for the entire WordPress environment, including the WordPress files (theme, plugins, options), content (posts, photos, videos, audio files), and all comments. Implementation is via Vaultpress plug-in.

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Posted in Editorial, General Technology, IT Management, Web Development | Comments Off

Mobile Me Finds Your iPhone

Friday, June 18th, 2010

Today, Apple sent the following email, indicating that there is a new Find My iPhone app that provides a number of pretty cool features for Mobile Me users that have iPhones, iPads or iPod Touches:

You can now download the free Find My iPhone app, enabling you to locate a misplaced device directly from iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch while on the go. After installing it from the App Store, just launch the app and sign in to quickly locate your devices on a map and access the other Find My iPhone features — Display a Message or Play a Sound, Remote Lock, and Remote Wipe.*

The Find My iPhone web application on me.com has also been updated with a full-screen map view. Clicking your missing device on the map lets you access all the Find My iPhone actions to help you recover your device and protect the information on it.

Learn more about improvements to Find My iPhone here.

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Posted in Editorial, General Technology, iPhone | Comments Off

Changing The Password Policy on Windows Server 2008 Domain Controllers

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

There seems to be a bug (maybe feature?) in Windows Server 2008 where you cannot change the default password policies on at least the first Domain Controller in a new Domain via Group Policy Management and editing the Default Domain Controller security policy.

You must make the changes in the Local Policies section of Active Directory on the Windows Server 2008 Domain Controller.
1. Start > All Programs > Administrative Tools > Local Security Policy
2. Security Settings > Password Policy

NOTE: You will see that the Password Policy for the domain controller is populated, unlike in GPMC.MSC where everything is “Not Configured” but has a confusing note about default settings being other than “Not Configured”.

http://www.petri.co.il/three-steps-initial-configuration-windows-2008-server-installation.htm

To further confuse the issue, it seems that in Windows Server 2008 R2, using the Local Security Policy to change the Password policy on the DC will NOT work. It will be grayed out. The Domain Controller policy then seems to default to the Default Domain Security Policy (not Default Domain CONTROLLER Security Policy). After changing the password policies under GMPC.MSC for the Default Domain Policy I was able to successfully get the needed password configuration settings for the Domain Controller. It seems that the Default Domain Controller Security Policy password settings are either no longer separate from the Default Domain Security Policy, or now the Default Domain Security Policy overrides the Default Domain Controller Policy. This happened on a fully patched Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 OS.

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Posted in Directory Services, IT Management, Windows | Comments Off