Many of the popular Web 2.0 services on the Internet, such as Twitter, Linked In, YouTube, and Google all rely on Linux as their operating system.
In 1991, while attending the University of Helsinki, Torvalds became curious about operating systems and frustrated by the licensing of MINIX, which at the time limited it to educational use only. He began to work on his own operating system kernel, which eventually became the Linux kernel.
Later, Linux matured and further Linux kernel development took place on Linux systems. GNU applications also replaced all MINIX components, because it was advantageous to use the freely available code from the GNU Project with the fledgling operating system; code licensed under the GNU GPL can be reused in other projects as long as they also are released under the same or a compatible license. Torvalds initiated a switch from his original license, which prohibited commercial redistribution, to the GNU GPL. Developers worked to integrate GNU components with the Linux kernel, making a fully functional and free operating system.
Linus Torvalds had wanted to call his invention Freax, a portmanteau of “free”, “freak”, and “x” (as an allusion to Unix). During the start of his work on the system, he stored the files under the name “Freax” for about half of a year. Torvalds had already considered the name “Linux,” but initially dismissed it as too egotistical. In order to facilitate development, the files were uploaded to the FTP server (ftp.funet.fi) of FUNET in September 1991. Ari Lemmke, Torvald’s coworker at the Helsinki University of Technology (HUT) who was one of the volunteer administrators for the FTP server at the time, did not think that “Freax” was a good name. So, he named the project “Linux” on the server without consulting Torvalds. Later, however, Torvalds consented to “Linux”.
Most small businesses are not technology organizations and rarely find the time or money to upgrade their IT needs. Technology in your business can not only help increase business efficiency, but can also save you money and time.
The first thing is to determine what is working and functioning well in your current set up. Why fix something that isn’t broken?
Is your software running slow or are you having several server crashes? You should always stay on top of updates and evaluate your existing software and hardware to make sure they are operating at your organizations needs to move swiftly. If your devices need updating it is wise to seek advice from an IT Service company. You want to make sure if you are updating your devices, they are compatible with what you are running and using.
If your internet is running slower than normal, you may need to look into more bandwidth to accommodate your needs. Other issues such as network equipment failure, or bottlenecks may also cause your network to appear slower than it should.
Metiix helps customers upgrade their IT assets to ensure the most proficient computer environment possible. Contact us to learn more.
A firewall is a security system that controls incoming and outgoing network traffic. As network traffic passes through the firewall, the firewall decides which traffic to send through based on rules that you designate in order to provide extra protection throughout your network environment.
Firewalls have evolved overtime in the 80’s and 90’s and have become efficient, pliable tools they are today.
In 1988 the Morris worm which hit NASA and several other universities, evoked the first firewalls. The Morris worm, or internet worm was one of the first computer worms via internet. This resulted in the first felony under the Computer Fraud and Abuse act of 1986.
When it comes to protecting data, small organization firewalls are available as either software or hardware, and may often consist of both. Hardware firewalls tend to be more expensive. Hardware is typically better for large organizations who have trained IT to monitor. They can protect every machine on a local network. Hardware firewalls provide a protected barrier which hides your business internal PCs from the outside. Hardware uses a technique to examine the header of the packet to determine its source and based on the rules set in place, either drops the packet or forwards it on.
Software firewalls are geared more for smaller businesses and is installed on your computer and you are typically able to customize your protection features on a per machine basis.
Firewall solutions for small business offer many benefits. There is no limit of configurations that are possible with firewalls. You are able to deploy new business applications safely as well as block unauthorized access to application.
With todays highly complex environments, it is critical to track free disk space. Running out of disk space can result in lost data, downtime, degraded performance, failed application, corruption, and is a big pain to deal with. Server disk space is a critical resource that must be monitored closely to prevent a crisis.
A disk monitoring application should be in place to prevent data loss or outages. Third-party disk space monitoring applications allow for IT administrators to keep track of how much space your files are taking up. Most providers offer this tool for free. The tool is able to keep track of disk usage across your network and alert you when you are running below your specific space thresholds. You are able to decide how often you want the software to check available free space as well as how often you want to receive alerts. This system can be configured and installed easily with no propriety hardware required and you can run it on multiple servers.
There are few things you can do to free up some disk space in the meantime. Run a maintenance disk cleanup. This is probably one of the easiest ways to free up space. The disk cleanup tool comes installed on most Windows computers. Disk cleanup is a tool that reduce the number of unnecessary files on your hard diskwill reduce unnecessary files on your hard disk that you longer use or need. This utility removes the number of temporary files as well as a variety of files that are unimportant
Disk cleanup also empties your Recycle bin. It is amazing how much stuff we can inadvertently collect in our Recycle bin over time that takes up space.
A couple other things to consider:
- Uninstall old programs and delete past restore point.
- Delete video and image files you no longer need. If you still do want to store them, an option would be to archive them to CD or DVD.
Metiix Drift is a free service that allows IT adminstrators to monitoring their disk space across all of their devices. Contact us to learn more!
Data Replication involves making copies of your data, then storing them either locally or on a remote site to ensure data redundancy in the case of failure. When replicating your data offsite, if your primary site is down due to power outage, disaster, or failure, you still have your secondary site with replicated data accessible and available for production service.
In most cases you need both data backup and data replication depending on how available you need your data to be. They both address different risks when dealing with data availability. Replication involves copying data from one machine to another machine, typically in a geographically dispersed fashion, but not always.
Replication is achieved either synchronously or asynchronously with the only difference being is the way the in which the data is written to the replica. Synchronous replication is the process of copying data over a storage, local, or wide area network so there are several up to date copies. Synchronous replication is more expensive and writes data to the primary and secondary site at the same time.
Asynchronous replication does not always occur in real-time, but is on a scheduled basis. The data is written to the primary source first, then copied to the secondary storage. Since Asynchronous replication does not have to occur in real-time it is often better designed to work over a long distance and is less expensive.
Replication is not a replacement for backup. Corruption is one reason why replication can’t replace backup because the same corruption would likely be replicated to the destination.
Time is another point of separation between data replication and backup. Replication allows almost immediate accessibility to your current data, where as backup may take you some time to recover. The longer it takes to restore your data, the more time and money you are likely to lose.
Although replication is very expensive, it is worth it if you have vital information you cannot wait for if one of your systems was to fail.