Tag Archive for 'cloud'

Current Project: Winsitter.com

Published by Bret Fisher on Jan 27, 2012 in Microsoft and Win Admin. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

This blog has seen less action over the last year due to my activities related to a personal obsession of mine: Creating a web startup to help keep Windows Servers up and running on autopilot.

As a consulting engineer for various small and large organizations, I can say it is the norm for users to actually be de facto monitoring solution.  They are the first to know of an outage.  Many small and medium business admins settle for this because they (and management) seem to assume that either:

  1. Good server monitoring is expensive or too hard to even consider.
  2. That it’s possible to prevent some outages with basic monitoring.

All this goes on while server manufactures and the Windows Server OS doesn’t offer the one feature they need: a basic built-in notification service for the 20% of issues that cause 80% of the problems.  Hardware and OS’s tend to log the problems, but those get lost in a sea of log data.  Why doesn’t my Dell server ask me for an email address to notify of hardware errors/warnings on first boot?  Why doesn’t Windows have a one-button option to turn on basic email alerting of service failures, unplanned reboots, or other monitoring 101 stuff?

Well enough wishing.  Time we did something about that for those who don’t have the time, budget, server recourses, or skills to deploy an in-house monitoring solution.

Sign up for my beta invite list and stop guessing if your servers are OK. http://winsitter.com

SugarSync Saves My Butt… Again (why no one should ever loose their files)

Published by Bret Fisher on May 7, 2010 in Tech. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

You no longer have an excuse to lose your important computer files.  It costs little to nothing to have them automatically backed up online.  Signup for SugarSync and backup 2GB for free.

Even I loose data sometimes.  I had a Excel file that I accidently overwrote, and the local Windows 7 Previous Versions didn’t capture the changes I needed, but SugarSync did!  My savior.  It backs up changes as I save files, quickly and quietly in the background.

image

I’ve used lots of backup and file sync technologies over the years to keep data in more then one place. Sometimes for backups (disaster recovery), sometimes for convenience, sometimes for collaboration.  No product until SugarSync did it all for a reasonable price.  After 6 months of using it across 3+ computers, two iPhones, etc. I can say it’s worth the monthly subscription (2GB plan is FREE).  Here’s my favorite features:

  • Sync files between computers
  • chose which folders to back up (not just one root folder)
  • Keep a copy in the cloud
  • Instantly backed up after saving changes. (not ‘schedule based’)
  • Keep 5 versions of the files online for recovery
  • Access them all from web browser or mobile client
  • Chose to make files public or post pics on Facebook from the webapp
  • get a single-click public link to send your friend for downloading that 500MB file you need to send!
  • edit files on the web
  • stream your synced music from web and on iPhone (whaaat?  awesome)

Feature List and Comparison Chart

I used Carbonite for years for computer backup, but that’s ALL it did, for $50+ a year.  I used Live Mesh to sync files between computers and the cloud, but I couldn’t buy more storage and it didn’t have a iPhone client.  I’ve used SyncToy for years but it’s only a LAN client and not easy to automate.  Mozy, Box.net, DropBox, some Amazon storage clients, and more…. none of them could do 1/2 of what SugarSync does.

Check it out buy using this referral link to get extra free storage.

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