Quick [tech] Questions Thread

[Yegolev]

You have to remember that UVerse is not FiOS where the fiber comes directly to your house, they are dealing with DSL technology and the length and quality of the copper loop back to the node is a big deal. They are probably doing pair bonded profile 12a which would give you at best about 45mb/s at a wire mile if I remember the documentation I was going through at the old job.

I think the max range is 2500 feet.  It's definitely more sensitive than ADSL.  It seems to drop more often than the ADSL did but it's cheaper overall than the discrete items it replaces, particularly DirecTV.  And my internet speed is definitely faster.

[Morat20]

UVerse says it dedicates 7 mb/s to video, but they QoS your internet down if you are watching multiple different TV streams in HD as 7 is basically just a little more than enough for one HD stream.

You have to remember that UVerse is not FiOS where the fiber comes directly to your house, they are dealing with DSL technology and the length and quality of the copper loop back to the node is a big deal. They are probably doing pair bonded profile 12a which would give you at best about 45mb/s at a wire mile if I remember the documentation I was going through at the old job.

One thing of note, if you get 4 set top boxes you should be able to watch the same channel in HD on 3 of them at the same time and still be able to watch a second on another TV as it should be multicast.

Yeah, they offer...4 input streams for TV. HD counts as two, which means that "7 mb/s" can't be right. Has to be 14 mb/s. That leaves 11 mb/s for internet and phone, if you're streaming max channels. Which fits, as they'll only install if you can get 25 mb/s on their system (that's what seems to inform their distance requirements). They have a new setup for people who can get 32 mb/s, but the one person I know that got bumped to that rapidly ran into pixelization problems which didn't resolve until they dropped him back to 25 mb/s.

My wife finds it amusing that I have to absolutely understand all this crap before I'm comfortable with it in the house. She's happy to view it as "magic plug in the wall that makes the internet and TV work".

[Yegolev]

It's fine to be ignorant as long as the magic works as expected.  First problem?  Demand explanation.

[Morat20]

It's fine to be ignorant as long as the magic works as expected.  First problem?  Demand explanation.

Yes. She's currently learning the intricacies of a specific Motorala built driod. I think she almost made Class A, 'Jesus Christ, agree to anything to get her off the phone and stop yelling at me' coldly-pissed off customer when the phone they shipped her to replace her broken phone was more broken than the one she had.

"Dp you know how to do a master reset of the phone?"
"I know A method. Do you have a secret method that deals with the fucking fact that this goddamn phone won't go past the motorala splash screen more than 10% of the time? It's randomly rebooting mid-bood sequence. Do I sacrifice a fucking chicken?"

[Salamok]

At least it didn't explode.

[Sky]

I have a ASUS RT-N12 wireless router. Two odd things.

1) Wireless seems flaky. Every few hours it will drop connection and I have to disable/enable the adapter on the pc to get a connection again. Wired connection is solid.

2) Wired speed is about 20% of the wireless speed?

[Chimpy]

Is there a device in the range of the AP that is broadcasting in 802.11a? I have read a couple of articles on extremely degraded 802.11n performance when there is signalling being done by devices in 802.11a (uses the same frequency bands) which could lead to the connection needing to be reset. This all assumes you are connecting with n and not b/g,

Only time I have seen weird speed issues on a home router through the wire, I had the customer reset to defaults and it fixed the issue (his was a linksys and he could connect fine direct to the wall, but through his router he had a 90% speed loss) but I am not familiar with the ASUS routers at all.

[Sky]

I'm on b iirc, her laptop is n. Not sure what else might be using that freq, it's the only 802.11 device afaik. I also have transceivers for my gamepad, keyboard and 3d glasses (went to a wired mouse because the wireless mouse was flaky). Really, really good connection when it's working, though. Afaik, the performance is fine right up until it quits.

[Chimpy]

Are your wireless adapter's drivers up to date? Also, if you are running Win Vista/7, turn off IPv6 for the wireless connection.

[MuffinMan]

I remember a few years back hearing good things about GoogleGear. Never bought anything from them but they had prices comparable to Newegg. They were forced to change their name to ZipZoomFly in 2003 it looks like.

When I was putting my PC together last month I checked their site and damned near everything is out of stock. Out of curiosity, does anyone know what happened to them? It's like an online version of a zombie mall.

[ghost]

So I have a file that is about 10-12 Gigabytes that I need to back up every work day.  My current method is to use two externals and back up on one locally and take the other home.  I am thinking of trying to set up an online system and wondered if anyone had an opinion as to the feasibility of backing up this amount of data over the internet. 

[Mosesandstick]

Paid (not free) dropbox? Can't remember what the size limit is.

[Yegolev]

So I have a file that is about 10-12 Gigabytes that I need to back up every work day.  My current method is to use two externals and back up on one locally and take the other home.  I am thinking of trying to set up an online system and wondered if anyone had an opinion as to the feasibility of backing up this amount of data over the internet. 

I am suspicious that the bandwidth options will not be to your liking.  Not without paying someone some badass monies.

[Sheepherder]

So I have a file that is about 10-12 Gigabytes that I need to back up every work day.  My current method is to use two externals and back up on one locally and take the other home.  I am thinking of trying to set up an online system and wondered if anyone had an opinion as to the feasibility of backing up this amount of data over the internet.

Do you really mean "file" as in "file", rather than "folder?"  As in "SB.pdf is 12 GB large, the fuck?  Do we even have a computer that can open this without generating an apphang?"

[Chimpy]

My only guess was it is some kind of large access (or similar) database where the "file" is the actual full database tree and records.

[Viin]

I've been using Amazon's S3 service with an app that connects to it while emulating a networked folder. Works pretty well, but use the cost calculator to determine your monthly charges for upload/storage of the beast. The daily upload will cost a bit, maybe just upload it once a week?

Edit:
Here: http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html

Quick numbers with S3 (select on the left side)
12gb storage a month
12gb upload a day
$36.08/month

[Sheepherder]

My only guess was it is some kind of large access (or similar) database where the "file" is the actual full database tree and records.

I'm sort of guessing that too, but those are usually the sort of thing that are can be accessed from home provided the proper security credentials anyways.

[ghost]

I've been using Amazon's S3 service with an app that connects to it while emulating a networked folder. Works pretty well, but use the cost calculator to determine your monthly charges for upload/storage of the beast. The daily upload will cost a bit, maybe just upload it once a week?

Edit:
Here: http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html

Quick numbers with S3 (select on the left side)
12gb storage a month
12gb upload a day
$36.08/month

The cost isn't particularly a problem, from what I can tell from looking at services that are out there, however it does need to be uploaded daily.  It's patient files, so I have to be very careful about it.  And yes, it is a single "file" that contains a bunch of crap that I'm too lazy to figure out exactly what it is.  I wish the people that do my patient management software would come up with an incremental backup solution, but this portion of the system sucks ass.  I have a multi location practice and the server is at one office.  I'm essentially trying to figure out how to keep from going to the central location every day to back up.

[Lantyssa]

Do you really mean "file" as in "file", rather than "folder?"  As in "SB.pdf is 12 GB large, the fuck?  Do we even have a computer that can open this without generating an apphang?"

Our genome sequencer cannot fit two runs on a terabyte drive.  Yes, it's one file.  A patent we submitted was 33 GB (though only 1.4 GB compressed).

The cost isn't particularly a problem, from what I can tell from looking at services that are out there, however it does need to be uploaded daily.  It's patient files, so I have to be very careful about it.  And yes, it is a single "file" that contains a bunch of crap that I'm too lazy to figure out exactly what it is.  I wish the people that do my patient management software would come up with an incremental backup solution, but this portion of the system sucks ass.  I have a multi location practice and the server is at one office.  I'm essentially trying to figure out how to keep from going to the central location every day to back up.

I'd lean towards keeping it in-house then.

Does rsync have an incremental option, in case of disconnection?  You could break it apart into more reasonable blocks and then it's not such a worry.  Simply restart that portion if it fails.

[Chimpy]

Do you need to have an actual copy of the file on-site at your other location(s) or are you already connecting to the database remotely and just need a method to do automatic backups?

You probably want some kind of NAS that integrates normal "tape" style backup solutions with remote replication. Something along the lines of the SnapServer from Overland Storage http://www.overlandstorage.com/products/network-attached-storage/#top might be what you are really looking for.

[Viin]

As I'm sure you know, if it's patient data (something I have some new experience with) be very careful where you put it and how: HIPAA, HITECH and all that. If you encrypt it well (use HTTPS to upload, as well as encrypt the file with 128bit encryption) it might be ok - not sure what your software provides.

If you setup Gladinet Cloud Desktop to connect to your S3 account you just need to setup a Windows backup job to copy the file to the folder every night. Pretty simple really. If its not on a Windows server there are other solutions as well. The S3 SLA of '99.999999999% Durability' is probably sufficient to make it your only backup, but a local copy wouldn't hurt for ease of recovery if needed.

Have you looked at management software that is web-based? Such as:

http://www.eclinicalworks.com/products-practice-management.htm

[ghost]

I'm an orthodontist, so the software I use is pretty specific for what I do.  It wouldn't be easy to switch, and the options all have their positives and negatives.  The particular one I use is mac based and actually allows me to reach my patient data from any location quite easily as it is stored in the central office.  The big issue, it seems to me, is going to be trying to upload a chunk of data that is 8-12 GB every night.  This will get bigger as time goes on, as well, probably causing me even more headaches if I try to do online backup.  I have been testing an online backup today, and it looks like I may end up having to opt for doing a remote desktop and putting a drive somewhere on the other side of the office for ghetto remote. 

[Chimpy]

If you are already accessing this remotely, and you are just doing off-site backups for catastrophic data loss, you really should think about how often doing offsite backups is necessary to keep your data at the point where the loss of a certain amount is not catastrophic.

You could just have a tape backup run every day, then one day a week you take a copy of the tape with you to the other office for "disaster" recovery. Or you get some kind of solution that does an upload to a remote storage facility once every 3 days automatically (or whatever interval you have decided is your ideal interval).

Also, have you talked to your software vendor about what backup solutions they recommend? (this usually gives you a good starting point to go from)

[Sheepherder]

So really, you just want a backup since remote access is already possible?

Build a low performance desktop with a RAID, put it on a UPS, connect it to your network, stick it somewhere cool and dry.  If your software supports automatic backups do that.  It won't protect it from fire and flood, but it will from random hardware failure, and from electrical damage that does not include a near direct lightning strike.

[ghost]

Also, have you talked to your software vendor about what backup solutions they recommend? (this usually gives you a good starting point to go from)

They recommend two external disks to which you drag over a "backup file" every day.  One you take home, one you leave on site.  It isn't that big of a deal, other than having to actually be physically at the location. 

And yes, it needs to absolutely be backed up every day that I see patients.  Losing even one day's worth of notes could be a real problem.  In reality, it should probably be backed up at lunch hour, too, but I don't do that. 

[Chimpy]

I don't think you understood my question. You can run an automated backup with just about any system that does backups (tape/disk etc.) and that is something that can easily be done as someone posted above. Having a remote backup is a disaster recovery thing. Not like "the hard drive crashed" kind of recovery but the "the whole office got uprooted by a tornado" kind. If that absolutely has to be done every day, then you need to have some form of replication of your backups.

You need an automated backup system, be it a cheap open source NAS RAID or a tape drive that does daily (or even twice daily backups) that is local to your office with the server. By local I mean somewhere on that office LAN be it directly connected to the server itself, or a network attached device. How you then make off-site backups of that, and how often you do that, becomes the question of the day.

Doing a daily replication of 12gb over the internet is going to probably get you into "paying a lot more for internet service" territory as well.

It seems like the vendor you are using for the software has a huge hole in their design if their only backup solution is "copy the entire database". There should at the very least be some form of incremental backup option where only records that have been changed since the last backup are added to the new backup (in a system like this, remote replication can be done a lot easier/quickly/more often as I am sure the actual changes to your database are likely less than 100mb a day and not the whole 12gb a day).

EDIT: Also, your server absolutely has to have some form of RAID in it.

[Rasix]

So really, you just want a backup since remote access is already possible?

Build a low performance desktop with a RAID, put it on a UPS, connect it to your network, stick it somewhere cool and dry.  If your software supports automatic backups do that.  It won't protect it from fire and flood, but it will from random hardware failure, and from electrical damage that does not include a near direct lightning strike.

Pretty much this.  I've also seen some low end NAS solutions that would be affordable.   Fill it with disks, set up your raid, and you're good to go.  There's got to be commercial software that does some form of ghetto remote mirroring for cheap. 

You'd have WAY more storage than you'd ever need.  You could keep multiple backups, no sweat.

[Murgos]

Do you actually need to replicate the whole file everyday?  Or just the delta?  Decent back up software should be able to handle incremental back ups which should be much smaller than 12 gb.

Or

Get a co-lo somewhere decent and sftp (or whatever) the files to it.

I googled "colo w/ 300gb transfer" and see prices from 60/mo to 300/mo.  If this actually is a legit expense a couple of hundred a month doesn't sound unreasonable.

[Yegolev]

I've been using Amazon's S3 service with an app that connects to it while emulating a networked folder. Works pretty well, but use the cost calculator to determine your monthly charges for upload/storage of the beast. The daily upload will cost a bit, maybe just upload it once a week?

Edit:
Here: http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html

Quick numbers with S3 (select on the left side)
12gb storage a month
12gb upload a day
$36.08/month

Informative.

[Yegolev]

Just thinking about the backup issue here, automation is the way to go.  Your IT guys telling you to manually drag a file into a folder is bullshit, so hopefully you are not paying them very much.  Using a Mac, I would assume you can write a Apple version of a shell script.  With Windows you can do the same with batch files.  If it's just copying a file then it's amazingly easy to write this.  If you are using a real DB (would hope so) then things get more complicated.

I don't know what rdbms you are using.  Why would you not want an online backup if you have that ability?  A DB with online backup ability would, I assume, have some crash recovery and log archiving (Oracle, DB2, but my experience is with commercial products).  You could run a online DB backup every 2-3 days (aggressive) and every hour or two copy off the recovery logs.  Like I said, I don't know what DB you are using or what it is capable of.  I do know, however, if you are doing a daily offline of the whole DB, you're doing it wrong.

[ghost]

Just thinking about the backup issue here, automation is the way to go.  Your IT guys telling you to manually drag a file into a folder is bullshit, so hopefully you are not paying them very much.  Using a Mac, I would assume you can write a Apple version of a shell script.  With Windows you can do the same with batch files.  If it's just copying a file then it's amazingly easy to write this.  If you are using a real DB (would hope so) then things get more complicated.

I don't know what rdbms you are using.  Why would you not want an online backup if you have that ability?  A DB with online backup ability would, I assume, have some crash recovery and log archiving (Oracle, DB2, but my experience is with commercial products).  You could run a online DB backup every 2-3 days (aggressive) and every hour or two copy off the recovery logs.  Like I said, I don't know what DB you are using or what it is capable of.  I do know, however, if you are doing a daily offline of the whole DB, you're doing it wrong.

I pay my IT guys nothing, for it is me.  The backup scheme is simply the company's recommendation. 

The backup setup for this program is actually decent if you have something go wrong and I really have no issues with implementing it if I am at the main office.  I have two friends that have had issues (one flood and one theft) where the main server got put out of commission.  The program company had them back up and running within a few hours.  Manual backup works decent if you're just in one office, it just doesn't work well for multi office.  I've also had some folks that had tape drives and all other sorts of backup schemes go to restore their data after a disaster only to find there's nothing there..... Woo that would suck. 

Yeah, after dicking around with this for a bit I think I'm just going to have to do an "off site" backup on days that I'm at the main office.  It's a bit risky, but bandwidth is a real bitch on this one.  I'm also going to bitch at the program company and see if I can't get them to do something about file backup size.  They have got to get into the modern world and figure out off site backup automation. 

As for the issues with the program itself, yes, this portion of it sucks.  The problem is that these programs are very niche and quite expensive, so switching is not really an option.  There are some other options out there that have better backup plans, but they don't do what I need them to do for the clinical and financial management and their remote access kind of sucks.  So I'm stuck with it for a while.  I would love an online record, but that won't be coming for orthodontics any time soon, I don't think.

Thanks for the advice, everyone!  

[Lantyssa]

Years ago we used Retrospect with a tape drive.  It did incremental deltas, so once a full backup was done, the rest went quickly.  Disks are huge nowadays, so the tape drive is unnecessary, but the software should work the same.  What you want is out there, it's just a matter of finding what will work with your set-up.

Whatever you do, I have to echo what was said and say make sure it's automated.  Certainly check it for integrity as often as you can, but you'll forget to do the back ups at all eventually if you have to always do it yourself.  (You'll always forget to either check or to perform the backup.  With one there's a reasonable chance of the data being there with no action on your part once it's working.  The other, you're out of luck.)

[Murgos]

How about this.  Get a BD burner and a stack of blu-ray discs.  Set a script to burn the disc every day at the end of the day.  Every morning, swap out the disc and mail the old one to yourself at home or where ever.

If you can't be on site one day to swap discs it doesn't take much training to get a knucklehead to do it for you.

You spend 30 seconds a day on it and 100 bucks up front and otherwise can forget about it.

[Yegolev]

Most importantly, make sure you can recover from backup.  Backups are really useless, it's the restore that's important.

[Morat20]

Depends on your bandwidth. At home, I use Mozy. They have a business/professional setup as well. The first full backup takes awhile, but after that it's incremental and automatic.