This Week: How reliable are your backups?

[Search400.com]

Title: TechTarget

June 30, 2003 >> Receive this email as text  >> About this email   In this Issue >> From the Editor: How reliable are your backups? >> Featured Topic: Top iSeries books >> Expert Technical Advice: * Featured Expert: Tim Granatir, programming * Discussion Forum: Problem printing from the iSeries * Administrator Tip: Create a system resource report >> Site Highlights: * New poll: Windows servers taking over? * Product & Vendor Guide * Quiz show  From the Editor: by Michelle Davidson, site editor How reliable are your backups? If your system crashed, how confident are you that you'd be able to restore the data? If you're lucky, you won't have to face this situation. But even a seemingly minor power surge can have you scrambling. That's just what happened at our company recently. Shortly after 9 a.m. on a Monday we experienced a power surge that disrupted the main servers and knocked out our e-mail server. We suddenly found ourselves without access to important data or (gulp!) e-mail. It didn't take long for the main servers to right themselves and get back online, but the e-mail server experienced an error and was unable to restart. Now, for some of you a morning without e-mail would seem like heaven. But if you work from home or are on the road, e-mail is your lifeline to the company. At TechTarget most of the editorial team works remotely, and e-mail is our main source of communication with our co-workers. In addition, everyone on the team uses the calendar and other features on the e-mail server. After about three hours, the e-mail server was back up and running, but when we logged on all previous e-mail messages were gone. All we had was e-mail received after the server came back online. All saved e-mails -- gone. Address book -- gone. Calendar -- gone. We would have everything back, they said, by the next morning after they recovered it from the backup. "OK," I thought. "I can deal with that. But they had better be able to restore everything." I had held on to some important e-mail messages and hadn't had a chance to save the information locally. All I could do was wait and hope. After bad experiences with previous data recovery attempts at other companies, I was skeptical. There was always a backup tape, but the tape was corrupt and we would end up having to redo all our work. Fortunately, that wasn't the case this time. I logged on the next morning, and everything was back. Phew! I just goes to show how important backups are. Do the work now to ensure a smooth recovery later. If you need some help or guidance, backup and recovery expert Kenneth Graap can help. Read previous q&a's with Ken or send him your own question. Don't forget to check out our Best Web Links on Backup and Recovery for more tips and advice and our White Papers on storage and backup technologies. You don't want to wait for an outage to discover that your backup process doesn't work.  Featured Topic: Top iSeries books by Michelle Davidson, site editor Looking to sharpen your skills? Need a handy resource to help when you're in a jam? Search400.com can help. Here are the 15 most popular books -- get summaries, download excerpts or make a purchase. Read more about this topic  Expert Technical Advice: Featured Expert: Tim Granatir, vice president of Technical Services, Interlink Technologies Categories: Application Development, Systems Management Tim has experience in a range of iSeries subjects, such as application development and systems management. Not only does he answer Ask the Expert questions, but he also helps moderate the Search400.com discussion forums, and he writes programmer tips. Submit a programming question This Week: In the forums >> ODBC performance calling a 400 application Rich Wright asks, "How do I improve performance of CL programs executed from within an ODBC session to the 400?" They have developed an XML interface from a SOAP/VB application to their AS/400 using ODBC. The application builds a set of files on the 400 using SQL, then calls a CL program on the 400 to run a set of processing. The SOAP allocation then uses SQL to retrieve data from the files on the 400. The jobs on the 400 run on the sub-system QUSRWRK as Prestart under QZDASOINIT, and they run considerably slower that interactive jobs. >> Problem printing from the iSeries "ObjectAuthority" has an HP 3325 printer connected to the PC through a USB port. He's trying to print from the iSeries but is running into problems. The spool file is released from outq, but an error pops up in Windows 98 and Windows 2000. What can he do? "Marcof" pointed out the reason for the problem. >> Starting CODE from PDM A few people asked about sending libraries, files and member names to the CODE editor/designer, then starting them from PDM. What they want to do is select a member in PDM and fire up CODE with that member downloaded. A few other users were on hand to help them figure it out. Tip of the Week: How to set up a system resource accounting system -- Part II Create a system resource report by Ron Turull First you learned how to configure and initiate an accounting system, then you learned how to categorize users by utilizing the ADGCDE attribute of the user profile. Now it's time to learn how to produce a useful report from the information gathered. Follow these three steps to create reports quickly. >> Read full tip  Site Highlights New poll: Windows servers taking over? Analysts predict that within the next few years Windows will be the dominant server in the data center. Do you see that as a real possibility in your company? Vote now Product & Vendor Guide When you need to find a new product or vendor, visit Search400.com's brand-new Product & Vendor Guide and get information on thousands of products in one convenient location. Simply search by: * Relevant topic * Company name * Keyword Gain complete vendor and important product information without having to comb through multiple sites. You'll be sure to find what you want and need quickly. Get product information Quiz show History of the AS/400 OK, everyone. Take out a pen and a piece of paper, and put away all your books and notebooks. It's time for the AS/400 history quiz. Alright, it doesn't have to be that strict. But if you haven't taken our quiz on the history of the AS/400, now is the time. Find out how much you know about the platform's early beginnings. Update your subscriptions Select newsletters you would like to receive from the list below. Daily News Security Tip Programmer Tips E-mail    Not a member? We'll activate your membership with your subscription. Product news What are companies such as Linoma Software, ASNA, PowerTech, and ACOM Solutions up to? We have their latest product and company news here. Learn more Tape technologies White Paper: A Comparative Analysis of Tape Technologies for Mid-Range Systems This paper highlights the storage requirements of digital applications in midrange systems and describes the essential tape technology characteristics needed to satisfy these needs. Read paper SearchSAP Conference Top experts from Gartner, META, AMR and more come together to address SAP. Learn how to master your SAP integration and slash TCO, plus case studies and SAP alternatives. Free attendance A B O U T   T H I S   N E W S L E T T E R Created by TechTarget TechTarget - The Most Targeted IT Media Copyright 2003, All Rights Reserved. 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