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High Availability with Open Source In the article High Availability with Open Source , Josh Kuo looks at three of the popular Open Source projects to implement High Availability redundancy (failover): Heartbeat keepalived CARP The article talks about where each of these three excels and some implementation ideas. Josh also mentions the DRBD utility to sync two remote filesystems to aid in an advanced High Availability setup. When I build a network or a system, I try my best to make sure that everything is as redundant as possible: redundant power supplies, RAID for the drives in case of a hard drive failure, backup routes in OSPF in case someone trips over the network cable... you get the idea. But what happens if the CPU overheats in one of the web servers and causes it to crash? Or what if someone yanks the network cable from your LDAP server? Or if someone flips the switch and accidentally turns off the accounting database server? If you incorporate High Availability (HA) into you...

Planning to Do Database Replication? Here's a solution with MySQL Savitha Nair writes " This article describes how to set up database replication in MySQL. MySQL replication allows you to have an exact copy of a database from a master server on another server (such as a slave). All updates to the database on the master server are immediately replicated to the database on the slave server so that both databases are in sync. This is not a backup method or policy because an accidentally issued DELETE or ALTER command will also be carried out on the slave; but replication can help protect against hardware failures." Need help to do it? Visit www.commgate.net and get a CommGate Professional Server with built-in MySQL database server.

Download & Convert Youtube/Google/FLV Videos As iPod iTunes, .MOV or .MP3 Files Several days ago I blog about how to download Youtube/Google videos which are in FLV format. The solution works for one of my friends and then he posted another question to me on how could he download audio files from Youtube? Since I have no requirement of downloading audio files from Youtube, I have never ask myself this question or seek a solution to it until now. So, while "googling" for a solution I learnt that there are tons of tricks that let you download flash videos from Youtube or Google videos in either FLV or AVI format. However, not many solutions are available to convert these videos or audios until I came across Vixy.net - a website that automates the whole process with a difference. With Vixy, you can download Youtube videos directly as a Quicktime video or an audio-only file in MP3 format. Vixy is effective in extract the audio portion from the Youtube video for you too! Very...

Download YouTube & Google Videos from your web-browser I have been receiving several emails the past month on how to save videos from YouTube and Google. So I thought, why not invest 30-mins to do some research on this and share the knowledge. I know some of us have that need to save the videos that you watch on Youtube or Google Video because it is funny, you want to share it with someone else or you want to use it as a reference point in your presentation. Or maybe, you are planning to transcode a video for playback on that new smartphone to impress your wife or new girlfriend. Or maybe you just want to edit that funny video clip into whatever multimedia project that you are working on. The challenge is, you can only download a subset of videos from Google and as you already know by now (which is why you are reading this blog), YouTube doesn't even provide a download button for you to click and get that video you like so much. Just for your quick reference, there are several ...

RAID-1 vs. RAID-5 Explained! In my line of business, I often meet customers whom asked me questions about RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) as they have been misled and/or confused by IT vendors whom are either out to make the most money from the customer by selling more storage/disks or they don't have an understanding of the customer's applications and storage needs. Some of the most popular RAID questions I come across are: I want RAID-5 as it is a better and faster than RAID-1. Is it? Should I install the operating system (OS) and put data in different partitions of RAID-5? Is it ok if we divide a RAID into two partitions? Does RAID-5 take a long time to rebuild? Is RAID-5 (hardware-based RAID) a better solution than RAID-1? Based on my experiences with MS Windows, Linux and UNIX-based (Solaris, AIX, HP-UX) operating systems since year 1996, choosing a RAID level actually depends on what application(s) you are implementing. RAID-1 characteristics One Write or two...

After all the success stories and financial facts on savings, IT outsourcing is still not catching on with Small-Medium Businesses Why are SMBs missing the boat? A recent survey revealed that small-medium businesses are falling behind in outsourcing IT functions. According to research by the Irish Computer Society (ICS), IT outsourcing has become common practice in Irish organisations, with some 72 per cent taking advantage of the services. Smaller IT departments, however, appear to be holding on to their services inhouse, despite the traditional assumption that these firms would be more likely to farm out their IT applications. "The fact that small organisations in Ireland are outsourcing IT services less than their larger counterparts perhaps suggests that outsourcing service providers do not focus their sales efforts on smaller firms," author of the study, Brian Kennedy of Lake Communications, said. "However, a more worrying alternative explanation is that sma...

Cisco Multiple Products Multiple Remote Denial Of Service Vulnerabilities So you think Cisco products are the most secure and stable? Think again... based on BugTraq ID 22561 at Securityfocus.com the following Cisco products suffers from " Failure to Handle Exceptional Conditions" which allows remote attackers to remotely exploit your network. Affected Cisco products are: Cisco PIX/ASA 7.0.4 .3 Cisco PIX/ASA 7.0.4 Cisco PIX/ASA 7.0.1 .4 Cisco PIX/ASA 7.0 Cisco PIX/ASA 7.1(2) Cisco PIX/ASA 7.0(5) Cisco PIX Firewall 6.3.5 (112) Cisco PIX Firewall 6.3.3 (133) Cisco PIX Firewall 6.3.2 Cisco PIX Firewall 6.3.1 Cisco PIX Firewall 6.3 (5) Cisco PIX Firewall 6.3 (3.109) Cisco PIX Firewall 6.3 (3.102) Cisco PIX Firewall 6.3 (3) Cisco PIX Firewall 6.3 (1) Cisco PIX Firewall 6.3 Cisco FWSM 3.1(3.24) Cisco FWSM 3.1(1.9) Cisco FWSM 3.1(1.7) Cisco FWSM 3.1 (3.3) Cisco FWSM 3.1 (3.2) Cisco FWSM 3.1 (3.18) Cisco FWSM 3.1 (3.11) Cisco FWSM 3.1 (3.1) Cisco FWSM 3.1 ...

Security Flaw found in MS Office 2007 Researchers have discovered a "highly critical" security flaw in newly released Office 2007, despite Microsoft's efforts to deliver its most secure version yet of the productivity software. Despite Microsoft's efforts to lock down the update, eEye finds a hole that could let an outsider run malicious software on a PC. So what else is new? Aren't we tired of reading about MS software products are not secure, Windows Vista has security flaws within 1-month of product launch ( Experts sceptical on Vista security ) and then this... The consumer version of Office 2007, which launched only four weeks ago , is designed to withstand higher scrutiny by malicious code writers, as Microsoft subjected the software to code auditors as part of its security development lifecycle. But researchers at eEye Digital Security found a file format vulnerability in Microsoft Office Publisher 2007 , which could be exploited to let an outsider ...

Why You Need to Change Your Broadband Router Password In this article, Sid Stamm, Zulfikar Ramzan, and Markus Jakobsson have developed a clever, and potentially devastating, attack against home routers. If you are using these mentioned routers in your office, it's time to change that default password. So how does it work? First, the attacker creates a web page containing a simple piece of malicious JavaScript code. When the page is viewed, the code makes a login attempt into the user's home broadband router, and then attempts to change its DNS server settings to point to an attacker-controlled DNS server. Once the user's machine receives the updated DNS settings from the router (after the machine is rebooted) future DNS requests are made to and resolved by the attacker's DNS server. And then the attacker basically owns the victim's web connection. The main condition for the attack to be successful is that the attacker can guess the router password. This i...

Is Your Business Safe From Internet Security Threats? Spyware, malware, viruses, unauthorized network access, weak passwords and hacker attacks can be devastating to small businesses. Here's how to protect your company from internet security threats. Keeping your networks secure and your data safe is critical to the success of your business. Which is why I always emphasize on attacking costs and complexities in implementing network security solutions that works without you having to painfully administer it. Most small-medium business owners assume that large corporations are far more vulnerable to Internet security threats than they are. In reality, however, it's often the other way around! For example, the destructive Mydoom worm affected one out of three small and mid-sized businesses--but only one out of six large enterprises, according to the Internet Security Alliance , a non-profit organization that provides a forum for information security issues. Because they have a f...

Helix Nebula Dust from comets that survived the death of their star is clouding the "eye" of the distant Helix nebula, reveals this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope released on February 12. The nebula, which lies about 700 light-years from Earth, is the colorful remnant of a dying sunlike star that cast off its outer layers to become a white dwarf. Similar nebulae litter our galaxy, but the Helix nebula is now among the few known to show evidence of cosmic survivors. A haze of red around the dead star at the center of the formation is most likely being caused by dust from colliding comets, NASA scientists concluded. Full story here . Do you know that the Final Testament (Quran) has mentioned this 1,400 over years ago? Refer to Submission.org for details. God Almighty is great!

Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin, February 13, 2007— Ice fisher Darren Horness sidles up to the 102-pound (46-kilogram), 72-inch (1.8-meter) female sturgeon he speared on Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin. Story and photo by National Geographic. Full details here .

Monster Glowing Squid Caught on Camera The first ever video footage of wild Dana octopus squid has revealed that the giant animals possess an unusual weapon: glowing arms used to blind and stun their prey. The footage was captured by a Japanese research team using cameras linked to baited lures. Full story here .

450 kg Squid Caught in New Zealand! NEW Zealand fishermen in the Ross Sea have caught what's thought to be the largest squid ever found, weighing an estimated 450kg. Full story here . More stories on this here and here . This colossal squid... if calamari were made from it, the rings would be the size of tractor tyres! Imagine dining or snacking on a calamari the size of a tractor tyre? Past stories on colossal squids: 1) Super squid surfaces in Antartic 2) Giant octopus puzzles scientists 3) Giant Squid and Colossal Squid Fact Sheet Calamaris anyone?

Web 2.0 explained in a YouTube video http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2007/02/here_is_what_we.php After watching that video, I asked myself these questions: What can CommGate do to be a catalyst of Web 2.0 for small-medium businesses? How can CommGate be a platform to support interactions between business applications, databases, text, video, audio - securely? I know that if we can answer these questions, CommGate will be a very successful company - the most widely used platform for Web 2.0 for small-medium businesses. Just think about it: AJAX technologies is capable of replacing fat clients. Imagine dragging and dropping security policies on a web-browser? Web based applications such as vTigerCRM replaces a desktop based CRM system while empowering users and businesses to work from anywhere to access their customer data securely. The CommGate built-in VPN makes that a reality. Alfresco and KnowledTree Document Management System replaces a tradition...

Why Data Backups Are So Important Our computers, smartphones, personal digital assistants, MP3 players, operating systems, and software are tools that we use to create and manipulate the content that is the most important aspect of computing - our data. Without your personalized data, the computing experience will be mundane and very generic. We need to be able to create in order to really feel good about what we’re doing. Many times people don’t realize how important their data is until it’s too late. I have see customers whom says, why do I need to spend $3,000 on a tape backup system just to archive, copy another instance of my data and then keep it? I’ve seen way too many people treat their hard drive’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet, and they’ll just pile anything and everything that they can find into an endless collection of files and folders that will be very difficult to make sense of in the future. The whole point of technology should be to simplify our lives instead of comp...

I received a few phone calls this morning from my fellow network of grassroots leaders. They were cheering me and I thought, "huh what's happening?"... has PAP won the election already? I was thinking, it's not possible as the polling day is 6th May... after much persuasion finally these guys broke the news that I was published in the People's Action Party monthly "Petir Magazine". The same afternoon, I received a hard-copy of the magazine with more phone calls and SMS insisting that I share it in my blog with the rest of the world. I was told not to be selfish. Hahahah... Yeah right guys... So after some thinking I then decided to share it with all of you on what actually was written about me by the editor. Too bad though, I am getting married on June 18, so I am no longer a bachelor that is "29 years young"! Heheheh... Without further yakking-yakking... here's the article (click on the image on the right to see the full story in A4 forma...

In early April 2006, I sign-up for the Excellerated Business School for Entrepreneurs (BSE) after a preview session held in Singapore by Executive-Directions. The seminar was held from 15 April to 23 April 2006 in Subang Jaya Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The BSE in KL was organized by GlobeSL Sdn Bhd. I left Singapore on 14 April via Transtar , the only 1st class coach service which has 16 seats to create a lot of room for your leg. They also provide hot meal during the journey with hot drinks on demand. The seats are equipped with a massage chair, a personal in-flight entertainment system on LCD screen, PC Games and the F&B Attendant will provide anything that you ask for. From newspaper, magazines, blanket, hot/cold drinks, a new set of earphones for the entertainment system... they have it all. They are most courteous and polite at all times. I truly enjoy the Transtar service. For SG$50 from Singapore to KL, it's worth it. I arrived in Subang Jaya Hotel at about 10p...

It was 1.30am in the morning yesterday when I got started with the business proposal for an education project. By the time I am satiesfied with the entire content and deliverable, it is nearly 7am in the morning! The sound of birds chirping on a Sunday morning... very soothing indeed. I decided to take a nap as I'm attending a seminar for all YECs Chairmen at 8.30am at The Grassroots Club . Start of Day Went to bed at 6.40am and got up at 7.45am and as usual, I felt recharged and fresh again. That's the power of deep sleeping . I was at The Grassroots Club at about 8.20am and was the only other Chairmen whom is first to arrive. I met a gentleman in the lift whom I said "Hello" to and introduced myself. Found out that he's a YEC Chairman from Toa Payoh South CC. Both of us clicked well as we build rapport, exchange views and ideas. Hai Tat is a smart man. I enjoyed his company throughout the day later. The Arrival of the Other Chairmen Then the other Chairmen sta...

It was my first North-West YEC Chairman meeting attendance in December 2005 at Zhenghua CC. By the end of the meeting, I was tasked to lead a YEC team-building program for all the 12 YECs in North-West region in March 2006. Despite the challenges and last minute changes, the event was a success. I owe it to Roger Hamilton, Irene Millar, Penny, Dewi and the team from XL Results Foundation for sponsoring the games and for providing crew support. I would also like to offer my thanks to: Tan Hock Chye, our sound engineer for the day Omer Farook, whom is our video man for the day Alex, whom is the camera man for the day Angeline Yee, for crew support and assisting me from the day the event was thought about Hazel, whom assisted us in wrapping the gifts and providing crew support Jia Hui, the god-sent angel to my CC whom co-ordinates all the calls/meetings/cheque collections, etc. Kok Leong, Kwong Ping and his YEC team from Bukit Panjang YEC for all the gifts purchase, calling of YECs, etc ...