Blumetech's Tech Blog

New - Monthly Snapshots

As part of AWS Managed Services from Blumetech, you can easily backup up your EC2 Instances in a completely automated way. Our Managed Service takes care of the management of your AWS backups for you. The service allows you to set-up a schedule to backup your instances hourly, weekly, and daily. You configure your backup schedule the way you want it.

Earlier this month we added a new feature so that you can now add a monthly backup option to your schedule. 

For example in the screenshot below I have instance, "PLUTO", that is running Microsoft Terminal Services. This machine provides remote desktop connectivity for Blumetech employees. The data on this machine rarely changes and therefore I'm happy with a monthly backup. I've configured a BACKUP_PROFILE of "BRONZE" which is configured for a single monthly backup of the machine.

Use it Now
This functionality was released earlier this month. Contact us anytime to change your backup configuration.

New - Custom Backup Profiles per Instance for AWS Managed Service

As part of AWS Managed Services from Blumetech, you can easily backup up your EC2 Instances in a completely automated way. Our Managed Service takes care of the management of your AWS backups for you. The service allows you to set-up a schedule to backup your instances hourly, weekly, and daily. You configure your backup schedule the way you want it.

Earlier this month we added a new feature so that you can now add a monthly backup option to your schedule. 

Building on that success we are also adding custom profiles. Previously customers were required to create a single backup profile for all their EC2 Instances. For example, a customer may have a profile that backs up instances

• hourly and keeps 8 hourly snapshots
• daily and keeps 14 daily snapshots
• weekly and keeps 2 weekly snapshots

Customers were limited by having a single backup profile across all their EC2 instances. They wanted the flexibility to set different backup profiles for different instance types. For example, they wanted instances that just run batch processes to not be backed up at all and other instances that run have mission-critical data like, Exchange E-mail systems, to be backed up hourly.

 Today's big news is that you can now create a custom backup profile for any instance. You can:

• Create as many different backup profiles as you like
• Apply those profiles to as many instances you like
• Use instance tags to match instances to a backup profile. You match on any tag. For example you can match on the "NAME" tag or any tag you create, e.g. "BACKUP_PROFILE"
• Create a default backup profile that applies when an instance doesn't have a specific profile assigned. This is a great way to make sure your instances always have at least a default backup.

Here's a screenshot of Blumetech's AWS Demo Account showing the new custom backup profiles.

In this account I've created a BACKUP_PROFILE tag that I'll use to assign backup profiles. The tag name is completely arbitrary. You can create a new tag or using an existing one.

I've then assigned different profiles to some instances:

• I've assigned the GOLD profile to my Exchange server. Gold is my highest level of protection and backs up the instance hourly and saves 8 hourly backups
• I've assigned SILVER and BRONZE to instances that need just daily and weekly backups respectively
• I've assigned IRON to instances that don't have any data and hence have a backup profile that does not take backups
• Finally some instances don't have a BACKUP_PROFILE assigned. Those instances get a default backup profile.

You can use this new functionality to create lots of different backup use cases. Some examples:

• Don't back up instances with "DisasterRecovery" in the name
• Instances with "DEVELOPMENT" in the name should only be backed up weekly
• Instances with an ENVIRONMENT tag set to QA should only be backed up monthly
• Instances with "DB" for database in the name should be backed up hourly

Use it Now
This functionality was released earlier this month. Contact us anytime to change your backup configuration.

SSD Drives really do make a difference!

Some of you already know this but replacing a standard mechanical or even hybrid hard drive with an SSD makes an incredible difference in system performance.  At the urging of one tech savvy client, we have replaced all desktop hard drives and their 5+ year old machines are now blazing fast.  Using the SSD vendor’s provided data migration utility, the ‘ghosting’ process was fast reliable.  While not free, the cost of SSD drives has been reduced significantly and the technology has been improved.  In my opinion, all business computers  should be provisioned SSD drives for the boot drive – and if your machine is sluggish but you’re not ready to buy a new computer, consider replacing the hard drive – simple and effective.

Looking to use Office 365 storage as file server?

Check out this great utility that we found to be useful and reliable. The developer (Myles Jeffery) responds to feedback and has made improvements to the software based on that feedback. It is a subscription service but we've found this invaluable for clients who want to take advantage of the storage associated with their Microsoft Office 365 E3 subscription plan but don't want to lose their familiar drive drive mappings.

http://www.thinkscape.com/Map-Network-Drives-To-Office-365-OneDrive/

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Scripting VPC and VPN configurations on AWS

As part of Blumetech’s managed service, we’ve created applications that provision your AWS infrastructure.  These services follows AWS published best practices and is based on our many years as an AWS Advanced Partner.

Our team has created scripts which will streamline the configuration your AWS infrastructure (VPC, CloudTrail, and S3 logging bucket).  With the VPC script, we create 2 private subnets, the NAT instances, the public subnets, security groups with minimal least privilege security, Internet Gateway, routing tables necessary to link all of these pieces together, VPC endpoint for fast connections to S3, and much much more.  The process also enables CloudTrail and create an S3 bucket and with that S3 bucket, we allow only access from CloudTrail. On the S3 bucket, we turn on versioning and lifecycle management.   Using the VPN script, we provision all of the necessary components to establish a site to site VPN.  This includes the VPN Gateway and the customer gateway – we then link all of the components together and attach them to a VPC.  And finally, we update routing tables to route traffic back to your on premise network.  All that’s left for you is to configure your on premise firewall.  Reach out if you are interesting in learning more or discussing the use of our service.

Office 365 mail attachment limit update

It was just brought to my attention that Microsoft actually increased the message attachment limit for office 365 mailbox accounts. This is big for some users and worth mentioning now even if it is technically old news. Limit is now 150mb for send and receive if using Outlook for Windows - limit is much lower with other mail clients and methods of connecting to send email. Default send/receive limit remains 25mb so if you need the limit raised on your account, please speak up! Read more here on Microsoft's blog https://blogs.office.com/2015/04/15/office-365-now-supports-larger-email-messages-up-to-150-mb/

 

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