Enter lightweight databases like SQLite. As the home page says, it’s a self-contained, zero-configuration, transactional database engine. It’s great for rapid development, but many find that it’s a perfectly suitable solution for production as well, saving the user the overhead of a more complex solution like MySQL.

While playing around a bit with SQLite this weekend, I discovered a handy tool that makes SQLite a breeze to work with. It’s by Mrinal Kant and it’s a nice little Firefox plugin that allows you to manage SQLite DBs much the same way one might use phpMyAdmin for MySQL databases.

So go forth developers, and create and manage thy lightweight tables for great justice.

I’ve played quite a few of the games I listed in the earlier post, but a few have been taking up more time than others while a single title really dominated my time.  A quick recap of each follows:

Fable 2 - Much much better than the first Fable.  Pay little attention to the storyline, the real fun here is amassing a fortune in order to buy out all the real estate, marrying as many spouses as you can get away with and just generally existing in the world.  Biggest complaint?  The weapons system sucks.  Without hardly trying you can have the best weapons by mid-game.  When you’re raking in money hand over fist from your real estate investments it would be nice to have something to spend it on.

Force Unleashed - Not the greatest Star Wars title ever to grace a screen, but a very fun game none-the-less.  The moves system is pretty deep, and the character upgrades system is fun.  Even if your budget can’t fit this title in it’s definitely worth a rent for the weekend.

Rock Band 2 - Meh.  More of the same I guess.  While there are some truly epic and fun songs on this outing overall I liked the track selection of Rock Band 1 better.  Depending on your musical tastes your milage may vary widely from mine.

Left 4 Dead - Haven’t picked this up, but the demo was pretty fun.  Its next on my list of purchases.

Warhammer Online - This game is a real blast. The PVP scenarios are super fun, and regardless of what anyone says the Witch Hunter class is awesome.  I’d imagine it would be harder to consistently place in the top 5 with a class that was really actually broken.  If you’re looking for a new MMO and you’re sick of WoW like I am, give this one a go.  I’m sure you’ll like it.

Fallout 3 - WHOAH.  This game has sucked more hours out of me than any game in recent memory.  In fact, I can’t remember spending as much time just exploring since I played Morrowind.  Fallout 3 does away with all of the problems I had with Oblivion, namely the terrible interface, quick travel and scaling enemies.  This is a true 100/100 game; placing Bioshock and Fallout 3 side by side makes Bioshock look like an 85/100 by comparison.  If you only have the budget for one game this season make it Fallout 3.  Let me repeat that.  Buy Fallout 3 right now.  Its that good, I promise.

Tonight is the first-ever Ignite SLC event at the Leonardo. There will be some great talks, a paper airplane Olympics and a whole lot of fun. I hope you’ll join us.

This announcement is very long but we wanted to address questions and concerns that have arisen to restore customer confidence.

Synopsis

While the power only went out for a moment, many systems were adversely affected by the outage and took extensive attention and time to recover. In the case of our primary storage device, we could not bring it back online even after hours of trying so we restored files to the new NetApp we already had on site.  Many systems tie into this device, which exacerbated the problem.

We are happy to report that we will be greatly increasing base quota in the near future for customers at no additional charge from 100 MB to 5 GB now that we have the new NetApp storage appliance online. Our web hosting customers will also see significantly increased quota in the very near future.

As of the opening of business hours this morning, file backups had completed and most everything was in working order. We continue to find and address remaining issues, though. Some customers continue to experience delays with sending and receiving email but the queues are clearing.

Additional Technical Details

We didn’t have all the answers last night so here are further details regarding the outage:

• Our primary storage device (a NetApp F801 we were in the process of replacing this week with a new NetApp FAS2020) suffered the loss of 2 drives on one of the volumes, causing us to lose the data on the device entirely.
  • We were waiting to get our snapmirror license from NetApp to copy data over but at least we had the new hardware on site and ready.
  • Since many systems NFS mount to this gear, which handles /home, other servers required attention to get up and running properly.
  • Web hosting was down into the night until customer files were restored to the new hardware. This was completed by morning.
  • Our new NetApp 2020 has additional recovery options not available on the older 810.
  • We have plans to purchase another NetApp 2020 in the near future to host offsite. While we already have off site backups, the 2020 is an upgrade to that system.
• While email services were down about 5 hours for most customers yesterday, no mail should have been lost although some customers continue to see delays sending and receiving email.
• DSL and UTOPIA customers were offline for up to an hour because our radius server did not recover on its own. Some customers also needed to powercycle their modem before they could reconnect. As a rule of thumb we highly recommend customers powercycle their gear when troubleshooting.
• Although it was a holiday, our systems administrators were on site within minutes and many worked through the night, some up to 18 hours without a break.
• We are sorry about problems with our phone systems. They initially were offline due to the outage, then we maxed out connections to it, and we couldn’t answer the calls because we only had a skeleton staff of phone technicians due to the holiday. We are making some changes to the existing phone system but are also in the process of replacing it by the end of this year. Some expressed concerns that our status messages were not very helpful.  Unfortunately, we often did not know when systems would come back up and we also needed to keep the message short due to heavy call volume.
• To clarify, the outage was due to human error while doing maintenance on one of our 3 UPS’s and not any of our equipment. A breaker was mislabeled, which brought about the mistake.
• DNS (Domain Name Service) was sporadic for up to an hour. This was mostly due to a Cisco 6509 that continued to have issues in the beginning but we have since moved our two onsite authoritative nameservers (ns.xmission.com and ns1.xmission.com), as well as most other servers, to a new redundant connection.  We should note that we do have a tertiary name server in California (ns2.xmission.com).  If you list ns2.xmission.com as a tertiary nameserver for your domain, then your domain will continue to have working nameservice in the event that the two onsite nameservers are offline.
• QMOE customers suffered a prolonged outage due to the same Cisco 6509 that caused problems with our name servers. They have since been moved to a different router with greater redundancy. We will send our QMOE customers a separate email with further details by tomorrow.
• About 25% of our colocation customers suffered a brief power outage since we have customers spread across 3 separate UPS’s. Otherwise, aside from networking being briefly down after the initial outage, colocation services were not widely affected. In case some colocation customers are not aware, they can purchase powerstrips from different UPS’s to have redundant power. If you suffered equipment loss from the power outage or would like details about redundant power, please contact your sales rep for details.

Resolutions and Moving Ahead

We are very sorry for all of the problems that this outage has caused our customers and greatly appreciate all of the kind words and support you have given us. More than anything, we want to assure you that we are taking this matter seriously and proceeding with steps to lessen the chances that something like this can happen again, which include:

• We will more dutifully use our already existing NetStatus page to keep customers informed about our systems: http://stats.xmission.com/netstatus
• As well, we will be announcing all upcoming maintenance on the NetStatus page in the future and emailing those who opt into a list, which will soon be created for this purpose. To be added to the list, please email: support@xmission.com.
• We recognize that we need to handle communication much better in the future. We did setup an outage page with updates but realize that most did not know such a page existed: http://stats.xmission.com/outage/
• We also have our Nagios systems status page, which provides a very good look into our systems: http://stats.xmission.com/nagios/
• We plan to run redundant power from a second UPS up to our server room to feed essential hardware with dual power supplies. That alone would have dramatically minimized the effects of yesterday’s outage.
• While we already perform most maintenance outside of business hours, we have decided to enforce a policy that all systems critical maintenance (i.e., involving power, routers, core systems) must happen outside of business hours. Some additional training is also planned in regards to our electrical infrastructure.

XMission extends a heartfelt apology to our customers for any inconvenience caused by yesterday’s outage. We are truly sorry, and appreciate your patience.

This is a courtesy post for anyone that is not already on the XMission Announcement email list.

XMission Outage

XMission experienced a serious outage while we were performing some standard UPS maintenance today. The outage affected all services and started at approximately 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, November 11th. Network services for many were partially restored by about 2:30 p.m. but some other services required a lot of attention and took much longer.

Details

About 40% of our data center, including our server room, suffered a power outage when a technician flipped a mislabeled breaker during some standard maintenance on one of our 3 UPS units. Although the power outage was momentary, servers and routers often respond very poorly to losing power and sometimes take extensive work to come back up. Unfortunately, such was the case today with many systems.

Seriously Affected Systems

• An important router, which some connections and servers rely on, required extensive attention from our network administrators.
• DNS (Domain Name Service) was sporadic for some customers for over an hour.
• Email services were down for over 5 hours.
• Web hosting suffered the longest outage because our NetApp storage appliance which houses all customer files and web sites lost multiple hard drives. As a result, we are currently restoring files to our new NetApp 2020 from our November 9th backup, which will take many hours yet to complete. We recently purchased this new NetApp and were merely days away from getting it online.

Conclusion

Today’s outage was exacerbated by multiple systems responding poorly to losing power. In spite of the holiday, our systems administrators were on site within minutes and continue to work tirelessly to restore all services. In the end, we should have performed this maintenance on a day when our systems administrators were on site because problems can arise no matter how carefully you proceed.

Here is how it works: businesses purchase two inexpensive DSL lines and combine their speeds into a single connection using a low-cost appliance developed by PipeDream Networks. This rack-mountable, noiseless appliance allows administrators to easily provision or remove lines from the appliance via a web-interface.

Each pair of bonded connections includes 500 GB of monthly transfer. Eventually, XMission will offer the option to bond up to four DSL lines. Consider this cost comparison:

Please note: unlike T1 and Optical Ethernet, Bonded DSL uses consumer-grade bandwidth and does not include a Service Level Agreement (SLA).

If you would like to participate in this new service, please contact Mandy by email or phone: 801.303.0838 (toll-free 1.877.964.7746).

Customers interested in signing up for service or making payments can now walk directly to our reception area without having to search out our different departments upstairs. XMission also has a new kiosk if you ever need to stop in to check your email.

We hope to see you soon!

Viewing Contacts in Address book

To access Contacts, click on the Address Book pane in the web interface or Zimbra Desktop client.

You can view your contacts either as a list or as contact cards. To change the view click on the View button and select either List or Cards. Personally, I prefer the List view.

Adding a new Contact to your Address Book

To add contacts just click the New button, then enter information in the appropriate fields.

Click "New" to create Address Book entry.

You can also add a contact directly from email by using right+click (Windows) or option+click (Mac) on the senders name, select Add to Contacts in the pop-up menu. Complete the information in the fields provided and Save.

Importing your Contacts

If you are using another contact manager program, you can import your existing contacts by saving them in “Comma-Separated Values” (.csv) format. See the program’s Help file for instructions on doing this. Note: For Apple Address Book, there is a useful utility by Antonio Lore called ab2csv.  XMission does not support this app but Mac users find it simple to use.

To import your contacts into Zimbra, click on the Preferences pane and then select the Address Book pane. Browse for the CSV File and then click the Import .CSV File button. You will be able to name the contact list and assign the folder a color of your choice. That is it, you are done.

Import .CSV File, found in Preferences pane.

Adding Emailed Contacts to your Address Book automatically

Zimbra can automatically add names and email addresses to your Emailed Contacts list from the email addresses you send to. To enable this feature, click the Preferences pane and check the “Add new contacts to ‘Emailed Contacts’” box. I find that every now and then I have to go through and delete temporary addresses, such as those used by craigslist.org and other services.

Creating a new Address Book

The ability to have multiple address books is a very useful Zimbra feature. To create a new address book, first go to the Address Book pane and click New Address Book above your list of contacts. Name your new address book and select a color for it. Click OK and the new address book will appear in your list of address books. Easily move contacts from one Address Book to another by clicking and dragging Contact(s) from one Address Book to another.

Simply click on New Address Book to create a new one.

Sharing your Address Book

To share an address book, click on the address book you would like to share and select “Share Address Book” from the pop-up menu.

Sharing with Internal users

You can share with individuals or groups on your XMission Zimbra domain. This is very similar to the process used to share calendars with other Zimbra users as covered in a previous post about Calendar sharing.  Set the access controls and Zimbra will send email Share Request to the user(s) you selected. Upon accepting the share, the Address Book will appear in their list of Address Books. Any changes you make to this address book with appear in their share. Note: If you grant other users Manager status, any changes they make will show up in your contacts folder. Always be certain how much access you want others to have before sharing folders.

Sharing with External guests

To share with external guests, simply provide their email address and set a password for them. XMission’s Zimbra server will email them with their login information and a URL allowing them to download a .CSV file of your shared Contacts folder.  Note: When you use external guest or public settings on an address book it is always read-only.

Public sharing

You can also make an address book publicly available. Follow the process to share your Contacts folder of choice, set to Public. This will show a custom URL you can provide to anyone. Copy this URL for future reference. Next, click the OK button to complete setting Public permission for this Contacts folder. Email your sharing URL and the end user can download the .CSV file.

Creating a Distribution List (Mailing List)

All XMission Zimbra accounts support distribution lists. To create lists, select New Contact Group from the New pop-up menu. Enter a name for your distribution list and then enter email addresses in the “Add Members to this Group” box. You can search your Contacts folder, the Global Address List, and your Personal and Shared Contacts folders for email addresses to add to your list or enter them manually in the box below. This is very slick. I use this to create custom invite lists for events and my other email list needs. Distribution Lists may have limitations on the number of addresses allowed as large lists can unduly tax the mail server. Note: It is a courtesy to always use BCC when sending to large email lists, simply enter your email address in the To: field so they know it is from you.

Searching for Contacts

Quickly find a contact by using the Search tool in the Zimbra web interface or Zimbra Desktop client. Type part of the name you are searching for in the box and then click the Search button (or hit return) to find your contact.

Use the Search field to find Contacts in your Address Book.

Need additional help?

For more help click the Zimbra Help button or visit the XMission Zimbra Support pages and the Zimbra forums.

Those are the basics of sharing your Contacts using the XMission Zimbra Suites. It is pretty simple and intuitive.

Thanks for reading and should you need our help just give us a call! Together we can find the best solution for your needs with one of the 3 distinct levels of XMission Zimbra hosting.

XMission’s Zimbra Suite makes it easy to share your calendar: simply right click on the calendar you want to share and click on “Share Calendar”.

Right click on the calendar of your choice, click on Share Calendar.

The “Share Properties” pane, show below, is where you can share your calendar with internal users on your domain, external users, and/or grant access to your public calendar. In addition you can grant access as view-only, or allow complete (Manager/Admin) access. Manager and Admin status allows others to make changes on your calendar.

The Zimbra Share Properties pane is very easy to use.

Enter the email address of the individual(s) you want to share your calendar with. Set share recipient “Role” appropriately. You can even send a note with the calendar share which can be very useful. Important: setting a calendar to “Public” means it is wide open to the world and anyone with the URL can download your calendar .ics file or view it in .html format.

Once shared, emails are automatically sent to those you granted calendar access. Here is what the email looks like:

Example of the Zimbra "Share Created" email.

The recipient can “Accept” or “Decline” the calendar share. You will not be notified of their receipt unless they sent an email back to you. Most calendar programs allow them to name your calendar as they see fit. In this case the calendar was named “XM John Webster’s Calendar” which was also set to Blue for easier identification in the Calendar view:

Accept and name the calendar share.

You also have the ability to grant access to your specific calendar’s .ics file through a direct URL (pictured above in the “Share Properties” window), or to html calendar by adding .html to the calendar name. This example shows Joe The Plumber’s html calendar for Public viewing (image shows week view). The html calendar allows the viewer to select Day, Work Week, Week, Month, or Today just by clicking on the icon:

HTML view of your public calendar.

There is another quick way to get the web address of your calendar, simply right click and choose “Launch in a separate window” (see image below). Your selected calendar will pop up in a new browser window. Copy, paste, and share that URL as needed. Use this URL to embed your calendar in websites. Calendars set to “Public” view also offer RSS subscriptions; viewers simply click on the RSS icon in the browser navigation window to subscribe.

Launch the HTML view of your calendar in a separate window.

Those are the basics of sharing your calendars using the XMission Standard and Premium Zimbra Suites. It is pretty simple and intuitive.

Keep watching this blog! Future posts will cover Contacts sharing, Documents sharing and management, using the Sync Connectors on your Mac & PCs, and much more.

Thanks for reading and should you need our help just give us a call! Together we can find the best solution for your needs with one of the 3 distinct levels of XMission Zimbra hosting.