Five reliable Windows Server backup solutions

30/11/2023 Categories: Logiciel Tags: , , Comments off

When disaster strikes (and it will), you can put the pieces back together if you’ve got a solid backup solution in place.

If you have a Windows server and you’re not backing it up, you are tempting fate. It’s only a matter of time before something tragic will happen: a hardware failure, a hacker, or a corrupted Windows update. Something will bring that server down and do everything it can to take your data with it.

Luckily, several reliable backup solutions are available for the Windows Server environment. They aren’t perfect. But the five solutions discussed here have their strengths and can be depended upon to keep your data safe. Now, before I reveal the big five, I want to make sure you understand how critical it is to be backing up that data to an external drive and to rotate that drive offsite. If you’re backing up drives and leaving everything onsite, should a fire (or some other catastrophe) occur, that data will be lost.

Note: This list is also available as a photo gallery.

1: Acronis Backup and Restore (with Universal Restore)

Acronis Backup and Restore (Figure A) is the backup tool I use the most. It’s costly but well worth it. The newer version of Acronis does a great job of ensuring that there is room on your external drive for your latest backup. You can overwrite the old backup or go by the traditional cleanup rules established in Acronis Echo. But if you go the Acronis route, you should also purchase the Universal Restore feature. With this tool, you can take a full image of a backup and restore it to any hardware — so long as it meets the requirements of your platform. That way, you don’t need an exact duplicate of your server hardware sitting around waiting to have an image restored onto it. Acronis also has add-ons for Exchange and SQL Servers.

Figure A

 

Acronis backup
Acronis Backup and Restore

2: Symantec Backup Exec

Symantec Backup Exec (Figure B) is a powerful backup solution that does a great job of « just working. » And with its at-a-glance calendar, it’s easy to know when your backup has succeeded and when it has worked. If you’re using Symantec Backup Exec across a network (to back up clients/hosts), you can feel safe because it uses SSL for all network backup connections. Like Acronis, Symantec offers solutions for Exchange and SQL. Also, the ability to manage Vaults (backup destinations) is superb with Symantec. Just make sure that if a Vault is physically (and permanently) removed, you remove it from within the backup software. Otherwise, it will cause problems.

Figure B

Symantec Backup Exec

Symantec Backup Exec

3: Carbonite

Carbonite (Figure C) is primarily an online backup (although the Business and BusinessPremier plans allow you to back up to an external drive). It’s meant to back up data only. Carbonite is probably one of the most reliable online backup tools and can back up email, documents, POS files, financial data, pictures and other multimedia, and more. But to use Carbonite for Windows Server, you must use the BusinessPremier Plan ($229.00 per year), which will allow you to include as many servers running Window Server 2003/2008/2011 as you like. Unlike Acronis, you won’t be backing up an image of your server with Carbonite — it’s a data-only backup tool. But it’s an excellent addition to any onsite backup solution.

Figure C

Carbonite

Carbonite

4: Windows NT Backup

Windows NT Backup (Figure D) is the free backup solution that comes with any Windows Server. Why do I include it here? Although it just does data backup and doesn’t offer many of the bells and whistles of the other tools, it is one of the only truly reliable backup solutions that will clear the Exchange logs for you. I always set up an NT Backup to run once a week (or month, depending upon the needs), just to have it clear the Exchange logs. Otherwise, you’ll be including a lot of unnecessary data in your backups, causing their size to get out of hand.

Figure D

Windows NT Backup

Windows NT Backup

5: ShadowProtect 4 (Server)

ShadowProtect 4 (Figure E) is probably the least-known product in this list. But it falls into place next to Acronis as a feature-rich tool that can do everything — including recover to dissimilar hardware. ShadowProtect 4 also includes an easy-to-use tool that allows you to consolidate backup image files and convert the backups to either .VHD or .VMDK virtual machines. Another outstanding feature is its granular recovery, which allows for the quick recovery of individual files from within a backup. Unique to ShadowProtect is the Virtual Boot technology, which provides for automatic failover to a virtual server.

Figure E

ShadowProtect

ShadowProtect 4

Which backup?

Every company needs a backup plan. How far you go with your backup depends upon the size of the company, your needs, and your budget. But any of the above solutions will serve as a great place to start — or stop — for your Windows Server backup needs. Do you have a different backup solution to add to the list? Share your recommendations with fellow TechRepublic members.

 
Source: Jack Wallen – TechRepublic
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How to Set a Minimum Word Count for WordPress Posts

30/11/2023 Categories: Logiciel Tags: Comments off

minimum word count wordpressMinimum Word Count

Do you run a blog with multiple authors? Then, you probably have wondered how you can set a minimum word count for your posts in WordPress. In this article, we will share with you a snippet that lets you set a minimum Word count for your WordPress posts. If a user tries to publish a post that is too small, then it will return an error telling them the post is not long enough.

Simply open your theme’s functions.php file and paste the following code:

function minWord($content)
{
	global $post;
	$content = $post->post_content;
	if (str_word_count($content) < 100 ) //set this to the minimum number of words
	wp_die( __('Error: your post is below the minimum word count. It needs to be longer than 100 words.') );
}
add_action('publish_post', 'minWord');

You may change the minimum number of words from 100 to whatever you like. You can also customize the error to make it helpful.

Source: wpbeginner.com

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Les différents moteurs de stockage de MySQL: MyISAM

29/11/2023 Categories: Bases de données Tags: , Comments off

II. Le moteur MyISAM

  • Licence : GPL
  • Version de MySQL : Depuis la version 3.23, MyISAM a remplacé le moteur ISAM
  • Type : Moteur Non transactionnel.
  • Domaines d’application :
    – Recherche FULL-TEXT (texte intégrale).
    – Tables en lecture seule.
    – Tables de Log.
  • Information : Documentation officielle de MyISAM

II-A. Description

Depuis sa création, il est devenu le moteur par défaut de MySQL. Il a remplacé Isam en y ajoutant des extensions. En raison de sa souplesse, simplicité et rapidité, MyISAM gagne en popularité dans les applications du web.

Il est très utilisé pour le web car, comme il ne gère ni les clés étrangères, ni les transactions, il n’a pas à vérifier la validité des enregistrements. Cela permet donc un précieux gain de temps sur des tables très fréquemment ouvertes en écriture/lecture.

En effet, lorsque vous faites des suppressions sur des champs de type VARCHAR, CHAR, BLOB ou TEXT, le moteur supprime le contenu mais la place précédemment supprimée est conservée et peut être réutilisée ultérieurement.
OPTMIZE va défragmenter la table afin de gagner de la place et ainsi faciliter l’accès aux données sur cette table.

 

Sélectionnez
OPTIMIZE maTable;

Rien ne sert d’exécuter cette commande sur toutes les tables en permanence. Vous risquez de faire baisser les performances si beaucoup de connexions s’effectuent en même temps.
Cette commande doit être utilisée seulement sur des tables dont la taille évolue rapidement.

D’après ses détracteurs, MySQL ne serait pas capable de gérer les transactions.
En réalité, les personnes ayant utilisé MySQL ne savaient pas qu’il était possible de changer de moteur. Ils sont tombés sur le moteur par défaut, MyISAM, qui ne gère pas les transactions.

Une table MyISAM utilise trois fichiers :
  • maTable.FRM : Fichier de définition de la table
  • maTable.MYD : Fichier contenant les données de la table
  • maTable.MYI : Fichier d’index

Lire la suite…

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Les différents moteurs de stockage de MySQL: InnoDB

29/11/2023 Categories: Bases de données Tags: , Comments off

X. Le moteur InnoDB

  • Licence : GPL niveau 2. Société InnoBase, filiale depuis 2005 de la société Oracle.
  • Version de MySQL : Par défaut depuis la version 4.0 de MySQL mais il y est possible de l’installer sur une version 3.23 de MySQL.
  • Type : Transactionnel
  • Domaines d’application : Application nécessitant une fiabilité de l’information avec une gestion des transactions

X-A. Description

InnoDB, est le moteur transactionnel le plus utilisé à l’heure actuelle dans les secteurs dit sensibles, c’est-à-dire nécessitant une cohérence et une grande intégrité des données.
Jusqu’à la version 5.1 incluse, c’est le seul moteur supportant les contraintes de clés étrangères (intégrité référentielle).

Il n’est pas concevable d’avoir des informations faisant référence à quelque chose d’inexistant. Peut-on imaginer un numéro de sécurité sociale qui ne soit pas associé à une personne ou un code postal associé à aucune ville ?
Il y a des domaines d’application où les données doivent être fiables à 100%.

Au-delà de l’intégrité référentielle, InnoDB propose des mécanismes transactionnelles présentant une grande compatibilité aux critères ACID.

X-B. Organisation interne

Avec une base de données composée de tables utilisant le moteur InnoDB, il est important de ne pas utiliser les mêmes méthodes qu’avec une base contenant uniquement des tables MyISAM.
Avec les tables utilisant le moteur MyISAM, il est facile de copier, supprimer une base de données : il suffit de copier le répertoire se trouvant dans le répertoire /Data/ portant le même nom que la base de données.
De là, il est possible de le déplacer vers un autre serveur, de réaliser une autre base de donnés à partir de celle-ci, d’effectuer des sauvegardes.
Par contre, si la base de données comporte des tables utilisant le moteur InnoDB, il faudra faire plus attention.
En effet, toutes les données de toutes les tables de toutes les bases sont stockées dans un espace de tables commun. De ce fait, la base devient un peu plus rigide.

Lire la suite…

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Disable NetBIOS and SMB to protect public Web servers

28/11/2023 Categories: Réseau Tags: Comments off

As the connection between your internal network and the rest of the world, public Web servers always deserve an extra measure of protection. Find out one way to lock down these servers.

Windows10logoServing data to users outside of an internal network, public Web servers are typically the first point of contact for an external attack. In addition, internal networking ports are the most revealing and most often attacked ports on a server. That’s why you need to make sure you’ve disabled the services that are specifically for intranets.

The two biggest culprits that you need to worry about are the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol and NetBIOS over TCP/IP. Both services can reveal a wealth of security information and are reoccurring vectors for hacks and attacks. They’re unnecessary for the operation of a public Web server, and you should take steps to shut down both services on these servers.

Disable NetBIOS

NetBIOS was once a useful protocol developed for nonroutable LANs. In this case, it acts as a session-layer protocol transported over TCP/IP to provide name resolution to a computer and shared folders. NetBIOS uses these ports:

  • UDP 137: NetBIOS name service
  • UDP 138: NetBIOS datagram service
  • TCP 139: NetBIOS session service

Since external users — or hackers — don’t need access to shared internal folders, you should turn off this protocol. To disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP, follow these steps:

  1. Got to Start | Control Panel, and double-click the System applet.
  2. On the Hardware tab, click the Device Manager button.
  3. Select Show Hidden Devices from the View menu.
  4. Expand Non-Plug And Play Drivers.
  5. Right-click NetBios Over Tcpip, and select Disable.
  6. Close all dialog boxes and applets.

This disables the Nbt.sys driver, which stops NetBIOS from listening to or initiating sessions over TCP 139. While SMB normally uses this port for communication, it will now switch to TCP 445 — also known as the Common Internet File System (CIFS) port. That’s why you need to disable SMB next.

Uninstall SMB

SMB uses TCP 139 or TCP 445 — depending on which port is available. There’s one way to disable SMB on a non-domain controller. However, I recommend completely uninstalling this service to prevent some well-meaning individual (or program) from re-enabling the service.

To uninstall SMB, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Start | Control Panel, and double-click the Network Connections applet.
  2. Right-click Local Area Connection (i.e., the Internet-facing connection), and select Properties.
  3. Select Client For Microsoft Networks, and click the Uninstall button.
  4. After the uninstall finishes, select File And Printer Sharing For Microsoft Networks, and click the Uninstall button.
  5. Close all dialog boxes and applets. 

Understand the ramifications

You’ve now disabled both SMB and NetBIOS. If an attacker manages to compromise your Web server, he or she won’t be able to use NetBIOS or SMB to further explore and exploit your network.

Of course, security measures are often a balancing act of functionality and security. In this case, disabling these services takes away your ability to remotely manage Web servers through Active Directory’s Computer Management console. However, you can still connect to and manage these servers through the Remote Desktop Client.

Final thoughts

While it’s a common practice to block these ports at security boundaries, nothing beats disabling them on the machines themselves. Remember, as the connection between your internal network and the rest of the world, Web servers always deserve an extra measure of protection.

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