Page Title

Alexander LAN, Inc.##

System Management Simplified

Text Box: A bank’s network was constantly failing. An inspection of the phone closet revealed several issues. First, the closet door actually swung open against the panel, jarring it and damaging connections. Second, the panel looked like a bird’s nest of wires of different sizes, shapes, and lengths. Finally (and worst of all) was that the cabling guy had jammed RJ-11and RJ-12 voice plugs into the many RJ-45 sockets in the patch panels. Not only were the network connections poor, but the actual plugs kept falling out. To remedy the situation, the cabling guy had jammed toothpicks in each socket to hold the connectors in place. To ensure he could continue to service the network, there were extra boxes of toothpicks sitting by the panels.
And...yes...this really did happen at a bank...

Bank Network brought down by Toothpicks

April 2006

IT Horror Story of the Month
from our customers’ tales of woe

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Moral of the Story

Alexander SMK™ News

System Management Kit for Windows & Linux prevents problems before they occur

Alexander SPK™ News

System Protection Kit for Windows & NetWare prevents & resolves crashes

PCI-based RAID monitoring and management is included in release 3.0 of Alexander SMK, including support for 3ware, LSI Logic, Adaptec, and Intel. This means that when you get an alert that a drive is failing in your server, just open SMK through a browser, bring on a hot spare, and rebuild the array. Done.

Many network problems can be traced to improper cabling. Be sure to have cable installed by a licensed, bonded, and insured cabling contractor. In the story above, a large, well respected company did the cabling, but they failed to send out one of their trained cable installers. And, while Steven J. Backman made a beautiful 13 foot toothpick model of the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge, toothpicks are not well suited for network connections.

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A patch is available to update the dump file Import Folder for the Enterprise Edition. Note also that a new build is due for release during Q2 2006.

Contact: support@alexander.com

Version 4.20 is available for updated support of NetWare 6.x. Another release is scheduled for May 2006, including updated support to save stack details during an abend. Contact: support@alexander.com

Global revenues for factory shipments of servers sees Unix fall 5.9%, Windows rise 4.7%, and Linux jump 20.8%. IBM holds its lead with 38.4% share in Q4 2005 while HP and Dell grew and Sun slipped. See Article: ZDNet Research

IT Market Sees Windows Grow...and Linux Grow Faster

Save 20% on Alexander SMK & SPK if placed by April 30, 2006. OK...we know that the 30th falls on a Sunday, but if we at least get an email dated by then, we’ll honor it!

20% Discount on SMK & SPK from Brainshare Expires April 30, 2006