The Hub and Spoke!

What often happens is that when I'm researching a topic or come across an interesting article and I don't make a note of it it goes missing, Some time later I have to try and remember the article reference and google is not always perfect. So these reference lists I have here are for that purpose. I you want to contribute leave a comment. This is a bibliography of resources and articles for data protection (especially back and restore).

South Africa celebrates Freedom Day on April 27 -- a commemoration of the first post-apartheid elections held on that day in 1994.   To honor the occasion, we've put together images of the best places to see in the Rainbow Nation. Click through the gallery for an eyeful of the best South Africa has to offer.

Each of the bridge's two main cables is made of 27,572 strands of wire. Often referred to as "the bridge that couldn't be built," the Golden Gate Bridge crosses the stretch of water nicknamed "the Golden Gate" by gold prospectors heading to the Californian hills. Prior to 1937, San Francisco was America's largest city but its growth rate was slow compared to others, due to the lack of a link with other communities around the bay. The size of the strait (2,042 meters wide) combined with strong winds and regular earthquakes led many construction experts to say a bridge couldn't be built. The solution? Huge amounts of concrete, 128,747 kilometres of wire housed inside two cables, 600,000 rivets and a whole lot of hard work.   Find out more about the Golden Gate bridge over at LinkedIn here .

Wilson Greatbatch, an assistant professor at the University of Buffalo thought he had ruined his project. Instead of picking a 10,000-ohm resistor out of a box to use on a heart-recording prototype, Greatbatch took the 1-megaohm variety. The resulting circuit produced a signal that sounded for 1.8 milliseconds, and then paused for a second—a dead ringer for the human heart. Find out more about the Pacemaker over at LinkedIn here .

Not so long ago the fax machine was a staple of the business world. It has gone extinct. Find out more about the fax machine over at LinkedIn here .

The Beetle is an economy car produced by the German auto maker Volkswagen (VW). The need for this kind of car, and its functional objectives, were formulated by Adolf Hitler, leader of Nazi Germany, wishing for a cheap , simple car to be mass-produced for the new road network of his country. He contracted Porsche to design and build it to his exacting standards. Ferdinand Porsche and his team took four years to finalise the design. This is one of the first rear-engined cars. With over 21 million manufactured in an air-cooled, rear-engined, rear-wheel drive configuration, the Beetle is the longest-running and most-manufactured car of a single design platform, worldwide. Find out more about the Beetle over at LinkedIn here .

Maker's Mark is a small-batch bourbon whiskey produced in Loretto, Kentucky, by Beam Suntory. It is bottled at 45% alcohol by volume and sold in distinctively squarish bottles sealed with a signature red wax by hand dipping each bottle. Find out more about Maker's Mark over at LinkedIn here .

The day of the 1995 Rugby World Cup Final is a day I'll never forget. We did not have tickets to Ellis Park Stadium but watched at the pub, soaked in beer with my mate Jose. Find out more about the 1995 Rugby World Cup over at LinkedIn here .

From 50 things that made the modern economy by the BBC . Read me about the iPhone over at LinkedIn here .  

Here is a list of my ten most famous South Africans. Have a great and democratic #freedomday. Read my list over at LinkedIn here .

Pineapple (reproduced here for all you pineapple lovers from the World's healthiest foods )  Pineapples have exceptional juiciness and a vibrant tropical flavour that balances the tastes of sweet and tart. They are second only to bananas as the world's favourite tropical fruit. Although the seasonal, they are available year-round in local markets. Read more about the Pineapple over at LinkedIn here .

In IT most people used a mobile phone, followed by a land line. Then there are the users of skype (luckily become more by the minute). I have previous written here about using whatsapp to control network operations. Although I use skype, my id is ronaldxbartels , there are other alternatives available. However, none as as prevalent as skype . Read about skype over at LinkenIn here .

When I was in the navy I connected a printer that had a 120v power supply to 220v mains. It exploded. Read the full article on LinkedIn's Pulse here .

If you work in IT.  All you need to know in one sentence.

Patsy Sherman together with Samuel Smith invented Scotchgard while an employees of the 3M corporation. An accidental spill of a fluorochemical rubber on an assistant’s tennis shoe was the beginning to the invention of the product. After exhaustive attempts to remove the spill failed, Sherman moved her intention from removing the spill to using the spill as a protectant from spills. Read more about Scotchguard over at LinkedIn here .

Have you ever heard of SWOT Analysis? Well, if you haven't after watching this video you'll be able to swot anything, a concept, an initiative, a campaign, or even a person!

A scientist at 3M in the US, Spencer Silver, was attempting to develop a strong adhesive. Instead he accidentally created one which was weak but reusable. For years, Silver promoted his "solution without a problem" but failed to gain acceptance. A colleague who had attended one of his talks, Art Fry, came up with the idea of using the adhesive to anchor his bookmark in his hymn-book. The idea was further developed inside 3M using their bootlegging incentive programme. The original notes' yellow colour was chosen by accident, as the lab next-door to the Post-it team had only yellow scrap paper to use. It was originally called "Press 'n Peel" but results were disappointing. "Press 'n Peel" was re-introduced as "Post-It Notes"and a legendary product was born. Read the full article that was published over on LinkedIn: Post-it Notes, without them SCRUM is a non-starter - the Awesome World of Things

A virtual customer premises equipment or vCPE is emerging as one of the most interesting use cases for NFV. It is not hard to see why; the capability of running many functionalities previously requiring separate dedicated pieces of hardware on one box while at the same time enabling rolling out future services by deploying software certainly sounds compelling. Being able to do this at a customer site, reducing the need to send people to install and configure services saves a lot of hassle and money.  Read more about virtualised CPEs over at Cranord here .

TWAMP Network Measurement Probe for Performance and SLA management with SDN-ready accuracy, reach and flexibility. Find out more about the probe here or checkout a more comprehensive list of tools over at LinkedIn here .

The hack could be used to access restricted floors as well as locked rooms .  Millions of electronic door locks fitted to hotel rooms worldwide have been found to be vulnerable to a hack. Read more about the hack over at the BBC here . 

"That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" were the words spoken by Neil Armstrong when he stepped onto the surface of the moon. This remains the single most awesome achievement in the human race 's technical endeavours!There was computer glitch during the descent of the landing module to the surface of the moon. However, despite this glitch the astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin safely landed on the surface. Even today, many computer programmes do not have the same levels of fail safe. (Ek praat met jou, Windoze se donderse Blue Screen!) Margaret H. Hamilton, Director of Apollo Flight Computer Programming MIT Draper Laboratory, Cambridge, Massachusetts, stated: “Due to an error in the checklist manual, the rendezvous radar switch was placed in the wrong position. This caused it to send erroneous signals to the computer. The result was that the computer was being asked to perform all of its normal functions for landing whi

The picture to the right is a data centre that is not up to scratch. The things required to bring a data centre up to par is exhaustive (and I have walked into data centres like the one above and wondered how they keep on working) However, this is not about that and standards and checklist exist that can be used. This provides a list of often overlooked items required in a data centre. They are related directly to experiences I have had which don't seem to be covered in the standards (or are conveniently overlooked). Many of the things and items referenced here in the post about the NOC are also relevant. View the list of life savers here .

When I worked for Madge Networks (read about the company here ) I encountered a difficult problem. A bank had bought a large number of RAMs (token-ring networking hubs). These hubs were randomly rebooting. I started diagnosing the problem using a rudimentary checklist I had an failed to find a resolution. Eventually, two engineers from the UK arrived to assist on the problem. They had a head start on me as the problem had already been reported at a few other sites world wide. It eventually turned out to be oxidization on the power connectors to the power switching supply. The wrong tool and materials had been used to crimp and attach the connectors which had resulted in the oxidization and hence the intermittent resetting of the network equipment. However, the engineers provided a valuable hint in how to dramatically reduce the time to troubleshoot. They said a problem with networking equipment is either hardware or software and when it doubt it is most probably hardware

This is a minimal checklist to complete for product management to ensure that all required items are covered and documented for a product go live. Review this checklist on Pulse here .

Yesterday I went for a cycle along the Spruit. In the area around Delta Park I hit a donga and was thrown over the handlebars. A donga is a rut caused by erosion. I dislocated my shoulder because I had fallen with my full body weight on it and had to call for an ambulance. The paramedics put me on a drip and administered morphine. I was then transported to emergency where I was x-rayed and luckily had no broken bones. My ligaments were severely strained. The doctor's advice was man up and at least you were having fun when it happened. Read the full article on LinkedIn's Pulse here .

The Vredefort dome situated in the Free State province of South Africa is the largest verified impact crater on Earth. It is estimated that an asteroid measuring 5 to 10 km in diameter created a crater in the region of 250 to 300 km with up to 70 cubic kilometres of rock being vaporised in the impact. This equates to the entire world's current nuclear arsenal being exploded in one go. Read more about the dome over on LinkedIn here .

The greatest hacking event in world history remains the decoding of Enigma and Lorenz messages during World War II. The efforts changed history. The two leaders involved were Turing and Flowers (read about them here ). It is often stated (refer here ) that compared to the hardware used by the World War II hackers, a modern Pentium PC programmed to do the same decoding task took twice as long to break the code The reasons are that a custom hardware device designed to complete a custom task will always trump software. But the hack wasn't only about the ingenious hardware devised by Turing and separately by Flowers. It was more than that. Read the article on LinkedIn's Pulse here .

Lego is the name for construction toys manufactured in Billund, Denmark. Lego consists of colourful interlocking plastic bricks often accompanied by an array of gears, minifigures and various other parts. The toys were originally designed in the 1940s in Denmark and the bricks can be used to construct such objects as vehicles, buildings, and even working robots, after which they can be taken apart again. Read more about Lego over at LinkedIn here .

Across all social media platforms the strange unknown invitations or requests to connect pop up. The people without photos, or photos of a hot model, or a small number of connections, etc. The red flag goes up and not only do I ignore these but also make the effort to block and report them. The more people that do that the quicker these guys are flushed out of the system. It's the scam artists or malware distributors. But, there are more, but different, candidates for blocking! Read about blocking on social networking here .

Pterosaurs were flying reptiles that existed from the late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous period. Pterosaur's are not dinosaurs but reptiles with a wingspan of up to 10m. Read more about Pterosaurs over at LinkedIn here .

TCP also known as trichlorophenylmethyliodosalicyl, was a common sight around the house, especially my grandmother's, when I was growing up. Any sign of a cough and we would have some of it as mouth wash. Today it is not at all common. However, the taste is addictive and lives on in Laphroaig whisky. The story is that during prohibition in the United States, whisky was imported as medicine. It had to taste like medicine, so Laphroaig made their whisky taste like TCP. I enjoy Laphroaig! Read the full article on LinkedIn's Pulse here .

Besides that, up here on the Highveld, where the Witwatersrand is located, at 1500m, there is always sunshine. We live in the largest man-made forest on plant Earth. Before large amounts of people flocked to the Witwatersrand to mine gold, this was all grasslands and savannah that stretched as far as they eye could see. The Witwatersrand is on the edge of the world's largest ever meteorite strike, the Vredefort Dome. If you wander around the rivers in the area you notice the melted rocks from eons ago. The impact site with a diameter of more than 300km is so large, it is only visible from space. The weather is great, neither too hot nor too cold. Read the full article on LinkedIn's Pulse here .

No, my boys are no angels. But this is a story about fatherhood and not about how my boys drive me crazy, which they often do. This is balanced with times of joy and achievement. I often wake up and write a story, typically first thing in the morning. It makes me feel happy. I keep the stories in a place where I can get back to them. Books get lost and hard drives crash or get hit by lightning. Some of the only pictures I have are on facebook and now on LinkedIn there are some stories too. Read the full article on LinkedIn's Pulse here .

It is typically easy to execute a task blindly without knowledge or applying intelligent process. This is not a job but a habit. Habits are very common in IT and are often disguised as best practices. What invariably happens is that a method is stumbled upon that achieves a goal, and just because it did the job, it is labelled as a best practice. An analysis is never conducted as to whether it was done in an optimal manner, meaning that it was effective and efficient. And thus IT is full of bad habits (read about them here ). Read the full article including the 7 steps on LinkedIn's Pulse here .

Previously I have written that it is not possible to improve uptime but only minimize the impact of major incidents (read about the major incident process in IT here ). This philosophy results in an improvement in uptime and is not a new idea, the avionics industry has been using it for decades to improve flight safety. It is thus clear that the investigation of accidents in IT will result in IT safety. Every time a plane falls out the sky, no stone is left unturned until the precise reason is known. IT is not as diligent and obviously not as safety conscious. However, safety in IT is more than measuring the power availability to a server in an arbitrary data centre using the "how many 9s" technique! Read the full article on LinkedIn's Pulse here .

Bryan jou doring - Retirement 24th April 2018

Apatosaurus is a sauropod dinosaur that lived during the Jurassic Period. It was one of the largest land animals that ever existed, with an average length of 23 m and a mass of at least 23 tons. Read more about the Apatosaurus over on LinkedIn here .

Tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world and humans have been drinking it since around the 10th century BC. The Portuguese introduced tea to Europe in the 16th century while being introduced to Britain by Charles II’s wife in 1660. Read more about Tea over at LinkedIn here .

A chimenea is a freestanding front-loading oven with a bulbous body and usually a vertical chimney typical make from volcanic ash and clay originating from Mexico. Read about the Chimenea over at LinkedIn here .

A cuckoo clock is usually pendulum-regulated and strikes the hours with a sound like a common cuckoo's call with a mechanical cuckoo that emerges with each note. Read more about the Cuckoo Clock over at LinkedIn here .

Mercedes-Benz is the world's oldest automotive brand still in existence today. It’s brand is the famous three pointed star. Read more about Mercedes-Benz over at LinkedIn here .

Technology leaders should be doing certain things better.  This is my take on what they should be doing.  Read about the 5 things on LinkedIn's Pulse here .

East of Tripoli in Libya, lies the only place in the world where you can view a preserved Roman city. It was one of the jewels of the Roman empire starting during the reign of Tiberius. It was built and funded by wealthy Romans, and the luxury of its day is clearly evident, with grand buildings, wide boulevards, large baths, magnificent theatre and forum, even a brothel. The Lonely Planet guide comments, “It must have been a great place to live”. Read more about Leptis Magna over at LinkedIn here .

AssetGen Connect  is designed to manage the physical aspects of IT infrastructure and can support data centres, networks, cabling, office buildings, etc. It combines hardware inventory with positioning and connectivity so the location of any hardware component can be easily found, as well as dependencies and single points of failure. AssetGen Connect automates the production and maintenance of Visio diagrams of floor plans, racks, networks and architecture views. It complements other information sources such as monitoring tools and workflow systems and trusted sources such as recovery documents, maintenance spreadsheets, etc. Read more about the product here .

Backing up by simply copying a few files to another drive and  then copying them back if needed satisfies only the most trivial cases. This book covers use cases from the simplest single server to large and complex systems. Access the book here .

Read the white paper here .

This book provides an overview of cloud-integrated data protection, which addresses many of today’s backup challenges by transforming the cloud into a low-cost, instantly accessible data storage tier. Access the book here .

IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) promotes the CCTA Risk Analysis and Management Method (CRAMM) for risk assessment. Everyone agrees managing risk is critical, yet few actually use CRAMM or any other formal system!   Part of the reason for this is that CRAMM is a sophisticated software tool that requires a trained practitioner to operate. However, if you examine CRAMM, you soon realize you can obtain many of the benefits without investing in consultants or expensive software solutions.  Read the full article here .

CRAMM, a well known risk assessment methodology in ITSM, provides a staged and disciplined approach embracing both technical (e.g. IT hardware and software) and non-technical (e.g. physical and human) aspects of security. Read the article here .

The great bell of the clock in the tower at the Palace of Westminster in London, is nicknamed Big Ben. Often the clock tower itself is referred to as Big Ben and is the most popular landmark in Britain, which now has a noticeable tilt as a result of construction on the Jubilee Line. Read more about Big Ben here .

The London Underground, also known as the Tube, is the world’s oldest underground railway located around Greater London in Britain. Read more about the Tube over at LinkedIn here .

The Big Hole, also known as the Groot Gat, is an open-pit and underground mine in Kimberley, South Africa. It is the largest handmade hole in the world and was excavated using picks and shovels. It was initially a hill. Read more about the Big Hole on LinkedIn here .

Most people when analysing the cause of downtime concentrate on the occurrence of the incident that triggered the downtime and then determine the cause of that incident. As an example, failure of a component. However, the cause of an incident is not a direct correlation to the cause of downtime. Read this article here on LinkedIn's Pulse to determine the top CAUSE of network downtime!

The Taj Mahal is a white marble mausoleum located in Agra, India, which was built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died during the birth of their 14th child. Read more about the Taj Mahal over at LinkedIn here .

The Spirit of St. Louis is a single engine monoplane that was flown solo by Charles Lindbergh on the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic. Read about the Spirit of St Louis over at LinkedIn here .

Trilobites are a well-known fossil group of over 17000 species of extinct marine arthropods. Trilobites became extinct after being among the most successful of all early animals, roaming the oceans for over 270 million years. Read more about Trilobites over at LinkedIn here .

A zip is a device for temporarily joining two edges of fabric together. It is widely used in clothing, bags and suitcases, purses, tents, sleeping bags and other textiles. Read about the Zip over on LinkedIn here .

The periodic table is a representation of the 118 known chemical elements arranged by properties of their atomic structures. This table keeps elements with similar properties together in vertical columns such as alkali metals, alkali earths, halogens and noble gases. Read more about the Period Table over at LinkedIn here .

The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued by King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts with essentially the same text: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek. It provided the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Read more about the Rosetta Stone over at LinkedIn here .

Percy Spencer was working with a magnetron which is used in radar equipment when he became aware that there was a strange feeling in his pants. He discovered that a chocolate bar in his pants pocket had started to melt. He deduced that the microwave radiation of the magnetron caused the chocolate to melt and so was born the microwave oven. Read more about the microwave oven on LinkedIn here .