Over the past decade, higher network bandwidths and processing power has resulted in a significant increase in the demand placed on storage requirements. Plunging storage media costs and the mission-critical nature of data have both spurred the implementation of redundant data storage, or better known as storage replication to ensure higher availability of reliability of stored data.

Another important concept which has evolved alongside storage replication is storage virtualization. Simply put, storage virtualization allows a user or an application to access a storage volume as if it were connected physically to the host computer or server, where in fact, the physical storage device is residing on a set of one or more network connected servers.

Typically, storage virtualization is achieved using one of three implementations, namely host-based, storage device based and network based. Host-based virtualization has been around in operating systems for a long time. To illustrate with a simple example, a single 2 TB hard drive can be partitioned into multiple logical or virtual drives of smaller sizes. Users and applications utilize the logical drive as if it were an actual physical storage device. The operating system or host handles and interprets the I/O requests which are translated to the physical level.

Storage device based virtualization is best explained with RAID devices where a set of physical devices can present themselves as a single abstracted storage location to the host computer or server. Besides virtualization, disk arrays can also provide cloning, snapshots and remote replication.

Network based is the third and most popular implementation of storage virtualization, and is achieved using high availability storage software. In this implementation, existing server and network resources are utilized to create networked SAN typically utilizing iSCSI or FC or Fibre Channel technologies. Fibre Channel technology requires storage servers to be connected using dedicated Fibre cabling which is expensive but guarantees high data throughput. iSCSI Storage is the more popular implementation which is also known as SCSI over IP. This technology allows organizations to leverage existing server and network infrastructure to create highly available and reliable Storage Area Networks or SANs.

StarWind Software is the developer and vendor of StarWind 5.0, an SAN Software utilizing iSCSI Storage that turns any industry-standard server into a highly reliable and highly available enterprise-class SAN or centralized storage. StarWind 5.0 works extremely well as a centralized storage system for Server applications such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Sharepoint Server or any other data-driven server application.

Additionally, StarWind 5.0 is also well suited for use in conjunction with application server virtualization platforms such as VMWare, Microsoft Hyper-V R2, creating robust, high-availability virtual servers, minimizing downtime and maximizing productivity.

On either implementation scenarios, users are provided with an entire suite of features which include Synchronous Data Mirroring, Automatic Failover, Failback with Fast Synchronization, Remote/Asynchronous Replication, CDP & Snapshots, Server Clustering and Thin Provisioning.

If you would like to maximize your IT infrastructure utilizing iSCSI Storage, StarWind 5.0 from StarWind Software is your platform of choice for high availability storage software.

To download a trial copy and to obtain additional information, visit StarWind Software.

If you have been a Windows application developer for the past 10 years, you would remember that when building a small, desktop sized application database driven application, perhaps the only viable option for a database would have been the Microsoft Jet Engine, which is what Microsoft Access is based upon. It used to get the job done, but with multiple users, the typical problem was that since it was file-based, the database would get corrupted as multiple simultaneous record updates took place.

Then at the turn of the century, along came a well-kept secret, the free Microsoft Desktop Engine, also known as MSDE 2000. This was essentially a scaled down version of the SQL Server 2000, with a size limit of 2GB. Microsoft did not over-advertize this database, and it did not even come with its own Management Tool. So you either had to use Microsoft Access as a front end (yes its possible, we will cover this in another post), or you had to purchase a third party tool such as MSDE Manager by Vale Software. This allowed many people to develop desktop and web applications on the Windows platform, with a more reliable database.

Subsequently, Microsoft a similarly scaled down version of the SQL Server 2005 database and branded it as Express. So it was called Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express edition. This worked just as well as the MSDE 2000, and was also Vista compatible, in addition to having a larger data limit of 4 GBs. These two factors moved a large number of developers to switch from MSDE 2000 to MS SQL 2005 Express edition.

Currently, SQL Server 2008 Express edition is the latest free database offering from Microsoft. It comes with many more features compared with the humble MSDE 2000, including its own Management Tool, reporting, and full-text search. To obtain a copy of this database, head over to : The SQL Server 2008 Express homepage.

The database is powerful enough to handle most desktop and workgroup applications. The good thing is that if you start off with the Express edition and find that you need a more robust database, you can easily switch to the one of the many versions of the full-fledged SQL Server 2008. Click here for a full comparison of all the versions of SQL Server 2008, including the free Express edition.

Just a word of advise, SQL Server 2008 Express edition starts in a “lockdown” mode. To prevent security risks, you will need to enable any features which you need on the server. Even simple network access within a local area network is disabled. Its designed to work only in Shared Memory mode when first installed. To get access to the server over TCP/IP, you will need to fire up the SQL Server Configuration Manager. Under SQL Server Services, first make sure that the SQL Server Browser service is running. Next, expand the SQL Server Network Configuration, and under Protocols for SQLEXPRESS, right click on TCP/IP and click on Enable. Now, double click on TCP/IP and under the IP addresses tab, you will see all the IP address which are associated with your server. Make sure you change those which you need to Enable and Active. Phew talk about lockdown security. If you still cannot access your SQL Server, you may also want to enable the NetBIOS protocol on your network connection, and also Enable the Named Pipes protocol in your Protocols for SQL Express.

Hopefully these steps you help you save some frustration in connecting to your SQL Server 2008 Express edition. Would love to hear from your on your experiences.

Firefox helped redefine the rules of web standard compliance when it first came out, fighting a David and Goliath battle against IE 6 then. It has come a long way now, and is the second browser in market dominance today.

Firefox 3.5 was released recently, promising double the processing speeds of Firefox 3.

I breezed through the upgrade process and hastily tried navigating around in Gmail. Decidedly faster.

Then, I realized the Offline Gmail feature was not working. I figured I needed to reinstall and resync the whole thing again, so I tried downloading Google Gears. That’s when I bumped into an error message and after Googling it up, I realized Google Gears has not been released for Firefox 3.5

This means users who rely on Google Gears (eg GMail Offline and Wordpress) are left in the dark. People have been complaining on message boards but somehow Google has yet to release an update for Google Gears on Firefox 3.5.

The Solution:  Geza Kovacs from MIT has released his own plugin for Firefox 3.5 which works perfectly well! If he could build it, I’m sure Google could have too. Perhaps they are trying to get people to switch over to their browser, Google Chrome. Anyway, Geza Kovacs’ solution is here : http://groups.google.com/group/gears-users/msg/70f164020c0f8f4e?pli=1

Just click on the appropriate link for your operating system, and you’re good to go!

I have been using AVG for a good number of years now and it has worked trouble-free for me. Out of the blue, a couple of days ago, a strange thing began happening to my AVG 8 Free Edition antivirus. It would refuse to update itself. A popup kept appearing saying Update failed. The connection with update server has failed.

Initially, I thought it was just due to the update server being too busy, with AVG boasting over 80 millions users worldwide. The next day, the symptoms were exactly the same, and I thought there was something wrong with my Internet connection, or perhaps the updater was being blocked by the firewall. I quickly ruled that out when it still would not update even using my wireless connection at home.

A search on Google revealed many other disgruntled users with the same problem, but no solution was to be seen. I then decided to check through every option in the Tools…Advanced Settings menu in AVG. Under the Update settings, I discovered that a checkbox saying ‘Use dial-up connections’  had somehow become selected. I unchecked this and restarted AVG, and voila! It was hungrily downloading the updates it had been deprived of the past few days.

So if you don’t know why your AVG 8 antivirus decides to stop updating all of a sudden, double check this setting to make sure it didn’t get switched on somehow.

Today’s post is about something I have wanted for a long time… Being able to access Gmail offline. You see, I use Gmail to send and receive email from multiple addresses (you can add up to 5 other email addresses). So yes, you could use Gmail to send and receive your Streamyx email or any email service that supports POP or IMAP.

So, this morning when the option to enable offline access to Gmail appeared under my Google Labs options in Gmail, I quickly grabbed the opportunity. You see, Gmail has been the perfect solution to all my email needs, especially with the virtually unlimited storage and multiple email address support. But the biggest gripe was it was not available offline since the emails are stored on Google’s servers. This was a major disadvantage compared to downloading emails to an email client, such as Microsoft Outlook.

So lets see how to go about enabling this feature for your Gmail account. First of all, you will need to check if this feature has been rolled out to your account yet. In typical Google style, the features are rolled out to their users in batches. Just click settings in Gmail, and then click on the third option from the right, Labs.

Here you will see a list of fascinating features which have not been officially released as part of the Gmail offering, but are available for mass user testing. While the title at the top says experimental features, based on my experience, all of Gmail Labs features work very well. That’s Gmail just being extra careful with which features they deploy.

Anyway, coming back to the Offline Gmail feature, click on the Enable radio button to enable this feature for your Gmail. Make sure you scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click on Save Changes. Next, go back to your Gmail inbox, and you will see the word “Offline 0.1″ on the top right hand corner. Click on this to start the entire Offline installation process.

Essentially, the Gmail Offline feature uses Google Gears, an application designed by Google to help bridge the gap between web-based and desktop programs. If you do not already have it, you will be prompted to install Google Gears. Based on your usage, Gmail Offline will automatically decide how much email it will save on your desktop for offline access. In my case, it decided it would fetch email from up to a year ago.

While the synchronization process is running, you will see a green rotation icon indicating the sync process is in progress. Placing your mouse pointer over this icon will show a quick status on how much of your email has been synchronized, including attachments. After the initial sync process is complete, it will continuously and intelligently sync your emails between the Google server and your computer to ensure you always have access to your emails, be it online or offline.

So if you thought Gmail was incomplete because it was only accessible online, think again, and enable the Offline mode access to enjoy Gmail in its fully glory.

Adobe PDF is perhaps one of the most ubiquitous file formats on the Internet today. It allows users with the Adobe Reader (or other PDF compliant reader software) to view and print (if allowed) PDF documents. The beauty of the PDF format is that it can be created from any originating file format, be it Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, vector images, PowerPoint slideshows, Websites. Anything at all that can be printed out by your computer, can be converted into a PDF document. The best part of the conversion is that the layout of the original document, along with its fonts is retained so your readers get to see your content exactly the way you created it, without having to have the originating software.

While viewing PDF documents is free with the Adobe Reader, Adobe charges big money for its Adobe Acrobat software which is their solution to creating PDF documents. But we don’t want to have to pay to create PDF documents, do we? So I scoured the web and discovered that there are in fact a few free PDF creation tools available for FREE!

BullZip is perhaps the best of the lot, and is downloadable free of charge from here : http://www.bullzip.com/products/pdf/info.php. It works just like Adobe Acrobat, since installs as a printer driver. The generated PDFs do not contain any kind of advertising or popups which is a major plus point for this program. The only limitation is that its FREE for personal and commercial use for up to 10 users. In most cases, this is not a limitation anyway.

BullZip’s features include :

• Print to PDF from almost any Windows program
• Runs on Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/XP x64/2003/2003 x64/Vista/Vista x64/2008
• Supports 64-bit operating systems
• Direct output to the same file each time or prompt for destination
• Control if the printer should ask if you want to see the resulting PDF document
• Control output and prompts programmatically
• Setup can run unattended
• Graphical user interface
• Password protect PDF documents
• 128/40 bit encryption
• Quality settings (screen, printer, ebook, prepress)
• Set document properties, Watermark text, size, rotation, and transparency.
• Superimpose/background documents.
• Appending/prepending documents.
• User interface control.
• Command line interface to all settings.
• COM/ActiveX interface for programmatic control.
• Support for Citrix MetaFrame
• Support for Windows Terminal Server
• Multiple output types supported: BMP, JPEG, PCX, PDF, PNG, and TIFF.

So, if you are looking for the perfect solution to being able to create PDF documents from any Windows program for FREE and without any hassle or limitations, go get BullZip. You will thank yourself you did.

Lots of people have asked me if its possible to download videos from YouTube and how to go about doing it. Yes, indeed its possible, in fact there are two ways of doing it. A) The free, but lengthy way; B) The cheap and quick way. Lets look at option A first (Click here to skip to the cheap and quick way)

OPTION A) The free but lengthy way

STEP 1 : Identifying the video

Identify the full address of the video which you want to download including the YouTube address (eg : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P6UU6m3cqk. You can get this from the address bar at the top of your browser window or by clicking on the More Info link at the right hand bar, from the URL box. Copy this address and have it ready to be used in the next step.

STEP 2 : Preparing for download

Open up a new browser window or tab and go to http://keepvid.com/. Here you will need to paste the address of the video you copied in STEP 1 into the box which says “URL”. Next click on the download button on the right hand side of the box DO NOT click on the Download, Convert and Play icons they are just advertisements.

STEP 3 : Downloading the video

Depending on the video you have chosen, you will be shown links which allow you to download the video file directly in a green box at the bottom of the page. Here you can choose to download either the low quality (FLV) format video or high quality (MPEG 4) format video by right clicking on the relevant link and choosing Save As. If you choose the Low Quality (FLV) option, you will have to rename the file from get_video to something else with an FLV extension, for example you may call the video “funny.flv”

STEP 4 : Playing the video

Depending on the video format you saved your file in Step 3, you will either need to have an FLV player to view the lower quality video file you downloaded in the FLV format, or an MPEG 4 player to view the high quality video file. FLV Player is a good player to use to view FLV video files. Apple Quicktime and many other video players are able to handle MPEG 4 videos without problems. Enjoy!

OPTION B) The cheap and quick way

STEP 1 : Download VideoPiggy

If you do not want the hassle of performing the steps above each time you need to download a video from YouTube, and want a quick and easy way to get your YouTube videos, I recommend VideoPiggy, an excellent piece of software which will make it effortless to download videos from YouTube and to convert them into any format you choose for various applications (such as inserting into PowerPoint presentations). Video Piggy will also download videos from other video servers including Google Video, Metacafe and MySpaceTV!

Click here to get VideoPiggy now!

Malaysians are greatly disadvantaged since we do not have free access to foreign media unless it goes through the censor board first. Freeview satellite tv is unheard of, and all we have is Astro which is a restricted commercial satellite tv service.

The Internet has been responsible to liberate a lot of such constraints which have been imposed on Malaysians all this while, most notable is the easier access to uncensored local and foreign news on the the World Wide Web. But what about TV? We are still restricted as to what we can and cannot watch.

iSoftwareTV is the perfect answer to this problem. Essentially, it is a piece of software which gives you access to over 3000 channels featuring Full DVD Quality Movies, International TV Shows, Music Videos and much more! This amazing piece of software has received acclaim from CNN, MSNBC, CNET and America Online. The best part is that since it is software, it will work wherever you are in the world! All you need is access to an Internet connection.

Your Astro subscription easily sets you back RM 80- RM90 a month on average, and you get to watch reruns of the same shows again and again. If you are in the United States, traditional satellite TV and Cable services can cost easily in excess of $90/month. iSoftwareTV costs only $39.95 ONE TIME. There is no monthly recurring fee to be paid at all. Even if you convert that to Ringgit Malaysia, it comes up to about RM 120 which is what you are paying A MONTH if you subscribe to every channel on Astro (not including Box Office shows).

So the next time you switch on your TV and start flipping channels looking for something worthwhile to watch, consider getting . It is simply liberating!

If you have a fresh installation of Windows XP, you will realize that it won’t play DVD videos, or a host of other audio/video formats on the Internet, including MPEG4 videos encoded with codecs such as DivX, Xvid, H.264 and the like. Even if you do not need to be able to watch these newer MPEG4 video formats, you will at some time need to be able to at least watch a DVD Video.

However, if you were to pop in a DVD into your computer expecting Windows Media Player to play it, you will be in for a surprise, as it will not play your DVD Video if you have not installed a DVD decoder software. This is most likely to happen if you installed the DVD drive into your computer yourself, or if you have newly formatted your computer (since any DVD decoding software which may have originally come with your computer would have been erased).

If you were to perform a search on Google to solve this issue, you may come across several different websites which will point you in different directions for a solution. Most of them lead to commercial software which then allow your computer to play the DVD content. One example is this excerpt from a blog post entitled DVD Playback in Windows XP, hosted on Microsoft’s servers:

If you are unable to find an installed DVD decoder, you can purchase one from the same vendors from which PC manufacturers license theirs. Ravisent, InterVideo, and CyberLink all have DVD Decoder Packs available for purchase and download over the Internet. Windows Media Technologies also lists third-party software vendors who have DVD Decoder Packs available. The cost from each vendor runs about $14.95, unless you want to pay a little more and get a combo-pack which also includes MP3 encoding. I tried products from the three vendors mentioned above, and they all worked great. Their decoder packs installed quickly and easily, and as soon as installation was complete, Windows Media Player immediately started to play the movie after I inserted a DVD.

While some of the software mentioned above are good, the good news is that there is no real need to fork out your hard earned money just to be able to playback your multimedia content. Windows Media Player is an excellent video player and you do not really need to pay for another video player on your computer. All you really need is a proper set of codecs which will help Windows Media Player (or any other video player on your computer for that mattter) understand the format in which your multimedia content was created in.

Personally, I would recommend the XP Codec Pack, or the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack depending on your needs. Essentially, both of these are a set of codecs which have been carefully put together to enable the playback of most audio/video formats. If alll you want to watch is DVD Video or AVIs encoded with DivX or Xvid, then XP Codec Pack would suffice. If you want to be sure of being able to watch practically any audio/video content available today, regardless of what codec it was encoded with, you will want to go for the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack.

Both of these codec packs also include Windows Player Classic, which allows you to access the various functions included with the codecs, allowing finer control over how the audio and video content is decoded, thereby tremendously improving your viewing experience. So if you find that you are unable to play a certain format of video or audio on your computer, be it DVD content, or a movie you downloaded from the Internet, be sure to install one of the codec packs mentioned above, and you should be well on your way to enjoying your multimedia content.

If you are like most people, you have a digital camera and constantly download your pictures from the camera into the My Pictures folder in your computer. Depending on how organized you are, you either save your pictures according to date or title; or do not bother with organizing them at all.

No matter how you currently organize your photographs, Picasa, a free photo management software from Google is set to revolutionize the way you manage your photographs on your computer. In a nutshell, Picasa allows you to locate and organize all the photos on your computer, edit and add effects to your photographs with a few simple clicks, and share your photos with others through email, prints and on the web. If you have a PC running Windows 2000/Windows XP, with at least Internet Explorer 5.0, you are all set to start using Picasa!

The very first time you run Picasa, its powerful indexing system scans each and every image on your computer, and automatically sorts them by date. You may even discover photographs you had long forgotten about. The next time you run Picasa, it will intelligently and quickly find and add newly added photographs to its collection.

Picasa makes it easy to rename photograps one at a time, or all at once. This is a useful feature and allows users to assign more meaningful names to their photographs. These photos can then be organized into albums, much like traditional printed photographs. One major difference though, is that Picasa allows users to place a photograph into multiple albums. It does this without actually making multiple copies of the photos, only by adding new references to the same photograph. This feature is not only powerful, its intelligent implementation reduces hard disk space utilization as well.

If that’s not enough, Picasa also includes fun photo effects which can turn ordinary photographs into works of art at the click of button. Some of these include sepia-tone, black and white, warmify, or even more advanced effects which let you vary the degree with which the effects are applied.

Download Picasa today and you will discover why its really the only photo management software you will ever need on your desktop computer. To read even more about this amazing software, head over to the Picasa Product Tour.