Evaluation of Computing Situation at SALFA SALFA's computing is surprisingly good given the small budget SALFA works within. This is attributable to their excellent computing staff, in the form of Rivo, with help from Anatole, Martin and several others who get involved in computing issues. Network: The network, while archaic and cobbled together sans the sort of design which is easy with even a $1000 budget for an organization this size, worked almost well enough for their needs. Only minor changes were needed to make big difference in reliability by design. However all their networking equipment is high-risk equipment. Literally every single piece of networking equipment is either low-quality or very old. There is not one piece of enterprise-grade equipment in the entire building network. Furthermore, the wires are a mess. It is very difficult to trace the path of the wires from one location to another, and practically impossible to make changes. All wires are custom length. The movement of a PC across a room means theoretically a new thirty meter cable, and in practical terms, means a spliced-in extension to the existing cable. Such splices make a modern network impossible, because they destroy a cable's ability to carry gigabit, or even 100mbs signals. Recommendations: SALFA is moving to a new building in approximately a year. This suggests that the network as it stands need not be fixed. Instead, a plan to install a professional (or more so) network should be in place before constructing the new building. Hardware: SOA should create a paypal account for SALFA. SALFA should bid low on Cisco network equipment on Ebay. In particular, 10 megabit switches with 100 megabit uplinks, and only those in the Minneapolis area. With patience, SALFA should be able to acquire two 24 port models of this sort for under $50 each. Furthermore, SALFA should bid on low quality 10 and 100 megabit switches in quantity, aiming not to spend more than $5 each. These should be shipped to SALFA from SOA. When the new building arrives, all rooms should be wired, without exception. All rooms with any computers at all should be allotted an eight port switch, even if only one person is using the room. Machines would then patch into that switch using short cables. All these switches should be connected to one 24 port switch in the data center. The second should be kept on hand as a spare. Cabling: Cabling runs should be designed into the blueprints of the new building. Networking is important to any office building, now, and should be accommodated in the design, just as power is. Enough space should be provided to allow for both phone and Ethernet cables. Power: The power in Madagascar is frustratingly unreliable. Surges as well as power dips and complete power failures are par for the course. While the server room has two UPS systems, one is too small to be very useful for anything but a switch -- which is exactly what it is used for. Recommendations: A building level UPS should be in the design of the new building, but this wildly unrealistic, unless a funding angel should appear. More realistic is line conditioning in every room, coupled with a UPS in the server room. The one UPS in the server room should be large enough to ride out minor dips in voltage for machines which are important only during the day. In other places, one would want a separate UPS sized to ride out all outages for only those machines which must operate on a 24 by 7 basis. If SALFA were to move its mail in-house, for instance (which I do NOT recommend), such an email server would fit into this category. As is, SALFA has no such machines. Since only short power burps can be ridden out, all file systems should be journaling systems, and an auto shutdown program such as powerchute should be put in place to try to gracefully bring down systems. The existing UPS will probably handle the load just fine, with Martin's ministrations towards extending its battery pile continuing. Martin adds any discarded batteries of the sort currently in use added to the stock. I suspect that the current setup will work fine for a few years, until too many of the batteries corrode and die. Batteries are expensive to ship, so extras should be bought locally. Older, good quality line conditioners for individual offices can be purchased on Ebay for next to nothing. The same paypal account used for networking equipment can be used to purchase a good number of these. Telephone System: The current telephone system is shot, and needs fixing or replacing. Such systems are arcane and proprietary. The most important criteria in fixing or replacing is that it work for SALFA, and that almost certainly means hiring an integrator. Voice over IP systems require all 100mb networking, and as such are unreasonable for SALFA, currently. It could be reasonable for SALFA in its new building, but again, an angel would need to appear. A system of this sort would have to be a donation along with good, modern networking equipment. Recommendations: Find a good integrator. Use Free IP telephony systems like Skype wherever possible. Computers: SALFA's desktop machines and servers are all old. The systems in use work, however, and labor cost in terms of lost productivity due to slow machines is (and this is the first time I have ever said this, coming from the United States where labor is expensive) LOW. Wasting people's time is of low economic importance here. I feel callous saying that, but that's the capitalist take on it. That said, morale and efficiency will improve with better computers. Let's hope they appear. Recommendations: Desktops: SALFA has a good number of desktop computers. Surprisingly, I have little to recommend, here. Many are very old and very slow. Replacing them would be expensive. I will point out, however, that since power is poor, and the machines are old, a BACKUP STRATEGY is incredibly important. These machines will die and when they go they will take years of work with them. Central: For this reason, it's vital that there be centralized backup. Every machine should be on the network, and a large file server (at least 40 gig) should be on-line to receive the files users deem important. Every user should have their own account, and should be responsible for making sure everything of importance to SALFA is put on the shared drive. Backup of the central computer is less necessary to protect against system failure. (The files on it are only backups, after all, and the likelihood of the server dieing a the same time as a desktop is low.) But backups are vital to protect against fire or a massive burglary. To protect against these eventualities, a backup must be made of the central server and taken off-site. For instance, the backups could be taken to Rivo's home. DAT is a particularly bad tape stock for backups, and I have already seen the tapes around SALFA. DO NOT USE THEM. I recommend, once again, lurking on Ebay and buying a cheap DLT tape drive and some DLT tapes, both used. Both the drives and the tape last forever. The fileservers such should be Linux, and aside from the Filemaker applications at SALFA, I see absolutely no justification for a central Windows machine. It should be replaced with Linux when a new machine arrives to fill that role, replacing the older NT box. Why Linux? Because performance is better, as is reliability. One Linux box can perform all the functions SALFA needs in a centralized server, from file share to caching proxy to domain controller. Linux has journaling file systems which handle crashes better, should the UPS catastrophically fail. Furthermore, backups are easier to script, under Linux. Even the current NT server which is a centralized resource is currently used, at times, as a desktop. That should stop. Desktop applications suck power from server functions, and risk crashes. Lab: SALFA should have a computer lab. There are people in SALFA who do not have machines. There should be a few machines available for these people, so that these users are not underfoot in the technical department of SALFA (the Cellule Informatique), so that they do not use servers, and so that SALFA can teach classes on computer use both to SALFA employees and partners. Operating System / Software: SALFA uses Windows software which is expensive. Deals for the licenses for the software at SALFA will at some point have to be pursued. There is an alternative, of course, in the form of Linux and OpenOffice. OpenOffice will not work satisfactorily well on older machines, although Linux will. For this reason, Linux cannot work for SALFA across the board, but can for new machines. Recommendations: All new machine which do not have to run Ceil (unless Ceil has a Linux version) should be Linux. There are several reasons for this. First, no one outside of a medium to large western corporation can afford to actually pay for the Windows software -- certainly SALFA cannot. Second, Linux and OpenOffice are not an encumbrance. OpenOffice can read and write Microsoft Office files, and OpenOffice is not significantly more difficult than Word or Excel for most tasks. Third, Rivo and Anatole need to be good at Linux. They need it for cost effective servers, but they cannot make mistakes on the servers. Linux desktops allow them to grow as professionals and gain valuable experience in places where the penalty for making a mistake is small. Then when they work on the Linux server, which SALFA truly needs, they won't be lost. To rephrase more concisely: There's no penalty for using Linux for higher-powered desktops (that is, anything newer than the machines Doug and Ramona sent), and they help ensure that the tech staff stays current. Furthermore, experience with Linux desktops can act as a lever against Microsoft should you ever be in a position where you need to negotiate a license deal with Microsoft. You should therefore have some Linux desktops. Internet Connection: SALFA's Internet connection is abysmal. It may, however, be the best available. Certainly, SALFA is already hitting capacity issues. Recommendations: My offer is still outstanding to send a $280 check to SALFA if they can find a better Internet provider than Wanadoo (AKA France Telecom) for a similar price. If there is no better provider, I would still recommend bumping the Wanadoo speed up to 1 megabit. It won't help much, but it will help a little. All (ALL) desktops should be configured to use the proxy server. Periodic tests should be made using ethereal on the Linux server (ldell2) to see if there are any rogues using the Internet connection directly. If Rivo can get the username and password for the router from Wanadoo, then he should change the IP of the router to 192.168.1.1, and configure a Linux firewall on 192.168.0.1, forbidding any machine but the proxy server from using port 80 to get out onto the Internet. This would go a long way towards keeping the Internet connection from becoming unusable.