hi greg
- electrical power failure (UPS)
currently using apc surge arrest, but not a ups. and i keep wanting to get one...
- data backup (i.e. tape or disk imaging)
been using iomega jaz 1gb disks (with compression i can fit almost 2gb per disk) for both full system and incremental backups. i've used norton 'zip' rescue disks once to rebuild a corrupted start up routine. lately i've switched to disk imaging (drive image3.0) for data back up and rollback recovery. i installed a second physical hd and have used powerquest's partition magic5.0 to create multiple partitions on each hd. i store images from one physical drive on the second physical drive and vice versa. imaging has so far saved me once when used as a rollback after symantec software just plain screwed everything all up. imaging has caused me to almost totally ignore the jaz drive. takes me about 3 minutes to image a 2gb partition as compared to about 40 minutes via jaz.
- multiple / redundant high-speed internet service providers (ISP's) which use ethernet-based connections such as cable or DSL
i have three isp's. one is cable modem, the other two are dial up. i made sure all are on different backbones in case one goes down there's a better chance that the other will remain okay. cable modem is currently just 'one-way', i.e, downstream and analog upstream. in the spring it will migrate to a conventional two-way cable modem system.
- high-availability, will automatically route to the other internet connection if one fails
see above, but no auto re-route capability
- internet sharing (NAT) for all computers on the internal network
i will network my two pc's as soon as i get out from under this one-way cable modem that seems to be complicating any ics plans for right now.
- automatic configuration of network settings (DHCP) for computers on the internal network
not applicable as of yet
- firewall protects internal network from snoopy hackers
i am currently running three firewalls simultaneously, blackice defender, zonealarm and norton personal firewall. this is on my win98se partition. i dual boot win2000pro, and so far i only have blackice and zonealarm configured on w2k. the symantec people say their norton products are win2k compatible, but imo, that is not an accurate statement. i plan to disable the w2k windows installer in order to get the norton firewall to install.
"What about the reliability aspect..."
i've been running win2000pro for 10 days now. the os hasn't crashed once, no IPF's or GPF's, no browser crashes, freezes, hangs, low resource errors, nothing like i have experienced in win98se.
hope this helps
:)
mark |
