Tag Archives: terminal services

Get Dropbox

15 Oct

It’s been a few years now that I’ve pondered how to share faxes with our office overseas. Before anyone criticizes the problem and offer a solution of CIF or Exchange routing, the problem is not as simple as that. Here’s the best simplification I can offer of the problem:

  1. Given 2 sites. Let HQ be the headquarter & XO be the offsite location.
  2. Given incoming faxes only.
  3. Faxes must be sorted according to its content. The sorting is manually done (drag & drop) into folders. Let’s say we have to sort into 3 folders, A, B, and C. These folders must be sorted by Day, Month, Year. That gives us 4-levels of heirarchy.
  4. HQ and XO may sort the faxes interchangeably.
  5. HQ must always have all files, thus it makes sense that files are hosted by HQ. XO does not need to have all files; only the files they need.
  6. Hierarchy must always be preserved.
  7. Both sites should be able to print faxes anytime they want.
  8. Low cost solution.
To satisfy my readers who are itching to recommend Goldmine or Exchange routing, how are you going to sort 300-500 faxes daily and easily access them when needed?
My solution was the use of Terminal Services. The disadvantages are:
  1. Expensive because of licensing, so I had to resort in limited users.
  2. Since the setup is minimal (click me), the resources are lacking which causes sluggish performance. That means, access is very slow. TS is already slow itself.
  3. Maintenance is too much of a hassle.
  4. It’s annoying to access RD in order to check faxes.
Experimental Solution
The latest solution I thought of is using Dropbox. The first 2GB is free and subscription is only $10/month @ 50GB. Therefore, I have 2GB of test space before implementing the logistics. Faxes will still be archived and hosted by HQ then XO will sync from it. XO must be restricted from deletion. Although Dropbox has the recovery feature that is a failsafe in case someone in XO‘s end is trigger-happy (my instantaneous backup in HQ‘s end will still remain of course; I’m paranoid).
With DP, the heirarchy is preserved, faxes can be easily accessed by both parties because the files will be locally (network scope) available to them. Since XO does not need the files, HQ will do deletion (folders have to be moved to reduce clutter in the workspace — imagine 30 folders when you only need the last 7 days.)

Cluster Computing

6 Oct

The main reason why I entered the computer science field is CREATION. Given a computer and programming environment, one can create something from his imagination from an empty notepad. Though I’m far from becoming a successful one, I still persist in learning. Learning is double edged. It’s fun and it’s demanding. Since my topic is cluster computing, there’s no reason for me to delve on the negative side of learning. Instead, let’s jump on the fun side. (more…)