- System Monitoring
- Network Security
- Email Servers
- Email Scanning
- Operating Systems
- File & Print Servers
- SAN Solutions
- Budget Planning
- DNS Servers
- Web Servers
- Server Virtualization
- e-Learning
- Backup Solutions
- Database Servers
- Helpdesk Software
- Instant Messaging
- Network Fax Servers
- Website (CMS)
- Web Filtering
- Terminal Servers (LTSP)
- Wireless Systems
- Firewall & VPN
About Us
Reverse Polarity has been deploying and supporting open-source and open standards technology solutions for almost two decades now. We have proven experience in the technology industry supporting Linux, Novell, FreeBSD, Unix, Apple and Microsoft.
We have a reputation for being "the expert's expert" within the technology industry and amongst our vendor and client relations and partnerships. Our expertise revolves around technologies and processes used to secure, stabilize and maintain network infrastructures and services.
We provide technology assessments, recommendations and solutions to fix, upgrade, maintain, and deploy network infrastructures, systems, applications, and monitoring tools that best fit our clients' situations and requirements.
Our solutions have a reputation for being stable and reliable because each solution is strategically assessed per each client's technology needs, environments, situations, budgets and objectives.
Our main client base consists of organizations such as boarding/day schools and government agencies.
Open-Source Software In The News
Here you will find a growing list of examples where Linux and other open-source software is being used successfully in schools, municipalities and businesses all around the world.
- 06/09/11 - Bacula Systems Receives US$5 Million in Fund Raising
- 08/30/10 - Five Reasons Linux Beats Windows for Servers
- 10/25/09 - WhiteHouse.gov Switches from Proprietary Content Management system to Drupal
- 03/31/09 - LINUX is the 'patch' to cure Conficker worm
- 03/23/09 - SUN Microsystems CEO - "What's next for open source?"
- 02/25/09 - Dries Buytaert (Drupal Author) - On the future of open-source
Here are some PDF articles on open-source software. Click on the links below to download the article.
Encrypted offsite backups on auto-mounted media with Bacula & vchanger
Introduction:
Since backups are the most important process regardless of what industry you are in, it pays to put a lot of thought into creating a reliable, easy-to-use, scalable, and secure backup solution.
Why reliable?
This should be pretty obvious. Without a reliable backup solution that "just works" you can not be 100% sure that you will be able to restore any data at any time, and this clearly a bad thing. Files are lost or accidentally deleted by users and there is no excuse for not being able to restore this data.
Why easy-to-use?
If your backup process is not simple and painless for the end users (eg: the person or persons responsible for rotating the backup media) then sooner or later shortcuts will be taken, steps will be skipped, errors or warnings will be ignored, and you will not have the data you need when disaster strikes - and it will strike, it's just a matter of time.
Why Scalable?
How much data are you backing up today? Tomorrow? Next week, month, year? If you build a backup system to only handle your current needs, it will surely need to be replaced sooner than you'd think. You want to make sure that the backup solution you build will take care of your needs now and will continue to work into the future with minor adjustments rather than needing to be completely replaced in a year or two
Why Secure?
The only thing more important than having good offsite backups of your data is making sure that someone else does not have access to your data. This is where encryption comes in. If your backups are written to an encrypted device (hard drive, tape drive, CDROM, etc) then you can safely transport your backup media on a regular schedule to an off-site location without the fear of your data being compromised.
The Concept:
The end result we are working towards is an inexpensive, reliable, open-source backup system with multiple, removable, encrypted, inexpensive SATA hard drives that may be removed and changed by an end user without the need to do more than unplug a drive and plug another one in.
Monitoring Temperature with Open-Source Software
Recently, while looking for a reasonably priced temperature sensor device that we could integrate into a Xymon monitoring server to monitor our server room as well as our clients' server rooms, a Google search turned up ControlByWeb.com and their 4-sensor/2-relay temperature module. It met all of our requirements.
This monitor is not only inexpensive, but it is also very simple to set up. And since the temperature readings are readily available to a web browser, it is just as easy to integrate into a Xymon monitoring server using some simple shell scripting and a great utility called "curl" to pull the state.xml web page that contains the temperature readings.
Take a look at http://www.revpol.com/xymon_cbw_temp_script to see the Xymon integration instructions and the actual bash shell script you may use to monitor, log, and graph up to four temperature reading from one of these devices.
To learn more about Xymon and some of the other Open-Source tools we use and support on our network and our clients' networks, see our System Monitoring page .
posted from my Nokia N900
