Frequently Asked Questions

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Why does Dana French charge so much for his services as a business continuity technical expert? Especially since I can hire 5 offshore personnel for what he charges?

Mr. French has decades of technical experience keeping business functions running and operational. He is able to anticipate problems and eliminate them from the design and operation of your facilities and hardware. He is able to dramatically reduce your business function outages and costs based on the implementation of advanced technologies and concepts that he has spent years developing and testing in numerous Fortune 100 data center environments. By hiring Mr French, you are the beneficiary of all of these decades of design and experience. You are not funding the education and experience of novice technology personnel, you are paying for state of the art, advanced, cutting edge, design and implementation that will put your organization far ahead of your competitors.

Because of his experience and knowledge, Mr French is able to save your organization money far over and above anything you may spend to hire him. Contrary to popular belief, technical personnel are NOT interchangeable, experience counts and saves you money.

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But I can hire 5 offshore people for what he charges. Wouldn't I get 5 times the work, knowledge, and experience by hiring 5 offshore people instead?

No. You could hire 100 offshore people and still not achieve the advanced technical environments and cost savings that Mr Dana French provides. If you are outsourcing your technical administration services offshore, the technical service you will receive will be the absolute minimum of what can be hired by the overseas technical company. This novice level of expertice and experience will never provide a competitive technical environment. You will be fortunate to even receive a moderately functional environment. Your organization will be quickly surpassed by your competition who recognizes the technology gap in the market, and takes advantage of that gap by implementing advanced technical environments. For your organization to stay ahead of your competitors, you must implement the latest advanced technologies. You will never achieve that by hiring offshore personnel, all you will ever get is the minimum required functionality to meet the SLA.

Furthermore, when it is time to upgrade your technology, you will find that your systems designed and managed by offshore personnel were designed only for the purpose of meeting the minimum SLA at the time the contract was signed, WITH NO CONSIDERATION FOR ANY FUTURE NEEDS OR REQUIREMENTS. You will find that upgrading your systems or implementing new technologies will require you to completely redesign your entire environment.

If you hired Mr Dana French, your systems would have been designed to accept and participate in future needs and requirements, thus saving your organization money far over and above anything you would have paid for Mr French's services.

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Do you have technical managers who insist on implementing the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid) or similar concepts? If so, you will be out of business soon, and here is why:

It has been observed in numerous IT departments that non-technical IT management personnel typically cling to some useless methodology to limit the activities of their technology experts to a level that non-technical personnel can understand. An example is the KISS principle, which stands for "Keep It Simple, Stupid".

Everywhere a concept such as KISS is applied, it is by non-technical IT managers who have no concept of the advanced capabilities in todays virtualized environments. They attempt to restrict the usage of these advanced technologies simply because they do not understand them. The result is the organization suffers because the IT department can no longer provide competitive systems under the restrictions of the KISS principle or similar concepts. Very large organizations have literally gone bankrupt because of non-technical IT managers restricting the implementation of advanced technologies using this type of logic.

There is a reason advanced technologies exist and are introduced into technical environments, they reduce costs, time, and effort. They also improve availability, recoverability, and stability. Implementing, supporting, and maintaining these advanced technologies typically require advanced technical experts. Avoiding these technologies simply because they are advanced and complex, is a fast-track to putting your organization out of business. Your competitors are certainly looking for any advantage to take over your market share, and they will not hesitate to implement advanced complicated technologies to accomplish this goal. But regardless of whether you or your competitors implement these advanced technologies, it will require advanced technical experts to implment, support, and manage them. But in the end, it will save your organization money to embrace advanced technology concepts. Attempting to restrict advanced technology and concepts is a losing position and will put your organization out of business.

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How can I license the VLPAR^tm automated deployment appliance for business continuity, disaster recovery, high availability, and virtualization?

For licensing information about VLPAR^tm Contact Dana French, president, Mt Xia Inc.

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Where can I obtain business continuity methodologies, policies, standards, and procedures?

Many of the business continuity methodologies, policies, guidelines standards and procedures developed by Mt Xia are freely available at the following URL:

http://www.mtxia.com/js/Business-Continuity/index.shtml

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Where can I attend an instructor led Disaster Recovery class?

Mr. Dana French teaches the class titled "Disaster Recovery Planning for the Enterprise" through Learning Tree International. Please refer to the following URL for class description, availability, and schedule:

http://www.learningtree.com/courses/289.htm

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Where can I obtain the "shell curses" library of shell functions?

The "shell curses" library of shell functions is available at the following URLs:

http://www.mtxia.com/js/Downloads/Scripts/Korn/Functions/shcurses/index.shtml

http://shunix.sourceforge.net

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Where can I obtain the "Shell Based Unix Utilities" library of shell functions?

The "shunix" libraries are now available on SourceForge at the following URL:

http://shunix.sourceforge.net

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Where can I obtain a shell scripting template?

A standardized Korn Shell 93 script template can be obtained at the following URL:

http://www.mtxia.com/js/Downloads/Scripts/Korn/shellscript_template_k93.shtml

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Where can I obtain books written by by Dana French?

Books written by Dana French are listed at the following URL:

http://www.mtxia.com/js/Documentation/index.shtml

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Where can I obtain published articles written by Dana French?

Dana French publishes regularly in "AIX Update" journal. Please refer to the following URL for further information:

http://www.xephonusa.com: AIX Update Journal

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