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Misc
Items of Note
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Server Migrations |
Beginning in
November of 2009 and continuing through the Christmas and New Years
holiday season, DataWedge has been slowly migrating their entire hosted
server stack to a brand-new storage facility.
The best description of a
successful technical undertaking is when your users are hardly aware
that anything has really been done at all.
While we'll admit that the
journey hasn't been without its random hiccups, overall we're pretty
happy with the end results.
This month, we'll go over some
changes that have happened, and how it affects you. |
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PCI
Compliance: dtsc.net Part I
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The single largest driving force for our entire server migration has
been to abide by PCI Compliance.
As part of DataWedge's PA-DSS compliance (SOFTWARE-level compliance, as
opposed to an RDS's PCI-OPERATIONAL compliance), it became more and
more obvious that our old hosting facility was not going to be able to
plug enough security holes to make it all work.
Our new hosting facility places the first line of servers behind a
commercial-level firewall, with the databases (second line, where the
customer and credit card information is stored) located behind an
ADDITIONAL firewall behind the first line.
This means that your Trustwave scans (you HAVE set up your Trustwave
Account, right?) are now completely in the GREEN when it comes to your
individual PCI security audits for your hosted web engine.
As part of the server migration, the domain "dtsc.net" has been
retired. As far as PCI Compliance goes, this means that for
all of your Trustwave Accounts, you need to REMOVE DTSC.NET as your
domain to be scanned for security. (It won't return anything,
and therefore will probably be rejected by Trustwave).
You may have noticed that we have been slowly swapping in
"deliverycheckout.com" as the new domain for use with your web engine.
In your Trustwave Account, you can the system up to scan
'deliverycheckout.com' instead of now retired 'dtsc.net'.
We have already tested Trustwave against our new server stack, and it
passes PCI Security scans with flying colors.
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dtsc.net Part II
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As mentioned above, "dtsc.net" has been phased out, being replaced with
"deliverycheckout.com".
The dtsc.net domain was largely decommissioned on December 31st of
2009. Anyone that was using the dtsc.net domain on any of their parent
pages to "light up" an instance of their on-line engine already knows
of the changes required in referencing the web engine from a parent
page, and the swapping to "deliverycheckout.com".
But some of the 'smaller' issues might not be known by some of the
other customers.
In the past month, we have uncovered lots of "little nagging" ways that
dtsc.net was used that we didn't accomodate for.
Some folks have been planting and hard-coding logos around the internet
using the "upload" feature on the web engine, with the "dtsc.net" links
in the admin pages.
Some folks have just been "dusting off" old email campaigns and
re-using the dtsc.net links that were previously embedded/referenced.
All in all, if anything you've got references the domain
'dtsc.net', then the link/reference itself needs to be updated.
The new domain/reference can be found by going back to your
admin pages and seeing the new link for your existing item.
In nearly all cases, the link can be simply "translated" by SWAPPING
the text "dtsc.net" for "deliverycheckout.com".
(The easiest example of this, of course, is in pointing out that your
new admin pages are now located at http://admin.deliverycheckout.com).
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Server
Monitoring enabled
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In addition, we have activated a new server monitoring service,
allowing us to keep VERY tabs on all running web sites, and be
notifed IMMEDIATLY if any issues occur with ANY individual running
system. This allows us to respond MUCH more quickly in the
case of any outages, or system problems.
However, as part of this, for those of you using Google Analytics with
the web engine, you might want to put some filters into your Google
Analytics Reporting. Our monitoring system is hitting the web
sites EVERY 60 SECONDS to ensure that everything is healthy... and such
a high series of hits on your web site will
probably affect/falsely inflate any tracking you are doing.
The IP Addresses that are monitoring our server facility are:
174.36.164.10
174.36.223.19
83.170.102.137
74.208.161.45
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Full Menu
Extracts/Single Menu Updates
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Early in December, we stumbled across a problem on our server stack
that was causing an intermittent service issue for web engines during
periods of mutiple menu extractions by several RDS's process.
To quickly compensate, we
limited the menu extraction process to run only during a scheduled time
period 4 times a daily. Uploads were still ACCEPTED for
processing, but would simply be QUEUED UP until the servers were in an
"off-peak" ordering window.
Knowing that we could not
simply "take away" the ability to do full extracts at any time without
any substitute, we quickly introduced a version of DMS that was able to
push a SINGLE MENU up to the Internet immediately.
Our original intent was to
re-enable the menu extracts as they were before once we migrated
everything to our new server facility... but upon looking at the logs
and seeing how the newer system was being used, we have
decided to keep the system as is.
As it turns out, 75% of the
uploads that are now occuring are with the single menu update solution,
with only a HANDFUL of extracts being run during a scheduled time
window.
Rather than do a FULL-EXTRACT
simply
to change a single menu item, most RDS's are now simply opting to do a
single menu-update instead.
This goes along with a theory
we have had for a while, that the majority of menu updates that occur
aren't actually changing an ENTIRE MENU, but rather a single menu
price, or an update to "the soup of the day".
The scheduled FULL EXTRACTS are
run at 11:00am PST, 1:30PM PST, 4:00pm PST, and at 2:00am PST.
In addition, a DMS version will
be soon released that will also immediatly synchronize Restaurants,
Geography, and Delivery Fees... further reducing the need to do a full
menu extract at all.
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A last minute comment on BACKUPS
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On a personal note, we had the misfortune of having an internal server
crisis of our own last Friday: DataWedge's E-mail server
completely crashed.
This was only used for email sent to the DataWedge domain, so no RDS's
were affected by the outage, and email receipts sent from web orders
were unaffected... but it was a cool lesson in WHY EVERYONE should be
looking at their own backup solutions.
For our own INTERNAL data backup solution, DataWedge subscribes to
the off-site backup service called CARBONITE.
(Perhaps you've seen their commercials on TV?)
For the past 2 years, DataWedge has been paying the $50 a YEAR, and
having the internal email/data server quietly backed up off-site to
Carbonite... unlimited backup storage and very reasonably priced...
... but much like the spare tire in the back of your car, or the
insurance policy in your glove box... the day you have to use a backup
solution to solve your problems is never a good one.
However, in this case, with a completely shot motherboard combined with
just enough corrupt data to make the system unusable... I was able to
quickly access my Carbonite information off-site, download the
necessary files that had been synchronized, and re-instate my internal
e-mail server. While no computer failure is ever a GOOD one,
I was able to reduce an issue that would have taken me WEEKS to recover
from (in terms of lost emails/data etc) into nothing more than a major
annoyance on a Friday.
For those of you who are looking for an easy way to manage your data,
(in particular your DMSBAK.BAK files), I highly recommend Carbonite.
It's simple to use, easy to manage, and when I TRULY NEEDED
IT, it worked.
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If you have other tips/tricks you
would like to share, or if you want to see how other RDS's are using
the DMS program, we encourage you to visit the DataWedge discussion
forums, located at: http://forums.datawedge.com
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| DataWedge Services |
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Web Services...
The process of caring and feeding your own
web server on your local network can be an expensive and daunting
task. Not many companies have the financial resources to
purchase and maintain the hardware necessary to run a web server out of
their office, in addition to the technical savvy necessary to keep it
secure from hackers on the internet.
DataWedge created an On-Line Ordering engine
to help solve some of these problems. Your restaurant and menu data is
uploaded and hosted securely on a DataWedge professionally hosted
internet server, away from your office internet connection - giving
hackers no place to scratch away at your network.
 DataWedge Sample Site.
The DataWedge system is a "pay-for-what-you-use" system. This
means for as little as $30 per month, you can have a professional web
presence available on the internet including restaurant information,
menus, and on-line ordering. Use of our templates and get on the
internet in a matter of days! For an example of a template
site, you can click here,
or click here.
Do you have an existing web site, but just
want to include on-line ordering functionality? No problem...
our On-Line Web engine has the ability to be wrapped inside a
frame. Measuring only 720 pixels wide, you can easily
integrate your own web site around an instance of an ordering engine,
and have the ability to push DMS data out to the internet, and have
orders push directly into your system. To see examples of
companies that have integrated their own web sites with our ordering
engines, you can click here, or you
can click here.
If you would like more information on our
on-line ordering engine, please don't hesitate to contact us (208)
874-4185 .
FoodGetters...
FoodGetters.com
represents our new aggregated web site, aimed at being firmly planted
as a national on-line food ordering portal.
Because DataWedge utilizes
a
"pay-for-what-you-use" billing system, it's in our best interest to
drive as many transactions as we can towards your service.
FoodGetters.com
currently is in beta with our brand new web engine, and hopes to go
live in January of 2010 with as many RDS's that wish to join.
At this time we are not accepting any new members for our
BETA period.
If
you would like more information on being a part of FoodGetters after
the BETA period, please
contact us (208) 874-4185.
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Credit Card Processing...
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DataWedge has teamed with Nova - the
nation's second-largest credit card processing system - to provide a
seamless charge authorization system that accepts a full range of bank
and T&E cards. The DataWedge/Nova partnership offers
a number of advantages over other card processing alternatives:
- Low transaction/discount charges
resulting from the purchasing power of one master contract for DMS
clients
- Elimination of ICVerify as a card
processing gateway. DMS is certified with the NOVA system for
direct data transmission to their system.
- The ease and efficiency of a
"seamless" process from order entry to authorization to funds transfer
into your account
If you would like to know how much you can
save over your existing credit card services,
please click here and fill out our request form
Copyright
2005-2009, DataWedge, LLC
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