Monday, June 16, 2008 by Myke.

“Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, goodbye” - My ode to Arcserve

We have been limping along and dragging bloody stumps for some time now using Arcserve as our backup solution. Well not anymore kids, we now have a great solution in place. We have moved our company over to a disk-to-disk-to-tape solution using Exagrid (disk based backups), CommVault (backup software) and Quantum (tape libraries). This has changed our backups so dramatically it is almost unbelievable. The speeds, the success rates and ease of deployment/restore are amazing. This will change how any and all backups are setup and all restores are done for our company. I cannot tell you how many sleepless nights I have had over the last few years working with unstable and not very effective backup solutions. I can honestly say that backups will be a second thought now. If you are a small, medium or large business, this is the solution for you. I have worked with many solutions as a consultant and this is by far the greatest and most reliable to date.

Imagine that you want to backup a server…and all you have to do is point and click and the agent is deployed (no restart required) and then that evening your backup runs without issue. Now I do not want to overload you with technical blah blah but the way this solution is running, our backups are faster and more efficient and the restores are so “Dummy” proof that you can almost let your end users do their own restores. Of course we will not do that as this will cause some serious confusion and of course the training time. I will post some pictures and diagrams later.

I have not even got to the greatest part of all yet. SUPPORT! How many times have you called and either got the south-side of India or the north-side of India? I hate those calls man, I mean I really hate those calls. And for the love of God, stop pretending your name is Bob or Erik or Tammy. We know your names are tough for us in the USA but trying to use a common American name only pisses us off even more. Sorry I got a bit carried away again. All three of our vendors have support here in the USA! That rocks man.

I will keep you all posted as we grow with this new solution and how much it helps us out on a daily basis.

New solution numbers
Backup times - cut down by an average of 53% (this will continue to get faster as we work out some backup issues, not the fault of the system but from us learning and debugging)
Backup space - cut down by an average of 75% (this is due to Arcserve kicking back improper space usage and the fact that the Exagrid system has a de-duplication ability and CommVault will not keep backing up the same file over and over unless it really has changed)

Here are a few articles that will also be helpful:

http://www.exagrid.com/backup_applications/CommVault_Galaxy.asp

http://www.commvault.com/qualified/exagridsystems.asp

http://www.cio.co.uk/whitepapers/index.cfm?whitepaperid=4566

http://travis.sarbin.net/2008/06/13/mid-deployment-report-commvault-exagrid

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Monday, June 16, 2008 by Myke.

If you have worked int he IT field for any amount of time you know that taking time off is always a pain in the neck.  You have to worry about being the primary support person for any task you have and whether or not your backup person can handle it while you are gone.  You then have to worry about the “powers to be” being able to get a hold of you while you are gone.  Then to top it off you have to worry about explaining to your spouse why you are on-call while on vacation.  it all sucks!

Well, not for me anymore.  I have a great partner in crime at work and great support from our vendors to back him up.  I was gone for 11 days and not once did my phone ring, not once did I even worry about what was happening at the office and best of all I actually enjoyed my time away.  Travis was even able to deploy our new disk-to-disk-to-tape backup project while I was away!  That rocks and kicks ass all in one man.  Thanks Travis!  I will post later about this new kick ass backup solution we now have in place and will soon have in place globally for the company.  Hint - Exagrid + CommVault = Sweetness!

I can even say that my boss, Diane a.k.a. The Greatest IT Manager of All Time, promised no one would call me and to enjoy my time away.  Sorry Jim. 

To make a long story short, in the 14+ years in this industry I have never been able to say that everything was protected and covered while I was away.  That is a great feeling.

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