Wednesday, June 25, 2008 by Myke.

In today’s IT world, we have an ever growing trend. Data growth. With the
need to store more and more electronically, companies are running out of room.
In the oil and gas industry we have a huge need for storage space with documents,
maps, charts, readings and so on. So what is a company to do? Do we keep throwing
storage space at it or do we draw the line and create a solid retention policy?
Well, the answer is both actually. With the average cost of SAN storage at
$7000 per TB we can financially let some data keep growing. With a
retention policy, it will need to be razor sharp so it has the ability to cut
through all retention regulations.

At our company we had a 250% increase in storage requirements from December
2006 to December 2007. With this growth, we added iSCSI SAN storage that was
going to handle growth and be run on an existing GB network. We chose LeftHand Networks
because of their ability to expand with ease and the management
interface was very straight forward. On top of the abilities of the solution
their support was top notch and very hands on. With the growth of storage came the second
step, backing up this data. We needed a solution that would allow us to store
data locally on disk and off-site on tape. We also needed a solution that would
keep us in line with any and all retention regulations. The solution we chose
is a combination of Exagrid and CommVault.
The choice of Exagrid and CommVault was inline with our LeftHand
Networks decision. We chose them for their ability
to expand with ease, management interface was straight forward and their support
was first class. We now have a solution that allows our users to store data
as needed for all projects and the IT department can
back up the data using disk-to-disk-to-tape. this now gives us the ability
to restore data for end users straight from disk and any litigation requirements
we run into we have data off-site on tape using the GFS strategy

So with all of this in place, now comes the hardest job of the whole project,
the retention of the data. We have data that is duplicated up to 25 times between
local user hard drives, servers and user home drives. So how do you get rid
of the duplicated data and find the best possible copy? We have decided to
assign groups to each area of data and they are now in charge of consolidating
data and getting it in line with our retention policy. We have also put in
place a data retention policy that our legal department has and all employees
are aware of. The one place that users like to store data at is in their email.
this is a huge area of concern so we have placed a data retention policy on
our Exchange servers as well. Any email that hits the 61 day mark is automatically
deleted. this allows our lawyers and IT department to let anyone know that
asks, we do not keep email older than 60 days.

Okay, so now we have our hardware solution and our company policy in place.
Now we must enforce it and move forward. Data storage is a growing need for
every company but it can and will be taken care of. You will always have a
need to expand storage but you can slow it down with the proper policies.

Bottom line - It does not make financial or legal sense to store information
indefinitely. Disposition is key to managing growing volumes of unstructured
and semi structured data, and the technologies required for a proper disposition
system underpin an efficient information management ecosystem. A solid disposition
policy can reduce the cost of legal discovery.

Off the record - If you and your company are going to say that you have a
retention and disposition policy, you better have it in writing. Along with
having these policies in writing you should have records and documentation
that demonstrates how the policy is implemented.

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Monday, June 23, 2008 by Myke.

Well we have been rocking and rolling with this backup solution for a few weks now and it has totally changed how we backup data. the data deduplication that the Exagrid hardware/software does has been amazing.

Check out these stats:

All Data
Deduplication Ration - 3.78:1
Total backup data - 12,441.08GB
Space consumed - 3,292.32GB

Misc Data
Deduplication Ration - 5.81:1
Total backup data - 4,413.62GB
Space consumed - 760.00GB

NAS Data
Deduplication Ration - 3.17:1
Total backup data - 8,027.46GB
Space consumed - 2,532.32GB

Our amount of tapes has dropped by 65% and our backup times are cut down by almost 75%. So now we are saving on backup times, amount of tapes being used and stored off-site and we will have about 12 weeks of backups on-site on hard drive. That means we can do restores from hard drive and in a worst case scenario we can request a tape from 13+ weeks ago.

Next step is to launch this as our remaining sites.

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Sunday, June 22, 2008 by Myke.

Some times, great ideas and great technology just fades away and we never get to use it again…even if it was a great product.

Here is the list of the top ten technologies that never survived.

10 - Knobs
Cool little heat touch buttons are cool but what happened to the good old knob we could adjust?

9 - Keyboards with real switches
Do you really need an explanation?

8 - RAMBUS
This was a great product but was knocked out by the royalties and the fact that it was way too damn expensive. Did you know it was actually faster than DDR?

7 - Minidisc
We had the ability to write and rewrite on these little suckers back in 1992, what happened?!?

6 - DVD Audio
Great idea, great sound but not enough backing to make it last.

5 - CRT Monitors
You can go to every single resolution and they looked great. Heavy as hell but still did a great job.

4 - Tube Amps
It kept me warm in my first apartment and they worked incredible. Sure today’s digital amps are good and cool but nothing beat out that beautiful glow of a tube amp.

3 - The Amiga
I dare you to to argue this one!

2 - Apple Newton
Hey Jobs, the iPhone would have been here sooner if it was not for you scraping this product. Dumb ass.

1 - HD DVD
The only reason this failed was due to Sony paying the movie industry with large truck loads of cash. Damn you Blu-Ray!

Posted in Technology | Print | 2 Comments »

Sunday, June 22, 2008 by Myke.

Have you ever been so drawn into something due to the hype that surrounds it? Like Star Wars Episode 1. With the help of the Internet, things and people can become very over-hyped and then become such a let down.

Here is my list of the top ten things that I felt were over-hyped recently.

10 - Multiple GPU Video cards
Not much to say here, just not as cool as one thought originally.

9 - Nintendo Wii
Now hear me out. This is a cool product and very fun to play, but where is my game list I was promised. Maybe over time the list of games will grow and maybe Nintendo will actually make enough for everyone to actual purchase.

8 - MySpace.com
All you ever seem to hear about anymore is how cool it is to have a MySpace.com page. To me, it is basically a way for people to do another form of on-line dating with actually saying it is on-line dating.

7 - 64-Bit Computing
With PC’s being able to handle more than 4GB of memory and the cost of setting up hardware for 64-Bit computing, where have all the apps gone that were supposed to come out? I mean the only logical place for 64-Bit anymore is in the server world.

6 - Battlestar Galactica
The once famous and awesome Science Fiction idea has turned into a futuristic version of Melrose Place or 90210. Sorry Travis and Ian.

5 - Downloading movies from the internet
Okay, this was very cool when I first tried it out back in 1999 and 2000. But today it is so easy and places like Netflix.com deliver right to my door.

4 - Facebook.com
This is a very distracting and fun place, but state of the art or revolutionary…Not.

3 - HD
Everyone everywhere is talking about HD this and HD that. By the time this becomes mainstream, there will be a new way to go. Let’s face it, some folks are still watching plain old analog TV.

2 - ASUS EEE PC
Experience easy, excellent and exciting computing with the New EeePC. Did you know there was an entire line of these PC’s? Things that make you go hmmm.

1 - The iPhone
Has anything in recent years received more hype and hoopla? I mean we were given a complete over dose of this crap. Yes it is a cool phone, but it has NO 3G support.
* Funny fact about the iPhone. According to AT&T, there is about half the number of subscribers as there have been sales of the phone. Damn hackers of the world.

Posted in Technology | Print | 1 Comment »

Sunday, June 22, 2008 by Myke.

The new "Heavyweight Hard drive Champion of the World" is, Western Digital’s Velociraptor 300GB 10K drive. This is a much needed drive since the 150GB Raptor X. Every drive manufacturer out there started to go after the Raptor X but WD never really responded. Well I can speak from first hand knowledge, this drive is awesome and fast.

Before I tested this drive the, fastest drive I had tested was Samsung’s HD103UJ 1TB drive. I understand that these two drives cannot be compared side by side or spec by spec but the only test we ran was speed. The WD drive is only 300GB, but it is selling for about $299 which is the same price as the 150GB Raptor.

So the drive is fast but one other very cool feature is the size of the drive, 2.5". Plus we cannot complain about the price either. The drive is currently selling for $299.99 over at Newegg.com.

Single Drive Test Results

HDTach Burst (MB/s) - 255.1
HDTach Random Access (ms) - 7.1
HDTach Average Read (MB/s) - 104.6
HDTach Average Write (MB/s) - 96.7
PCMark05 Overall - 9457

RAID Test Results

HDTach Burst (MB/s) - 229.9
HDTach Random Access (ms) - 7.2
HDTach Average Read (MB/s) - 100.8
HDTach Average Write (MB/s) - 93.5
PCMark05 Overall - 8471

The one thing that folks need to understand is that this drive is not built to placed in a laptop. This is a desktop or server drive only. The power requirements would trash a laptop.

Of course if you are looking for storage and not speed, then the Samsung is still the top dog.

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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.

Posted in Technology | Print | 2 Comments »

Sunday, June 15, 2008 by Myke.

I finally put the company issued Broadband card tot eh test and man does it kick some booty.  We used it in Enid, OK, Mansfield, TX and in the middle of nothing in Kansas and Colorado.  Every time I used it, it worked great and the speeds were awesome.  I was able to connect to the house, the office and to whatever I wanted basically.  Even when the single strength was at 1 bar it still worked at an amazing speed.  I would even go as far as it being faster than “name removed” cable modem speed.  I was able to upload and download anything I wanted.

I was able to test out the AT&T card as well but it was not even close to the same speeds.  If you want a Broadband card I would highly recommend the Verizon PC Card, well worth it.

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Friday, June 6, 2008 by Myke.

So I had a scheduled pick-up time of 8AM to 10AM today and to my surprise, :-), they never showed up.  I even called and they said, no problem sir he is going to be there before 10AM.  Well, since he never showed up I decided to go drop off the hunk of junk modem to them personally.  I get there and walk right up and turn it over to the lady behind the counter.  She was so wonderful she wanted to know why I was returning it.  I explained that even working with their technicians they could not explain why the speed was cut by 70% over the last 3 to 5 months.  Then she proceeds to tell me…”I see in the notes of your account that the last tech who worked with you explained that your PC’s were the issue.  Did you get that resolved?  Because that might help to get new PC’s to handle the 6MB Internet.”..Please hold your laughter in folks.  I kid you not, she said that word for word.  I did not yell at her and I did not blow a head gasket in their office.  I told her that with 15 years in the computer industry I think I would know if my PC could handle 6MB Internet or not.  I also explained that since moving to Qwest DSL 12MB I have seen speeds that are pushing over 12MB for downloads and 900K uploads.  I told her to just return the damn modem so I could leave.

Dear Comcast: The worst mistake you can make is to blame the customer for your wrong doing.  I know that the FCC will have you head soon enough.  I am not too worried as I have a real ISP now and everything is wonderful.  I can speak on my behalf and 19 others in the last 1 month that have switched from Comcast over to Qwest because of my stories and others just like it.  If you want to earn business then do as you claim and stop blaming the customer.  If you decide to e-mail me again about talking to me so you can get to the bottom of the issue…don’t.  I will post every single email you send me so the world can see how dumb you really are.

Posted in Rant, Technology | Print | 2 Comments »

Saturday, May 31, 2008 by Myke.

Due to come questions about my personal experience with Comcast and what issues I was seeing and why I switched over to Qwest, I decided that maybe a follow-up post to the first “Comcast - You are not my keeper”.

I started to read deeper into this issue and maybe lend a helping hand where it is needed. Comcast has come out said, “Comcast does not block access to any Web sites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services like BitTorrent.” and a little more side stepping “We have a responsibility to provide all of our customers with a good Internet experience and we use the latest technologies to manage our network so that they can continue to enjoy these applications.”

I personally tested their service and from my conclusion I saw a huge difference in speeds from Comcast and Qwest. I hooked up a PC directly to the Comcast modem and sure enough every single P2P or FTP file I would upload would average 100 to 200kbit. My actual download speeds on my 6MB line were averaging 1.2MB to 3.4MB. I was used to seeing an average of about 5MB to 6MB pretty much every day all day long. So when I tested the Qwest line my upload speeds were averaging 768kbit to 950kbit and my downloads were averaging 10.5MB to 12MB. Um, Comcast that looks pretty bad for you.

So I started to read the Internet and see what else was being said and what issues people were seeing. Here is a few links that really hit home.

http://torrentfreak.com/comcast-throttles-bittorrent-traffic-seeding-impossible/

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-9769645-46.html

http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/10/comcast-traff-1.html

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/comcast_filtering_for_profit_a_three_phase_plan_to_right_size_consumer_bandwidth

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080108/151810.shtml

http://news.digitaltrends.com/news-article/14548/comcast-filtering-file-sharing-traffic

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/comcast-were-delaying-not-blocking-bittorrent-traffic/

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/01/09/att-to-filter-intern.html

I know my Blog is not all that or that large…yet. But after spending about 4 hours reading on-line I came to the conclusion that maybe I am right and Comcast is in fact wrong. You know you are doing wrong and once the truth comes out, you will have to eat some serious crow. “The truth shall set you free!”

I then noticed a very good friend of mine (http://travis.sarbin.net/) was going through the same damn thing and he also received a message from Comcast themselves. Basically from what I read, you are just trying to play PR to tech world. Guess what, we only have one thing for you to do Comcast. Please read the following statement out loud for all to hear.

I AM SOFA KING

WE TODD DID!

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