http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress Musings on backups, storage, tuning and more Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:54:53 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en My colleague Vaughn Stewart explains it in detail here. I didn’t feel we gave this the publicity it deserves… In a nutshell: We have numbers (published only after VMware engineering themselves approved the paper as accurate and gave their permission) proving that, compared to “traditional” arrays, running virtualized ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2010/08/30/netapp-benefits-for-virtualization-benchmarked-and-proven/ Haven’t blogged in a while, way too busy. Against my better judgment, I thought I’d respond to some comments I’ve seen on the blogosphere, adding one of my trademark extremely long titles. Part response, part tutorial. People with no time to read it all: Skip to the end and see ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2010/08/07/fud-tales-from-the-blogosphere-when-vendors-attack-and-a-wee-bit-on-expanding-and-balancing-raid-groups/ It came to my attention that EMC is offering a 20% efficiency guarantee vs the competition (they seem to be focusing on NetApp as usual but that’s besides the point in this post). See here. Now, I won’t go ahead and attack their guarantee. Good luck with that, more power to ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2010/05/24/et-tu-brute-emc-offering-capacity-guarantees-the-sky-is-falling-will-chuck-resign/ I come across all kinds of FUD, and some of the most ridiculous claims against NetApp regard usable space. I won’t post screenshots from competitive docs since who knows who’ll complain, but suffice it to say that one of the usual strategies against NetApp is to claim the system has ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2010/05/07/netapp-usable-space-beyond-the-fud/ It’s come to my attention that pretty much every storage manufacturer is trying to imitate NetApp’s thought leadership and keeps announcing “Unified Storage” products. Everyone can do it now, it seems :) Now, this post is not going to be bashing them or claiming they don’t work. This ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2010/04/27/what-exactly-is-unified-storage-and-who-can-sell-it-to-you/ Technorati Tags: ext4,xfs,ntfs,benchmark,postmark,BFS,CFS,Linux,Ubuntu,PCLOS It’s been a while since I checked the status of Linux-land regarding filesystems and CPU and I/O schedulers, so I thought I’d post some results. A bunch of new distributions are coming out with Linux kernel 2.6.32 as standard (Ubuntu 10.04LTS one of them), and one distribution (PC Linux ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2010/03/29/filesystem-benchmark-extravaganza-win-linux-ntfs-ext4-xfs-bfs-scheduler-impact-and-more/ I watched “The Invention of Lying” movie the other day. Fairly entertaining, and it had an interesting concept: Imagine a society where nobody can lie – the very concept of lying is alien and never even enters anyone’s mind. Obviously, tons of jokes can be made using that premise, and the ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2010/03/18/fud-and-the-invention-of-lying/ This is going to be another post that was inspired by sheer frustration… It’s one thing talking to someone about adopting a totally new platform and meeting with resistance – I get it, it’s not what they’re used to, it’s new stuff, they don’t know if it will ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2010/03/17/are-you-using-the-features-of-your-existing-platforms-and-if-not-why-not/ Technorati Tags: netapp,compellent,performance Note: I edited this a bit to remove some confusing pieces of info. Another one came in. I'll keep calling the offenders out until the craziness stops. Fellow engineers - remember that, regardless of where we work, our mission should be to help the customer out first and foremost. ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2010/03/09/more-tales-from-the-field-sizing-best-practices-does-compellent-follow-them/ I'm in MN prepping to teach a course (my signature anti-FUD extravaganza), and thought I'd get a few things off my chest that I've been meaning to write about for a while. Some Stravinsky to provide the vibes and I'm good to go. It's getting really late BTW and I'm ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2010/03/03/emc%e2%80%99s-incredible-marketing-and-the-fast-fairy-tale-and-a-bit-on-how-to-reduce-tiers/ It's an undeniable fact that many customers, while they would love to use the highly advanced features of modern disk arrays, have already made a big investment in legacy storage. Sure, it doesn't have all the great features, but it's already there, frequently there's a lot of it, and the ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2010/02/22/protecting-your-existing-legacy-storage-investment-with-virtualization-%e2%80%93-do%e2%80%99s-and-don%e2%80%99ts/ There was some weird backlash against my site and my person recently – see here and here and in the comments here. Chuck Hollis got all uppity about whether I work at NetApp (with, for) or not. I find it interesting that this only came up when I wrote something pro-NetApp. ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2010/02/18/so-are-there-any-independent-bloggers-really/ Before all the variable-block aficionados go up in arms, I freely admit variable-block deduplication may overall squeeze more dedupe out of your data. I won't go into a laborious explanation of variable vs fixed, but, in a nutshell, fixed-block deduplication means that data is split into equal chunks, each chunk given ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2010/02/10/more-fud-busting-deduplication-%e2%80%93-is-variable-block-better-than-fixed-block-and-should-you-care/ Due to the craziness in the previous blog, I decided to post an actual graph showing a NetApp system I/O latency while under load and a disk rebuild. It was a bakeoff vs another large storage vendor (which NetApp won). The test was done at a large media company with over ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2010/02/08/netapp-disk-rebuild-impact-on-performance-or-lack-thereof/ I'm all for a good fight, but in the storage industry it seems that all too many creative liberties are taken when competing. Let's assume, for a moment, that we're talking about the car industry instead. I like cars, and I love car analogies. So we'll use that, and it illustrates ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2010/02/02/vendor-fud-slinging-%e2%80%93-at-what-point-should-legal-action-be-taken-and-who-do-you-believe-as-a-customer/ Competing against Pillar at an account. One of the things they said: That their RAID5 is superior in reliability to RAID6. I wanted to put this on the public domain and, if true, invite Pillar engineers to comment here and explain how it works for all to see. If untrue, ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2010/01/14/pillar-claiming-their-raid5-is-more-reliable-than-raid6-wizardry-or-fiction/ So, let's say the DBA (or insert some other discipline) wants to do some testing for a new product (known to happen occasionally) – and the way he would really like to test is to create 20 test cases, which requires 20 copies of the main database. He would then ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2010/01/09/what-if-you-could-dramatically-improve-your-application-testing-times-what-would-happen-to-your-productivity-and-to-the-company%e2%80%99s-bottom-line/ It's no secret that, in most companies, the technology folks are primarily the ones deciding on which new technologies to adopt – after all, they are the ones that understand the technology, right? Business owners explain the business problem to the technologists, and the techies take it from there – ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2010/01/09/should-techies-or-business-owners-decide-on-technology-or-both/ It's been a while since I wrote anything – unlike some, I actually have a day job! Well, at least that's my excuse. My admiration for RecoverPoint is well known (see older post, which is referenced internally within EMC as a great pro-RecoverPoint article). It really is a good product and, ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2009/12/04/is-emc-under-sizing-recoverpoint-and-avamar-deals-to-win-business/ So, let's talk about this not-so-hypothetical customer... They have: A few sites A lot of data per site Much of the data is DBs and Multimedia No replication currently Can't back up everything currently No proper DR Fairly significant rate of change Not the fastest pipes between sites They asked me to propose a solution that will back everything ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2009/08/15/should-your-backups-to-disk-consume-more-disk-than-you-use-for-production-seriously/ It's interesting how many storage vendors claim their products are easy to use and, indeed, show nice canned demos full of wizards and elves and whatnot that seem to impress most. There are also grandiose claims of magically reliable hardware and other pixie dust… Ultimately, the reality is that: Most modern ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2009/07/29/ease-of-use-backup-and-recovery-and-efficiency-in-modern-disk-arrays-%e2%80%93-what-questions-should-you-really-be-asking-the-vendors/ What a difference a kernel rev and/or distribution make. If you recall from a previous post, I was unable to complete postmark testing on Ubuntu 9.04 using ext4, and had to recommend against ext4. Now, with the release of Fedora 11 "Leonidas", a new kernel seems to make a big ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2009/06/14/new-ext4-vs-xfs-benchmarks-using-fedora-11-leonidas/ Technorati Tags: emc,ddup,ntap,netapp,data domain,dl3d,deduplication,recoverpoint,avamar Much has already been written about this imminent acquisition of Data Domain by either NetApp or EMC and, since opinions are like you-know-what, and I have one, here it is… if I ramble, forgive me. I have too much to say and I’m trying to ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2009/06/13/about-the-data-domain-acquisition-and-is-emc-really-the-best-place-for-data-domain/ I have some spare time these days so I figured I'd finally test as many filesystems on Linux as I could... The new ext4 is an option with modern kernels so I loaded Ubuntu 9.04 and tried postmark and bonnie++ on the same partition using various filesystems and switching ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2009/05/18/linux-filesystem-benchmark-extravaganza-including-deadline-vs-cfq-schedulers-and-ext4-instability/ Backing up VMs seems to be one of the topics nobody can seem to be able to agree on despite a plethora of reading material on the subject… and maybe because of said plethora. I will focus on VMware since it is the leading and prevalent virtualization method in the marketplace ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2009/04/27/so-what%e2%80%99s-the-best-way-to-back-up-vms/ I just got this information: For XIV to be in jeopardy you need to lose 1 drive from one of the host-facing ingest nodes AND 1 drive from the normal data nodes within a few minutes (so there's no time to rebuild) while writing to the thing. Have no way of confirming ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2009/02/05/the-true-xiv-fail-condition-finally-revealed/ By now most people dealing with storage know that IBM acquired the XIV technology. What IBM is doing now is trying to push the technology to everyone and their dog, for reasons we’ll get into... I just hope IBM gets their storage act together since now they’re selling products made by ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2009/01/05/so-what-exactly-is-ibm-trying-to-do-with-the-xiv/ The time has come for me to get a new phone (my current one can't keep up with the demands and the speed or lack thereof ends up frustrating me). So I've been looking at the plethora of devices out there - Berries, Windows Mobile, iPhone, etc (disclaimer: I've been a ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2009/01/05/on-current-smartphones/ It's after 4AM, I can't sleep since I'm in pain after a car accident and I've had altogether too much caffeine. I've already watched 3 movies. BTW, "I am Legend" - WTF! Never have I seen a decent book butchered so much! The ideas in the book were so much ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2008/12/27/so-how-frequently-do-you-really-test-dr/ As a matter of course, I deal with all kinds of IT manager types during the course of a campaign. Sometimes said managers are well-versed in technology. Other times they have biases, are bigoted, and so on. Which is fine, I’m more opinionated, cranky and obnoxious than most. It agitates me encountering ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2008/12/22/my-frustration-with-the-quality-and-education-of-cios-ctos-it-directors-what-have-you-what-caliber-it-manager-should-you-choose/ Been a while since I posted anything - there's a TON of material but some of us actually do more than blog, it's quarter/year end, and I barely have time to go to the bathroom...But this was an easy one so I thought I'd post it real quick. Using Scribefire, ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2008/12/15/cinebench-benchmarks-performance-comparison-between-vista-64-and-mac-os-x/ So I'm now the proud owner of a tricked-out 2.8GHz MBP. Naturally I've been tinkering with it already (only had it for 2 days). I've disabled swapfile encryption, for instance, and I think it makes it have teh snappy. I compiled postmark for it with -O3 -m64 and ran the usual. ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2008/11/02/postmark-on-late-2008-macbook-pro/ Based on some recent experiences I wanted to make people aware of some caveats with setting up a VTL with deduplication. This is specifically regarding the EMC DL3D (AKA Quantum DXi) but applies to all of them. This will be a mercifully short and to the point post. Here's the ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2008/10/16/a-word-of-caution-when-setting-up-a-deduplicating-vtl/ Maybe the longest title for a post ever. And one of my longest, most rambling posts ever, it seems. Recently we did a demo for a customer that I thought opened an interesting can of worms. Let's set the stage – and, BTW, let it be known that I lost my train ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2008/08/20/what-is-the-value-of-your-data-do-you-have-the-money-to-implement-proper-dr-that-works-how-are-you-deciding-what-kind-of-storage-and-dr-strategy-you%e2%80%99ll-follow-and-how-does-continuous-data-p/ Found this while surfing and couldn't resist posting the link. This guy did a massive array of tests on pretty much all versions of Windows that matter at the moment. The short version? If it's performance you're after, there's no clear winner, since they all have their strengths. Overall, of ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2008/06/16/massive-benchmark-comparison-between-windows-xp-vista-and-2008-server-32-and-64-bit/ One of my readers, Randall Ehren, was kind enough to provide benchmarks for Xen-virtualized Windows 2003 and XP with and without the optimized PV driver, and also compare to the underlying host. Most of the text below is copied verbatim from his correspondence with me, I just added some clarification ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2008/06/10/virtualized-windows-io-performance-on-xen-with-and-without-the-optimized-pv-drivers-and-versus-the-linux-host/ My colleague Ian (last name withheld to save him from the Mac zealots) compiled the postmark code on his beloved Mac and ran it with the same settings I use in general (see older blog posts, just search for postmark). I've been curious for the longest time to see how OSX ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2008/05/28/finally-some-postmark-results-for-osx-and-how-does-it-do-versus-windows/ I've been trying out ESET's NOD32 on my 64-bit 2008 Server box. Before that I'd tried Avast! – which has great detection but noticeably slows down my computer, even when it's loading pre-cached and pre-checked content (easy test: load Firefox with and without Avast! several times. It's ALWAYS much slower ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2008/05/13/lowest-impact-antivirus-tool-i%e2%80%99ve-ever-tried/ So this is kind of a long but funny story and a rant against oversensitive people at the same time. About a year ago, this sales guy and I go to this architecture firm since they told us they are in dire need of a better storage solution. We meet with their ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2008/05/08/retarded-storage-and-thin-skinned-people/ I've been using Vista x64 for a while now, just so I can make use of all the memory on my machine (an über-thinkpad), and because I like shiny new things and 64-bitness and don't want to be one-upped by smug Mac users with their feline-named OSes, mock turtlenecks and ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2008/03/25/windows-server-2008-rtm-64-bit-performance-versus-vista-sp1-64-bit-and-using-2008-as-a-workstation/ NetApp posted some SPC results showing their 3040 box performing pretty well in SPC-1 relative to an EMC box. There have been rumors that when running multiple features in a NetApp box then performance suffers. Which kinda negates the whole value prop of NetApp (since that's when people typically choose ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2008/02/04/netapp-posts-spc-1-results/ I was helping out a customer with some backup issues in the Wall street area and they happened to be literally across the street from Delmonico's. At the end of a particularly long day I thought I'd reward myself with a nice steak, and the proximity to the steakhouse made it ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/12/20/ate-at-delmonico%e2%80%99s-in-nyc/ No, I don't mean Gandalf, I mean the software kind. And before I'm accused of being Gates' live-in cabana boy (it's all baseless rumors), let me clarify. It's a known fact that most OSes need tuning (sometimes significant) to perform well with heavy-duty applications (I'm not talking about your home web ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/12/09/we-need-more-wizards/ Out of curiosity, I very briefly tried the new Server 2008 Release Candidate (freely available from Microsoft). I've been using Vista 64-bit since I need to see all the memory in my machine and, while it works mostly OK, there are some low-level scheduling issues with it – for instance, ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/12/07/very-preliminary-windows-server-2008-impressions-and-vista-multimedia-performance-under-battery-power/ Since opinions are like you-know-what, and since I'm decidedly anatomically complete in that respect (some, indeed, claim all of me is composed of implied anatomical part, so maybe that's why I'm so opinionated), I thought I'd throw my $0.2 in the pot and not stay silent. The whole issue irks ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/11/15/my-opinion-on-the-sunnetapp-altercation-both-companies-should-be-grateful-instead-of-resorting-to-lawsuits/ At the insistence of my colleagues (that seem to enjoy the steak posts more than the high-falutin' technology ones) I decided to visit another NYC steakhouse. It was raining, I didn't feel like going further so I went to a place near the office at 2 Penn Plaza (Madison Sq. Garden). It's ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/10/26/ate-at-the-staghorn-steakhouse-in-nyc/ I normally don't do retractions unless proven wrong. So, ignore the text below and read Nick's comment. ---------------------------- A warning to those who use Datacore's Uptempo: While it works wonderfully as long as the server doesn't suffer a low memory condition, the memory it reserves for cache will get paged out in low-memory ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/10/15/uptempo-cache-can-get-paged-out/ I've been hopped up on uppers all day (relax, just a huge amount of chocolate-covered high-test espresso beans, though the amount of caffeine was surely enough to get me disqualified from competing in any sport - every time I pee it smells like freshly-brewed coffee). Needing something to relax me, ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/09/26/ate-at-the-old-homestead-in-nyc/ The deluge of WAN accelerators from Cisco, Riverbed, Juniper, Expand, Packeteer,Bluecoat, Silverpeak etc. etc. is proving good for datacenters. Not sure how many vendors will remain viable in a year or two, but the selection at the moment is decent. However, most of the vendors don't address remote desktop acceleration, say ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/09/20/wan-acceleration-for-remote-workers/ One of the more exotic and exciting IT subjects is the one of processor scheduling (if you're not excited, read on, practical stuff to be seen later in the text). Multi-tasking OSes just give the illusion that they're doing things in parallel - in reality, the CPUs rapidly skip from ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/08/17/processor-scheduling-and-quanta-in-windows-and-a-bit-about-unixlinux/ Once more, dear reader, I place my colon's health at peril for your reading pleasure and culinary edification. I could have gone to Via Brazil for a proper feijoada by walking a few yards from my hotel but, instead, I sacrificed variety on the altar of dedication and had another bone-in ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/08/09/ate-at-aj-maxwells-in-manhattan/ After the glowing reviews of a colleague I ate at Bobby Van's on 230 Park. It's considered to be one of the better NYC steakhouses (there are 4 in the chain, most in NYC). I got a bone-in ribeye and some mushrooms. I asked for a 145°F internal temperature and the decrepit ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/08/08/ate-at-bobby-vans-in-manhattan/ I just got a new corporate laptop, a nice, shiny T60 (OK, it's IBM black and therefore thoroughly incapable of reflecting on any part of the spectrum). I noticed that doing disk-intensive work was much slower than I've been used to. I configured it as a server (see previous posts) and ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/07/30/just-how-much-is-your-antivirus-harming-your-io/ Will be demonstrating Cisco's WAAS tomorrow in NYC, so today we spent some time going through a testing protocol so we can show people different things. After we finished we had dinner at Murphy's in NJ. Strange place. It's not a classy steakhouse or anything - nor does it have aspirations ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/06/13/ate-at-murphys-style-grill-in-red-bank-nj/ Well, aside from visiting Flames and helping fix a severe customer problem. Those were rewarding. I still haven't pooped that steak, BTW. I was supposed to only stay for 1 day in Manhattan, fix the issue, ba da bing. I ended up staying an extra day - had no extra clothes ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/06/08/this-has-been-one-of-the-worst-trips-ever-because-of-one-of-the-silliest-dr-exercises-ever/ Not amazing news but an official announcement nonetheless: Saw this (www.macnn.com/articles/07/06/06/zfs.in.leopard/) and I couldn’t resist posting. This means a few things: Sun figured out how to make ZFS bootable (at least on OSX) Someone figured out how to deal with ZFS and resource forks (I can't believe they are willing to break ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/06/07/zfs-in-osx/ I was helping a client in the Wall Street District today with some rather obscure CIFS performance issues (Opportunistic Locks anyone? Berzerk BDCs causing issues? Multi-user Access DBs over WAN?) Had to stay overnight (unplanned) so after putting in some solid hours I decided to get some steak, and NYC is ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/06/07/ate-at-flames-in-manhattan/ I've known about IBRIX for a while, but it was refreshing to talk to a decent techie that knew the product. They have improved it a lot over the past year. For the uninitiated, IBRIX can be either A network-based filesystem using the IBRIX client and protocol Also accessible using NFS or CIFS SAN-based ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/06/02/ibrix-at-emc-world/ I had some great customer meetings in OH this week. One meeting took me to Bowling Green, cute town. The locals like to eat steak at Trotter's Tavern. They only serve fist-sized and -shaped chunks of sirloin in some weird sauce that has at least some Worcestershire in it but is ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/06/02/ate-at-trotters-tavern-in-bowling-green-oh/ I'm not known for retractions and I'm not posting one. I did however check out the new DD boxes and the really big ones are far more capable than the old ones. So, the techies (hats off for enduring a half hour with me) explained to me a few things: The smallest ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/05/23/data-domain-update/ This has been bothering me for a while, and I think I'm not alone. Hitachi has been making great progress with their virtualization gear, as has IBM, Falconstor before them, etc. They claim you'll be freed from the vendors' shackles, achieve greater utilization of your arrays, simplify administration, cure cancer etc. Well, here's ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/05/23/storage-virtualization-is-there-a-point/ Superb. Not much fanfare, steaks wet-aged 21 days. Got the strip. So much better than Charley's it wasn't even funny. Great flavor, tender, perfectly cooked. 8/10. (Charley's claim double the aging time but their stuff just wasn't that good). Sides were maybe too rich (the spinach could clog a Yak's arteries). Bisque ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/05/23/ate-at-del-friscos-steakhouse-in-orlando/ Here's the deal: EMC has a lot of cool stuff. Lots of it came through acquisitions. Lots of it runs on the x86 platform, believe it or not. At the moment one needs to buy multiple boxes from EMC to do NAS, SAN, archiving, etc. Imagine if you got instead generic boxes ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/05/23/should-emc-move-to-more-multi-functional-devices/ While waiting for another EMC World session to start (this one is at "Guru" level, let's see) I thought I might share some of my experience regarding running Netbackup on very large setups - nothing like learning through pain. Don't get me wrong - NBU has its marketshare for a reason. ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/05/22/netbackup-best-practices-for-ridiculously-busy-environments-but-not-exclusively/ Just attended a session. Seems like the new rev of RM supports 2007 fully. They also support Recoverpoint clones (or will, later this week). For whoever is not aware of it, EMC Replication Manager is like a front-end that manages local replicas of your salient Exchange data for the purposes of ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/05/22/emc-world-replication-manager-and-exchange-2007/ As has been my idiom lately, I will comment on food. Went to Charley's steakhouse while attending EMC World. They made a huge deal of showing off their steaks - which looked good. Wet-aged, 6 weeks for the bone-in ones, 4 weeks for the rest. Aged in-house. I prefer dry-aged but it's ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/05/21/just-ate-at-charleys-steakhouse-in-orlando/ Currently attending EMC World. The first day bored me to tears, I hope the rest will be more exciting (though it utterly depends on the presenters). Some of the material is too introductory, even if one attends the advanced sessions they're not that advanced. More to follow. D http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/05/21/at-emc-world/ Anyone feel that deduplication is not finding its final resting place in backups and WAN accelerators? It's only a matter of time before the algorithms are run as a matter of choice on the array processors. Of course, that means fewer disk sales, but also bigger/faster/more expensive processors. Replication will also become more ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/05/08/i-wonder-when-dedup-will-make-it-to-the-arrays/ I use my laptop so much that I sometimes forget about some server-type tunings. I resuscitated my hot-rod AMD box - it's a grossly overclocked monster but only has 1GB RAM (since it's hard to find that kind of fast RAM in bigger sizes, and using 4 sticks prohibits me from ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/05/04/another-windows-tuning-i-forgot-to-mention/ Lately I've been dealing with WAN accelerators a lot, with the emphasis on Cisco's WAAS (some other, smaller players are Riverbed, Juniper, Bluecoat, Tacit/Packeteer and Silverpeak). The premise is simple and compelling: Instead of having all those servers at your edge locations, move your users' data to the core and ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/05/02/cisco-waas-benchmarks-and-wan-optimizers-in-general/ Been a while since I updated this blog. Too busy running around, evangelizing cool technologies, eating rich food, not exercising and spending WAY too much time in airports delayed due to bad weather. Someone needs to either: Change the rules so that planes fly even under more adverse conditions (which is, ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/04/30/on-traveling-lately/ Well, just finished the meal. Steak was ordered medium-rare, arrived medium, a bit chewy (but still tasty) and not hot. I was too tired to complain and ate military style (i.e. it was gone in a minute). The 26oz ribeye I had at Wollensky's a couple years ago was a ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/02/28/just-ate-at-keens-steakhouse-in-nyc/ I don’t know if this has been discussed elsewhere but I felt like I had an epiphany so there… They way I see it, in a decade or two the most important technology regarding data will be data classification and search technologies. Consider this: At the moment, all the rage is archiving ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/02/19/it%e2%80%99s-all-about-data-classification-and-searching/ Re the previous post: If you want to use supercache or uptempo the idea is that you take AWAY from windows/SQL/exchange cache and add to the fancy cache. So, even on windows server, in “file and print sharing for microsoft windows” (in the properties for your network card, under file and printer ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/02/19/some-clarification-on-the-caching/ One subject I keep hearing about is deduplication. The idea being that you save a ton of space since a lot of your computers have identical data. One way to do it is with an appliance-based solution such as Data Domain. Effectively, they put a little server and a cheap-but-not-cheerful, non-expandable ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/02/19/on-deduplication-and-data-domain-appliances/ I first posted this as a comment on http://www.gotitsolutions.org but this is its rightful place. Having deployed what was, at the time, the largest VTL in the world, and subsequently numerous other VTL and ATA Solutions, I think I can offer a somewhat different perspective: It depends on the number of data ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/02/19/do-you-need-a-vtl-or-not/ Hello everyone, My name is Dimitris Krekoukias. This blog used to be on another server, I moved it here - hopefully this hosting facility will be more stable. I resemble a silverback gorila more than a monkey (man-pelt and all), and could probably wrestle one (and have a fair chance of winning). I have ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/02/19/first-post/ Edited: I just realized I must have used different postmark settings for vista and XP. Do NOT use the following numbers to compare Vista to XP performance. I won’t go into a diatribe on how to tune Windows - there are excellent guides on Microsoft’s and IBM’s sites, among others. But I ... http://recoverymonkey.net/wordpress/2007/02/19/on-windows-filesystem-tuning-and-funky-cache-mechanisms/