Technically Speaking

I was looking through some email today and saw a newsletter from ZDNet at the top of my inbox.  Normally these don’t get my immediate attention, but for some reason, today… it did.  There was a post from Mary Jo Foley (linked below) looking at the upcoming file system in Windows Server 8, ReFS.

I am anxious to get my hands on this file system and play with the features that it will bring to the table.  I do have the Windows 8 preview and will get into it further soon, but from what I have read and previous discussions with Microsoft this seems very very interesting.

Things I like so far:

Live.  Microsoft is working to engineer ReFS to handle corruption and corrections live, without the need to offline the file system.  This will reduce the time needed to maintain the filesystem.

Better data integrity as a whole.  Because the file system can manage and mitigate corrupt files and handle much of the repair process online, there will be less need to reboot to take care of maintenance tasks, like following check disk runs.

Checksums on metadata.  Being able to ensure a file integrity has not been compromised at will without a process run by the user is great.

Shared Storage Pooling.  This will allow storage across servers to be pooled and shared amongst them creating a load balanced configuration to allow for better resource an file availability.

I cannot say that I am surprised these changes are coming and this makes up for the Metro UI a bit for me, but I do want to see more of that is planned for ReFS and get my hands on it a bit more.  One of these days I will get another Windows laptop and get Windows 8 running on it to get a closer look at the file system and its tools.

For more information on ReFS check out these links:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/microsofts-killer-windows-server-8-feature-refs/17757

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-goes-public-with-plans-for-its-new-windows-8-file-system/11666

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/01/16/building-the-next-generation-file-system-for-windows-refs.aspx

The last couple days (minus travel) I have been in Fort Collins CO learning about Converged Infrastructure, 3PAR, VirtualSystem and other things HP is doing in storage.  I got the invite about a month ago and having attended other events in the past, I was all in.

I am not sure if the knowledge, and technical learning or the people and networking I get the opportunity to do is the best part.  I will admit, the technical things I liked the most were the ones I knew the least about going in.  My organization is small, and we have bigger storage than we did even two years ago, but some of the storage I have been learning about lately is definitely in the Big Enterprise category.

3PAR

I knew 3PAR was a service provider focussed storage company that HP acquired.  That is about it.  I think I also knew they used yellow bezels.  Some of the programming and data handling software that 3PAR is using to efficiently handle data is amazing.  A good amount of the decisions made (once the user decides where the data should be placed) are handled on the backend in the array.

Once the offload happens, 3PAR has a set of algorithms and software called ASIC that get to work on the commands passed in by an admin.  The compute work is also handled in storage and the whole thing is very fast.  The hands on lab was a great experience, allowing me to play with a 3PAR array, something I will likely not get to do in the real world.

It would be cool if HP could make some of these labs available via the web to allow further learning by us geeks who just have a desire to know as much as we can hold about storage.

I know that I havent covered everything we saw from 3PAR, but for me the ASIC discussion and the efficiency of the system were definitely the highlights.

Virtual System

I have always wanted a kick ass pile of compute in a box.  You know, the kind that falls from the sky and plugs in, bringing you an enterprise quality system.  HP is doing this on medium, large, and huge scale.  They sell certain levels of virtual system which brings compute, management compute, networking, and storage into one or more interconnected rack enclosures.  The customer works with HP and chooses the options they want, and the racks appear  (plus shipping of course). Even though the systems can be high to start, it is a ground up, quick way to take the mess out of a datacenter and get a clean, fast, product that just works.

Networking

The networking opportunity that came from this event, with both other bloggers (some of whom I had met before and some new faces) and HP employees was incredible.  I know that I will be reaching out to a few of the HP-ers to learn more about some of these products and to the other bloggers to help my network and general knowledge of storage technology grow.  I am amazed how much I have learned over the past few years both from attending events and meeting people.

Next up.

Once I get back to Wisconsin (boarding the plane in just under 2 hours) I will be knee deep in Tech On Tap.  That kicks off tomorrow and really is a similar event in style to what I have been doing this week.  On a smaller scale, since we selected a technology and found some smart people to come in and help us talk about it. As much as I am tired at the moment, I cant wait to see what tomorrow brings.

I know that I will also be chasing down a good digital recorder before I goto another event like this.  It is really hard to keep up sometimes and maybe getting notes that way and sculpting them into useful stuff after that is the way to do it.  I missed a good chunk of a virtualization integration session while fielding a couple of support calls, nobodys fault, but a good opportunity to record and review later.  The portions of the session I did catch were interesting to say the least.  I have a lot to learn about virtualization.

Thank you

I want to thank HP (@HPStorageguy and @beccataylor) for putting this event together and all the other HP-ers and bloggers who participated and helped me learn something new.

It seems that my organization will receive 10 tons of benefits from moving to Exchange 2010.  Some of  those are mail related and some are not, but since the overall infrastructure of the place will decrease by a few physical items, we are full speed ahead in the Exchange 2010 consideration.

So I started getting acquainted with Exchange 2010 in a VM today.  Prepping AD and Running setup to see where that might leave me.  Since it knows about my existing Exchange 2003 organization and detects it without much help I think this really might be pretty decent.  

I feel a bit like a geek rockstar, having a full mail server all to myself, but once all the configuration and testing are done others will be moved there too.  Then, the old hardware we use for mail, a pix firewall, and various other prehistoric gear can come out.

Doing that might make our Internet experience less bumpy, goto meeting might work all the time, and dare I say, we can go cloud.  So far the cloud looks good, but no way until the bandwidth is reliable.  I’m interested to see how quickly this happens once things get moving.

Well the first days of 2012 have flown right by and given no indication of slowing any time soon. I have quite a few things coming up over the next month or so which I am hoping will motivate me to get more content online here as well… We’ll see how that goes.

In a couple weeks I’m off to Fort Collins Co. to see some HP storage technology and some friends, then it’s right back here for Tech on Tap : Virtualization on Saturday 1/28. I am still not sure we really managed to get it all done, but it seems to be coming together nicely. If you are still wondering what Tech on Tap is all about, check out the link and sign up, there are a few seats left that need filling for this event.

After the first ToT event there is something new coming for me in February with SolarWinds thwack community. I will be providing some blog posts to get the discussion moving about storage. The posts aren’t for products, just to build conversation. The gig is paid (full disclosure) and my opinions are my own. I am excited for the opportunity and can’t wait to get started… Now where did those notes and ideas go?

Next up, Microsoft’s MVP summit, or geek camp as my wife refers to it.  I am hoping to learn more about Windows 8 and plans for file system dedupe.  Should be an informative week.  Hopefully lots of ideas land on my plate to consider and expand on, then when those that might be under NDA can be disclosed I’m all set.  I know there will be things ready for prime time right away and that’s cool too. Between all these things there is writing for TechRepublic and Redmond Magazine, planning more Tech on Tap events and maybe some work for Pearson Education too.

Oh and as of yesterday, I got Exchange 2010 running. Now to get the pieces in place for the iPhone and other users, then the network cleanup can begin, progress, and be completed.

2012 looks to be the best year yet, and I can’t wait to see how this year shakes out. Thanks to all the friends I have made over the past few years for all the help, support, and opportunities (learning and other). I am often surprised by them. Here’s to great content in 2012!

It all started with an idea during a panel session at the Microsoft MVP Summit earlier this year.  Simply stated, my thought was that sessions in or near the bar are almost always full.  Why don’t we do some sessions locally for all different types of technologists and geeks at brewpubs.  This way we can all network around beer and the technology du jour.

When I got home, I talked with Jes Borland (@grrl_geek) about the idea and if I remember she was on board from the word beer.  We did some brainstorming and came up with a few ideas to help determine if this was feasible or not.  Amazingly, it was very feasible.

After some discussion we enlisted another person to help out.  Mark Cyrulik (@mcyrulik) came on board almost as fast as Jes did, although I think that discussion was a few tweets.

Then came some paperwork and more brainstorming and as of this week, Tech on Tap spun up and we are racing toward our first event.

What is the idea?

Brewpubs are great places to network and socialize and technology is fun. Bring the two together and who knows what kind of learning might happen.

For more details about the organization and upcoming events visit Tech on Tap.

Our first session on Virtualization is Saturday November 12th 2011 at the Stone Cellar Brew Pub in Appleton.  We have an attendance limit for this event of 50 people.  If we get more signups than we can accommodate, that will help us work toward the next Tech On Tap Session.

Where are the details?

The details of the specific events, especially the first one are still being finalized and are coming soon.  Because this is our first event, it will likely take a little longer than we’d like, but should make going forward that much easier.

Thank you for all your help

Working on this project has been exciting and sometimes a bit scary, but Jes and Mark have been great partners in getting this rolling.  Without their help, and form filling skills, I do not think this would have been more than an idea.  You guys Rock!

My wife Laura is also at the top of my thank you list because she believed my idea was worth a shot and that I wasn’t crazy for going after it.  Sure I’m busy and have a lot on my plate, but what’s one more thing?  Thanks Honey.

We hope that others in the Fox Valley will find these sessions useful and share them with those they know.

The past few weeks have been more than a bit nuts. Trying to keep my writing calendar up to date and get things moving is proving to be quite the challenge. One of these days, there will be time for all of it I hope.

In addition, the beginnings of an infrastructure refresh are afoot at my company. We are going to go virtual in the coming months and up first is out with the old and configure some new. Adding another 12 disk shelf to the storage array and working to get the most disk for our buck and replacing upses is the first thing on the list. Should make fo an interesting Friday night. Depending on your definition of interesting.

I am looking forward to the huge project, but am a bit nervous as well. The sheer size and scope of the thing is pretty wild. If you have done something like this before, what would you do differently if you could do it over again?

The fact that this will lead to a huge footprint reduction and cut down my departments power use is awesome, although I do not know by how much as it currently is not measured. If the temp in the room comes down 5 to 10 degrees on average I will call it successful based on the “green” metric. I think the virtualization and new methods of backup will take some getting used to, but once I have a handle on them they should work out well.

In addition, figuring out a way to vlan my backup traffic to a nas device is on my almost short list. If anyone has s suggestions there feel free to email me or comment here. I am looking for ideas here yet, so any info I can collect is good by me,

On September 11 2001 I was far away from the Big Apple.  Having just graduated from college the previous May, I had started working full time at the local ISP doing tech support for those who needed it.

Since I was working the close shift and didnt need to go to work until noon, I got to sleep in a bit, however the alarm was still set for 7 or so in the morning.  Normally if I was allowed to ignore the alarm I would hear it come on and barely move.  When the alarm went off (or when I noticed it) I heard then President Bush addressing the nation (or a clip thereof).

Let me tell you, hearing the President on the radio where there would normally be music or mindless banter is like hearing the Emergency Alert Signal, which in a way, I guess they are very similar.  I do not have stories to tell of colleagues or co-workers in New York but just seeing the events unfold on the news was mind boggling.

Having been in the IT industry for my entire career I have had some amazing opportunities and met some truly amazing people.  Some of them did have first hand experience with the events of 9.11 – and I am very grateful that I have gotten the chance to know these individuals. For one such account, click here.  The events of the day seem like they happened only yesterday even though I wasnt involved directly and the horrors of what happened stick out just as clearly.

For all the complaining many do about what is going on in the US today from the economy to the elections and the job market, we as a nation made it through 9.11. The events of today seem small in many ways compared to the events 10 years ago and maybe they aren’t, but if we can get through that we can surely get through this.

To those who lost loved ones on 9.11, my prayers go out to you still.  And to those serving to defend the freedoms we have, Thank You.  You deserve all the thanks and respect in the world and you certainly have mine.

Because of the decision by HP to discontinue development on any WebOS hardware, I was able to get an HP TouchPad tablet for $99.  Because I went to Best Buy, I managed to use Reward Zone points to get the tablet and a sleeve for about $32.

Why buy a discontinued tablet?

I was a Pre user when Palm first released it, by this I mean I was in line super early at the Sprint store to get it right away.  The Pre was a great device and made WebOS something new.  The new method of use in WebOS was interesting for sure.  However when Palm would fix one feature or speed up the device, something else would be left performing worse.

I was excited overall when HP purchased Palm even though I had given up on the Pre by then for an Android device.

On to the TouchPad.  I thought WebOS was perfect for a tablet with true multitasking and other features and that so far seems to be the case in the first day or so of use.

The fire sale price was just the motivation needed to take a crack at it.

What’s the Good?

There are many things I found on the TouchPad that I like a lot and surely there will be more as I dig further into the device.

Multitasking – WebOS allows the TouchPad to truly multitask and run multiple apps together.  The iPad pauses applications when switched to give the appearance of multi-tasking.

Mail – This is one of the apps I found on the Pre to be really easy to use, and the TouchPad continues this.  Combining accounts and simple folder selection with the ability to select favorite folders for even faster access

Search – the “Just Type” feature built in to WebOS where I could type and search across applications, the web, and other web services.  In addition, when visiting a site with a search capability, the tablet prompts you to add the site to the on board search.

Dictionary – being able to edit and customize a dictionary to add commonly used words wasn’t something I expected or thought I would use, but it is really handy.

What’s not so good?

The first thing is a lack of apps.  Sure the support for WebOS and its community will continue, but Im not sure if developers will stick with the OS with no hardware support at present.  Maybe a hardware manufacturer will get behind WebOS and create some future devices, because of the possibilities by both submitted apps and the homebrew community, it would be a shame to see that get abandoned.

Netflix needs a WebOS app.  Being a streaming customer of Netflix I like watching TV shows and movies and have been a bit spoiled by the Netflix app on the iPad.  With the support for flash and the solid video/audio quality on the TouchPad, this would be a very wise move.

Pleasant Surprises

Skype integration out of the box is a great feature.  I also found the fact that I was able to restore settings and features from prior backups of my Palm Pre.  This pulled my email and some other settings in without any work for me.

Add a search was an interesting find.  When you visit a site with a search, it prompts to be added to the search on the device.  For sites used a lot, this is awesome.

Overall I think the TouchPad is a solid device.  Sure the iPad has more apps, but the mail application and true multi-tasking are things the iPad at present does not offer.  Sure I can get mail on both, but the application on the touch pad is just better in my opinion.

There has also been rumor floating around the Internet about Android coming to the TouchPad as a port.  I am not sure I would do it, but the option might be nice.

I feel that HP made a bad decision after just a few months to kill the hardware behind WebOS.  They spent a lot of money on Palm last year and the Pre was a solid phone that just needed some support.  Killing off the hardware and keeping the IP of the OS to support or sell to the highest bidder just seems like a waste of time/money.  Having control of the hardware could have been the best thing going, look at Apple and the iPad, those are selling like hotcakes and have set the bar for tablets.  I wonder what the recent fire sale will do to the cost of tablets by other manufacturers.

As I find other features I like or dislike I will point them out here.  I am curious to see where HP and the community at large take WebOS and hopefully there will be good things yet to come for the operating system, I choose to remain positive at this point.

Because backing up data is something that goes without question. Sure care should be taken to select the right software and media to ensure your (or your organization’s) data is regularly backed up.  Imagine if there was a single solution allowing easy management and usage.

Symantec Backup Exec Appliance

Symantec Backup Exec is coming to a new single U / single SKU appliance that will manage your backups and restores.

The Symantec Backup Exec v3600 is designed to take the management pain out of backing up data.  By including all of the agent licenses for Windows and Exchange and SQL (among others) there is no guessing and ordering to ensure that the correct licensing exists.  The goal of the device is to simply do backups and restores after a little configuration.

Configuration

Getting the appliance up and running requires knowledge of your network and an available IP address for the device.  It does need to be on the same subnet as the other devices (the remote agents) that you will be backing up.  Once this is configured, build your backup jobs and get them scheduled.

Storage

This appliance will manage 5.5 TB of backup deduplicated data, which for many SMB organizations is plenty of storage space. Because the data is deduped the storage space is increased even further. The disk based nature of the appliance makes for improved backup and recovery speed. But be aware that in the first implementation there is no tape support. Backup data can be migrated to a USB drive or replicated to other Symantec Backup Exec appliances, the cloud through a few different hosts, or a USB drive.

The backup data will be deduplicated before it heads off to the cloud, based on the cost of bandwidth to get data onto a cloud service, this is kind of a big deal.  For an extremely small organization the cloud might be a good off-site option, but for many I feel that even deduped data will be to expensive to send there.  The inclusion of a cloud option may be a great decision going forward when cloud services get cheap enough to allow this type of thing.

Simple and all inclusive backup and easy restores appears to be the goal, but there are some caveats there as well.

Also, you cannot use SAN storage for backups from the device.  Once the internal storage is full, that’s all she wrote.  Adding the ability to use existing SAN storage once the internal storage gets to a certain percentage (say 80%) would be a huge step forward.  Personally, I think that the backup jobs should be flushed to an archive regularly enough where rolling over-writes (similar to recycling tapes) can happen to reuse space for more recent backup data.  If it is important for posterity, archiving is the way to go.

Not expandable

The v3600 is not expandable.  The out-of-box configuration is as good as it gets, which is a little dissapointing given that the appliance is so straightforward.  While looking at the demo of this applicance, I also came across a Dell offering powered by Backup Exec that seemed a bit larger than the v3600.

Tape Support

I know that many organizations are moving (or have moved) away from tape and even many who attended Tech Field Day with me were quite vocal about getting away from tape, but what about as an archival solution?

While I also know that backup is not a legitimate archival solution, bringing some archival to the appliance, to allow for backups to have a scheduled archival from the v3600 to a tape library or drive for easy off site archival of data would be a great addition to this already interesting appliance.

Central Administration… not included

For those of you using many Symantec Backup Exec media servers and central administration to manage all of these, this license is not included with the v3600 and will need to be purchased separately.  Might still be worth considering if there are going to be other media servers within your environment.

I would like to see a slimmed down version of the CA server on the appliance so that it can be the one stop shop and manage all of your other media servers (if any).  Maybe the device detects other Symantec Backup Exec servers in an environment and prompts to enable the central administration features if needed.

How does dedupe happen?

Looking back at deduplication which is a nice feature given the finite amount of storage included, the process for dedupe is to point the backup jobs needing to be deduplicated at a predetermined folder on the device.  When jobs use this folder, the data will be deduplicated.  Thats a pretty cool idea.  The use case I can think of for this would be an mailbox backup job.  Duplicate messages would be taken care of automatically.  Hopefully when used with email or other common sources of duplicate files, the rehydration of restored data is optional or at least configurable to allow dupes to be skipped going back to Exchange.

Support and Maintenance

There will be 1 year and 3 year options for support available as a separate purchase.  At first I wasn’t sure this would work, having the support separate, but thinking about it further it makes sense to allow support to be optional.  This way it can be used when needed.  Suppose you have the appliance for a few years with a support contract, if other things come up and the solution no longer fits or will be used only for a certain situation, the support can be changed to a lesser plan (if you have the 3 year option) or discontinued as needed.

Final Thoughts

I am definitely interested in seeing pricing and a bit more about the Symantec Backup Exec appliance.  When that happens I will consider it to possibly become a part of disaster recovery planning.  I do not think at this time it will completely replace the media server we have today, but when my organization goes virtual the data portion, file servers and things that users cannot live without might be great candidates for an all in one appliance.  I will definitely keep it in mind.

Recently I was working on a project to get an application prepared for rollout. When I received the initial email about the process that needed to be followed, I called the vendor to find out if our usual server configuration would work or if different considerations would be needed. Specifically we are considering virtualization in the future using Windows Server 2008 R2 guest machines.

The response I received was that this application would support Windows Server 2008 but not Windows Server 2008 R2. I asked about plans to support R2 and was told that the application would not support Server 2008 R2 for some time. In other words they have no plans right now to support it.

My first thought was that this was a bit of an odd practice since Windows Server 2008 R2 is the current version of Server OS from Microsoft. Then I got to thinking about some of the considerations I might need to make to work this application. The only testing to be done is to ensure that the application, once installed, communicates to its supported devices over our network.

My plan is to set the application up using a Windows Server 2008 R2 Virtual Machine just to see if it will even run. If it doesn’t work, a 2008 VM will be tested, but since the functionality of the application is very limited in scope, I thought it was worth a shot. My goal is to spin up a 2008 R2 guest for this testing very soon (next week sometime).

I also started thinking about the difference between “not supported” and does not work. There are many applications that vendors no longer support and configurations they choose not to support that work just fine. Case in point, Windows 2000. Microsoft doesn’t support Windows 2000 anymore. But if I install it, it will run just like it was 1999.

If an application can run on an operating system one step (or half step) prior to current, there are few things that would make it unusable on the current OS. This to me, warrants giving it a shot. I believe that the requirements I got didn’t rule out x64 architecture, thus making it likely to work just fine on the current version of Windows Server. This way all of the servers in our upcoming environment will be consistent on the same OS (for a little while anyway). I also have to admit there are times when I like a challenge… and this is one of those times.

When considering supported applications, it is generally good to follow supported guidelines given by the manufacturer. When the application or vendor provides no technical reasoning or explanation for this choice, it might be worth a try. It comes down to the cost of your time and availability of your resources. If you have the time and resources to test, go for it. If not, well, convenience (and downgrade rights) say that following the stated guidelines is the easiest course.

Applications like VMware do not work on things outside their stated hardware compatibility list. Sure there are some who might be able to work on the edges of that list, but mostly it is definitely easier to work amongst the guidelines of the HCL. Being someone new to VMware, I am following the HCL for sure.

My advice here is dependent on your time and interest. If you are curious and have the resources, test it. If not, do not bother testing it. Being a bit of a geek, I rather enjoy the idea of testing things just for the sake of trying them out. It has helped me learn many different ways to do things as well as just learning about technology. Which I certainly encourage.