Technically Speaking

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.

 So this week is storming right by and is capped off with a trip to Fort Collins CO to learn about 3Par and Lefthand and how HP does storage.  I am interested to learn more about both of these products, and even storage in general. There will be lots of useful discussion for sure which is the best part.  

Bringing bloggers together to discuss and learn about HP products and the tech that makes them work is great and I’m glad to participate.  Like others attending I have read some of the white papers covering both 3par and Lefthand but have no experience with them. No worries, I’m sure it is coming soon. After going to CO, next up is Tech on Tap I am very much looking forward to the first event and hope it is the first of many.

 

Time to pack and charge my iDevices.

I head to Austin Tx for Tech Field Day 7 on Wednesday morning. Should be a good couple days of sessions and overall discussion. I am not sure at the moment who I am most looking forward to. I think all of the presenters have things that interest me.

The Presenters are:

Dell (Dell | @Dell_Storage)

SolarWinds (SolarWinds | @SolarWinds_Inc)

Symantec (Symantec | @Symantec)

Veeam (Veeam | @Veeam)

Some of them I have seen before, but there are new product releases since then and probably some new faces as well. I think the networking opportunity is what I like the best about Tech Field Day. In my neck of the weeds… er woods there aren’t many user groups so these events and the online stuff that tends to go with them are high on my list. Although the local tech stuff may be changing soon, but I cannot divulge that just yet.

I am looking forward to seeing some old friends again and definitely making some new ones. These events are busy, but in my past experiences they are enjoyable.

A bit of a thank you in advance to Stephen, Matt, and the rest of the TechFieldDay crew, without them, we wouldn’t be doing this. Oh and for the links above, I apologize as the editor I can access right now doesn’t seem to HTML friendly – will fix those soon. Update: Links Fixed… much better.

For the last in the Storage Migration Tools series I am going to link to an article I wrote for TechRepublic recently that reviews Secure Copy from ScriptLogic.  The application is a paid application that can aid in migrations or everyday copies.  You can read the entire thing by clicking the link below.

 

In this installment of the Storage Migration Tools series RichCopy is the tool of choice.  It is a free tool offered by Microsoft (without support of course) that uses a simple and easy to use GUI interface to copy files or aid in a storage migration.

The last installment of the Storage Migration Tools series covered RoboCopy, a command line copy utility and also its GUI add-on.  This one is for the GUI lovers.  Let’s get started.

What is Rich Copy?

Rich Copy is a utility that allows files to be copied via a GUI interface.  Some IT Professionals are command line guys, some are not.  If you are not, this tool might be your best free option.

This utility was featured in an Utility Spotlight in TechNet Magazine in the past but I thought it might be a good idea to get my hands on it and see just how it works.

When the utility starts you are presented with a simple working interface, a box to enter the source path and destination path and a dropdown for the copy options as shown in figure A.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you specify source and destination files, you can simply click the start button and the selected profile of options will copy the files.  The progress of the operation is shown in the bottom pane(s) of the interface.

Copy and Paste it ain’t

Here are two features of Rich Copy that are high on my list and they are not terribly fancy:

• Simple Interface – the simple pane of glass and easy appearance of the software is really refreshing
• Piles of options – because I can create copy profiles specifying options for different scenarios to use via a drop down box, the power of the application remains easy to use.

The options available are configured in an additional screen, shown in figure B, and can be saved in separate profiles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The table below outlines the options available for use in a copy profile.

[table id=2 /]

A quick note about source consolidation

The option to consolidate multiple sources is an interesting one.  If the option is not checked and multiple sources are specified, the source directories are copied into the destination.  Figure C shows a simple example of this scenario.  If the option is turned on, the directory structure from the source is created in the destination when files are copied.  Figure D shows an example of this scenario.

Note: Both images are provided from the Rich Copy help from Microsoft

Figure C

 

 

 

 

Figure D

 

 

 

 

After using the Rich Copy and looking into it for this post, the copy profiles feature is really great if you copy files using similar options frequently.  For example, you might configure and save a profile for a backup job for the My Documents folder on your PC which might schedule it to be off loaded to removable media.  Using a profile allows you to configure it and re-use it as needed.

What’s My Take?

I like the feature set and functionality that Rich Copy brings to the table.  If you are a GUI user it is definitely worth a look.  Support for this utility can certainly be found within its help documentation and on the Internet, even though it is not officially supported by Microsoft.  The utility is very full featured and a breeze to use, as with any software, I can merely suggest that you give it a try and see its features for yourself.  I am very pleased with Rich Copy where I have used it.

 

Getting upgraded storage is usually like being a kid on Christmas morning.  Sure for most, disk isn’t the most exciting toy, but for me, its pretty cool and always presents new things to play with (and some headaches to be sure).  But the disk is still just the first part, once you have everything hooked up, you still need to move the data over and ensure everything works as closely to normal as possible.

In this post I am going to look at using RoboCopy to migrate inform

ation to new storage.

Featured Tool: RoboCopy

RoboCopy is a command line tool from Microsoft that allows for multi-threaded file copying.  It functions similarly to Copy.exe or XCopy.exe but has a few of its own nuances which will be look at here.

Using RoboCopy is quite straight forward, specifying the source, destination, files to be copied,and any options you wish, for example:

robocopy “c:\myfiles” “d:\newstorage” blogpost.docx

Note: Examples in this post will use simple paths on my local machine, but these can be changed to accommodate any storage.

In the above example, the utility will move the blogpost.docx file from the C drive to the D driv

e.  If the file exists in the destination, it will be skipped without prompt.

If a more robust feature set is needed to act on files during the copy operation, robocopy supports the following options:

[table id=1/]

With the amount of options available for use with RoboCopy, it is an extremely robust tool.  If you are comfortable with the command line it might be the best choice for a data migration.  With a little scripting knowledge you could schedule copies and use the Windows Task Scheduler and options in RoboCopy to move/migrate piles of data.

While researching and playing with RoboCopy, I also discovered a GUI add-on for the utility, details on that can be found here. I highly recommend testing it for data migration, you might be surprised with what you get that you don’t need to pay for.

Recently my organization purchased an EMC Celerra Array in the interest of making our file storage more scalable and available for the users.  We are also going to start down the virtualization path, but I am going to try the one step at a time approach.

Now that I have the storage in place and turned on, the planning of just how to cut it up can begin.  Because we are an all Windows shop, CIFS will be the method of choice for file systems.  I will likely keep a small section of disk for iSCSI just for opportunities sake.

What now?

Next comes moving the existing data to the Celerra.  This is where I am currently planning and determining how to proceed.  The goal of this series is to look at a few of the tools available to help with data migration and some of the planning that might go with moving data.

As this moves forward I will discuss planning of a migration and what you might consider when looking to migrate data as well as a few of the tools available to accomplish a migration.

Because things are still coming together for these posts, if there are things you want to see or know about, please let me know.

This evening I was watching television, specifically the show about family reunions (who do you think you are?) and it got me thinking about storage. No it isn’t a stretch, bear with me.

The idea of the show is that a celebrity wants to find out more about the history of their family using tools from ancestry.com and other resources in genealogy. Its really quite interesting.

how does this relate to storage?
while watching the show, I thought about just how much information someone seeking family members would go through. This information is in many many formats.. From the Internet to the microfilm at the library. All of these volumes of information have to be stored and managed by someone.

Being he curator of all of this information and data would be a huge undertaking, surely the management of the online archives alone is more than a bit of work. What about the offline information? The stuff of the people who keep track of all this stuff, what they know and have seen?

Ok maybe the concept of LUNs and genealogy are not closely relatable, but the idea that all of this stuff, online and off, is kept by storage freaks (those who are far too interested in storage) and overly curious people anxious to find their heritage.

I for one find both topics quite fascinating and am hoping to begin learning about my family history… then all I need is some where to store it all, preferably with dedupe and cloud backup enabled.

I am curious about what kind of data storage it takes to manage a project like ancestry.com. If anyone knows or has contacts there please share.

Recently I setup a SAN at my office to handle file sharing and data storage and replace our current file server with a more scalable solution. Getting this configured wasn’t so bad, however getting migrated to the solution is still in the coming “soon” stage of planning.

I had been planning on configuring a couple different CIFS servers (one for general file sharing, departmental files and things and one for home directories). Because these seem to be the fastest to implement and certainly to get out to the users, this might get things up and running sooner than other options.

However, I have also been considering configuring a Windows Storage Server to attach some iSCSI LUNs to and share out to the users that way. I realize that the Storage Server will have some overhead with it, but I will be able to continue using some storage monitoring tools we already own, and have an opportunity to get my hands on the latest iteration of Storage Server. Since a previous release of the product launched me into new and exciting experiences, it might be a good experience to check out the new version.

Waiting for licensing
Because the licensing for the applications to test this at work might be costly and take time to bring the appropriate approvals, my home lab might get me the first taste of things.

My current setup consists of a Windows Server 2008 R2 VM, A Windows Storage Server 2008 VM and a Windows 7 Enterprise client VM.

The storage will be VHDs inside the host server for now (maybe eventually additional storage will make it into the home lab).

Depending on testing
If the initial tests in my lab work out alright I might look into the additional licensing costs for Storage Server. Either way I am hoping to review the product once I get my feet wet.

If any of you have had a chance to take a crack at Windows Storage Server 2008 R2, what are your initial thoughts?  I would love to hear them in the comments.

Recently I started reading the Daily on the iPad, and today they had an interesting piece on storage. The piece discussed the findings of a college researcher discovering the amount of data stored on man made devices. The final tally, 295 Exabytes. Holy man thats a lot of data.

According to the article, this is a drop in the bucket to the amount of DNA data stored in just one human being. 90 Zettabytes or 90,000 Exabytes of DNA data per person.

It seems that even though we store more data, and multiple copies of the same files everyday, but we have quite a long way to go. This makes me wonder just what we are capable of. If there is that much information zipping around within each of us, when will we tap into it? And when we do, what then?

Storage and compute get faster and larger with smaller form factor all the time. I’m curious to know what we will witness in the next 15 to 20 years. If 256Gb of storage is coming soon to cheap commonly available storage what’s next? Terabytes of storage for $20? The Flux Capacitor? Who knows?

While I tried to provide the link for the article from The Daily, it is only available in the app at this time. If you have an iPad I encourage you to check out The Daily it is a great way to get the news and is new everyday. Plus, Verizon had been providing 2 weeks free.