Commvault Simpana 8 saving lives, disk space and relieving stress

10. December 2009 by Myke.

I recently implemented Commvault version 8 with a company that was running Symantec Backup Exec.  The Symantec software was having trouble backing up the Exchange mailboxes (Exchange 2007) and this was a mission critical issue for the executives.  The Symantec software was also having a difficult time backing up Server 2008 and Citrix Xen Server.  After numerous calls and emails (18 calls and 22 emails) to tech support it was still not resolved.  So now the company was missing a massive amount of data and could not get the software to backup to an IP NAS device (Seagate Black Armor).  In the end this would have spelled disaster for the IT team and there would have been some very bent employees with a very bad taste in their mouth for the IT staff.  I made one suggestion…Commvault.  I used it in the past as a stand alone and in conjunction with Exagrid disk storage.  I loved it very much and wanted to get it in house ASAP.

First step was getting the management staff on board after showcasing it for the Director of IT/IS.  The Director loved it and only had one thing to say.  “Prove it in the first month of use and I am sold forever.”  The budget was approved and the purchase was made.

Second step was scheduling the fun of turning off Symantec and kick starting Commvault.

It was a warm fall day in 2009 and Myke the Master Geek went to work in his workshop.  I started by disabling the Symantec service on all servers and disabling the software on the backup server.  Next up, getting my Commvault Media Agent and Commserve on-line and ready to go.  The Media Agent was a new Dell R710 loaded with Server 2008 64 bit with a Powervault connected to it.  Then we added 2 Seagate Black Armor 4.5TB devices for the disk storage.  The Commserve was actually a VMWare virtual server loaded with Server 2003 32 bit.  Once the devices were loaded, connected and talking…it was on to deploying the agents on each server to be backed up.

The ultimate goal was to have about 4 weeks of backup data on disk and then a weekly full backup on tape.  We had a decent size of data that was backed up daily so we purchased the deduplication license with our Commvault software.  This would allow us to deduplicate our data and use less disk space for our backups.  With that in mind we expected a disk savings of about 50% to 60%.  We were wrong and wrong big time.  After running the Commvault backups with deduplication for about 2 months, we were getting a disk savings of 89.88%.  We were storing 10.074TB of data on 1.019TB of actual disk space.  That was saving us 9.055TB of disk space.  We were very excited about this as this gave us a great amount of room for growth and gave us a baseline to look forward to in the future.  Needless to say, the Director of IT/IS was very happy.

So with backups running to disk and tape now we had to verify that everything worked as planned.  So I began to test restores of data.  I started by restoring data from disk back to file servers, mailboxes and SQL servers.  Everything worked as planned and with great speed.  Now I began the tape restore process.  I selected a file and the software came back and told me what tape it need and bam, there it was…restored.  I tested about 35 different files ranging from SQL to Exchange to general Office file types.  Everything worked as planned and promised.

To this day everything has worked perfect and we have been very happy with our backups since.  This has saved on restless nights of sleep having nightmares about backups and restores and it has dropped our stress level by a huge margin.

Thanks Commvault!

I would also like to say that the new Dell R710 server runs like a champ and is a solid server.  We are also very pleased with our low cost NAS devices from Seagate, Black Armor 440.

p.s.  If you are from Symantec or really like Symantec and find this post to be offensive…good.  That is exactly what it was meant to be.  Once Symantec bought Backup Exec, the software fell apart and has fallen way behind the times and needs of the IT/IS world.

posted by: Myke Reinhold

Posted in Backups, Storage | 4 Comments »

Make a mapped drive available offline

30. July 2009 by Myke.

As simple and easy as this task is, we received about 10 emails over the last 2 weeks asking, “I have my users set up to use a mapped drive for their personal data stored on the network.  How can I make that available to them while they are not on the network?”

Easy, open up My Computer and right-click on the mapped drive and select “Make available offline”.  That’s it.  Once the wizard pops up you can detail what you want the offline files to do and once you complete the wizard, it will begin the sync of the files to the local PC.  You are now done.  Cheers.

Posted in Technical Questions, Networking, Microsoft, Desktops, Laptops, Storage | No Comments »

Life without ExaGrid and CommVault

24. June 2009 by Myke.

There I was living the life of luxury with my backups running via CommVault software over to my ExaGrid disk storage and then to tape.  Backups were fast and the deduplication was AMAZING!  I basically set it then forgot about it each day.  I would get my daily reports telling me “hey, your backups worked of course and they are still kicking butt and taking names”.  Then came D-Day for my career at that job.  I walked away proud of my environment and what I left behind.  I was proud of where I took my job to, technology wise.  Servers went from white box to HP, server software went from 2000/2003 to 2003/2008.  i created virtual server after virtual server.  I put in an HP Blade Enclosure and all power was controlled via APC.  It was a true Enterprise setup for an Enterprise company.

I took the next 4-5 weeks pulling myself to the conclusion that I will never work on that equipment again.  I started with a very small group with my new career that has potential to become the largest Gold mining/production/exploration/reserve companies in the World.  Backups are controlled by an unnamed software vendor and it is not all that great.  The backups are about 30% fail to 70% complete each day and they are slow.  They eat tapes like there is no tomorrow and it is only going to get worse each day as we grow.  So what do I do to make my new job run as streamlined as my previous job?  How do I make backups a non-issue?

Simple, I work a budget that allows me to move forward with each piece one step at a time.  My first goal of 2010 will be to get ExaGrid in house to help create a disk based backup solution with some serious deduplication abilities.  The deduplication process will basically take my backups and compress them into smaller chunks of data (sorry for the non-IT explanation).  Take for instance, you have about 20TB of backup data and you run it through the ExaGrid…you will get about 15:1 (based upon my very own first hand knowledge) on space usage.  What does that mean to the non-IT person who is in charge of reducing backup costs???  That means I will get about 15TB worth of raw data and have it backed up on an ExaGrid using 1TB of actual disk space.  That’s right folks…15:1 on an average and that is being generous on the small side.  I have seen deduplication results close to 60:1 and 70:1.

Some folks have asked if I sell ExaGrid or CommVault or if I get paid by them or receive free hardware…no.  Like we have said before, we share the truth with no biased answers or results.  We want what works best for the IT World and truthfully, ExaGrid is the King of disk based backup solutions.

Links to previous ExaGrid posts.

http://homerun-networks.com/2008/12/17/exagrid-announces-customer-focused-enhancements/

http://homerun-networks.com/2008/07/22/exagrid-deduplication-update/

http://homerun-networks.com/2008/07/22/exagrid-announces-enhancements-with-latest-version/

http://homerun-networks.com/2008/07/21/exagrid-and-commvault-a-perfect-backup-solution-update/

http://homerun-networks.com/2008/07/21/exagrid-and-commvault-a-perfect-backup-solution/

p.s.  Dear ExaGrid - It would be very nice if I could borrow a couple 1TB units for about 1.5 years or so.  I promise to love and care for the units at all times. 

Posted in General Hardware, Servers, Backups, Storage | No Comments »

Malware bomb at Fannie Mae

30. January 2009 by Myke.

IT Worker Indicted For Setting Malware Bomb At Fannie Mae

IT contractor deployed highly malicious script before his administrative rights were terminated

A former IT contractor at Fannie Mae, angry at being terminated in October, has been thwarted in his attempt to crash all 4,000 servers at the mortgage services institution and wipe out all of their data.

According to a report from the U.S. Department of Justice, a federal grand jury in Maryland has indicted Rajendrasinh Babubhai Makwana, a contractor working at Fannie Mae’s Urbana, Md., facility, for transmitting a malicious script to the company’s servers.

The malicious code, which was set to execute on Jan. 31, was designed to propagate throughout the Fannie Mae network and destroy all of the company’s data, the DoJ says.

According to court documents, Makwana — who was employed by OmniTech, a third-party contractor that handles server administration for Fannie Mae — was censured by management on Oct. 10 after unintentionally distributing a server script without authorization. The documents suggest the mistake was so egregious that Makwana probably knew he would be fired, although his administrative rights were not revoked until hours after his official termination on Oct. 24.

Apparently, Makwana had been busy before he was kicked off the system. On Oct. 29, five days after Makwana had left the company, a senior Unix engineer found a malicious script buried in a legitimate script that validates the storage area network connections among the company’s 4,000 servers every morning at 9 a.m. A page break had been inserted between the malicious script and the legitimate script, making it less obvious.

The malicious script was set to execute multiple tasks, all of them bad. First, it would wipe out all of the passwords on the servers, effectively locking administrators out. Then it would build a list of all servers that contained Fannie Mae data and wipe out all of the data, replacing it with zeros. This would also destroy the backup software on the servers, making the restoration of data more difficult because new operating systems would have to be installed on all servers before any restoration could begin, the court documents say.

The script would also remove all “High Availability” software from any critical server, the complaint continues. Then it would power off all servers, disabling the ability to remotely turn on a server. After the second run-through, the script would remove all of the files on the current host and try to zero out the root file system.

“Had this malicious script executed, [Fannie Mae] engineers expect it would have caused millions of dollars of damage and reduced, if not shut down, operations at [Fannie Mae] for at least one week,” the complaint says. “If this script were executed, the total damage would include cleaning out and restoring all 4,000 [Fannie Mae] servers, restoring and securing the automation of mortgages, and restoring all data that was erased.”

Makwana faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. He had his initial appearance in federal district court on Jan. 6, following the filing of the complaint. Arraignment is scheduled for Jan. 30, 2009.

Industry experts warn that such exploits may become more common as the economy forces companies to lay off an increasing number of employees. Enterprises should be careful to terminate all data and administrative access rights for the affected employees before they have the opportunity to act in retribution, the experts warn.

Posted in Security, Servers, Storage | No Comments »

Hard drive death is coming

27. January 2009 by Myke.

So you know that your hard drive will die sooner or later, but how do you proactively figure that out?  Magic 8-ball used to be the best method but as of recently we can do a much better job.

The standard IDE/SATA hard drive today is still the most mechanical piece of equipment sitting in your present day PC. And this will continue to be the case until solid state drives become much cheaper and much more compatible for present day hardware. The most unfortunate part of the problems with these drives, is how incredibly critical they are to the state of your computer. A hard drive failure means a dead computer - unless you are lucky enough to be running in some type of RAID environment, which most home users won’t be.

So those of us here at Homerun decided maybe we should put together a list of tools to help everyone else out that would like a better Magic 8-ball.  Below you will see our four choices and a brief description of the tool.  One thing to remember, these are Windows based tools and they are to be used at YOUR own risk, not ours. 
Crystal Disk Info

CrystalDiskInfo is a S.M.A.R.T. based utility that supports not only internal drives, but both USB and IEEE1394’s as well. It displays an incredible amount of simple and advanced disk information, and may always be running in the background. This includes temperature readings, read/write errors and power management tools, running at all times of the day.

General Drive Info

Advanced Diag of your drive

 HD Tune

HD Tune is a much simpler hard drive disk scanning utility that has benchmarking, advanced diagnostics, similar to Crystal and a disk scanning utility, very similar to the Windows version, but can be run in real-time. It also includes real-time temperature monitoring.

Benchmarking

Disk Scanning

HDD Health

HDD Health is another similar product. It includes temperature and real-time monitoring, but includes a health indicator, simply by percentage and nothing more. It does include the same advanced diagnostic tools as the other SMART utilities as well.

General Information

Extended Drive Information

HDD Scan

HDD Scan not only includes many SMART diagnostic utilities, but other disk utilities as well. It includes many advanced testing modes, such as reading, writing and erasing in linear. In comparison to the other products, HDD Scan might get you more bang for the free buck.

Various HDD Scan Tools

Available Surface Tests

Manufacturer Specific Products

Some people might trust products designated for their specific hard drive more then any other. So I’ve provided a list of all the major manufacturers with a link to their diagnostic tools. A few of these may even support different manufacturers.

Fujitsu - Supports all forms of internal connection and is capable of doing in depth surface and diagnostic testing.

Hitachi - Several diagnostic tools for Hitachi drives. Analyze, optimize and protect your drive from failure.

Samsung- The Samsung utility will only work with Samsung drives and is an offline bootable disk that can be run no matter what the state of your drive.

Seagate/Maxtor- The Seagate tools, also known as Seatools, are Windows specific tools that can quickly and comprehensively determine the state of your present Seagate or Maxtor hard drive.

Western Digital - In order to determine your appropriate tools, you’ll first have to select your specific product and browse to a compatible ‘Data Lifeguard Diagnostic Tools’. Thorough test and repair utilities for West Digital drives.

All of the tools above may or may not be able to resolve serious disk errors on your drive. But if you are worrisome about the state of your current HDD and you’d like to confirm it, these tools will help to do so. It will force you to begin transferring data, or backing up your data on a regular basis before the inevitable happens. Play with each of tools, and find the best that suits your situation.

Posted in Microsoft, General Hardware, Desktops, Laptops, Backups, Servers, Storage | No Comments »

Exagrid announces customer-focused enhancements

17. December 2008 by Myke.

ExaGrid Announces Customer-Focused Enhancements to Disk-based Backup System with Data Deduplication
New Features and Enhancements Deliver Added Performance, Expanded Data Handling, Instant DR Capabilities and Automated System Health Reporting

Westborough, Mass. - December 17, 2008 - ExaGrid® Systems, Inc. (http://www.exagrid.com), the leader in cost-effective and scalable disk-based backup solutions with data deduplication, today announced that it has enhanced its Disk-based Backup System with several customer-focused enhancements, including an industry-first, instant disaster recovery (DR) capability, higher performance connectivity options, expanded data handling and automated system health reports. These product enhancements allow customers to significantly improve the way they manage their backups by providing greater flexibility in handling disparate backup data types, delivering backup data more rapidly for DR purposes and providing proactive system health reporting on key operational metrics.“We speak with IT professionals every day who struggle with tape backup and are eager to move to disk backup with deduplication,” said Lauren Whitehouse, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “ExaGrid’s Disk-based Backup System has the ingredients many organizations need to address their backup issues.  Customers stand to benefit from ExaGrid’s focus on increasing performance, expanding DR capabilities, a growing list of supported data types, and automated email-based reporting that reduces the system management burden.”  The latest version of the ExaGrid Disk-based Backup system includes the following important enhancements and customer benefits:Support for Higher Performance 10 Gigabit Ethernet Interfaces:

• ExaGrid’s Disk-based Backup product line will now support the use of higher performance 10 gigabit Ethernet interfaces for connectivity to a customer’s backup environment. This capability provides the speed of fibre channel connectivity without the higher cost or hassle. 

Instant DR Capability for Fastest Data Restoration from Remote Sites:

• ExaGrid’s Disk-based Backup System has always maintained a full copy of an organization’s most recent backup at the site where the backup was performed. To ensure the fastest possible recovery time during a disaster, ExaGrid now keeps the most recent full backup at a customer’s disaster recovery site in its non-deduplicated form, ready for high-speed recovery in the event of a disaster at the primary location. ExaGrid is the first and only disk-backup with deduplication vendor to deliver this capability.
• By using the innovative, byte-level delta data deduplication technology, this instant DR capability is accomplished while still sending only deduplicated data over a customer’s wide-area network, preserving a 50 to 1 WAN efficiency, versus sending entire non-deduplicated backups. This instant DR capability provides significantly faster restores than competing solutions, which have to reassemble deduplicated backups from millions or even billions of deduplicated fragments. 

Additional Data Type Support Provides Increased Flexibility:
Beyond its interoperability with industry-leading backup applications, ExaGrid now supports additional data types. ExaGrid delivers a 10 to 50:1 deduplication ratio, replicates the deduplicated data to a disaster recovery location, and can report a deduplication ratio by the individual backup jobs (Oracle RMAN and Unix/Linux data dumps). Additional supported data types include the following:

• Oracle RMAN Backups – customers can now simply send Oracle backups via the RMAN utility set directly to an ExaGrid disk-based backup system, bypassing the use of a backup agent. 
• Unix/Linux File System Data Dumps – customers can now simply transfer file system data from Unix or Linux systems, bypassing the use of a backup agent. 
• Non-deduplicating Data – customers now have the flexibility to simply allocate portions of the ExaGrid disk-based backup system for any type of data they want to protect on the ExaGrid system but do not wish to deduplicate.

With this release, ExaGrid supports leading backup applications such as Symantec Backup Exec™ and NetBackup™, CA ARCserve ®, EMC Networker®, CommVault® Galaxy™, and Vizioncore vRanger Pro; as well as other data types including VMware® VMDK, Oracle® RMAN, Linux/Unix data dumps and Microsoft ™ SQL dumps. ExaGrid’s future product plans include the support of many additional backup applications and utilities.Automated System Reporting for Ease of Management:
With the release of this version, each ExaGrid Disk-based Backup System will deliver a daily status to a defined set of administrators, lowering the management touch time of the system even further. This easy to understand report includes:

• System status
• Current and past data deduplication ratios
• Replication status
• Detailed status by backup job

“ExaGrid continues to hear from organizations, which are eliminating tape from their backup and archive operations, that they want the full benefits of disk in terms of performance, scalability and ease-of-use,” said Marc Crespi, vice president of product management, ExaGrid Systems. “Too many disk-based backup products with deduplication rob disk of its natural performance and scalability through their deduplication implementation. With this software enhancement release, ExaGrid further extends our product leadership by providing significantly faster recovery time at DR sites, increased flexibility in data protection and tools to even further reduce necessary system management touch time.”
About ExaGrid Systems, Inc. Headquartered in Westborough, Massachusetts, ExaGrid® Systems is the leader in cost-effective and scalable disk-based backup solutions with byte-level data deduplication. A highly scalable system that works with existing backup applications, ExaGrid is ideal for companies looking to quickly eliminate the hassles of tape backup while reducing their existing backup windows. ExaGrid’s patented approach minimizes the amount of data to be stored by providing standard data compression for the most recent backups along with byte-level data de-duplication technology for all previous backups. Customers can deploy the ExaGrid system at a primary site and at secondary sites to supplement or eliminate offsite tapes with live data repositories or for disaster recovery. For more information, contact ExaGrid at 800-868-6985 or visit www.exagrid.com. # # #
ExaGrid is a registered trademark of ExaGrid Systems, Inc.  All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.For a complete listing of ExaGrid news releases, please visit our News and Events on our web site.

Posted in Backups, Storage | 1 Comment »

HP Acquires LeftHand Networks

1. October 2008 by Myke.

HP Acquires LeftHand Networks to Extend Leadership in Storage and Virtualization Solutions

PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct. 1, 2008 - HP today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire LeftHand Networks Inc., a leading provider of storage virtualization and iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions.

LeftHand Networks’ solutions enable midsize companies and remote offices or branches of large corporations to easily and cost-effectively protect critical business data. HP has agreed to purchase LeftHand Networks for $360 million in cash, subject to certain purchase price adjustments.

Founded in 1999, LeftHand Networks is privately held and headquartered in

Boulder, Colo. It has 215 employees and more than 500 resellers and distributors worldwide. The company has more than 11,000 installations across 3,000 different customers.

A pioneer of iSCSI SAN technology, LeftHand Networks delivers scalable storage software on industry-standard hardware that supports existing technology environments. LeftHand Networks’ portfolio extends HP virtualization solutions to the midmarket with software that runs on both existing storage and industry-standard server hardware, reducing training time and overall complexity. As a result, companies can move to a SAN for significantly lower cost, manage their data more easily, and scale their storage infrastructures incrementally as their businesses grow.

Additionally, for certain virtualized environments, LeftHand Networks’ intelligent cloning technology can reduce the amount of disk space required for storage by up to 97 percent,⁽¹⁾ while its thin provisioning features reduce power consumption by minimizing the over-provisioning of storage.

In addition, LeftHand Networks also features advanced data replication technology with bandwidth management and failover protection. This makes it ideal for backup and disaster recovery operations between remote offices and a central location.

With the addition of LeftHand Networks, HP will add midrange offerings to its suite of iSCSI solutions. Customer needs at the low end of the market will be met with the HP StorageWorks All-in-One Storage System (AiO) and HP StorageWorks Modular Smart Array (MSA) product lines. The high end will be addressed by the HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) line. Customers will further benefit since LeftHand Networks’ solutions are already certified to work with a wide range of HP products, including HP ProLiant servers, HP BladeSystem infrastructure, HP ProCurve Networking and HP Insight Control management software.

“Customers need a faster, less complex and more economical route to storage networking to better protect their critical business data,” said Dave Roberson, senior vice president and general manager, StorageWorks Division, HP. “The acquisition of LeftHand Networks significantly expands our storage portfolio, enabling HP to deliver customers an expanded suite of storage functionality, scalable capacity and interconnect options for every budget and performance requirement. With our strong channel and leading position in the industry-standard server market, we are ideally positioned to deliver this technology to customers worldwide.“

“Joining with HP is a natural fit for our customers and channel partners, giving them an expanded portfolio of server, storage and networking products and services that are already supported by LeftHand Networks’ solutions,” said Bill Chambers, chief executive officer, LeftHand Networks. “The combination of LeftHand Networks’ virtualization technologies with HP’s has the power to significantly accelerate server consolidation projects by making the deployment of shared storage much easier and more cost-effective.”

The transaction is subject to certain closing conditions and is expected to be completed in HP’s first fiscal quarter of 2009. Following completion, the business will be integrated into the HP StorageWorks division within the Technology Solutions Group at HP.

More information about HP StorageWorks is available at www.hp.com/go/storage.

About LeftHand Networks

Founded in 1999, LeftHand Networks pioneered IP-based storage area networks (SANs). SANs built using LeftHand Networks’ SAN/iQ® software are uniquely able to distribute and protect data across a cluster of industry-standard storage servers. The company’s patented architecture increases data availability, allows users to start small and grow the SAN seamlessly, and simplifies management. The LeftHand SAN is ideal for storage and server consolidation, multi-site SANs and disaster recovery. LeftHand SANs are available in the United States, Canada and throughout

Europe. For more information, contact LeftHand Networks at info@lefthandnetworks.com.

About HP

HP, the world’s largest technology company, provides printing and personal computing products and IT services, software and solutions that simplify the technology experience for consumers and businesses. HP completed its acquisition of EDS on Aug. 26, 2008. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.

Note to editors: More news from HP, including links to RSS feeds, is available at http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/.

⁽¹⁾ Based on preliminary findings with two hundred 10 GB intelligent cloning volumes.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including the expected benefits and costs of the transaction; management plans relating to the transaction; the expected timing of the completion of the transaction; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the possibility that expected benefits may not materialize as expected; risks related to the timing or ultimate completion of the transaction; and other risks that are described in HP’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2008 and HP’s other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to HP’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2007. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

2008 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

http://www.lefthandnetworks.com/pressreleasedetailredirect.aspx?oid=27d44bc6-ef0a-4260-a0db-db92a9d8beba

Posted in Servers, Storage | No Comments »

Data storage growth versus retention regulations

21. July 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.

Posted in Storage | No Comments »

Heavyweight Champion Hard drive

21. July 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.

Posted in General Hardware, Storage | No Comments »