Aside – That old spindle problem

When I used to be a system administrator, back when 2GB hard drives were the norm, I remember an Oracle…

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In-lab review of the impact of dense filesystems

Frequent visitors to this blog will be well aware of the various comments I’ve made about the impact of filesystems…

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Spacing out full backups

Bigger, faster, better. That’s one of the common catch-phrases of backup architecture. Backup window too small? Buy faster, and more…

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Design considerations for ADV_FILE devices

Introduction When choosing to deploy backup to disk by using adv_file devices (instead of say, VTLs), there are some design…

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Architectural failings of monolithic personal mail databases

This article might be summarised as: I wish Microsoft would pull their heads in and design better email client software.…

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What is /nsr/debug?

Those new to NetWorker may wonder what the purpose of the “/nsr/debug” directory is. When working in Windows environments, the…

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Should you use NAS for disk backup?

Over at SearchStorage, there’s an article at the moment about using NAS disk as a disk backup target – i.e.,…

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Dealing with low-bandwidth connection to storage nodes

The fantastic thing about NetWorker is that being a three-tier architecture, a datazone may encompass far more than just a…

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Merits of Virtual Tape Libraries (VTLs)

Or, “In 5 years time will we reflect on VTLs as an example of a bad direction in data protection?”…

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