The 7 procedural obligations of backup administrators
A while ago, I ran a post titled Ethical Obligations of Backup Administrators. Following up from that now I want…
Gotchas for disparate versions of NMC and NetWorker
A few days ago a customer was having a rather odd problem. They’re currently running NetWorker 7.3.3 and getting ready…
Think backup belongs in ILM? Think again
In my opinion (and after all, this is my blog), there’s a fundamental misconception in the storage industry that backup…
British PM acknowledges and apologises for treatment of Alan Turing
Anyone who has either an understanding of the role that the computers played in World War II, or has a…
Basics – Peeking inside your jukebox without leaving your desk
In order to speed up jukebox operations, NetWorker maintains a cache, or a map, if you will, of the current…
You can’t escape cloning with cross-site backups
Periodically someone will tell me that they don’t need to clone because they run cross-site backups. I.e., they’ll have an…
Basics – Staging
In NetWorker, staging refers to moving savesets from one piece of media to another. The move operation is two-fold, consisting…
Basics – Perpetual overrides in schedules
In the dim dark days of NetWorker (e.g., v4 and v5), I used to have periodic cron jobs that would…
Aside – EMC Acquires Kazeon
EMC has been buying so many companies lately that sometimes it’s difficult to remember who did what, and why they…
Quibbles – Directive Management
I’m a big fan of careful management of directives – for instance, I always go by the axiom that it’s…