What You Need To Know

This post also appears here on the Storage@Work blog. 

The Server Room has to be one of the best forums I've seen.  So if Dell EqualLogic people go there, lets make sure we don't trash it. Put the Name Dell in your sign on to avoid being poachers and don't pimp our stuff.  It's fine to talk about experiences and what we know and all that, but its a tech forum not a drop box for hype - perbole.

And the rest of you too.  Do your thing and back up your blood type. Somebody might need it for the ultimate restore. 

Dell has sponsored a forum on the Ars Technica site called The Server Room.  This is how it's described on the forum header:  This forum is dedicated to the "bigger picture" topics--high-level systems that don't easily fit in the other forums. Before you can build a server room, there must be understanding of the requirements and technologies. This forum, then, is for the architects, the designers, and the decision makers for IT systems.

There are a lot of smart people weighing in there on some interesting threads, such as  Interesting Uses of Virtualization. For example, two scenarios discussed in that thread involve using a VM to circumvent corporate security implementations and using a VM as a surrogate when your laptop goes into the shop.

I recommend this forum to any readers who want to compare notes with talented and smart IT professionals. Of course, if you need help from experts at Dell, don't hesitate to visit the forum on the Dell TechCenter.

Bob Plankers, the Lonesysadmin posted yesterday about how Apple, Sun and Google have taken to using software updates as the vehicle for tricking customers into installing software they don't want.  Bob suggests legal protection, which I assume was mostly exasperation with the situation.  The debate that followed Apple's decision to take the low road has been all over the blogosphere for a few weeks now, but its interesting there are still lots of people discovering it - including me - I found Safari on a machine at home tonight when I checked. 

The people backing Apple on this one are wrong.  Their argument is that people running systems should know enough to pay attention to the little details.  Of course, this runs contrary to the image that Apple portrays in its MAC vs PC ads where MAC operations are effortless and PC operations require unnecessary technical skill.. The idea of personal systems is not to make everybody a systems expert, but to provide as much automation to help people perform their work more efficiently. 

The question of what administrative tasks users should be expected to do is particularly thorny where security issues are involved. People need to be aware that attacks of all types can and do occur, but that doesn't mean that they should have to know what all the various risks are.  There needs to be some level of trust, as some of the bloggers have written about. Maybe Plankers is on to something.  Maybe there does need to be a way to help non-technical system users trust that the software they are downloading addresses a legitimate system need and does not contain spurious features and programs that are mostly unrelated to software that is being updated. 

We need our infrastructures to work with a minimum amount of mischief and the industry wants a minimum amount of government meddling .  The fact is, most infrastructure technologies end up being regulated by governments at some point to ensure the common good.  Apple's Safari stunt is just another example of a vendor spamming the commons and is a small step towards increased government regulations.

For those of you with an intense interest in all things storage - this is exciting news.

We're working with the Techdirt Insight Community to start conversations about what's really going on in the storage arena. As this introductory  post explains - we're posing questions to TechDirt's community of experts and posting their answers - and inviting you to join in on - a conversation hub called The Future of Storage.

Just a few of the questions we're looking to discuss include:

• What are the biggest storage problems that need solving?   What does "hitting the wall" mean to you, if anything?
• What are the most important new storage technologies?   
• For FC users, will you wait for FCoE products before you upgrade your infrastructures?  
•  What's changing due to virtual server technologies?
• How is your approach to DR changing?   
• What are you doing for online archiving?  How will that change in the next five years?
•  How do you want to manage storage?

From time to time we'll also be pulling key conversations from The Future of Storage and posting them on Inside IT.  Join the conversation - or pose a question you think the community should discuss.

This entry is also available here on the EqualLogic Storage @ Work blog. 

Computerworld just published an article on the recovery operations at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Biloxi after Hurricane Katrina flattened most everything. I always like articles like this because they often clue me into logistics problems that I hadn't anticipated.  One of the items mentioned in this article was the loss of cellular towers, which made it difficult for team members to communicate. 

A couple weeks ago I asked the question on my Storage @ Work blog on the EqualLogic web site "Is tape dead?"   Its certainly not dead at the Hard Rock because the article talks about how they have a service that takes tapes offsite every day.

Since recovering, their IT team moved quickly to implement disk to disk (D2D) backup with Commvault software and Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SAN arrays in order to get their backup window down to a few hours.  I assume they are making good use of our snapshot software, although the article doesn't mention it.