Case study: Build Disaster-recovery from ordinary NAS almost free of charge

Today I will describe you the real situation from one huge IT environment.

Imagine that you spend million dollars from your budget. You build high-capacity NAS in your primary data center. You build the second one in your backup data center.

All NFS and SMB shares are replicated from primary site to backup one.
Besides the replication you have snapshots configured as well.

But do you have DR?

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Don't be next GitLab

"Mount Sinabung, Indonesia" by Yosh Ginsu @ unsplash.com
If you are living in the IT world and didn’t spend past weeks on some abandoned island, you have read about GitLab disaster issue.

If you don’t know, here is a short summary:
During PgSQL replication troubleshooting, the admin deleted part of the database by mistake. Every real admin made such mistake at least once in the life.
“Let him who didn’t screw up some important system be the first to throw the stone.”

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Important tip for FC zonning to simplify your life

Many storage teams use port numbers instead of WWNs during FC zone configuration. Do you belong to them?

Personally, I think you are making big mistake.

It seems that life is easier with port based FC zones but I will show you it could be opposite.

If every touching of configuration is handled as planned change by your documented processes, read next.

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Author image Radovan Turan on #storage,

3 traditional problems of storage operation and non-traditional solution

Dream workflow
If you are managing storage operations team, you are dealing with task how to run systems within your limited budget. Every technical issue costs you a money.
Every outage caused by human error is therefore irritating.

To eliminate human errors you are fighting with 3 following issues:

  • not possible to limit admin access rights for less skilled team members
  • typos in the naming convention causing non-functional reports
  • non-unified configuration of disk arrays

Nobody is solving these problems in most of the companies as there is no time, willingness to do it and often there is a belief that the solution is extremely expensive.

But solution is relatively simple and surprisingly cheap.

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Author image Radovan Turan on #storage,

3 tradičné problémy storage operations a ich netradičné riešenie

Dream workflow
Ak šéfuješ ľuďom, čo majú na starosti diskové polia, denne bojuješ s tým, ako zabezpečiť beh systémov v rámci svojho prideleného rozpočtu. Každý technický problém ťa stojí peniaze.
Každý výpadok spôsobený ľudskou chybou ťa štve o to viac.

A pri eliminácii ľudských chýb bojuješ s nasledovnými problémami:

  • Nemožnosť prideliť obmedzený admin prístup menej skúseným členom tímu
  • Neodhalené preklepy v názvosloví spôsobujú nefunkčnosť reportov
  • Nejednotná konfigurácia diskových polí

Vo väčšine firiem tieto problémy nikto nerieši. Nie je na to čas, chuť a často presvedčenie, že riešenie je extrémne drahé a tým pádom nie sú ani peniaze.

Riešenie je však relatívne jednoduché a prekvapivo lacné.

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3 reasons I don't like NetBackup Storage Lifecycle Policies

At the beginning I have to admit that Storage Lifecycle Policy (SLP) is a great idea. During ancient times of NBU we had NBU Vault available. Nifty tool allowing us to select backup images by various filters and create new copies on tapes prepared to eject from tape library and transport to offsite location. And by reading documentation for 7.6 version it supports duplication from any Storage Unit (STU) to any STU. »

How I wanted to donate and how I didn't

"Money in hand" by Tax Credits @ Flickr; CC BY 2.0
That was very weird situation. I have heard about one amazing project.

Imagine idea to create tablet application to teach children that have no possibility to visit school.
Or if the school system is not good enough.
Or for any child that wants to learn more than in school.

Did you read The Diamond Age from Neil Stephenson? Great novel.

The main idea is about interactive book.
By telling story is able to teach small girl.
During few years from basic - reading/counting - to programming, self defense,…

Of course. This application will not be such complex but can be some starting point to alternative teaching. I decided to donate.
Great, just do it.

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Author image Radovan Turan on #,

NetBackup - check available space for weekend backups

You know this situation. In some remote site you have just some amount of empty tapes available and nobody to add new ones to library available. Or it’s Friday afternoon, tape library is down and you don’t know whether the space on staging disk storage unit will be enough to accomodate wekend backups? Here is a shell oneliner showing sum of last full backups for clients from list of policies (the policies configured for this particular storage unit):

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