It started off fairly basic, with a definition of the problem: data is growing faster than it can be thrown to tape.
No biggie there. We've known that for years.
Then he went into the various data protection methods out here, roughly:
But anyway, there were some other useful tidbits in this class. Hierarchical Storage Management has been around since the 80's. NetWare has had HSM hooks in it for as long as I can remember, and that's at least as far back as NW4.10. Possibly earlier. We keep looking at HSM as a way to cut down backup costs.
As it happens, Gartner has studied the issue and discovered a few things. For general purpose file-server like we run, HSM is a really poor fit. For specific applications with a predictable data-add and access rate, such as Blackboard, it is a really good fit. So HSM isn't going to save our bacon on the 2.7TB WUF cluster. Oh well.
Distributed File System is something that's also been around for a while, and has been something of an unsung hero. It also allows separate backup policies for sections of a directory tree. We don't use it because the NetWare DFS doesn't behave like the Microsoft DFS, which does what we want it to. Though I heard a solid rumor that Novell is going to fix that. That's on my 'to confirm' list for Meet The Experts night.
Also in the future, Novell's Archive and Versioning server will also use NSS Snapshot and Salvage data. It isn't there yet, but it will provide a one-stop-shop for recovering deleted files. Not quite useful for full system restores, but very useful for the "I deleted it last week by mistake" restores we currently fulfill through Salvage.
Tags: novell, brainshare
No biggie there. We've known that for years.
Then he went into the various data protection methods out here, roughly:
- Tape backup
- Tape backup with off-site
- Remote archive of data (snapshots, that sort of thing)
- Remote archive of data with live servers
- Business contiunity clusters
But anyway, there were some other useful tidbits in this class. Hierarchical Storage Management has been around since the 80's. NetWare has had HSM hooks in it for as long as I can remember, and that's at least as far back as NW4.10. Possibly earlier. We keep looking at HSM as a way to cut down backup costs.
As it happens, Gartner has studied the issue and discovered a few things. For general purpose file-server like we run, HSM is a really poor fit. For specific applications with a predictable data-add and access rate, such as Blackboard, it is a really good fit. So HSM isn't going to save our bacon on the 2.7TB WUF cluster. Oh well.
Distributed File System is something that's also been around for a while, and has been something of an unsung hero. It also allows separate backup policies for sections of a directory tree. We don't use it because the NetWare DFS doesn't behave like the Microsoft DFS, which does what we want it to. Though I heard a solid rumor that Novell is going to fix that. That's on my 'to confirm' list for Meet The Experts night.
Also in the future, Novell's Archive and Versioning server will also use NSS Snapshot and Salvage data. It isn't there yet, but it will provide a one-stop-shop for recovering deleted files. Not quite useful for full system restores, but very useful for the "I deleted it last week by mistake" restores we currently fulfill through Salvage.
Tags: novell, brainshare