Updates

We've finally moved the MSA up to Bond Hall. I've spent the better part of the last two days undressing and redressing racks as a result of this. It has been interesting.

One of the things we learned is that it would be a really good idea to invest in power cables of custom length. Especially since we have the nice power-strips up there in BH. 4 footers will do in most cases, and have a minimum of cable to coil and stow. What we do have are longer cables and that leads to having black power cables crammed everywhere there is space, and that complicates chasing them when the time comes.

We have four racks over in Bond Hall in which to stuff things. Because of this, those are some of our densest racks.

The fibre channel bridged the distance just peachy. I don't know what the total distance is, but it is well under 10km so we could get both the fibre switch in BH and the fibre switch up here talking. Servers up here can see the MSA and talk to it at full speed. And do so without incurring any extra Brocade licensing costs to make it all work. That was nice to see.

Right now we're doing some tests on backup-to-disk to the MSA. The performance is... underwhelming. I'm not yet sure if the MSA is the bottleneck, or the speed of data coming from the backup sources. I do know that the MSA is all too easy to saturate for I/O, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if B2D pegs the needle. Early indications are that the MSA is a welcome addition to our existing backup strategy, but it won't come close to replacing tape.

And finally, I'll be on vacaton all next week. So there won't be any updates until the week of the 21st.