This week in Gearhead we move our irreplaceable photo collection onto a RAID5 subsystem and suddenly it's gone! What can we do? Swear? Drink? Find out if we have to wash out our mouths and what state out livers are in?
By kb (not verified) on Mon, 11/20/2006 - 11:53pm.
You see, here's the thing. With something that irreplacable, why would you only have one copy around anyways?
I mean, I sometimes do the same stuff, but that's an educated risk I take as an IT professional... but the moment I do something that flies in the wind of what I recommend to my clients, I lose the right to whine about it if it ends up on my face.
And considering this would have only taken about 5 DVD's to back up properly... it's pretty pathetic.
By Paul Thomas (not verified) on Wed, 11/29/2006 - 10:03am.
Your recent article on new HD arrays not being what they seem struck a nerve here. I am 'the' IT department for a small engineering firm with offices north and south in Ca. We bought a Snap 18000 ( 3 TB ) in January of this year. I couldn't get to it for 1-2 months however when I did I found that:
1: Adaptec had just laid off or reassigned over half of Snaps technical support people. Those who remained appeared to have less experience working with the Guardian OS. They did this in anticipation of selling Snap off, however later reversed course deciding to keep Snap. They then restaffed appropriately. Delays of over an hour to reach a tech were an issue, however the lack of knowledge their techs had really slowed our implementation of their product down.
2: Despite claims to the contrary by Symantec Backup Exec and Bakbone's Netvault ( comes with the Snap server ) we are unable to restore cross platform should the Snap go down for any length of time ( to a W2K server ). Many tech's with both companies indicated we could do so: only after months of trying to make it work reliably did both companies finally say their product could not do it. Thus we either had to find another solution or buy a 'spare' Snap server to restore to should the big unit go down.
3: The nail in the coffin ( my coffin :] ) was finding out, half a year into testing/strapping up that the $#^&*&^$#~@@#@! thing will not support AD rights. When we bought the unit nothing on Snap's web site indicated there were issues when serving files to a W2K AD Domain. In fact their current web site states the unit has compliance with
Microsoft Active Directory Service (ADS Member Server) Kerberos Authentication v5 Microsoft LDAP v3 Client Windows NT Domain (member server) ... others....
Their current site now indicates there MIGHT be issues when serving files to an AD Domain, however this sentence is deep down in the tech support pages, not on the Spec pages where prospective clients would look. The problem is that if your organization assigns rights to folders and files via group memberships and assigns different rights at different levels of the file tree then the Guardian OS will not work for you. Apparently they assign the rights using Linux parameters, which look for you as an individual or member of a group. However the Snap takes the First match it finds, be it grant the right or say nothing which it interprets as a deny, and makes that your right to the resource. So you would have to re-structure the file structure to ensure that user was not a part of any group that might come up in the Snap ACL prior to the group you wish to assign rights from.... Then multiply that by 30 users and 350 gigs of data.
We are going to get around this problem by changing the Snap to be an iSCSI unit. From what I recall this means we will have a single point of failure ( which we really were trying to avoid ) in the new server we have ordered to sit in front of the Snap and serve files ( we also were looking to avoid $5K for a server here as well ). But with luck the files will be on a stable server/NAS and we can finally turn toward other projects.
I pass this on to you because of the three Storage columnists I wrote to about it only one responded. He indicated that pretty much everyone in enterprise IT knew about the different rights structures of Linux and Windows. As you are 'Geared' toward a smaller sized audience I thought, if you find it appropriate, you might pass the word along. I've toyed with Linux for 5-8 years, and got my first cert in '93 (CNE). But the possibility of this problem never occurred to me, nor to the vendor we bought it through who are good techs themselves. The rumor is that Snap will be replacing Guardian OS in spring with one based on Suse instead of the current incredibly locked down Red Hat distro, but.....
The other thing, if you're still with me, is a phone I picked up a few weeks ago. I haven't seen any write-ups on it yet. I've been playing with data phones since they came out, HOPING for something that will allow me to use Metaframe to connect to my servers to help end users out or fix a problem. The Cingular 8125 does this. If you ever tried remote control from an HP IPAQ it's like that only the screen is almost doubled in size. Pretty darned usable. Also has better phone reception than my Treo 650, far better music handling, decent camera with a ridiculous 'flash' next to the camera lens, one button voice recording for notes... all in all the best device I've ever seen. And it still 'fits' into a pocket! Highly recommended.
and you know... I have no sympathy.
You see, here's the thing. With something that irreplacable, why would you only have one copy around anyways?
I mean, I sometimes do the same stuff, but that's an educated risk I take as an IT professional... but the moment I do something that flies in the wind of what I recommend to my clients, I lose the right to whine about it if it ends up on my face.
And considering this would have only taken about 5 DVD's to back up properly... it's pretty pathetic.
-kb
Striking a nerve
Your recent article on new HD arrays not being what they seem struck a nerve here. I am 'the' IT department for a small engineering firm with offices north and south in Ca. We bought a Snap 18000 ( 3 TB ) in January of this year. I couldn't get to it for 1-2 months however when I did I found that:
1: Adaptec had just laid off or reassigned over half of Snaps technical support people. Those who remained appeared to have less experience working with the Guardian OS. They did this in anticipation of selling Snap off, however later reversed course deciding to keep Snap. They then restaffed appropriately. Delays of over an hour to reach a tech were an issue, however the lack of knowledge their techs had really slowed our implementation of their product down.
2: Despite claims to the contrary by Symantec Backup Exec and Bakbone's Netvault ( comes with the Snap server ) we are unable to restore cross platform should the Snap go down for any length of time ( to a W2K server ). Many tech's with both companies indicated we could do so: only after months of trying to make it work reliably did both companies finally say their product could not do it. Thus we either had to find another solution or buy a 'spare' Snap server to restore to should the big unit go down.
3: The nail in the coffin ( my coffin :] ) was finding out, half a year into testing/strapping up that the $#^&*&^$#~@@#@! thing will not support AD rights. When we bought the unit nothing on Snap's web site indicated there were issues when serving files to a W2K AD Domain. In fact their current web site states the unit has compliance with
Microsoft Active Directory Service (ADS Member Server) Kerberos Authentication v5 Microsoft LDAP v3 Client Windows NT Domain (member server) ... others....
Their current site now indicates there MIGHT be issues when serving files to an AD Domain, however this sentence is deep down in the tech support pages, not on the Spec pages where prospective clients would look. The problem is that if your organization assigns rights to folders and files via group memberships and assigns different rights at different levels of the file tree then the Guardian OS will not work for you. Apparently they assign the rights using Linux parameters, which look for you as an individual or member of a group. However the Snap takes the First match it finds, be it grant the right or say nothing which it interprets as a deny, and makes that your right to the resource. So you would have to re-structure the file structure to ensure that user was not a part of any group that might come up in the Snap ACL prior to the group you wish to assign rights from.... Then multiply that by 30 users and 350 gigs of data.
We are going to get around this problem by changing the Snap to be an iSCSI unit. From what I recall this means we will have a single point of failure ( which we really were trying to avoid ) in the new server we have ordered to sit in front of the Snap and serve files ( we also were looking to avoid $5K for a server here as well ). But with luck the files will be on a stable server/NAS and we can finally turn toward other projects.
I pass this on to you because of the three Storage columnists I wrote to about it only one responded. He indicated that pretty much everyone in enterprise IT knew about the different rights structures of Linux and Windows. As you are 'Geared' toward a smaller sized audience I thought, if you find it appropriate, you might pass the word along. I've toyed with Linux for 5-8 years, and got my first cert in '93 (CNE). But the possibility of this problem never occurred to me, nor to the vendor we bought it through who are good techs themselves. The rumor is that Snap will be replacing Guardian OS in spring with one based on Suse instead of the current incredibly locked down Red Hat distro, but.....
The other thing, if you're still with me, is a phone I picked up a few weeks ago. I haven't seen any write-ups on it yet. I've been playing with data phones since they came out, HOPING for something that will allow me to use Metaframe to connect to my servers to help end users out or fix a problem. The Cingular 8125 does this. If you ever tried remote control from an HP IPAQ it's like that only the screen is almost doubled in size. Pretty darned usable. Also has better phone reception than my Treo 650, far better music handling, decent camera with a ridiculous 'flash' next to the camera lens, one button voice recording for notes... all in all the best device I've ever seen. And it still 'fits' into a pocket! Highly recommended.