The Ur-Guru mailed me a copy of this image, which I've cut into chunks to fit onto the blog. It's a visual demonstration of the different RAID configurations, using water coolers. You can get the original photo on Zachary Tirell's Flickr Page. … [Read more...]
Some People Are Just Rude
I received an e-mail message this morning with the return address "[email protected] on behalf of Rick [[email protected]]"It wasn't complimentary, but I hardly consider myself or what I write here above criticism, so that's not a problem in and of itself. The message was in response to my January 14, 2005 Backup Reminder, and because it does contain some valid points, I wanted to … [Read more...]
Dead Servers and RAID vulnerabilities
This is a follow-up to last Friday's Backup Reminder. The Ur-Guru pointed out to me that the dead-server, dead-backups double whammy couldn't have happened the way I described it, because "You can't be running a functional bootable system with RAID1 mirroring if the second disk(s) are dead and not functioning. Every write operation is done twice for RAID1. Guess what happens if one of the two (or … [Read more...]
More alternatives to tape
The Ur-Guru just sent me a link to an article by Patrick Schmid and Achim Roos in Tom's Hardware Guide called "Backups to Disk: Four Tape Alternatives Put to the Test." They're not kidding when they say "test," either: each one is dismantled and examined from all angles, with photos and screenshots. The first page of the article points out that no single hard drive can be a truly secure backup … [Read more...]
FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 8-6-04: RAID and Redundancy
Dear FileSlinger clients, colleagues, and friends: Last week I got to go on a tour of a data center—a place designed to house huge arrays of servers securely. I went on this tour because I wanted to know more about how ASPextra.net, the data center's largest client, works. The concept of an ASP (Application Service Provider) interested me when I first heard of it. When you use an ASP, instead of … [Read more...]
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