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Q&A with the UK’s Leading Data Protection Consultant

Kevin Green has been in the IT industry for 30 years, he has worked for vendors like Dell and Symantec, for resellers and end users up and down the country and now for himself. He is a specialist in all aspects of Data Storage, Virtualisation and Data Protection; a presales whiz, a technical design authority, an implementation consultant and a trouble-shooter. He has architected, implemented, trained and supported customers from The Economist to Warner Music to University of Cambridge and across the banking, local government, health and corporate sectors. He is dedicated and always in high demand but the first thing you notice about Kevin is how he still manages somehow to make time for you, like giving this interview…

LC : 30 years in IT, would you do it all over again?

KG : I can honestly say what a great choice I made, the technical challenges I have faced and the people I have met, worked with, become friends with, like family. If I could carry on for another 30 years in this dynamic field, I would be a very happy contented old man!

LC : How much has Data Protection changed during your time in the industry?

KG : I started with the very first IBM PC’s with no hard disks and now I work with the latest Hyper-Converged infrastructure and Software Defined Datacentres, but the same questions are asked and need answering today as they did 30 years ago.

LC : Is there a list of typical things you get asked for?

KG : Yes, when broken down and understood there are 90%+ similarities with all engagements: budget, needs, wants, actual requirements. Distinguishing these facts from fantasy and merging all of them together to fit within the company, this is a recurring story.

· How to do I protect my business data and systems?

· I need a simple to understand solution which doesn’t have limitations.

· We need simple systems management.

· Low training overhead.

· We need a flexible solution which allows us decide what to use, how to use and without complex, expensive upgrading issues (as seen with so many systems today).

· We need to know when external support is required, that it is there and that it works with us not against us.

· We need it to be cost effective, with minimal consultancy overhead.

· It has to be proven technology that will make a real impact in removing day to day risk and management overhead

LC : Do Data Protection vendors fulfill on these common requirements?

KG : After 30 years in the Data Protection echo system, I have found very few products which deliver on their promises long-term. It is always easy to be invited out for a day to listen to someone discuss their interpretation of what you need. But with the onset of social media, webcasts and the internet, we find ourselves armed with sometimes too much information.

LC : How do you vet a Data Protection product?

KG : First, just as I would with any new technology, obtain an unrestricted copy of the product, spend time reading as much information as I can and then plan my testing environment and criteria.

Just like any good POC, test, test, test, which might mean asking others for criteria. I always spend time talking to friends and colleagues in the industry on what issues they are coming up against to ensure I don’t fall into the trap of assuming I have thought of everything,

Day 1, as a technical implementation consultant, if I cannot get a POC working on a new product to a basic level in the first day then two things are wrong, either I am losing my touch or the product is more complex than first described and this could mean potential risk and costs to deploy.

LC : Which Data Protection product do you recommend?

KG : I have been contacted by many vendors over the years looking for someone to deliver architectural and implementation consultancy. Arcserve were no different, 4 years ago they contacted me and asked if I could supply consultancy to themselves and partners who required assistance in pre-sales, design, delivery and training. I vetted their product, Arcserve UDP, and on Day 1 I was up and running in less than 30mins, backing up physical and virtual servers running on both HyperV and VMware in 60mins, by the end of day I had created and triangulated a 3 site UDP data protection grid.

Further testing over the next 4 days proved to me that not only was the solution robust and delivered on its promises, but it was something I felt I could put my name against.

In this industry you always need to know that what you’re doing today will get you remembered for the right reasons in 10 years’ time so when you meet the same people again they want to listen or talk to you …not run away.

Since my introduction to UDP, I have implemented the solution in over 60 locations for different partners, direct for Arcserve and also for the end client. This includes a single site setup, to multisite setup involving 100s of TBs and 10+ site configurations.

LC : How do you explain UDP to the uninitiated?

KG : You can list the benefits:

· Physical server backup, with the option of automated virtual server conversation P2V or even P2P “I still see a need to Physical and so do customers”

· Citrix, Hyper-V and VMware virtual server support

· None intrusive application recovery, i.e Exchange mail, contacts etc.

· Single agent, no distribute deployment when required

· Massive reduction in protected data storage footprint due to enterprise source and global deduplication

· Simplified site to site replication with data transfer optimisation and throttling’s

· Simple to understand and use management console

· User access control

· Multiple data recovery methods, we are not alike!

· Integrated out of the box site to site DR even to dissimilar hypervisors

· Ability to integrate and manage from the same console close to zero data lose high availability option

As well as some of the less well-known use-cases:

· On premise to cloud migrations

· Cloud back to on premise migrations “yes it happens not everyone was/is ready for the cloud”

· Physical to virtual migrations

· Hypervisor to Hypervisor migrations

· CIFS – to Windows fileserver migration

LC : And what sort of feedback do you get from users?

KG : I have a client who could not believe what he was seeing, after just a few days 80%+ of their estate was fully protected and all green using UDP, no more looking through logs for hours sifting the reds. He told me “I am actually smiling when I get into work now.” Looking through my recent emails I can see another great reply “Still loving Arcserve, the Arcserve UDP virtual standby stuff is brilliant. It has saved me an awful lot of time and worry over the last year” These are great results for a Data Protection guy.

LC : What are your plans for your company, Open3i?

KG : Working for vendors has given me a deep understanding of the sometimes complex and delicate relationships between vendors and resellers. Working within the reseller community has provided me the ability to build out sales and technical practices, calling on the wealth of contacts and knowledge from the vendor world. Working with end users has allowed me to become a better listener, architect and implementer. Open3i is about me adding these experiences together and bringing the knowledge to bear, like I said, bring on the next 30.

Contact Kevin: [email protected]

Join the Arcserve UDP twice weekly, live, on-line demo: http://pages.arcserve.com/EN-Weekly-Webinar.html?src=UK/AR/Arcser/Lnewfeatures

Find out what the University of Cambridge says:

Exploding 6 Myths About High Availability

1. Identical hardware is needed for high availability

Not anymore. Though gone are the days of IBM’s "Parallel Sysplex” with fault tolerance built on system firmware and even though hyperconverged solutions still require identical boxes to deliver high availability (unless complimented by a software appliance) today, where you have a virtual or physical Windows/Linux server, storage and network access you can deliver high availability with the same RPOs and RTOs in milliseconds but to/from dissimilar hardware.

2. Block-level, image based ‘availability’ will do

No and it never did. Using a block-level, image based backup tool to snapshot VMs every 5 mins consumes considerable system resource, is costly to scale and still only provides RPO and RTOs in minutes. Real time, byte-level replication can deliver more effective optimization of LAN/WAN with superior system performance so that failover can be automatic and genuinely instant.

3. High availability is only needed at enterprise organisations

Not these days. The larger the size of your company the greater the cost of downtimebut from your perspective that means nothing, minutes of downtime add up and in a competitive landscape can make the difference between winning and losing business, especially in the mid-market where IT services are delivered across locations and where the cost of downtime is significant enough to measure in seconds.

4. Hypervisor high availability is as good as it gets

No. Besides longer RPOs and RTOs with sync/recovery time in minutes, VMware or Hyper V high availability is restricted to its own hypervisor and out-of-the-box cannot detect application failure. In fact, application level high availability syncs/recovers immediately, provides cross-hypervisor compatibility, virtual to physical (and vice versa) support and detects application failure automatically.

5. High availability is expensive

You guessed it… not anymore. The liberation of high availability from identical hardware gives flexibility in how you provision it, redundant hardware is easier to refresh and allows for the repurposing (or tiering) of servers and storage. Virtualization drives the cost down again with public clouds like AWS, Azure and Arcserve Cloud offering different rates for cold and hot VMs so you only pay for high availability when you use it.

6. High Availability is a separate tool from backup

It’s a no. Arcserve UDP V6 allows users to manage their file based, image based and application level high availability from a single console. Users can turn on and off features according to priority and only pay for the features that they use; for mission critical services that would mean activating high availability as demonstrated here---->

For more information, please click here

Disaster Recovery Is An Extreme Sport

Do you get paid to look into the abyss? If the buck stops with you for the backup, recovery and availability of your company’s data and applications, are you standing on a precipice? If you make a mistake is it a long way down? Good. This is what real life looks like. This is the chance to really be alive, you versus reality, winner takes all. You might be afraid but fear is not going to guide you. Hardware will fail, security will be compromised, offices will be closed …but none of this matters because you will be there, the best of us, the one who saw the future.

Most Unforgiving

Data recovery and application availability is as close to life and death as you get using computers, every day you participate in the most extreme out of all IT functions… get it wrong and you wipe out.

Detail Is The Difference

What separates the good from the best? The more detail you can see the better you can prescribe. As the impact of downtime on your business moves from being measured in minutes to seconds the cost of getting it wrong is ever more tangible. Yesterday was minutes and hours but today the bar is at instant.

Danger Is OK

You will not be ruffled by the dangers that are there, the abyss may stare back at you but do it right and there is no danger.

No One Looks As Good As You

The disaster comes, everyone panics but you do not. You already thought about multiple locations and cloud. You already have the bandwidth assigned and the off-site VMs in sync. Your team already activated failover. No one looks as good as you.

Best Equipment

When everything is on the line only the best gear is good enough for your standards. You need real time availability in the same console as backup, you need truly heterogeneous compatibility across hypervisor, OS, media and hardware and you need the sophisticated management and reporting tools to massively optimize their performance.

Sam Crofts raced an Arcserve UDP replication job from Shoreditch to Canary Wharf in London. Watch the full race which includes a full walk-through of the UDP console by legendary engineer Carl Green:

Find out more---> www.arcserve.com

Download a free, full version of Arcserve UDP including 30 day key: http://arcserve.com/free-backup-software-trial/?src=UK/AR/Arcser/Lnewfeatures

The Last Word in Overconfidence

Confidence is the don, confidence is the boss, literally, confidence is a little Al Pacino inside of you that slaps you awake in the morning and yells at you until you get out of bed. Need it done? Confidence is the go-to. Without it: nothing would be decided, the stock market would have no value, hip hop would go extinct. Be confident: clothesline the moment, get your favourite muffin, put high fives where the full stops used to be (slap) Sure, a confident you is luckier, more successful and has the lead part in a year-round perfume advert called “Eau de You”, what could possibly go wrong? It all starts out fluffy but day by day your inner Al Pacino is turning up in better suits, your other feelings start disappearing in suspicious circumstances, “baby” is back in your vocabulary and World domination now appears only mid-way in your career strategy. Overconfidence, arrogance, hubris… call it what you want, it won’t call you. While only the severest cases of overconfidence result in a showdown with James Bond in a helicopter, for the average IT person overconfidence is just another name for a bad decision; “I don’t need to test this”, “it will never happen”, “this is going to be easy” Overconfidence is profoundly difficult to self-diagnose and is usually only discovered after it is too late, often resulting in an embarrassing meme, this list of most overconfident famous last words gives you the red line.

“You are going to love this song.”

Marsyas (904 BC)

Marysas was one of the greatest musicians in Ancient Greece but his big mistake was challenging the god of music to a sing-off. This is what happens when a PR stunt goes terribly wrong, Apollo executed him on the spot and Marsyas’ much anticipated third album was never to be.

"I have made but one mistake."

Titus (81 AD)

The same Roman Emperor who built the Coliseum and thus gave us X-factor had these last words, he was clearly not counting the spin-off shows.

“I’m feeling better”

Anonymous old man (1347)

In the middle ages the bubonic plague wiped out a third of the world’s population and Monty Python had no problem writing a comedy about it.

“They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.”

Union General, John Sedgwick (1864)

Taunting the enemy in a hail of bullets is like trolling a hacking forum using your network password as a user name, John chose the rock and roll way to go.

"This is exactly what might take place and what will take place, if the liners are sent to sea short of boats"

William Stead (1886)

26 years after William Stead wrote these words in the Pall Mall Gazette, the Titanic liner sunk in the North Atlantic incurring massive loss of life due to an insufficient number of life boats, William Stead was one of the passengers who drowned. Awkward.

“Ah that tastes nice. Thank you.”

Johannes Brahms (1897)

One of the greatest composers in history and it was a cup of tea that got him.

“You are going to see how my seventy-two kilos and my parachute will give your arguments the most decisive of denials.”

Franz Reichelt (1912)

Despite the protests of the Police, a leading scientist of the day and several journalists from Le Petit Journal, the argument was ended once and for all when Franz Reichelt spoke these last words then leapt from the Eifel Tower. It puts you off joining a start-up.

“She is as safe as a house”

Lord Thomson (1930)

In hindsight filling a massive balloon with highly flammable gas and flying around on it is a bad idea but the British Air Minister, Lord Thompson, was convinced Airship R.101 was the future of transport, in fact airships did take off but, like R.101, they crashed shortly afterwards and burst into flames.

“I'm sorry. You can't know what it's like to be almost a god.”

Dr. Elizabeth Dehner (1966)

Even though she was inhabited by an alien presence and even though she sacrificed herself to save the starship Enterprise I still think Captain Kirk dodged a bullet there.

“Don’t worry, there isn’t going to be a hurricane”

Michael Fish (1987)

Weather forecaster Michael Fish was having none of it, he told an anxious nation “Earlier today, a woman rang the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way. Well, if you’re watching, don’t worry, there isn’t!” The next day arrived one of the largest hurricanes in British history and began the Great Storm of 1987.

“.......….......”

Nutsy

You will remember Nutsy from the dog pound in Lady and the Tramp, the unlucky pooch condemned to the ‘long walk’ who without so much as a woof goes bounding into the unknown.

Don’t underestimate the future. By using a backup and recovery solution with the widest range of restore options you can be prepared for the unknown with confidence: cross-hypervisor, cross-platform (p2v, v2p, v2v, many to 1, 1 to many, cascade), multi OS, multi-site, cloud and for both data and applications. Here is one---> http://arcserve.com/data-protection-resources/arcserve-udp-technical-overview/?src=UK/AR/Arcser/Lnewfeatures

Or sit back and watch a recording here--->

The Ultimate Guide to Faking a Vacation

Hard luck, whatever the reason you are reading this, I can totally understand why clicking on this article is a new low for you. Whether you booked a four week holiday for an intensive saxophone workshop at 8 minutes past midnight on the 1st January in a bold move to guarantee that this year you would have to make good on your latest New Year’s resolution. Or if, one day, whilst running to work pummeled by freezing rain you decided that out of all the problems in your life the season of ‘Winter’ was your biggest; if you went shivering to HR and if you blew a year’s vacation to ditch this place before they start shooting the next series of Game of Thrones in your garden… whatever has brought you here; you have no vacation days left to use, every single person you know is “T minus 2 sleeps” and counting until their summer getaway inaugurates a new joyful era in their lives while you are going to be sat right here at your desk, reading articles like this, alone.

So for myself and all those other IT people who don’t have any days left to take as holiday, here is a step by step guide on how to fake a vacation from the safety of your own desk.

Step One

Choose the destination for your made-up trip abroad….

Remember, this vacation is not going to cost you a cent so be good to yourself, pick an exciting destination and the best accommodation you can find. This trip is all about you.

Step Two

Research the place that you will not be visiting…

You will be pleasantly surprised how much more you can find out about a place while sat at home using the internet instead of face to face and in a language you don’t speak. Gather articles which summarise the history and culture of the place you will not be visiting; you will need this info along the way.

Step Three

Pre-launch your fake vacation…

A photo of you grinning inanely beside the biggest rucksack you can find will do fine. Upload this to social media being sure not to mention the name of the exciting destination but still alluding to a great journey to come and peaking the curiosity of competing holiday makers.

Step Four

Launch your fake vacation…

This is the only stressful part of your imaginary itinerary, you need to Text, Email and IM as many of your contacts as you can, you could use a template but you need to send each message individually, something like: “Hey there X. I’m not sure if we had plans for lunch next week? I have been meaning to tell you I am trekking through the Y Jungle to climb Mount Z this week. Let’s do lunch when I’m back? ”

Step Five

The first glimpse of paradise…

At first, the only thing you need to overcome is the fact that you are not actually sat in a hot spa on the roof of a members-only hotel overlooking the setting Sun on a lapping blue ocean, you are actually in the rest room of your company’s office at an inconvenient moment to have run out of toilet paper. Travelling is full of such awkward and embarrassing moments, don’t let whoever forgot to replace the empty roll disrupt the first day of your soon to be legendary, non-existent holiday.

Step Six

Don’t just sit there, there’s a world out there waiting to be explored…

What are you waiting for? A few taps on your phone, headphones on and you are already listening to the ancient folk music of mountain people, you’ve found a restaurant in walking distance from your work where they serve all the customary food that you’ve been reading about, you hear the staff talking and the language and the smell of your soup all mix together. Selfie!

Step Seven

There must be a catch…

If you are beginning to wonder why anyone would bother with a real vacation when a fake vacation is 100% cheaper, much better for the environment and far more convenient if travelling with pets… there is a catch. Unlike a real vacation the fake version still requires you to do your job; that means doing everything on this list on top of a full day of system administration.

Step Eight

Make room for more vacation…

Use Arcserve UDP Premium Plus to automate the real time availability of your applications and data. Suitable for all types of vacation.

You can watch the full technical demo here -----> http://arcserve.com/data-protection-resources/arcserve-udp-technical-overview/?src=UK/AR/Arcser/Lnewfeatures

how did you recover so fast?

Human vs. Machine : Round 12

Round 1

John Henry vs. Steam Drill

Somewhere between 1870-1872

The mightiest man in railroad history, John Henry spent his days drilling holes the hard way, pounding steel spikes into the bare rock with a massive hammer. He was challenged to a competition against a steam powered drill…which of them could dig deepest in 35 minutes? John was the type of guy to have two 20 pound hammers just lying around and so he accepted right there. How terribly noisy was that competition? Or put another way… how awesome was the techno at that competition? Literally; banging. Soundtrack aside, the steam drill dug a 9 foot hole while John Henry dug two 7 foot holes, a total of 14 feet. Unfortunately John died a few seconds later from a hemorrhage, if only he had known he would one day be on this list giving humanity the big 1 - nil against the robots.

Winner : Human

Round 2

Garry Kasparov vs. Deep Blue

10-17 February 1996

The victory of Gary Kasparov over IBM’s Deep Blue computer wasn’t just the most rock and roll moment in the history of chess it was a moment for every man, woman and child alive, the vindication of what it means to be a human, an affirmation of our primary position in existence. Because of Garry we could look down at our 200 Mhz PC with a knowing air of superiority, we could use our scientific calculators to spell silly words upside down and still feel clever, we could use our Nokia menu system and forgive it for not understanding us, it was just a simple, stupid little machine.

Winner : Human

Round 3

Garry Kasparov vs. Deep Blue

3-11 May 1997

And the next year they had a rematch and Garry lost. Yeah, thanks for that bro.

Winner : Machine

Round 4

David Boys vs. Quackle

18-19 November 2006

If you’re as hopeful for opposable thumbs as I am you will be pleased to know it is 2 – 1 in our favour. Come on David Boys, Scrabble champion of Montreal, time to get ‘quixotic’ and defeat some open source software at a game of Scrabble. David saw off 100 human competitors over 18 rounds and he even got 2 rounds up on the computer but Quackle came back and mashed him 3 – 2 to win the match. David was quoted as saying “It’s still better to be a human than to be a computer." Yes David, but not that day.

Winner : Machine

Round 5

Chris Barnes vs. EARL (Enhanced Automated Robotic Launcher)

17 February 2011

Compared to some of the contests so far and given how obsessed humans are with making guns to shoot things with, you would have thought that bowling was one of the areas where machines could do well. Ha! 259 – 209 in the favour of Chris Barnes and us, his bipedal home side. It almost, but doesn’t quite, make up for what Garry put us through.

Winner : Human

Round 6

Mark Lewis vs. BMW 320d

15 May 2012

Although they weren’t expecting Mark Lewis to out-run the BMW over a lap of the city, he still lost the race which measured the contestant’s immediate acceleration. There’s David Boys moaning because a computer beat him at Scrabble and then there’s Mark Lewis who tried to race a car and nearly won…there is no shame for Mark, we salute him.

Winner : Machine

Round 7

Bryan Habana vs. Airbus A380

31 July 2013

If you’re cheering on the machines then you will be overjoyed at their great comeback and that the score is now tied at 3 – 3. Bryan Habana had already raced a cheetah back in 2007 and he lost by a length… but could he defeat the much bulkier British Airways aircraft? In a word… yes. But it is still worth watching the video anyway!

Winner : Human

Round 8

Turing Test vs. Eugene Goostman

7 June 2014

At Reading University, a computer program called Eugene Goostman passed the Turing test by simulating the responses of a 13 year old Ukrainian boy. Since the test was conducted in English you do have to wonder how far expected mistakes in the language would cover up lack of meaning or depth of meaning but hey, I’m not going David Boys on you, the machines won this contest fair and square.

Winner : Machine

Round 9

Doug Polk, Dong Kim, Bjorn Li and Jason Les vs. Carnegie Mellon Computer

23 April – 6 May 2015

There is some controversy over the card game that pitted 4 poker pros against the Carnegie Mellon Computer and for fear of being kidnapped by a disgruntled student from Carnegie Mellon I am pleased to report that this contest was a draw… a draw I say… even though the software, Claudico, ended up a few thousand in the hole and walking home without a server rack cover.

Result : Draw

Round 10

Lee Sedol vs. AlphaGo

9-15 March 2016

It is 5 – 5 and I think you will agree the anticipation is as unbearable as waiting for next week’s episode of Game of Thrones… right?! If you’re not quite there yet then let me introduce you to the game of Go: players take turns placing small black or white stones on a 19-by-19 grid and try to gain territory on the board by surrounding groups of one another’s stones. It sounds simple but creating a machine that could defeat a human pro player has been the golden fleece of AI, no program could do it, that is until earlier this year when AlphaGo defeated Lee Sedol and left humanity without a single game it was best at, a bit like Britain and every single game they invented. The team behind this victory used deep neural networks to teach computers to master the game of Go and now is really not a good time to hit the Terminator box set.

Winner : Machine

Round 11

Luke Menand, Robert Siegel and Ray Monk vs. Pythonic Poet

18 May 2016

The judges were asked to read poems and decide whether the author was human or an algorithm. Take a look at this one. What do you think? Human or algorithm?

“we seelove solve losselse we seelove sow woe selves we woowe loselosses we leveewe owe we sellloose vowsso we loveless well so lowso levelwolves evolve”

This poem was voted as the most likely to be from a computer but was actually written by a human named Christian Bök and yet in spite of this mistake, not a single computer generated poem was thought to be human. Still, I hope Pythonic Poet is dusting off its beret and coming back for a rematch next year. The humans come back to draw level at 6 – 6 and once again we let that patronizing look descend on our faces when we’re using the toaster.

Winner : Human

Round 12

Sam Crofts vs. Arcserve UDP V6

15 June 2016

Could an IT guy using Arcserve UDP recover a VM faster than it takes pro skater, Sam Crofts, to grind a ledge? Now this is really fast…

If you want to learn more about Arcserve UDP, the one console for backup and instant availability, you can see the in-depth race and demo here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsQVAfdf_hU

Or please register for one of our twice weekly live demos :http://pages.arcserve.com/EN-Weekly-Webinar.html?src=UK/AR/Arcser/Lnewfeatures

And for more more exciting content, connect with Arcserve on any of these platforms:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/arcserve

https://community.spiceworks.com/pages/arcserve

https://www.facebook.com/ArcserveLLC/

https://plus.google.com/u/0/109642769224138491763

https://twitter.com/Arcserve

The top 12 funniest movie titles from IT Pros about their last backup/DR experience...

Thank you if you took part in the Palme D,R competition, the movie titles suggested by IT Pros like you were so good that I had no other choice but to announce 12 winners instead of just 5 and I had to post the next best 28 answers too! These made me laugh, just had to post everything here…

Gone with the Wind

Saving Private Data

Backupalypse Now

I See Dead Tapes

Backup Wars : The End User Wipes Back

The Crying Game

The Day The Earth Stood Still

Saturday Night Backup

Backup Wars : The Storage Menace

127 Hours

Gone in 60 Seconds

12 Angry Admins

Waiting to Exhale

And here are THE NEXT BEST 28, you’ve got to love these just as much, it was a tough competition:

Karma Suture

Groundhog Day

The Hateful Eight (bits)

Backup To The Future

The Panic Room

Full Metal Backup

Data: Interrupted

Fran’s San Cisco Bound

No Data for Old Techs

50 Shades of Fired

I know what you did last Backup

War of the SANs

There Will Be Blood

500 Gigs of Summer

Fast and Furious

Apocalypse Restore

The Bye Bye Man

Multiplicity

Mission Impossible

The Perfect Storm

Miracles from Heaven

Close Encounters of the Backup Kind

The Good, The Bad, The LTO tapes

Below the belt

A Bridge Too Far

Sleepless Nights

Too Little, Too Late

Road rage on a Single VLAN: Pile up at the SAN

The Gods Must Be Crazy

If you are looking for recovery without the drama… take a look at Arcserve UDP. Available as software, appliance or cloud, UDP has the ease of use and completeness of features that are winning plaudits, awards and seeing rapid adoption around the world, you can join our live demo twice every week, although seeing it once will be enough! You can register here—> http://pages.arcserve.com/EN-Weekly-Webinar.html?src=UK/AR/Arcser/Lnewfeatures

Or download a full copy of the software here, includes a 30 day license and no reinstall required if you like what you see—> http://arcserve.com/free-backup-software-trial/?src=UK/AR/Arcser/Lnewfeatures

*Competition is now closed

T-shirts as modeled by the lovely Jim:

And here’s the latest gossip from the Palme D,R:

The Speed Of Dreams. The Predictions of J.C.R. Licklider.

The only reason we don’t celebrate a national “Licklider Day” is people would probably get the wrong idea about how best to show their commemoration; see “licking” meets “hang gliding”. But Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider is the first person to have written down a vision of what we now call the internet and this and his other dreams read like a blueprint of our evolving relationship with information technology. This is the man whose “eyes twinkled when he talked about ideas” and who only accepted a director position at ARPA on the condition that his “research which would be helpful to society in general.” This is a dude. Maybe you already have his poster on your wall? Maybe you’ve read his biography The Dream Machine and when you refer to him in conversation you just call him “Lick”? As a compromise to the Licklider hardliners and for those who have never heard of the man, the timeline below is not a chronology of his incredible life and career, although I encourage you to read it if you haven’t already, instead, here is the story of how long it took each of Licklider’s mind-blowing predictions to come true…

Email. 1971. 6 years.

In 1971 Ray Tomlinson sent the first email to himself, presumably because he was forgetful, it was 6 years after Licklider’s study Libraries of the Future, published by MIT in 1965. OK… so sending a message from one place to another using computers may seem like an easy one, read on hot shot.

Databases. 1974. 10 years.

Licklider’s same study described a paperless and searchable access to data “through convenient procedure-oriented and field-oriented languages” System R’s SEQUEL query language was developed in the mid-70s some 10 years after he wrote those words. This is getting spooky.

The Internet. 1983. 23 years.

It’s a biggie… at least it is now, although… the internet had a far better name back when Licklider first described it in a series of memos in 1962, he called it “The Intergalactic Computer Network” Let’s bring that back! It was not until 1969 when the first network link was established between the University of California and the Stanford Research Institute and this is what they wrote (sorry if you got this poster free with the Licklider one)…

"We typed the L and we asked on the phone,

"Do you see the L?"

"Yes, we see the L," came the response.

We typed the O, and we asked, "Do you see the O."

"Yes, we see the O."

Then we typed the G, and the system crashed ..." Leonard Kleinrock (MIT)

But cue amazement sound effect, it is not until the early 1980s and the TCP/IP revolution that the internet took its form in all the fullness that Licklider had foretold, as he described in his 1960 paper Man-Computer Symbiosis “a network of computers connected to one another by wide-band communication lines which provide the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval and other symbiotic functions.” He wrote that over 20 years before it came true, unless you are Gene Roddenberry… you are well impressed right now!

Video Conferencing. 1995. 27 years.

“You will seldom make a purely business trip…you will sit at a two-place console and interact as much through it was face to face.” And 27 years after Licklider wrote those words, in 1995 the first public videoconference took place, it was a serious business, The Cybersafari Digital Be-In and Internet Love-Fest created a video link between cognitive dissidents at a technology fair in San Francisco with a tech-rave and cyberdeli in Cape Town, and if you think I’m making it up, check here. Licklider might have seen Facetime coming but he missed the bus on cyberdelis, can’t predict everything I guess.

Internet Dating. 1995. 27 years.

Yes, internet dating. You’ve got to love Licklider even if his title of “computer-augmented romance” has got you swiping left. In 1995 Match.com began a new era in meeting people, cut to 27 years earlier and Lick was explaining his ideas to the illustrator, Rowland B Wilson, so he could depict them in the April issue of Science and Technology. This is the illustration Rowland came up with; pretty racy stuff…

Fig 1. The Computer as a Communication Device, 1968 -> http://www.utexas.edu/ogs/alumni/events/taylor/licklider-taylor.pdf

Social Media. 1997. 29 years.

In the same 1968 article The Computer as a Communication Device, Licklider and his co-author Robert Taylor painted a picture of future "communities not of common location, but of common interest. In each field, the overall community of interest will be large enough to support a comprehensive system of field-oriented programs and data." In 1997 the first social media site was introduced to us by Six Degrees and as it turns out humanity would use this great step forward in communication to send each other cat pictures.

Big Data. 1997. 32 years.

“Big data” sounds like data is a bouncer and everyone knows his nickname. The concept was first coined in an article with the less catchy title of: Application-controlled demand paging for out-of-core visualization by Michael Cox and Ellsworth in 1997. This was a full 32 years after Libraries of the Future but I suppose we did have to wait for the data to get big enough.

Virtualization. 1998. 34 years.

Licklider is looking like the Dalai Lama of technology right now but the earliest examples of “time sharing” a computer’s processor between simultaneous users were tested under his guidance at Project MAC circa 1964. Licklider passed away in 1990, 8 years before VMware opened their doors and proved true Licklider’s 3 decade old “faith that computer speeds and memory sizes would increase rapidly in the future while their costs would decrease” permitting the type of “multi-access” computing he first envisioned on Project MAC’s CTSS computer.

Application Availability. 1998. 34 years.

It seems all of the big advances on Project MAC were just explorations of Licklider's vision leading to the successor to the CTSS computer, called Multics, which was the first high availability computer system. Hey, 1998 wasn’t just the year Will Smith won an MTV video music award for “Big Willie Style” it was also the year that application availability hit the mass market in the form of WANsync, a component technology now developed into Arcserve’s latest solution Unified Data Protection (UDP), the type of backup and real time availability across locations that finally fulfills Licklider’s dream of “data and software that would exist on a network and migrate wherever it was needed.”

Cloud Computing. 1999. 34 years.

Licklider’s Libraries of the Future directly describes hardware/software tools that could be accessed from anywhere and provide access to anywhere, irrespective of geographical location. He suggests there would be in-built “procognitive systems” which would proactively assist the user in making use of their data. Who would have thought the same person who prophesized Tinder had time to imagine Salesforce.com as well? In your face Nostradamus! Salesforce.com was launched in 1999 34 years after its first description.

The Internet of Things. 2002. 42 years.

No way did Licklider foresee the Internet of Things?!!! Way. “Eventually, every informational transaction of sufficient consequence...each secretary’s typewriter, each data-gathering instrument, conceivably each dictation microphone, will feed into the network.” It was 42 years after publishing these words that “The Ambient Orb” went on sale in 2002, a plastic globe connected to the internet, it monitors the Dow Jones, personal portfolios, weather and other data sources and changes its color based on the dynamic parameters. It is only in the last few years that the Internet of Things (IoT) has truly become a part of our everyday lives just as Licklider said, for example my shoelaces have WIFI just in case I forget to tie them.

Cloud Storage. 2002. 37 years.

How do you top predicting the IoT over 50 years early?!! Cloud storage may seem like an obvious one but as with all of Licklider’s dreams, he wasn’t interested in the technology being possible he wanted it in the hands of the masses. Amazon Web Services (AWS) came out in 2002 and Libraries of the Future was 37 years ahead of the curve but it is only through improvements in bandwidth over the last decade that services like AWS, Microsoft Azure and Arcserve cloud are truly in reach of all sizes of organisation.

Automated Personal Assistants. 2010. 42 years.

“There is continuing interest in the idea of talking with computing machines.” OLIVER is an acronym for “on-line interactive vicarious expediter and responder” and it was conceived in the 1968 article The Computer as a Communication Device. OLIVER was a voice activated, individualized, automated personal assistant which “acts on behalf of its principal, taking care of many minor matters that do not require his personal attention and buffering him from the demanding world.” In 2010, Apple integrated Siri into its iOS and we have been asking it for directions to Elvis Presley ever since.

Intelligence Amplification. Still waiting!

Looking at the past is one thing but more exciting is, like Licklider, to dream of what can be. Since his predictions have been so shockingly accurate over the past 50 years can we look at his unfulfilled prophecies and expect them to certainly happen? Reading about this genius, and seeing how many years each of his ideas took to manifest, it is clear that the bigger your dreams the longer the world needs to catch up with them. Licklider’s biggest dreams saw a future where our “main intellectual advances would be made by people and computers working together in intimate association” and part of this journey has happened, see how social media is changing our relationships, see our symbiosis with smart phones, see science’s latest discoveries, see how sales and marketing gets done these days. Lick did not predict computers replacing people, at least not for a long while, but the vision he saw of “intelligence amplification”, the tight partnership of man and machine, is playing out even as you read this: wearable screens, VR, computers injected in the eye, chemical circuits that can interface with our body cells and this very article was mostly written by AI. Licklider foretold of them all over 50 years ago but we’re going to have to wait even longer before we get our national “Licklider Day”, maybe when we finally figure out how to digitally store our memories, or when we learn how to augment our brain’s cognitive processes. If this timeline has taught us anything it is this… it’s not a question of if but when.

Please connect with me on these platforms if you would like to see my future articles for IT Pros:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/arcserve

https://community.spiceworks.com/pages/arcserve

https://www.facebook.com/ArcserveLLC/

https://plus.google.com/u/0/109642769224138491763

https://twitter.com/Arcserve

And please join a technical demo of Arcserve UDP if you are interested in Licklider’s real time application availability: http://pages.arcserve.com/EN-Weekly-Webinar.html?src=UK/AR/Arcser/Lnewfeatures

All composite images used in this article are in the public domain.

By Louis Cadier -> https://uk.linkedin.com/in/louiscadier

9 #nearmiss stories you won't believe are true (but are!)

1. Long lost Star Trek files have been recovered just in time for the show’s 50th anniversary http://bit.ly/1LC3caF #nearmiss

2. John Steinbeck had to rewrite Of Mice and Men when a dog ate his manuscripthttp://bit.ly/218L7NZ #nearmiss

3. Universal lost classic film prints in a 2008 fire – luckily it had originals stored elsewhere http://lat.ms/1Vs4eeP #nearmiss

4. Did you know a taxi driver saved Ticketmaster’s data following an earthquake in 1989? http://bit.ly/1Q5nH4T #nearmiss

5. Children and adults everywhere would have been upset if Pixar really had lost Toy Story 2! http://bit.ly/J8Yzej #nearmiss

6. Ever heard about the missing tape recordings from Apollo 11 and the first moonwalk? http://bit.ly/1osvhMn #nearmiss

7. Kevin Costner’s laptop was stolen on his wedding day by a hairdresser. The thief was made to return it http://bit.ly/1QwlB0a #nearmiss

8. U2 front man Bono lost his laptop containing all his new song lyrics – luckily a fan returned it http://on.mtv.com/1OpwXeN #nearmiss

9. Now meet Bill…

If you need a tool that allows you to do more than just move VMs around, why not look at Arcserve UDP? UDP gives you a single, easy to use console to manage virtual and physical backup alongside genuine, 100% availability; that is ZERO downtime, ZERO loss of data. If you need remote site availability or cloud, UDP’s award winning deduplication technology and virtual standby turn limitations in bandwidth and recovery times into problems of the past. Arcserve UDP is a) software, or b) an all-in-one HW/SW appliance, or c) storage and recovery direct from our datacenters in Arcserve Cloud, Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services.

Register for our weekly webinar, we won’t give you money for attending but we will show you why Arcserve UDP just won 3 awards from VMworld : http://pages.arcserve.com/EN-Weekly-Webinar.html?src=UK/AR/Arcser/Lnewfeatures

One Console : Virtual, Windows, Linux, Disk, Snapshot, Mirror, Instant VM, Real Time Replication, Proven Tape, Hardware Integration, 10:1 Deduplication Ratios, WAN, LAN and VPN, Remote BMR, Workstations and Servers Together, Controlled Anywhere, Extreme Ease Of Use> O RPO, O RTO

Connect with Arcserve on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to take your place as a backup and disaster recovery pro.

IT Pro Poem for World Poetry Day

I wandered lonely as a cloud So my IT was available With all its data and software, A host, of servers virtual; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, I restore with Arcserve UDP.

Continuous as the stars that shine, Resilient as the military, I manage the never-ending line Of processes necessary: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Now automated, so advanced.

Disaster threatens us always But no more sleepless nights worried; Recovery with no delays, In such a jocund company! I gazed and gazed but little thought What happiness Arcserve had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, I cherish all this extra time Which is the bliss of certitude; I recover anywhere at will, A host, of servers virtual.

Remix of the Wordsworth’s classic by Louis Cadier -> https://uk.linkedin.com/in/louiscadier

These 2016 Cyber Security Threats Mean You Need Better Backup and Recovery Software

“The failure to understand and address risks related to technology, primarily the systemic cascading effects of cyber risks or the breakdown of critical information infrastructure, could have far-reaching consequences for national economies, economic sectors and global enterprises.” -The Global Risks Report 2016

Cheery stuff and just to really depress you; why not try to find your country on this map and see how at risk your business is to a cyberattack? Yay!

Fig 1. Ranking of cyber attacked. The darker the colour, the higher the concern. Source : The Global Risks Report 2016

You’re still smiling aren’t you? Optimistic, I like that. Or maybe you work at an SMB or Mid-market company and you think no one would bother to hack little old you? This is what AT&T have to say: “Hackers will no longer target just large organizations as they can get equally valuable information in other places through analytics on the data they are collecting and combine data to make it more valuable. That means smaller organizations are more likely targets.”

No one is suggesting you down a bottle of cough syrup, whack on a Morrissey album and spend a night-in with this year’s Global Risks Report, but one or two of the nightmare scenarios are worth knowing about. The report links cyber security with information infrastructure or in other words, there are a lot of security breaches expected in 2016 and advanced backup and disaster recovery capabilities are going to be needed more than ever to mitigate their impact.

Here is a list of the top cyber security threats expected this year and what backup and disaster recovery capabilities you will need to combat them:

Ransomware

“The criminals behind the ransomware campaigns are savvy and once they realise that they’ve locked up source code and financial documents that haven’t been properly backed up, you can expect prices to skyrocket … and be paid.” - Michael Sutton, CISO at Security, Zscaler

Recovery tools you need :

Multi-site replication –multiple image copies of backups cascaded to separate networks

Encryption of backup images

Encryption of backup data in transfer

Recovery time in minutes not hours/days – virtual standby and BMR to dissimilar hardware in the case of building a new environment

Recovery time in less than 1 second not minutes/hours/days – full system data and application failover (optional)

Safely stored tape archives and/or cloud backup

Attacks That Change or Manipulate Data

“At the moment, most of the serious hacks have been theft, but what if someone gets in the system and starts manipulating and changing data, to the point where now as an operator, you no longer believe what you’re seeing in your system?” -Mike Rogers, Head of the NSA and US Cyber Command

Recovery tools you need :

Recovery points – point in time backups which you can ‘rewind’ to, i.e. to restore your data and applications from before the first attack

In-line deduplication – the more restore points you have the more data you store; a powerful deduplication technology is key to making possible more restore points

Safely stored tape archives and/or cloud backup

Cost of cyber insurance

“We expect to see an increasing sophistication in the way the risks associated with a cyber breach are factored into policy cost, just as a driver’s safety record and driving habits are factored into the cost of an automotive policy.” - Carl Leonard, Principal Security Analyst, Websense

Recovery tools you need :

A recovery solution capable of faster recovery times means lower cyber insurance premiums

Multi-site replication to separate networks improves scope and speed of recovery, again lowering premiums

Safely stored tape archives and/or cloud backup reduce the extent of lost data and lower cyber insurance premiums as well

Balkanized Internet, divided by countries

“Countries everywhere will take some measure to strategically block Internet access suspected of industrial or governmental cyberespionage and other online criminal activity.” - Sean Tierney, VP of Threat Intelligence, IID

Recovery tools you need :

Adhere to local compliance by having full control over the location of your backup data and applications – multi-site replication

Working with a cloud backup provider with data centers in the same geographic region

Social engineering

“Hackers who understand technical details of attack security, but also have the business acumen to communicate with CEOs and convince CIOs of their importance will make a significant impact on the role of security professionals.” -Dave Baker, CSO, Okta

Recovery tools you need :

Role-based administration of your recovery solution – the highest privileges only for the most security savvy

See Ransomware

Open source vulnerabilities

“We observed certificate issues related to older hashing schemes such as SHA-1, as well as problems related to the version of ciphers supported. If some of the “big names” on the Internet are struggling to keep up, how can smaller vendors cope?” - Carl Leonard, Principal Security Analyst, Websense

Recovery tools you need :

Compatibility of your recovery solution with the latest versions and updates of your operating systems, hypervisors and applications – never be left waiting

See Ransomware

The best remedy for a security breach is that it never happened at all, prevention is paramount but given the sophistication of the threats that companies face, a strategy for the immediate restore of all data and applications is essential. For backup and recovery software, appliance or cloud that can do everything in the above list of recovery capabilities, please take a look at Arcserve UDP.

Free download: http://arcserve.com/free-backup-software-trial/?src=UK/AR/Arcser/Lnewfeatures

Twice weekly demo: http://pages.arcserve.com/EN-Weekly-Webinar.html?src=UK/AR/Arcser/Lnewfeatures

By Louis Cadier —> https://uk.linkedin.com/in/louiscadier

I spoke to a psychic about moving from tape to disk backup, this is what happened...

I realise you never asked to know anything about my life but there is no way I can explain what happened to me yesterday without telling you a small detail of it. There is this cake shop, a cake shop? No, not a cake shop, THE cake shop, the one! The Frank Sinatra of cake shops! And to get anywhere close to communicating how exceptional their cakes are, this shop is a 30 minute walk away from where I work. 30 minutes! In London that is an extended lunch break. OK, we’ve got the personal bit over with (and exhale). I was running, I mean Mel Gibson charging into battle at the end of Braveheart style, running, driven by the thought of a muffin.

As I stormed onto Portobello Road I charged right into the path of a little old lady who stood her ground firmly and caused me to divert into a nearby garden. As I was carefully extracting myself from a rose bush, the lady shouted to me over the garden wall “Do you want to know your future?” I shouted back gruffly “Only if it has a muffin in it.” I joined her on the pavement, she was wearing a bright bluecoat, like Paddington bear, her hair was long and pointing in all directions as if magnetized in place and I could barely see her eyes behind such a great big smile. “Nice to… bump into you.” I said, removing the last of the rose thorns from my left buttock. I began heading back the way I had come; there was going to be no muffin that day, I thought of that Herman Hermits song ‘No Milk Today” and changed the word “Milk” to “Muffin” as I sang it in my head but then I heard the voice of the little old lad. “You just wrote an article about moving from tape to disk backup…”

“How do you know about that?” I said but I was thinking to myself: perhaps that Red Dwarf episode was right, maybe existence really is just a computer game, if so, I was either going up or down a level and I didn’t know which. She continued “The article is going to be a disaster. You will receive so much abuse from disgusted Spiceworks/LinedkedIn users that you will close down your account in days, move to France and become a goat herder.” I know, I promised you there would be no additional personal information about me but… goat herding has always been there as a plan B if this software gig doesn’t work out. I was completely taken in, convinced. “Why? What’s wrong with the article?” I think she sensed the defensiveness in my reply and her face became a lot more sympathetic but I could see she was hiding some bad news. “Wellllllll…..” she cooed the word in putting off the inevitable “I mean really… you didn’t even mention that the user needs to have two separate disks; they need one disk for the production data and a separate disk for the backups.” For a lady in her 70s I was quite impressed with her technical vocabulary. I said “Why is that important?” and she slapped her forehead in amazement and looked up to the heavens for strength, echoing my words “Why is that important. Why is that important?! Good gosh! If there is a hardware failure on the disk which shares both the production data/applications AND their backup then you lose them both!”

Fair enough, the old lady had a point. “I guess I could add that in.” I said. She swung her finger in my face and waved it around theatrically, much like a politician I had seen on TV recently “You’ll do more than that!” she crowed, “You also need to have the separate disks on separate networks.” I thought about this for a while but I don’t know why I bothered, her face was so smug I should have just believed it. I said “You put the backup disk on a separate network so that if there is a security breach in the production environment, the backup is safe from the threat?” She gave me a big sloppy kiss on the cheek “Exactly!” she said. It was 2 nil to the nutter, she was good. I carried on the thought “That opens up some interesting options for sending backups off-site to a remote network or to a cloud provider. The disk can be anywhere!” The old lady was dancing now, whooping and cheering “He’s got it! The boy has finally got it!” I am not one to miss a party and I decided the most reasonable course of action was to have a little dance along with her; dancing in the day time is what life is all about, the fact that we were dancing about backup and disaster recovery just made it more true. A little breathless I said to her “All that stuff I wrote about keeping the tape device in use for archiving and periodic full system tape backups… that was bang on, right?” Her expression suddenly changed, it hardened. She said grimly “Before I answer that. We haven’t talked about payment…” Ah. I gulped nervously. “Um… what exactly were you thinking?”

I gave an old lady my shoes in exchange for this information and I didn’t get a muffin. If you are thinking of moving from tape to disk backup please:

1. Ensure you have separate disks for production and backups.

2. Ensure these disks are on separate networks to protect your backup from security threats.

3. Replicate an additional copy of the backup off-site to a remote office, a co-location or cloud provider as a plan B.

4. Do not retire your tape device and tapes, these can now be used for archiving and less frequent full system tape backups as a plan C, third line defense against an incident.

And here is where you can hear “No Muffin Today” (Louis remix):

Arcserve UDP provides both disk and tape backup from a single console. UDP’s market leading feature-set and ease of use supports both virtual and physical platforms, Windows and Linux. With over 20 years in Backup and Disaster Recovery, Arcserve UDP is built on proven enterprise tape and disk technology and includes replication and deduplication as standard with every license to make sending backups off-site a reality even on a limited bandwidth. If no second site is available, UDP has open APIs to work with any service provider and it comes fully integrated with public clouds like Amazon Web Services, Azure and Arcserve cloud.

Please register to join the Arcserve weekly webinar : http://pages.arcserve.com/EN-Weekly-Webinar.html?src=UK/AR/Arcser/Lnewfeatures

And you can download a full copy of Arcserve UDP here, it includes a 30 day license: http://arcserve.com/free-backup-software-trial/?src=UK/AR/Arcser/Lnewfeatures

By Louis Cadier –> https://uk.linkedin.com/in/louiscadier

Top 20 Moments in the History of Backup and Disaster Recovery

13.7 billion years BC – The universe begins as a singularity; those who believe in the “big bang” theory suggest the disaster is on-going…

3.8 billion years BC – The start of life on Earth. The first cell is thought to have arisen from self-replicating RNA what developed later into DNA. DNA is a store of biological data, the genetic information that allows all modern living things to function, grow and reproduce. Put another way, you are the backup of your parents. Say hi to the therapist for me.

65 million years BC - Dinosaurs, not backed up.

3200 BC – The invention of writing. In order not to forget stuff, the ancient Sumerians started to write it all down. There are great RPOs on books (as long as you have a good scribe) but the RTOs are rubbish; the average adult reads at 300 words per minute, painful.

552 BC – Cyrus the Great memorises the name of every soldier in his entire army, some 10,000 Persian men. An amazing achievement of memory but also a harsh lesson in single-point-of-failure, he is killed in battle in 530 BC and the information goes with him.

48 BC – The burning of the Library of Alexandria. Among others in your “Top 10 Lost Books Of All Time”, the second book of Aristotle’s Poetics went up in smoke and humanity was beginning to realise the fatal flaw in their cunning backup plan; paper is actually quite flammable.

1347 AD - The first known insurance contract is signed in Genoa, Italy. This was great for those buying and selling goods and owning property but information is difficult to value, most people would rather have their data back than receive compensation for its loss.

1436 AD – Johannes Gutenberg, a former goldsmith, created the first printing press in Germany. He used his knowledge of metalwork to fashion letters out of an alloy, pressing these against ink and then paper to create a copy. This made the printing of multiple copies considerably faster, a great step forward in data resilience.

1539 AD – Image based backup, born. Henry VIII, King of England was trying to decide who to marry next, he sent the artist Hans Holbein to make a reliable copy of what his list of European princesses looked like. Based on these pictures, Henry made his choice and proposed engagement to Anne of Cleeves only to discover she looked nothing like he expected. Corrupt copy.

1937 AD – Invention of the photocopier. Successfully and faithfully photocopying documents and bottoms since the early 20th century. It is a shame about those grey smudges you get and hey, where is the disaster recovery for the rain forests?

1949 AD – The Manchester Mark 1 computer ushers in the era of stored program computing, the Amazon looks on hopefully.

1964 AD – Mass market computing begins, the Programma 101 was unveiled to the public at the New York World’s fair. One of these computers was used on Apollo 11 and it was pretty much… a calculator.

1972 AD – Mainframe computers now deliver applications and data at high speed to hundreds of users, in-built hardware redundancy ensures exceptional RPOs and RTOs. The ancient Sumerians would have just loved this.

1990 AD – Arcserve 1.0 released by Cheyenne software. The age of distributed computing is in full swing and it is all about backing up to these little rectangular things called “tapes”.

1998 AD – VMware founded in Palo Alto, California. Although the concept of a hypervisor originated from 1960s, it was VMware who introduced hardware virtualization to the mass market. Virtualisation will go on to revolutionise backup and disaster recovery.

2006 AD – XOsoft’s WANsync technology is integrated into Arcserve. For the first time mid-market users can perform both backup and full system failover from one solution.

2008 AD - Microsoft releases their competing product to VMware, they call it Hyper V. If you weren’t virtualised before, you are now. Specific software for virtual backup exists but there is little integration with physical servers, tape backups or cross platform Microsoft/Linux.

2014 AD – Unified Data Protection (UDP) is released by Arcserve. This software is specifically designed for virtual environments, VMware, Hyper V and Xen, whilst extending its ease of use and functionality across virtual and physical servers. UDP provides both image based and file based backup as well as providing application level replication and hot swap and always on capability. UDP maintains its advanced features with tape and compatibility controlling both Windows and Linux environments, virtual and physical, backup and DR, disk, tape and cloud from a single console. RPO = 0. RTO = 0.

2015 AD – Arcserve UDP wins three awards at VMWorld, including “best disaster recovery project” and “best in show”.

2016 AD – You are here.

Please register to see a live demo of Arcserve UDP here :

http://pages.arcserve.com/EN-Weekly-Webinar.html?src=UK/AR/Arcser/Lnewfeatures

Or download a free copy of Arcserve UDP here :

http://arcserve.com/free-backup-software-trial/?src=UK/AR/Arcser/Lnewfeatures

B Louis Cadier - https://uk.linkedin.com/in/louiscadier

A comparison of free, open source Linux backup and recovery tools vs. purchasing proprietary software.

Perhaps there was a time when the Linux user could look on at their Windows-only colleagues with the slightest envy, with their slick GUIs and their one-click set and forgets, it all looked so easy for them. Linux OS provides so many advantages in control and cost that the Linux user does not get jealous often but in the area of backup and disaster recovery there must have been a twinge…. not anymore!

In this post I will summarise the new capabilities and services now available to Linux users for backup and disaster recovery, comparing these to current industry best practices.

Supports RHEL 7, CentOS 7, SLE 12 : Arcserve, fwbackups, rsync, KBackup, Acronis, Arkeia, Bacula Systems, Amanda, Veeam, Commvault

Graphical User Interface (GUI) and command line interface

Using a command line tool like Rsync or KBackup is a great way for skilled administrators to perform their Linux backup and recovery. Employed manually or automated by creating scripts used in conjunction with Cron, these tools fit perfectly for those who have the knowledge to use them. However this is also a problem; for all those organisations with multiple IT staff or for those who are reliant on a Linux service partner this creates a bottleneck around the knowledge. The more IT staff who can confidently and easily operate the backup and recovery of the Linux environment the better protected the data and applications will be, the faster they will be restored. GUIs can provide an easy way-in to share processes among the team.

Provides both GUI and command line interface : Arcserve, fwbackups, Acronis, Arkeia, Bacula Systems, Amanda, Veeam, Commvault

Enterprise maintenance and 24/7 support

An open source tool like fwbackups may even come with your distribution’s repository… for free! Why would you look at anything else? No one likes to think of the worst case scenario but that is exactly what you need to think about when you are questioning your backup and recovery plan. Sorry :) By using a proprietary solution which includes software maintenance and 24/7 support you are gaining access to first line technicians who have a vast experience with their solution and similar environments; this is like a warranty on your Linux environment. As backup and recovery touches every area of an organisation’s hardware, data and applications, it is the vendor’s responsibility to ensure their product’s compatibility and to deliver on a reliable outcome.

Provides enterprise maintenance and 24/7 support : Arcserve, Acronis, Arkeia, Bacula Systems, Veeam, Commvault

One solution to manage Windows and Linux

In a mixed environment of Windows and Linux servers it makes sense to use a single tool to manage the backup and recovery of them both, if the process is separate it requires more coordination between administrators; adding-in additional steps to recover, taking more time to perform and increasing the chance for error. A number of vendors have bridged the Windows/Linux divide, some with limited functionality, please read on to find out what separates them.

One solution to manage Windows and Linux : Arcserve, Acronis, Arkeia, Veeam Commvault

One solution to manage virtual and physical

This really speaks to the last point, a single solution for the backup and recovery of both virtual and physical servers provides absolute control. Day to day this is about the ease and speed of managing the backup administration of a mixed environment but in the event of the worst case scenario it becomes even more important; the user needs complete flexibility in how they restore for a situation they cannot foresee. Linux backup and restore tools can now provide p2p, v2v, p2v, v2p as well as cross hypervisor support.

One solution to manage virtual and physical : Arcserve, Commvault, Acronis, Arkeia

WAN optimised replication

This brings us to the exciting part! That is, if the word “resiliency” makes you feel like the first time you heard The Beatles. The ability to securely replicate data and applications to remote sites or to a quality cloud provider is widely becoming seen as an essential part of any backup and recovery plan. Unlike tape backups which take time to perform and restore from, replica images can be restored in minutes, activated remotely and delivered from different sites.

Provides WAN optimised replication : Arcserve, Commvault, Acronis, Arkeia

Client side deduplication

When you come to look at replication one of the first barriers you may encounter is bandwidth. Especially for virtual environments with large volumes of data there could be a hefty price tag attached to replicating to a remote site or to cloud. Client side deduplication radically shrinks the data without the need to stage it first, it happens in-line and therefore reduces the load on the network. If Linux users are serious about investing in a cloud provider then client side deduplication is one way to dramatically minimise those costs.

Provides client side deduplication :Arcserve, Commvault

Full system failover

The King Kong of any backup and recovery plan has to be full system failover, its implications are massive; as close to zero loss of data as you can get, as close to zero downtime as you can get. By mirroring Linux servers in real time, production applications are always-on and can meet the most punishing SLAs. The only downside is the additional cost of redundant hardware, a cost which has been coming down through the virtualisation of server hardware as well as cloud providers now offering powered-off VMs in their cloud and only charging full rates when they are in use.

Provides full system manual and automatic application failover and failback : Arcserve

Industry best practice is not just about doing the right thing it is about getting the most benefit for your money and in the area of backup and recovery specifically it is about ease of use, reducing data loss and improving your time to recovery. As an Arcserve advocate, the following list is the very least that I would ask for from my Linux utility, the new release of Arcserve UDP, V6. is an important step forward in backup and recovery for Linux users.

CTRL Z your life

After a busy day of writing and correcting emails, copying and pasting into spreadsheet cells and tweaking objects in this and that presentation, I was finishing up the last of it, clicking away on my laptop at the kitchen table when my right hand slipped suddenly and sent my mouse Saturday Night Fever style across the tabletop knocking a glass of water off the side. As the glass fell in slow motion, my left hand, still resting on the keyboard, jumped into action and out of pure reflex hit CTRL Z. For those of you who do not use shortcuts, I tried to stop a real life glass of water from breaking on my kitchen floor by pressing the computer’s “Undo” command. And… smash. This at once provided my Mrs. with a new entry in her long catalogue of ‘silly things Louis has done’, the source material for her best jokes at my expense. It was one morning as I melodramatically writhed in pain following a stubbed little toe that she suggested satirically “Why don’t you just hit CTRL Z?” Funny…I’m told. But it got me thinking about it again and you know what? I need CTRL Z in my life. It is the stuff of science fiction to imagine what it is like to live in a virtual world where you can pick the rules, read the dark warnings of William Gibson’s Burning Chrome or enjoy the pop asceticism of The Matrix, but as we spend ever more time on-line, our lives routinely uploaded there, maybe the future is closer than we think. What commands would you want in your virtual world? I am just a Backup and Disaster Recovery guy so please forgive my lack of imagination in this bucket list of Louis’ Must Have Commands For His Virtual World:

Save a Recovery Point of me when I was 21 so I can go back and have hair again any time I want.

Replicate myself on holiday. After deduplicating and compressing myself so that I could travel on even a modest connection, I would encrypt myself and then, either real time or scheduled, replicate myself to a datacenter in Barbados.

Use Virtual Standby to create a lookalike of me. Not feeling like work today? I would spin up a Virtual Machine copy of myself fully equipped with all the relevant data and applications and send the poor chap into work instead of me.

Archive my fashion mistakes to the cloud. That is pretty much 1995 all the way to present day with only a few exceptions at weddings and one or two fancy dress parties. I will take Granular Restore with that just in-case I am ever feeling nostalgic and want to have a laugh at one or two badly dressed memories without having to remember the whole lot.

Make everything much easier to do than it currently is. I’m thinking of absolutely everything here but acute examples include; baking a decent macaron, DARPA’s math challenge and Morris dancing.

Deduplicate plastic bags. If only we could delete all the unnecessary plastic bags in the World! Well this is my virtual world and we just did, we’ll keep one plastic bag to put in a museum somewhere.

SSD my brain. Daft Punk have already had this upgrade.

Intuitively know exactly what to do and when to do it. In my virtual world I’m not asking to be smarter, I’m just asking that everything else is simpler.

Truncate my logs before I go to bed.

There is probably a far more controversial version of this list for anyone who uses Adobe Photoshop extensively but all of the Backup and Disaster Recovery capabilities mentioned are available this very moment with Arcserve UDP in software, all-in-one appliance and cloud options. And for those of us left wanting CTRL Z right now and in the real world, there is Virtual Reality in our smartphones already and we still have the power to untag bad photos of ourselves on Twitter, we’re getting there!

Free download: http://arcserve.com/free-backup-software-trial/?src=UK/AR/Arcser/Lnewfeatures

Twice weekly demo: http://pages.arcserve.com/EN-Weekly-Webinar.html?src=UK/AR/Arcser/Lnewfeatures

First published for Cloud On Demand —> http://www.cloudondemand.co.za/blog/ctrl-z-your-life/

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