Vizioncore Puzzle Contest – I WON!

Check it out I was chosen as one of the winners in the Vizioncore Crossword Puzzle contest that has been going on the for the last few weeks! The contest was to promote the release Vizioncore’s backup product vRanger Pro DPP 4.0.

I guessed at the last clue and looks like I got it right.

Very Awesome!!!

Mozy Online Backups – Backup Your Home Computer

If you are looking for a way to backup your home computer check out Mozy.com. They offer a 2 Gig backup for free but for just $4.95 you get unlimited backup for a single computer. They have clients for Windows and Mac.

“Mozy is a simple and safe way to back up all the important stuff on your computer. A copy of your data is stored in a secure, remote location for safekeeping, so that in the event of disaster your data is still retrievable.”

Sign up for an account, install the client, select the files you want to backup, and that’s it. There are some tweaks to allow more bandwidth to be used for backups, or backup only when idle but I just selected all the defaults. The initial backup took about 10 days for 45GBs of data, but now my data is quickly backed up daily. I am sure they are using some sort of source de-duplication similar to AVAMAR.

Here is a capture from my Mozy account of my backup data

I have not tried to do a restore yet, but I have browsed through my backed up files on the Virtual Drive created when you install the Mozy Client and using the Web restore online.

Mozy’s web restore interface

If anyone from Mozy reads this… I wish you had a Linux Client!!!

Enable Web Access on vSphere ESX 4

Not sure why this is but Web Access to ESX 4 is disabled by default.

To enable it ssh to the service console and log in as root.

[root@vmware]# chkconfig –level 345 vmware-webAccess on

Verify it has been enabled for run level 3, 4, and 5

[root@vmware]# chkconfig –list vmware-webAccess
vmware-webAccess 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off

Start the service

[root@vmware]# service vmware-webAccess start
Starting VMware Virtual Infrastructure Web Access:
VMware Virtual Infrastructure Web Access [ OK ]

You can now log in a root at https://vmwareESXhostname/ui/

Does anyone know why VMware disabled this by default?

Freeware LDAP Browser

Freeware LDAP Browser from Softerra
http://www.ldapadministrator.com/

Awesome free tool to help troubleshoot Active Directory/LDAP configurations.

First Hampton Roads User IT Group Meeting

Last night was the first meeting of the Hampton Roads User IT Group meeting. It was held at Burton’s Grill in the Hilltop section of VA Beach. The local EMC sales folks put the meeting together.

Unfortunately the turn out was not that great only a handful of folks showed up. Traffic was terrible and it took a little over an hour to make the 30 minute drive from Chesapeake to VA Beach, probably a reason for the low turn out.

Despite the small crowd it was still a great event. Tom Lennon from RSA Security did a presentation on some of their current and upcoming offerings. RSA’s log collection and analysis product – enVision – looks pretty interesting, definitely something to get a little more info on. I got to say a little bit about my experiences at EMC World (I am still working my blog post about it – so much good stuff, so little time). Chatted with a couple of other EMC customers and partners about technologies they are planning on or currently using – AVAMAR, VMware, Celerra, etc.

The appetizers were good, the drinks were cold, and Stephanie & Joe from EMC were great hosts.

A couple of folks from Varrow out of NC were there and it was pretty cool chatting with them. Check out their community blog at http://www.varrowblogs.com/ – some good info there.

The local EMC folks are planning to have User IT Group meetings once a quarter. I’ll be sure to post when the next one is, hope you can make it.

AVAMAR f_cache and p_cache Formulas

Formulas to help determine the correct size of your f_cache and p_cache for AVAMAR backups.

f_cache = N * 40MB

N = Millions of Files
So for 3 million files:
f_cache = 3 * 40MB
f_cache = 120MB

p_cache = DB Size in GB/Average Chunk * 20MB

Average Chunk Sizes:
Exchange DB: 16
Microsoft SQL DB: 24

For a 100GB Microsoft SQL DB:
p_cache = 20/24 * 20MB
p_cache = 83.3MB

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