Clik here to view.
The divisibility of eggs
The caution about keeping all of ones eggs in the one basket is a fairly common one. It’s also a fairly sensible one; after all, eggs are fragile things and putting all of them into a single basket...
View ArticleOur new home
Hosting for the NetWorker Blog has shifted. I’m hoping I’ve not left anything out – but if you spot any oddities, please let me know ASAP.
View ArticleClik here to view.
All frameworks have limits
One of the most powerful aspects of NetWorker is that the entire design philosophy of the product is that of a framework. Rather than trying to be all things to all people, NetWorker has a core set of...
View ArticleNetWorker Usage Survey, 2012-2013
It’s time again for the NetWorker Usage Survey. There’s just 16 questions in this survey (one more than the previous one), but it should hopefully still take less than 10 minutes to complete – even...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Best Practice – Pool content
NB: Don’t forget to fill in the NetWorker Usage Survey, if you haven’t already done so. It’s open until 31 January 2013. NetWorker has a bunch of predefined pools that come in the bootstrap...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Best Practice – Are index pools required?
A common question that you see fielded regularly is whether or not it’s “best practice” to have dedicated index pools. To me, there’s only a couple of pros to having index backups in their own pools,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
EMC Elect
I was rather chuffed, in December, to be nominated to the new EMC Elect programme, and humbled to be informed a couple of days ago that I’ve been accepted into it. The directory of all members for 2013...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Best Practice – Groups
There’s a few very important rules to follow when it comes to NetWorker groups: Maintain an air-gap: Ensure there’s at least 5, preferably 10 minutes, between the start time for any two NetWorker...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Basics – Getting a bootstrap with every backup
One question you’ll periodically see raised in NetWorker forums is … “why am I getting a bootstrap backup with every backup?” The answer is actually a fairly simple one: if the backup server is in an...
View ArticleNetWorker Usage Report 2012
Running between December 11, 2012 and 31 January 2013, the NetWorker Usage Survey switched from a bi-yearly to a yearly activity and continued to track trends within the NetWorker user community, as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
NetWorker Tunnels
NetWorker and firewalls has always been a bit of a challenging combination. It’s become increasingly simplified over time – to the point where even a network luddite such as myself can readily...
View ArticleDebugging – device device daemons on a storage node
On one of my lab environments I recently had a problem where the devices (AFTD) on a firewalled storage node suddenly stopped working. This manifested in a fairly odd way: NetWorker was still running...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Basics – Old Savegroup Messages
A long time ago, in a NetWorker far, far away, all the output of a savegroup was included in the notification it generated. Eventually, this was determined to be too problematic – when it worked, it...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Basics – Tape capacity and compression
Tape capacity. It should be straight forward, but many people tend to look at only the biggest, most optimistic numbers, and assume the best. In backup, this is a mistake, and one which I’ve seen...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Cloud and Backups
The other day I stumbled across a link to an article, Why you should stop buying servers. The title was interesting enough to grab my attention so I had a quick peruse through it. It’s an article...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Happy anniversary, EMC and Legato
In July 2003, 10 years ago, EMC announced they were buying Legato for around $1.3 billion dollars (US). The acquisition was completed in October 2003, but almost immediately after it was announced,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
NetWorker 8.1 Overview
As is typically the case, EMC and my timing has been a little out of whack. They announced their “backup to the future” event around the time that I suddenly had to move, and a few days after the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Of accidental architectures
EMC’s recent big backup announcements included a variety of core product suite enhancements in the BRS space – Data Domain got a substantial refresh, Avamar jumped up to v7, and NetWorker to 8.1....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Data protection lessons from a tomato
Data protection lessons from a tomato? Have I gone mad? Bear with me. If you’ve done any ITIL training, the above diagram will look familiar to you. Rather unimaginatively, it’s called the DIKW model:...
View ArticleNotify me
A small yet nice new feature in NetWorker 8.1 is a limited form of parameter expansion in NetWorker notification action entries. I spotted this in the Scheduled Clone Notification: name: Scheduled...
View Article
