Basics – Upgrading to Data Protection Central 19.2
Data Protection Software 19.2 has been released, and included in that, of course, is v19.2 of Data Protection Central (DPC). DPC is the central dashboard for Dell EMC Data Protection, supporting...
View ArticleData Protection Memes
The concept of a meme has been around for quite a while, now. It was first introduced in 1976 by Richard Dawkins in his book, “The Selfish Gene”, as a way of explaining behaviour which may not have an...
View ArticleWhat’s New in NetWorker 19.2?
With the release of Data Protection Software 19.2 comes NetWorker 19.2. There are some great new features in NetWorker 19.2, and in this blog, I’ll take you through some of them. Work on the NetWorker...
View ArticleWhat’s New in Avamar 19.2?
Included in the release of Data Protection Software 19.2 is, of course, Avamar 19.2. While I don’t have Avamar 19.2 rolled out in my lab yet to include any screen-captures, I still wanted to run...
View ArticleAvamar Fitness Analyzer – Taking the Pulse of your Avamar Environment
One of the options introduced in Avamar 19.1 is the ‘Fitness Analyzer’. This is a great tool that lets you really drill into the health and activity of your Avamar data protection environment. You’ll...
View ArticleBasics – Using Avamar to Protect S3 Bucket Data
Technically you shouldn’t need to backup object stores such as Amazon S3. Object stores are designed with massive durability levels, and best practices for protection include: Enable versioning Use...
View ArticleBasics – Using NetWorker to Protect S3 Bucket Data
Introduction In my previous post, I showed how to use Avamar to protect S3/Bucket data. This time around, I’m going to look at the mechanics of it with NetWorker. Like Avamar, this technique requires...
View ArticleBasics – Helping the Elderly
Regular blog visitors will know that I think legacy applications and operating systems have a negative impact on the datacentre. I usually think of legacy as being systems which the originating vendor...
View ArticleMeme Monday
Let’s start the week off by thinking of a few data protection topics through the awesome window of memes, shall we? I’m a big fan of taking the time to do data discovery. While data gravity means...
View ArticleCloud is a Product Pivot
Whoa! Everyone calls cloud a destination, what is Preston going on about here? I grew up in a farming town, though I didn’t come from a farming family, myself. My father mistakenly thought he could get...
View ArticleMeme Monday
OK, let’s look at common data protection challenges through the eyes of memes again! I’m a big fan of backup monitoring. When I was a backup administrator, I’d spent anywhere up to the first hour of...
View ArticlePowerProtect Data Manager 19.3
If you thought Dell EMC was done with product releases for 2019 with the recent Data Protection Software updates, you were in error. Just in time for the holiday season, PowerProtect Data Manager...
View ArticleLooking Back on a Decade of Data Protection
Introduction It’s that time of the year when pundits usually (badly) predict what’s going to happen next year. It’s an even bigger time for predictions when we roll into a new decade. I personally...
View Article…and that’s a wrap for 2019
So, that’s it for 2019, for me at least. This isn’t really going to be a post about data protection – though I’ll note that over the year, the highest read posts have been: Stopping and starting...
View ArticleAustralian Bushfires show the Precarious State of Modern Infrastructure
Having grown up in rural regions, I’ve found myself glued to coverage of the bushfires raging throughout Australia at the moment. It has been emotionally stressful, even as an observer. Several million...
View ArticleThe Perils of Myopic Optimism
“Oxford economics historian Avner Offer believes that we’re hopelessly myopic. When left to our own devices, we’ll choose what’s nice for us today over what’s best for us tomorrow. In a life of noise...
View ArticleBasics – NetWorker Compressed Recoveries
While Data Domain compressed restores had been available in the NMDA and NMM modules for a while, NetWorker 19.1 introduced recovery compression for most other backups. (VMware virtual machine...
View ArticleErrata – Updated KVM Backup Script
So, when I was putting together a blog post last week on NetWorker compressed recoveries, I noticed the KVM Backup script I’d put together had a bug in it. A while ago, I’d updated the savekvm.pl...
View ArticleBasics – PPDM 19.3 Deployment and Initial Setup
I needed to do some reconfiguration in my lab recently, and I decided that it was a prime opportunity for me to start my PowerProtect Data Manager (PPDM) deployment from scratch, but actually record...
View ArticleOf Milestones and Memories
So, something happened last month that I’ve only just noticed – I’ve gone over 2,000,000 hits on this blog. I think that calls for a little celebration! Sure, numbers can mean different things between...
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