NetApp - Incorrigible Techno-Weenie

LAN Party!

My youngest son recently celebrated his 16th birthday, and Stephen wanted to host a larger-than-normal LAN party for his friends. Presented with the opportunity to build new high-performance clients, how could I refuse? :-)

Computer games are often seen as a solitary activity. However, with ten players (and PCs) stuffed into our home - all within trash-talking range! - this was a highly interactive group event lasting most of the day. Typically after each game the entire crowd converged in the kitchen, munching on snacks, recounting stories of success or failure, and trading tips on strategy. Play resumed after re-balancing teams, stretching late into the evening.

Aside from the basic logistics (seating, power, networking, etc.) the most challenging obstacle was ensuring relatively equal opportunity for each of the participants. We played a popular online game ('DOTA') based on Blizzard's Warcraft III engine. Some players have nearly godlike skills, others are self-professed n00bs, with the rest somewhere in-between.

In advance of the party Stephen developed a simple handicapping scheme which proved very effective. This ensured that even the most inexperienced players remained competitive.

Overall the party was a huge success. While no comparison to the truly gigantic events, this was one of my sons favorite birthday parties ever.

We're already planning for next year!

SSD Upgrade

I managed to upgrade my laptop with a slightly-worn SSD that we have been using for internal development. Overall, this is a sweet upgrade from a Hitachi 250GB 7.2k HDD, although the results are a bit different than I expected.

Cold boot speed is essentially unchanged, as are almost all application launches. I regularly defragmented my "old" 7.2k drive, so this result makes sense, although I was hoping for improvement!

The big advantages are with applications like WinDirStat (4x speed boost) or context switching between different applications. Outlook also is MUCH "smoother" and now I rarely want to smash my computer!

There is a very small improvement in weight (45g), but power consumption dropped a significant 4 Watts (from 26 to 22 Watts), which obviously has a positive impact on battery life. One of the unexpected positive side-effects of this is that the system ("CPU") fan now hardly ever runs. Combined with with the obviously noiseless SSD, my laptop is now usually completely silent!

Aside from the outrageous cost/GB (if I actually had to buy this thing), the SSD upgrade is the best change in my laptop computing experience since the original Pentium-M machines. Great stuff!

Personal Virtualization

Earlier this year DDR2 memory prices completely cratered, so I decided to rebuild my main Windows desktop client with 8GB of memory. My main goal was ostensibly avoiding disk paging under virtually any circumstance, and this was a recurring problem when manipulating extremely large photos or video.

However, the real driver was the chance to build a blistering fast - but nearly silent - new PC. :-)

Overall, the transition to Vista64 proved remarkably smooth, with one major exception: my scanners. Not surprisingly, my older (but still excellent) flat-bed photo scanner had no 64-bit driver, and prospects were slim-to-none. However, even a very recently-purchased document scanner had little hope for a 64-bit driver. Replacing the scanners would nearly double the new PC's cost, but even with a substantial outlay I could not find a suitable 64-bit-capable document scanner at any reasonable price. $5k is not reasonable, and since I use the document scanner regularly, I needed another alternative.

My first experience with desktop virtualization left me skeptical - particularly with high-speed USB peripherals - and I considered dual-boot alternatives. But since I also wanted to play with Ubuntu and hoped for a more elegant solution than triple boot (!) I decided to give VMware a try.

Overall the results have far exceeded my expectations. VMware Workstation 6 cost far less than even one new scanner, and at almost every turn I've been delighted by a nearly seamless experience. For example, the fluid way Workstation handles dual-monitors and high resolutions was a completely unexpected surprise, and the ability to 'drill' through the guest into the host (with appropriate warnings of the security risks) or cut-and-paste from guest to host (or vice-versa) is much more useful than a multi-boot configuration.

With dual monitors I simply open the guest on one panel, and the host on the other. The virtual XP installation is so convenient and stable that I now generally only load performance-hungry applications (video & photo editing, plus graphics-intensive games) on my Vista64 host, and install almost every other program in the guest OS.

Highly recommended!

Follow-up: Personal DR

One unambiguous early conclusion from my personal DR plan: I am lazy!

Remembering to connect a USB drive to the front port of my PC before shutting down for the night is an apparently insurmountable obstacle. In the eight months since initiating my DR plan, I've typically only synchronized local USB copies every couple of weeks (at best), and swapped copies in the safe deposit box only three times.

Fortunately, the automatic synchronization to my local networked storage is not lazy, and runs without fail every night. The automatic secondary replication also runs as scheduled, so I am protected from anything but a complete catastrophe that destroys our home entirely. Even then the copies in the bank vault will likely only be a few months out of date.

This experience echoes the complete lack of confidence I hear from customers about their conventional tape-based backup "plans" - particularly in remote offices. Fully automatic disk-to-disk backup removes human nature from the equation and dramatically improves real-world data protection.

For home use, Daniel Holmes suggested an online backup tool, and if your data requirements are relatively modest, this is an excellent alternative.

In my case I'm sticking with a small local networked storage infrastructure:

1. The mirrored data is rapidly exceeding 100GB for my client alone, plus comparable amounts for some of our other clients. My "paperless" office, digital camera & camcorder ensure relentless future growth.
2. Any time my NetApp laptop launches an online backup from home it completely trashes our broadband latency (crucial for gaming) and the 400+ ms ping generates howls from my family.
3. Most important, as a flaming cheapskate I zealously avoid subscription charges whenever possible. For example, we have two ancient-but-fully-upgraded TiVo DVRs with lifetime (i.e., one-time)  subscriptions that paid for themselves many years ago. Paying monthly fees in-perpetuity for online storage is just not going to happen on my watch. :-)

Complete Product

Last year while starting to consolidate my desktop software collection I stumbled across some older PC games. In a burst of nostalgia I decided to fire-up one of my all-time favorites: MechWarrior 2. 

One of the early First-Person-Shooters (OK, in a walking tank, but this was mainly to overcome graphical limitations in the mid-1990's), this is the game that launched my interest in PCs.

The full color 640x480 3D graphics were a giant leap forward at the time, and provided my first immersive gaming experience. I spent many fun hours playing MechWarrior 2 and the follow-on expansion packs.

Even in compatibility mode, I could not get my edition of MW2 running in Windows XP, and my original Pentium-90 desktop had long ago transported to “computer heaven.” Microsoft had recently launched Virtual PC 2007, and I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to test-drive virtualization technology and re-live fond memories. So I installed Virtual PC, created an old-school Win95 client, and installed MW2.

It was an amazing and seductive experience seeing these familiar images on my 24" LCD panel: quite an upgrade from my original 14” CRT monitor! The intro movies were greatly enhanced by a thundering sub-woofer, drawing my son and his friends around my PC to see the action. I could see the cockpit controls, turn with the keyboard and mouse, and hear the familiar sounds. What a rush! Everything was fantastic, right up until I discovered that Virtual PC did not support devices requiring specific drivers. No support for a USB joystick?!?! A complete deal-breaker for this game, and a huge let-down.

I experienced in a new and visceral way how our customers sometimes feel when we come tantalizingly close to fulfilling their fondest desires and leave them just slightly short. We've been putting increasing energy into more comprehensive interoperability testing and more overall focus on delivering complete products. This experience added extra personal impetus.

"Paperless" Office

A few years ago I aborted an attack on my vast bulk of infrequently-accessed paper (tax-related documents, various financial statements, newsletters, manuals, etc.) with my flatbed scanner. The HW & SW tools were tedious, and the resulting file sizes were huge. Last year a NetApp colleague happened to relate his success in a similar endeavor, so I decided to try again. The key was a terrific little Fujitsu S510 document scanner he recommended.

With stunningly-fast double-sized scans, auto-sizing and auto-color selection that actually works, direct conversion to searchable PDF files, plus an included full copy of Acrobat, this diminutive scanner made short work of my paper mountain. Several times the shredder overheated while attempting to keep pace!  Nearly a year later I quickly scan & shred new documents. Combined with a consistent push for online billing and statement delivery, the paperless-reduced office is finally a reality in my home.

Of course, this has only added extra importance to protecting the digital copies. My track record in this regard is poor, but I have hope.

Outlook Fix

For much of the last year my calendar randomly dropped appointments. Since many of my meetings are with customers, this became a major problem. I've discovered that many of my friends and colleagues suffer from the same calendar issues but assume there is no cure. If this sounds familiar, read-on!

I'm Baaack!

I recently returned from medical leave for a very successful mitral valve repair.
The short story is that if you or someone you love has any kind of heart valve problem, I highly recommend Dr. Marc Gillinov and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. Marc is an exceptionally-skilled surgeon with an unassuming demeanor, and the staff and facilities at CCF are outstanding. The CCF team's combined skill enabled us to fly home only 3½ days after surgery, which certainly is much sooner than I ever expected.
If you would like the longer story, please contact me directly.

One of the delightful side-effects of this experience is my genuinely warm re-entry into NetApp. I'm reminded anew how much I enjoy my colleagues, and that NetApp is such a great place to work.

Where's Waldo?

Finding stuff is a hassle, particularly within ever-expanding data stores. Outlook search improved dramatically after Microsoft integrated the Lookout engine into Office 2007, and is now actually useful. For unstructured data I have tried a variety of free local search tools, but all of the fast ones involve indexing via hash tables or trusting that some third party won't actually look at any of my data.

Windows Tune-Up

Long boot times and sluggish performance often create the urge to upgrade a PC, but these common symptoms usually mean a Windows machine simply needs a tune-up. A complete tutorial is beyond the scope of this blog, but here is a summary of the first four actions I take when tuning a friend's PC.

Consider these “Best Practices” for Windows computing: you don't have to do this stuff, but your results will be much better if you do.