NetApp - Incorrigible Techno-Weenie

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 Even then the copies in the bank vault will likely only be a few months out of date.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.