Comments for FisherFindings

Comment on Shadowing is better than ever by Ian Miller

Ian Miller — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:52:38 +0000

Pause I/O and do a backup – should be handy

Comment on Where to get T4 and Friends by jbf

jbf — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 20:17:10 +0000

TLViz continues to be a well used tool within HP. It provides an incredible way to analyze data very rapidly.

Comment on Where to get T4 and Friends by Steve Lieman

Steve Lieman — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 15:51:07 +0000

John and Ian. Great to see interest continuing in T4.

Comment on Small Systems and Encryption by Rich Jordan

Rich Jordan — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:18:14 +0000

Mr. Fisher,
I look forward to your findings.

We’ve been trying to locate information on enabling the built-in encryption in the SAS-connected DAT320 drive, but that also doesn’t appear to have support in VMS.

We are looking at a VMS program found on the ITRC forums for manually modifying encryption related parameters on LTO-4 tape drives, but so far haven’t been able to come up with actual command set info for the DAT320 (to confirm its the same or similar to the LTO-4). Plus the box is in production now so we have to take great care we don’t do something fun like “brick” the drive…

Comment on Small Systems and Encryption by jbf

jbf — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 03:15:08 +0000

This is a quick comment. Hopefully this will work well. It will be nice to be able to post from almost any location.

Comment on Data encryption: Fail to plan and Plan to fail by jbf

jbf — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 15:11:03 +0000

GREAT comment. It’s a good point you make. I opened this to the VMS community for discussion. I will also add a post to this blog about this very topic, since you raise an important topic for our general conversation. Thank you for taking the time to express your concern.

Comment on Data encryption: Fail to plan and Plan to fail by Rich Jordan

Rich Jordan — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 20:46:14 +0000

Interesting post and links, thanks. We have a vanishing breed ‘small’ VMS site that needs to start encrypting their backups. We’re looking at using the VMS Encrypt capabilities in the current version, and working up some appropriate method of key handling and preservation. They’re a single I64 server with locally attached mirrored disks and DAT tape drive; no arrays.

Unfortunately the low end customer has been left out of all the nice hardware encryption solutions like the XP arrays and SKM/LTO tape due to cost. While the backups can be handled with built-in capabilities, encryption of ‘data at rest’, should that become a requirement, will be a serious issue that may end up driving a move to another platform (this customer likes VMS and wants to continue using it).

I keep hoping the maintainer of the LD package will be able to add some usable encryption capabilities; that would provide a good solution for the small sites.

Comment on T4 & Friends ScreenCast Agenda by jbf

jbf — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 13:56:05 +0000

Sigh! I had to ask Ian. “Round-To-It” … Doh! … My wife wishes I would adopt Nike’s Slogan “Just do it!” Of course I could always order a Round Tuit. Just search for “order round-tuit”. Though I doubt my wife would find the humor in it!

Comment on Where to get T4 and Friends by Ian Miller

Ian Miller — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 10:20:17 +0000

A link for t4 that does not mention a dead company
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/products/t4/index.html

Comment on OpenVMS and the Green IT revolution by Ian Miller

Ian Miller — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 10:15:33 +0000

HP has a wonderful new data centre at Wynyard which I drove past only yesterday. It’s very green despite being painted white inside

Comment on T4 & Friends ScreenCast Agenda by Ian Miller

Ian Miller — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 10:13:55 +0000

Perhaps you also need a round-toit as well as a big bag of sparetime

Comment on T4 & Friends ScreenCast Agenda by John Apps

John Apps — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 08:11:02 +0000

John,
what an impressive list of work items! I do hope you find lots of ‘spare time’ to complete them all as I will appreciate the work and make use of it frequently.

John

Comment on T4 & Friends ScreenCast Agenda by jbf

jbf — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 19:23:26 +0000

Yes. Though the T4 & Friends page includes VEVAMON, it was designed for a much older version of the EVA storage array hardware and firmware. Instead of using VEVAMON, you should “run EVAPerf on the SMA and then move that data to the system where I would look at it with TLViz”. The piece I add is that the EVAperf data should first be converted to a TLViz readable format using the EVAperf-to-TLViz converter that is located in the same directory as the EVAperf software on the SMA.

Comment on T4 & Friends ScreenCast Agenda by Jim Mehlhop

Jim Mehlhop — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 17:05:23 +0000

for SAN (EVA) storage on an Integrity there is no VEVAMON (as I understand it) I contacted T4 and Friends and the person that responded said I have to run EVAPerf on the SMA and then move that data to the system where I would look at it with TLViz. This seems insane to me, but he would not budge. Is this your understanding as well?

Comment on Best “Bang for the Buck” by Amit Agarwal

Amit Agarwal — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 21:29:02 +0000

colors in bash — script to display all the possible colors….

I found your entry interesting thus I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog …

Comment on Service Center Response Time by Ian Miller

Ian Miller — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 09:39:28 +0000

I look at my knees and am not enlightened yet looking at knees in graphs is enlightening – it’s a funny old world

The best way to enlightenment about performance is data collection – collect performance data even if you don’t know why yet.

Comment on Best “Bang for the Buck” by jbf

jbf — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 15:09:11 +0000

Careful there! Rational thought and system design? Isn’t it the selection of systems and storage a “religious” decision?

Regardless of vendors, the needs are the same and the design needs to meet the needs!

Comment on Best “Bang for the Buck” by Ian Miller

Ian Miller — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 07:53:38 +0000

You don’t have a XP of your very own in your garage?
Perhaps a EVA?

Simple maths like this might shock some people but does introduce at least an illusion of rational thought into system design

Comment on Best “Bang for the Buck” by Amit Agarwal

Amit Agarwal — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 02:58:16 +0000

let a cow tell you your fortune…

I found your entry interesting thus I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog …

Comment on Upcoming Best Practices Presentations by jbf

jbf — Sun, 23 May 2010 17:02:10 +0000

Thanks! I agree a good blog for middleware and messaging would be a help. While perhaps not as “popular”, we actually need it more. There are lots of sites about Storage. Very few about middleware and messaging.

Comment on Upcoming Best Practices Presentations by JohnApps

JohnApps — Sat, 22 May 2010 11:34:07 +0000

John,
an excellent and attractive remake of the site! Your ideas and initiative make me think that Brett and I should perhaps be looking at something similar for middleware and messaging?
Not so popular a topic as storage, but one perhaps of interest to a few people.

Keep well, John

Comment on A Fresh Start … by Galen

Galen — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 22:32:19 +0000

It’s nice to see you back, John. The new design looks great.

I have done very little with my own VMS blog in quite a while, now that I’m not working with it on the job every day. And I just can’t seem to find any time to play with it at home.

It’s also good to hear you’re doing better healthwise. I hope the improvement will continue.

Galen

Comment on Upcoming Best Practices Presentations by jbf

jbf — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 03:15:47 +0000

Bingo! Wel, you will be very happy to know that the first three Best Practice presentations and white papers will focus on Best Practices for OpenVMS:

… with Host Based Volume Shadowing
… with Extended SANs
… with Volume Shadowing and Disaster Tolerant Clustering

And as you note, I will try to answer “when is CA the right choice vs volume shadowing, or when does Business Copy make more sense than splitting shadowsets in an OpenVMS environment” and so on.

The presentation / white paper will focus on two area – performance and reliability. It will help you see how to weigh one against the other.

And I’m happy to share my experience and thoughts! : )

Comment on Upcoming Best Practices Presentations by Kel

Kel — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 01:23:46 +0000

I was probably a little vague about my statement. You’re absolutely right that CA and Business Copy have best practice documents.

However, a best practice guide for exactly what you’re talking about – when is CA the right choice vs volume shadowing, or when does Business Copy make more sense than splitting shadowsets in an OpenVMS environment – these are things I would love to have HP publish best practice on.

So replication options and preferred methods around storage and backups on VMS are the topics I’m most interested in hearing about.

Thanks for your work on this!

Comment on Upcoming Best Practices Presentations by jbf

jbf — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:02:40 +0000

If I’m not mistaken, there are some Best Practices for both CA and Business Copy. I will try to track down the documents on the web.

Of course, with OpenVMS customers for replication within a Metroplitan Area, I also highly recommend they consider HP Volume Shadowing for OpenVMS. This allows synchronous replication between arrays and (more importantly) the ability to transparently handle loss of any single component. For example, you might loose an array, but OpenVMS can continue to work – as long as the data is shadowed to another array.

But for longer distances, there is no doubt that HP CA and Business Copy are the best approach. I am busy working on some a Best Practice presentation for Volume Shadowing. This first presentation will then be presented as a Technical Online Seminar (TOS). About the same time I will start to post articles here.

Anyway, it’s good to hear it wil help.