Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

I have to change one tape a week. It’s for an third party app that we don’t really manage.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Gucci Loafers
May 20, 2006

Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?


Super Soaker Party! posted:

I guess I'm the only one that likes tape. When you find something that can store that much data for the cost per GB (really cost per TB now) and can be safely stored offsite without cloud storage costs and without degrading as fast and unpredictably as hard drives, let me know. Especially in the age of ransomware, a completely air-gapped non-active backup copy of data is really appealing to me just from a CYA point of view.

I'd think Cloud Storage would have at the least reach price parity with physical tape backups along with whatever overhead? I feel like the only benefit of tape is there's zero risk of the :cloud: getting hacked.

GnarlyCharlie4u
Sep 23, 2007

I have an unhealthy obsession with motorcycles.

Proof
Veeam for tape backups is pretty good, yeah. But I don't miss changing and cataloging tape cartridges weekly.

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.

Super Soaker Party! posted:

I guess I'm the only one that likes tape. When you find something that can store that much data for the cost per GB (really cost per TB now) and can be safely stored offsite without cloud storage costs and without degrading as fast and unpredictably as hard drives, let me know. Especially in the age of ransomware, a completely air-gapped non-active backup copy of data is really appealing to me just from a CYA point of view.

I recently did away with my 2-drive tape library in my house.*

Instead I have a physical box with two drive arrays that stays powered off. When I want to run a full backup I use IPMI to power on the box, run the job that alternates between two media sets, then shut it down again because I, too, I am petrified of ransomware after getting hit with it once a few years back. I also have a quarterly solution that uses AWS Snowball to upload to S3 / Glacier for my backups to accommodate my internet connection (it is only 75/15 and hah hah if I'm going to try a full backup over a 15mbit link).




* by "did away" I mean I still have it in a box with all of my tapes. I am the Fred Sanford of IT kit.

SyNack Sassimov
May 4, 2006

Let the robot win.
            --Captain James T. Vader


Agrikk posted:

I recently did away with my 2-drive tape library in my house.*

Instead I have a physical box with two drive arrays that stays powered off. When I want to run a full backup I use IPMI to power on the box, run the job that alternates between two media sets, then shut it down again because I, too, I am petrified of ransomware after getting hit with it once a few years back. I also have a quarterly solution that uses AWS Snowball to upload to S3 / Glacier for my backups to accommodate my internet connection (it is only 75/15 and hah hah if I'm going to try a full backup over a 15mbit link).




* by "did away" I mean I still have it in a box with all of my tapes. I am the Fred Sanford of IT kit.

I look forward to hearing how well those drives fare with being turned off and on periodically, which isn't actually meant in a snarky manner - I've always heard that having them off for a long while allows things to gum up which leads to more failures when they're turned back on. Although I guess it also depends on how often you're turning them on.

I used to have a small datacenter in my house and would love to do so again, but our delightful power company has the tiers set absurdly low and I really don't want to invest in solar when the technology is so terrible (20% efficiency and 10-15 year payback? No thank you). So I had to cut usage to the bone and I now have one fairly low-power Xeon D Supermicro that is VM host and server all in one, with just Crashplan as backup. Which isn't great, but it does the job.

orange sky
May 7, 2007

I know this is a stupid question, but did one of all of you ever have to restore those tape backups?

I implemented those systems a couple of times and we always did a restore test and documented it, but I'm pretty sure that when they were in production nobody knew the procedure and the document was lost somewhere (probably in a tape backup).

SlowBloke
Aug 14, 2017

Super Soaker Party! posted:

Of course this is also with the caveat of Veeam. Tape backup (any backup, really) that isn't Veeam? gently caress that noise.

Call it PTSD but I've never liked how veeam does tape, I've always preferred the way backup exec does (it tends to use one tape per job so you could remove one tape from the library and send it away/store safely) while with veeam removing one specific job point-in-time tape is a hassle.

Neddy Seagoon
Oct 12, 2012

"Hi Everybody!"

devmd01 posted:

Out of office reply set on Friday, logged out of Outlook and Teams on my phone, time to completely ignore work for a week and a half. Spending it on the beach with the family.

Take your time, people.

Unless you're in like New Zealand or maybe Europe, I wouldn't think the beach is the best place to go right now unless you're looking to tack on at least two weeks sick leave afterwards :ohdear:.

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

orange sky posted:

I know this is a stupid question, but did one of all of you ever have to restore those tape backups?


*tape break*

*tape break*

:smith:

Defenestrategy
Oct 24, 2010

orange sky posted:

I know this is a stupid question, but did one of all of you ever have to restore those tape backups?

I implemented those systems a couple of times and we always did a restore test and documented it, but I'm pretty sure that when they were in production nobody knew the procedure and the document was lost somewhere (probably in a tape backup).

Once and it wasnt so bad that I could remember just took awhile, but we only had to restore to the week before. I dont know how going two years into the past would go.

Internet Explorer
Jun 1, 2005





SlowBloke posted:

Call it PTSD but I've never liked how veeam does tape, I've always preferred the way backup exec does (it tends to use one tape per job so you could remove one tape from the library and send it away/store safely) while with veeam removing one specific job point-in-time tape is a hassle.

Yes, and that's actually how I got started with virtualization. We had a mandate from on high to test DR and restores for "1/4 of our systems once a quarter." We had several hundred physical servers and no budget for a lab to do this in, so I started using older hardware and virtualization. I don't remember the details, as it was awful and forever ago. I think we used VMware Server right about the time it was released.

alg
Mar 14, 2007

A wolf was no less a wolf because a whim of chance caused him to run with the watch-dogs.

Super Soaker Party! posted:

I guess I'm the only one that likes tape. When you find something that can store that much data for the cost per GB (really cost per TB now) and can be safely stored offsite without cloud storage costs and without degrading as fast and unpredictably as hard drives, let me know. Especially in the age of ransomware, a completely air-gapped non-active backup copy of data is really appealing to me just from a CYA point of view.

Of course this is also with the caveat of Veeam. Tape backup (any backup, really) that isn't Veeam? gently caress that noise.

edit: that said we have helpdesk techs to do the annoying tape management bit so I don't get the full brunt of how annoying it is anymore :v:

I like it for all the reasons you state, but finding people to manage the tapes is really tough. We can't pay smart people what they're worth to do that stuff.

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.

Super Soaker Party! posted:

I look forward to hearing how well those drives fare with being turned off and on periodically, which isn't actually meant in a snarky manner - I've always heard that having them off for a long while allows things to gum up which leads to more failures when they're turned back on. Although I guess it also depends on how often you're turning them on.

I've had these two LTO-4 drives for at least eight years now and I kept them powered off all but the 24 hours per month that I used them to perform actual backups. Looking at my backup log excel spreadsheet it translates to roughly ten days of power-up time per year. I cleaned them when they reported dirty, but that was all I did for them.

In that time I had two tape cartridges report unusable by the drives and have had plenty of opportunities to test restore because I am an idiot.

I hear plenty of reports about tapes being finicky and fragile and whatnot, but my personal experience has been that they're bombproof. Backup software, on the other hand. poo poo. I've rebuilt my backup server countless times (because it's easier to do that sometimes than troubleshoot) and inventorying tapes is the most tedious thing ever.


orange sky posted:

I know this is a stupid question, but did one of all of you ever have to restore those tape backups?

I implemented those systems a couple of times and we always did a restore test and documented it, but I'm pretty sure that when they were in production nobody knew the procedure and the document was lost somewhere (probably in a tape backup).

Yes, I have. (See above.) I like to rearrange my directory structure to make it more efficient and I inevitably delete or overwrite something. My backup system is "tested in production" more often than I'd care to admit.


edit: In rereading this post and others of mine like it, I realize I am the sloppiest and most cavalier SysAdmin ever on my home kit. At work I am completely methodical and risk-averse, but on my stuff at home? Weeeee!

TheFace
Oct 4, 2004

Fuck anyone that doesn't wanna be this beautiful

Super Soaker Party! posted:

I guess I'm the only one that likes tape. When you find something that can store that much data for the cost per GB (really cost per TB now) and can be safely stored offsite without cloud storage costs and without degrading as fast and unpredictably as hard drives, let me know. Especially in the age of ransomware, a completely air-gapped non-active backup copy of data is really appealing to me just from a CYA point of view.

Of course this is also with the caveat of Veeam. Tape backup (any backup, really) that isn't Veeam? gently caress that noise.

edit: that said we have helpdesk techs to do the annoying tape management bit so I don't get the full brunt of how annoying it is anymore :v:

I can't speak for today's tape, but back when we were using it it felt like there was about a 50/50 chance that the tape wouldn't work for a restore, especially the longer it was stored. Backup doesn't mean poo poo without being able to restore them.

Contingency
Jun 2, 2007

MURDERER
Backups are either working or current.

MrMoo
Sep 14, 2000

Hmm, is it possible to transfer a Google Domain accounts across country codes? Hong Kong is hosed and wondering about three accounts I have, one commercial for a lot of business work (miru.hk), a silly vanity alternative because it was free (見。香港), and basic test domain (junko.hk). I have Google Domain setup on the first and last, because they still? don't support punycode domains. Obviously the 。香港 is not going to last.

angry armadillo
Jul 26, 2010
I have a daily tape. I also have a UDP appliance as well, but 'officially' it's not commissioned so I'm leaving the tapes live even though I'll never touch them.

There was an issue with my tapes recently, so I tasked the guy who works for me to fix it, as I didnt care if it didnt work for a prolonged period as I had my appliance... He doesn't come from an enterprise IT background so let's see how he goes...

It took him a while and it's still not getting anywhere, eventually he asks for help. I looked at it and said 'well the error is X, so prove that X isn't the problem and it will either fix it or come up with a new error' (I'm not a massive expert I didnt really know either)

Well technically, I've kinda done X by doing Y
Y is not X, do X.
But I have because Y=X so it's pointless
no Y does not equal X, do X.

Repeat that for maybe a week or 2 (can't really remember) and he is still not just taking my advice and doing X... Eventually I broke and said I'm telling you to just do X. He still argued the toss, so I just did it myself, it led to a new error and now it's solved.

(I dont like going into specifics in case someone is reading / i can deny this is me, so we will leave X as X)


So I'm going to see this guy after his week of leave, then a bit of leave from me and the backup magically fixed itself whilst he was away - the struggle is that he will look for excuses to justify that his knowledge isnt inferior to mine, but honestly, I'm not that great as I said earlier - I am just logical and methodical and did what X was asking, i didnt try to overthink it by introducing Y and the problem got solved. He needs to get that in his brain as the learning point here, but he wont.


tapes!

Hughmoris
Apr 21, 2007
Let's go to the abyss!
Just received a job offer, having not worked since getting furloughed in April and laid off in May. The offer is not as high as I'd like but the job market is rough out there to say the least, and they'll pay relocation and cert training, so I'm grateful.

Anyone from the Upstate SC area that can offer insight to living in the area?

SyNack Sassimov
May 4, 2006

Let the robot win.
            --Captain James T. Vader


Agrikk posted:

I've had these two LTO-4 drives for at least eight years now and I kept them powered off all but the 24 hours per month that I used them to perform actual backups. Looking at my backup log excel spreadsheet it translates to roughly ten days of power-up time per year. I cleaned them when they reported dirty, but that was all I did for them.


Sorry, I think either you misunderstood or I did. I was referring to the drive arrays you mentioned, which I assumed were hard drive arrays, because hard drives theoretically have issues being turned off for long times and then being powered back on.


SlowBloke posted:

Call it PTSD but I've never liked how veeam does tape, I've always preferred the way backup exec does (it tends to use one tape per job so you could remove one tape from the library and send it away/store safely) while with veeam removing one specific job point-in-time tape is a hassle.

I mean, if you're talking about BE 10.5, or possibly BE 11 (but not really), then sure. Anything after that is Symantec trash and was the reason I switched to Veeam long ago and never looked back. Using Symantec software, or software that's been "improved" by Symantec, is basically like being in an abusive relationship. "I know it's failed before but this time maybe it'll succeed! I know it can do it, it must be able to do it, it cost a lot of money and time to get going" <backup fails with useless error for the eleven billionth time> "OK well let me just restart it <broken sigh>". PTSD is what I had after using Backup Exec 12 for a year, seriously, gently caress that software after Veritas sold it. Complete pile of poo poo, like everything Symantec touches - I don't know what the opposite of the Midas touch is (Trump touch? but given his #metoo issues that's not exactly a great phrase to use), but whatever it is, Symantec and Sage are the master of it.

SyNack Sassimov fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Jul 1, 2020

The Iron Rose
May 12, 2012

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:
Considering the Midas touch wasn’t exactly a blessing... I feel like you could use it as a negative.

I don’t have anything else interesting to say I just like talking myths.

bull3964
Nov 18, 2000

DO YOU HEAR THAT? THAT'S THE SOUND OF ME PATTING MYSELF ON THE BACK.


The Iron Rose posted:

Considering the Midas touch wasn’t exactly a blessing... I feel like you could use it as a negative.

I don’t have anything else interesting to say I just like talking myths.

Couldn't get this out of my head now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4I74mCDmko

Antigravitas
Dec 8, 2019

Die Rettung fuer die Landwirte:
We have a big fuckoff tape robot that needs special concrete foundations. But then we do d2d2t anyway. I have no idea how many PB central has, but it has to be a few.

Tape is a few orders of magnitude cheaper than "cloud" and can restore in finite time, which is important.

I once did a cost estimation of glacier archival for our research data and the numbers said we'd never be able to get our data back.

Nuclearmonkee
Jun 10, 2009


Antigravitas posted:

We have a big fuckoff tape robot that needs special concrete foundations. But then we do d2d2t anyway. I have no idea how many PB central has, but it has to be a few.

Tape is a few orders of magnitude cheaper than "cloud" and can restore in finite time, which is important.

I once did a cost estimation of glacier archival for our research data and the numbers said we'd never be able to get our data back.

Yeah this is why places with giant amounts of data still use it. I don’t think it really makes sense for anyone else.

DelphiAegis
Jun 21, 2010
You mean it would work to put all your data on a big truck and drive it there and back? :v:

SyNack Sassimov
May 4, 2006

Let the robot win.
            --Captain James T. Vader


DelphiAegis posted:

You mean it would work to put all your data on a big truck and drive it there and back? :v:

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon etc. etc.

DelphiAegis
Jun 21, 2010

Super Soaker Party! posted:

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon etc. etc.

Actually I was just referring to this: https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/30/amazon-will-truck-your-massive-piles-of-data-to-the-cloud-with-an-18-wheeler/
But that article is 4 years old now, I'd be surprised if there are legit customers still needing that level of data upload to the butt.

Wibla
Feb 16, 2011

Super Soaker Party! posted:

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon etc. etc.

I moved an 8x8TB array an hour by car ... that's something like 17-18 GB/s :v:

Jack B Nimble
Dec 25, 2007


Soiled Meat
Hey all, I frequently use the ROBOCOPY command to move some networked directories around in windows and now I'm being asked to rename some, too.

I see there's a REN command, but it doesn't work on network directories, right?

I'm not automating this (that's not my decision), I'm just looking for a string I can paste into command line or maybe even powershell instead of clicking around in a bunch of GUIs like a smuck. So, is there some sort of command I could use to rename a directory, similar to ROBOCOPY?

The Fool
Oct 16, 2003


Rename-Item maybe?

Jack B Nimble
Dec 25, 2007


Soiled Meat
Oh awesome, I think that'll do it.

Agrikk
Oct 17, 2003

Take care with that! We have not fully ascertained its function, and the ticking is accelerating.

DelphiAegis posted:

Actually I was just referring to this: https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/30/amazon-will-truck-your-massive-piles-of-data-to-the-cloud-with-an-18-wheeler/
But that article is 4 years old now, I'd be surprised if there are legit customers still needing that level of data upload to the butt.

Snowmobile is alive and well.

I admit that I still giggle like a child every time I hear “snowball” though.

SyNack Sassimov
May 4, 2006

Let the robot win.
            --Captain James T. Vader


Agrikk posted:

Snowmobile is alive and well.

I admit that I still giggle like a child every time I hear “snowball” though.

Whatever do you mean, is there some sort of swapped meaning to the term I'm not aware of? Come on.

The Fool
Oct 16, 2003


Super Soaker Party! posted:

Whatever do you mean, is there some sort of swapped meaning to the term I'm not aware of? Come on.


https://youtu.be/m_A58231NFk

klosterdev
Oct 10, 2006

Na na na na na na na na Batman!
Going from 16GB to 48GB of RAM on my work laptop has me in heaven rn, I can virtual machine for days

DropsySufferer
Nov 9, 2008

Impractical practicality
I didn’t know they made laptops that could handle more than 32GB and even 32 gigs on a laptop sounds overkill.

SyNack Sassimov
May 4, 2006

Let the robot win.
            --Captain James T. Vader



:thejoke: I was trying to be subtle. Perhaps I was a little too subtle.

devmd01
Mar 7, 2006

Elektronik
Supersonik

DropsySufferer posted:

I didn’t know they made laptops that could handle more than 32GB and even 32 gigs on a laptop sounds overkill.

I use my i7/16GB mem laptop as an RDP terminal at home and as a movie player during vacation.

It’s main use? To RDP to my i7/32GB workstation on the admin vlan.

devmd01 fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Jul 2, 2020

Matt Zerella
Oct 7, 2002

Norris'es are back baby. It's good again. Awoouu (fox Howl)

DropsySufferer posted:

I didn’t know they made laptops that could handle more than 32GB and even 32 gigs on a laptop sounds overkill.

I do a lot in VMs and it would be pretty handy to have. Most of the tome I keep them small but having the option to go 16 gigs + sometimes would be great.

Nuclearmonkee
Jun 10, 2009


Matt Zerella posted:

I do a lot in VMs and it would be pretty handy to have. Most of the tome I keep them small but having the option to go 16 gigs + sometimes would be great.

Yeah we get 32 for the engineers who run a lot of stuff in VMware workstation

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

TheFace
Oct 4, 2004

Fuck anyone that doesn't wanna be this beautiful

angry armadillo posted:

I have a daily tape. I also have a UDP appliance as well, but 'officially' it's not commissioned so I'm leaving the tapes live even though I'll never touch them.

There was an issue with my tapes recently, so I tasked the guy who works for me to fix it, as I didnt care if it didnt work for a prolonged period as I had my appliance... He doesn't come from an enterprise IT background so let's see how he goes...

It took him a while and it's still not getting anywhere, eventually he asks for help. I looked at it and said 'well the error is X, so prove that X isn't the problem and it will either fix it or come up with a new error' (I'm not a massive expert I didnt really know either)

Well technically, I've kinda done X by doing Y
Y is not X, do X.
But I have because Y=X so it's pointless
no Y does not equal X, do X.

Repeat that for maybe a week or 2 (can't really remember) and he is still not just taking my advice and doing X... Eventually I broke and said I'm telling you to just do X. He still argued the toss, so I just did it myself, it led to a new error and now it's solved.

(I dont like going into specifics in case someone is reading / i can deny this is me, so we will leave X as X)


So I'm going to see this guy after his week of leave, then a bit of leave from me and the backup magically fixed itself whilst he was away - the struggle is that he will look for excuses to justify that his knowledge isnt inferior to mine, but honestly, I'm not that great as I said earlier - I am just logical and methodical and did what X was asking, i didnt try to overthink it by introducing Y and the problem got solved. He needs to get that in his brain as the learning point here, but he wont.


tapes!

Dude lacks basic troubleshooting skills, and refuses to learn. Fire his rear end.

Step 1 if error message is telling you where to look for the problem, you should probably look there for the problem.
Step 2 (if Step 1 didn't amount to anything) Google

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply