SysAdmin magazine was the first magazine to publish an article of mine, and they have closed their doors.  (They've even notified their subscribers that they can get a refund on their 5-year subscriptions.) Continue reading →

In-line and post-process de-duplication are features — not benefits. And I think that arguing about which one is better is like trying to argue which is better: synchronous or asynchronous replication. The both have benefits and drawbacks. What matters is whether or not the one you buy meets your requirements, right? I’ll try my best to present both sides of the argument, and dispel a lot of what I believe to be misconceptions about this issue.

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They need to stop calling it that.  No one installing 10 GbE is getting 10 GbE performance, so why should they be allowed to call it that? Continue reading →

I know it may sound like an obvious statement, but I think all your backups should fit in one night.  Not just 24 hours, but 12 hours or less.  Besides the obvious RTO/RPO problems, it just messes up so many parts other parts of the design when backups go over 24 hours.  A related issue is that I think it's a bad idea to push all your full backups to the weekend.
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