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General

10 Things I Am Thankful For

The Thanksgiving holiday is a time to reflect on things that you are thankful for and so I figured that this would be a great topic for my one blog post this week.

1. That the Somali pirates have not hijacked SEPATON although Bloomberg suggests in a humorous press release that Citibank may be in their sights.
2. That the backup guy is no longer treated like an ugly step child and locked in the tape silo when naughty.
3. That data retention requirements are likely to get even stricter thanks to our friends on Wall Street.
4. I have a job.
5. My job is not selling Rube Goldberg contraptions.
6. Data Domain has spent millions educating the market on why dedupe matters but only offers solutions for SMBs.
7. That all those cubicle gophers are still jacking up their company’s capacity requirements by downloading, sharing and storing all of their personal MP3s, videos and photos.
8. That gas prices have declined so I no longer have to skateboard to work.
9. Our VTL is so easy to install and operate that a consultant with no SEPATON experience set it up and got it running in 15 minutes.
10. That the loud CS guy who sat across from me was relocated to the broom closet. 🙂

Feel free to post what you are thankful for in the comments. Have a great Thanksgiving.

Categories
Backup Restore Virtual Tape

Rube Goldberg reborn as a VTL

I have fond memories from my childhood of Rube Goldberg contraptions. I was always amazed at how he would creatively use common elements to implement these crazy machines. By using every day items for complicated contraptions, he made even the simplest process look incredibly complex and difficult. But that was the beauty of it, no one would ever use the devices in practice, but it was the whimsical and complex nature of his drawings that made them so fun to look it.

Rube Goldberg Definition
Image courtesy of rubegoldberg.com

It is the in the context of Rube Goldberg that I find myself thinking about the EMC DL3D 4000 virtual tape library. Like, Goldberg, EMC has taken an approach to VTL and deduplication that revolves around adding complexity to what should be a relatively simple process. Unfortunately, I don’t think that customers will treat the solution with the same whimsical and fun perspective as they did with Goldberg’s machines.

You may think that this is just sour grapes from an EMC competitor, but I am not the only one questioning the approach. Many industry analysts and backup administrators are confused and left scratching their heads just like this author. Why the confusion? Let me explain.