Storage Expo

3 days prior to a roll out of a new server and I mosey on down to Olympia. Alfred Biehler announces the Press launch of DPM to some journos. Bit of a quid pro quo and I made a deal that should keep everyone happy. MVPs could be much better utilised in situations like that and FGM was there to spread the word.

On to the Quest stand and still no-one can see a flaw in my plan; Exchange Server to be backed up at store level using ntbackup and have me a copy of Aelita Recovery Manager to do brick level from the store level. Works elsewhere so why can't it work on my network?

Current backup time (Backup Exec): 12 hours for the brick level, 6.5 hours for the stores and about 30 minutes for the exmerged PSTs for former staff members. Total storage about 200GB. Hmm, 19 hours a day. Time for a change!

So Aelita Recovery Manager can provide brick level from a store level backup (for those that haven't tried it already). So I don't need to do a brick level. Bang goes 12 hours a day. The faster tape drive that hits that server on Saturday should improve things as well (not got an accurate handle on how much, but quite a bit). So backup goes from 19 hours to about 5. In real terms, backup and committed TLs at 3am instead of 5pm.

Then I get home and find the nice folks from Quest are also offering their AD Recovery Manager to me too. Some proper tools to do a proper job. Marvellous. Thanks guys.

Managed to get a nice London sausage, mash and onion gravy at some place in Kensington and a pint of Greene King IPA (or so). Pity that the pints were flowing nicely but the time was flying and all too soon it was time to adjourn back to civilisation which turned out to have been fine without me and I missed a chance of a pint with Mr Arnold.

Talking technical drivel with Mark or talking drivel with Lorna. If I said it was a toss up, Mark would pass a rude comment. By the time I got back to the office, Mark was firmly at his country pad and could not be coaxed out even with the offer of me buying the next round. A better offer himself perhaps?