Reflections at dawn

Biscotti - comming home

2009-04-11T20:02:00.002-06:00

A new member of the family! Biscotti came home with us today. He came home at 6 pounds 8 oz at 9 weeksof age. Mr. Biscotti is a Goldendoodle from Placer Goldendoodles outside of Ft. Collins, CO. We are looking forward to many hours of fun with our little fluff ball!

2009-04-06T09:51:00.001-06:00

Enjoying the warmth and humidity of CA.

2009-04-01T07:49:00.001-06:00

Happy April Fools' Day - from Google http://ping.fm/aBZfx

De-dup compared

2009-03-06T06:50:00.001-07:00

A very interesting blog post showed up yesterday: Backup Central - Performance Comparison of Deduped Disk Vendors

This provides are very interesting side by side comparison of the performance of various de-dup products. What is interesting is the comparison of marketing vs marketing. There is no real side-by-side comparison using actual data, but it does pull together the marketing brochures.

And interesting read for those looking into de-dup technologies.

Quantum DXi7500 - stuff to learn

2009-02-25T13:57:00.002-07:00

Being new to Quantum and to the de-duplication space I've been trying to increase my knowledge. I'm sure that's pretty evident from the link aggregation that I've been doing. Internally we've been adding people to our numbers (and are still hiring) and we've needed to get them trained. Recently we completed a Galaxy University where a senior architect went through the whole software stack. It was a fun walk through the history of the product and provided a great information exchange. While the session was recorded, it is proprietary and I cannot share it .... sorry. For those inside Quantum let me know if you are interested and I can provide a link.

However, you all can benefit from this “University” via the learning of one of our instructional designers. With the most recent release of DXi7500 there are some new courses available. There are courses directed at field support and resellers and an online “Operators Guide” course. This new course provides behind-the-scenes explanations for VTL, NAS and de-duplication functionality. It also has some great visuals and explanations of the de-duplication concepts. There are graphics to show how variable-length block de-duplication is accomplished and how the DXi software can perform both in-line and post-processing de-duplication. (Yes these graphics are also “secret” until you take the course, but I’m working on finding some good material that I can share.)

Take a look and see … maybe you’ll learn something. I know I did.

What I'm reading: Quantum DXi 7500 - Product of the Year - Bronze

2009-02-23T13:07:00.001-07:00

The folks at SearchStorage.com have released their 2008 Product of the Year Awards. This year the Quantum DXi7500 was awarded the bronze medal in the back up hardware category. This is great to see the efforts of our engineers resulting in an award.

It is also exciting to know that the same software used in this product is also used in this product is the same that is used in the EMC Disk Library 3D family of products.

One other note, the software stack for the DXi7500 has recently been updated. I'll be writing more about that in a few days. There are performance enhancements, stability improvements and lots more.

The Bad Apple & The Good Leader

2009-02-20T13:25:00.001-07:00

Thanks go out to my long time mentor Howard Fear for this article;
Coding Horror: The Bad Apple: Group Poison.

As I reflect on current and past teams I have to agree with every one of the points. Bad Apples to quickly destroy a great team, and great leaders minimize bad apples and raise the qualities of the whole team.

Human nature seems to enjoy the bad, the cynic, the non-positive. The challenge for me always seems to be in finding the good and creating the positive environment. But I too, reflect human nature, more often than I care to admit. Sinking to being part of the bad apples is way too easy, being a good leader is a real struggle.

This article is a great challenge to step up to the positive leadership role that we are all called to live.

Thanks Howard.

Breaking News: StorNext 3.1.3

2009-02-12T14:52:00.001-07:00

Some breaking news. The StorNext team has just release a new maintenance version (3.1.3 ). This release represents a good number of bug fixes to increase the stability of the code and also added was support for two StorNext platform service packs: Redhat Enterprise Linux 4 Service Pack 7 and SUSE Enterprise Linux 10 Service Pack 2. Additionally, the Sun/STK ACSLS 7.3 library family using the SL 3000 library was validated with a number of drives.

If you are not familiar with StorNext check it out. It is a great data sharing and archive product.

A great accomplishment for the team!

What I'm reading: TechValidate: Quantum DXi-Series TechFact Case Study -- Source: Chief Information Officer, Large Enterprise Banking

2009-02-09T11:26:00.001-07:00

This morning I received a Google Alert about a case study of the Quantum DXi dedup product. What is cool is the TechValidate service, a 3rd party service that collects and published end-user experiences.

TechValidate: Quantum DXi-Series TechFact Case Study -- Source: Chief Information Officer, Large Enterprise Banking
This note give a summary of a Large Bank where they reduced their backup and restore times by implementing Quantum DXi.

A cool note and a new service to watch.

What I'm Reading: 7500 Coverage

2009-02-02T15:24:00.002-07:00

Quantum beefs up disk-based backup 1/30/09

InfoStor - Kevin Komiega

A nice quick summary of the latest happening at Quantum

NetBackup, OpenStorage and Quantum, 1/30/09
Symantec NetBackup Blog - Tim Burlowski

This is a transcript of a Q&A between Tim and Steve Whitner (Product Marketing @ Quantum). It was interesting to see Steve's answers about OpenStorage. This is not how I have defined OpenStorage (while at Sun), but there are different levels of open and different API levels. Here Quantum is looking at the application level, where at Sun we were looking at the OS, hardware level.

DCIG, 1/28/09
Dedupe Gets Smarter in New DXi7500 Release (Blog)
Jerome M Wendt and Howard Haile
This is a nice piece that gives an overview of the upcoming release of the software stack that makes up the Quantum product line. There are some exciting new features that are slated to show up in the next few weeks.

That's it for today ... I'm behind in my reading and even further behind in my blogging.

What I'm Reading: SearchStorage.com - Backup hardware finalists

2009-02-02T15:21:00.000-07:00

The folks at SearchStrorage have released their finalists for the 2008 Storage Product of the Year Awards. The Quantum 7500 is one of the Backup hardware finalists!

Pretty cool ...

What I'm reading: Jeff Tofano - The Business Benefits of Deduplication

2009-01-26T13:26:00.000-07:00

The Business Benefits of Deduplication

The Quantum CTO, Jeff Tofano, had an article published today at eBizQ. This article give a great overview of the evolution of de-duplication technologies and some considerations that people deploying this technology should take into consideration.

As a fun coincidence, I was chatting with Peter Cassidy this morning about the history of the Quantum de-dup backend, the block pool. Peter is the department manager for the Quantum team in Adelaide Austriallia. This team formerly known as Rocksoft brought the deduplication technology into the stroage worked from data security. They developed the de-dup techniques to deal with shipping around cryptographic signature files. They found that these files changes very rarely and they could use the blocklets(TM) concepts to only ship the changes over then network. This evolved into the dedup engine of the Quantum DXi product line.

It is good to have team meetings where you can find out these fun stories.

DXi in German ...

2009-01-20T19:50:00.000-07:00

Do you speak (or read) German? If so, check out the recent press release about a European tour of the Quantum DXi product line. This is pretty cool to see out products being toured around Europe.
pressrelations.de | Pressemitteilungen
Maye I can get invited next time? What do you say boss?

Baby It's Cold Outside

2008-12-15T07:42:00.004-07:00

Last night we in Denver set a record. The overnight temperature at DIA was -18 degrees Fahrenheit. This morning when I logged in I was greeted to the indication it was -11 in my home town. The juxtaposition of the sun set in Hawaii to the -11 is fun. As much as I would like to be on the beach, I really enjoy snow and cold. To me there is nothing better than the sound of snow cracking under foot. Or the sight of fresh snow on a cold morning. The colder the snow the more it seems to sparkle. These are the moments the make me alive.

Now let's try and stay warm and build a technology roadmap.

Why is it so hard?!?

2008-11-14T16:09:00.003-07:00

2 posts in one day ... I hope my boss doesn't mind :-)

After listening/ watching Randy Pausch's talk on Time Management I've decided that my mom was right. It is good to take the time to say thank-you. Even better it is great to write your thoughts down and send them to the person you are thinking. However, have you ever tired to send a thank-you note (or e-mail) to a specific person at a company?

Now that I'm starting to work from home with more frequency I decided I needed to upgrade my internet connection. My cable modem had been working very well for years, but I decided to try out the new 20 Mbps service from Qwest. The extra speed would come in handy when downloading files and doing internet video conferences, so I decided to spend the extra money and upgrade. Long story short the DSL line was horrible. The modem was resetting itself every 30 - 50 minutes and when that happened the VPN dropped and my system briefly hung. Way too frustrating. A call to the tech service resulted in an appointment for a serivce tech this morning.

Again to make the story readable (or to not tax more poor writing skills any further), the tech showed called before coming to the door and after a brief conversation he had a line on the problem. 20 minutes latter Steve showed up at my door and said he thought things might be better. After another 10 minutes he reconfigured the modem and I was now receiving the promised bandwidth with a good strong signal. During the time Steve was fixing things we chatted about how he apologized for not getting the configuration correct at the time of installation and gave me his number in case any other problems arose.

Now that the service has been working flawlessly for hours, I wanted to say thanks to Steve (and let his supervisor know of his great work). I searched the Qwest web site and there is no way to leave a compliment. Lots of ways to complain, but no way to say thanks. (Actually I left a message in the "Other Problems" section and I pray the message receives Steve.)

So why does it have to be so hard to say thanks? It has to be a direct reflection of our complaint driven society. Hopefully Qwest adds a "Say Thanks" button to their web site, and maybe I can help my company do the same.

So a big THANKS to you Steve. You provided great service, I just thought you should know.

Manager Tools and Race, Don't Chase

2008-11-14T10:30:00.002-07:00

I’ve been spending a bit of time in the car and to fill the drive time I listen to various podcasts. One of my new favorites is Manager Tools. These guys are very straight forward in their cast and discuss relevant topics.

Last week I listened to the 2 part series Race, don’t Chase (part 1, part 2) dealing with the topic of managing in difficult economic times. The thing that made this cast relevant to me was how I see Quantum acting and how it is modeling the macro concepts being discussed.

The challenge is to now put the topics into practice in our group. That sure means a bunch of work for me. But good work!

Links for 11-11

2008-11-11T11:30:00.003-07:00

Since I can't seem to get del.icio.us to automatically post some interesting links to this blog, I'll do it the "old-fashion" way.

Protecting VMware Environments with the Latest Backup Exec and Quantum DXi De-duplication Solutions
A webcast on how to use the Quantum DXi products to backup VMware Environments.

For some background on de-duplication checkout:

If you want to follow along with my bookmarks you can subscribe to my del.icio.us RSS feed

Boulder Cup Cycle-cross

2008-11-02T19:53:00.002-07:00

What a great afternoon! We had the great opportunity to hang out in Boulder this afternoon and check out the Boulder Cup cycle-cross race. My cousin Chad Cheeney, of Durango Devo fame, was in town with a few friends (Brendan & Greg) for the Boulder Cup race. These three guys raced in the Men's Elite class and treated us to some great bike racing.

I so blown away at the strength and agility of these riders and what amazing athletes they are.
Check out the whole set of pics @ http://picasaweb.google.com/jscusc/BoulderCup#

I will be watching more of this type of racing. It was amazing and lots of fun!

Great job Cheeney!

Hawaii Fun ...

2008-11-02T07:24:00.003-07:00

It's finally here ... the first post on this new blog.

As some of you know I took a little break between my assignment at Sun and starting the new assignment at Quantum. The family and I had a great trip to Hawaii, specifically the wonderful island of Kauai. The change in scenery served as a great transition between roles. It was great to slip away from the past responsibilities and into the warm surf. It amazed me how quickly the old job melted away while watching the kids hand out at the beach.

For this who want to check out the pictures, the rough images can be found on my Picasa stream.

Mahalo for your comments and friendship. Aloha!