How many SAN people are bald?

OK.  I am.  What I have left is probably deeply rooted and I doubt I will lose much more but is my lack of hair related to my constant SAN problems over the last year.  Perhaps it just fell out or I pulled it out.  I am still determining the cause.

Some time ago, a poster was complaining about Windows and I never really wondered about it but recently, I am starting to come to the conclusion that one year in a Windows shop has caused me more problems than at least five in a Solaris shop.  I am probably being unfair as there seems to be lots of unrelated issues that once they come together, life is no fun anymore.

Some may have seen my exasperation with Exchange 2003 and Synchronous True Copy.  The list of issues just goes on.  So, considering my stress free past of UNIX and databases, has it all caught up with me?

Today, Microsoft showed us Data Protection Manager.  Ok, so it looked good (for a few moments) but then you have to wonder why on earth anyone would have two backup solutions.  The very last thing they said was its only good for Microsoft products but they expect other vendors to take it on.  What??  I thought about that for a while and that movie "Field of Dreams" came to mind. 

So while I was busily slapping my manager about the head telling him to wake up, I reminded him that they said they would need 3 times the current amount of storage to back it up.  So, hmm.. let me think.. Last count of say 350 TB for Open Systems.  So, I would need about a PB of crappy SATA to backup up Microsoft Solutions. 

Oh and there is no option for real time DR solutions.  A server in one datacentre can be around an hour behind the other.  I wonder could I use TC for that? 

I wonder where DPM and ProtecTIER fit in?  There was absolutely no mention of deduplication at all.  Why, because it seems to be completely block sized data movement.  Sort of like COW on steriods.

I also wonder have they ever heard of Riverbed too? 

Yep, Microsoft builds the playing field so everyone else will come to play.

Then I asked them how we are going to cope with two backup software regimes.  And did it fit in with Archiving (HCAP in the near future)?

None of the Microsoft people were bald but I wonder how many customers are....  Sure, it appears to be a cheap solution up front but thats were the facade ends.

On a last note, I was quite excited that Steve Todd wrote something on my last post.  There are two things happening right now that his background relates to.  XAM and my Centera's which are growing old.  I applaud his visit and a good blog read too.

Stephen