[OPLINTECH] [OPLINLIST] Recent Technology Symposium Event in Toledo

Mon Apr 27 12:06:37 EDT 2009

Just a note on your Item 2:  You're backup could possibly take 30 
minutes or less too, if you did an incremental backup. To achieve your 
"30-minute backup", you would first have to have a base-line full 
backup. After that the only data going out to the company is the changed 
blocks of data. If that first full backup is damaged or corrupted, ALL 
of your following backups will be completely useless. Further, that 
first, full base-line backup would take a rather long time to upload to 
the company. Likewise, in the event you need to recover your data, 
returning it to you will also take a good long time.

Several companies provide this type of block-based incremental backups. 
It's a good strategy when backing data up over a limited pipeline, like 
to/from the Internet. It can be a good strategy for offsite backups of 
critical data, if the price per amount of data makes sense. Anyone 
investigating the strategy of course should evaluate the benefits and 
drawbacks to see if it makes sense for any particular situation!

I've looked at these types of backups before for my own libraries. To 
date, I've not found it to be economical, or necessarily even the best 
strategy, for my small libraries. That's not to say that tomorrow won't 
bring a better price or something else to tip the scales, though!

My 2 cents,
Chad

-----------------------
Chad Neeper
Senior Systems Engineer

Level 9 Networks
740-548-8070 (voice)
866-214-6607 (fax)

--   Full LAN/WAN consulting services   --
-- Specialized in libraries and schools --

Bob Neeper wrote:
> Jim's insight is welcomed additional information, being  in depth for 
> a specific library and suggesting different options.
>
>
> The speakers from the 3 featured companies did not provide prices.
> DMC plans to provide us more information and a preliminary quote.
>
> Item 1 (Bandwidth monitoring and control)
> Toledo-Lucas County Public Library uses it .
> A price I google'd ($2800) seemed reasonable for the benefit.
> But the price was for low usage and also may be wrong.
>
> Item 2 (Deduplication backup} is probably expensive, as Jim mentioned.
> But, still interesting to contemplate.
> Imagine, 30 minute backups. Our full backup takes 10 hours
>
> Item 3 (Virtualization without a client OS) is scheduled for release 
> this year according to the speaker.
> It probably will be expensive, but interesting to dream about.
> I specifically did not mention company names of the presenters.
> However....
>      This company was VMware so details should eventually show up.
>
>
> OUR VIRTUAL SERVER ~ For what it's worth.
>
> We have had one for 2 1/2 years. So far it just chugs along.
> It requires maintenance, updates, etc. but much less time than the 
> rest of our PC's.
> Probably due to the type of guests, network setup, quantity of PC's, etc.
>
> The server currently has 8 guests.
>   IPcop (With DansGuardian)
>   ZoneCD (for wireless policy acceptance)
>   openSUSE website, blogs, etc.
>   openSUSE Education (Like Edubuntu)
>   Novell 5.1 (File Server)
>   WXP admin console
>   W2003 Server (TLC for CIRC &  PAC)
>   NIMA (Network Monitoring)
>
>
>
> R. W. (Bob) Neeper     Cell: (740)-407-3572 
> Community Library
> 44 Burrer Dr.
> Sunbury, Oh 43074
> Tel:  (740)-965-3901
>
>
> JKENZIG wrote:
>> We  did some pricing of Item 2 last year on several of these 
>> solutions and while the pluses look good, actual solutions are VERY 
>> expensive and for small organizations I would contend they are not 
>> cost effective. (and probably aren't for larger ones either at this 
>> point in time)
>>  
>> Item 3 virtual desktops (VDI) solutions are very expensive once you 
>> pay licensing etc. unless you use all open source it will get 
>> expensive and just as much management is involved, only in a 
>> different way. 
>>  
>> Remember even virtual servers, require just as much management as a 
>> real iron server also. You still have to worry about security, 
>> updates, antivirus etc.  A lot of apps don't scale well under 
>> virtualization also.   I have never heard of running applications 
>> without some sort of OS, did they specify what product exists that 
>> does it? I specialize in this stuff and follow the industry 
>> carefully.  You need at least a browser to run an app in and to run a 
>> browser you need an OS. (and JAVA is an OS if that is what they mean) 
>> I would really like to know if they mentioned a product as I didn't 
>> gleen much from their site. .
>>  
>> Something we are looking at with virtualization is Citrix 
>> Provisioning Server for desktops. (PVS) It is a different beast than 
>> virtual desktops in that you are streaming the OS to the desktop and 
>> all processes and the OS are then still run at the desktop.  Benefits 
>> are that you are managing only a single or a couple Virtual Hard Disk 
>> (vhd) images in the data center.  Versus with VDI all of the virtual 
>> machines run on a server in your data center and you are managing 
>> possibly hundreds of virtual machines in the data center. If you are 
>> a Microsoft shop VDI requires extra licensing and also many extra 
>> servers.  If we did VDI our costs would approach $1 million after 
>> servers, licensing, software etc. and a yearly maintenance fee.  Cost 
>> for PVS is closer to about $80,000.   Quite a difference.
>>  
>> Regards,
>> Jim Kenzig
>> Network Manager
>>  
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:* oplintech-bounces at oplin.org on behalf of Bob Neeper
>> *Sent:* Thu 4/23/2009 12:21 PM
>> *To:* Oplintech at Oplin.Org; Oplinlist at Oplin.Org
>> *Subject:* [OPLINTECH] Recent Technology Symposium Event in Toledo
>>
>> Chauncey Montgomery (director) and I attended a symposium at the 
>> Toledo-Lucas County Public Library on 4/15
>> A no charge, no pressure event with speakers from 3 companies and a 
>> case study by TLCPL
>> In my opinion, an event well worth attending should you have the 
>> opportunity.
>>
>> DMC Technology Group Inc, in Toledo, held it to showcase 3 
>> interesting technologies for use in libraries
>> All 3 have the potential to streamline operation and save money.
>>
>> A short summary (of sorts) on the covered items.
>>
>> 1) Optimize network bandwidth, monitor use, control streaming media 
>> and social networking sites, accelerate mission critical traffic.
>> Item of interest:
>>  You don't necessarily need to increase bandwidth, possibly just 
>> control the use.
>>
>> 2) Backup and recover solutions using data deduplication technology
>> Items of interest:
>>  No tapes
>>  Very substantial reduction in backup time utilizing block mode 
>> (faster than incremental)
>>  Quick restore of files
>>  Long term backup retention
>>
>> 3) Virtualization solutions
>> Items of interest:
>>  Virtual desktops,
>>  Live migration of virtual machines between servers
>>  Running programs without an operating system.
>>
>>
>>
>> If interested, additional information may be obtained through:
>>
>> Website   http://www.dmctechnologygroup.com/
>> Email       eric.lacy at DMCtechgroup.com
>>
>> <http://www.dmctechnologygroup.com/>
>> -- 
>> R. W. (Bob) Neeper     Cell: (740)-407-3572 
>> Community Library
>> 44 Burrer Dr.
>> Sunbury, Oh 43074
>> Tel:  (740)-965-3901
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> OPLINLIST mailing list
> OPLINLIST at oplin.org
> http://mail.oplin.org/mailman/listinfo/oplinlist
>   
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.oplin.org/pipermail/oplintech/attachments/20090427/69b036dc/attachment.html