[Info-vax] A Samba alternative, could this be something for VMS?

[Kerry Main]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax [mailto:info-vax-bounces at rbnsn.com] On
> Behalf Of IanD via Info-vax
> Sent: 06-Sep-16 9:08 PM
> To: info-vax at rbnsn.com
> Cc: IanD <iloveopenvms at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Info-vax] A Samba alternative, could this
be
> something for VMS?
> 
> On Wednesday, August 31, 2016 at 11:15:04 PM UTC+10,
> Kerry Main wrote:
> 
> >
> > Bottom line - any new technology needs to adopt to
> meet business DR/DT/RTO/RPO SLA's - not the other way
> around.
> >
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Kerry Main
> > Kerry dot main at starkgaming dot com
> 
> +1
> 
> Business availability is #1 priority where I am,
everything is
> skewed around that ideal
> 
> VMware has done well in terms of the business spend
> here because they perceive VMware as giving them total
> availability
> 
> Our OpenVMS systems were clustered across different
> geographical regions and that came with issues of it's
own.
> Stretched vlan's are the focal hate point of networks.
> Latency on disk writes was somewhat annoying but the
> old SCSI HSZ disks were by far the bigger pain than
going
> across a vlan. Being a Telco, they threw plenty of money
> into hefty links (this was spanning three DC's after
all).
> 
> When the business decided geographical redundancy
> wasn't worth it anymore because the new DC was
> supposedly designed with a near 100% up-time
> guarantee, our world got a lot smaller as we
consolidated
> to a single DC
> 
> Charon with flash drives replaced the HSZ based 8400 and
> I/O rates literally went through the roof. SAN is now
the
> bottleneck (one system still remains on physical
> hardware)
> 
> Redundancy in the geographical form for our business has
> been replaced by pushing that responsibility onto the DC
> to manage. Supposedly the DC is designed to take a plane
> strike and other such mad things human being want to do,
> so the concept of clusters spanning long distances for
us
> went away (whether right or wrong is not for me to say)
> 
> I think when we see those blazingly fast memory based
> systems, the business will embrace them endlessly and in
> the stampede for performance, all concerns about
> housing everything on a single bit of hardware will be
> thrown to the wind until something happens and they get
> bit firmly in the arse and then suddenly redundancy will
> come into sharp focus again
> 
> Human being have a psychological flaw in that they are
> overly optimistic (Can't remember the actual research
> article now)
> 
> <sarcasm>
> Oh look, there's some new technology over there. Looks
> good, but what about...Stand out of the way or you'll
get
> trampled by the mob...
> </sarcasm>
> 

Re: consolidate to one DC ... really bad idea.

Even if it is a tier 4, all it takes is for one person
with SARS or some other exotic pandemic issue to walk into
the front desk area of the DC and that's it - when the
guys in white suits find out, everyone in that entire
facility physically goes home for 10 days.

This is where you find out if you can reboot, power off/on
and if you have enough remote access / VPN lines.

If a critical system crashes - too bad, the Maint folks
won't be able to get in until the quarantine is over.

Question - if no one can get into the lone DC for 10 days,
what would be the impact on your company?

And I have pointed this out before, but this actually
happened to HP in Toronto during the SARS epidemic: (mind
you they had dual site strategy, so the impact was not as
bad)

Reference:

http://www.cnet.com/news/sars-sends-hp-workers-home-in-can
ada/
http://www.itbusiness.ca/news/sars-scare-leaves-hp-canada-
in-limbo/5669

Related:
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2561655/it-management
/sidebar--the-sars-effect.html


Regards,

Kerry Main
Kerry dot main at starkgaming dot com