Andrew Hale: IT Talk & Other Topics

If you've managed a backup solution before (DPM, BackupExec, UVB, Veamm, etc.), then retention was probably set by answering the simple question of "How long do I want to keep this stuff for?" Most of the time, retention is a simple setting. Set it & forget it right? in Tivoli Storage Manager, or TSM, it's a bit more complex than that.

Part of my responsibility is supporting our various Backup systems and for handling VM backups in the VMware world, there's 2 clear contenders winning the popular vote; The most popular is Veamm Backup&Restore, and the other popular option is Unitrends Virtual Backup (Formerly PHD Virtual Backup). I want to talk about my experience migrating from PHD v6.5 to UVB v8.

So you've identified a VM in your environment that needs a little boost and you've decided to up the resources on it so it can adequately run whatever services your VM is providing. You go to up the vCPU and ask, "Do I add more sockets or more cores? What's the difference?"

As our new virtualization admin, I've taken over the day-to-day administration of our UCS & vSphere infrastructure. I'm also in charge of the upgrade project for it. We're currently rockin' vSphere v5.1 on 2x Windows Server 2k8r2 vCenter VMs in a Heartbeat v6.6 configuration. We want to get to a single vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) v5.5. I've broken this up into 3 distinct phases. In the first phase, we need to get to a single vCenter configuration. That means tearing down the Heartbeat configuration & decommissioning our secondary vCenter VM. In the second phase, I'll do a simple upgrade to the vCenter server to v5.5, followed by the hosts, VM hardware version & VMtools upgrade (with either VUM or pounding out something in PowerCLI). In the third phase, I'll use the VCS to VCSA fling to convert our Windows vCenter server to the Linux-based VCSA.

My "Time Management" that I've been using for the last 27 years could be summed up with 2 words; "Wing it". I assume that since I'm a relatively smart person that I can just remember things. Well, I've never had a particularly impressive memory and I have forgotten things before. Birthdays, appointments, grocery items, assigned tasks at work... You get my point. Lately, I've been feeling like I'm spending so much brain-power trying to remember all I need to do that I hardly get anything done. It feels very odd to work for 8 hours and not think of a single thing you've completed. I knew that I needed a system but where to do I start?