Some people are competitive. I’m not. Sure, I taunted my 62-year-old father after dunking on him… on a 6-foot hoop… at my son’s 6th birthday party. Yes, I cheat at Candyland to beat my 4-year-old daughter. And I have been known to race cars on my way to work – on my bicycle. Sometimes, though, ...

When I was younger, I believed chronicling the past was far simpler than predicting the future. Little did I know that “history” means “incessant squabbling over what really happened in the past” (did you know there are multiple active magazines about the American Civil War?). On the other hand, people very rarely check on the ...

It’s that time of year again, and, no, I’m not talking about the time to make resolutions. You should have already done that. (And if you’re surprised that it’s 2012, put down the DLT IV tape cartridge, turn off the Chumbawamba CD and walk outside.) It’s the time of year when bloggers use the “reflections ...

No series of blog posts, regardless of wittiness, insight and general brilliance, can provide a prescriptive answer about how to protect your VMs. (Of course, if you do find some blog posts with wittiness, insight, and brilliance, please send them; I’d love to see how it’s done. Except for Chad’s posts. Don’t send those.) The ...

During World War I, Will Rogers, noted American humorist, was asked by a young reporter how he would stop the U-boat attacks on ships, to which Rogers responded, “Boil the ocean.” But when pressed for how he would do that, Rogers quickly replied, “I’m just the idea man here. Get someone else to work out ...

“Just because I’m not a huge enterprise company, doesn’t mean my data is any less important to my business than theirs is to them.” – Midsize enterprise customer  While many companies deploy traditional storage-based replication for critical applications and data, the disaster recovery (DR) “solution” for much of their data is still “putting tape in ...

Do you remember the anticipation of the conclusion of the serialized stories you loved best? Maybe you waited with breathless anticipation for Harry Potter to finally defeat Lord Voldemort, for Luke Skywalker to defeat the Empire or to find out whether Michael Knight and KITT could save the day in any of the Knight Rider ...

Previously on “The Backup Window,” I had described a scene that would rival a classic 1960s Batman cliffhanger. I was desperately trying to get my daughter dressed for church, so I could save my donut from the clutches of some Joker. Backup administrators tried to solve the Riddler’s question, “How can I protect all my ...

We’re pleased that the inimitable Chad Sakac has climbed through The Backup Window; until now, our sitcom lacked a hyper-caffeinated neighbor. We recently posted Chad’s tech preview about the Avamar’s vCloud Protector. If you haven’t read it yet, I’ll wait. Ideally, I’d find a way to lambast Chad’s post, insult his ancestors, and mock his ...

My last post began with my three-year old daughter trying to wear only a t-shirt and underwear to church, as I weighed the risk of excommunication vs. post-mass jelly donuts. Obviously, the story was a thinly veiled parable for Virtual Machine (VM) backup and recovery. In that post, I covered the traditional VM backup mechanisms ...

My three- year-old daughter Sophia has difficulty making decisions about what clothes to wear. Sunday morning, before church, she cycled through four fancy dresses in 10 minutes. As we slid from “fashionably late” to “in danger of missing post-mass donuts,” I injected some male leadership. “Pick anything. You’ll look beautiful. We have to go. The ...

For most of IT, riding technology curves is like jumping on a kid’s trampoline: dangerous, sure, but oh-so exhilarating (note: ignore trampoline manufacturer’s “weight limits” at your own peril). Faster processors, larger disk capacities, flash storage and higher-performance networking enable new applications, drive server and storage virtualization and allow businesses to generate and analyze data ...

“Everybody keeps telling me about the huge changes that are taking place in the backup market, but it feels like I’m doing exactly the same things in exactly the same way as I was 10 years ago. Where’s the revolution?” When a backup administrator first said this to me, I was floored. After all, in ...