from the gut

Now that our datawarehouse database is over 250GB, using the built-in SQL Server tools are not an option. I have experience with Veritas BackupExec and NetBackup, and here is my typical experience: backups are scheduled overnight and usually take the entire night. Restores are no faster.

Here’s a product that’s worth looking in to: Idera SQLSafe. This products creates compressed backup files on the local drives. They advertise up to 95% compression and they’re not joking. We were able to achieve 80% compression and the backup took a third the time. Our 270GB datawarehouse backs up to a 55GB file in 1:20.

We have yet to perform a mission-critical restore, but if they are as fast as the backups, then we’re talking about a pretty small outage for having to restore the entire database from scratch.

And the best part is that, at < $1K per instance list price, it's much cheaper than the so-called "enterprise" solutions.

[Update]: If the price is still too steep, there is a pretty well-enabled freeware option. I need to do some checking, but based on the feature list, I wonder if we aren’t using the freeware.

I recently wrote that I switched all my domains over from SRLNet to Dreamhost.com. I closed the account on 10/11 by jumping through all the hoops to file a ticket on their support system. When I received a bill 11/1, I replied to the automated email, and BANG! Instant response.

The reply was that dreamhost offers terrible support, oversells their servers, and their sites frequently go down. I already knew all this. You know why, because dreamhost told me. He told me that I might be saving money but that I would be losing support and performance.

At the time, I didn’t realize I was talking to the owner of the company. I thought it was just some support jockey. But I still wanted to be helpful and give him some feedback about his company — hoping that the information might make its way up the chain. So, I replied:

…For the record, your assumption that cost is my primary motivation is
wrong. I prefer their control panel. I like the subversion support. I
have received great support via their wiki and I am entertained by
their blog. SRLNet is missing all of these.

Who knows what was controversial about this, but the response indicates that I pushed some buttons. (Maybe he just hates dreamhost.)

cPanel is an extremely user friendly control panel, we’re here 24/7/365
to offer you our personal support.  So you’re basically moving to a
terrible hosting provider because you like their blog.

The condesending demeanor … totally free of charge.

I finished moving everything to the new host last night. I am done with the old host and their skimpy disk space allowance and am now on Dreamhost.com. They’ve given me 200GB disk space that will grow by 1GB per week. (My old host gave me 1GB total.) How did I learn about Dreamhost? Through their blog, of course!

I don’t need this disk space right now, but with all that space I can put up a lot of baby pictures and videos. All Dora, all the time.

For those of you reading this on the web, I apologize for the new theme. It looks like I forgot to install the theme I was using. I might change the theme a time or three before I settle on something I like. I read blogs through RSS so layout is the least of my concerns.

Talk about making your technology easier to use. For a while, I’ve been looking for a solution to our calendaring problem. You see, Julie and I each make commitments for ourselves or for both of us. We commit. Make a mental note. And then either don’t write it down on our calendar. Don’t mention anything to the other. Mention something that we or the other forgets about before the event happens. etc. etc.

We wanted a solution to all this. I was hesitant for it to be a technical solution, because I wanted it to be cheap and really easy to use. I’ll leave alternatives we considered to another post, but we are currently trying google calendar. We both check our gmail frequently, so it’s a pretty natural fit. It is free, but I was still hesitant about it being easy to use.

My pie-in-the-sky dream would be that I could have a conversation over email about getting together with someone and a link would just show up that I could click and automatically add that to my calendar. A lot of calendars will accept iCal files, but to just detect an event from a conversation would be totally cool.

Gmail makes this a reality. Note the link the right of this conversation.

I’m running the new nightly build of Thunderbird 3.0. If you are using Thunderbird and don’t have it installed. Consider it for two reasons:

(1) Folder Views: Including Favorite Folders and Unread Folders
I used Favorite Folders all the time in Outlook and have really missed it since the switch. I have so many IMAP folders that I’m always scrolling around. Bringing back Favorite Folders helps because I can promote folders for current projects to the front.

The unread folders view is something that Outlook didn’t have. I really like it. It’s much better than the brain-dead “unread mail” search folder in Outlook & Thunderbird because it’s still subcategorized by folder. So the tags I apply to my incoming mail are reflected in the unread mail view. ie, Service Center tickets (high priority) aren’t lumped together with Toad listserv blather.

(2) Fixed named entites bug in RSS reader.

Very annoying when your RSS reader doesn’t work with one of the most popular blog platforms out there. Thanks to the writer at Chronos Digital Technology for the tip.

For those who just like to collect data, here are some ways to use Excel in your daily life. I personally like the idea of using Excel to track grocery costs. Maybe rather than tracking everything, it would be useful to track prices that fluctuate or that there are often specials on that mask the true “price” of a product. (Does anybody buy yogurt when it’s not on “sale”?) It would also be interesting to compare products head-to-head with so-called “wholesale” store prices.

Besides work, I use Excel for quick-and-dirty calculators. Right now, we’re researching our options for dropping our PMI insurance from our mortgage. So, I created a workbook that looks at two variables: appraised value of our home and amount of lump sum payment. I have also set up two targets of equity-to-value: 20% and 25%. I’ve also created a column that expresses the lump-sum in terms of how many months of PMI that equates to. I should add a column that expresses how many months each lump sum would knock off the re-payment of our mortgage.

The NYT has a good piece about the economics of airlines providing WiFi on their planes. I am not exactly a seasoned traveller. I’m one of the people who hold up the security checkpoint because I’m never sure what to do before I am told.

That said, when I travel, which is usually for leisure, it always surprises me how unwired the airlines and airports are. I get frustrated at the lack of WiFi and I’m not even working! The technology is there — Boeing has been putting a lot of weight behind it since 2001 — but the airlines don’t see the money in it.

Does anybody else thinks this seems short-sighted? If say, United, had WiFi on their planes, wouldn’t you go out of your way to book a flight on United versus their competitors? Moreover, the airlines are losing money like crazy anyway, what’s another half-million to fit your planes with WiFi?