Today Sun announced release of X4540 Open Storage server (a.k.a Thor). We were fortunate to get early access to Thor to certify Amanda Enterprise and Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for MySQL. Both solutions are optimized for backing up to disk, are already certified with Solaris 10, and leverage capabilities of ZFS. So it made perfect sense to certify them on Thor, effectively creating a high-performance and yet relatively inexpensive backup appliance.

The unit we were using is powered by 8 CPUs operating at 2300 MHz and provides 48 SATA drives with total capacity close to 50TB in 4U enclosure. That is good packing; a typical EMC unit with so much capacity will take the whole rack.

Here are my slides used for presentation at Red Hat Summit in Boston last week:

Zmanda: Open Source Backup (.odp open office format, 1.7MB)

The Red Hat Summit started today here in Boston. Based on the evening reception today, it is shaping up to be a pretty good show. I will be speaking at the show on Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 11:30 AM eastern time. I will discuss current state of open source backup as well as where things are headed. We also have a booth located towards the right side of the exhibit floor (by small meeting rooms). We are demonstrating Amanda as well as ZRM for MySQL. Do stop by if you are coming to the show!
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Storage Snapshots are excellent tools in arsenal of a system administrator to create quick and consistent backups of their databases and applications. Snapshot is a “picture” of a filesystem at a point-in-time. In most modern snapshot implementations, this “picture” is not a full copy of the data, but rather a set of pointers to the data.

Here is a list of current industry leading snapshot technologies:

• LVM Snapshots: Snapshot capability built into the Linux Volume Manager (LVM) - the default option on a Linux system.

• ZFS Snapshots: Snapshot capability built into the ZFS filesystem on Solaris and OpenSolaris

• NetApp SnapShots: A feature of the WAFL® (Write Anywhere File Layout) filesystem

• Windows VSS: Volume Shadow Copy Service from Microsoft introduced in …

We have been focusing on providing the best possible backup solution for following scenario: 100 GB+ of data stored in MySQL database, Transaction intensive workload (i.e. rapid rate of change of data), with a business requirement to be able to perform point-in-time restoration of the MySQL database. Oh, the solution also needs to take into account that the database can grow to 1TB or more very quickly.

For such a scenario, we believe that the best possible solution today is a combination of:

1. Storage level snapshots - a capability built into ZFS (Solaris), NetApp, LVM (Linux), VxFS, and VSS (Windows)
2. Transaction logs generated by MySQL
3. Point-and-click restore capability provided by Zmanda Recovery Manager for MySQL

Two reports came out today which go into nitty-gritty of above. First is a joint report written by …

We are hosting a webcast this Wednesday to talk about backing up corporate data to Amazon?s Simple Storage Service (S3) using Amanda Enterprise. We will demonstrate live, how enterprise users can now use Amanda Enterprise to harness Amazon S3 for a complete data backup, archiving and disaster recovery solution. The webcast will take place on Wednesday February 27 at 10:00AM PST and will last about an hour, including a Q&A session at the end. We hope you can join us to discover a new & cost effective way to leverage online storage services such as Amazon S3 as a part of your corporate data protection strategy. Click here to register.

I was reading, this article (subscription required) by Ben Worthen on WSJ about a study on how well companies are prepared for a disaster. I was not at all surprised by (one of) the findings (paraphrased):

…While 70% of 189 tech leaders surveyed by Forrester Research Inc. said that their companies are prepared for a disaster, the reality was quite different…

We run into this all the time, in talking to (prospective) customers. People “think” they are prepared for a disaster. The truth hits them when you start peeling the layers of the supposed plan. Some things to keep an eye on are

• Is it robust and reliable?
• Do you have the right resources engaged in the plan - both design and implementation?
• How often are the plans tested?
• How well is the plan documented?
…

Could not resist the title after reading what Matt wrote. Sexy and exciting, indeed. Most of the crew here have their heads buried with the upcoming releases of Amanda Enterprise and Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for MySQL. We are continuing to enhance the Management console for Network backup. And with the next release of ZRM for MySQL, backup of MySQL database will never be the same. Dmitri already wrote about how easy it will be to manage MySQL backups from Iphone. Additionally we are fixing stuff in the Management console for ease of use. You can see, touch and feel them at LinuxWorld. …

Given a chance, I always check www.zmanda.com on different gadgets with various browsers and form factors. As soon as iPhone became available, I was at the Apple store checking out the new device and especially its web browsing capabilities.

It took me a couple of attempts to type the URL, but then I got it right and I could see our web site, wiki and forums. Everything looked great. Surprisingly, I could see most of the page without too much zooming and moving the window. Our upcoming Management Console for backup and recovery of MySQL is built on a LAMP stack with a look and feel similar to our website. What if we could actually manage all or at least some frequent day to day backup activities of MySQL DBA via iPhone?

Here at Zmanda we are moving fast, and within a few days we presented to a couple of our customers how to manage MySQL backups via iPhone. Here is a use case. A …

The value of data stored in LAMP applications is increasing at an exponential pace. Indeed, the LAMP stack fuels an economy of its own - with its own currency, lingo and players. While e-commerce is the clear and present evidence of the LAMP powered economy, the currency for this economy is by no means just monetary. Value is manifested in many factors other than financial gains: personal reputation and legacy, karma points, creativity etc. The LAMP stack fires up innovation by enabling new ideas - you can quickly and cost-effectively prototype a concept which other’s may find bizarre.

User generated content (UGC) is one key currency of the LAMP stack. UGC, even votes (ok, diggs) on other’s UGC store tangible and lasting value. While naming “You”, a proxy for UGC, the Time’s Person of the Year 2006, The Time magazine said: “It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the many …