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Feb 26 2009
Barracuda Monitoring Print E-mail
Written by Paul Winkeler   
Thursday, 26 February 2009

Barracuda Neworks makes a fine line of inbound (and outbound?!) SPAM filters deployed in-line with your email server and the outside world. These devices provide a web interface both for management and configuration as well as for end-users to trawl through suspect quarantined e-mail searching for treasure. You can see how the device is performing under its current load right from the front page of this built-in website and then it can also send scheduled e-mail messages with various statistical reports. Unfortunately, what it does not do, is alert you of odd behavior in any meaningful pro-active way. After all, who has time to read through all those daily statistics reports from all their devices?!

The obvious answer to this problem then is to monitor the device through our facorite Open Source monitoring platform, Zenoss but that is where we run into a glitch. It turns out that Barracudas cannot be probed with SNMP, the standard way such devices are probed until you get to the 400-series and even then, the exposed MIB is not an enterprise specific one with Barracuda goodies but just the generic OS one, courtesy of the underlying Linux engine. Ah, you say, but doesn't Barracuda make a REST-based API available? Well yes, they do, but now we're writing a command based datasource and even then, this feature is not available until the 400-series and up.

Read on to learn how PBnJ Solutions built a Zenoss ZenPack to monitor Barracudas from the 200-series on up, now allowing everyone to not only get an alarm when the inbound queue is overflowing but also collect some great SPAM statistics over time.

Last Updated ( Sunday, 01 March 2009 )
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Apr 21 2005
NetBackup Migration from Unix to Windows Print E-mail
Written by Paul Winkeler   
Wednesday, 20 April 2005
Earlier this month I asked around for some advice on how best to about migrate a NetBackup 3.4 installation on Solaris to version 4.5 on Windows. Many were called, but few answered. Those who did expressed disdain at the direction of the migration without offering much advice. My own instincts told me I should migrate first and then upgrade so that is how this author started his morning...
Last Updated ( Thursday, 26 April 2007 )
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Dec 23 2003
Data Buffer Size and Quantity Settings Print E-mail
Written by Paul Winkeler   
Tuesday, 23 December 2003

Much has been written on this subject already yet it continues to be a topic fraught with pitfalls and mired in confusion. Perhaps by describing the way NetBackup's tape writing (as implemented in bptm process) operates some of this veil can be lifted and tape drives can be made to hum more efficiently.

For each NetBackup job stream writing to tape, a bptm process is launched. Part of its launch information packet includes a description of the source of its data, i.e. the client machine, the NetBackup policy and schedule, etc. However, the first bptm process does not directly concern itself with contacting the client, instead, it forks off a child process to start listening on a predetermined TCP/IP socket for the client to contact it. The parent process meanwhile proceeds to allocate, open and otherwise prepare a tape and a tape drive to start writing the eagerly anticipated client data.
Next comes the description of how to the two pass this client data between eachother.

Last Updated ( Thursday, 26 April 2007 )
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Jun 25 2003
Labeling May Not Be P.C., But Somebody Has To Do It Print E-mail
Written by Paul Winkeler   
Wednesday, 25 June 2003

Anyone with more than one backup tape volume will have a need to apply labels to keep them straight. If nothing else because that is how all backup software refers to the tapes it writes and, hopefully, reads.

Although you can often-times get the tape vendors to sell you the tapes with labels already applied, there are still occasions where labels need to be generated after the tapes have been purchases. Here are some vendors we know about:

Last Updated ( Thursday, 26 April 2007 )
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Jun 19 2003
The Cleaning Crew Is Here Print E-mail
Written by Paul Winkeler   
Thursday, 19 June 2003

Run enough tapes through tape drives and eventually the accumulated dust and rubbed of tape particles will affect the drives' ability to read and write. The good news is that all modern tape drives have a read-behind-write design which allows them to detect this condition. When a head-cleaning is required these drives will send out an alert on their SCSI bus.
The response to this SCSI alert depends on how NetBackup and the hosting robot, where applicable, are configured. Read on to see what your options are:

Last Updated ( Thursday, 26 April 2007 )
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