Saturday, December 3, 2011

How-To: Force Expire Tape in DPM 2010

System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2010 enables disk-based and tape-based data protection and recovery for servers such as SQL Server, Exchange Server, SharePoint, virtual servers, file servers, and support for Windows desktops and laptops. DPM can also centrally manage system state and Bare Metal Recovery (BMR).

Do you ever got yourself into a situation where you run out of backup tapes due to inappropriate backup strategy ? If your answer is yes, then you probably notice at the same time you are facing an issue and that you are desperately to expire a LTO tape which holding the oldest recovery point. And guess what... You can't do this using DPM 2010 Administrator Console...OUCH!!!

So, you are sitting in the dark, waiting any tape to expire and helplessly watching each and every scheduled backup failed. Well, this will not happen  anymore if you use a powershell as found in Microsoft TechNet's Library. The script contents is as below :

Code Begins Here

param ([string] $DPMServerName, [string] $LibraryName, [string[]] $TapeLocationList)
if(("-?","-help") -contains $args[0])
{
    Write-Host "Usage: ForceFree-Tape.ps1 [[-DPMServerName] <Name of the DPM server>] [-LibraryName] <Name of the library> [-TapeLocationList] <Array of tape locations>"
    Write-Host "Example: Force-FreeTape.ps1 -LibraryName "My library" -TapeLocationList Slot-1, Slot-7"
    exit 0
}
if (!$DPMServerName)
{
    $DPMServerName = Read-Host "DPM server name: "
    if (!$DPMServerName)
    {
        Write-Error "Dpm server name not specified."
        exit 1
    }
}
if (!$LibraryName)
{
    $LibraryName = Read-Host "Library name: "
    if (!$LibraryName)
    {
        Write-Error "Library name not specified."
        exit 1
    }
}
if (!$TapeLocationList)
{
    $TapeLocationList = Read-Host "Tape location: "
    if (!$TapeLocationList)
    {
        Write-Error "Tape location not specified."
        exit 1
    }
}
if (!(Connect-DPMServer $DPMServerName))
{
    Write-Error "Failed to connect To DPM server $DPMServerName"
    exit 1
}
$library = Get-DPMLibrary $DPMServerName | where {$_.UserFriendlyName -eq $LibraryName}
if (!$library)
{
    Write-Error "Failed to find library with user friendly name $LibraryName"
    exit 1
}
foreach ($media in @(Get-Tape -DPMLibrary $library))
{
    if ($TapeLocationList -contains $media.Location)
    {
        if ($media -is [Microsoft.Internal.EnterpriseStorage.Dls.UI.ObjectModel.LibraryManagement.ArchiveMedia])
        {
            foreach ($rp in @(Get-RecoveryPoint -Tape $media))
            {
                Get-RecoveryPoint -Datasource $rp.Datasource | Out-Null
                Write-Verbose "Removing recovery point created at $($rp.RepresentedPointInTime) for tape in $($media.Location)."
                Remove-RecoveryPoint -RecoveryPoint $rp -ForceDeletion -Confirm:$false
            }
            Write-Verbose "Setting tape in $($media.Location) as free."
            Set-Tape -Tape $media -Free
        }
        else
        {
            Write-Error "The tape in $($media.Location) is a cleaner tape."
        }
    }
}

Code Ends Here

To put this script into use
  1. Open a new Notepad file and copy the code above into it.
  2. Save the file as ForceFree.ps1.
  3. Copy ForceFree.ps1 to C:/Program Files/Microsoft/Microsoft Data Protection Manager/scripts .
  4. The syntax to run the script is ForceFree.ps1 -DPMServerName <Name of server> -LibraryName <Name of library> -TapeLocation <slot numbers>.
Sample of script execution

PS C:\Program Files\Microsoft DPM\DPM\Scripting> .\ForceExpire.ps1
DPM server name: : backupserver
Hewlett Packard LTO Ultrium-4 drive
Hewlett Packard MSL G3 Series library  (x64 based)
Library name (cut & paste from above): : Hewlett Packard MSL G3 Series library
(x64 based)
Tape location: : slot-2
Processing this slot list...
slot-2
The operation will remove the following recovery point(s) because they have dep
endencies on each other:
Datasource '\\?\Volume{9f6da658-f6f1-11df-8d4f-00155d000115}\' on targetcomputer1.xxx.xxx.xx:
Saturday, 5 November, 2011 10:31:28 AM
Monday, 7 November, 2011 11:52:13 PM
Wednesday, 9 November, 2011 4:03:54 AM
Wednesday, 9 November, 2011 9:47:34 PM
Thursday, 10 November, 2011 8:01:09 PM
Friday, 11 November, 2011 8:09:17 PM
Monday, 14 November, 2011 8:31:54 PM
The operation will remove the following recovery point(s) because they have dep
endencies on each other:
Datasource '\\?\Volume{dff33793-b735-11df-a919-00155d000225}\' on targetcomputer2.xxx.xxx.xx:
Sunday, 6 November, 2011 12:02:41 AM
Tuesday, 8 November, 2011 2:36:56 AM
Wednesday, 9 November, 2011 7:33:40 AM
Wednesday, 9 November, 2011 9:24:50 PM
Thursday, 10 November, 2011 11:04:38 PM
Friday, 11 November, 2011 10:01:35 PM
Monday, 14 November, 2011 8:09:52 PM
Tuesday, 15 November, 2011 8:00:30 PM


More details information can be found at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff399673.aspx


Sunday, October 9, 2011

How-To: Installing Smokeping on CentOS 5.5

yum update
# rpm -Uhv http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/i386/rpmforge/RPMS/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
# yum install httpd
# yum install rrdtool
# yum install fping
# yum install echoping
# yum install curl
# yum install perl perl-Net-Telnet perl-Net-DNS perl-LDAP perl-libwww-perl perl-RadiusPerl perl-IO-Socket-SSL perl-Socket6 perl-CGI-SpeedyCGI



# wget http://oss.oetiker.ch/smokeping/pub/smokeping-2.4.1.tar.gz
# tar zxvf smokeping-2.4.1.tar.gz
# mv smokeping-2.4.1 /opt/smokeping
# cd /opt/smokeping



# cd bin/
# cp smokeping.dist smokeping
# cd ../htdocs/
# cp smokeping.cgi.dist smokeping.cgi
# cp tr.cgi.dist tr.cgi
# cd ../etc/
# cp config.dist config
# cp basepage.html.dist basepage.html
# cp smokemail.dist smokemail
# cp tmail.dist tmail
# cp smokeping_secrets.dist smokeping_secrets
# chmod 600 /opt/smokeping/etc/smokeping_secrets



# vi /opt/smokeping/bin/smokeping



Hard Drives IOPS

Found and interesting topic over the weekend. A topic which most of us overlook during the design of a storage infrastructure.

We all do concern about the speed if the data transfer between storage and host, the network bandwidth, and that RAID configuration used, while we always forgot about the IOPS.

For some of us out there who wondering what is IOPS, "IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second, pronounced i-ops) is a common performance measurement used to benchmark computer storage devices like hard disk drives (HDD), solid state drives (SSD), and storage area networks (SAN). As with any benchmark, IOPS numbers published by storage device manufacturers do not guarantee real-world application performance" - Wikipedia (on layman term)

The table I found below to remind myself of the ball park IOPS figure of various type of common hard drives:

DeviceTypeIOPSInterface
7,200 rpm HDD~75-100 IOPS[2]SATA 3 Gb/s
10,000 rpHDD~125-150 IOPS[2]SATA 3 Gb/s
15,000 rpHDD~175-210 IOPS [2]SAS
Simple SLSSD~400 IOPS[citation needed]SATA 3 Gb/s
Intel X25-SSD~8,600 IOPS[11]SATA 3 Gb/s
Intel X25-SSD~5,000 IOPS[13]SATA 3 Gb/s
G.Skill PhSSD~20,000 IOPS[citation needed]SATA 3 Gb/s
OCZ VerteSSDUp to 60,000 IOPS[citation needed]SATA 6 Gb/s
Texas MeSSD120,000+ Random Read/Write IOPS[17]PCIe
Fusion-io SSD140,000 Read IOPS, 135,000 Write IOPS [18]PCIe
Virident SSSD320,000 sustained READ IOPS using 4KB blocks and 200,000 sustained WRITE IOPS using 4KB blocks [19]PCIe
OCZ RevoSSD200,000 Random Write 4K IOPS [21]PCIe
Fusion-ioSSD250,000+ IOPS [22]PCIe
Violin MeSSD250,000+ Random Read/Write IOPS[23]PCIe /FC/Infiniband/iSCSI
DDRdrive SSD300,000+ (512B Random Read IOPS) and 200,000+ (512B Random Write IOPS)[24][25][26][27]PCIe
OCZ SinglSSDUp to 500,000 IOPS [28]PCIe
Texas MeSSD600,000+ Random Read/Write IOPS[29]PCIe
Texas MeSSD1,000,000+ Random Read/Write IOPS[30]FC / InfiniBand
Fusion-ioSSD1,180,000+ Random Read/Write IOPS[31]PCIe
OCZ 2x SuSSDUp to 1,200,000 IOPS[28]PCIe