Oct 26 2009 3:22AM GMT
Posted by: Steve Pitcher
AS/400,
iseries,
lto,
tape,
safe,
System i
OK, well it’s the first Fire King I’ve purchased and I hate Lord of the Rings with a passion but I needed a title.
I have a Fire King DM2520-3 being delivered this Wednesday. This little monster weighs in at a whopping 1050 lbs and will hold about 210 LTO tapes. I only need storage for about 100 tapes, so there’s plenty of room for growth, documentation, CD/DVD media and other goodies we want to keep out of harms way.
While scoping out a fire resistant safe, I was given a few clear requirements.
- Get the best fire rating possible
- The 3 hour rating may be overkill, considering a standard office fire temperature would be lower than the 2000 F heat that this safe is rated to protect against, so you can’t say I didn’t find the best available. Actually, a 1 hour rated safe would probably suffice for most businesses considering if flame is in direct contact for 1 hour with your data safe then you’re probably storing your tapes in an oil refinery. Heat away from the fire is a much lower temperature than the actual fire, and since most material/fuel will burn away fairly quickly, most 1 hour safes would do the trick.
- Theft protection
- Considering this thing will take a locksmith a couple of hours to bust into if the front keypad melted off…it’s not easily broken into. Plus you’re not going to get a few fellas to haul a 1050 lb box away without making a little noise and alerting security.
This puppy is also rated against 30 foot drops and explosions. I’m not sure what they test explosions with, but that would have to be a neat job.
I’m curious, what do you all use for storage protection? Are there others out there with bigger, better and cooler physical media storage systems?
Comments welcome.
Oct 23 2009 1:48AM GMT
Posted by: Steve Pitcher
AS/400,
iseries,
ibm i,
management central,
monitor,
systems management,
navigator
Check out the November edition of System i News magazine. I submitted an article a little while ago that’s now been published in the Pro VIP section.
Check out www.systeminetwork.com and get yourself a subscription to a great resource.
If you have any questions, please feel free to comment and I’ll do my best to help.
Oct 8 2009 7:28PM GMT
Posted by: Steve Pitcher
AS/400,
iseries,
System i,
IFS,
quota
Users and storage quotas. Groan…
If you’re using the IFS on your iSeries for users to store files then you’ve probably struggled with storage management. I’ve often compared managing user storage to being a credit card company with a lot of irresponsible customers. We give a customer a $1000 credit limit (i.e., 100 MB of storage) and they go on a spending spree. Once they’ve reached their limit they ask for more money. Since they have good credit we give them an extra $500 (i.e., bump their storage limit an additional 50 MB). We may do this a couple of times before we catch on and send them to the collection department to hound them on a regular basis to get below their credit limit.
When users reach their storage quotas, simple things like generating spooled files are a problem because they don’t have any space to generate them. Then they call IT when their reports don’t print.
Now, users who need their storage caps adjusted for a business requirement have a legitimate reason. I’ll adjust your quota accordingly and perhaps make a case to add disk. My beef lies with knuckleheads using 90% of their storage on pictures of their family trip to Disney World. If you can afford the digital camera and the trip then you can afford a flash drive or a DVD burner. So pretty please, keep the crap off the production server.
I put together a little automated email routine to inform users and cut down on storage related support calls. Personally, I’d say I’ve easily cut the storage support calls by 50%. Here’s the gist of what the user gets:
- A quick explanation that every user has a storage quota and that they’re approaching it.
- How much space they have left.
- A list of files they own in descending order of size. I also include the last change date of the object.
There’s a number of pieces that put this together.
- Retrieve a listing of iSeries users using the DSPUSRPRF command to an outfile and then do some quick query/400 work.
- I interface with our Domino server to get the email address for each user. This is done by way of a simple Domino agent that exports mail users to a csv file on our iSeries.
- I determine which users are exceeding 90% of their storage quota via the output of the DSPUSRPRF command above.
- I get a list of objects each user owns (using the RTVDIRINF command, some CL and query/400) and create a csv file for that user with some RPG. The csv file generation stuff was put together after reviewing Scott Klement’s awesome website that has a section on working with files on the IFS http://www.scottklement.com/rpg/ifs.html)
- Each user is emailed the notification with the attached csv. This is accomplished, in my scenario, with the Javamail application that you can install on your iSeries free of charge.
If anyone would like an explanation on how to do build this yourself, please let me know and I’d be happy to help. It’s a Frankenstein solution, but it’s free and works well.
Oct 8 2009 6:50PM GMT
Posted by: Steve Pitcher
How hard is it to make a pot of coffee in the office? Not very hard at all.
It seems as though some people believe that the Java Fairy comes around every couple of hours and fills the coffee machine up for everyone. Free coffee in the office isn’t a right, it’s a privilege. My company doesn’t have to pay for it, but they do. There’s a coffee shop well within walking distance to our office.
You may as well leave half an inch of motor oil in the pot too. The Java Fairy will take what little “coffee” you left in the pot and empty it down the sink.
It’s a simple, free perk that we get. The last I checked there’s not many of those left. I’m assuming this perk would disappear after some guy inadvertently burns the building down by leaving an empty pot on the burner over the weekend.
The blatant lack of consideration for other co-workers is appalling. It’s a smack in the face to the people that take it upon themselves to actually clean the coffee pot after the motor oil has morphed into pure tar and effectively becomes part of the pot itself.
It’s not my place to regulate who gets to drink coffee from the coffee machine. If it was I’d be like Jerry Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi. You don’t clean the pot, you don’t use it. You take the last cup and leave a shot glass full burning away in the pot, no more cups for you!
I’m done prancing around the subject with people. Next time I see someone leave a dab of coffee at the bottom of the pot and put it back on the burner, I’m taking a picture of it and emailing it to everyone in the office and singling out the bugger that left it there. Hints don’t work with these people. Coaching doesn’t work. Promoting a sense of responsibility and community doesn’t work.
Maybe some old school chastising would?
Last chance.
Don’t mess with the coffee.
