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.

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:

1. A quick explanation that every user has a storage quota and that they’re approaching it.
2. How much space they have left.
3. 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.

1. Retrieve a listing of iSeries users using the DSPUSRPRF command to an outfile and then do some quick query/400 work.
2. 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.
3. I determine which users are exceeding 90% of their storage quota via the output of the DSPUSRPRF command above.
4. 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)
5. 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.

Around 3PM we get word that there’s going to be a scheduled power outage at 3:30 for repairs.  Evidently there were a couple of explosions earlier in the day and some of the electrical equipment got toasted.  The outage would last between 5 hours and 3 days.  Big window of an estimate, but what can you do?  The poor electricians were probably airing the smoke out of the substation and assessing the problem.

We have a 4 person IT shop.  A manager, myself and two other technicians.  As luck would have it, my 2 week after hours on-call shift started Friday, the manager is on vacation and the two other technicians started their vacation Friday after work.  Guess who gets to hang out after work to make sure things are in good order with the equipment?

At 3:30 the power shuts off and our UPS handles the power load for our servers for about a minute or so until the propane generators fire up.  At 3:32 the propane generator kicks in like clockwork and runs along for all of 5 minutes before shutting off again.

I run and find one of our electricians to have a look while I check the UPS.  Cool.  I have 33 minutes of battery time left.  I make a few calls and send a few emails to prep users on the possibility of a total computer shutdown on the 5 companies we support out of our office.

Looks like the generator was toasted from the power surges earlier in the day.  Knowing all is lost and I need to power down 3 AS/400′s and maybe 10-12 Windows servers with 15 minutes to spare, I head back to the server room and check the UPS.  The front panel says “15 minutes battery time remaining” so I have plenty of room to move.

I get 2 AS/400′s on the way down (and I need a full 8 minutes for them to shut off) and start working on the 3rd when the UPS starts making the awful fast beeping noise indicating an imminent shutdown.  It’s times like these when you second guess yourself on your ability to restore from backup tapes.  1 very short minute later, all machines go down…HARD.  My stomach rolled over like you’d expect.

Colorful and creative cursing ensued at the UPS for telling me I had 15 minutes when I really had 5-6.

More colorful and creative cursing ensued at the flipping generator for failing when I needed it the most.

6 long hours later after the power was restored I started to power up the machines to find the lovely amber alert light on our new AS/400 model 515.  Luckily after booting into SST it just turned out to be an indicator of power fluctuation.

Even more colorful cursing ensued at the bloke at IBM who put this feature in the new machines.  Our models 170 and 270 went through the same experience but appeared fine with no system attention light.  Put the message in the QSYSOPR message queue but don’t fire up the “uh oh” light and cry wolf.  I want to see that light come on when I have a DASD failure or something and need to take action.

With all that said, all systems were a go with no hardware or software damage.

I don’t like dodging a bullet, but the alternative is being hit by one.  I had to hunt down one of the technicians in order to put myself on the UPS email alert system in case the systems went to UPS power in the next few days until we get the generator repaired.  In that case I’d have to remote in and power down all systems and bank on only having 20 instead of 33 minutes to get the job done right.  Tethered to the computer room 30 miles away.  I’ll also have to get the UPS checked to ensure it’s giving an accurate representation of battery time based on the load.

It’s time to review our systems continuity strategy and schedule more regular testing.  I’d suggest you do the same.

Hey Now!

First blog post.  I’ll try and keep it brief and give a little introduction of who I am, what I do and what you’ll expect in future blogs.

Who I am:

I’m a 30 year old systems analyst that’s been working with the AS/400 since about the year 2000.  I use the term AS/400 because I think that IBM will eventually re-brand the system to it’s former name.  Naming the system an “IBM i” really did nothing but force AS/400 advocates like myself to ponder about the marketing suits at IBM.

What I do:

I work for a Canadian paper manufacturer.  We have 3 AS/400′s on-site running ERP, payroll, Lotus Domino, Barcode/400 and a slew of other applications (both purchased and home grown) used to augment the primary systems.

Previous to my current job, I worked with a major Canadian IBM Business Partner doing technical sales and services.

What to expect:

Most of my content will be about Lotus Domino and the AS/400 from both administration and development points of view.  I’ll be supplying tips, code, best practices, subtle and not so subtle suggestions, blurbs about current projects I’m working on and the occasional rant on office politics.

As well, I’ll be offering opinions and tips on working with hardware/software vendors and business partners.  For example, I’ve seen many rack configuration proposals that had unnecessary, and sometimes costly,  components.  I’ve also seen some that had more holes than road.  Perhaps in the near future I’ll deconstruct an anonymous system proposal I’ve seen for the purposes of suggesting that you always get a second opinion and to ensure your BP does their homework and reads their system builder handbook.

Later.