I so wish we could do this. Unfortunately, backups/restores are considered an
afterthought both by the vendors and customer management. In general, data
lifecycle management has gotten to be a thornier problem over the years,
and a lot of people deal with that by ignoring it until it's a serious
issue.

On Tue, May 06, 2014 at 07:30:23PM +0000, Prather, Wanda wrote:
> Taking opportunity to mount soapbox on this issue:
>
> I have SO many customer that are facing this problem.
> Vendors of giant NAS devices *should* be providing better, decent solutions 
> to back them up.
> It's very do-able, it's just that crappy vendors don't care what they dump on 
> you.
>
> NetApp, for example, has implemented their SnapDiff API that provides true 
> incrementals, and it works.
> I have no other reason to plug NetApp, I'm just pointing out that other 
> vendors could do the same thing, if they wanted to - it's not impossible.
>
> I know, in most cases backup folks have hardware dropped on us without any 
> input into the purchase, and we are just stuck with it.
> BUT the only thing that is going to solve this industry-wide problem in the 
> long run, is whenever tech people hear there is a purchase going down, we 
> step in and tell management STOP! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?!?, and boycott 
> vendors who inflict bad technology on us when they could do better.
>
> Soapbox off.
>
> W

--
-- Skylar Thompson (skylar2 AT u.washington DOT edu)
-- Genome Sciences Department, System Administrator
-- Foege Building S046, (206)-685-7354
-- University of Washington School of Medicine