Backup Strategy revised...

So my external storage comprises 2 x RAID arrays both configured as RAID 0 or scary RAID as some people like to call it.

The reason I originally went with RAID 0 was two fold, one it was fast and secondly, my eSata card didn't support RAID 5. The reason for two RAIDs was to use one as a master and one as a backup.

Sweet!

Until the backup RAID failed for no apparent reason a couple of days ago. Ok, so I still had the main RAID but as this was also in RAID 0 format, it gave me a couple of hours of palpitations whilst I made some space available on the Mac Pros to make an immediate copy. Unless you've got two copies of something, you ain't got a copy at all!

Actually, it wasn't that bad as I'd taken a full backup of the RAID up to the end of February and moved that offsite. So I really did have two copies of the bulk of my project files plus most if not all of my really important documents are backed up between Amazon S3 and Dropbox. Plus, my video project files since February were also stored on one of the Mac Pros, so it wasn't too perilous.

But I had to fix the backup RAID and decided that I needed to come up with an alternative to RAID 0 moving forward, that included the provision for moving backups off site. BTW, I can't really rely on a cloud based backup solution for my video projects, the shear amount of data generated each week makes it impossible with my limited upload speed. I have to backup to physical media.

So this is what I'm planning....

The SCO Archive (all my screencast video project files) I've pruned down to 1.1TB. I had a lot of intermediate files that I could delete and recreate if needed so there was no point keeping those. As it's over 1TB, I'll need to split it over separate drives (didn't really want to buy any more drives and the biggest I have are 1TB) so I'll probably go for a Firewire 800 based Drobo as permanent storage. I have 4x750GB in one of the existing RAIDS that will give me 2TB space so will give me another years expansion even without upgrading the drives. I know the new Drobo Pro is out soon, but I'll wait until they are tried and tested and also a lot cheaper!

I'll also be creating a mirrored pair of 1TB drives for new additions to the SCO video archive. So when I create new content, this will be backed up to the mirrored pair and then also to the Drobo. The beauty of a mirrored pair (or RAID 1) is that each disk is an exact copy of each other. If one disk fails, your data is still on the other disk and when you introduce a new drive, the mirror is created.

There is one other benefit too! At monthly intervals, I can deliberately break the mirror and convert one of the drives into a standard drive which then becomes my offsite backup. Whack in a new drive and re-create the mirror and repeat the cycle for as many times as I want.

As well as the SCO Archive mirror, I'll create a 1TB mirror for all my media, again, will probably last for a while before I fill it up. Not too concerned about off site backups for this but would be a nice to have!

And finally, another mirrored pair for any other data that I need to keep, not connected with video projects. I may also mirror this to the cloud using Jungledisk, Mozy or BackBlaze. I may wait to see if Amazon introduce a service that allows you to send in a drive for them to copy locally in to S3 which you can then incrementally update - they are thinking about it and it would be excellent if they did introduce it.

In the medium term, I can well see me investing in a Drobo Pro, once the FW Drobo starts to reach capacity with the SCO Archive, but I'll still need the mirrored pairs for offsite backup.

I'd probably re-use the FW Drobo as a separate media only storage device, perhaps hooked up to the Mac mini once in place as the Media Center (or Apple TV Take 3 whenever that appears!)

Anything I've left out?

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Time for a re-think...

Well, if you follow my blog (or watch the show), you'll know that I picked up a second Intel based Mac Pro when the new Mac Pros came out a few weeks ago. I just had to take advantage of the great savings available by getting one of the "End of life" Mac Pros, basically picking up a non "Nehalem" 8 core plus 16GB memory for the same price as a new iMac.

The master plan was to use the second Mac Pro as a dedicated video editing machine, keeping the existing Mac Pro as my general purpose desktop machine but combing both machines as a virtual cluster when encoding. In order to make the best use of my 30" monitor, I setup a KVM to share the monitor between both machines.

After a couple of weeks, a couple of observations...

The KVM works well but has proved to be extremely disruptive to my workflow. Although the idea of a dedicated editing machine is fine, I've found that I don't work that way in reality. When editing, I still need to do other tasks and found myself switching to the desktop machine much more than I anticipated.

I ended up with just using the KVM to switch the monitor but still ended up with 2 mice and 2 keyboards (yes I know about Teleport and Synergy) and really, it's become more of a pain than I anticipated.

I really missed the three monitor setup I had with the original Mac Pro and found reverting back to a two monitor setup (albeit, two monitors on each machine due to the KVM) to be a retrograde step.

So I've had a re-think about the current setup.

What I think I'll do is to revert to a single desktop for both my normal day to day computing and video editing, and go back to the three monitor setup. However, I still want the second Mac Pro for encoding duties so that's going to replace the current G5 tower used by my wife, and I'll probably sell the G5 tower.

Just a slight change to the mix is the introduction of the new MacBook Pro, ordered to replace the MacBook Air. I'll configure the new laptop to do all podcast publishing duties including publishing my RSS feeds (via Feeder) and publishing my ScreenCastsOnline website (using Rapidweaver). This will enable me to make sure I can still publish when travelling without having to transfer all the settings from my desktop machine to the laptop each time if I know I'm going to be away. I'm also hoping to do a lot of work over the next few months updating the ScreenCastsOnline website so if it's on the laptop, I can do it from anywhere (even the living room!). Updates to the blog are covered as that's based on Wordpress so I can update that from any machine.

I'll probably also change the configuration of my iPhone so it synchronises with the MacBook Pro rather than the desktop machine, again, that's always been a pain when preparing to do any travelling.

Another big area of change is in my backup strategy but I'll save that for another blog post!

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New kit..

Remember that new Mac mini I told you I was going to get ages ago (well, when the models came out anyway). Well, I finally bit the bullet and bought one of the base models from the Liverpool One Apple store last night. The base configuration is:

• 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 1GB memory
• 120GB hard drive
• 8x double-layer SuperDrive
• NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics

Shame on you Apple for selling a machine with 1GB!

Seriously, would it have hurt to cram in another 1GB stick for the same price?

Ah well, based on my experiences with my older G4(?) PowerPC based Mac mini, it's no big deal to upgrade the memory and a 4GB upgrade kit is only £50 from crucial.

At least, that's what I thought!

Gazmaz from ForMacEyesOnly sent me a PDF (see his Mac mini page) and video he's put together and the memory upgrade looks to be significantly more fiddly now :-( I may just leave it with the 1GB but the extra RAM is really needed. We'll see!

Before you ask, why have I acquired yet another Mac, well this one is for several reasons connected with the show. I'll be using it this week to demo a new piece of hardware that's just been released and I needed a standard Intel based machine with multiple USB ports. I didn't want to use the Mac Pro as that might "colour" the real life performance of this new gadget.

I'll also be doing a show or two in the near future about using the Mac mini as a replacement for the Apple TV for all your media playback.

Besides, you can never have too many Macs.

And before anyone else comments that I get a new Mac every month (boy, getting defensive aren't I), I went a whole year between buying the MacBook Air and the Mac Pro so cut me some slack ;-)

So what if I'm making up for it now!

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My dilemma...

Ok, so the dilemma is this, to use your ADC discount (which is part of your ADC membership) you need to create a dummy order on the online Apple store, and then ring them to find out what discount is available. On my current level (Select) I get a single credit each year, which gives a variable discount on a single system.

The discount varies on the kit you want to buy, and is really aimed at developers wishing to buy development equipment.

So I duly spec'ed out a MBA with the 128 SSD config and got in touch to check on the discount.

10% :-(

Just 10% off the total order. Do'h

It transpires that the MacBook Pro gets 20% but the MacBook Air only 10%.

If you think about it, that's probably reasonable as no one is going to buy a MBA as a development machine but still.

In reality, what it means is that is costs roughly the same for a:

Macbook Air

Macbook Pro

Now if I were to upgrade, I'd have to sell my existing MBA to help finance the deal so the laptop I'd buy would be my primary laptop.

So for virtually the same price, I'd be getting so much more bang for my buck with the MacBook Pro, more screen real estate, double the RAM, much faster processor, more ports! (including FireWire), double the disk space, a super drive, two video card and twice the video RAM.

But it's nearly twice the weight.

So do I stick with the sleek form factor and get a machine that probably has more than enough horsepower to do all I want, or spend the same money to get a powerhouse that might take a little getting used to.

Oh, the dilemma....

PS. Feel free to add your comments. I imagine I'll get a number of incredulous comments on it being a no brainer as the MacBook Pro looks like the obvious choice. Fair do's but to be honest, once you've become used the the MacBook Air form factor, it's really not that cut and dry.

PPS. Or should I just wait for the MacBook Tablet and sort out my studio chair in the meantime...

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MacJury Duty

It was late, I was tired....

Well that's my excuse for being a bit quieter than usual on a special episode of MacJury recorded late last night (UK time) following the iPhone 3.0 event.

A veritable cast of thousands and some interesting view points make for a good podcast!

Check it out here:

MacJury #903: Evidence is Heard and Judgement is Passed on the iPhone 3.0 Announcements

Thanks for the invite Chuck!

PS You could always subscribe in iTunes

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