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[wildmind]

REALLY good news there Simon!!!

[devnull]

we have identified a possible backup solution, an attached SCSI tape library that is apparently capable of backing up the mail platform in 15/17 hours.

You'll probably find that scsi attached tape libraries are slow. If you're going to invest in a new library, you may wish to consider fibre. The SL500 is a decent entry-level unit and can support SDLT as well as LTO (the latter probably being better suited to your requirements.) Your next problem will be feeding the drives enough data to stop them shoe-shining (hence the need for fast fibre connectivity.)

You may take a performance hit if you can't ramp up the parallelism, but this really depends on the underlying filesystem layout. If you have a single filesystem, your backup software has to walk through n files from top to bottom. If you split the mail into multiple filesystems, you can parallelise more effectively (without having to specify the data to save on a per-directory basis.) Other than that, I guess you could look at three-way mirrors or some sort of filesystem snapshotting.

[mr_chris]

Thanks for letting us know, Simon Let's hope it does perform ok - with all the disk activity as well as streaming it to tape, 15/17 hours might be a bit hit n miss. Would this back up from one of the snapshots somehow so there would be a consistent data state?

[Tam]

As a result of your feedback about the back-up of the mail platform, and the internal review that has been  going on, we have identified a possible backup solution, an attached SCSI tape library that is apparently capable of backing up the mail platform in 15/17 hours. We are investigating the real-world performance and will see where we get to.

I'd suggest getting someone in, if thats the best your internal review were able to come up with!

Remeber we are *NOT* talking lots of data here, so i dont see the issue!

[Simon Day]

I'd suggest getting someone in, if thats the best your internal review were able to come up with!

Remeber we are *NOT* talking lots of data here, so i dont see the issue!

As someone once said, everything is relative Tam.

[jayarte]

I would just like to say that although I have been frustrated recently with falling standards in the customer service and also speed and connection problems since "upgrading" to 8mb, I am impressed that PN have a forum like this.  It sounds as though all the staff in all the departments are working very hard indeed to get the service back to the high level it was at a year ago when I joined PN.  Bear in mind also that it is probably very rare for a business to have a forum like this where customers can communicate directly with employees. Most companies I have contact with have people at the frontline who don't seem to care very much at all about whatever complaint I might have.
So thanks again to all the PN staff who are doing their best.

[Ultra]

It is good to see such discussions, but I sometimes feel concern for staff morale when I see comments from outsiders "telling them how do their job" because for whatever reasons (no doubt some where decision makers are not posting here) policy dictates what will happen, and staff are voicing the decisions, rather than necessarily being able to change them (of course that might be happening, but perhaps not as often as they'd wish for).  I often wonder whether staff get to a point where they think it probably not worth commenting because someone will be along an hour later to dismiss almost any choice...

I'm certainly glad I only have to justify decisions on a one-to-one basis rather than be posting to a public forum and have potentially 'anyone' reading the comments for months/years to come!

[Simon Day]

To be honest these discussions are a very valuable aspect of being associated with PlusNet, both as a customer and as a staff memeber. Like any interaction with other human beings, they are sometimes rewarding and sometimes frustrating, but rarely pointless. There is always something to be gained from these conversations.

[ian@stringer.plus.com]

thanks for your response James - you may indeed talk about the investment that plus.net have made - but cannot agree with the commitment to customer service.

I have wrote to you on a number of occasions and you hnot replied.   My maxdsl service had got worse agian - and all I hear is the LLU customers are suffering = what us on BT -

The service you provde is abissmal and pointed towards your servies towards the customers you want

what about the rest of us !

my open ticket/question which is weeks old does not resolve me service issue - what does it take to get a proper answer !  I will continue yet again to fight for a proper 'Paid' for service

[ian@stringer.plus.com]

and why is it that my normal forum login has been cancelled - and have got to register again !!! what's going on !!

[kitz]

and why is it that my normal forum login has been cancelled - and have got to register again !!! what's going on !!

Im not admin so I cant check things 100%..  but according to the moderating logs which I do have access to:-

No forum logins with the partial name stringer have been cancelled..
In fact Im not aware of any usernames ever being cancelled/blocked or deleted.


Your first registration was October 28, 2006, 07:41:12 PM
I notice youre on a static IP and a check on all post on that IP state that only 4 posts have ever been made by you - the first being 07:49:46 PM October 28, 2006.


TBH Ive not noticed any previous registration under this username - and it did stick out because you have used an email address to register a username rather than a nickname which most people use.

Is it possible that you previously registered under a different name... or got us mixed up with the official portal forums?