Slashdot Mirror
A Primer on Data Backup for Small- to Medium-Sized Companies (Video)
This is a conversation with Jeff Whitehead and Lou Montulli, respectively Vice President of Technical Operations/CTO and Chief Scientist for Zetta.net, a company that specializes in online backup and disaster recovery service. Also, while this interview was arranged without his help, in the interest of full disclosure we'd like to tell you that Zetta's CEO is Ali Jenab, who used to be CEO of Slashdot's parent company. But this discussion isn't about Ali or Zetta.net, but about data backup, and what methods are best and most cost-effective for companies ranging from home-based businesses up to enterprise operations with thousands of employees. Among other things, we discussed the importance of multiple-site storage for important data, a factor that was drilled in to us yesterday by an article titled Another Iron Mountain Fire Points Up Shortcomings of Physical Storage by long-time tech journalist Sharon Fisher. And never forget: You don't know how effective your backup and data storage arrangements are until you try to retrieve your data -- and if you don't try to retrieve data until you need it, and things don't work, you are in big trouble. (Don't see the video? Here's a link.)
Why am I seeing this adert?
The thing is, if we talk to people who have skills or whose company does something useful to some Slashdot people, others assume it's an ad. But it's not. These are serious experts. We're going to do another interview with Lou one day, too, about the early days at Netscape, a company he cofounded.
What I find amusing is that videos or other stories where we've been totally negative toward what the people are doing still get called "Slashvertisements" by some.
Believe it or not, Slashdot editors have friends, and we even have products we like. For example, I like my Asus MemoPad tablet, my Samsung Victory Android phone, my Marlin 795 rifle, and my 1996 Jeep Cherokee. Does this mean I shouldn't say anything about them, but only about products I don't like?
I won't talk about Dice except to say they get me my checks on time, and they just put somebody new in charge of Slashdot who seems like she's smart and wants to make Slashdot better, not worse. Slashdot Beta? There's a link to "Slashdot Classic" at the bottom of every Beta page. I'm back on "Slashdot Classic" myself because IMO Beta is nowhere near ready for broadcast at *any* time.
But I'm no longer a boss, but an old retired guy who makes Slashdot videos and does a little writing here and there for side money. I often agree with readers more than management (the story of my life as a writer & editor), and I tell management what I think you want and generally get ignored. Example: I have said over and over that video preroll ads over 15 seconds are a bad idea, and that 30 seconds should be the dead maximum, ever. And still...
Whoops - I wrote the above comment without logging in. That makes me a cowardly anon, doesn't it? :)