Category: Technology

Views of science and technology from around the world

Saturday (10-November-2012) — New Jersey

Technology Update: Drobo Good Bad and Ugly.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with my Drobo disk arrays ever since I got them. I have two Drobo’s, an eight disk Dobro B800i (configured with eight 2 TB drives) as my primary working array and a 5 disk Drobo S (configured with five 3 TB drives) as an offline backup. Although some glitches when setting them up, when working they are fast and have been happy. Well, mostly happy other than the >10 days it took to add more drives: see my 13-November-2011 post.

When I got back from the SAS 2012 Fall Semester voyage, I realized that my storage space was getting tight, and after the Gone to See America 2012 Road Trip/Nikonians ANPAT 12 Trip I was running out of space. The B800i drive had a message that I was >85% full, and the one of the hard drives had a yellow light indicating that it should be replaced with a higher capacity hard drive.

One of the reasons that I bought the Drobo disk arrays was that I was supposed to be able to a hot swap upgrade if I a drive went bad, or I needed to increase drive space on the disk-array. Well, the first bit of bad news I found out that if you are using a fully populated Drobo array and all of the drives are the same size, you need to upgrade with two higher capacity drives before you get access to more space. The second bit of bad news was that I got back to New Jersey just in time for Hurricane Sandy.

Since I had configured my Drobo in the default (single drive failure mode) this meant that I could only add the higher capacity drives one at a time. And each time it takes 24+ hours for the data protection to complete before adding the next drive. This gets to be a long, long process especially during Hurricane Sandy when the power kept going down. In my case the power was on and off four times over 10 days. A UPS works for a couple of hours, but not for days. As such, I ended up having to restart the data protection process several times. This was all on the Drobo B800i that was initially set up with eight 2 TB hard drives, that I wanted to upgrade to eight 3 TB hard drives.

The upgrade process on the Drobo S system populated with five 3 TB drives was more complex. In this case the system was also configured in the default mode (single drive failure). I was at the point that there was less than 10% free space, and the top drive was red – indicating that it needed to be upgraded. The availability of 4 TB hard drives is limited, but I was finally able to find some. Again, not well documented by Drobo, but you need to replace two or more drives to get more space and get back to a normal green operating space. When I replaced the “red” 3 TB drive with a 4 TB drive you have to be very patient. First it takes several minutes to indicate that the new 4 TB drive was installed, and then it takes almost half an hour to go from red to flashing green/yellow and indicate that data protection is in progress. Really bad news – 56 hours to complete data protection.

When the data completion was finally complete (less than 56 hours, but more than 36 hours), the system flashed red on the same 4 TB drive that I just replaced – indicating that the drive that I needed to replace was the drive that I just replaced. OUCH – that was the drive that I installed and waited 36+ hours for the data protection process to complete. Was the new drive bad – or was there a software/hardware problem with the Drobo S unit. Well, I took a chance (since I have 2 other on & off site copies of the data) and the unit did indicate that the data protection process was complete. I did a hot swap of the #2 hard drive with a new 4 TB drive. It took several minutes to 1) get an indication that the drive was removed; 2) many more minutes to indicate that a new 4 TB drive was installed; and after waiting for 20 minutes that the data protection process was underway (all drives flashing green and yellow). This time it indicated 69 hours to complete (dropped to 36 hours in a couple of hours). We will see in another day or two if this works.

I have been concerned about the Drobo arrays since the posts by Scott Kelby in June. As a noted Photographer, he had four Drobo disk array fail and ultimately decided on another solution for storage of his images. Right after his posts, I started getting e-mail messages from Drobo that I needed to purchase an extended warranty. Do I stay with Drobo or find a less proprietary solution? With the amount of time it has been taking me to upgrade my storage over the last couple of weeks I wonder if it is time to evaluate a Synology NAS disk array.

Thursday (08-November-2012) — New Jersey

Autumn Weather in New Jersey: Nor’easter Athena.

An early winter. Not as much wind from Nor’easter Athena, but we did get 8-12 inches of snow last night. I didn’t know that nor’easters get names like hurricanes — social media or weather and news channels looking for ratings? Power was off for about 12 hours, so it was cold in the house this morning. Still not sure if the power was off due to ongoing power grid repairs, or new damage due to this storm.

PSE&G just sent an e-mail out that stated 70K users were still out due to hurricane Sandy, and another 90K users were out due to the nor’easter last night. The other comment was “Despite the snowstorm, the 4,000 out-of-state workers and 700 PSE&G linemen restored service to more than 120,000 customers affected by Hurricane Sandy in the past 24 hours. Many of our crews from the south have never worked in snow before, but have proven more than capable of handling this new challenge.”

Dawn after Nor'easter Athena, One+ Week Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Dawn after Nor’easter Athena, One+ Week Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Snow Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Snowy Dawn. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Snow Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Birch Tree Bent Over by Snow. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Snow Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Dawn after Nor’easter Athena, One+ Week Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Snow Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Deer Tracks in the Snow. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)

Wednesday (07-November-2012) — New Jersey

Hurricane Sandy Aftermath: Day Nine.

Some progress on power grid repairs, but a Nor’easter is coming. It is hard to believe that it was just a year ago that we had an early winter Nor’easter for Halloween. This year we get another early winter storm before all of the repairs post Hurricane Sandy are completed. The following images show that progress is being made. The last image shows that the light rain was converting to snow. My furnace and hot water heater were repaired, and I got a delivery of oil before the storm hit. Power went out again during the night. I was not sure if this was due to the power company switching over circuits to the newly repaired lines, or due to snow-covered branches taking down new lines.

Snow Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Snow Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Snow Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Snow Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Snow Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Snow Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Snow Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Snow Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)

Tuesday (06-November-2012) — New Jersey

Hurricane Sandy Aftermath: Day Eight and Election Day.

Power lines still down and roads in my neighborhood are still closed. I have power, but others still don’t. PSE&G folks are working, but still a lot to do.

Drobo update. The 3 TB drive that I added to the Drobo disk array completed the disk protection process. Unfortunately, and not clear in the documentation — I need to add another 3 TB drive and wait for the disk protection process (24+ hours) before the additional space is available. So the warning is that if you have a fully populated Drobo, you will need to add 2 new drives (one at a time) to get more space. In my case this will take 2-4 days. On the positive side, I have access to all my data — but on the negative side, data access during the upgrade is slow.

Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)
Post Hurricane Sandy. Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera (David J Mathre)

Monday (05-November-2012) — New Jersey

Hurricane Sandy Aftermath: Day Seven — Halloween and a Home Cooked Meal.

Last week the Gubernator canceled Halloween due to Hurricane Sandy. By Gubernator order Halloween was rescheduled for today in Montgomery Township. No one came by, even though I had my Habanero pepper surprises ready to give out. For several years the local trick-or-treat folks stopped by for my hot peppers.

Day 8: ANPAT 12 Day 1 - Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta (David J Mathre)
Day 8: ANPAT 12 Day 1 – Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta (David J Mathre)

I normally don’t do food reviews, but was intrigued by something that I saw at the local grocery store today. The fish department was pretty sparse with fresh fish post Hurricane Sandy, but I did see a Cedar Planked Atlantic Salmon in their frozen display. I took one home (orange & ginger flavored) to try it out. I’ve done salmon on cedar before and liked the taste that cedar smoke can add. I defrosted the salmon on the cedar plank and removed it from its shrink wrapped plastic packaging (image below). I cooked it in my oven per the directions (preheated oven at 425 °F for ~15 minutes). The house filled with the smell of the cedar burning — some smoke, but not enough to set the smoke detectors off. When I took the plank out of the oven, the cedar plank was noticeably burnt/black — but the salmon looked good (image below). The salmon did have a good smoked taste, but was a bit too sweet. When I went back to check the list of ingredients, sugar was #2 after Atlantic Salmon.

Cedar Bay Salmon (before cooking). Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera. (David J Mathre)
Cedar Bay Salmon (before cooking). Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera. (David J Mathre)
Cedar Bay Salmon (after cooking). Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera. (David J Mathre)
Cedar Bay Salmon (after cooking). Image taken with a Leica V-Lux 30 camera. (David J Mathre)