Category Archives: Backups

How To Securely Sync Your Synology NAS with P5

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Use Tailscale Mesh-VPN with P5 Backup and Sync

In the old days we used to forward ports. On your router the traffic for a server or service went to a port (where a number represents a service, some which are defined, but can be arbitrary) and to a destination IP address. Well, wouldn’t you know it, if ssh is port 22 or web traffic is on port 80 then everyone and their port scanner comes knocking. So then your firewall is tested, and then auto-ban and geo-block and emails go out. What if we could avoid that and not open (or forward) any port to make services work across the internet?

Tailscale is a mesh-VPN which uses WireGuard to securely establish a mesh (point to point) VPN of your devices. Suddenly your iPhone can securely send files to your Mac or raspberry Pi across the world. How cool is that? In today’s advanced lesson: you can backup and sync your Synology NAS using Archiware P5.

Step 1: Setting up Tailscale on Synology

It honestly used to be harder than this, these days you can simply add the Tailscale package via the Synology package center app and you’re done. Almost. There’s one more step.

Step 2: Set up Outgoing VPN access via Tailscale which requires editing some files (which necessitate Terminal and remote login access). This only has to be done once but future updates may require fixes. This was tested in DSM 7. Pro tip: only allow remote access to a restricted and time limited account so you don’t leave it on accidentally.

Step 3. Install Archiware P5 on Synology NAS

Using Archiware P5 to Backup and Sync your NAS is a good thing if you’re already using Archiware P5 to backup and sync all the other things, then at least you have only one dashboard to look at. I use P5 with my clients to backup their shared storage to LTO and it makes sense to backup all the things no matter where they are with P5 also. With Synology NAS package center it’s a simple one-click install for P5. Add your P5 clients to your P5 server via Tailscale and you’ve got a secure setup.

This post is just a quick overview of using Tailscale to set up your P5 clients (which is your Synology NAS in this case).

Backup Fast, Restore Quicker

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Backing up is nice, restoring is better. Slow backups, mean slow restores. Make good decisions, and backup only the files you want to keep to the fastest storage you have.

When working with a fast fibre channel or Thunderbolt SAN your first choice for fastest backup destinations is a Thunderbolt RAID. I recommend to have this onsite with an off site LTO and/or cloud disaster recovery setup (a replicated SAN or shared storage system is nice to have too).

A built-in option to copy Xsan files is cvcp (cv stands for centravision).

cvcp -vxy /Volumes/TSAN/folder /Volumes/GammaRAID/backups

cvcp is fast. Really fast. And cli commands are scriptable. A very smart person (Jasper Siegers) wrote a script called cvcpSync which combined the power of rsync and cvcp. It was awesome. But there are limits to the best of scripts. For my clients I use Archiware P5 with large SAN and other shared storage to simplify the number of things which need to be monitored. One dashboard to monitor tape or cloud backups, tape archives and sync to nearline RAIDs or NAS.

With a recently Thunderbolt SAN deployment with Accusys T-Share I set up the Accusys Gamma Carry as a backup destination. I set up Archiware P5 to do the backup. It was fast. How fast? Over 1Gb/s. Fast backups are also fast restores. With the Gamma Carry I can run a backup then carry it off site. It’s an option as part of a complete backup strategy.

Archiware P5 backup 1.6TB in 53 minutes

(Luckily I have almost 2 TB of video from my Cycliq bike cameras to test backups. Sadly, after my last bike vs car incident I felt obliged to buy bike cameras for my safety. I edit small fun rides when I can. Sometimes traffic near-accidents too. Please be kind, don’t kill cyclists.)

Archiware P5 backup of a Thunderbolt SAN to a Thunderbolt Gamma Carry RAID

Note: In my tests I tested backup to a nearline RAID. I also like to use tape drives. LTO tape is another recommended option for backups or archives. Cloud or other offsite replication is also recommended if possible but is the slowest of all the options. Good to have slow and fast options, offsite and on premise, though any practical solution should be affordable and useful to help decision makers take the steps to preserve data and ultimately their own business.

LTO vs Cloud backup comparison: For LTO backups to one LTO7 drive I normally see 1TB in under 2 hours versus some recent cloud backups I did using rclone which took 9 hours for 1TB. Remember: restore times will equal your backup times. Want to restore 100TB? Got a spare 900 hours? 38 days for cloud restore vs 8 days with one LTO7 drive (much faster if you have more than one drive). Even faster if you restore from a Thunderbolt RAID. Only 2.5 days. Think about it.

Testing equipment:

Hardware: T-Share SAN, Gamma Carry Thunderbolt RAID

Software: Archiware P5

The case of the strange disappearing drive space

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Recently I was asked to look at a 4TB drive that was only showing less than 2TB available…. No problem, I said, this is easy to fix. Famous last words.

Just open up Disk Utility and resize the partition, or reformat the disk, right? Easy Peasey. Well, it took some troubleshooting to time to figure out and a trip to Terminal was required to solve this weird case, plus I learned a new command along the way. Fun.

The Problem:

Buying a 4TB hard drive then putting it into your external drive case for backups should be simple,  but what if instead you got a nasty surprise and it showed up as less than 2TB?

Troubleshooting the issue:

4TB drives were presented to me and when I loaded them into an external SATA dock then showed as 4TB drives with a partitioned volume of less than 2TB.

I tried to delete the phantom partition, and I tried resize the volume to use the empty space in Disk Utility.app but it refused to budge. This needed a trip to Terminal.

man diskutil

Using “man” or “info” commands you can find out more about almost any particular command. Maybe some useful options or arguments would be listed or at least some examples would help.

NAME

     diskutil -- modify, verify and repair local disks

SYNOPSIS

     diskutil [quiet] verb [options]

DESCRIPTION

     diskutil manipulates the structure of local disks. 

 

To find out more about what we’re faced with let’s ask diskutil what it sees:

diskutil list
/dev/disk2 (external, physical):

   #:                       TYPE NAME           SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      GUID_partition_scheme               *4.0 TB     disk2

   1:                    EFI                   209.7 MB   disk2s1

   2:        Apple_HFS Backup                  1.8 TB     disk2s2

Looking through the man page the “resizeVolume” command caught my eye. Also the “limits” option seemed interesting. How

diskutil resizeVolume disk2s2 limits

Resize limits for partition disk2s2 Backup:

  Current partition size on map:         1.8 TB (1801419800576 Bytes)

  Minimum (constrained by file usage):   846.4 MB (846426112 Bytes)

  Recommended minimum (if used for macOS):26.8 GB (26843545600 Bytes)

  Maximum (constrained by map space):   4.0 TB (4000442028032 Bytes)

The Answer:

Reading through the man page revealed that the best way, and new to me, was to resize the partition to use all available space with “R”. Of course, so intuitive.

sudo diskutil resizeVolume disk2s2 R

I did get some errors. But repairing the disk fixed those issues. And I was able to resize the disk in Terminal with diskutil where Disk Utility.app had failed.

sudo diskutil resizeVolume disk2s2 R

Resizing to full size (fit to fill)

Started partitioning on disk2s2 Backup

Verifying the disk

Verifying file system

Volume was successfully unmounted

Performing fsck_hfs -fn -x /dev/rdisk2s2

Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume

Checking extents overflow file

Checking catalog file

Checking multi-linked files

Checking catalog hierarchy

Checking extended attributes file

Checking volume bitmap

Checking volume information

The volume Backup appears to be OK

File system check exit code is 0

Restoring the original state found as mounted

Resizing

Modifying partition map

Growing file system

Finished partitioning on disk2s2 Backup

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):

   #:                       TYPE NAME          SIZE       IDENTIFIER

   0:      GUID_partition_scheme              *4.0 TB     disk2

   1:                        EFI             209.7 MB   disk2s1

   2:                  Apple_HFS Backup      4.0 TB     disk2s2

And lastly, the issue may have been caused by the old drive dock which refused to see the 4TB volumes even when correctly resized. A newer drive dock was required.

Best of 2018: FCPX and iMac Pro

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Part of a series of blog post on the “Best of 2018”

Part 1: the iMac Pro and FCPX

The year started off with the new iMac Pro and Final Cut Pro X 10.4. Both new hardware and software were released in December 2017. New awesome hardware and software to start of 2018.

FCPX and the iMac Pro have proven themselves to be a great combination that has been amazing for FCPX editors everywhere. The new colour grading tools and other enhancements were warmly received in FCP X 10.4. The power of the iMac Pros was not exaggerated. Excellent pro hardware.

FCPX works great on a MacBook Pro and internal storage, with Apple’s Xsan and fibre channel or with Lumaforge Jellyfish 10GbE over NFS. I worked with all different setups in 2018 and happy to report that editors kept editing and left the storage and backup worries to me (and I didn’t worry since I’ve got Archiware P5 watching my back).

Working with the Jellyfish I installed the P5 Linux agent to backup and archive to tape. Getting the Jellyfish to back up to my P5 server running on a Mac Mini couldn’t have been easier. Through the year I worked with Archiware to make improvements in the P5 Archive app so that my editor clients can archive and restore more easily on their own. Works well and look forward to working more closely with both companies to help make awesome setups for FCPX editors and creative professionals everywhere.

NAB and FCPX

The week before NAB 2018, Apple announced a new version of Final Cut Pro X with support for closed captions, and the brand new ProRes RAW codec.

NAB in April is always a busy month with announcements from all companies in the media production and media asset management world and Apple’s public talk at NAB showing off new features so soon after their last major release was unexpected but very warmly received.

Of course there was one more major event in the 2018, in November there was the FCPX Creative Summit.

I attended this year and it was awesome. Apple released a brand new version with 3rd party integration in the form of extensions. This is huge. This will be amazing for FCPX editors who want to stay in FCPX and do their editing work but integrate with other apps.

What was the FCPX creative summit?

⁃ rendez-vous in Cupertino with Final Cut Pro editors, studio owners, plugin authors, creative apps vendors

⁃ Visit to Apple HQ. With Apple Pro Apps engineers, QA, managers and everyone involved.

⁃ In depth discussion of the next version of FCPX extensions which allow third party integration deep into the app for example: Frame IO for review and approve or Keyflow Pro or Cat DV media asset management apps.

⁃ Great team of people organizing. This event had multiple tracks and lots of great sessions for everyone. Well done. Enjoyed it immensely. Everyone using Final Cut Pro or involved in this creative universe should be there.

2018 was great year for pro hardware and software. The iMac Pro and the constant stream of FCPX updates kept us grinning from ear to ear. Great stuff. Awesome year.

Next up: best conferences of 2018

Updating the P5 client on the Jellyfish

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You’ve successfully installed Archiware’s P5 backup and archiving software on your backup server following my previous blog posts and after it has run smoothly for a while you decided to upgrade the version of P5 on your server, but how do you do this on the Lumaforge Jellyfish storage? I’m glad you asked.

There are a couple of ways to update your P5 agent, and I will show you the built in way in Archiware’s P5 software. Surprisingly after many years of using P5 I have never used this method before. I’ve been using Munki for years to upgrade all software on my Mac clients including P5 and on Linux and Solaris servers I’ve just done it by hand. Install over top of the previous version and voila upgrade! But what if you didn’t want to ssh in as root and just install over top, what if there was a better way? I present to you the official “Update client” dialog box. It’s nice.

Update-p5-jellyish-1

Updating client software assumes you’ve set up clients in the P5 server clients section, This is needed when you want to use these server agents to designate their attached storage as a backup, archive or sync source. And also, this assumes you’ve updated your server.

P5 client update Jellyfish 2 Screen Shot 2018-08-06 at 4.40.03 PM

During the update process there are some nice dialog boxes to let you know what is happening.

P5 client update Jellyfish 4 Screen Shot 2018-08-06 at 4.44.34 PM

And afterwards you can test your client with a Ping test.

P5 client update Jellyfish 3 Screen Shot 2018-08-06 at 4.44.27 PM

Success! Looks like we’ve updated our client successfully. How wonderful. And no need to mess about in Terminal with a root shell. No telling what kind of trouble we could get into with those elevated privileges…. much safer this way.

Thanks Archiware for making this great software. I depend on it every day.

 

 

P5 on the Jellyfish: Archiving Gotchas

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TL;DR

Using Archiware P5 to Archive files to tapes is awesome, but watch out for little things you might miss, such as the path to the files and backing up your Archive Db.

P5 Archive on the Jellyfish

Using P5 Archive with the Lumaforge Jellyfish is a great way to preserve your digital archives. See this post for how to set up P5 on the Jellyfish

Using Archiware P5 for archiving makes sense. You want your completed projects and original camera footage on LTO tape. But how do you do archives? There are several different ways, and there be gotchas.

P5 Archive vs P5 Archive app

Using P5 Archive to manually archive completed projects to LTO tape is a process of logging into the server via a web browser and selecting the the project folder you want to archive to tape.

The completed project folder could be on the storage visible to the server or it could be storage the client sees. And that can make a difference. Where the storage is mounted is different on a Mac vs Linux. Its’ the difference between “/Volumes” and “/mnt”.

The same Jellyfish storage, either SMB or NFS, when seen on a Mac is mounted by default at “/Volumes” (this can be changed but for most people leave it at the default). But when archiving the storage via a Jellyfish client you will get “/mnt” path.

p5-smb-test2.png

Using the P5 Archive app, which is a Mac only companion application to P5 Archive, to run the archives you will see the storage archived as “/Volumes”.

This first Archiving gotcha is if you’re archiving the Jellyfish storage with the web application of P5 Archive you will have to find your footage and restore from the “/mnt” path vs if you’re archiving from the P5 Archive app which is running from a Mac and will see and store the footage using the “/Volumes” path.

All this to say that using both ways to archive may double up your footage in your archive which may be unintended. And from a restore in the web browser finding your footage may be confusing if you’re used to seeing it mounted in “/Volumes” and you actually find it under “/mnt”.

Note: the reason to use the P5 Archive app is because of the simplicity of right-clicking files in the finder which are on your storage and telling them to archive right then and there. Files are copied to tape then the original files on the storage are replaced with stub files. Right-click again to restore. Simple.

p5-archive-app-job-monitor.png

Backup your Archive!

Don’t forget to backup your archives. Or rather, your archive Db. A more recent addition is the ability to automate the backups on the Archive index, so don’t forget to enable it.

In the managed index section, choose your Archive index.

Set the target client where the backups are going and the backup directory. Choose a time and don’t forget to enable it (check the checkbox and hit apply before closing the windows).

Note: Repeat this setup for each Archive index you want to backup.

Archive Backup db setup3.png

Monitoring your Archive!

Don’t forget to enable email notifications for your P5 server to get your inbox full of status notifications and errors and other important stuff. But if you want to cut down on email notifications or you have multiple P5 servers (many different clients, perhaps), then you might want to check out Watchman Monitoring and the P5 plugin that is built-in). Find out easily when your tape pools are getting low, the tape drives needs to be cleaned, the support maintenance needs renewing etc. All in one dashboard. How convenient!

Maybe everything is going well…

Watchman-P5-info.png

Or maybe not!

Archiware-P5-Jobs-Watchman-tapes-required.png

 

Install P5 on the Jellyfish

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TL;DR

You can easily install Archiware P5 backup and archive software on a Lumaforge Jellyfish storage server. Once you’ve done that you can backup to tape or disk or the cloud directly or through another P5 server. Backups are good. Archive are good. Restores are better.

P5 install on the Jellyfish (Linux) How-To:

Note: Thank you to Lumaforge’s CTO Eric Altman who gave me some basic instructions to get me going.

Step One: Download the latest Linux P5 rpm file 

http://p5.archiware.com/download

p5-Linux-rpm.png

Copy the downloaded rpm file to the root folder of your SMB or NFS file share.

 

Step Two: Install the rpm file

Open Terminal and ssh into your Jellyfish. Login as root or as another appropriate user.

yum localinstall /mnt/Primary/ShareSMB/awpst554.rpm

 

Step Three: Browse to server on port 8000 to test that the server is up

e.g. https://jellyfish:8000

Or in Terminal and ssh into your Jellyfish and ping your P5 server

cd /usr/local/aw 

./ping-server

Pinging PresStore application servers...

  lexxsrv pid: 4840 (server is running)

  lexxsrv url: http://127.0.1.1:8000/login 

Pinged 1 from 1 application servers.

 

Step Four: Decide if the Jellyfish storage will be a P5 client or a server.

Note: If configuring the Jellyfish storage as the main P5 server you may wish to set up a user that only has access to the shared volumes.

For my set up the Jellyfish storage is going to act as a P5 client to a main P5 server on a Mac mini (yes, they are useful for something). The Mac mini is this case is the P5 server and is attached to theOverland tape library via a Promise SANlink2 Thunderbolt Fibre Channel adapter.

NEOs-T24-large-new.jpg

macmini-ports.png

 

Step Five: Set up the Jellyfish storage as a P5 client

Log into your P5 server and add the Jellyfish by the IP known to the P5 server. In this case the P5 server is connected via 1GB to the Jellyfish in Port 1.

P5 clients jellyfish setup1.png

Note: You could also choose to plug into the Jellyfish via a 10GB port, but in my setup these 10GB ports are reserved for the edit stations. You should choose what’s appropriate for your setup.

P5 clients jellyfish setup2.png

Resource utilization of P5 on the server is low, topping off generally at 1GB of RAM at peak usage. While this does technically take resources from ZFS caching, the impact should be super minimal.

In my observations the CPU never spiked too high while both serving NFS and SMB mount points to multiple Final Cut Pro X workstations even with backups or archive jobs going to tape at the same time.

jellyfish-cpu-resources-graph.png

More Jellyfish P5

See the follow up post on Archiving gotchas with the Jellyfish here

 

macOS High Sierra vs Server.app

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Upgrading to macOS High Sierra is akin to walking on the bridge of peril. Too perilous!

I don’t recommend macOS 10.13.x for production, but it is necessary to test and for this reason back in September I did upgrade my test Mac. Of course, when the installer detects server it will give you a warning about it not being compatible and you’ll have to download a compatible version from the App Store. Be warned!

ThisVersionOfServerNoLongerSupported2

Which is no big deal as long you are warned and have backups and maybe you can download the compatible version from the App Store. Trying to launch the old version will get you a warning to go to the App Store and be quick about it.

ThisVersionOfServerNoLongerSupported

Some people are reporting that the macOS installer is erasing their Server.app and refusing to upgrade their Server with the macOS 10.13 compatible version (v.5.4).

In that case, restore from Time Machine or other backups and start again?

I don’t get High — Sierra!

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Friends don’t let friends install macOS High Sierra in production. Don’t get High, Sierra.

macOS 10.13 was released on Sep 25, 2017, and almost two months later with only one point release update, it’s still too new for production. Download it on a test machine or two or more, test it with your apps and systems, file bug reports and radars, but for the love of all that is Python and Monty! don’t run it on your production Xsan. Well, at least not yet. Wait until next year. Or as long as you can. Or until the new iMac Pro is released with 10.13 pre-installed or wait until they ship the new Final Cut Pro X 10.4 that may or may not require macOS High Sierra.

With that out of the way, I’ve just upgraded the production Xsan to … macOS Sierra. Yes, macOS 10.12.6 is stable and it’s a good time to install last year’s macOS release. Time to say good bye to macOS el Capitan 10.11.6, we hardly knew ya. Besides guaranteed security updates, stability and the annoying newness of a changed macOS, what else is there? In Xsan v5 they introduced a new “ignore permissions” checkbox for your Xsan volumes. Looking forward to that feature in production. No more Munki onDemand nopkg scripts to run chmod. No more tech support requests for folders, files, FCP X projects that won’t open because someone else used it, owns it, touched it. We’ll see how that pans out. I’ll let you know.

Upgrading Xsan to v5

Step 1. Back up your data

You’re doing this, right? I’m using Archiware P5 Backup to backup the current projects to LTO tape. I’m using Archiware P5 sync to sync the current Xsan volumes to Thunderbolt RAIDs, and using Archiware P5 Archive (and Archive app) to archive completed projects to the LTO project archive. That’s all I need to do, right?

Step 2. Back up your servers

Don’t forget the servers running your SAN! I use Apple’s Time Machine to backup my Mac Mini Xsan controllers. External USB3 drive. I also use another Mac Mini in target disk mode with Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the server nightly. (Hat tip to Alex Narvey, a real Canadian hero). And of course I grab the Xsan config with hdiutil and all the logs with cvgather. Because, why not?! For Archiware P5 backup server I also have a python scripts to backup everything, another scripts to export a readable list of tapes, and BackupMinder to rotate the backups. Add some rsync scripts and you’re golden.

 

Step 3. Upgrade the OS

Unmount the Xsan volume on your clients or shut them down, disconnect the fibre channel. Do something like that. Stop your volume. Download the macOS Sierra installer from the App Store. Double click upgrade. Wait. Or use Munki. I loaded in the macOS 10.12.6 installer app into Munki and set it up as an optional install to make this portion of the upgrade much quicker and cleaner.

In my case after the OS was upgraded I checked the App Store app for any Apple updates (you can also use Munki’s Managed Software Center to check) and of course there were some security updates. In this case the security upgrade hung on a slow network connection and the server crashed. Server down! I had to restore from Time Machine backup to the point where I just upgraded the server. It took some extra time  but it worked (can’t wait for next year’s mature APFS / Time Machine and restoring from snapshots instead).

Step 4. Upgrade Server

After macOS is upgraded you’ll need to upgrade the Server.app or just upgrade the services used by Server (even those not used by Server get upgraded).

Step 5. Upgrade the Xsan

Bur first we have to restore the Xsan config. Don’t panic! It may invoke bad memories of data loss and restoring from backups. Xsan PTSD is real.

Restore-previous-Xsan.png

Step 6. Upgrade the rest

Next you have to upgrade the Xsan volumes.

Xsan-volume-needs-upgrade

New version of Xsan, ch-ch-changes! Ignore permissions check box will remount the xsan with the “no-owners” flag. Let’s test this out.

 

Upgrade the OS and Server app on the backup controller. Upgrade the OS on the clients using Munki or App Store if you like doing it the hard way. Ha Ha.

Step 7. Enjoy

Plug those Thunderbolt to Fibre adapters back in, mount those Xsan volumes and be happy.

Step 8. Wait for the complaints

The next day the editors walked in and went straight to work with Final Cut Pro X. No one noticed anything. Xsan upgraded. Workstation macOS upgraded. Everything appeared to be the same and just worked. Thankless task but well worth it.

 

Reference: Apple’s iBook guide here

 

 

My Thunderbolt Nightmare

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It was a dark and stormy night of cables and capacitors when suddenly I heard the door knocking, or was something falling of a shelf? I was in a cramped server room, if you’d call it that, and I was day dreaming, sorry, night terrorizing, of days gone past when I worked in nice big well ventilated server rooms with proper enterprise gear. Oh wait, did I really dream that? Did it really happen? Maybe it was less well ventilated and there were cables strewn about the tall 42U shelves and sometimes we found a Mac hidden underneath spaghetti. Sometimes. I vaguely remember the long shiny metal servers, they talked to me, they sang, a whiny pitch of whale song. Dream on, dream on.

Now. Today. Apple Music on my iPhone plays every single Arcade Fire album in a long playlist, in order. And I follow the white rabbit of Thunderbolt cables. This is my thunderbolt nightmare. Dead drive in a Thunderbolt Promise Pegasus unit, web ticket filed for registered hardware. Legacy. That’s the word they used. Where’s Marshall McLuhan when you need a proper redux of the shit storm you’re in? Thunderbolt 3 uses USB-C and everything is possible. Can’t wait to step into that confusing identity crisis. OK, back to the present day when I stared at the red blinking drive, a replacement drive from not long ago dead again, sitting in the last row of a now legacy Pegasus R6 unit. RAID 5, the most dangerous kind, this is what stood between me and uncertainty. The worst kind of RAID. Well, not as bad RAID 0. Raid nothing. Raid 5 is one bad drive away from a bad day. Backups? Hmm, I got those, I got plenty of those, but I don’t want to be tested today. No, not today. Not this bloody day.

I open the Pegasus utility and the GUI wants an update. Hmm, that’s not in autopkg, I think. Why is out of date? Munki let me down. I start to drift, to side shift into adding newer better recipes to autopkg, to tweaking my Munki repo, to what sessions would be awesome at the next MacDevOps:YVR conference. Gee whiz, I love open source, and everyone in the Mac Admins community…. Snap out of! I slap myself in the face. I was hallucinating. Stay on task. I update the Pegasus utility. I stare at the critical reports from one of the three R6 units attached to this Mac Mini server. Did I say server? But it’s so small, so little. It works. It’s magical, kinda neat. Until you stare too close at the back. The Thunderbolt cables go from the Mac Mini to the first Pegasus unit to the SANlink fibre channel adapter to the LTO 6 tape library to the next Pegasus utility to the second SANlink adapter to a third and final Pegasus RAID unit. What’s is going on? Where does this cable go? Let me just follow it to the next jumping off point. My brain slows, the lack of oxygen in this cold machine room start to affect my thinking. I lose my way.

I download the report for the Pegasus unit. I had to unlock a pretty neat lock icon and click on the save report. I upload it to the web support and add it to the ticket. Tech support gets backs to me in a day and said all is good, and to carry on. I can’t. The drive is dead. What are they not seeing? It’s right in front of me. I download the report again. Again the same response. Fine. It’s time to stop messing around and pop open Terminal. Loading up promiseutil I check out the options and switches and get into an argument with myself about the currently valid optionals of letters and numbers that are required. I check my notes, online knowledge base, and try again. It’s broken. It doesn’t work. Stumbling around the command line typing imprecisely incorrect statements gets nowhere fast. I realize that there’s no way for the cli utility to properly change its focus to the broken unit with the busted drive. Both the GUI and the binary are stuck on the one R6 unit and won’t see what’s in front of my face.

I call tech support. This is humiliating. This was supposed to be easy. Drive dead, drive reported, drive ordered, drive replaced, then no one the wiser. Data saved, not dead. Backups not tested. Not today. No, not today. Tech support treats me like the imaginary newbie IT people sometimes treat everyone with. He repeats his instructions to me. He is polite. Download the report. I can’t. It won’t work. Unplug the unit. Plug it into something else. I can’t. The cables. The Thunderbolt cables are everywhere. It’s magical, and daisy-chained, and stuck. “Can I remote in and see?” he asks, hoping to resolve this quickly. Sorry. That’s impossible. Even if I thought it was a good idea. I remind him that I have a dead drive. That’s why I called. I want to get a replacement drive. “Sorry sir that legacy unit is not under support most likely,” I know that. I realize that now. That I wasted my time. It happens sometimes. The truth is staring at you. You need a mirror to see. “You need to order compatible drive from the compatibility list.” I am a well spring of emotions. I thank him. I am nice. He was polite. But now I know what I need to do. Oh wait, what? Order a drive now! Order two.

McLuhan never had a chance to evaluate Thunderbolt storage technology but the insane genius and simplicity of Thunderbolt reduced expensive enterprise fibre channel storage to the dust bin. Magical SAN for video editing with a Mac Mini and Thunderbolt RAIDs. Cheap enough to buy with a departmental credit card, fewer meetings to attend, more films to shoot and edit. Backup, archive, repeat. McLuhan would have no doubt reminded me that the tetrad of technology would have flipped Thunderbolt on its head, Fibre channel never went into a dust bin, but was firmly relegated to well cooled storage room, and long ago legacy drives in the enterprise units are humming a long while the cursing wind and emotions swell over the Thunderbolt mountain. Fibre channel just became cool again. Retro smart.