This is what 55TB looks like!

We got our Backblaze Pod from Proto Case but building the system is only half the battle. The real magic is configuring all the software that powers it, and the storage space. Speaking of storage, we at Oxygen Cloud just happened to have over 50 Western Digital 1.5TB Green drives on hand.

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Software Configuration:

The backblaze from Proto Case ships with Debian 5 Squeeze and all the required drives for the system to start. Its up the user to supply the drives and handle configuration. With those 50+ WD Green drives, we decided to go with 3 Raid 6 array using mdadm. With this, we used LVM on top to create one uber-drive.

One hurdle we hit was trying to format this new partition. We’d originally chosen JFS for the filesystem but this caused enough issues that we decided to go with ext4 instead. This presented its’ own problem: ext4 supports up to 1EiB, but the distro copy of e2fsprogs only supported 16TB. Building from source using the 64bit flag solved this.

Unsurprisingly, formatting 50TB is not a fast process. Be prepared to wait a long time.

Bryan Pham, playing Chess as he waits for 55TB to format.

After formatting comes the really hard choice: What do we do with 55TB of storage? NFS? SAMBA? So 90s! What if you’re out with your iPhone, iPad, or Android device and need your data? That’s where Oxygen Storage Connector (codename: Morpheus) comes in!

What is Oxygen Storage Connector? Its software you can deploy on any Windows or Linux machine (OS X coming soon!) that will convert unused storage on a NAS/File Server into storage you can use with Oxygen Cloud so you can access your data anywhere in the world.

This also means your data is encrypted end to end in both transit from your NAS to your device but also at rest on your device and NAS. You can share spaces from your Oxygen Storage Connector with family, friends, co-workers, anyone you choose around the world and they — and only they — will have the ability to see spaces you share with them. Now we at Oxygen Cloud can store all of our data in-house yet leverage the cloud for all of our Metadata allowing us to access it anywhere in the world! With a team that includes members in Pakistan, Indonesia, Hong Kong and the US it’s important they have the ability to put their files on the backblaze from anywhere and one way we allow this is via our Oxygen Tunnel Gateways.

Oxygen Tunnel gateways are servers we’ve deployed that allow you to access your Oxygen Storage Connector behind your firewall when you are outside your firewall, without having to punch any holes or change your configuration.

Oxygen Tunnel Gateways are the magic that allows Oxygen Storage Connector users to access their storage without having to reconfigure their router or firewall. Inside, outside, it doesn’t matter — it just works! How? Magic! It’s also smart enough that when you’re on the local network it will connect directly, allowing the fastest transfer speeds possible.

If you want to learn more about Oxygen Storage Connector and get the software yourself, check out Oxygen Cloud.

EDIT: Our team has created a video montage of us building, configuration and using the backblaze pod.

Click here to view the embedded video.

mysqldump -P <port#> -h <server ip>-u mysql_user -p database_name table_name > backup.sql

To restore your DB in the cloud you use a more well-known mysql technique

mysql -u mysql_user -p -h <server ip> cloud_db_name < backup.sql

First little note, this is a post from my old blog that was hosted at typepad.  After seeing the light and moving to wordpress I need to move them here so the links still work =\

After reading a lot about LaTeX, and seeing its powerful use in making documents i decided a good way to learn a lot more about LaTeX is to make a Resume using it.

My Resume: zuhaib-cv-ns.tex, zuhaib-cv.ps (coming soon), zuhaib-cv-ns.pdf

What is LaTeX? Well if your asking that question, you might want to check the link out. But if you have ever read a computer text book, or any document published from a scientific or computer science community there is a very good chance it was made using LaTeX as it provides you more power over simple WYSIWYG editors like Word, especial for texts involving math equations.

Now a few notes about my resume, first is that i used a lot of sites to help make my resume, looking at other peoples works and referring to The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX. This is a good way to get started in anything new i feel, looking at examples and using texts as references as it can be pretty boring to just read.

Back to my resume for it to work you need to have res.cls but the one i used is an edited version of the one found on CTAN. The changes i made was to remove a badly place page break which would come out if you tried to use itemize for your position description which i wanted to use as i like the bullets. I am calling this version of rel.cls 2.09a and i will be e-mailing it to the original writer and see if i can get this incorporated in to the rel.cls on CTAN.

My Rel.cls: rel.cls

The main tex file was based off the one provided by Jason R. Blevins, with some edits you can see in my tex file like to allow for bullets and to add itemize to position and other changes i liked from other people resumes that i will list below.

My tex editor of choice was actually TextMate for OS X, i liked a lot when working in OS X and the fact it and handle a lot of different type of files from LaTeX to just about anything you can throw at it. If your not on OS X, or dont want to play for TextMate, look at Emacs as that is the granddaddy for LaTeX.

To make the PDF and etc files i used the Makefile again from Jason Blevins file, again edited only to fit my needs

My Makefile: Makefile

That is about it i have for my make file, for more i would tell you to read these sites that helped me a lot besides the one i mentioned early

Links

LaTeX Resume Tips
LaTeX CV Template
The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX
How to Write a Killer Resume (for Software Engineers)

And something for you people that must use word:

Give your résumé a face lift