My chill-out time

Huu,

Yesterday I attended Terminator:Salvation screening at GSC One Utama organized by my company, the cinema was packed with audience whom are supposed to be our customer. A good half of them I've never met or being introduced before this event, let alone recognize which company they are from. I sat at the front half of the cinema screen, the surround speaker system was amazingly blaringly loud! Whenever there's a scene involving two machines duking it out, the sounds of metal clutching or hammering each other that was produced could probably render me deaf. Half way through the movie, I was wondering, could I possibly walk out of this cinema as a deaf man? The movie was pretty exciting to watch but a little bit predictable as far as how the storyline will develop, if you are a fan of movie with witty conversation and remarks or engaging storyline this is a movie that you must avoid.

Movie ended around 11p.m, than my colleague suggested to go for a drink at Mamak stall, since it’s already late and none of us is in the mood to search for Mamak stall outside of OU, we settled for Mamak Corner inside OU. I reached home around 4 a.m , but not after another 2 drinking session at TTDI and DJ. I was freaking tired by the time I reached home.

Today, I went out with my fiancée and her army of destruction *read as her siblings* =) . Her brother wanted to purchase a desk, so he can put his newly bought prized possession properly. He wanted to survey for the price of LCD TV as well so we decided to stop by at Courts Mammoth Mutiara Damansara. The price of all the goods is a bit expensive compared to any other outlets but here you will get the comfort to compare a lot of products side by side without any hassle as they have quite a number of items to choose from.

 

We had lunch at Marche *again*, by again I meant we had lunch not 2 hours ago and also we had lunch at Marche not 1 week ago.  The bill came in at about 125++, it can be considered as relatively cheap as there were 4 of us compared to last week bill which is 99++ for 2 person. I'm sure the main reason is the fact that Izat and Nana is quite reluctant to order something expensive as they know I will be footing the bill. They ordered pasta like thingy and a sausage; the home made pizza ordered by Ely was quite tasteful although the ingredients used are quite minimal.

I've sent my wedding gift to Ely for decoration at Keramat, will be picking it up 1 or 2 days before the wedding, hopefully everything will turn out to be beautiful. Hmm need to be 'friendlier' to my in-laws, wouldn't want them to think I'm too stuck up or disrespectful to them. I guess I'm not a 'people' person but more like a 'techie' person. How I wish my in-laws is well versed in storage fundamentals or technologies so we can discuss non-stop for days! Haha.

Regards, 

MARK

 

My sleepless night

Its 3 a.m but I couldn’t sleep, these pesky mosquitoes is a pain in the ass! I'm tired but can’t sleep, even a healthy dose of aerosol spray doesn’t seem to stop the incoming onslaught of these beasts. Luckily, I don’t' have an appointment or meeting set up with any of my clients tomorrow but I'll have to attend Termination Salvation screening organized by my company at One Utama as a little token of appreciation to our customers and its own personnel.  I'd completed 2 tenders and there's only one more tender left to be submitted, I'm leaving that for weekend.

I guess organizing and planning of wedding ceremony does pose its own challenge, from the mix-up that my mum made for our VIP wedding favors. She actually spelled my fiancée name incorrectly and as the result, our VIP wedding favors will be printed with incorrectly spelled bride's name, leaving me to correct it by myself. Our wedding cards it’s kinda of nice in its own way but the map is slightly small in size for people to see, unless you're very well versed with Bukit Damansara or KL downtown area, my bets are you will be most likely got yourself lost in the process of finding our wedding reception. The workaround is too print additional map maybe on A4 size paper to be distributed with the cards.

Moving on to something else, unfortunately my UFC 2009 Undisputed avatar is getting beaten to a pulp. Every match will end in a knockout fashion, either by submission or a by solid right punch. I can't recall real life UFC matches to happen on this type of electrifying pace. It’s too unrealistic in that sense but I do love the ground and pound, reversal and transition of moves, under hook slam and the submission. Kudos to Yukos for a game well executed!

* Reminds me that I have to call our travel agent tour, I'm supposed to pay the balance of fees, still uncertain on whether Beijing or Perth is the better option.*

Regards,

MARK

 

 

My Short Entry #1

Its barely 10 p.m but I'm feeling sleepy already, a bit tired today without any real reason to be so, I just bought Xbox 360 for my future brother in law with NBA Live 2009 as the mandatory free game, I couldn’t comprehend anyone obsession with basketball but I guess each and everyone of us is entitled to be obsessed with something no matter how distasteful it is! Haha. I bought UFC 2009 Undisputed for myself and trying to work myself up the career leadership. I'm about to doze off, it will be short and simple entry unlike my previous blog entry. Ah, just received email from DiGi requesting me to apply for the position of Unix Engineer, thanks but no thanks, not interested to work as an engineer anymore. I have a couple of tender and proposal to be completed by next week, because of that I foresee this weekend will be quite hectic as well.

*Went to lunch with Azim and Rahman, the intention was to give them the invitation card for my wedding, that bloody fella actually left my invites at the restaurant we ate after all of my trouble going to see him and treat him lunch! =) *

Regards,

MARK

 

My (ex)Colleagues

I had my fair share of weird colleagues from the past 4-5 companies that I worked for but none of them will trump or even come close to the ones that I'm going to share with you about. For obvious reasons, real name of all person described here will be withheld to protect the identities of these folks.

a) Feisty Salesman (Account Manager)

Yeah, this is one feisty lady to be working with, you wouldn’t want to be on the other side of the table when she sets her crosshair on you, she really likes to argue and she argues a LOT! She will argue everything there is to argue for, from my point of view she's way too competitive and I do mean it negatively. She's a headache to manage and to work with, detrimental to team motivation, she doesn’t listen to advices and would rather act based on instincts rather than based on cold hard facts. She will seek for assistance if she's already knee deep into trouble. She doesn't follow team instructions but will act according to her own intuition which is propelled by her own self interests. She was asked to leave not too long ago, who needs enemies if you have friends like this?

b) Bimbohead (Account Manager)

She likes to brag about her past success, whether it is the truth or not is an entirely different matter. She never failed to mention that, once upon a time not too long ago, she managed to clinch a deal worth millions of dollars, which turns out to be about 200K or so. What struck me dumbfounded is the fact that she can't articulate the products that she's selling. Conveying the message of a product benefits is one thing but to completely fail to differentiate between storage array and tape library is simply unacceptable. She even requested my assistance to design a disaster recovery solution using Documentum and Captiva, how miserable is that? She’s a total nightmare to all system/solution consultants alike,  every meeting and discussion will be dragged 2-3 hours because of all the crap that keeps spewing out from her mouth.  Whenever a customer asked why should we buy this particular storage model, she will reply with "because our company is a EMC Velocity Partner", this type of answer may impress a person with an IQ of a 2 year old but it is completely off the mark and without any relevance to the question posted by customer.  She was asked to leave the company for failing to meet her quote much too the smile of all consultant. She only manages to close deals worth a pathetic 9k, not even 1% of her alleged past achievements.

c) Conniving Thief (System Consultant)

He will try his very best to impress you with his very well polished communication skills. He will go the extra mile to get you comfortable up to a point he is willing to reserve a parking space for you in front of our office which is very scarce and hard to get during office hours. Whenever we went out to lunch or late lunch session together, he will always brought up topic about his family matters and of course financial problems. He will talk about his family health problem, funerals and everything under the sun that requires him to fork out huge sum of money while expecting us to pay for his food bills. Everything that was told by him, if we were to believe it, will make even the saddest soap drama or telenovela looks pale in comparison. What sickens me is the fact he has 3 hand phones, Nokia e71, HTC Touch and Sony Eriksson and even bought a full HD LCD 32 inch TV from our CEO. The financial problem is largely due to lackadaisical attitude in managing his own finance; imagine at the middle of the month, he suggested having lunch at Tony Roma's. I'm flabbergasted by his suggestion, how could he suggested that while at the same time complaints about not having enough money to make ends meet? Imagine his wife dejected face if she learned that her husband is having 80++ lunch while she's staying at home eating leftovers. This is not even half of his problem, his real problem started when Feisty Salesman (refer above) lost her credit card and reported about that to the authorities and our company HR. Magically the card reappears when Feisty Salesman by chance inform Conniving Thief about it. Feisty Salesman became suspicious about it; she decided to embark upon CSI styled self investigation. She contacted her credit card company trying to discover where and when the card was used when it was reported stolen. It was utilized a couple of times throughout the duration that card was stolen, the first instance was at Shell Petrol Station and second one was at Pizza Hut One Utama. Of all people, Conniving Thief should have known that at every petrol station and at almost all up market Pizza Hut restaurants are installed with closed circuit TV. His picture and his family was recorded while enjoying their lunch at Pizza Hut, talk about getting caught with your pants down! This matter was brought to HR dept attention, but Feisty Salesman decided not to pursue her attention to get Conniving Thief sacked. His excuse when confronted about this was, his family badly wanted to eat Pizza Hut, my dear god!, how could've him uses stolen goods to feed his family?

His story doesn't end here, a couple of weeks back one of my other colleague hand phone was stolen when he left it unattended on his desk around 9 p.m. Guess who was in the office when it all happened? There are only 3 people in the office, the victim, the Conniving Thief and another Account Manager. What's your take on this? I for one will not jump into conclusion, but your guess is as good as mine. By the way, Conniving Thief is oblivious of the fact that every one in the whole company knew about his Pizza Hut ordeal, but no one confronted him as they couldn’t be bothered about him.  I used to hang out with him but not anymore, I've distanced my self from him after these incidents.

This is a guy who will be kind towards you but sooner or later he will ask for something in return

d) Good for Nothing Guy (Senior System Consultant)

This guy was appointed to be a Senior System Consultant based on his close relationship with some of the big bosses; I was not piqued enough to investigate this claim so I just dismissed it as a mere rumor.  I was quite relieved when somebody senior was hired so I can share my knowledge and hopefully learn new things from him.  It was a huge disappointment to know his level of knowledge doesn’t qualify him to be appointed as consultant let alone a senior system consultant. His work is constantly challenged by customers and questioned by our bosses, even our CEO in of their management meetings told my boss to get rid of him as he doesn’t bring any value to the company. After many months of complaints from customers, account managers and bosses, he finally decides to tender in his resignation citing his incompetence is the main reason. All of this not before numerous complaints by customers and principals consultant, he can’t even write proposal, produce BQ or design a solution without asking for sample of template. My final take and word is “Good Riddance!".

e) Mercenary (System Consultant)

This worth for nothing chap is simply the kind of guy who is only interested to render his service to the highest bidder and to push forward his own agenda and guess what?! I'm actually describing myself here! =)

Regards,

MARK

DiskXtender 6.1 Extended Drive Migration

Argh, I'm supposed to oversee the migration process of DiskXtender ED containing stubs and Metadata for one of the largest DiskXtender and Centera deployment at SEA. Searched through EMC powerlinkg and discovered 3 methods of migrating the stubs and metadata. Each options listed here has its own pros and cons that requires carefull planning and execution.

Option 1: Data-Export Procedure:

1) Ensure that all transaction-, move- and purge logs on the Old Extended Drive are flushed out

2) Disable move schedule and disable real-time moves
3) Create/map the disk that becomes the new ED 
4) Perform a Meta Data Export (MDE) of the original ED to a network share folder. 
5) Stop DX services and set it to manual start
6) Run Vol Id ((http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/VolumeId.html), change the vol-id and drive letter of the old ED to temporal values

7) Reboot

8) Run Volume ID tool (http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/VolumeId.html), and assign the new drive the Volume ID and drive letter that was previously assigned to the old Extended Drive. 
9) Reboot
10) Start the DX service, and set it to automatic start again 
11) At this point, DX recognizes the new ED but with no data inside. 
12) Perform a Mata-Data import done in 2 step to the new ED.

 

Deallocate media from one ED and reallocate to the new ED (See EMC KB article - esg74432)

 

====================================================================

Option 2: Using dxdmchk utility

Using dxdmchk utility (command line utility) to fetch the files back from the Centera and then run the clean switch to stripped migration information of the files. In order to run the clean switch, EMC Support will issue an access key.
 
Then remove the media from the media group and uninstall DX. Next, reinstall DX and reconfig DX on the new server
Then, use any 3rd party utility to copy the files frm old ED to the new ED on the new server

 

====================================================================

Option 3: File restore (Centera media)

 

During the migration, the Extended drive should be made inaccessible to users and processes.

 

1) Save out the EMC Registry. (HKLM\Software\EMC) and Registry Log folder (C:\Program Files\EMC\DiskXtender)

 

2) Run a full Meta Data Export and export the data to a network drive that is not the current Extended Drive, or the new drive.

 

3) Disable the DiskXtender Move Schedule. 

4) Disable the DX service (in windows services). Disable the DxSpy Driver, and DxSpy Recognizer Driver. Both of these drivers are located in Device Manager. Go to Computer Management > Device Manager. Select "Show hidden devices" from the "View" drop down menu. Next, expand "non-plug and play drivers" in the right hand tree view. You will see both drivers as listed above. 

 

5) Make note of the Volume ID and Drive Letter of your current Extended Drive and save this information. 

6) Power down the system, make the physical swap of the Extended Drive. 

 

7) Power the system back up.

 

8) Run Volume ID tool (http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/VolumeId.html), and assign the new drive the Volume ID that was previously assigned to the old Extended Drive.

 

9) Verify the drive letter for the new drive matches the Drive Letter for the old Extended Drive. If the drive letter is not the same, change the drive letter to match the drive letter for the old Extended Drive, using Disk Manager in Windows.

 

10) Reboot.

 

11) Verify volume ID for the new SAN drive is the same as the Volume ID for the old Extended Drive. Verify that the drive letter for the new drive is the same as the drive letter for the old Extended Drive.

 

12) Set the DxSpy and DxSpy Recognizer drivers back to startup type "Demand", as originally configured, and set the DX service to manual.

 

13) Create a folder at the root of the new Extended Drive called "EmailXtender".

NOTE: Step #13 will differ, depending on the Media Folder names in use for your particular system. Make sure to manually create any Media Folders in Windows Explorer, prior to starting the DiskXtender Service, as part of Step #13.

14) Reboot. 

 

15) Create a file in the directory called "dx_EmcService.log". (Use this step if you have Centera Media) -- see EMC KB article esg 61046

 

16) Start the DiskXtender service. Verify the service starts successfully and the Extended Drive has an "Online Status". 

 

17) Run the File Restore task on EMC media. (Right click on the media in the DiskXtender Administrator, and choose "Edit Tasks" from the flyout menu. Choose the "File Restore" task from the drop down menu, and complete the wizard. This will re-populate the new Extended Drive with the file and directory structure of the old Extended Drive.

***You can also run Meta-Data Import instead of File Restores for this step*** 

 

18) Force a Drive Scan. Enable the DiskXtender Move Schedule. 

19) Verify existing migrated files can be accessed, and new files can be successfully written to media.

 

20) Stop the DiskXtender Service. Cut the file in the directory called "dx_EmcService.log" out of the directory and save it to another location. (Use this step if you have Centera Media)

 

21) Start the DiskXtender Service. Set the Startup type back to "Automatic".

Regards,

MARK

My eventful Sunday

My feet are sore of all the walking today; it started of with me visiting my fiancée parent’s house. After a brief stop, we went straight to Tesco Selayang just to get a couple of blueberry cheese tart, my favs! Had a couple of drinks and off we go to Cavenzi furniture store right next door to Tesco. Saw quite a few items that are pretty interesting, especially at Enzo furniture store. The prize of Enzo furniture is slightly higher than Cavenzi but I believe the finishing is a tad better. It’s better to check whether Enzo and Cavenzi furniture is manufactured at the same factory or I might be paying extra for nothing. If it is indeed manufactured at the same location than it might not be worth the extra bucks

Of all the store that we went through, there are a couple of things that irritates me. First, the constant harassment by the sales assitant, I can't stand it when I'm deliberating to purchase something, the over zealous sales assistant keeps yapping in the background. I can't even walk and admire the quality of their products without being tailgated. Lastly, what's the point of hiring storekeeper if they can't converse in Bahasa or English? Some of the questions are not answered, but most are answered out of context. 

We had late lunch at Marché, to our pleasant surprise, there's a lot of food variety to be chosen from. I ordered Seafood Platter while my fiancée ordered Chicken Chop and Lamb Jumbo. To my dismay, the Seafood platter servings is too small, the rest of the foods ordered are acceptable by any standard.

I'm too tired to continue my training modules; I think its time to call it a night.

*I'm watching UFC 98 main card, Lyoto Machida vs Rashad Evans. UFC is one of my favorite sports if you may call it that*

Regards,

MARK

 

My lazy Saturday

I absolutely did not do anything much or productive today! =) spent most of my time watching DVDs, completed 5 out of 6 DVDs, going to watch the last of that DVDs later tonight.  I went to see our house today with my mum, she wanted to have a look but unfortunately the gate was locked. I guess this is part of Sunway precautionary measures to deter any would be thieves. I ended up just making my way around the housing area perimeter. I can't help but to feel proud of the house that we've bought whenever I take a look at it, sure it isn’t a 1.2M penthouse sitting atop of any hill but at least I can afford a house to call my home.

My fiancée is having her family gathering today, the gathering will discuss the finer details of our wedding ceremony and solemnization ceremony as far as how many people will be sitting at the bride and groom table, talk about protocol! How far we've come to reach this stage, I can still vividly recall attending JAIS/JAKIM mandatory marriage course around end of 2007. Back then it was still 18 months away from the wedding ceremony, fast forward to the future, now it’s just another 1 month to go. How time flies!

Within those 18 months, I switched jobs three times, from Unix Engineer responsible for taking call for any hardware or software related issues to Presales Engineer and now I'm a System Consultant responsible for designing an end-to-end storage and backup solution. Reminiscing the time when I was working as a Unix Engineer, I would wait for my then girlfriend at IOI Mall Puchong as she was working at Maxis TPM. I used to sit outside of IOI Mall Starbucks looking inside and wondering to myself, how on earth these guys can afford 12-15 bucks coffee? They must be freaking rich. Now fast forward to the present future, we visit Starbucks, Coffee Bean, Dome and San Fran every other week, as I'm a coffee addict and I have to get my cravings fixed =). Whenever I bought coffee from any of these outlets, I will sometime smile to myself and feel very grateful to Almighty Allah that gave me bountiful rewards.

* I have since stopped going to Starbucks, McD, Carl's Junior or any other American fast food joint. I will only buy American goods if it is the only product available in the market and there's no any other viable alternatives*

Regards,

MARK

 

What a bummer!

I told one of my colleagues not to set his expectation too high for today inter department meeting, but it turns out to be the other way around,  I was the one who were disappointed with the announcement. A mere 250 increment is all that I get and even that is not approved by our group CEO yet. Sure 250 is quite acceptable considering current economic climate, but after almost every night and weekend slugging it out to finish up proposal, BQ and BOM, 250 is a rather petty figure. Everything is not lost as there are a couple of good news, I was appointed to be one of SMART members because of my technical prowess and I have demonstrated my capacity to the team as the storage expert (whatever that means), by the way SMART stands for Subject Matter Advisor and Response Team. I was deemed to be the storage expert for reason stated above in our company, while this might be debatable as I only have less than 4 years of working experience while all of the other SMART members can be considered as veterans in IT field. Go figure!

Another positive development that was announced is that there will be incentives for any project that is completed ahead of schedule. When they say early than the proposed schedule, what this actually meant is, it must be at least 10% earlier than the proposed timeline. Am I happy with what I heard of today meeting? Certainly not as I feel that our contribution to the company is significantly undervalued. My next course of action is to complete my training which is actually consisted of 25 very long and dry modules and to complete my certification track and attain EMC Backup and Recovery Technology Architect certification. After achieving this, I will update my CV and start sending out job applications with priority application to boot! =)

I had dinner with my mum and fiancée at Pavilion KL. Since my mum doesn’t feel like walking too far to go to The Ship, we decided to have dinner at Rain Noodle House. We ordered Deep fried Garoupa with Thai Chili Sauce and Tom Yam Seafood. Was it good? Well for the amount of money I paid, I could easily gotten my self tastier and certainly cheaper Thai delicacies at any self respecting Tom Yam stall. It wasn’t bad at all, do not misinterpret this and say Rain Noodle House is not worth your visit, it is slightly above average IMHO.

Bought 6 DVD's to watch over the weekend and I'm going to strive and complete at least 5-6 modules of Legato Training. I will update if there's anything interesting.

*I'm very much interested in politics but what is happening in Malaysian political scene is too perverted up to the point that I'm disgusted with the Machiavellian approach adopted by certain party.

Regards,

MARK 

 

EMC BURA Training

What a tiring day physically and mentally! Today, I attended accreditation training at EMC office pertaining to their new 2009 BURA campaign covering products such as Legato Networker, EMC Disk Library and EMC Avamar. I was disappointed with the course content as it was exactly the same with the one that was provided by PSC-APJ, the course material could be easily downloaded off EMC partner website.  It was a huge letdown to attend this training as it offers nothing revolutionary in terms of ideas or products. In short the training fails to achieve its intended objectives.

I left the class around 2 p.m as I have to join another weekly status update meeting at the outskirts of KL. The meeting was straight to the point and short; several objectives were achieved and another milestone was set. There will a POC next week to demonstrate the capabilities of our proposed solution. Although it was short and concise, the meeting does have its light moments, we do share a couple of jokes and friendly banter just to dispel any negativity surrounding the project team.

I had dinner with my fiancée today at Saisaki, Wisma UOA. I ate everything they have to offer, OK! Not everything almost everything, up to the point that I can't even muster the strength to eat one spoonful of ice cream offered to me. As we didn't bring along our camera, there's no pictures to be shown. People might asks, why we didn’t snap pictures using our handphones. Believe me, when I say - it did cross my mind but considering the fact that I'm using Futsuu handphone with limited camera functionality and my fiancée is using an old school handphone, the plan never materialize. Yes peeps! We're that broke, we can't even afford 'proper' phone =)

I'm waiting for tomorrow to come with abated breath. Tomorrow will determine whether I will spend another year at my current company or this will just be short stint as always.

Oh! For the uninitiated BURA stands for Backup, Recovery and Archiving.

Regards,

MARK