Backup & Beyond

We’ve got a small team here that’s feverishly working on ramping up our reporting module ASAP. While we already have email reporting, alerts, events, etc, and a server dashboard that tells you about current backups, licensing, storage utilization, etc- we’re working on one key bit: a single screen that lets you look out for the ‘reds’ and take appropriate action!

I just had a look at the initial designs for this ‘work in progress screen’, and we’re about to decide on one of two. We’ve never been fans of long meetings and most of our decisions are fairly ‘obvious’ or are driven by our customers. So we thought we’d get the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ on this one too…

Which of these designs works better for you ( I won’t get into the details of each); just give us your ‘blink‘ reaction.

Important: These are in no way, finished screens - they’re more like ‘initial drafts’ ; however, they (hopefully) convey the broad ‘idea’…

Option 1: the table option

Option 2: the calendar option

Screenshot a (for option 2) - in Week view

Screenshot b (again, for option 2) - in Day view

Let me also toss in my 0.02 - I’m with Option 2!

Let us know your view ASAP in the comments below.

I’m sure there’s something called the Weekend Law, and that it works hand in glove with Murphy’s, especially in the context of a software release. We were hoping to release v2.2 of the Service Provider Edition by March 10, 2007 and celebrate over the weekend!

It seems the bubbly will have to wait!

If memory serves me right, there were two previous instances where we aimed for a pre-weekend release and ended up working through the weekends, through to the next week.

The good news is: we did (in those two instances) have the releases the next week.

We’re currently shooting for (optimistic) March 12 / (pragmatic) March 14.

Thanks for your patience, and for all the feedback you’ve provided on the release candidate (approx. 1,200 mails were sent out last week announcing the release candidate and soliciting feedback); 2.2 is looking good

We’ve been speaking about v2.2 of the Service Provider Edition for some time. Many partners & customers have asked for more detail on the new features in this loaded version. While we’ve been providing bullet points & details on these new features, a picture is worth a 1000 words, and a video is worth a lot more (11,610,000 words to be exact, for this particular video- ask me why :-))

The video below is a You Tube version. If you’d like a more hi-res (16MB) version, please download the Windows Movie (.wmv) file from here (please right click the link and choose “Save Link As…” or “Save Target As…”)

We’d love your feedback, and hope you’re as excited about 2.2 as we are. As someone rightly mentioned in our forum, considering the number and kinds of improvements, we should have called it v3.0 !

Oh, it’s there on the video but let me tell you here anyway - we’re currently 2 weeks into the testing process, are looking at a release date of March 10, and expect to have the release candidate available by March 3. Fingers crossed; thanks for your patience!

Vembu StoreGrid Service Provider Edition v2.2 - A Preview

Great! We’ve finally got this blog on the road.

We’ll be using this quite often to keep you up to date with developments on Vembu StoreGrid. There will be the occasional ‘off topic’ post, I’d expect! But by and large, we’ll stick to StoreGrid, backup & IT - in that order of priority!

We’ll update our forum when something ‘important’ is posted on this blog. And if its really big news (like a new release), you’ll probably get an email as well - if you’re in our ‘nearing unmanageable’ database.

There’s an RSS feed here - if you do use a reader (personally, I use Google Reader, even though it’s still in official Beta), please add us to your reading list.

Our first ‘real’ post will be a video providing an overview of what’s coming in the Service Provider Edition v2.2 ; for more on that, please watch this space.