Apple Computers

Apple's Brian Croll told about telling his small son about the early days of computers, when a computer filled an entire room. His son commented, "It must have taken three people to move the mouse." Brian then noted that "we are in one of the biggest times of change in the whole personal computer industry." Five years ago, he said, most people used their computers for word processing, personal finances, games, and perhaps presentations. Now, though, e-mail is the most popular use of computers, and jokes are the number one e-mail subject. Instant messaging is second and growing fast, and browsing the Web is "huge." Digital music is another very popular use. "The biggest one ever," he said, will be digital photography. "That's going to take over this year," with digital movies on computer close behind. Those are the applications driving computer use today, he said, and most didn't exist six or seven years ago. The result is that most computer software in use today was designed for the old applications, not the new ones.

Apple's response was to rewrite the system from the ground up to accommodate the new things people want to do. Apple calls its new system "the digital hub." The new Macs allow people to create DVD movies and write them to disc, then send them to friends. Brian showed off the iPod, a pocket-sized device that holds 4.7 GB of music—"I have about 60 CDs on this right now." The iPod works as both an MP3 player and a FireWire hard drive that can be plugged into a Mac. It can be used to transport documents and other files. Digital cameras, video cameras, the iPod all plugging into one computer are the essence of the idea of the "digital hub" concept.

OS X was written for this environment, and "under the hood" is an incredibly stable Unix environment, Brian said, that will never crash. Because the basic networking is the same as what is used throughout the Internet, the system is "extremely compatible" with the Internet. Much hard work went into rendering the graphics in OS X, he added, with the goal of creating "an extremely compelling and beautiful environment that can do a lot of animation." Wireless networking is also built in, to provide mobility. The system also includes an "instant on" feature, which brings it from sleep state to ready instantly when a notebook is opened.

Because this is Apple, the focus was on "delivering the simplest experience possible to do all these new and innovative things." All the drivers are built in, and they work, so for example, when you buy a camera, all you do is plug it in. There's no need to download the drivers. Also, "the best Microsoft Office ever" is now available, beautifully implemented in OS X and totally compatible with the Office used under Windows.

Brian pointed out that many people are facing upgrades to make their computers capable of handling the new options, and "if you're going to deal with the hassle of upgrading, why not go the whole way" and go to Apple OS X? He then turned the microphone over to Chris Bourdon, product line manager of OS X, to do a demo of the system.

Chris pointed out that the slides Brian showed were created in PowerPoint for OS X, part of the new Office that had gone on sale only two days earlier. Chris opened a window with a picture of fruit, and showed how fluidly the system's graphics performed when moving and resizing windows. Like Windows, each window has three buttons at the top (top left on the Apple) for minimizing, maximizing, and closing the window. All windows also have a drop shadow with real depth, adding a dimensionality to the system. All text on the menus are fully anti-aliased, and the menus are translucent so backgrounds show through. This is an example of the effort Apple put into the graphics, which he called "light years ahead of what anyone else can do."

The Finder (somewhat like Windows Explorer) is another improved feature. The Finder is the file management tool in the operating system. Previously, opening windows would launch new windows, instead of opening them in the same window to reduce the litter on screen. OS X makes opening in the same window the default, with an option to open new windows if desired. The Finder window also includes quick access buttons to go to popular locations with one click.

Because the system was designed for multiple users, unlimited users can share a computer and each can have a personalized environment, a private home directory, their own desktop, etc. Icons in OS X are much better as well. Instead of the common 32 or 48 pixel size, the new system uses icons that are 128 by 128, and they are fully scalable and sizeable. The audience applauded the quality of the icons as he enlarged them. Many documents have preview pictures associated with them, he said, and now one can see the preview in the Finder window without having to open the document.

Like Windows, OS X has several different folder views, and Chris demonstrated them. He showed how a QuickTime movie plays in the Finder window, giving a preview without having to open the file. All of this contributes to giving more information about your system and the files in the system. The Mac has a system menu at the top of the screen, which is the menu for whatever application is open at the time. There is also an Apple menu, which provides access to functions and equipment on the computer.

Because OS X is based on Unix, it has many desirable features, like protected memory, which prevents the system from crashing when one application crashes. Chris demonstrated the "force quit" feature, which allows him to terminate an application without damaging other programs that are running. He said Mac users are now developing the habit of never rebooting their computers—"they just keep running and running and running."

At the bottom of the screen is the Dock, which is like the Quick Launch bar in Windows. It's a series of icons for things that are most often used, like Internet Explorer, e-mail, iTunes, and other tools. Document or folder icons can be stored there, too. Icons can be set to enlarge when the mouse rolls over them, so the user can easily see what they represent when a large number of icons forces small size on the Dock. "This is one of the most compelling features of OS X," Chris said, "being able to get to the things you use most frequently right there on the Dock."

Then he moved on to showing the new version of Microsoft Office, "an incredibly great version of Office." It uses many of the OS X technologies to look brighter and more transparent. Charts are smoother and look more professional, he demonstrated.

Apple has gone from being considered the most proprietary operating system, he said, to being the most open. The Unix core, which they call Darwin, is all open source. Finally, Brook Stein demonstrated how OS X interacts with the Windows environment. First, he said, Apple has standardized on USB as the connection interface for devices. So mice, keyboards, cameras, all connect through USB. Over 1800 software applications are specifically designed for OS X, and over 15,000 applications exist for the Mac.

Finally, in the area of networking, OS X "is really well-behaved," he said. And OS X will work with Windows networks, and allow exchanging files with Windows systems. He showed how he could moved files from a Windows machine running Word to a Mac, edit them, write them to a CD on the Mac, then take them back to the PC on the newly-written CD. The two computers can share drives and files, and can edit documents on each other's computers, using Office for each platform. Apple has put a lot of effort into making the Mac much more compatible with PCs, he concluded.

Brian ended the presentation by saying they'd tried to build the easiest and most powerful personal computer on the market, and asked those about to upgrade to "take a look, kick the tires," and see if it met their needs.

Storactive
Ken presented the second speaker of the evening, Mike Milley of Storactive, Inc. Mike got immediate cheers from the audience when Ken pointed out that Storactive provided the soft drinks and Storybook Lifesavers presented to those in attendance.

Mike thanked the SPCUG for the invitation to make a presentation. He identified Storactive as a company started up in 1997 and based in Marina del Rey, California (just north of the LA airport). The purpose of the company was to work on some new ideas for data protection and storage management. The first product hit the streets in late 1999.

Mike began his presentation of Storactive LiveBackup by telling the audience that the product is really aimed at data protection in an enterprise or corporate environment. Mike realized that not all of his audience was part of a large corporation, however, he would present some new ideas, and as technology quickly moves forward, the technology should become more practical for smaller environments and backup over the Internet.

Traditional forms of backup have gone through various iterations, as the classic backup vendors have gotten better at copying data from disk to tape. LiveBackup is based on the idea that there is a better approach to backup. Mike noted a couple of changes that have occurred in the corporate computing environment. Data has become less centralized than it has been in the past. As personal computers become more powerful, the data creeps out of the highly centralized protected environment onto desktops and laptops, thus enabling people to telecommute from their homes. So over time, the demands for data protection have changed. In today's world, more and more data is not accessible to traditional forms of backup simply because the data is on a laptop, and the laptop is not connected to the network, or else the data is on a machine that is not powered on.

In a traditional organization, there are instructions that come from the IT department that say "Copy your important data to the network so we can back it up." Mike asserted that really does not work. People forget, it is a hassle, it slows them down, and it is not really an effective approach to backup.

In a traditional over-the-network backup, you have a lot of client machines, many of which look similar. They all would have a copy of Windows, and a collection of applications critical to the organization. So there is an enormous amount of redundant data. In a traditional backup scenario, that data gets copied over the network many times—if not every night, then maybe a full backup on the weekends, then an incremental or differential backup during the week. It typically does not leverage data compression or redundancy elimination.

Another point Mike communicated is that traditional forms of backup are scheduled. They do not recognize that the most recent is the most relevant, the most important data. If you just spent all day on an important project, and if there is hardware failure or human error, you are interested in what you are working on now and not what you were working on some time ago that happened to be part of a scheduled backup.

LiveBackup is the implementation of a number of ideas that Storactive has had for doing a better form of backup. First, LiveBackup is a client/server architecture. Mike brought a server, running Windows 2000 Advanced Server, and a Windows 2000 client, connected through a crossover cable to create a small private network. LiveBackup is inherently network in its architecture. The key point of differentiation, compared to a traditional backup product, is that it is real time. If you make a change to a file on the client, the LiveBackup software that is resident on the client will capture the change—not the entire file, just the change—and using data compression and encryption, send it over the wire to the server. So the server, by having the base version and the changes, maintains continuously the logical file system of the client.

So, if you are familiar with a product called Ghost, you could think of the LiveBackup server as being able to generate a Ghost image that is continuously updated every time the file system on the client is changed. This puts the LiveBackup product in a position of doing a number of very important tasks, and these capabilities imply cost saving as the backup is initiated by the actions of the end user. In a traditional IS environment, in order to do a file recovery, you need an administrator to deal with tapes. It takes time and there is a lot of cost involved. Because this is an online form of backup, where all of the backup goes on a server and is maintained online, none of that overhead is required.

Mike touched on three basic functions that LiveBackup provides. The first is version recovery. Every time a file is changed, a new version is recorded on the server. A classic situation of why version recovery is necessary is when a user opens a template, makes modifications to the template, then instead of doing a Save As, they do a Save and overwrite the template. Mike asked, "Anybody ever done that?" Many in the audience had.

The second major capability of LiveBackup is to restore an earlier state of the system. Mike gave another classic scenario. There is a person based in the field, using a laptop. They take the laptop home and load a game for the kids. The game works fine. Later, they go forward and do some more work, maybe change a few documents. Then they discover that something does not work anymore. Microsoft conducts training courses, one of which is titled "How to deal with .dll hell." In other words, that game provided a different version of a .dll, probably a newer one, that the original application is not compatible with, so now the machine is in .dll hell. The way to get out of that is to have LiveBackup installed in advance. Go to the rollback wizard, and roll the system back to an earlier point in time. One of the neat features is that it can be done without changing all of the user data. The LiveBackup software understands the difference between system data and user data. So you can leave all of the documents in the current state and just roll the system back, effectively uninstalling that game.

The third major capability is called bare metal disaster recovery. If you have a hardware failure or a laptop gets lost or stolen, you are in a situation of going back to the beginning. You buy a brand new hard drive and install it, or replace the entire laptop. You now have a bare hard drive in place. You go to the server and create what is called a disaster recovery image, similar to a Ghost image.

You probably want to put the image on a blank CD, but you can do the recovery a number of different ways. Go to the newly repaired machine with the bare hard disk and boot from the CD. LiveBackup software will ask you one question. At that point LiveBackup will automatically partition the new drive, format the new drive, restore the disaster recovery image. You then reboot and have a healthy machine.

In case the image had been made six months before the disaster, the machine would be in the state it was in six months ago. No problem, just connect the client to the server. Go into the same dialog that would have rolled the machine back in time, but this time roll it forward in time right up to the last point that the client had connected to the server, which might have been just seconds before the disaster. So, compared to the state you could be in with a traditional backup product, you are far ahead.

Continuing, Mike did a quick review of the features of the LiveBackup server—not to train everyone on how to use it, just as overview of what it feels like. First, he covered the requirements. It is based on SQL Server, so a formal database is utilized. The advantage is that all of the communication that goes on between client and server has a database transaction context wrapped around it, so the product is robust. If you break the connection between the client and the server, there is no problem because when you reconnect you would get a transaction rollback. The user would not see this happening, but none of the data gets lost.

Mike demonstrated the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). The architecture is new and utilizes the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), an XML and HTTP transport. That is how the client talks to the server. The product can perform backups through firewalls. Basically if a web browser can access something, so can LiveBackup.

The server can have all of the storage and collect all of the versions, without being outrageously expensive, by using redundancy elimination and data compression. Windows and Office on the desktop get backed up only once. If a file gets sent from the client to the server, and the server already has a current copy, the server ignores the file. A module that Storactive calls LiveArchive is the back-end piece, where LiveArchive can go through the server, find old versions, and migrate them off to tape. This is something that typically would be done at night and on weekends by the system administrator.

The current version is capable of operating on NT4. The product that Mike used during his demonstration will ship in January and is intended for Windows 2000 Server and Microsoft SQL Server 2000. The LiveBackup client will operate on recent versions of Windows (95 and newer). The new version that ships in January 2002 will also support Windows XP.

Mike discussed a couple of terminology items, including mirroring and versioning. Mirroring is taking the entire file system from the client to the server. Versioning is where you accumulate changes to the file system from one point forward. LiveBackup also utilizes the concept of a checkpoint. Every time the client boots, or every time the client makes a request, the software makes a checkpoint on the server. It is a guaranteed point of consistency for open file handling.

Mike next discussed how the software handles disconnected computers. If you have a laptop connected to a network, every time you save a file, it goes from client to server. When you take your laptop away from the office and make changes, the changes get cached locally on the client. When you reconnect to the corporate server, LiveBackup updates your file changes on the server automatically. This could happen if you connected from a remote location, like at your hotel, when you connected to check your e-mail. While you are reading your e-mail, the file changes that were cached earlier would automatically filter back to the server.

Mike then demonstrated LiveBackup on the server side. He brought up the MMC, with the features that could be used by LiveBackup on the left-hand side, and the server name on the right-hand side.

A graph showed performance of data coming into the server. Another graph showed the space available on the server. A table showed all of the clients in the community and their history of file backups and recoveries. Alerts, where the administrator needs to do something, are highlighted in yellow. After the administrator reads the message, the color changes from yellow to white.

In multiple-administrator environments, completed tasks can be tagged as done. Properties can be defined for a group of clients. You can do full system protection, or user documents only. You can select which disk drives are to be protected. There are options to define what is user data, what is system data, what data can be discarded, and how to handle data aging. Older versions can be discarded or archived to tape.

The System Imaging Assistant is a wizard that helps the administrator create disaster recovery images. The Remote Rollback Assistant allows the administrator to rollback a user machine. So if the end user is remote and is not comfortable doing a recovery, the administrator (perhaps working at home) can rollback the client to repair the user machine.

The Migration Assistant provides the ability to take user data from one machine, and lay it down on a different machine. This can be very powerful; for example, if you have an entire department with various versions of Windows 98 and Windows NT, all with various data, and you want to bring them all to a common Windows 2000 situation. If all machines are on LiveBackup, all of the data is in the server's database. You can give all of the machines Windows 2000, Office, and the other common applications for the department. The whole department can be updated automatically overnight, keeping the user data intact.

There are three tiers of feature lockdown capability: for LiveBackup users, LiveBackup Power Users, and LiveBackup Super Users. This gives you the ability for some users to have more capabilities to use the LiveBackup product than other users.

The database is encrypted using Microsoft Crypto API, giving you many choices for encryption. The transport between client and server is also encrypted. The Single Instance Object System (SIOS) is how redundancy elimination is handled. LiveBackup also provides a wizard for backing up the server.

Mike next demonstrated the product on the desktop, from the user's perspective. Mike began by opening a document that he saved the previous night. He then pasted the entire document to double the file size, and saved the document. Then he made another change and saved again. There are two ways of retrieving the original file. First, you can click the Storactive icon in the Windows tray. You can recover a version, a folder, or roll the system back to a previous point in time.

There is a second method. In Windows Explorer, you can point at the file, right click, and select Undo Version, and choose the version you want to restore to. Mike selected the middle version and requested a preview of the document. He asked Ken to look at his server screen graphs to verify that data was moving back to the client (which Ken did). Mike cancelled out of the preview, then restored back, without a preview, to the original version. (Audience applause).

At this point, Mike requested user questions.

Audience: Is this similar to GoBack (a Roxio product)?

Mike said his understanding of GoBack is that it works entirely locally. So if you were do have a hard disk failure, you will also lose your backup. LiveBackup is more of an enterprise product and is much more robust. LiveBackup is the only product on the market that is real-time continuous.

Audience: Let's say an enterprise has hundreds of computers. What would the backup software do to network bandwidth?

Mike gave an example from experience. Storactive's biggest customer is Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto and they are seriously into measurement. They instrumented their traditional backup, an HP product called OmniBack, and LiveBackup, and let them both run for a month. At the end of the month, with similar client populations (but not identical) LiveBackup on an aggregate basis was moving half of the data over the network that OmniBack was. Mike asserted, using the data gathered by HP Labs, this means LiveBackup is more efficient.

Audience: For the file that you just restored on the client, can you now restore back to the newer version of the file?

Yes. I started with an original version and then created two more. When I restored the original version that actually became version number four. So it was in there once as the original, and then again as version number four. There is a complete history. You can keep as much history as there is space on the server. However, with the archive feature, you can push versions off to tape, so it becomes a question of how many tapes you want to buy. The user interface for recovery is identical whether it is online on the server or off-line on tape. If the version you need is on tape, the icon will be yellow, which means you can get the version back but you may need to wait for the administrator to mount the tape.