DPM and the shower that tried to kill me

Microsoft Data Protection Manager (DPM)

I have a couple disparate topics to address today. 

First, I was just reading Computerworld’s story about the announcement of Microsoft’s new continuous data protection product called Data Protection Manager (DPM).  The Windows 2003 disk-to-disk software saves up to eight snapshots per day thereby allowing faster recovery and more save points for recovery.  Read the story at http://www.computerworld.com/hardwaretopics/storage/story/0,10801,104963,00.html?source=NLT_AM&nid=104963.  The beta shipped back in April of this year (http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/46051/46051.html). 

This seems like a really effective, low-cost high-availability solution.  Pricing starts at only $950 per server.  You can read all about it at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/dpm/default.mspx.

Next, I wanted to mention my latest travails while on the road to the PASS 2005 Community Summit (http://www.sqlpass.org).

This is my first experience where a shower has tried to kill me.    If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you know that I travel a lot between my job at Quest Software (http://www.quest.com/sql_server) and my volunteer work with PASS.  I’ve had some good trips and some really, really bad trips.  And this one, overall, is a good trip.  But it started off with a bang.

I arrived at the beautiful Gaylord Texan resort & conference center on Sunday night at about 8:00 pm.  I got the opportunity to meet most of the board of director members and staff for a great dinner and time for catching up.  After the meal and a drink, I decided to return to my room and freshen up before bed. 

The first lesson I learned was this – do not trust a shower with more than two knobs.  This shower had, in fact, four knobs and a control panel a bit above my regular line of site.

The second lesson I learned was this – do not enter a shower running with hot water until you know what every knob does.

Now the kicker is that I’m a softy when it comes to hot water.  I guess it comes from growing up in a house where I was the last kid to get into the shower in the morning after my dad and my brother.  Consequently, I grew up always taking luke warm showers.  As an adult, I’ve always like tepid showers.  So getting into this steaming hot shower was a painful shock.  So a grab the closets knob and give it a twist to turn down the temperature.  Bad move!

The knob I twisted immediately engaged the three other shower heads and one flexible shower wand, dowsing me in scorching water.  Ieeeee!  I ducked out of the way as best I could and turned the next knob.  This one had the temperatures marked in tiny letters, so I was feeling relieved and lucky. 

However, at this point I began to realize that the shower was steamy.  Really steamy.  In fact, I couldn’t hardly see my hand in front of my face.  And now that I thought about it, I couldn’t hardly breath the 110^o soggy air.  Yes, Charlotte, this shower had a sauna built in and it was somehow programmed to go off.  Ok – I’d had enough.  I threw the door open and jumped out, slipping, arms and legs akimbo across the tiled bathroom floor.

After recovering my balance, I went back to the shower, spotted the control panel and got the sauna shut down.  At last, I’d tamed the dragon.  Grumble, grumble, grumble.  Finally, I was able to enjoy a shower and get ready for bed.

So don’t forget – don’t trust a multi-knobbed, control paneled shower!

Best regards,

-Kevin