GUI for Spectrum Scale MMBACKUP function requested from MD Anderson Cancer Center

.This appears to be a duplicate of RFE 133246.

Due to processing by IBM, this request was reassigned to have the following updated attributes:
Brand - Servers and Systems Software
Product family - IBM Spectrum Scale
Product - Spectrum Scale (formerly known as GPFS) - Public RFEs
Component - Product functionality

For recording keeping, the previous attributes were:
Brand - Servers and Systems Software
Product family - IBM Spectrum Scale
Product - Spectrum Scale (formerly known as GPFS) - Public RFEs
Component - V4 Product functionality

You are very welcome!

Actually the answer to your question is that all of the questions you are asking are what they are pursuing as the problem they are trying to solve. It is as basic as the reason there is a Windows operating system (and of course all the other OSs out there) with a GUI interface instead of the old DOS (Disk Operating System in the case of Windows).

As an FYI in a bi-weekly meeting that we had this week with MD Anderson, it came to my attention that they have had non-public RFE that went through this same discussion and has been approved.

Do you have access to the non-public RFE request process for Scale "MMBACKUP"?

If you do can you look to see if you find the RFE from MD Anderson that has the "MMBACKUP" request that we are discussing.

I like the line of questions you are asking as long as we can connect on these points with cause for the customer.

You have me though at a disadvantage as you know who I am but I don't know who you are. What is your name and maybe we can talk over the phone instead of going back and forth every two weeks via this great but not intended for chat type discussions :-)

Hi Raul, I'm trying to understand more precisely what this means: "MD Anderson is looking for a way to calculate how much storage has been backed up with MMBACKUP and how much is left to be backed up specifically." To be precise, what I understood is that they *don't* want to calculate anything, they just want to be able to clearly see it :-)

But what I don't understand is what problem are they actually trying to solve? Do they want to know the remaining volume so that they can verify they have enough space for the backup? Are they trying to estimate the running time remaining? Or just wanting to see progress because they are concerned that a long-running backup might actually be hung?

Thanks for your input on this.

MD Anderson isn't looking for a solution based on command line entries and calculations. That's only intended as a statement of what they are pursuing.

MD Anderson is looking for a way to calculate how much storage has been backed up with MMBACKUP and how much is left to be backed up specifically.

They feel that in the modern era with products from every corridor providing GUI effective information streams MMBACKUP needs the interface.

Manual calculations as they explained are self defeating in that working knowledge at a depth required to enter the correct command sets to gain the information is an impediment at times.

They strongly feel that they shouldn't need to have to enter command line entries to obtain simple information such as this.

In MD Anderson's view the GUI helps you to see what's happening "at a glance".

The era of "command line" entry is under significant attack.

I know from a development standpoint that command line entries are second nature and you can do those literally with your eyes closed. Now take a user that doesn't have that experience with Spectrum Scale MMBackup and what you need in front of you is a GUI interface.

MD Anderson carries a lot of influence on their decisions in the region in Texas that they operate from and this is another in an area that would help us with the product's position in the industry.

All of your efforts are appreciated and not taken for granted so please do continue the conversation as well as consider the possibilities that are being asked about, with their great thanks.

You're knowledge of the product and thoughts are greatly respected.

What sort of calculations are you struggling with? The GUI might not be the best answer (or the most feasible)

Text from the original case:

Case TS002279140 (GPFS)
Crit Sit AB1835

Subject: mmbackup progress information needed by way of a GUI instead of the hand calculations that this original request went through.

Description:

This customer ran into multiple issues which prevented the mmbackup from running for about a month. Now, the issues with the Spectrum Protect server have been resolved and the mmbackup could be started again.

Customer estimated there was about 900 TB of data to back up.

The backup has now been running for 11 days and has backed up about 1.2 Petabytes. Customer would like to know how far along they are with the mmbackup and would like to know the amount of data that is left to back up.

This is critical data to backup and there is a CRITSIT (AB1835) opened for this customer via Spectrum Protect pmr 57993,004,000. A Spectrum Scale support person was needed to do the calculations to which if a GUI that is being recommended by this RFE could be created it would eliminate the difficulty of making that calculation.