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Pensions tax loading additional pressure on paediatric workforce, according to RCPCH survey of members
5 December 2019
We surveyed 715 paediatricians in the UK to assess the effects of the pensions tax issue on services, morale, and work practices.
Pension tax and paediatrics - a consultant paediatrician's experience
5 December 2019
The pension tax legislation introduced in 2016 has had an unforeseen impact on senior clinicians in the NHS. In this blog, RCPCH Vice President for Education and Professional Development Camilla shares her experience of receiving a pension tax bill and urges all doctors to take a careful look at the...
Pension tax and paediatrics: Explainer
5 December 2019
The pension tax legislation introduced in 2016 has had an unforeseen impact on senior clinicians and poses a risk to the health service - and to its patients. In this blog, Policy Officer Grace Brown describes the impact of the pension tax rules on paediatrics and calls for a sustainable and fair so...
Confirmation of pensions fix welcome news for members, says RCPCH
22 November 2019
Today it was confirmed by Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of the NHS, that a short term solution to the pensions tax crisis has been agreed.
Long term, sustainable solution needed on pensions tax, says RCPCH
20 November 2019
Ministers and NHS leaders have signed off on an interim plan to address the pensions tax issue affecting doctors who take on extra hours.
College citation application window now open for Clinical Excellence Awards
19 November 2019
These fixed term awards recognise and reward the exceptional contribution of NHS consultants - over and above that normally expected in a post - to the values and goals of the NHS and to patient care.
RCPCH responds to GMC report on wellbeing for doctors
15 November 2019
Today the General Medical Council (GMC) published 'Caring for doctors, caring for patients', which sets out an ambitious and welcome vision for a health service that supports doctors' wellbeing and patient safety.
Our manifesto for the next UK government
13 November 2019
With the UK general election on the horizon, we have an opportunity to make our case, explains Russell, for urgent action on the challenges facing both our workforce and the children and young people we support.
RCPCH responds to Academy pensions consultation
5 November 2019
RCPCH participated in a consultation by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges about proposals to reform the NHS Pension Scheme.
Prominent speakers announced for the 2020 RCPCH Conference and exhibition
25 October 2019
Next year's RCPCH Conference will play host to a diverse line-up of prominent speakers who will take to the main stage over the three-day event.


text: On February 17, 2014, Eric J. Barron was named as the 18th President of The Pennsylvania State University and will assume responsibilities for the presidency on May 12. Dr. Barron has nearly 35 years of experience in academic administration, education, research and public service, as well as fiscal management within large and complex institutions. He has served as the president of Florida State University in Tallahassee since 2010, and has held several notable positions within higher education, including dean of Penn State's College of Earth and Mineral Sciences from 2002 to 2006. Please join the Penn State community in welcoming Dr. Barron to Penn State. Penn State University

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Modernize legacy toolsets and automate cumbersome manual processes and data entry
Optimize financial processes with integrated financial budgeting, planning, forecasting and modeling
Establish a single version of the truth across plans, budgets, lines of business, operating units and corporate
Reduce cycle time and enhance business agility by standardizing on a single solution with robust workflow
Accelerate disclosure and external reporting cycles. Meet regulatory requirements more quickly with more confidence
Improve accountability and transparency, with a complete audit trail across planning processes
CCH Tagetik's unified performance management solution for the Media & Entertainment industry delivers
Strategic Planning & Forecasting
Using CCH Tagetik's unified budgeting, planning, forecasting and modeling solution, effortlessly generate periodic and rolling forecasts. Since data automatically refreshes and populates reports, you eliminate manual data entry. With all strategic planning needs in a single solution, you can easily align business plans and operational budgets.
Project Planning
Project owners can add and monitor projects. Play out scenarios to optimize costs and capital structures. See how changes affect the P&L, cash flow and balance sheet. To manage the workload, project owners can load, enter and assign tasks without burdening system administrators.
Production & Capacity Planning
See how production plans impact sales, purchasing and financial plans, as well as P&L, balance sheet and cash flow. Link editorial and production costs with advertising, broadcasting and administration expenses when you combine production planning with other operational and financial planning.
Cash Flow Planning & Forecasting
With high working capital needs comes tighter operating cash flow. CCH Tagetik allows media and entertainment companies to keep a finger to the pulse of cash flow in real-time. See the cash-in/cash-out impact of expenditures and investments on cash flow plans, forecasts, and other performance documents — all the way down to the budget line item — so you can quickly assess the larger business impact.
Cost Allocation & Profitability Analysis
Allocate direct and indirect costs to any level of detail, including services, products, customer or sales associate to more accurately analyze profitability by product, segment, region and more. Using CCH Tagetik's allocation engine for expenses and activities, planners gain insights into lines that impact profitability and margin.
Seamless Close-to-Disclosure
Shave days off month end with CCH Tagetik's fast close. Consolidate figures, manage journals, create adjustments, conduct intercompany eliminations and reconciliation. Using financial intelligence and automation, cascade a single version of the truth across all management and statutory reports, presentations and financial statements.
Reporting & Analytics
Report creators from any department or skillset can easily generate analytics without depending on IT. Designed for ease-of-use, CCH Tagetik's reporting toolset includes drag-and-drop dashboards, data visualizations, custom reports and ad hoc analytics. This self-service analysis enables users to generate performance insights with the confidence they're using the right data.
Unified Corporate Performance Management
CCH Tagetik automates financial performance management across your enterprise using a single, modernized software solution. Purpose built for finance, CCH Tagetik is optimized for non-financial users and available on the Cloud, on-premises and your mobile device.
CCH Tagetik Software is trusted by leading companies in the Media & Entertainment industry
Consolidation & Reporting, Budgeting and Sustainability Reporting
Consolidation, Disclosure Management
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Consolidation, Budgeting and Planning
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CCH Tagetik has helped us develop a rhythm in our business cycle. It has supported our need to gain more insight and information from our data, and we're using it to make decisions that positively impact our strategic goals.
Ishfaq Is-haq - Head of Performance Management
CCH Tagetik provided HMH with a way to capture data easily, accurately in a database-type structure, and often enough to catch errors and identify opportunities for improvement.
Donna Ritchie - Vice President of Finance Publishing and Operations
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What happens when you discover that your Consolidation and Reporting system is not able to support your growth? Mark Pennington, Group Financial Controller and CFO at Tarsus Medical, talks about how he kicked off a productive Finance Transformation Journey by speeding and automating the Consolidation solution and integrating the Reporting process.
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The Joint Data Archiving Policy (JDAP) describes a requirement that data supporting publications be publicly available. This policy was adopted in a joint and coordinated fashion by many leading journals in the field of evolution in 2011, and JDAP has since been adopted by additional journals across various disciplines. Other journals are welcome to endorse and implement JDAP, or use it as a model.
Journals that adopt JDAP often recommend Dryad as an appropriate data repository, however, the JDAP initiative is distinct from Dryad.
JDAP consists of the following text:
[Journal] requires, as a condition for publication, that data supporting the results in the paper should be archived in an appropriate public archive, such as [list of approved archives here]. Data are important products of the scientific enterprise, and they should be preserved and usable for decades in the future. Authors may elect to have the data publicly available at time of publication, or, if the technology of the archive allows, may opt to embargo access to the data for a period up to a year after publication. Exceptions may be granted at the discretion of the editor, especially for sensitive information such as human subject data or the location of endangered species.
View recommended elements and examples of journal data policies.
No, only the data required to support the claims made in the publication need to be archived. Of course, you are welcome to archive more if you like. For recommendations on what and how to submit, see: Data archiving in ecology and evolution: best practices, MC Whitlock, (2010). Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 26 (2), p. 61-65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2010.11.006
When permitted by journal policy, data may be placed under embargo at the time it is archived, allowing you to prepare additional publications from the same original data. Both the JDAP and Dryad permit each data file to be placed under embargo for a period of one year from the publication of the associated article.
Facts in and of themselves are not eligible for copyright in most countries (e.g. see this commentary from Bitlaw regarding U.S. copyright law). Researchers who reuse data from Dryad are expected to follow community norms for scholarly communication and cite the original data authors, just as they would cite a published paper. Any reuse of the data for publication is expected to cite both the data and the original publication from which it was derived. See Submitting Data to Dryad for more information.
The journals behind the JDAP are committed to minimizing the burden on authors, while ensuring that important data is permanently archived.
All text on this page is available under a CC-BY 3.0 license. (opens in a new window)
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'Breaking Bad,' 'Modern Family' are top shows at Emmys
As Breaking Bad continues its intense journey to its final moments, its cast and crew were all smiles at the Emmy Awards.
With its series climax airing in a week, the AMC show won best drama series on Sunday night.
"Man, I did not see this coming," said creator Vince Gilligan, whom star Anna Gunn called a "mad genius" when accepting her outstanding supporting actress Emmy.
"I thought this was gonna be House of Cards," Gilligan added, "or it could've been Homeland, or it could've been Mad Men, or it could've been Game of Thrones or Downton Abbey, could've been any of 'em, and even some others who were not nominated in this golden age of television that we feel so proud to be a part of."
On the more humorous side, Modern Family pulled off its fourth consecutive win for best comedy series, and also added an Emmy for best directing.
"I cannot begin to express to you how surreal this ride has been, because none of us grew up feeling like winners," said Modern Family creator Steven Levitan. "So thank you to the bullies, to the popular kids, to the gym teachers who taunted us, who rejected us and who made fun of the way we ran. Without you we never would have gone into comedy!"
HBO's Behind the Candelabra won three Emmy Awards for best miniseries or movie, outstanding director for Steven Soderbergh and lead-actor honors for Michael Douglas, who played the flamboyant piano superstar Liberace.
"I hope all the people that deserve to be thanked will understand if I say that no matter what we all did, and no matter how well we did it, and no matter how much support we got, if Michael and Matt (Damon) don't show up with those performances, we don't have a movie," Soderbergh said.
In his acceptance speech, Douglas thanked his co-star, fellow nominee Matt Damon.
"You're magnificent," he said to Damon, "and the only reason I'm standing here is because of you, so you really deserve half of this, so do you want the bottom or the top? The top? I figured that."
In a bit of an upset over the likes of Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston, Homeland's Damian Lewis and Mad Men's Jon Hamm, Jeff Daniels won his first Emmy as Newsroom's larger-than-life cable newsman Will McAvoy.
"Well, crap! Didn't expect this, I usually don't win anything," Daniels said. "The last thing I won was a few years ago for Squid and the Whale. I won the best actor over 50 from the AARP. With all respect to the AARP, this is better."
Claire Danes won her second straight award for lead actress in a drama as CIA agent Carrie Mathison on Homeland. She took time on stage to acknowledge Henry Bromell, the Homeland producer who died of a heart attack at age 65 in March and was posthumously awarded with a best writing Emmy.
"We just love him so much. We think of him every day," said Danes, who thanked her cast and husband, actor Hugh Dancy, "for making me so whole and happy so I can be unhappy in the land of make-believe."
Oscar-winning actress Ellen Burstyn picked up her second Emmy for her supporting role on the miniseries Political Animals.
"I'm just glad I was on screen long enough for you to vote for me," Burstyn said. "I want to thank USA for putting this smart show on the air" as well as the creative team "who had the wisdom to write a woman over 65 who still had a lot of juice."
American Horror Story, which led all nominees with 17 total, was honored with a supporting actor Emmy for James Cromwell, who called the win "very strange."
Boardwalk Empire star Bobby Cannavale also won his first Emmy, for supporting actor in a drama series.
"I didn't write anything down, I can't believe I get to get mentioned with these other really incredible actors," he said. "Thank you for putting me with them. Mandy Patinkin's the first person I ever saw on stage, he's like my favorite person. But you know what, I have a family, so let me thank them."
Laura Linney won outstanding lead actress in a miniseries or movie for The Big C but wasn't there to accept the award at the ceremony hosted by Neil Patrick Harris. Thankfully, Matt Damon was.
"Laura couldn't be here tonight. She's such a great actress that she didn't even need to show up," he joked.
Like on their show Veep, Julia Louis-Dreyfus had Tony Hale for help to accept her second straight Emmy for leading actress in a comedy.
"This is so much good fortune it's almost too much to bear," said Louis-Dreyfus, who started thanking folks. Hale whispered "Family, family" to her from behind, causing her to excitedly state, "I'd like to thank my family!"
Everything you need to know about Emmys
The Big Bang Theory star Jim Parsons won his third Emmy for lead actor in a comedy. "Boy, I want you to know that I'm very aware of how exceedingly fortunate I am," he said during his acceptance speech.
Merritt Wever won her first Emmy for outstanding supporting actress in a comedy for Nurse Jackie, and had arguably one of the shortest speeches in recent memory: "Thanks so much. Thank you so much. I gotta go, bye."
Tina Fey accepted the best writing Emmy for comedy for 30 Rock and said she was sharing the award with her partner of seven years, Robert Carlock. "There are not that many people that make me feel lazy and stupid, and you make me feel that way every day."
Hale won best supporting actor in a comedy, and was honored to be in the same field as the other nominees.
"Here's the deal. Even to be on a list with those guys is crazy humbling. This is mind-blowing," Hale said.
Saturday Night Live won for outstanding directing of a variety show, Dancing WIth the Stars was honored with best choreography, and Stephen Colbert accepted two Emmys, for best variety and outstanding writing for The Colbert Report.
"Wow, the Emmys are so good this year. Something special about it, I'm not sure what," Colbert joked, thanking his writing team "who give me all the stupidest things to say.
"We want to thank anybody who's willing to come on and talk to that stupid person I play on TV. Personally, I want to thank my wife for being so cruel and sexy."
Colbert also made special mention of his mother, who died earlier this year, and thanked her for "not worrying about me and believing that I'd be OK."
Glee's Jane Lynch led a tribute to her late co-star, Cory Monteith, who died of a drug and alcohol overdose in July.
"Cory was a beautiful soul. He was not perfect, which many of us here tonight can relate to. His death is a tragic reminder of the rapacious, senseless destruction that is brought on by addiction," Lynch said. "If you were lucky enough to know Cory as we did, and witness firsthand Cory's goofy, breezy sense of humor, his natural instinct for inclusiveness and his unbridled sense of generosity day in and day out, I promise you have loved him even more."
Edie Falco also honored her late co-star on The Sopranos, James Gandolfini: "You all knew James Gandolfini the actor. I was lucky enough to know Jim the man for 10 years as his close colleague and his pretend partner and for many more years as his friend. And it's Jim the man, the very dear man, that i will miss most of all."
The video service Netflix made history by winning its first Emmy: a best directing award to David Fincher for the drama House of Cards. It's the first Emmy to go to a show not aired on a traditional TV station or network.
The Voice won for best reality program and The Hour won for outstanding writing in a miniseries or movie.
Among pre-broadcast awards, Project Runway's Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn won their second straight Emmy for outstanding host of a reality program. Bob Newhart (The Big Bang Theory) and Melissa Leo (Louie) won guest actor and guest actress in a comedy series, respectively, and Carrie Preston (The Good Wife) and Dan Bucatinsky (Scandal) won in the drama guest-star categories.


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February 9, 2019 @ 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
Kids Do Art Program
This program is for children to get creative, have fun and let their imagination run free!
Every week new opportunities will be presented for children to play with clay, pencils, paint, collage, and construct from a variety of materials. Come and join us!
What they will learn:
- Children will be encouraged to paint, draw and construct from their imagination.
- Children will learn about being creative.
- Children will learn how to work with a variety of materials.
What they will get: Children will take home something they have made and the feeling of being creative, guided and supported.
What to Bring: All materials will be supplied.
What to Wear: Wear clothes that can get dirty!
Details: All sessions are $10 per child per hour. Pay on the day – no pre-booking required. Held at Hands on Art, 150 Enoggera Terrace, Paddington.
Need to ask a question or find out more?


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BRSITOL, Tenn. – For the first time in their last three home games, there was no precipitation falling for the King University women's soccer game as they hosted Virginia Intermont College on Saturday. The Tornado took advantage of the near perfect weather conditions as Rayna Spears gave King the lead in the fourth minute. Rachel Thorpe added a pair of goals as the Tornado topped their crosstown rivals 3-0.
Spears took a throw in from Keely Easterling and dribbled the ball through the Cobra defense and ripped a shot from the top of the box in the middle of the field. The ball found the back of the net, just out of the reach of the Cobra keeper to put King on top.
The Tornado (2-6) kept the pressure on Virginia Intermont (0-8), and broke through again in the 22nd minute when Bekah Ramstack slid a through ball to Thorpe in the middle of the field. Once she was behind the defense, Thorpe beat the keeper on the right side to extend the Tornado lead to 2-0.
King continued to pressure throughout the rest of the first half, and all of the second half as they outshot the Cobras 25-2 in the contest. Virginia Intermont's best scoring chance came in the 88th minute, but Tornado keeper Morgan Lawson smothered the shot to keep the shutout intact.
In the final minute, Thorpe added an insurance goal as she took a pass from Devon Shanklin and ripped her shot from the left side of the net past the keeper to give King the 3-0 win.
Thorpe placed four of her team-high eight shots on net, with two goals while Easterling, Ramstack and Shanklin all registering assists in the win. The Tornado also had seven corner kicks while holding Virginia Intermont to no corners.
King will be in action again when they return to Conference Carolinas play against Limestone College. Kickoff from King's Parks Field is scheduled for 1:00 p.m.


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VALDOSTA - Georgia Southwestern scored three runs on three hits in the first inning, but was held scoreless the rest of the way scattering four hits in a non-conference baseball matchup at Valdosta State on Wednesday evening as the Blazers went on to a 7-3 win.
GSW has lost four of its last five games and falls to 3-16 this spring. VSU improves to 8-6.
The Hurricanes came out swinging at Billy Grant Field on Wednesday, jumping to a 3-0 lead in the first inning after RBI singles from Gabby Ramirez and Blane Parker. With a hit batter, two singles and a walk, VSU starter Ben Watson was quickly pulled from the game. Dom Demasi allowed the single to Parker before settling in for 2 2/3 innings of scoreless relief.
The three-run inning gives GSW a total of 13 runs scored in the first inning this season making the opening frame its most productive inning of the game. The 13 runs account for almost 20 percent of the 'Canes offense through the opening 19 contests.
VSU quickly answered with a pair of runs in the bottom half of the inning and took the lead for good in the third when two more runners crossed the plate.
A pair of singles around a walk in the fourth gave the Blue & Gold its best opportunity to recapture the lead, but the final two batters of the frame went down quietly and GSW was left with the bases loaded.
The Blazers added single runs in the fifth, seventh and eighth.
The Hurricanes put three more runners on in the ninth behind their final two hits and a VSU error, but left the bases juiced once again to end the game.
Ramirez and Corey Benson collected two hits apiece to lead GSW at the plate. Parker drove in two. Michel Coffey extended his hitting streak to 10 games with a single in the fourth inning.
Ryan Noelte, Chaz Bagwell, Christian Glisson and Cooper Lemonds had two hits apiece for VSU. Bagwell scored three runs. Glisson score twice and both of his hits were doubles. Bagwell belted a solo home run in the seventh inning.
Hunter Thompson (0-1) made his first start of the spring for the Hurricanes. He allowed five runs - three earned - in 4 1/3 innings while walking one and striking out five. Cameron Blinn pitched 2 2/3 innings (one run) before Gray Carden entered for the eighth (one run).
Benjamin Weil (1-0) earned the win for VSU after 4 2/3 innings of scoreless relief. Steven Groves pitched a scoreless ninth.
GSW returns to conference play this weekend when Lander comes to Americus for a three-game series that opens with a doubleheader on Saturday at 1 p.m.


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WESTERVILLE, Ohio (Blugolds.com) - The UW-Eau Claire women's basketball team handily defeated Frostburg State (Md.) 72-43, on the second and final day of the Smokey Ballenger Classic at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio.
The Blugolds came out strong in the first half, quickly climbing to a 42-21 lead at halftime. They never turned back, outscoring Frostburg State 30-22 in the second half.
Eau Claire was led by Teenie Lichtfuss (Fr.-Oshkosh, Wis./Lourdes), who recorded 14 points for the game. All of her points came in the first half of the game.
Also scoring in double figures for the Blugolds were Sarah Bingea (Sr.-Delano, Minn.), who had 12 points, and Leah Rempert (Sr.-Lake Geneva, Wis./Badger), who recorded 10 points off of the bench.
A key to Eau Claire's victory was its ability to control the boards. The Blugolds out-rebounded Frostburg State 40-25. Bingea and forward Courtney Lewis (So.-Prairie Du Chien, Wis.) led the Blugolds with seven rebounds each.
The win marks the third straight victory for the Blugolds. They are now 7-5 overall while Frostburg drops to 4-8 on the year.
The Blugolds will look to extend their win streak when they play Capital (Ohio) on Monday. The game will be played at the Capital Center in Ohio, at 2 p.m. Eastern.


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LaFerrari is queen of France
What better setting than the Grand Palais in Paris for "LaFerrari", the queen of cars, to make its debut on French soil? The new special limited edition car from Maranello was a magnet for over 200 journalists who attended its premiere this afternoon on the opening day of the Tour Auto Optic 2000. Around 250 cars will take part in the event which wends its way through the streets of L'Hexagone from tomorrow to 27 April and they were all at the Grand Palais to celebrate "LaFerrari". Amongst them some older supercars that are part of Prancing Horse history.
Enrico Galliera, Ferrari's Commercial and Marketing Director, pulled the wraps off the first hybrid car produced in Maranello, which is also the star attraction at a gala cocktail this evening for over four hundred customers who will be able to see for themselves the best example of technology, exclusivity and passion ever built by Ferrari.


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"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much!"
– Helen Keller
When we talk team, we include our vast network of fundraising professionals with whom we collaborate. Together, we work seamlessly (and have a lot of fun), helping our clients pull off the best events possible. It's our teamwork that helps clients ease the workload while garnering record-breaking results.
"We thought we were hiring an auctioneer. We were wrong. With Kelly we have a fundraising partner who consults and guides us on virtually all aspects of the event. She has brought the same high energy that makes her live auctioneering so successful to pre-event planning and brainstorming and the impact has been huge. She even follows up after then event to help detail what worked and what should have worked differently so that we can improve again next year."
"We love having Kelly lead our brainstorming kick-off party for our annual auction! Kelly's energy is contagious, and she does a great job of getting our committee off to a great start. She helps our volunteers generate new and interesting auction ideas, and gets them excited about the possibilities. Kelly's extensive experience also helps direct the group into pursing auction items that really work. At the end of the party, Kelly encourages volunteers to take responsibility for procurement of the items they suggested, and gets them to work."
"Kelly is confident, straight forward, and always delivers. She creates a warm, fun atmosphere by engaging the audience, and she embodies the passion of our mission in her delivery. During our planning for the event, she engaged with us strategically, because she always has our best interest in mind. She genuinely wants our event to be a success."
"Kelly Russell Artisan Auctions is a pleasure to work with and her professionalism, enthusiasm, and experience added a great deal to the fun and success of our event. Every comment about her work in our post-auction survey was positive!"
"We knew we needed a professional auctioneer to achieve our fundraising goals. Kelly's advice and guidance made all the difference. She was easy to work with, brought invaluable advice to maximize our fundraising success, and took command of the event floor to make that success happen, all the while making the experience easy for us and a great time for our guests."
"Hiring Artisan Auctions was one of the first things I recommended when I joined Bradley Angle. As fundraisers, we do a lot of work to make sure that our donors come to our events ready to give. But we all need on-stage partners to help us bring those gifts home. Kelly Russell and her team make sure my guests leave having spent a little more money than they intended to and feeling great about supporting survivors of domestic violence as they take back control of their lives. I couldn't ask for more."
Do you want an enthusiastic and trustworthy fundraising partner for your next auction? Kelly Russell is your woman!
I've had the pleasure of hiring Kelly several years running for PHAME's signature "Sparkle!" gala, and she always goes above and beyond in the pre-event consulting and advising work, [as well] the night of event execution. I trust her completely to handle a huge event that accounts for 40% of our annual operating revenue, with an endless list of details and complications that she handles effortlessly with a seemingly unlimited reserve of goodwill AND good fun!
We raise more money with Kelly as our event auctioneer -- period.
In our 23rd year of hosting one of the premiere fundraising events in Greater Lafayette, we were fortunate to discover Kelly Russell and Artisan Auctions. We knew we needed to make several modifications to the event, but did not have the internal experience to know the best direction. Kelly walked our team through an entire revamp of the event. It took patience and convincing on her part, but our team took the leap of faith, and adopted Kelly's plan.
Fortunately for our school system we did! The 23rd Blue Knight Auction was a complete success! We spent less time purchasing items and more time focused on our mission and donors. Our appeal, which had started to decrease, was the largest ever. Guests who had attended for years said it was the best one ever! It was an exciting evening and we look forward to growing upon the success next year. We asked Kelly back before she even left the building.


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If you don't mind the atrocious handling, the office gray paintjob and the association with mankind's greatest mass murderer, you can party like a mustached Georgian with nukes and an evil empire to command.
It's called the ZIS 110 and even the name is a fantastic reflection of post-World War II times. ZIS stands for Zavod imeni Stalina, which offers a brutally simple translation: factory named after Stalin!
For gourmets of Americana, the shape will be strikingly familiar. Expanding on the wartime collaboration between the US and the Soviet Union, the 110 is nothing but a sovietified 1942 Super Eight, originally made by the factory named after the brothers Packard.
This was Stalin's parade car for the last three of the vicious years between the end of World War II and his death in 1953. Mileage is then rather low: a scant 793 miles. But imagine spending 793 miles sticking out of a car, waving to your terrorized subjects, moving along on scarred postwar roads, and it suddenly sounds a rather heroic achievement, at least for the dictatorial deltoid, trapezius and brachioradialis muscles involved.
Inside, you'll find wood, carpets, a lazy—think 140-hp—6-liter
V8 straight eight, and legroom which is fairly surreal when you consider that Stalin was not exactly NBA material at 5'6".
The car is located, of all places, in the town of Kannus in Western Finland. Anyone considering a trip to pick the car up would be advised to only drive it on Finnish soil towards the nearest border to avoid running into dudes who look like Olympic biathletes but are not.
Photo Credit: JamesList (where you can see many more photographs of the ZIS, both current and historic), Atlantic City Classic Car Auction, Talvisodan pikkujättiläinen


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Hi! Remember me? A long time ago, I used to blog here.
So, last time I wrote, I was off to my first destination bachelorette party. The destination, it can now be told (OK, it was already told repeatedly on Twitter last weekend), was Vegas. The bride, one of my oldest and dearest, works for a big, giant corporation that owns several casino resorts. Said big, giant corporation is not in the habit of comping its employees, on accounta they've got a bazillion employees and that would get spendy, but the bride and some of her local friends were able to call in a few favors and get us some ridiculous free shit, including rooms, a cabana by the pool for Saturday afternoon, and numerous free bottles of booze — including some at two different clubs of the sort I didn't even frequent when I was 21, which is really the only time you'd want to.
So we all had a total blast, duh. But it was one of those total blast events I spent so fucking much time stressing about beforehand, it's kind of a wonder I did manage to enjoy it. First of all, I didn't realize there would be quite so much free shit, and with a book tour coming up, I was worried about spending too much money on comparatively frivolous travel. But that was really the only practical, reasonable stress. All the rest of it — and it was a lot — was self-image shit.
Not just body image shit — though gearing up to wear a bathing suit in public can still throw me for a bit of a loop. (As I said in comments on the bathing suit shopping post, it's not even really fat shame anymore, just general prudishness; I'm simply not comfortable with anyone but Al and my doctor seeing that much of my naked flesh. And really, I'm not that comfortable with my doctor seeing it.) No, I was just all-around obsessed with how I'd present myself — i.e., making the fatal mistake, not for the first time, of assuming that anyone else really gives a rat's ass how I present myself. Especially when I'm standing next to a woman wearing 4-inch heels, a white feather boa, and rhinestones spelling out "bride" across her shoulder.
The problem was this: I didn't know most of the other women who would be there. And even though I knew the bride would never be friends with assholes, I just couldn't tamp down the following fears:
- They'd all be girlier, cuter, better dressed, more at home in bathing suits and fancy clubs, etc., than I am. (Actually true, overall — it just didn't ultimately matter a bit.)
- There was a strong likelihood of running into diet talk, given that it was a group of 10 women. (Also true, but it was minimal.)
- Some of them might look at me like I had 3 heads, all of which were about to be diagnosed separately with diabetes and heart disease, when I told them what I write about. (Not true!)
Now, about 85% of this stress manifested as me going, "WHAT THE FUCK AM I GOING TO WEAR NO REALLY WHAT THE FUCK?" — I wasn't having panic attacks or anything. But it was a good lesson in how much the stability of my self-image can depend on context. Still. After two years of blogging and writing half a book purporting to share the secrets of my awesome self-image.
Don't get me wrong — I DO have an awesome self-image, both generally speaking and especially compared to what it used to be. Overall, I'm plenty confident and often enough arrogant. It's just, there's still that "what it used to be" part lurking underneath, and certain situations can bring it shooting up to the surface. I can stand on a stage and read to an audience, write opinionated blog posts, get loud and stupid with my friends, wear skintight yoga pants in a class full of hardbodies, moderate the fuck out of comments, and talk easily to reporters, all without worrying too much about what anyone thinks. But put me in a group that's mostly people I don't know and ask me to socialize OR ask me to spend an entire afternoon wearing a bathing suit in public, and I am suddenly self-conscious as all hell. Ask me to do both at once, and I'm suddenly a useless pile of WHAT THE FUCK AM I GOING TO WEAR NO REALLY WHAT THE FUCK OMG OMG OMG THIS MIGHT ACTUALLY KILL ME.
But here's the difference between me now and me when my self-image was like 90% suck: I went anyway. I didn't talk myself out of it because I was so afraid the potential for being judged negatively outweighed the potential for fun. When I asked myself "What's the worst that could happen?" the answer was, "Some of [bride's] friends don't like me." Bride would continue to like me anyway, as would another one of our oldest and dearest who would also be in attendance. It seemed highly implausible that all 7 of the other women would find me repulsive, so it was unlikely that I'd get stuck with no one at all to talk to, or that a bunch of grown-ass women, including two of my oldest friends, would gang up on me like a pack of hostile 7th-graders. At the absolute worst, I'd get a polite brush-off from a couple of people I would only have to see one more time in my life. WAIT, THAT'S ALL I'VE BEEN FUCKING FREAKING OUT ABOUT?
So I went. I went, and I had a blast. What's more, my very favorite part of the weekend was the part that involved wearing a bathing suit in public. (As it turned out, the day was cooler than expected, so I ended up wearing sweats over my suit most of the time I wasn't in the pool or hot tub — so much for all the anxiety about finding a sufficiently adorable suit and cover-up combo.) I lovelovelove to be in the water, and I have now learned that I REALLY love to sit in a private cabana and have people come and refill my drink while I'm not in the water. (This is a bittersweet bit of new knowledge, since the likelihood of my ever having access to a free cabana again is about equal to the likelihood that I'll ever have enough disposable income to just pay for one, i.e., nil.) And of course, I loved all of the bride's friends I got to talk to for longer than 5 minutes, and I'm sure I would equally love the ones I didn't. Most of my fears did not come true, and those that did turned out to be irrelevant anyway. (Oh noes! 90 seconds of throwaway diet talk!)
All this should surprise exactly no one, least of all me. But when you're an anxiety-prone person who's still overcoming decades of self-hatred — even if you've written half a book about how not to hate yourself so damn much — it's still so easy to get wrapped up in the fear of not being charming enough and smart enough and funny enough and bikini-ready enough to survive an unfamiliar social situation. Not so many years ago, I probably would have decided to skip the whole thing, purely because I knew I was likely to be the fattest person there by a considerable margin (which I was). I would have convinced myself that all of them — including the two I've been friends with for plus or minus 20 years — would be humiliated to be seen with me, disgusted by having to look at me in a bathing suit, and thus either terribly awkward (my friends) or downright cruel (all the rest). And the thing is, none of that would have been true then, either. But I never would have found out the fears were bullshit. I never would have found out that flitting between a cabana and an enormous pool all afternoon is pretty much my idea of heaven (though again, it might have been better if I never did find that out). Not to mention, I would have missed a celebration in honor of one of my oldest and dearest — all because of my own fucking insecurity.
I still get alternately angry and weepy when I think about how much I used to hold myself back, how much I chose to miss out on, because I was so worried that people would think I was too fat/ugly/dull/irritating/etc. — mostly fat and ugly — to deserve to take part in whatever fun activity was on the table. It wasn't even that I didn't think I deserved it, necessarily — but that I believed everyone else would be looking at me and thinking, "Who the hell does she think she is?" (I mean, wearing a bathing suit at a pool! Can you imagine THE NERVE?)
The first mistake, of course, was believing that everyone — or anyone, really — would be looking at me at all, much less long enough to form a strong opinion about my body and/or character. It is kind of amazing how closely related insecurity is to egotism. But the other mistake was believing that the risk of being judged was always greater than the potential fun of putting myself out there. I mean, how could I possibly enjoy swimming, or lying by the pool, or drinking fruity drinks, or dancing, if there might be someone nearby thinking, "Damn, she needs to put those thighs away." Oh, wait — I would still be swimming, lying by the pool, drinking fruity drinks, dancing. These are INTRINSICALLY ENJOYABLE ACTIVITIES in my book. It would take a lot more than a dirty look from a stranger to make those things not fun.
Of course, sometimes you get a lot more than a dirty look. (And people fatter than me get a lot more a lot more often.) But as Lesley said in a brilliant post (which happens to be reprinted in the book) a while back:
Given the choice between restricting my movements and being assured of never being catcalled again, versus going out shamelessly and risking (or demanding!) attention – I will gladly take the latter. I like being visible. Even when I become a bull's-eye upon which the insecurities and savagery of others are exorcised. Even when I lose time processing and remembering the emotional risks I take just by being myself, time I would have otherwise spent relaxing in the sunshine. When I first began my self-acceptance process, I decided first off that I never wanted to feel afraid of what those people – those who would mercilessly catcall me from a moving car, for example – might think or say about my body again. I never wanted to avoid life out of fear. And I'm still there, still fighting to be fearless.
So I say fuck those people. I'll be on that beach tomorrow, and this weekend, and for months to come, and if they don't like it, good, I'm glad to displease them.
And as my lovely co-author said just today:
I would rather be seen than be invisible. I would rather exist as a vocal and visual body than as a silent and hiding one, occupied mostly with minimizing myself.
Right on. I may never be completely rid of all those old fears, but these days, I feel strong enough to fight them, instead of rolling over and letting them win. That's the big difference between having a mostly positive self-image and a mostly crap one. And I can tell you this much with absolute confidence: The next time someone invites me to spend an afternoon in a free cabana by a ridiculously gorgeous pool (oh please, let there be a next time), I will immediately say yes.


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The newest addition to the Heart of Knoxville,is the Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites Knoxville West at Papermill! We are conveniently located to I-75/ I-40 at Exit 383, just a short drive to Downtown Knoxville, the University of Tennessee campus, Knoxville Convention Center, West Town Mall and Turkey Creek Shopping. With our World Class Service and many Knoxville Businesses, Restaurants, Shopping and Attractions minutes from our front door, you'll discover why our guests have selected us as their Preferred Hotel in Knoxville!
This state-of-the-art Hotel features special in room amenities such as free high speed Internet access, Microwave and Refrigerator, 47" Flat Panel HDTVand Free Local Calls. Whether you are staying with us for Business or Pleasure, take time to relax and enjoy our indoor heated swimming pool, business center, wireless Internet access in all public areas and fitness center.
Points of InterestCompanies:Pilot Corp, Flying J, Team Health & Bush BrosUniversities:University of Tennessee, Pellissippi State & Knoxville CollegeHospitals:UT Medical, Fort Sanders, Parkwest & Mercy Health PartnersLocal Attractions:West Town Mall, Thompson-Boling Arena, Neyland Stadium, Knoxville Civic Coliseum, Regal Cinemas, Knoxville Zoo, Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, Three Rivers Rambler, Bijou Theatre, Tennessee Theater, Ijams Nature Center & Zuma Fun Center.
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Fan Noise
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Fan noise:
- The internal electronics require a controlled temperature in order to function reliably. The cooktop is fitted with a fan which runs at various speeds according to the temperature detected during cooktop and/or oven operation.
- The fan may also continue to run even after the cooktop and/or oven has been switched off, if the temperature it detects is too high. In some cases the fan may run for an extended period of time. This is part of normal operation.
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The College of Science encourages undergraduates to reach beyond the traditional classroom learning and enhance their education by participating in hands-on learning through a research experience. In collaborations with faculty, graduate students, technical staff, and peers, undergraduates have the opportunity to become part of the process of discovering new information and technologies while working on real world problems. Become a part of world-class research ranging from the search for life on Mars to the study of complex diseases such as cancer.
SCI 392/492 Directed Research (1-6 units per term, Fall/Spring/Summer)
Individual or small group research under the guidance of faculty associated with research centers in the College of Science. Students may register for a maximum of 12 units of Directed Research units over their career. Grades available: A,B,C,D,E.
In order to approved for enrollment into SCI 392 or 492, students must secure the permission of the professor, complete and submit a Directed Research Proposal Form, and follow all dates and deadlines for adding the units of credit as outlined on the Registrar's website for dates and deadlines.
Students can search for research opportunities through the Office of Undergraduate Research.
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Youthful Hands Needle Crafts has been selling on the web since 2005, and we've been hand painting and hand dyeing sunny*dyes fabrics since 2007. We're members of TNNA (The National Needlework Association).
We design unique fabrics for cross stitch, embroidery, and quilting, specializing in scenes from nature such as: sunrises, sunsets, snowy days, the seaside, and fabrics with stars, crescent moons and full moons.
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text:
The present invention relates to a method for performing an image level copy of an information store. The present invention comprises performing a snapshot of an information store that indexes the contents of the information store, retrieving data associated with the contents of the information store from a file allocation table, copying the contents of the information store to a storage device based on the snapshot, and associating the retrieved data with the copied contents to provide file system information for the copied contents.
Latest COMMVAULT SYSTEMS, INC. Patents:
- Job management and resource allocation in a data protection system
- Fast deduplication data verification
- Filtered reference copy of secondary storage data in a data storage system
- Dynamic triggering of block-level backups based on block change thresholds and corresponding file identities using communication pathways between co-resident data agents
- Replication using deduplicated secondary copy data
The present application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/951,773, filed on Nov. 22, 2010, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/433,238, filed Apr. 30, 2009, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,840,533, issued Nov. 23, 2010, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/990,353, filed Nov. 15, 2004, U.S. Pat. No. 7,539,707, issued May 26, 2009, which is based on and claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application Nos. 60/519,876 and 60/519,576, each filed on Nov. 13, 2003. These applications are incorporated by reference herein in their entirety.COPYRIGHT NOTICE
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosures, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.RELATED APPLICATIONS
This application is related to the following patents, each of which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety:
- U.S. Pat. No. 6,418,478, entitled "PIPELINED HIGH SPEED DATA TRANSFER MECHANISM," issued Jul. 9, 2002, attorney docket number 4982/6;
- application Ser. No. 09/610,738, entitled "MODULAR BACKUP AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM USED IN CONJUNCTION WITH A STORAGE AREA NETWORK," filed Jul. 6, 2000, attorney docket number 4982/8;
- application Ser. No. 09/744,268, entitled "LOGICAL VIEW AND ACCESS TO PHYSICAL STORAGE IN MODULAR DATA AND STORAGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM," filed Jan. 30, 2001, attorney docket number 4982110;
- Application Ser. No. 60/409,183, entitled "DYNAMIC STORAGE DEVICE POOLING IN A COMPUTER SYSTEM," filed Sep. 9, 2002, attorney docket number 4982118PROV;
- application Ser. No. 10/681,386 entitled "SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MANAGING STORED DATA," filed Oct. 7, 2003, attorney docket number 4982129; and
- Application Ser. No. 60/460,234, entitled "SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PERFORMING STORAGE OPERATIONS IN A COMPUTER NETWORK," filed Apr. 3, 2003, attorney docket number 4982/35PROV.
The invention disclosed herein relates generally to a system and method for performing a snapshot and for restoring data. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for performing snapshots of an information store, which are stored across multiple storage devices, and for restoring partial or full snapshots.
To obtain a more thorough understanding of the present invention, the following discussion provides additional understanding regarding the manner is which magnetic media is used to store information. Using traditional techniques, copies of an information store are performed using the operating system's file system. Copying is done by accessing the operating system's (OS) file system for the information store to be backed-up, such as the Windows NTFS file system. The file allocation system of the operating system typically uses a file allocation table to keep track of the physical or logical clusters across which each file in the information store is stored. Also called an allocation unit, a cluster is a given number of disk sectors that are treated as a unit, each disk sector storing a number of bytes of data. This unit, the cluster, is the smallest unit of storage the operating system can manage. For example, on a computer running Microsoft's Windows 95 operating system, the OS uses the Windows F AT32 32-bit file allocation table having a cluster size to 4K. The number of sectors is determined when the disk is formatted by a formatting program, generally, but not necessarily, when the OS is installed.
The operating system allocates disk space for a file only when needed. That is, the data space is not preallocated but allocated dynamically. The space is allocated one cluster at a time, where a cluster is a given number of consecutive disk sectors. The clusters for a file are chained together, and kept track of, by entries in a file allocation table (FAT).
The clusters are arranged on the disk to minimize the disk head movement. For example, all of the space on a track is allocated before moving on to the next track. This is accomplished by using the sequential sectors on the lowest-numbered cylinder of the lowest numbered platter, then all sectors in the cylinder on the next platter, and so on, until all sectors on all platters of the cylinder are used. This is performed sequentially across the entire disk, for example, the next sector to be used will be sector 1 on platter 0 of the next cylinder.
For a hard (fixed) disk, FAT, sector, cluster, etc. size is determined when a disk formatting program formats the disk, and are based on the size of the partition. To locate all of the data that is associated with a particular file stored on a hard disk, the starting cluster of the file is obtained from the directory entry, then the FAT is referenced to locate the next cluster associated with the file. Essentially, the FAT is a linked list of pointers to clusters on the disk, e.g., each 16-bit FAT entry for a file points to the next sequential cluster used for that file. The last entry for a file in the FAT has a number indicating that no more clusters follow. This number can be from FFF8 to FFFF (base 16) inclusive.
A sixteen-byte section of a FAT 20 is depicted. The first four bytes 21 store system information. A two-byte pair, bytes four and five (16), are the beginning bytes of the FAT 20 used to track file information. The first cluster for data space on all disks is cluster "02." Therefore, bytes four and five (16) are associated with the first cluster of disk sectors "02" used to store file information. Bytes six and seven (22) are associated with cluster "03" . . . and bytes fourteen and fifteen (24) are associated with cluster "07."
This example illustrates how sectors associated with a file referenced in a directory are located. The cluster information bytes 14 in the directory 2 point to cluster number "02." The sectors in cluster "02" (not shown), contain the initial sector of data for the referenced file. Next, the FAT is referenced to see if additional clusters are used to store the file information. FAT bytes four and five (16) were pointed to by the cluster information bytes 14, and the information stored in bytes four and five (16) in the FAT 20 point to the next cluster used for the file. Here, the next cluster is "OS". Accordingly, cluster "OS" contains the next sector of data for the referenced file. FAT bytes ten and eleven (26) contain an end-of-file flag, "FFFF," indicating there are no more clusters associated with the referenced file. All of the information comprising the referenced file, therefore, is contained in clusters "02" and "05" on the disk.
As with other applications running on the computer, a typical backup application provides a read request to the operating system, which handles interpretation of the information contained in the FAT and reading of each file for the backup application. A file system is provided on the storage device that is used by the backup application to write files that are copied to the device. Similarly, the recovery portion of the backup application, or a separate recovery application, may read files from the storage device for recovery of the information.
Inherent problems and disadvantages have been discovered with currently available systems and methods for archiving data contained in an information store. One technique is to perform a full copy of the data contained in the information store. Utilizing this technique results in two separate copies of the information store, and the length of time it takes to make this kind of copy is related to the amount of data copied and the speed of the disk subsystem. For example, assuming a transfer rate of 25 MB/sec, the approach will take one hour to copy 90 GB of data. These techniques, however, in addition to other disadvantages, require the applications on the information store to be quiesced during the copy routine. This places a significant burden on system administrators to complete copying and get critical systems back into the production environment as, absent a high-speed data bus, the copying may consume a significant amount of time to complete.
Administrators typically keep multiple copies of a given information store. Unfortunately, this has the drawback of requiring n times the amount of space of the information store to maintain n copies, which can be quite expensive to store, in addition to requiring complex and time consuming techniques for restoration of the copied data.
One currently available alternative is to perform snapshots of an information store. With current snapshot systems and methods, administrators create an incremental copy that is an exact point-in-time replica of the source volume each time a snapshot is taken. A series of snapshot are stored locally on the information store from which it was taken and track incremental changes to the data in the information store. Furthermore, changed data is written to a new location in the information store as tracked by the snapshot. With knowledge regarding the change, as well as the changed data, the snapshot can be used to "roll back" changes to an information store to the point in time when the snapshot was taken. If there should be any logical corruption in the information store's data that went undetected for a period of time, however, these incremental updates faithfully replicate that logical corruption to the data when copying. Additionally, other drawbacks are associated with currently know snapshot techniques, including the significant drawback of preventing restoration from the snapshot in the event that the information store fails, as both the snapshot and the information store become unavailable.
Systems and methods are needed, therefore, that overcome problems associated with currently known techniques for taking, maintaining and restoring snapshots.SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention addresses, among other things, the problems discussed above with copying up data using systems and methods known to those of skill in the art. The invention provides systems and methods for performing n snapshots of an information store, without requiring n times the space of the information store, and storing those snapshots in multiple destinations across a network.
One embodiment of the system of the present invention creates the snapshots by taking a snapshot that indexes only clusters for files that were created or changed since the last snapshot. A snapshots, tn, is restored by restoring the clusters from the snapshot tn. The clusters that were not restored from snapshot tn are restored from snapshot tn−}, etc., until the remaining clusters are restored from the first snapshot, snapshot t0.
In accordance with some aspects of the present invention, multiple snapshots are kept on a storage device, without requiring n times the space of the total volume of the information store. The system creates snapshots at various points in time that index only clusters for files that were created or changed since the last snapshot, and creates a copy of the data that has been changed or created. This allows users to keep several snapshots without requiring n times the space of the total volume of the information store.
In some embodiments, the system stores a map, which may be part of a snapshot, to track specific files and folders with their corresponding copied clusters. The map created by reading data from the file allocation table of the information store and associates files and folders with the clusters stored in the snapshots. In this way, even though the snapshot was performed at the cluster level, individual or groups of files and/or folders may be restored without unnecessarily restoring the entire information store.
The invention is illustrated in the figures of the accompanying drawings which are meant to be exemplary and not limiting, in which like references are intended to refer to like or corresponding parts, and in which:
With reference to
As shown, the system of
A data agent 95 is a software module that is generally responsible for retrieving data from an information store 90 for copies, snapshots, archiving, migration, and recovery of data stored in an information store 90 or other memory location, e.g., hard disc drive. Each client computer 85 preferably has at least one data agent 95 and the system can support many client computers 85. The data agent 95 provides an interface to an information store 90 to execute copies, snapshots, archiving, migration, recovery and other storage operations on data in conjunction with one or more media agents 105. According to one embodiment, each client 85 runs a number of data agents 95, wherein each data agent is configured to interface with data generated by or from a specific application, e.g., a first data agent to interface with Microsoft Exchange data and a second data agent to interface with Oracle database data. As is explained in greater detail herein, a data agent 95 is III communication with one or more media agents 105 to effect the distributed storage of snapshots on one or more storage devices 115 that are remote from the information store that is the source of the snapshot 90.
The storage manager 100 is a software module or application that coordinates and controls other components comprising the system, e.g., data and media agents, 95 and 105, respectively. The storage manager 100 communicates with data 95 and media 105 agents to control and manage snapshot creation, migration, recovery and other storage operations. According to one embodiment, the storage manger 100 maintains data in a storage manager index cache 120 that instructs a given data agent 95 to work in conjunction with a specific media agent 105 to store snapshots on one or more storage devices 115.
The storage manager 100 maintains a storage manager index cache 120. Data in the storage manager index cache 120, which the storage manager 100 collects from data agents 95, media agents 105, user and other applications, is used to indicate, track and associate: logical relationships and associations between components of the system, user preferences, management tasks, and other data that is useful to the system. For example, the storage manager index cache 120 may contain data that tracks logical associations between media agents 105 and storage devices 115. The storage manager index cache 120 may also contain data that tracks the status of storage operations to be performed, storage patterns such as media use, storage space growth, network bandwidth, service level agreement ("SLA") compliance levels, data protection levels, storage policy information, storage criteria associated with user preferences, data retention criteria, storage operation preferences, and other storage-related information.
A media agent 105 is a software module that transfers data in conjunction with one or more data agents 95, as directed by the storage manager 100, between an information store 90 and one or more storage devices 115, such as a tape library, a magnetic media storage device, an optical media storage device, or other storage device. The media agent 105 communicates with and controls the one or more storage devices 115. According to one embodiment, the media agent 105 may communicate with the storage device 115 via a local bus, such as a SCSI adaptor. Alternatively, the storage device 115 may communicate with the data agent 105 via a Storage Area Network ("SAN"). Other types of communication techniques, protocols and media are contemplated as falling within the scope of the invention.
The media agent 105 receives snapshots, preferably with the changed data that is tracked by the snapshot, from one or more data agents 95 and determines one or more storage devices 115 to which it should write the snapshot. According to one embodiment, the media agent 1 05 applies load-balancing algorithms to select a storage device 115 to which it writes the snapshot. Alternatively, the storage manager 100 instructs the media agent 1 05 as to which storage device 115 the snapshot should be written. In this manner, snapshots from a given information store 90 may be written to one or more storage devices 115, ensuring data is available for restoration purposes in the event that the information store fails. Either the media agent or the storage manager 100 records the storage device on which the snapshot is written in a replication volume table 102, thereby allowing the snapshot to be located when required for restoring the information store 90.
A media agent 105 maintains a media agent index cache 110 that stores index data the system generates during snapshot, migration, and restore operations. For example, storage operations for Microsoft Exchange data generate application specific index data regarding the substantive Exchange data. Similarly, other applications may be capable of generating application specific data during a copy or snapshot. This data is generally described as metadata, and may be stored in the media agent index cache 110. The media agent index cache 110 may track data that includes, for example, information regarding the location of stored data on a given volume. The media agent index cache 110 may also track data that includes, but is not limited to, file names, sizes, creation dates, formats, application types, and other file-related information, information regarding one or more clients associated stored data, information regarding one or more storage policies, storage criteria, storage preferences, compression information, retention related information, encryption related information, and stream related information. Index data provides the system with an efficient mechanism for locating user files during storage operations such as copying, performing snapshots and recovery.
This index data is preferably stored with the snapshot that is backed up to the storage device 115, although it is not required, and the media agent 105 that controls the storage operation may also write an additional copy of the index data to its media agent index cache 110. The data in the media agent index cache 110 is thus readily available to the system for use in storage operations and other activities without having to be first retrieved from the storage device 115.
In order to track the location of snapshots, the system uses a database table or similar data structure, referred to herein as a replication volume table 102. The replication volume table 102, among other advantages, facilitates the tracking of multiple snapshots across multiple storage devices 115. For example, the system might, as directed by a policy or a user, store a first snapshot to on first storage device A, such as a tape drive or library, and then store subsequent snapshots containing only the changed cluster(s), tn, on a second storage device B, such as an optical drive or library. Alternatively, instructions may be stored within system components, e.g., a storage manger 100 or media agent 105, directing the storage devices 115 used to store snapshots. Information regarding the storage device 115 to which the snapshot is written, as well as other information regarding the snapshot generally, is written to the replication volume table 102. An exemplary structure according to one embodiment is as follows:
In the exemplary replication volume table, id is a unique identification number assigned by the system to the snapshot; PointInTime represents the date and time that the snapshot was created; CreationTime represents the date and time that the snapshot was completed; ModifyTime is the recorded date and time of the snapshot taken prior to the current snapshot; Current state is an identifier used to indicate a current status of the snapshot (e.g. pending, completed, unfinished, etc.); PrimaryVolumeId is the identifier for the information store 90 from which the snapshot is being made; PhysicalVolumeId is a hardware identifier for the information store 90; RVScratchVolumeId is an identifier for a scratch volume, which in some embodiments may be used to buffer additional memory as known to those of skill in the art; Flags contains a 32 bit word for various settings such as whether a snapshot has been taken previously, etc.; JobId stores the identifier for the job as assigned by a storage management module; and the Snap VolumeId points to the physical destination storage device 115 to which the snapshot is written.
As each snapshot indexes an information store at a given point in time, a mechanism must be provided that allows the snapshots taken of an information store to be chronologically related so that they are properly used for restoring an information store 90. According to the replication volume table 102, the CurrentRole integer may store a value for the relative position of a given snapshot in hierarchy of snapshots taken from a given information store 90 (e.g. first (to), second (tl), t2, t3, etc.)
In some embodiments, components of the system may reside on and be executed by a single computer. According to this embodiment, a data agent 95, media agent 105 and storage manager 100 are located at the client computer 85 to coordinate and direct local copying, archiving, migration, and retrieval application functions among one or more storage devices 115 that are remote or distinct from the information store 90. This embodiment is further described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/610,738.
One embodiment of a method for using the system of the present invention to perform snapshots is illustrated in the flow diagram of
Advantageously, the snapshot and data copied from the information store may be written to a storage device that is remote or different from the information store, step 302, e.g., local data from a given information store is written to a storage device attached to a network. The selection of a destination storage device for the snapshot may be accomplished using one or more techniques known to those of skill in the art. For example, a fixed mapping may be provided indicating a storage device for which all snapshots and copied or changed data should be written. Alternatively, an algorithm may be implemented to dynamically select a storage device from among a number of storage devices available on a network. For example, a storage manager may select a media agent to handle the transfer of the snapshot and copied data to a specific storage device based on criteria such as available bandwidth, other scheduled storage operations, media availability, storage policies, storage preferences, or other consider considerations. The snapshot, preferably along with the data from the information store, is written to the selected destination storage device, step 304. According to certain embodiments, the snapshot contains information regarding the files and folders that are tracked by the snapshot. Alternatively, the information regarding the files and folders that are indexed by the snapshot, e.g., file system information, are stored on the storage device.
One embodiment of a snapshot used to track clusters read from the information store to clusters in a snapshot, as well as to map file and folder names corresponding to the snapshot clusters, is illustrated in
The snapshot 350 is used to associate the original cluster numbers from an information store with clusters on a storage device, which in the present embodiment is a magnetic tape. It should be appreciated by those of skill in the art that the present invention is not limited to magnetic tape, and that the systems and methods described herein may be applicable to using snapshots with other storage technologies, e.g., storing disk geometry data to identify the location of a cluster on a storage device, such as a hard disk drive.
The tape offsets 356 for the clusters 372 in the snapshot 370 are mapped to original disk cluster information 352. File and folder names 354 may be scanned from the information store's FAT and also mapped to the tape offsets 356. A file part column 358 in the snapshot tracks the clusters 372 for each file and folder where each file and folder contains an entry for the first cluster 372. For files or folders that are stored in more than one cluster, sometimes not in contiguous clusters, the offset table entry for each further cluster is numbered consecutively 358.
In order to identify the files and folders represented by the stored clusters 372, e.g., changed data, in the snapshot 370, the map may exclude data from columns relating to the original disc clusters 352 and last snapshot 360. In order to keep track of changed verses unchanged clusters, however, the original disk cluster information 352 is stored in the map 350. Other information may also be stored in the map 350, such as timestamps for last edit and creation dates of the files.
For each snapshot, even though only clusters that have been changed or created since a previous snapshot are tracked in a given snapshot after the initial snapshot to, the snapshot may be provided with the data from all previous snapshots to provide the latest snapshot with folder and file information such that an index of the entire information store is maintained concurrently each snapshot. Alternatively, this may be bypassed in favor of creating a snapshot that indexes all data at a given point in time in the information store and copying only changed data.
Entries from each snapshot 350 may also contain a last-snapshot field 360 that holds an identifier for the last snapshot containing the cluster indexed by the entry at the time the current snapshot was created. According to an alternative embodiment, e.g., for snapshots that do not store the information from the information store's FAT, the snapshot only tracks clusters stored in the information store with the clusters indexed by the snapshot. For those embodiments, the snapshot 350 contains neither file and folder information 345 nor file part information 358.
Returning to
For each snapshot, tn, that is taken of the information store, a comparison is performed such that only the clusters which have changed or been created since the last snapshot, tn.)' was taken of that volume are stored, step 310. For example, in some embodiments the data agent employs a block filter or similar construct known to those of skill in the art to compare snapshot tn with tn-i and thereby detect changed clusters on an information store. Alternatively, the data agent may use other techniques know in the art, such as Copy on Write ("COW"), to identify changed data on an information store. If a given cluster in the information store has changed since the last snapshot in which the cluster appears, or if the cluster from the information store was created subsequent to the last snapshot, then the cluster is read from information store and stored with the new snapshot being written to the storage device, step 3 14.
A determination is made regarding the given storage device to which the snapshot and changed data (which may also include newly created data) is to be written, step 316. Techniques such as those described in conjunction with storage of the initial snapshot, steps 302 and 304, may also be employed regarding storage of subsequent snapshots. Advantageously, the initial snapshot and any subsequent snapshot may written to any storage device available in the network. Furthermore, there is no limitation to the combination of devices used to store the snapshots for a given information store. For example, an initial snapshot may be written to storage device A, a second and third snapshots may be written to storage device B, and a fourth snapshot may be written to storage device C. Regardless of the storage device that is selected, step 316, the replication volume table is updated to reflect the location, step 318, allowing snapshots to be located when a user requests to restore the information store from which the snapshots were taken.
System administrators use stored snapshots, in conjunction with the changed data that the snapshot indexes or tracks, to recover lost or corrupted information.
When the user selects a snapshot, the storage manager performs a query of the replication volume table to identify all previous snapshots for an information store from which the selected snapshot was taken, step 404. This may be accomplished by performing a search on the replication volume table for all snapshots with the same PrimaryVolumeId or PhysicalVolumeId. Starting with the selected snapshot, for each snapshot in the query result, loop 406, the storage manager directs a given media agent, in conjunction with a given data agent, to read and restore all clusters of changed data not already restored from clusters indexed by a prior snapshot, e.g., the latest version of each cluster, step 408. According to one embodiment, this is accomplished by restoring the clusters indexed by each of the snapshots in the query result, starting with the original snapshot, and overwriting clusters indexed by the original snapshot with changed clusters indexed by subsequent snapshots up to the snapshot representing the point in time selected by the user or system process. As an alternative, the last snapshot field of the selected snapshot may be utilized to determine the snapshots that should be utilized in the restore operation. The latest version of each cluster, starting with those indexed by the selected snapshot, is then restored, step 408.
As discussed above, embodiments of the invention are contemplated wherein FAT information of the information store is stored in conjunction with a given snapshot, e.g. the file and folder information corresponding to the clusters of changed data indexed by a given snapshot. Accordingly, the storage manager may allow the user to select individual files and/or folders to be selected for restoration from a snapshot. With reference to
When the user desires to restore the information store to a given point in time, the user interface allows the user to view the files and folders indexed by a snapshot representing the point in time as if the user were viewing a folder structure on a storage device, step 500. The storage manager retrieves the file and folder information for changed data that is indexed by one or more snapshots for display. Once one or more files and/or folders are selected, step 502, the storage manager selects those snapshots that index the given version of the files and/or folders using the replication volume table, step 502. Each snapshot indexing data for the one or more files to be restored are opened serially, loop 506. The changed data for the selected files and folders that are indexed by the snapshots are restored from clusters indexed by each snapshot, step 508, but not overwriting clusters indexed by prior snapshots.
While the invention has been described and illustrated in connection with preferred embodiments, many variations and modifications as will be evident to those skilled in this art may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the. invention, and the invention is thus not to be limited to the precise details of methodology or construction set forth above as such variations and modification are intended to be included within the scope of the invention.
1. (canceled)
2. A method in a computing system of creating snapshots for an information store, the method comprising:
- performing a first snapshot of one or more files in an information store at a first time, the one or more files being associated with clusters of data stored in the information store;
- storing the first snapshot in computer storage that is separate from the information store;
- performing a second snapshot of the one or more files in the information store at a second time, the second time occurring after the first time;
- comparing the second snapshot to the first snapshot to identify clusters of data associated with the one or more files that changed after the first time and before the second time;
- storing the second snapshot and copies of the changed clusters of data in computer storage that is separate from the information store; and
- automatically indexing the second snapshot, wherein said indexing includes storing data indicating that the copies of the changed clusters are stored in association with the second snapshot.
3. The method of claim 2, wherein the second snapshot is automatically indexed in a system catalog containing file system information.
4. The method of claim 2, wherein said automatically indexing includes storing data indicating where in the second storage device the copies of the changed clusters are stored.
5. The method of claim 2, wherein said automatically indexing the second snapshot includes identifying one or more previously saved snapshots where previous copies of the changed clusters were stored, if any.
6. The method of claim 2, wherein said automatically indexing the second snapshot includes storing file data indicating what files or folders the changed clusters are associated with.
7. The method of claim 6, wherein the file data includes a file name associated with one or more of the changed clusters.
8. The method of claim 2, further comprising storing copies of each of the one or more files in association with the first snapshot.
9. The method of claim 2, further comprising identifying a plurality of snapshots stored in association with a copy of a first cluster or file, and restoring the first cluster or file at least partially by reading each of the copies of the first cluster or file.
10. An electronic file storage system configured to create snapshots for an information store, the system comprising:
- computer hardware comprising one or more computer processors;
- a storage manager module configured to execute in the one or more computer processors and configured to: direct performance of a first snapshot of one or more files in an information store at a first time, the one or more files being associated with clusters of data stored in the information store; store the first snapshot in a first storage device that is different than the information store; direct performance of a second snapshot of the one or more files in the information store at a second time, the second time occurring after the first time; compare the second snapshot to the first snapshot to identify clusters of data associated with the one or more files that changed after the first time and before the second time; store the second snapshot and copies of the changed clusters of data in a second storage device that is different than the information store; and automatically index the second snapshot, wherein said indexing includes storing data indicating that the copies of the changed clusters are stored in association with the second snapshot.
11. The system of claim 10, wherein the storage manager is configured to automatically index the second snapshot in a system catalog containing file system information.
12. The system of claim 10, wherein the storage manager is configured to automatically index the second snapshot at least partially by storing data indicating where in the second storage device the copies of the changed clusters are stored.
13. The system of claim 10, wherein the storage manager is configured to automatically index the second snapshot at least partially by identifying one or more previously-saved snapshots where previous copies of the changed clusters were stored, in any.
14. The system of claim 10, wherein the storage manager is configured to automatically index the second snapshot at least partially by storing file data indicating what files or folders the changed clusters are associated with.
15. The system of claim 14, wherein the file data includes a file name associated with one or more of the changed clusters.
16. The system of claim 10, wherein the storage manager is further configured to store copies of each of the one or more files in association with the first snapshot.
17. The method of claim 10, wherein the storage manager is further configured to identify a plurality of snapshots stored in association with a copy of a first cluster or file, and restore the first cluster or file at least partially by reading each of the copies of the first cluster or file.
18. A computing system comprising:
- an information store having clusters of data associated with a plurality of files stored thereon;
- computer storage separate from the information store, the computer storage having stored thereon: a first snapshot of the plurality of files, the first snapshot having been stored in the computer storage at a first time; a second snapshot of the plurality of files, the second snapshot having been stored in the computer storage at a second time; copies of clusters of data associated with the plurality of files that changed between the first time and the second time; and an index of the second snapshot including data indicating that the copies of the changed clusters are stored in association with the second snapshot.
Type: Application
Filed: May 24, 2012
Publication Date: Jan 3, 2013
Patent Grant number: 8645320
Applicant: COMMVAULT SYSTEMS, INC. (OceanPort, NJ)
Inventors: Anand Prahlad (East Brunswick, NJ), David Ngo (Shrewsbury, NJ), Prakash Varadharajan (Oldbridge, NJ), Rahual Pawar (Ocean, NJ), Avinash Kumar (Ocean, NJ)
Application Number: 13/480,321
International Classification: G06F 17/30 (20060101);


text:
An article in the Wall Street Journal by Francis Rocca today discusses the potential return of meatless Fridays in Great Britain.
Every year during the 40 days of Lent, millions of Catholics honor Jesus's crucifixion by foregoing meat in their Friday meals. But starting this September, if the bishops of England and Wales have their way, Catholics there will abstain from meat every Friday, year-round. This change marks the revival of a practice that the church abandoned a half-century ago—and it's the latest of several in recent years.
Catholic tradition calls for acts of penance every Friday, the day of Jesus's death, but observance of that tradition has changed dramatically since the modernizing reforms that followed the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). Bishops in most countries eliminated abstinence from meat or limited it to Lent alone, and each Catholic became free to choose his own form of Friday penance: skipping television, perhaps, or taking the stairs instead of the elevator. This effectively meant the disappearance of Friday penance altogether. In my 11 years of Catholic schooling, I don't recall hearing it mentioned once.
That's why the announcement by the bishops of England and Wales is so significant. To anyone with a taste for sushi or smoked salmon, missing hamburger once a week might present little inconvenience. But then, lightly beating one's breast, as Catholics do in one version of the Penitential rite during Mass, isn't a serious form of corporal mortification either. Catholicism is a fundamentally symbolic religion whose teachings are typically embodied in conventional signs and gestures.
That last sentence is particularly intriguing. One might quibble with Catholicism being described as a "fundamentally symbolic religion," but there's no doubt as to the importance of the little things that make up our identity as Catholics. This paragraph further along in the article explains why this is all so important.
Sociologists such as Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, who study the behavior of "religious economies," have observed that churches tend to lose vigor when they relax demands on adherents, especially those tenets and practices that cut against the grain of wider society. In economic terms, lowering the "costs" of membership in this way ends up diminishing its benefits, among other ways by loosening the bonds of community.
This is what bothers me with the Novus Ordo. The first time I ever attended a non-Catholic Christian service (In this case Presbyterian) it felt hardly distinguishable from a Catholic Mass, although the small cups of grape juice being passed around at Communion did seem odd to me. That's because I had only ever attended a Novus Ordo Mass. One of the many great things about the Extraordinary Form of the Mass is how markedly different it is from other Christian worship services. Sure the essential elements bear strong resemblances to one another, but no one would ever walk into the middle of an traditional Latin Mass and think they were in a Lutheran church.
At any rate, I applaud the Bishops for attempting to restore this valuable tradition. For a few years I've made a concerted effort to go meatless on Fridays year-round, though I confess to being not quite 100% successful in this endeavor. It is certainly something worth pursuing.
H/t: Rich Leonardi.


text:
On December 26, 2019
Boxing Day
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text:
BOISE — When the 2014 Idaho legislative session convenes Jan. 6, Idaho Farm Bureau Federation lobbyists will be involved in several pieces of legislation that could benefit farmers and ranchers.
That includes a possible modification of state statutes to make it easier for farmers and ranchers to comply with the posting requirements of Idaho's trespass laws.
Current Idaho law requires private property owners to post large signs with high-visibility paint at the beginning and ending of their property lines and every 660 feet in-between.
Farm bureau members would like to change the provision of state law that deals with farmers and ranchers whose property has limited access. In that case, they would only be required to post signs at the beginning and ending points of their property.
"If you have a large tract of grazing land or something like that and access only in one spot, there's no point in requiring you to have a 100-square-inch sign with high-visibility paint every 660 feet," said Dennis Tanikuni, IFBF's assistant director of governmental affairs.
IFBF officials also plan to work with communications groups and scrap dealers on legislation designed to cut down on the number of metal thefts occurring on farms.
Metal thefts from farms and ranches can cause major collateral damage, Tanikuni said. "It may only be a few hundred dollars worth of metal but if you have to fly a motor in from the East Coast, it can cause thousands of dollars worth of crop damage if you can't water your crops for several days," he said. "It can be a big issue."
Russ Hendricks, IFBF's director of governmental affairs, said farm bureau expects to see and support a bill that would stop the indexing of Idaho's homeowner's exemption to rising or declining home prices.
The Idaho Tax Commission is required to recompute the homeowner's exemption each year based on the average increase or decrease in housing prices across the state.
This indexing provision has pushed the exemption as high as $104,000 in previous years. It fell to $81,000 during the recession but is expected to rise to $83,000 this year.
The indexing provision is shifting taxes to agriculture and other businesses, Hendricks said.
Bob Geddes, who handles natural resources issues for IFBF, said he expects to see some legislation related to aquifer recharge emerge during the session.
"There's really no one who disagrees with recharge," he said. "The question is, how and where do we do it and how do … we reimburse those water rights holders?"
And IFBF, which represents almost 15,000 people actively engaged in agriculture, will use its clout to fight back any attempt to change Idaho's open range law, which permits livestock to roam freely outside of cities and herd districts.
"There has been talk about possible changes to Idaho's open range law this year," Hendricks said. "We strongly oppose any change to (the) law."


text:
MOUNTAIN VIEW — Google (GOOG) Thursday morning unveiled the early rollout of same-day, Bay Area delivery service for shoppers who use Google to make their online purchases.
Shoppers from San Jose and up the Peninsula to San Francisco can apply to test the same-day delivery service at www.google.com/shopping/express/about/.
Both Google and Facebook are trying to cut into the e-commerce trade currently dominated by the likes of Amazon and Walmart.com as a way to find new sources of revenue while keeping people engaged.
Bay Area shoppers who are initially selected for Google's trial service will get same-day delivery of items they purchase through Google Shopping Express from big-name retailers that include Target, Walgreens, Staples, American Eagle, Toys "R" Us/Babies "R" Us, as well as local companies that include Raley's Nob Hill Foods, San Francisco's Blue Bottle Coffee and Palo Alto Toy & Sport.
Google is not disclosing how many Bay Area shoppers will actually get to use the service during the soft rollout.
But a source close to the project said that orders can be delivered within hours and will come directly from the closest store shelves and not from centralized distribution centers that could delay delivery.
Shoppers will be allowed to select delivery-time windows, the source said, and items ordered as late as 5 p.m. are designed to be delivered no later than 9 p.m. that night.
Google is working with several delivery companies in the Bay Area but all drivers will wear Google Shopping Express uniforms and their trucks will carry the Google brand.
Contact Dan Nakaso at 408-271-3648. Follow him at Twitter.com/dannakaso.


text: People with hypothyroidism is always looking for natural thyroid treatment instead of choosing conventional medication. The reason is simply because traditional medicine to solve thyroid symptoms hasn't established a great reputation for providing a long-term solution for hypothyroidism. In this article we present a proven natural thyroid treatment program developed …Read More »