Did you know March 31st is World Backup Day?

Posted by Paul Braren on Mar 30 2016 in

Alright, I had never heard of it either, but figured it's as good a time as any to remind you that in addition to spring cleaning of HDD and SSD clutter, you may want to first take a moment to back up your system, or make sure your existing backups are valid!

nakivo

VMs

Looking for simple backup software to get all your VMware VMs backed up automatically, affordably, or possibly even for free? Includes de-duplication and compression, and available as a simple appliance you download and configure in minutes. See:

NAKIVO Backup & Replication 6.0 VMware appliance is an easy choice for VM backups, can be installed directly on a Western Digital or Synology NAS!

veeam-endpoint

PCs and/or VMs

Looking for simple backup software to get all your PCs and/or VMs backed up automatically, for free, by a reputable enterprise backup company? This slick UI even includes built-in service requests, which are also handled for free. See:

PCs and VMs in one repository

If you want to keep all your backups in one repository that can be replicated offsite, then your research should include:

Free NFR of Veeam Availability Suite v9 with Backup & Replication for VCPs, vExperts, and many other certified professionals

World Backup Day Pledge

The World Backup Day website is rather simple, encouraging you to publicly pledge:

worldbackupday.com
@WorldBackupDay

im-convinced

See also at TinkerTry

Your SSD drive will need >27GB free space on C: to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8, here's some clean-up tips

Necessity to sunset SuperServer Bundles

These systems still work great for many even 9+ years later, mine included, even with (unsupported) vSphere 8 and Windows 11 Version 21H2. But unless you added the optional TPM module, it may be the end of the line as far as repurposing them for running the latest Windows 11 Version 24H2 and beyond.

After 6 successful years testing then shipping well over 1,000 Xeon D Bundles, Wiredzone had to stop SuperServer bundles in mid-2021 due to cost, supply, and logistics challenges. Bare bones system sales continued for years longer.

What's next in 2025? I don't yet have my answer for my home lab, especially now that VCF certification is required to keep non-production home lab licenses going, even as a vExpert and VMUG Advantage EVALExperience customer.

As for a SuperServer follow-on, the Xeon D-1700/2700 (Ice Lake D) was a minor refresh for 2023, with Xeon D-1800/2800 (Granite Rapids D) refresh slightly better in 2024, and hopefully Xeon 6 (Granite Rapids-D) much better in 2025 featuring PCIe Gen5, MCRDIMMs, and 100GbE networking, wow! Feb. 27 2025 update update looks promising, but pricey. Infortunately, it's become clear to me that Supermicro is less focuses on the mini-tower form factor these days.

As for the CPU industry, it's unfortunate that Pat Gelsinger was apparently ousted from Intel's helm in these challenging times, but I'm also grateful to have had the honor of working at VMware when he was the CIO there. I'll leave it at that, given the whole Broadcom thing.