ZFS Time Slider Demo (5 minutes)

Description

This demo works best if the audience doesn't know what it's about to begin with. In this demo we "accidentally" delete the presentation we're about to deliver. Do we have to pack up and go home - no, thanks to Time Slider!

OpenSolaris Versions Supported

OpenSolaris 2008.11 or higher.

Points to Hit

• Time Slider is a differentiating feature providing strong motivation to consider OpenSolaris
• Time Slider is a GUI on top of the ZFS file system.

Demo Prep

The directory housing your presentation must be under Time Slider control (and it should have been to begin with).

Gotchas

None known.

Demo

• Tell the audience you need to make a slight modification to your presentation. It's best if this occurs before you get to the Time Slider Demo page.
• Press esc to get your presentation our of slide show view.
• Switch to the Slide Sorter view and select your current slide and all the slides following.
• "Accidentally" hit the delete key.
• Oops. Let's undo that delete. "Accidentally" hit ctrl+s instead of ctrl+z.
• Oops again. I guess the presentations over .
• Wait a minute, I've got Time Slider turned on...
• Close the presentation.
• Open the File Browser and navigate to the directory containing your presentation.
• Open the Snapshot History browser and explain the interface (number of snapshots, space used, etc.)

• Switch to the List View and look at the Restore information. It will tell you have many different versions of a given file are available.
• Slide back in time, showing how snapshots are taken every 15 minutes, with the interval increasing as time passes (snapshots are automatically cleaned up).
• Select the time slider and use your left arrow key to navigate back 15 minutes in time. The Restore information should say something like: "different date, bigger than latest version" - no kidding .
• At this point you could either double-click the file to open it in read-only mode (which you could then save for editing) or right-click the file and restore it to your desktop.
• Make sure the left side of the desktop is visible and restore the presentation to the desktop.
• Open the Desktop in the File Browser, open time slider, and notice the presentation doesn't exist in any earlier snapshots.
• [2009.06 Only] Click the camera icon to take an instant snapshot.
• Double-click the file to open continue the presentation.

  Demo Cleanup

• Restore the presentation to its original location
• Delete the restored presentation from the Desktop