StorageIOblog

August 2010 StorageIO News Letter

August 30, 2010 – 1:50 am
August 2010 Newsletter Welcome to the August Summer Wrap Up 2010 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) newsletter. This follows the June 2010 edition building on the great feedback received from recipients. Items that are new in this expanded edition include: Out and About Update ...

Posted in Cloud, Data and Information Management, Data archiving and preservation, Data footprint and proliferation reduction, Data protection, Education, Green, I/O Networking, IT Industry Activity, IT Infrastructure Topics, Infrastructure Resource Management, Performance and Capacity, Power and Cooling, Site related, Storage Architecture and Access, Storage and Storage Management Tools, Travel, fun, server, virtualization | View Comments

While HP and Dell make counter bids, exclusive interview with 3PAR CEO David Scott

August 26, 2010 – 10:52 pm
Last week Dell announced (read previous and related posts here) that they were buying 3PAR for $1.15B USD, then HP offered a counter bid, this morning Dell countered with a $1.6B USD bid only to be followed by HPs counter counter counter bid of $1.8B which almost seems like an Ebay autobid raising the question of what is the buy it now price. Meanwhile, I was asked today to be the guest co host of the Storage Monkeys Infosmack Podcast with regular host Greg Knieriemen filling in for the regular co host Marc Farley who happens to be a 3PAR employee while we interviewed special guest CEO David Scott. Click here to listen to this exclusive interview with 3PAR CEO David Scott during the midst of the bidding between HP and Dell for some insight into 3PAR, their technology as well as get an inside insight discussion with the ...

Posted in Education, IT Industry Activity, IT Infrastructure Topics, fun, virtualization | View Comments

My Favorite Late Summer Reading Material

August 20, 2010 – 9:54 am
No it is not the Tape Times, or the Oracle Sun times, or IBM Magic Moments, or EMC Money Magazine, nor is it the Oracle Law Journal review. Sorry to say that it is not the Dedupe Discovery Debate Diaries, nor is it the Virtual Vanity Fair or NetApp Networking News. My favorite late summer reading is not the eDiscovery Entertainment this week, or Mens Metadata Monthly and it is not the Cisco Chronicles let alone the HP national inquirer Pages. No my favorite late summer reading is not Business Barons, NFL weekly wrap up nor Virtualization Hyperventilation Health tips. Neither is it the editorials, advertisements or cheerleading sections in the Cloud Crowd Confusion Chronicles, nor is it million miler monthly and it is not Green IT Eggs and Spam. While all good reads, it is not Wine Snob Weekly, ...

Posted in Education, IT Industry Activity, IT Infrastructure Topics, Travel, food, fun | View Comments

Dell Will Buy Someone, However Not Brocade (At least for now)

August 18, 2010 – 8:52 pm
Earlier this week Dell announced that they were buying 3APR for $1.15B USD As a follow up to this, this and this recent posts, I keep getting asked in different forums, venues, via email, telephone calls and in person who will or should Dell buy next, and will Dell buy Brocade, who will buy Brocade or anyone else for that matter. Ok, first let me say that everything in this post is just a perspective based on openly (e.g. publicly) available information along with some common sense. Thus there is no NDA or confidential insight or tips from some anonymous source named blue horseshoe (remember the movie wall street?). However I did used to work for a SAN, MAN and WAN company called INRANGE that was a supplier to server and storage vendors as well as partnered with Emulex, Qlogic as ...

Posted in Data and Information Management, Data footprint and proliferation reduction, Data protection, Data security, I/O Networking, IT Industry Activity, IT Infrastructure Topics, Infrastructure Resource Management, Performance and Capacity, Power and Cooling, Storage Architecture and Access, Storage and Storage Management Tools, server, virtualization | View Comments

Back to school shopping: Dude, Dell Digests 3PAR Disk storage

August 16, 2010 – 3:29 pm
No sooner has the dust settled from Dells other recent acquisitions, its back to school shopping time and the latest bargain for the Round Rock Texas folks is bay (San Francisco) area storage vendor 3PAR for $1.15B. As a refresh, some of Dells more recent acquisitions including a few years ago $1.4B for EqualLogic, $3.9B for Perot systems not to mention Exanet, Kace and Ocarina earlier this year. For those interested, as of April 2010 reporting figures found here, Dell showed about $10B USD in cash and here is financial information on publicly held 3PAR (PAR). Who is 3PAR 3PAR is a publicly traded company (PAR) that makes a scalable or clustered storage system with many built in advanced features typically associated with high end EMC DMX and VMAX as well as CLARiiON, in addition to Hitachi or HP or IBM enterprise ...

Posted in Cloud, Data and Information Management, Data archiving and preservation, Data footprint and proliferation reduction, Data protection, Green, I/O Networking, IT Industry Activity, IT Infrastructure Topics, Infrastructure Resource Management, Performance and Capacity, Power and Cooling, Storage Architecture and Access, Storage and Storage Management Tools, metrics, server, virtualization | View Comments

Kudos to HP CEO Mark Hurd for dignity to step down from his post

August 7, 2010 – 6:52 am
Yesterday (Friday) late afternoon, HP announced (or read here) that their CEO Mark Hurd was resigning due to improprieties uncovered during an internal investigation. HP is far from being alone in the corporate world involving investigations, lawsuits by governments or allegations of bribes and impropriety. However what stands out is that of the CEO stepping down. While not unique, after all remember the former CA CEO Sanjay Kumar who was locked up, or former Brocade CEO Greg Reyes now stepping into new government provided accommodations due to illegal activities, not to mention those from Enron among others. Granted in those situations there were legal ramifications outside of the companies prompting the courts to get involved, something that looks like for now is not the case at HP. However, having the courts get involved with corporate activity is almost becoming a pattern ...

Posted in IT Industry Activity | View Comments

Data footprint reduction (Part 2): Dell, IBM, Ocarina and Storwize

August 3, 2010 – 4:52 pm
Over the past couple of weeks there has been a flurry of IT industry activity around data footprint impact reduction with Dell buying Ocarina and IBM acquiring Storwize. For those who want the quick (compacted, reduced) synopsis of what Dell buying Ocarina as well as IBM acquiring Storwize means read the first post in this two part series as well as some of my comments here and here. This piece and it companion in part I of this two part series is about expanding the discussion to the much larger opportunity for vendors or vars of overall data footprint impact reduction beyond where they are currently focused. Likewise, this is about IT customers realizing that there are more opportunities to address data and storage optimization across your entire organization using various techniques instead of just focusing on backup ...

Posted in Data and Information Management, Data archiving and preservation, Data footprint and proliferation reduction, Green, I/O Networking, IT Industry Activity, IT Infrastructure Topics, Infrastructure Resource Management, Performance and Capacity, Storage Architecture and Access, Storage and Storage Management Tools, metrics | View Comments

Data footprint reduction (Part 1): Life beyond dedupe and changing data lifecycles

August 3, 2010 – 4:52 pm
Over the past couple of weeks there has been a flurry of IT industry activity around data footprint impact reduction with Dell buying Ocarina and IBM acquiring Storwize. For those who want the quick (compacted, reduced) synopsis of what Dell buying Ocarina as well as IBM acquiring Storwize means read this post here along with some of my comments here and here. Now, before any Drs or Divas of Dedupe get concerned and feel the need to debate dedupes expanding role, success or applicability, relax, take a deep breath, then read on and take another breath before responding if so inclined. The reason I mention this is that some may mistake this as a piece against or not in favor of dedupe as it talks about life beyond dedupe which could be mistaken as indicating dedupes diminished role which is not the case (read ahead and see ...

Posted in Cloud, Data and Information Management, Data archiving and preservation, Data footprint and proliferation reduction, IT Industry Activity, IT Infrastructure Topics, Infrastructure Resource Management, Performance and Capacity, Storage Architecture and Access, Storage and Storage Management Tools, metrics | View Comments

Availability or lack there of: Lessons From Our Frail & Aging Infrastructure

July 23, 2010 – 1:36 pm
I have a new blog post over at Enterprise Efficiency about aging infrastructures including those involved with IT, Telcom and related ones. As a society, we face growing problems repairing and maintaining the vital infrastructure we once took for granted. Most of these incidents involve aging, worn-out physical infrastructure desperately in need of repair or replacement. But infrastructure doesn't have to be old or even physical to cause problems when it fails. The IT systems and applications all around us form a digital infrastructure that most enterprises take for granted until it's not there. Bottom line, there really isn't much choice. You can either pay up front now to update aging infrastructures, or, wait and pay more later. Either way, there will be a price to pay and you can not realize a cost savings until you actually embark on that endeavor. Here is the link to the full ...

Posted in Cloud, IT Industry Activity, IT Infrastructure Topics, Infrastructure Resource Management, Storage Architecture and Access, server | View Comments

July 2010 Odds and Ends: Perspectives, Tips and Articles

July 18, 2010 – 2:23 pm
Here are some items that have been added to the main StorageIO website news, tips and articles, video podcast related pages that pertain to a variety of topics ranging from data storage, IO, networking, data centers, virtualization, Green IT, performance, metrics and more. These content items include various odds and end pieces such as industry or technology commentary, articles, tips, ATEs (See additional ask the expert tips here) or FAQs as well as some video and podcasts for your mid summer (if in the northern hemisphere) enjoyment. The New Green IT: Productivity, supporting growth, doing more with what you have Energy efficient and money saving Green IT or storage optimization are often associated to mean things like MAID, Intelligent Power Management (IPM) for servers and storage disk drive spin down or data deduplication. In other words, technologies and techniques to minimize or avoid power consumption as well as subsequent cooling requirements which ...

Posted in Data and Information Management, Data archiving and preservation, Data footprint and proliferation reduction, Data protection, Education, Green, I/O Networking, IT Industry Activity, IT Infrastructure Topics, Infrastructure Resource Management, Performance and Capacity, Power and Cooling, Site related, Storage Architecture and Access, Storage and Storage Management Tools, metrics, server, virtualization | View Comments