Category: BC and DR

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Is there an information or data recession? Are you using less storage? (With Polls)

Is there an information or data recession? Are you using less storage? (With Polls)

StorageIO industry trends

Is there an information recession where you are creating, processing, moving or saving less data?

Are you using less data storage than in the past either locally online, offline or remote including via clouds?

IMHO there is no such thing as a data or information recession, granted storage is being used more effectively by some, while economic pressures or competition enables your budgets to be stretched further. Likewise people and data are living longer and getting larger.

In conversations with IT professionals particular the real customers (e.g. not vendors, VAR’s, analysts, blogalysts, consultants or media) I routinely hear from people that they continue to have the need to store more information, however they’re data storage usage and acquisition patterns are changing. For some this means using what they have more effectively leveraging data footprint reduction (DFR) which includes (archiving, compression, dedupe, thin provision, changing how and when data is protected). This also means using different types of storage from flash SSD to HDD to SSHD to tape summit resources as well as cloud in different ways spanning block, file and object storage local and remote.

A common question that comes up particular around vendor earnings announcement times is if the data storage industry is in decline with some vendors experience poor results?

Look beyond vendor revenue metrics

As a back ground reading, you might want to check out this post here (IT and storage economics 101, supply and demand) which candidly should be common sense.

If all you looked at were a vendors revenues or margin numbers as an indicator of how well such as the data storage industry (includes traditional, legacy as well as cloud) you would not be getting the picture.

What needs to be factored into the picture is how much storage is being shipped (from components such as drives to systems and appliances) as well as delivered by service providers.

Looking at storage systems vendors from a revenue earnings perspective you would get mixed indicators depending on who you include, not to mention on how those vendors report break of revenues by product, or amount units shipped. For example looking at public vendors EMC, HDS, HP, IBM, NetApp, Nimble and Oracle (among others) as well as the private ones (if you can see the data) such as Dell, Pure, Simplivity, Solidfire, Tintri results in different analysis. Some are doing better than others on revenues and margins, however try to get clarity on number of units or systems shipped (for actual revenue vs. loaners (planting seeds for future revenue or trials) or demos).

Then look at the service providers such as AWS, Centurlylink, Google, HP, IBM, Microsoft Rackspace or Verizon (among others) you should see growth, however clarity about how much they are actually generating on revenues plus margin for storage specific vs. broad general buckets can be tricky.

Now look at the component suppliers such as Seagate and Western Digital (WD) for HDDs and SSHDs who also provide flash SSD drives and other technology. Also look at the other flash component suppliers such as Avago/LSI whose flash business is being bought by Seagate, FusionIO, SANdisk, Samsung, Micron and Intel among others (this does not include the systems vendors who OEM those or other products to build systems or appliances). These and other component suppliers can give another indicator as to the health of the industry both from revenue and margin, as well as footprint (e.g. how many devices are being shipped). For example the legacy and startup storage systems and appliance vendors may have soft or lower revenue numbers, however are they shipping the same or less product? Likewise the cloud or service providers may be showing more revenues and product being acquired however at what margin?

What this all means?

Growing amounts of information?

Look at revenue numbers in the proper context as well as in the bigger picture.

If the same number of component devices (e.g. processors, HDD, SSD, SSHD, memory, etc) are being shipped or more, that is an indicator of continued or increased demand. Likewise if there is more competition and options for IT organizations there will be price competition between vendors as well as service providers.

All of this means that while IT organizations budgets stay stretched, their available dollars or euros should be able to buy (or rent) them more storage space capacity.

Likewise using various data and storage management techniques including DFR, the available space capacity can be stretched further.

So this then begs the question of if the management of storage is important, why are we not hearing vendors talking about software defined storage management vs. chasing each other to out software define storage each other?

Ah, that’s for a different post ;).

So what say you?

Are you using less storage?

Do you have less data being created?

Are you using storage and your available budget more effectively?

Please take a few minutes and cast your vote (and see the results).

Sorry I have no Amex or Amazon gift cards or other things to offer you as a giveaway for participating as nobody is secretly sponsoring this poll or post, it’s simply sharing and conveying information for you and others to see and gain insight from.

Do you think that there is an information or data recession?

How about are you using or buying more storage, could there be a data storage recession?

Some more reading links

IT and storage economics 101, supply and demand
Green IT deferral blamed on economic recession might be result of green gap
Industry trend: People plus data are aging and living longer
Is There a Data and I/O Activity Recession?
Supporting IT growth demand during economic uncertain times
The Human Face of Big Data, a Book Review
Garbage data in, garbage information out, big data or big garbage?
Little data, big data and very big data (VBD) or big BS?

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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Data Storage Innovation Chat with SNIA Wayne Adams and David

Data Storage Innovation Chat with SNIA Wayne Adams and David

In this episode, SNIA Chairman Emeritus Wayne Adams and current Chairman David Dale join me in a conversation from the Data Storage Innovation Conference (DSICON) 2014 conference event.

SNIA DSI David Dale
SNIA Chairman David Dale opening remarks SNIA DSICON 2014

SNIA DSI Conference (DSICON), CDMI Conformance Testing and other updates

DSICON is a new event produced by SNIA targeted for IT professionals involved with data storage related topics, themes, technologies and tools spanning hardware, software, cloud, virtual and physical. In this conversation, we talk about the new DSI event, the diversity of new attendees who are attending their first SNIA event, along with other updates. Some of these updates include what is new with the SNIA Cloud Data Management Initiative (CDMI), Non Volatile Memory (think flash and SSD), SMIS, education and more. In addition to the DSICON event, SNIA also announced CDMI Cloud Interoperability Conformance Test Program is now available for cloud solution vendors and providers.

DSI, Santa Clara, CA (April 22, 2014)— The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), today announced the launch of a Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI) Conformance Test Program (CTP)that validates cloud products’ conformance to the ISO/IEC CDMI standard for cloud data interoperability(ISO catalog number ISO/IEC 17826:2012). Cloud solutions that pass the CDMI CTP offer cloud consumers assurance that the CDMI standard has been properly implemented and that data stored in any conformant implementation will be transportable to any other conformant implementation.

Here is a perspective commentary quote that I issued which was included in the SNIA Press Release.

“Today, the cloud market is crowded with a slew of vendors offering different solutions for migration, data management and security, often leaving IT customers confused about the right solution for their requirements,” said Greg Schulz, founder of StorageIO, a storage technology advisory and consulting firm. “SNIA’s CDMI Conformance Test Program is a great step forward helping IT customers, VARs or others in the industry navigate their way through the fog of cloud interoperability requirements in a streamlined fashion, not to mention laying standard routes vendors will want to adopt going forward.”

Check out the full SNIA CDMI press release announcement for the conformance testing here, as well as learn more about CDMI here.

audio

Listen in to our podcast conversation here as we cover cloud, convergence, software defined and more about data storage.

Topics and themes discussed:

  • Data Storage Innovation (DSICON) Conference
  • Data Storage Infrastructures and Convergence
  • Cloud Data Management Initiative (CDMI) and Conformance Testing
  • CDMI Update and Overview (or refresher)
  • Nonvolatile Memory and flash SSD
  • Standards, education and other technical activities

    • Check out SNIA and DSICON listen in to the conversation with David Dale and Wayne Adams here.

    Also available via 

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers
    Gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    Data Protection Diaries: March 31 World Backup Day is Restore Data Test Time

    Storage I/O trends

    World Backup Day Generating Awareness About Data Protection

    This World Backup Day piece is part of my ongoing Data Protection Diaries series of posts (www.dataprotecitondiaries.com) about trends, strategies, tools and best practices spanning applications, archiving, backup/restore, business continuance (BC), business resiliency (BR), cloud, data footprint reduction (DFR), security, servers, storage and virtualization among other related topic themes.

    data protection threat risk scenarios
    Different threat risks and reasons to protect your digital assets (data)

    March 31 is World Backup Day which means you should make sure that your data and digital assets (photos, videos, music or audio, scanned items) along with other digital documents are protected. Keep in mind that various reasons for protecting, preserving and serving your data regardless of if you are a consumer with needs to protect your home and personal information, or a large business, institution or government agency.

    Why World Backup Day and Data Protection Focus

    By being protected this means making sure that there are copies of your documents, data, files, software tools, settings, configurations and other digital assets. These copies can be in different locations (home, office, on-site, off-site, in the cloud) as well as for various points in time or recovery point objective (RPO) such as monthly, weekly, daily, hourly and so forth.

    Having different copies for various times (e.g. your protection interval) gives you the ability to go back to a specific time to recover or restore lost, stolen, damaged, infected, erased, or accidentally over-written data. Having multiple copies is also a safeguard incase either the data, files, objects or items being backed up or protected are bad, or the copy is damaged, lost or stolen.

    Restore Test Time

    While the focus of world backup data is to make sure that you are backing up or protecting your data and digital assets, it is also about making sure what you think is being protected is actually occurring. It is also a time to make sure what you think is occurring or know is being done can actually be used when needed (restore, recover, rebuild, reload, rollback among other things that start with R). This means testing that you can find the files, folders, volumes, objects or data items that were protected, use those copies or backups to restore to a different place (you don’t want to create a disaster by over-writing your good data).

    In addition to making sure that the data can be restored to a different place, go one more step to verify that the data can actually be used which means has it be decrypted or unlocked, have the security or other rights and access settings along with meta data been applied. While that might seem obvious it is often the obvious that will bite you and cause problems, hence take some time to test that all is working, not to mention get some practice doing restores.

    Data Protection and Backup 3 2 1 Rule and Guide

    Recently I did a piece based on my own experiences with data protection including Backup as well as Restore over at Spiceworks called My copies were corrupted: The 3-2-1 rule. For those not familiar, or as a reminder 3 2 1 means have more than three copies or better yet, versions stored on at least two different devices, systems, drives, media or mediums in at least one different location from the primary or main copy.

    Following is an excerpt from the My copies were corrupted: The 3-2-1 rule piece:

    Not long ago I had a situation where something happened to an XML file that I needed. I discovered it was corrupted, and I needed to do a quick restore.

    “No worries,” I thought, “I’ll simply copy the most recent version that I had saved to my file server.” No such luck. That file had been just copied and was damaged.

    “OK, no worries,” I thought. “That’s why I have a periodic backup copy.” It turns out that had worked flawlessly. Except there was a catch — it had backed up the damaged file. This meant that any and all other copies of the file were also damaged as far back as to when the problem occurred.

    Read the full piece here.

    Backup and Data Protection Walking the Talk

    Yes I eat my own dog food meaning that I practice what I talk about (e.g. walking the talk) leveraging not just a  3 2 1 approach, actually more of a 4 3 2 1 hybrid which means different protection internals, various retention’s and frequencies, not all data gets treated the same, using local disk, removable disk to go off-site as well as cloud. I also test candidly more often by accident using the local, removable and cloud copies when I accidentally delete something, or save the wrong version.

    Some of my data and applications are protected throughout the day, others on set schedules that vary from hours to days to weeks to months or more. Yes, some of my data such as large videos or other items that are static do not change, so why backup them up or protect every day, week or month? I also align the type of protection, frequency, retention to meet different threat risks, as well as encrypt data. Part of actually testing and using the restores or recoveries is also determining what certificates or settings are missing, as well as where opportunities exist or needed to enhance data protection.

    Closing comments (for now)

    Take some time to learn more about data protection including how you can improve or modernize while rethinking what to protect, when, where, why how and with what.

    In addition to having copies from different points in time and extra copies in various locations, also make sure that they are secured or encrypted AND make sure to protect your encryption keys. After all, try to find a digital locksmith to unlock your data who is not working for a government agency when you need to get access to your data ;)…

    Learn more about data protection including Backup/Restore at www.storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/ where there are a collection of related posts and presentations including:

    Also check out the collection of technology and vendor / product neutral data protection and backup/restore content at BackupU (disclosure: sponsored by Dell Data Protection Software) that includes various webinars and Google+ hangout sessions that I have been involved with.

    Watch for more data protection conversations about related trends, themes, technologies, techniques perspectives in my ongoing data protection diaries discussions as well as read more about Backup and other related items at www.storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/.

    Ok, nuff said

    Cheers
    Gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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    March 2014 StorageIO Update Newsletter : Cisco Cloud, VMware VSAN and More

    Industry Trends Perspectives: Cisco Cloud and VMware VSAN

    Welcome to the March 2014 edition of the StorageIO Update (newsletter) containing trends perspectives on cloud, virtualization and data infrastructure topics. Technically it is now spring here in North America and to say that we have had abnormal cold weather would be an understatement. However it is March with April just around the corner meaning plenty to do including several upcoming events (see below).

    Clouds and Cisco

    Some recent industry activity has included Cisco announcing its Cloud intentions (e.g. more than simply selling servers and networking hardware). So far the Cisco Cloud move appears to be more about hybrid and partner ecosystem including channels vs. going toes to toe with an Amazon Web Service (AWS). Cisco appears to playing the hybrid theme of being a technology supplier as well as provider or partner. Thus, it looks like for the near term the Cisco cloud target is not as much AWS as the likes of an IBM who recently added Softlayer or an HP.

    Greg Schulz Storage I/OGreg Schulz on break

    This will also be interesting to watch where along with how other Cisco partners such as EMC, Microsoft, NetApp, VCE and VMware participate. Keep in mind that some of these and other Cisco partners also have their own public, private and hybrid cloud initiatives, services along with being a supplier to each other.

    VMware VSAN Software Defined Storage

    Another industry activity involving servers storage I/O networking hardware software and virtualization (aka software defined) was the general announcement (GA) by VMware of Virtual SAN (VSAN). VMware VSAN went into public beta shortly after VMworld 2013 timeframe when many of us downloaded, installed and did various types of testing with it.

    For those not familiar with VSAN, it is added licensed software functionality for VMware that creates a cluster to host Virtual Machines (VMs) along with its own shared resilient storage solution (e.g. Software Defined Storage). How VSAN works is to use PCIe, SAS, SATA dedicated direct attached storage (DAS) including that are local to the VMware host server (physical machine or PM). The VMware host PMs support DAS Hard Disk Drives (HDD), Solid State Devices (SSD) including PCIe cards, drives or DIMMs, along with Solid State Hybrid Drives (SSHD). This local DAS storage is served and shared among the nodes (up to 32 host or PMs) per VSAN cluster balancing performance, availability (and resiliency) along with space capacity to host VM objects. Note that VM objects include VMDKs (e.g. virtual disks) and are not to be confused with the other type of object storage or access such as CDMI/SWIFT/S3/HTTP/REST.

    VMs (and those managing them) see in the VSAN cluster dats that are familiar with other VMware implementations including storage policies and other tools. Here is a link to a great piece by Patrick Schulz a data infrastructure systems engineer in Germany (no relation, at least not that I know of yet) where he shares his experiences with VSAN implementation.

    storage I/O vsan
    Generic VSAN example

    Instead of using an external iSCSI, Fibre Channel (FC) or FC over Ethernet (FCoE) shared SAN or NAS storage system / appliance to create the storage repository, local DAS is leveraged in groups spread across the hosts in the VSAN cluster (up to 32 nodes ). VSAN requires a percentage of SSD for each storage group on the host cluster nodes that a part is used for caching data which is persistently stored on HDD based media.

    VSAN software is licensed by the number of active sockets (not the cores) in the host servers (PM) that are in the cluster or by number of VDI users (guest VMs). For example if there are four servers two with one socket and two with dual sockets there would be six socket licenses. MSRP License cost per processor socket is $2,495 USD which also assumes core VMware licenses already exist. There are also a per guest VM license of $50 per VDI instance, as well as other optional license models and bundles with different features or upgrades.

    What is different with VSAN vs. other VMware clusters is that a) the storage is only accessible to VMs that are in the VSAN cluster (unless a VM exports and serves to others via NFS, iSCSI, etc which is a different conversation for another day). Another difference is that today VSAN leverage storage inside of servers or direct attached as opposed to using iSCSI, FC, FCoE SAN or NAS storage systems.

    Btw, the current maximum LUN, volume or target storage device size is 4TB so if you were thinking of taking a SAS attached storage system and creating a bunch of small LUNs, you might want to review that from a cost perspective, or at least for today.

    There is much more to VSAN including how it works, what it can and can not do, who it is for and whom should not use for different app’s, however IMHO besides lower-end, SMB, workgroup, departmental, VMware centric environments, the number one scenario today is VDI along with where converged solutions such as those from Nutanix, Simplivity and Tintri among others are playing.

    Watch for more StorageIO posts, commentary, perspectives, presentations, webinars, tips and events on information and data infrastructure topics, themes and trends. Data Infrastructure topics include among others cloud, virtual, legacy server, storage I/O networking, data protection, hardware and software.

    Check out our backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving (Under the resources section on StorageIO.com) for extra content.

    StorageIO Industry Trends and PerspectivesIndustry trends tips, commentary, articles and blog posts
    What is being seen, heard and talked about while out and about

    The following is a synopsis of some StorageIOblog posts, articles and comments in different venues on various industry trends, perspectives and related themes about clouds, virtualization, data and storage infrastructure topics among related themes.

    StorageIO in the newsRecent StorageIO comments and perspectives in the news

    SearchSolidStateStorage: Comments on automated storage tiering and flash
    EnterpriseStorageForum: Comments on Cloud-Storage Mergers and Acquisitions
    SearchDataBackup: Comments on near-CDP nudging true CDP from landscape
    EnterpriseStorageForum: Comments on Ways to Avoid Cloud Storage Pricing Surprises
    SearchDataBackup: Q&A: Snapshot, replication ‘great approach’ for data protection
    SearchDataBackup: Comments on LTFS-enabled products

    StorageIO tips and articles Recent StorageIO tips and articles in various venues

    InformationSecurityBuzz: Dark Territories – Do You Know Where Your Information Is?
    InformationSecurityBuzz: Rings Of Security For Data Protection Or For Appearance?
    SearchSolidStateStorage: Q&A on automated storage tiering and flash
    SpiceWorks: My copies were corrupted: The 3-2-1 data protection rule

    StorageIOblog postRecent StorageIOblog posts and perspectives

  • Missing MH370 reminds us, do you know where your digital assets are? Click to read more
  • Old School, New School, Current and Back to School – Click to read and view poll
  • USENIX FAST (File and Storage Technologies) 2014 Proceedings – Click to read more
  • Spring 2014 StorageIO Events and Activities Update Click to view
  • Review – iVMcontrol iPhone VMware management, iTool or iToy? Click to read more
  • February 2014 Server StorageIO Update Newsletter

    • Remember to check out our objectstoragecenter.com page where you will find a growing collection of information and links on cloud and object storage themes, technologies and trends from various sources.

    Server and StorageIO seminars, conferences, web cats, events, activities StorageIO activities (out and about)

    Seminars, symposium, conferences, webinars
    Live in person and recorded recent and upcoming events

    The StorageIO calendar continues to evolve, here are some recent and upcoming activities.

    129/78/148/103/1527/350/242/91 = 650

    June 12, 2014The Many Facets of Virtual Storage and Software Defined Storage VirtualizationWebinar
    9AM PT
    June 11, 2014The Changing Face and Landscape of Enterprise StorageWebinar
    9AM PT
    May 16, 2014 What you need to know about virtualization (Demystifying Virtualization)Nijkerk Holland
    May 15, 2014 Data Infrastructure Industry Trends: What’s New and TrendingNijkerk Holland
    May 14, 2014 To be announcedNijkerk Holland
    May 13, 2014 Data Movement and Migration: Storage Decision Making ConsiderationsNijkerk Holland
    May 12, 2014 Rethinking Business Resiliency: From Disaster Recovery to Business ContinuanceNijkerk Holland
    May 5-7, 2014EMC WorldLas Vegas
    April 22-23, 2014SNIA DSI Event

    Presenting – The “Cloud” Hybrid Home Run
    Life beyond they Hype

    		Santa Clara CA
    April 16, 2014Open Source and Cloud Storage – Enabling business, or a technology enabler?Webinar
    9AM PT
    April 9, 2014Storage Decision Making for Fast, Big and Very Big Data EnvironmentsWebinar
    9AM PT
    April 8, 2014NABNational Association Broadcasters (e.g. Very Big Fast data Event)Las Vegas
    March 27, 2014
    		Keynote: The 2017 Datacenter – PREPARING FOR THE 2017 DATACENTER SESSIONSEdina
    8:00AM
    Register Here

    Click here to view other upcoming along with earlier event activities. Watch for more 2014 events to be added soon to the StorageIO events calendar page. Topics include data protection modernization (backup/restore, HA, BC, DR, archive), data footprint reduction (archive, compression, dedupe), storage optimization, SSD, object storage, server and storage virtualization, big data, little data, cloud and object storage, performance and management trends among others.

    Vendors, VAR’s and event organizers, give us a call or send an email to discuss having us involved in your upcoming pod cast, web cast, virtual seminar, conference or other events.

    Thank you to the current StorageIoblog.com site sponsor advertisers

    Druva (End Point Data Protection)
    Unitrends (Enterprise backup solution and management tools)
    Veeam (VMware and Hyper-V virtual server backup and data protection tools).

    Contact StorageIO to learn about sponsorship and other partnership opportunities.

    Click here to view earlier StorageIO Update newsletters (HTML and PDF versions). Subscribe to this newsletter (and pass it along) and click here to subscribe to this news letter. View archives of past StorageIO update news letters as well as download PDF versions at: www.storageio.com/newsletter

    Ok, nuff said (for now)

    Cheers
    Gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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    Missing MH370 should remind us, do you know where your digital assets are?

    Storage I/O trends

    Missing MH370 should remind us, do you know where your digital assets are?

    I recently did a piece over at InformationSecurityBuzz called Dark Territories, Do You Know Where Your Information Is?

    Clouds and lack of insight awarness

    In that piece (click here), I bring up the topic of dark territories which with the recent missing Malaysian Airlines flight 370 (e.g. MH370) reminds us that even with today’s 24×7 Internet of Things (IoT) connected world, there are still dark spot areas lacking in coverage or monitoring.

    Some of you might have heard of dark territories as a term used in days of old that refereed to parts of railroads or other transportation that were out of site with no command, control, monitoring or communications.

    Perhaps something that the tragedy of MH370 will remind us all is just how big this planet is, and not everything is connected or covered or monitored yet, or, at least that we know about or have access to.

    Excerpt from the piece:

    It might seem awkward today in this era of instant access to news, information as it happens, or in some cases before it happens how can we not know where something is?

    Between traditional media and social media, not to mention public on-line web sites, along with big data powered government (or private) surveillance using radar, cell-phone or other radio based, not to mention satellite tracking.

    Thus, how can we not know where things are?

    Do you know where your data and information are or have been?

    Do you have positive control over where you data and information have been?

    Is your data and information exposed to dark territories?

    With the recent disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight 370 (MH 370) a Boeing 777 flying from Kula Lumpur to Beijing China, how can we not know where it is? After all, we all have public access to sites such as FlightAware and FlightRadar among many others, not to mention sites we in the public may not have access to. Same with using Cell phones or other forms of electronics, surely in the 7×24 non-stop, always connected world we should have insight and situational awareness about where things are always at, right?

    Wrong!

    Click here to read more.

    Do you have digital dark territory or security surveillance gaps in your environment?

    Dark Territory and digital data security

    How safe and secure are your digital assets and information resources including data, software applications, hardware and services?

    Are you securing your information and digital assets with rings or layers of defense?

    What about tracking where those items including data or hardware and software have been or do you have dark territory points of exposure

    Hopefully you are not one of those that I see at airports, coffee shops or at events who leave your computer or other digital assets alone, unattended while going to get a new beverage, or off to the rest room, talking on the phone? No worries, others will watch over your digital assets, right?

    Closing comments about MH370

    In the meantime condolences to those who lost friends and family including crew members on MH370. I only have flown MH a couple of times including over some dark or almost dark territories between the US and Asia and on to Australia in and out Kuala Lumpur which was a good experience. Also would like to extend thanks and best wishes to all of those involved in the search efforts so that someday we can learn what happened as well as to prevent it in the future.

    Ok, nuff said (for now)

    Cheers
    Gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    Spring 2014 StorageIO Events and Activities Update

    Storage I/O trends

    Cloud Virtual Server Storage I/O and Networking events

    Speaking of Old School, New School, Current and Future School, here are some upcoming events including live in-person as well as virtual or online StorageIO activities. The following calendar also includes a series of one-day workshop sessions that are part of a week of seminars to be held in Nijkerk Netherlands being Organized by Brouwer Storage Consultancy (learn more here).

    The current calendar which continues to be updated includes a mix of webinars (playback are available), and live events covering data infrastructure topics from cloud, virtual, physical and software defined across servers, storage I/O networking, SSD, performance, object storage and data protection among other related themes.

    June 19, 2014
    Server and StorageIO BrightTalk Channel    		Evolving from Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity (BC) to Business Resiliency (BR)Webinar
    9AM PT
    June 12, 2014
    Server and StorageIO BrightTalk Channel    		The Many Facets of Virtual Storage and Software Defined Storage Virtualization9AM PTWebinar
    June 11, 2014
    Server and StorageIO BrightTalk Channel    		The Changing Face and Landscape of Enterprise Storage9AM PTWebinar
    May 16, 2014 What you need to know about virtualization (Demystifying Virtualization)Nijkerk Holland
    Netherlands
    May 15, 2014 Data Infrastructure Industry Trends: What’s New and TrendingNijkerk Holland
    Netherlands
    May 14, 2014 To be announcedNijkerk Holland
    Netherlands
    May 13, 2014 Data Movement and Migration: Storage Decision Making ConsiderationsNijkerk Holland
    Netherlands
    May 12, 2014 Rethinking Business Resiliency: From Disaster Recovery to Business ContinuanceNijkerk Holland
    Netherlands
    May 5-7, 2014EMC WorldLas Vegas
    April 22-23, 2014SNIA DSI EventTBASanta Clara CA
    April 16, 2014
    Server and StorageIO BrightTalk Channel    		Open Source and Cloud Storage – Enabling business, or a technology enabler?9AM PT
    Webinar
    April 9, 2014
    Server and StorageIO BrightTalk Channel    		Storage Decision Making for Fast, Big and Very Big Data Environments9AM PT
    Webinar
    April 8, 2014NABNational Association Broadcasters (e.g. Very Big Fast data Event)Las Vegas NV
    March 27, 2014
    		Keynote: The 2017 Datacenter – PREPARING FOR THE 2017 DATACENTER SESSIONSEdina MN
    8:00AM CT
    Register Here
    March 19, 2014
    Server and StorageIO BrightTalk Channel    		Business Resiliency (BR), Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recovery (DR) Management9AM PT
    Webinar
    March 19, 2014
    Server and StorageIO BrightTalk Channel    		Data Center Monitoring – Metrics that Matter for Effective Management7AM PT
    Webinar
    March 12, 2014
    Server and StorageIO BrightTalk Channel    		Hybrid Clouds – Bridging the Gap between public and private environments11AM PT
    Webinar

    View other recent and past activities along with new additions at the StorageIO.com/events page. Also check out recent commentary in the news here as well as tips and articles here.

    Ok, nuff said (for now)

    Cheers Gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    Its Award Season: Time for 2014 top VMware and virtualization blog voting

    Storage I/O trends

    Its Award Season: Time for 2014 top VMware and virtualization blog voting

    It’s that time of the year again for award season including with the recently wrapped up 2014 Winter Olympic (and benchmarking games), the academy awards and many others. That also means it is time again for the annual top VMware, Virtualization, Storage and related blogs voting now taking place until March 17th over at Eric Siebert (aka @ericsiebert) vsphere-land.com site that then appears on his vLaunchPad site. There is plenty of new school, as well as some old school and a few current or future school theme blogs represented with some being more VMware specific while others are cloud, virtual, server, storage, networking, development or other related themes.

    Click on the above image to cast your vote

    My StorageIOblog.com has been on the vLaunchPad site for a few years now as well as having syndicated content that also appears via some of the other venues listed there.

    Greg Schulz StorageIOblog

    Thus as this is a peoples choice process, I’m asking if you can take a few moments and cast your vote here (thank you in advance) which I hope includes StorageIOblog.com as part of the top ten, in addition to being nominated in the Storage, Podcast and Independent blogger categories.

    VMware vExpert

    In addition to mine, you will also find many of my fellow VMware vExperts among others at the vLaunchpad site so check them out as well.

    Ok, nuff said (other than thanks for reading)

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    Old School, New School, Current and Back to School (With Poll)

    Storage I/O trends

    Old School, New School, Current and Back to School

    Are you old school or new school?

    If you are new school or old school, then will you be stuck on those school’s of thought or advanced to the current and future schools?

    Old School

    From the old school folks you will hear things along the lines of that is how we do or did it. Also you might hear things along the lines of lets use what we have as long as we can make it work to fix problems while learning from mistakes. Also from old school you may here things like new school is only focused on the newest latest greatest shiny technology. Not to mention themes such as we have to stick around and clean up and take care of the mess left when new schoolers move to their next focus.

    New School

    On the other hand from new school you may hear snarky comments about old school either in kidding and jest, as a way to put down to promote self up in status. Some other new school perspectives are focus on the newest technology that can be used wherever with focus on the tool, product or service as opposed to sometimes lack of focus on the problem to address. Another theme can be don’t worry about the future, we will either throw away what we have and get something new, or leave it up to somebody else to take care, after all, the old schoolers are good at doing that.

    Current and Future School

    Storage I/O trends

    Then there are the current and future schoolers that are hybrid, combing the best of old-school leveraging their experiences with openness to explore new things of the new schoolers. The current or future schoolers are a blend of risk-averse yet willing to explore and find new ways to fix problems vs. simply moving, masking or leaving issues behind. The new or current schoolers are keen on learning lessons and mistakes of the past to avoid making them in the future.

    Likewise they are also dialed into using both new and old tools, technologies and techniques in new ways vs. simply using new things in old ways. Another characteristics of the new or future schoolers is that they are open and willing to create converged teams to leverage converged technologies. Not only are they dialed into the new technology, trends and techniques, they are also dialed into how to use them for different things, situations and apply to business or other needs as opposed to just a focus on the tech.

    This means that they are willing and interested in learning other skills, crafts capabilities vs. creating old or new silos or fiefdoms of technology. These new schoolers could care less who is a cloud, virtual, server, storage, networking, database, applications, backup, security, hardware or software person as they are focused on all of those as data infrastructure professionals.

    What this all means

    Stay in School and be a student of the game

    Some of you might be old school while others are may be new school or what ever is current trendy and cool. However new schoolers to become future or current schoolers can learn from the old schoolers. Likewise the old schoolers can learn a new thing or two as well as help transfer some knowledge experience to the new schoolers to become future schoolers. Granted old schoolers can settle in to their comfort zone while new schoolers can stay out front of the curve and both watch the rise of the new and future schoolers.

    Are you old school, new school, current or no school, cast your vote and see results below:

    Some more reading:

    Who or what is your sphere of influence?
    How many degrees separate you and your information?
    Technology buying, do you decide on G2 or GQ?
    What does gaining industry traction or adoption mean too you?
    Industry adoption vs. industry deployment, is there a difference?
    Pulling Together a Converged Team
    People, Not Tech, Prevent IT Convergence

    Ok, nuff said (for now)

    Cheers Gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    February 2014 Server StorageIO Update Newsletter Data Infrastructure Insights


    Welcome to the February 2014 edition of the StorageIO Update (newsletter) containing trends perspectives on cloud, virtualization and data infrastructure topics. Its winter here in North America and specifically in the Stillwater Minnesota to say that there is plenty of snow and cold would be an understatement. However in a few months instead of dealing with -20F or -40F wind chills, it will be 100F head index, thus the saying of if you don’t like the weather, either leave or wait a bit as it will change.

    In case you missed the December 2013 StorageIO holiday greeting which was in place of the normal newsletter you can view that here. In the absence of the regular December and January StorageIO Update newsletters, this is a larger edition to get caught up. However not to worry as there is more content and items in the wings for March.

    2013 wrapped up with a flurry of industry activity including some acquisitions (Avago buying LSI and Seagate acquiring Xyratex among others). Likewise 2014 so far is continuing the momentum living up to the mantra that while there may be economic challenges, there is no such thing as a data or information recession.

    		Greg Schulz StorageIO
    Watch for future posts, commentary, perspectives and other information down the road (and in the not so distant future) pertaining to information and data infrastructure topics, themes and trends across cloud, virtual, legacy server, storage, networking, hardware and software. Also check out our backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving (Under the resources section on StorageIO.com) for various presentation, book chapter downloads and other content.

    Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO Update newsletter and keep in mind, at least here in North America spring is just around the corner with summer not to far off either.

    Ok, nuff said (for now)

    Cheers gs

    StorageIO Industry Trends and PerspectivesIndustry trends tips, commentary, articles and blog posts
    What is being seen, heard and talked about while out and about

    The following is a synopsis of some StorageIOblog posts, articles and comments in different venues on various industry trends, perspectives and related themes about clouds, virtualization, data and storage infrastructure topics among related themes.

    StorageIO in the newsRecent StorageIO comments and perspectives in the news

    SearchSMBStorage: Comments on Lenovo EMC Iomega new SMB NAS products
    ChannelProSMB: Comments on what the future holds for HDDs
    NetworkAsia: Comments on WORM disk and tape
    SeaarchSolidStateStorage: Comments on SSD industry activity and OCZ bankruptcy
    EnterpriseStorageForum: Comments on software defined storage
    Ironmountain: Comments on storage efficiency in small businesses
    PC Today: Comments on best practices
    PC Today: Commnets on How to recover lost data
    PC Today: Comments on Virtualization 101, understand context which virtualization is used
    PC Today: Comments on going paperless
    PC Today: Optimize Now – Comments on optimize to improve IT productivity
    Processor: Comments on Know Which Emerging Technologies Could Make An Impact
    Processor: Comments on Backup Problems – What To Do Before & After Issues Arise
    Processor: Comments on Know When & When Not To Replace Servers
    Processor: Comments on Enterprise Backup Solutions Buying Tips
    Processor: Comments on Server Trends, Technologies Reshape The Industry

    StorageIO tips and articles Recent StorageIO tips and articles in various venues

    Information Security Buzz: How Secure Is Your Data Storage?
    SearchStorage: Bridging the gap: Choosing storage-over-distance network technology 
    SearchEnterpriseWAN: Wide area network resiliency best practices 
    StateTech: 5 Tips for Factoring Software into Disaster Recovery Plans
    BizTech: How to Turn Storage Networks into Better Performers
    InfoStor: The Many Variations of RAID Storage

    StorageIOblog postRecent StorageIOblog posts and perspectives

  • Server Storage I/O Network Benchmark Winter Olympic Games – Click to read more
  • Removing complexity and cost to drive return on innovation – Click to read more
  • StorageIO data infrastructure links page updated (1,200+ entries) – Click to read more
  • Welcome to Data Protection Diaries – Visit www.storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/
  • Data Protection Diaries series – My data protection needs and wants – Click to read more
  • Until focus expands to data protection, backup is staying alive! – Click to read here
  • IT and data center sustainability, the other convergence zone – Click to read more
  • Lenovo buys IBM’s xSeries server business, what about EMC? – Click to read more
  • Securing your information assets and data, what about storage? – Click to read more
  • Dell Inspiron 660 i660, Virtual Server Diamond in the rough? – Click to read more
  • Book review: Rethinking Enterprise Storage by Marc Farley – Click to read more
  • Some Windows Server Storage I/O related commands – Click to read more
  • IoD, IoT, IoE, IoS, IoP, IoU and IoX are in your future – Click to read more
  • Goodbye 2013, hello 2014, predictions past, present and future – Click to read more
  • Small Medium Business (SMB) IT gains respect, what about SOHO? – Click to read more
  • Seasons Greetings, Happy Holidays 2013 from StorageIO – Click to read more
  • Server virtualization nested and tiered hypervisors – Click to read more

    • Remember to check out our objectstoragecenter.com page where you will find a growing collection of information and links on cloud and object storage themes, technologies and trends from various sources.

    Server and StorageIO seminars, conferences, web cats, events, activities StorageIO activities (out and about)

    Seminars, symposium, conferences, webinars
    Live in person and recorded recent and upcoming events

    The StorageIO calendar continues to evolve, here are some recent and upcoming activities.

    March 13, 2014 BrightTalkBusiness Resiliency (BR), Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recovery (DR) ManagementWebinar
    9AM PT
    March 12, 2014 BrightTalkHybrid Clouds – Bridging the Gap between public and private environmentsWebinar
    9AM PT
    February 18, 2014 BrightTalkNetworking with your Servers and Storage – Cloud, virtual and physical environmentsWebinar
    9AM PT
    January 28, 2014 Backup.UData Protection for Hybrid Environments 201Backup.U
    Google+ hangout
    January 23, 2014 DataCenter
    Acceleration    		Building and Managing the Sustainable Datacenter – Driving efficiency, productivity, effectiveness and economicsLive chat
    11AM PT
    January 15, 2014 BrightTalkModernizing Data Protection For Cloud, Virtual and Physical EnvironmentsWebinar
    11AM CT
    January 14, 2014 Backup.UData Protection for Hybrid Environments 101Backup.U
    Online Webinar
    December 12, 2013 Backup.UData Protection for Cloud 201Backup.U
    Google+ hangout
    December 6, 2013
    Code42    		Panelist – Endpoint Data Management
    Protecting the Perimeter of the Internet of Things    		(Replay)
    1PM CT
    Web Based
    December 3, 2013 Backup.UData Protection for Cloud 101Backup.U
    Online Webinar

    Click here to view other upcoming along with earlier event activities. Watch for more 2014 events to be added soon to the StorageIO events calendar page. Topics include data protection modernization (backup/restore, HA, BC, DR, archive), data footprint reduction (archive, compression, dedupe), storage optimization, SSD, object storage, server and storage virtualization, big data, little data, cloud and object storage, performance and management trends among others.

    Vendors, VAR’s and event organizers, give us a call or send an email to discuss having us involved in your upcoming pod cast, web cast, virtual seminar, conference or other events.

    Thank you to the current StorageIoblog.com site sponsor advertisers

    Druva (End Point Data Protection)

    EMC (EMC Community Network)
    Unitrends (Enterprise backup solution and management tools)
    Veeam (VMware and Hyper-V virtual server backup and data protection tools).

    Contact StorageIO to learn about sponsorship and other partnership opportunities.

    Click here to view previous StorageIO Update newsletters (HTML and PDF versions). Subscribe to this newsletter (and pass it along) click here to subscribe to this news letter. View archives of past StorageIO update news letters as well as download PDF versions at: www.storageio.com/newsletter.

    Thank you for reading this edition of the StorageIO Update Newsletter.

    Ok, nuff said

    Cheers
    Gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    StorageIO data infrastructure industry vendors links page updated with over 1,200 entries

    Storage I/O trends

    StorageIO data infrastructure industry vendors links page updated with over 1,200 entries

    Is your company, organization or one that you are a fan of, or represent listed on the StorageIO industry links page?

    The StorageIO industry links page has been updated with over thousand different industry related companies, vendors, vars, trade groups, part and solution suppliers along with cloud and managed service providers. The common theme with these industry links is information and data infrastructures which means severs, storage, IO and networking, hardware, software, applications and tools, services, products and related items for traditional, virtual and cloud environments.

    The industry links page is accessed from the StorageIO main web page via the Tools and Links menu tab, or via the URL https://storageio.com/links. An example of the StorageIO industry links page is shown below with six different menu tabs in alphabetical order.

    storage I/O and data infrastructure cloud, virtual and software defined links

    Know of a company, service or organization that is not listed on the links page, if so, send an email note to info at storageio.com. If your company or organization is listed, contact StorageIO to discuss how to expand your presence on the links page and other related options.

    Visit the updated StorageIO industry links page and watch for more updates, and click here to learn more about the links page.

    Ok, nuff said (for now)

    Cheers
    Gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    Part II Until the focus expands to data protection – What to do about it

    Storage I/O trends

    Part II – Until the focus expands to data protection – What to do about it

    This is the second of a three-part series (read part I here) about how vendors are keeping backup alive, however what they can and should do to shift and expand the conversation to data protection and related themes.

    Modernizing data protection and what to do about it

    Building off of what was mentioned in the first post, lets take a look at what can be done including expanding the conversation around data protection in support of business continuance (BC), disaster recovery (DR), high availability (HA), business resiliency (BR) not to mention helping backup to actually retire (someday). Now when I backup retire, I’m not necessarily talking about a technology such as hardware, software or a service including clouds, rather when, where, why and how data gets protected. What I mean by this is to step back from looking at the tools and technologies to how they are used and can be used in new and different ways moving forward.

    People convergenceStorageIO people convergence
    Converged people and technology teams

    All to often I see where new technologies or tools get used in old ways which while providing some near-term relief, the full capabilities of what is being used may not be fully realized. This also ties into the theme of people not technologies can be a barrier to convergence and transformation that you can read more about here and here.

    Whats your data protection strategy, business or technology focused?

    expand focus beyond tools
    Data protection strategy evolving beyond tools looking for a problem to solve

    Part of modernizing data protection is getting back to the roots or fundamentals including revisiting business needs, requirements along with applicable threat risks to then align application tools, technologies and techniques. This means expanding focus from just the technology, however also more importantly how to use different tools for various scenarios. In other words having a tool-box and know how to use it vs. everything looking like a nail as all you have is a hammer. Check out various webinars, Google+ hangouts and other live events that I’m involved with on the StorageIO.com events page on data protection and related data infrastructure themes including BackupU (getting back to the basics and fundamentals).

    data protection options

    Everything is not the same, leverage different data protection approaches to different situations

    Wrap up (for now)

    Continue reading part three of this series here to see what can be done (taking action) about shifting the conversation about modernizing data protection. Also check out conversations about trends, themes, technologies, techniques perspectives in my ongoing data protection diaries discussions (e.g. www.storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/).

    Ok, nuff said

    Cheers
    Gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

     

    Posted on

    Until the focus expands to data protection, backup is staying alive!

    Storage I/O trends

    Until the focus expands to data protection, backup is staying alive!

    This is the first of a three-part series discussing how and why vendors are keeping backup alive, read part two here.

    Some vendors, Value Added Resellers (VARs), pundits (consultants, analysts, media, bloggers) and their followers want backup to not only be declared dead, they also want to attend (or send flowers) to the wake and funeral not to mention proof of burial so to speak.

    Yet many of these same vendors, VARs and their pundits also are helping or causing backup to staying alive.

    Sure there are plenty of discussion including industry adoption and customer deployment around modernizing backup and data protection that are also tied to disaster recovery (DR), business continuance (BC), high availability (HA) and business resiliency (BR).

    On the other hand the usual themes are around talking about product or technology deployment to modernize backup by simply swapping out hardware (e.g. disk for tape, cloud for disk), applying data footprint reduciton (DFR) including archiving, compression and dedupe or, another common scenario of switching from one vendors tool to another.

    How vendors are helping backup staying alive?

    One of the routine things I hear from vendors among others is that backup needs to move from the 70’s or 80’s or 90’s to the current era when the John Travolta and Oliva Newton John movie Saturday Night Fever and the Bee Gees song "Stayin Alive" appeared (click here to hear the song via Amazon).

    Stayin Alive Image via Amazon.com

    Some vendors keep talking and using the term backup instead of expanding the conversation to data protection that includes backup/restore, business continuance (BC), disaster recovery (DR) along with archiving and security. Now let’s be that we can not expect something like backup to be removed from the vocabulary overnight as its been around for decades, hence it will take time.

    IMHO: The biggest barrier to moving away from backup is the industry including vendors, their pundits, press/media, vars and customers who continue to insist on using or referring to back up vs. expanding the conversation to data protection. – GS @StorageIO

    Until there’s a broad focus on shifting to and using the term data protection including backup, BC, DR and archiving, people will simply keep referring to what they know, read or hear (e.g. backup). On the other hand if the industry starts putting more focus on using data protection with backup, people will stat following suit using the two and over time backup as a term can fade away.

    Taking a step back to move forward

    Some of the modernizing backup discussions is actually focused on take a step back to reconsider why, when, where, how and with what different applications, systems and data gets protected. certainly there are the various industry trends, challenges and opportunities some of which are shown below including more facts to protect, preserve and service for longer periods of time.

    Likewise there are various threat risks or scenarios to protect information assets from or against, not all of which are head-line news making event situations.

    data protection threat risk scenarios

    Not all threat risks are headline news making events

    There is an old saying in and around backup/restore, BC, DR, BR and HA of never letting a disaster go to waste. What this means is that if you have never noticed, there is usually a flurry of marketing and awareness activity including conversations about why you should do something BC, DR and other data protection activities right around, or shortly after a disaster scenario. However not all disasters or incidents are headline news making events and hence there should be more awareness every day vs. just during disaster season or situations. In addition, this also means expanding the focus on other situations that are likely to occur including among others those in the following figure.

    data protection headline news and beyond

    Continue reading part two of this series here to see what can be done about shifting the conversation about modernizing data protection. Also check out conversations about trends, themes, technologies, techniques perspectives in my ongoing data protection diaries discussions (e.g. www.storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/).

    Ok, nuff said

    Cheers
    Gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    Part III Until the focus expands to data protection – Taking action

    Storage I/O trends

    Part III – Until the focus expands to data protection – Taking action

    This is the thrid of a three-part series (read part II here) about how vendors are keeping backup alive, however what they can and should do to shift and expand the conversation to data protection and related themes.

    Modernizing is more than simply swapping one technology for another

    As I have said for a couple of years now, modernizing data protection, or data protection modernization if you prefer is more than simply deduping or swapping out media, mediums, tape, disk, clouds, software or services like a recurring flat tire on an automobile. If you keep getting flat tires, instead of treating the symptom, find and fix the problem which means for backup, taking a step back and realizing that what is really being done is protecting data (e.g. data protection).

    Granted the security people may not like sharing the term data protection as some of them prefer to keep that unique, just like some of the compliance people want to keep archiving exclusive to their focus areas, however lets move on.

    On the other hand, data protection also means that, protect, preserve and enable data and information to be accessed and served when and were needed in a cost-effective way with consistency and coherency.

    Sure there is still the act of making a copy or a backup at time intervals (frequency) with various coverage (how much gets copied) to multiple locations (copies) with versions kept for different amounts of time (retention) to support RTO and RPO, not to mention SLA and SLO for ITSM (how’s that for some buzzword bingo ;).

    Buzzword bingo

    This means using copies, sync (or rsync), snapshots, replication and CDP, discrete copies such as backups along with all the other buzzword bingo enabling tools, technologies and techniques (e.g. Agent or Agent less, Archive, Availability zones. Not to mention Bare metal, virtual bare metal, Block based, CDP, Compression, Consolidation, Deletion, Data management, Dedupe, eDiscovery, durability, erasure coding/parity, file level, meta data and policy management, replication, snapshots, RAID, plugin, object storage, NAS, VTL, disk, tape, cloud, virtual among others). In addition to taking a step back, this also means rethinking why, how, when, where data (and information) gets protected to meet various threat risks as well as diverse business requirements.

    Storage I/O toolbox
    No tools in the toolbox (physical, virtual or cloud)

    Part of the rethinking is expanding the focus from what are the tools, who makes what’s, how do they work, their features and functions to how to use the tool or technology for different things.

    Storage I/O backup and data protection tools
    Various tools (hardware, software, services) for different physical, virtual and cloud tasks

    This is like going into a store like Lowe’s or Home Depot and talking to the sales people their (ok, associates or team members) who can tell you everything thing there is to know about the tool or technology, however they can’t tell you how to use it.

    Sometimes you can get lucky and there will be somebody working at the tool (hardware or software) store who will ask you what you are trying to do and give you advice based on their experience of a different approach with another tool or tools and some supporting material or parts and supplies.

    Does this sound familiar to data infrastructure or IT in general, not to mention server, storage, backup and data protection among other areas of interest?

    If all you have, or know how to use is a hammer, then everything or situation starts to look like a nail. Expand your toolbox with more tools AND learn how to use or apply them in new and different ways. Align the right tool, technology and technique to the task at hand!

    Expand from talking new technology to using new (and old) things in new ways

    In addition to focusing on new tools and technology along with their associated terminologies across physical, virtual and cloud environments, it is also time to expand the discussion and awareness to using new (and old) things in new ways. This also means expanding the terminology from backup/restore to more comprehensive data protection as part of modernizing your environment.

    For example some people (and vendors) use the term or phrase "Modernizing Data Protection" to mean swap out tape for disk, or disk for cloud, or one cloud for another cloud, or upgrade from one software version to another, or simply swap one vendors software or tool for another, yet continue to use it for all practical purposes in the same way.

    Sure, moving from hourly or daily copies to tape over to direct to disk and then either redeploying tape where it is better suited (streaming large amounts of data, powering off to save energy, e.g. deep cold archive). This also means leveraging fast random access to small files that need to be recovered (usually within first hours or days of being protected).

    technology alignment
    Aligning tools, technologies, techniques to various threat risk scenarios

    Modernizing data protection (also known as transformation) also means recognizing that not everything is the same in the data center or information factory regardless of size, and that there are also different and evolving data access patterns. Another reason and trend to consider is that there is no such thing as an information recession and that people plus data are living longer as well as getting larger.

    Expand your awareness and focus beyond simply knowing what the tools are and who makes them to how, when, where, why along with pros/cons of using them to discuss different situations. This means having multiple tools in your data protection toolbox as well as knowing how to use different tools for various tasks instead of always using a hammer. – GS @StorageIO

    data protection continuum
    The data protection continuum, more than tools and technoligiues

    Call to action, stop talking about it, start walking the talk

    If you or somebody else is tired of hearing about backup, then stop complaining about it and take some action. Following are some things to expand your thinking, awareness, discussions and activities around modernizing data protection (and moving beyond traditional backup).

    • Take a step back and check the basics or fundamentals of data protection which when enabled, allows your organization to move forward after a small or big incident (or disaster).
    • Start thinking beyond backup tools and technologies (hardware, software, services) particular how its been done, to why it needs to be done, how can it be done differently.
    • Revisit why you are protecting different things, realize that not everything is the same, so does that mean you have to protect everything the same way?
    • Learn about how to use different tools and technologies which is different from learning about the tools, features and functions.
    • Also keep in mind that a barrier is often people and process (along with organizational politics) that also result in new (and old) technologies being used in old ways.
    • Think about using different tools and technologies in different e.g. hybrid ways.
    • This means start using new (and old) tools, techniques, techniques in new ways, start to apply your return on innovation by using things to discuss issues, vs. simply using them for the sake of using them.

    In addition to the above items, here are some added links on various topics and themes mentioned here:

    BackupU – Vendor and technology neutral series of on-line webinars, Google+ hangouts, book chapter downloads and other content (Sponsored by Dell Data Protection Software, that’s a disclosure btw )

    Via StorageIOblog – Only You Can Prevent Cloud Data Loss,
    Cloud conversations: confidence, certainty and confidentiality,
    Modernizing data protection with certainty,
    More Data Footprint Reduction (DFR) Material,
    More modernizing data protection, virtualization and clouds with certainty,
    EMC Evolves Enterprise Data Protection with Enhancements and Data protection modernization, more than swapping out media.

    Via StorageIO Reports/Resources Page – backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving available here including presentations and book chapter downloads

    Via Internet evolution – People, Not Tech, Prevent IT Convergence.

    Closing comments (for now)

    Now having said all of that, It would be unrealistic to think that we can simply overnight drop the term backup and switch to data protection, after all, we need backwards compatibility. However until the industry which means from vendors, their pundits (analyst, bloggers, consultants, evangelists), press/media, vars, investors and customers start thinking and speaking in the broader context of data protection, life beyond backup, guess what, we will still be talking about backup. Start calling it (e.g. backup) data protection and perhaps within a generation (or sooner), the term backup will have been ILM, compressed, deduped, tiered, spun down, put into deep cold archive storage to take a long REST on object storage with a NAS interface in a software defined hybrid virtualized cloud ;).

    Watch for more data protection conversations about related trends, themes, technologies, techniques perspectives in my ongoing data protection diaries discussions (e.g. www.storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/).

    Ok, nuff said

    Cheers
    Gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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    Data Protection Diaries – My data protection needs and wants

    Storage I/O trends

    Blog post: Data Protection Diaries – My data protection needs and wants

    Update 1/10/18

    Rather than talking about what others should do or consider for their data protection needs, for this post I wrote down some notes using my Livescribe about what I need and want for my environment. As part of walking the talk in future posts I’m going to expand a bit more on what I’m doing as well as considering for enhancements to my environment for data protection which consists of cloud, virtual and physical.

    Why and what am I Protecting?

    live scribe example
    Livescribe notes that I used for creating the following content

    What is my environment

    Server and StorageIO (aka StorageIO) is a small business that is focused in and around data infrastructures which includes data protection as a result, have lots of data including videos, audio, images, presentations, reports, research as well, file serving as back-office applications.  Then there are websites, blog, email and related applications, some of which are cloud based that are also part of my environment that have different availability, durable, and accessibility requirements.

    My environment includes local on-site physical as well as virtual systems, mobile devices, as well as off-site resources including a dedicated private server (DPS) at a service provider. On one hand as a small business, I could easily move most if not everything into the cloud using an as a service model. However, I also have a lab and research environment for doing various things involving data infrastructure including data protection so why not leverage those for other things.

    Why do I need to protect my information and data infrastructure?

    • Protect and preserve the business along with associated information as well as assets
    • Compliance (self and client based, PCI and other)
    • Security (logical and physical) and privacy to guard against theft, loss, instrusions
    • Logical (corruption, virus, accidental deletion) and physical damage to systems, devices, applications and data
    • Isolate and contain faults of hardware, software, networks, people actions from spreading to disasters
    • Guard against on-site or off-site incidents, acts of man or nature, head-line news and non head-line news
    • Address previous experience, incidents and situations, preventing future issues or problems
    • Support growth while enabling agility, flexibity
    • Walk the talk, research, learning increasing experience

    My wants – What I would like to have

    • Somebody else pay for it all, or exist in world where there are no threat risks to information (yeh right ;) )
    • Cost effective and value (not necessarily the cheapest, I also want it to work)
    • High availability and durability to protect against different threat risks (including myself)
    • Automated, magically to take care of everything enabled by unicorns and pixie dust ;).

    My requirements – What I need (vs. want):

    • Support mix of physical, virtual and cloud applications, systems and data
    • Different applications and data, local and some that are mobile
    • Various operating environments including Windows and Linux
    • NOT have to change my environment to meet limits of a particular solution or approach
    • Need a solution (s) that fit my needs and that can scale, evolve as well as enable change when my environment does
    • Also leverage what I have while supporting new things

    Data protection topics, trends, technologies and related themes

    Wrap and summary (for now)

    Taking a step back to look at a high-level of what my data protection needs are involves looking at business requirements along with various threat risks, not to mention technical considerations. In a future post I will outline what I am doing as well as considering for enhancements or other changes along with different tools, technologies used in hybrid ways. Watch for more posts in this ongoing series of the data protection dairies via www.storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/.

    Ok, nuff said (for now)

    Cheers
    Gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved