Education Archives

November 9, 2010November 26, 2023

Fall 2010 StorageIO News Letter

Fall 2010 Newsletter

Welcome to the Fall 2010 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) newsletter. This follows the August 2010 edition building on the great feedback received from recipients.

You can access this news letter via various social media venues (some are shown below) in addition to StorageIO web sites and subscriptions. Click on the following links to view the Fall 2010 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the newsletter page to view previous editions.

Follow via Goggle Feedburner here or via email subscription here.

You can also subscribe to the news letter by simply sending an email to newsletter@storageio.com

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO newsletter, let me know your comments and feedback.

Cheers gs

Nuff said for now

Cheers gs

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

November 8, 2010March 7, 2022

Who is responsible for vendor lockin?

data infrastructure server storage I/O vendor lockin

Updated 1/21/2018

Who is responsible for vendor lockin?

Is vendor lockin caused by vendors, their partners or by customers?

In my opinion vendor lockin can be from any or all of the above.

What is vendor lockin

Vendor lockin is a situation where a customer becomes dependent or locked in by choice or other circumstances to a particular supplier or technology.

What is the difference between vendor lockin, account control and stickiness?

Im sure some marketing wiz or sales type will be happy to explain the subtle differences. Generally speaking, lockin, stickiness and account control are essentially the same, or at least strive to obtain similar results. For example, vendor lockin too some has a negative stigma. However vendor stickiness may be a new term, perhaps even sounding cool thus it is not a concern. Remember the Mary Poppins song a spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down? In other words sometimes changing and using a different term such as sticky vs vendor lockin helps make the situation taste better.

Is vendor lockin or stickiness a bad thing?

No, not necessarily, particularly if you the customer are aware and still in control of your environment.

I have had different views of vendor lockin over the years.

These have varied from when I was a customer working in IT organizations or being a vendor and later as an advisory analyst consultant. Even as a customer, I had different views of lockin which varied depending upon the situation. In some cases lockin was a result of upper management having their favorite vendor which meant when a change occurred further up the ranks, sometimes vendor lockin would shift as well. On the other hand, I also worked in IT environments where we had multiple vendors for different technologies to maintain competition across suppliers.

As a vendor, I was involved with customer sites that were best of breed while others were aligned around a single or few vendors. Some were aligned around technologies from the vendors I worked for and others were aligned with someone elses technology. In some cases as a vendor we were locked out of an account until there was a change of management or mandates at those sites. In other cases where lock out occurred, once our product was OEMd or resold by an incumbent vendor, the lockout ended.

Some vendors do a better job of establishing lockin, account management, account control or stickiness than compared to others. Some vendors may try to lock a customer in and thus there is perception that vendors lock customers in. Likewise, there is a perception that vendor lockin only occurs with the largest vendors however I have seen this also occur with smaller or niche vendors who gain control of their customers keeping larger or other vendors out.

Sweet, sticky Sue Bee Honey

Vendor lockin or stickiness is not always the result of the vendor, var, consultant or service provider pushing a particular technology, product or service. Customers can allow or enable vendor lockin as well, either by intent via alliances to drive some business initiative or accidentally by giving up account control management. Consequently vendor lockin is not a bad thing if it brings mutual benefit to the suppler and consumer.

On the other hand, if lockin causes hardship on the consumer while only benefiting the supplier, than it can be a bad thing for the customer.

Do some technologies lend themselves more to vendor lockin vs others?

Yes, some technologies lend themselves more to stickiness or lockin then others. For example, often big ticket or expensive hardware are seen as being vulnerable to vendor lockin along with other hardware items however software is where I have seen a lot of stickiness or lockin around.

However what about virtualization solutions after all the golden rule of virtualization is whoever controls the virtualization (hardware, software or services) controls the gold. This means that vendor lockin could be around a particular hypervisor or associated management tools.

How about bundled solutions or what are now called integrated vendor technology stacks including PODs (here or here) or vBlocks among others? How about databases, do they enable or facilitate vendor lockin? Perhaps, just like virtualization or operating systems or networking technology, storage system, data protection or other solutions, if you let the technology or vendor manage you, then you enable vendor lockin.

Where can vendor lockin or stickiness occur?

Application software, databases, data or information tools, messaging or collaboration, infrastructure resource management (IRM) tools ranging from security to backup to hypervisors and operating systems to email. Lets not forget about hardware which has become more interoperable from servers, storage and networks to integrated marketing or alliance stacks.

Another opportunity for lockin or stickiness can be in the form of drivers, agents or software shims where you become hooked on a feature functionality that then drives future decisions. In other words, lockin can occur in different locations both in traditional IT as well as via managed services, virtualization or cloud environments if you let it occur.

Keep these thoughts in mind:

Customers need to manage their resources and suppliers
Technology and their providers should work for you the customer, not the other way around
Technology providers conversely need to get closer to influence customer thinking
There can be cost with single vendor or technology sourcing due to loss of competition
There can be a cost associated with best of breed or functioning as your own integrator
There is a cost switching from vendors and or their technology to keep in mind
Managing your vendors or suppliers may be easier than managing your upper management
Vendors sales remove barriers so they can sell and setting barriers for others
Virtualization and cloud can be both a source for lockin as well as a tool to help prevent it
As a customer, if lockin provides benefits than it can be a good thing for all involved

Additional learning experiences along with common questions (and answers), as well as tips can be found in Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials book.

What This All Means

Ultimately, its up to the customer to manage their environment and thus have a say if they will allow vendor lockin. Granted, upper management may be the source of the lockin and not surprisingly is where some vendors will want to focus their attention directly, or via influence of high level management consultants.

So while a vendors solution may appear to be a locked in solution, it does not become a lockin issue or problem until a customer lets or allows it to be a lockin or sticky situation.

What is your take on vendor lockin? Cast your vote and see results in the following polls.

Is vendor lockin a good or bad thing?

Who is responsible for managing vendor lockin

Where is most common form or concern of vendor lockin

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert 2010-2017 (vSAN and vCloud). Author of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press), as well as Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com any reproduction in whole, in part, with changes to content, without source attribution under title or without permission is forbidden.

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved. StorageIO is a registered Trade Mark (TM) of Server StorageIO.

November 7, 2010December 31, 2022

Another StorageIO Hybrid Momentus Moment

Its been a few months since my last post (read it here) about Hybrid Hard Disk Drive (HHDD) such as the Seagate Momentus XT that I have been using.

The Momentus XT HHDD I have been using is a 500GB 7,200RPM 2.5 inch SATA Hard Disk Drive (HDD) with 4GB of embedded FLASH (aka SSD) and 32MB of DRAM memory for buffering hence the hybrid name.

I have been using the XT HHDD mainly for transferring large multi GByte size files between computers and for doing some disk to disk (D2D) backups while becoming more comfortable with it. While not as fast as my 64GB all flash SSD, the XT HHDD is as fast as my 7,200RPM 160GB Momentus HDD and in some cases faster on burst reads or writes. The notion of having a 500GB HDD that was affordable to support D2D was attractive however the ability to get some performance boost now and then via the embedded 4GB FLASH opens many different possibilities particularly when combined with compression.

Recently I switched the role of the Momentus XT HHDD from that of being a utility drive to becoming the main disk in one of my laptops. Despite many forums or bulletin boards touting issues or problems with the Seagate Momentus XT causing system hangs or Windows Blue Screen of Death (BSoD), I continued on with the next phase of testing.

Making the switch to XT HHDD as a primary disk

I took a few precaution including eating some of my own dog food that I routinely talk about. For example, I made sure that the Lenovo T61 where the Momentus XT was going to be installed was backed up. In addition, I synced my traveling laptop so that it was the primary so that I could continue working during the conversion not to mention having an extra copy in addition to normal on and offsite backups.

Ok, lets get back to the conversion or migration from a regular HDD to the HHDD.

Once I knew I had a good backup, I used the Seagate Discwizard (e.g. Acronis based) tool for imaging the existing T61 HDD to the Momentus XT HHDD. Using Discwizard (you could use other tools as well) I configured it to initialize the HHDD which was attached via a Seagate Goflex USB to SATA cable kit as well as image or copy the contents of the T61 HDD partitions to the Momentus XT. During the several hours it took to copy and create a new bootable disk image on the HHDD I continued working on my travel or standby laptop.

After the image copy was completed and verified, it was time to reboot and see how Windows (XP SP3) liked the HHDD which all seemed to be normal. There were some parts of the boot that seemed a bit faster, however not 100 percent conclusive. The next step was to shutdown the laptop and physically swap the old internal HDD with the HHDD and reboot. The subsequent boot did seem faster and programs accessing large files also seemed to run a bit faster.

Keep in mind that the HHDD is still a spinning 7,200RPM disk drive so comparisons to a full time SSD would be apples to oranges as would the cost capacity difference between those devices. However, for what I wanted to see and use, the limited 4GB of flash does seem to provide a performance boost and if I needed full time super fast performance, I could buy a larger capacity SSD and install it. Im going to hold off on buying any more larger capacity flash SSD for the time being however.

Do I see HHDD appearing in SMB, SME or enterprise storage systems anytime soon? Probably not, at least not in primary storage systems. However perhaps in some D2D backup, archive or dedupe and VTL devices or other appliances.

Momentus XT Speed Bumps

Now, to be fair, there have been some bumps in the road!

The first couple of days were smooth sailing other than hearing the mystery chirp the HHDD makes a couple of times a day. Low and behold after a couple of days, just as many forums had indicated, a mystery system hang occurred (and no, not like Windows might normally do so for those Microsoft cynics). Other than the inconvenience of a reboot, no data was lost as files being updated were saved or had been backed up not to mention after the reboot, everything was intact anyway. So far just an inconvenience or so I thought.

Almost 24 hours later, same thing except this time I got to see the BSoD which candidly, I very rarely see despite hearing stories from others. Ok, this was annoying, however as long as I did not lose any data, other than lost time from a reboot, lets chalk this up to a learning experience and see where it goes. Now guess what, about 12 hours later, once again, the system froze up and this time I was in the middle of a document edit. This time I did lose about 8 minutes of typing data that had not been auto saved (I have since changed my auto save from 10 minutes to 5 minutes).

With this BSoD incident, I took some notes and using the X61s, started checking some web sites and verified the BIOS firmware on the T61 which was up to date. However I noticed that the Seagate Momentus XT HHDD was at firmware 22 while there was a 23 version available. Reading through some web sites and forums, I was on the fence on trying firmware 23 given that it appears a newer firmware version for the HHDD is in the works. Deciding to forge forward with the experiment, after all, no real data loss had occurred, and I still had the X61s not to mention the original T61 HDD to fall back to worse case.

Going to the Seagate web site, I downloaded the firmware 23 install kit and ran it to their instructions which was a breeze and then did the reboot.

It has not been quite a week yet, however knocking on wood, while I keep expecting to see one, no BSoD or system freezes have occurred. However having said that and knocking on wood, Im also making sure things are backed up protected and ready if needed. Likewise, if I start to see a rash of BSoD, my plan is to fall back to the original T61 HDD, bring it up to date and use it until a newer HHDD firmware version is available to resume testing.

What is next for my Seagate Momentus XT HHDD?

Im going to wait to see if the BSoD and mystery system hangs disappear as well as for the arrival of the new firmware followed by some more testing. However, when Im confident with it, the next step is to put the XT HHDD into the X61s which is used primarily for travel purpose.

Why wait? Simple, while I can tolerate a reboot or crash or data loss or disruption while in the office given access to copies as well as standby or backup systems to work from, when traveling options are more limited. Sure if there is data loss, I can go to my cloud provider and rapidly recall a file or multiple ones as needed or for critical data, recover from a portable encrypted USB device. Consequently I want more confidence in the XT HHDD before deploying it for travel mode which it is probably safe to do as of now, however I want to see how stable it is in the office before taking it on the road.

What does this all mean?

Simple, have a backup of your data and systems
Test and verify those backups or standby systems periodically
Have a fall back plan for when trying new things
Keep productivity in mind, at some point you may have to fall back
If something is important enough to protect, have multiple copies
Be ready to eat your own dog food or what you talk about
Do not be scared, however be prepared, look before you leap

How about you are you using a HHDD yet and if so, what are your experiences? I am curious to hear if anyone has tried using a HHDD in their VMware lab environments yet in place of a regular HDD or before spending a boat load of money for a similar sized SSD.

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

September 3, 2010June 13, 2021

VMworld 2010 virtual roads, clouds and INXS Devil Inside

This past week I spent a few days in San Francisco attending the VMworld 2010 event which included a Wednesday evening concert with the Australian band INXS.

Despite some long lines (or queues) waiting to get into sessions, keynotes or lunch resulting in delays reminiscent of trying to put too many virtual machines (VMs) onto a given number of physical machines (PMs) in the quest to drive up utilization, the overall event was fantastic.

While at the event, I had a chance to meet up with fellow vExpert Eric Siebert whose new book Maximum vSphere made its debut. I was honored when asked by Eric to help out with his chapter on storage, learn more about Erics new book here.

Eric was just one of many people I was able to catch up with or in some cases meet for the first time face to face. Among the many fellow twitter tweeps included @3parfarley @aebarrett @charleshood @cxi @edsai @ericsiebert @hpstorageguy @iben @jmichelmetz @jtroyer @keithnorbie @KendrickColeman @MesabiGroup @PariseauTT @RayLucchesi @RickVanover @rodos @rogerlund @rootwyrm @sakacc @scott_lowe @ServerVirt_TT @SiliconValleyPR @ssauer @ssharwood @StorageOlogist @stu @Texiwill and @vmworld not to mention many others who are not on twitter.

Big thanks to @rogerlund for organizing a very impromptu ad hoc lunch discussion with a couple of other IT pros representing vary different as well as diverse spectrums of public, private, small, large and ultra large environments. I was only at the event for two days and thus there were many others that I was looking for at their booths or in the hallways (I saw @ekhnaser among others that I could not call out too in time) or in the meeting rooms as well as in the lunch hall. I look forward to seeing you all at some future event or venue.

On the food scene, while I did not have a chance to dine at one of my local favorites Brandy Hos, I did have a fantastic lunch at Henrys House of Pain (aka Henrys House of Hunan on Sansome). I also had a great outdoor dinner in the alleyway based Cafe Tiramisu where I enjoyed their signature dish. The dish which was essentially a fruit de mer (Fruit of the Sea) over linguine covered with a thin pizza crust that was baked. It was fantastic and brings a whole new dimension to the theme of a classic pot pie meets fruit de mar, give it a try!

On an even lighter or fun note, following are photos and links to some videos of the INXS event courtesy of Karen (aka Mrs Schulz). In addition to being an award winning photographer, Karens day time job is that of an applications development analyst (e.g. an IT Geekette) at a large Minnesota based Mining and Manufacturing company that is also involved in many different sticky and abrasive among other products.

Karen (Photo Courtesy Karen Sculz)

Karen took the following photos (and videos) with her Cannon Powershot S5 Digital camera.

Me heading to INXS show at VMworld 2010 (Photo Courtesy Karen Schulz)

Me sitting in the middle of the virtual highway (Photo Courtesy Karen Schulz)

INXS at VMworld 2010 (Photo Courtesy Karen Schulz)

JD Fortune of INXS at VMworld (Photo Courtesy Karen Schulz)

Kirk Pengilly and JD Fortune of INXS at VMworld 2010 (Photo Courtesy Karen Schulz)

Tim Farriss of INXS (Photo Courtesy Karen Schulz)

Here are links to some videos that Karen captured from up front near the stage during the INXS show at VMworld 2010.

Devil Inside (not to be confused with the devil is in the details of clouds, virtualization and other IT topics)

By My Side (Where a vendor or solution partner should be during and after the sale for their customers)

Disappear (What should not happen to your data or virtual machines in physical, virtual or cloud environments)

Never Tear Us Apart (What should not happen between your servers, storage, applications and data)

Need You Tonight (The call that many system admins get during their off hours)

New Sensation (What many are experience with virtualization and clouds)

Dont Change (Ironic final song of encore of a concert at conference with a theme of change)

A big tip of the hat along with thanks goes out to John Troyer of VMware as well as Sarah Shvil of the VMware Analyst Relations team for helping make it possible for me to attend as an independent IT industry analyst instead of on the coat tails of a vendors exhibit hall pass (disclosure: I paid for my own travel, lodging and dinning expenses).

Me hitching a ride on the virtual highway to the clouds and VMworld (Photo Curtsey Karen Schulz)

Hopefully with some luck, I will be able to hitch a ride and attend VMworld again next year in Las Vegas, perhaps even as a repeat vExpert as well as IT Industry Analyst.

Thats a wrap for now.

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

August 30, 2010November 26, 2023

August 2010 StorageIO News Letter

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
Industry Trends and Perspectives (ITP)
Featured Article

You can access this news letter via various social media venues (some are shown below) in addition to StorageIO web sites and subscriptions. Click on the following links to view the August 2010 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the newsletter page to view previous editions.

Follow via Goggle Feedburner here or via email subscription here.

You can also subscribe to the news letter by simply sending an email to newsletter@storageio.com

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO newsletter, let me know your comments and feedback.

Cheers gs

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

August 26, 2010January 23, 2019

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

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 man who is the current Belle of the Ball in this current IT industry merger and acquisition bidding battle along with related industry trends and perspective insight commentary.

Cheers gs

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

August 20, 2010December 4, 2019

My Favorite Late Summer Reading Material

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, or the Great Grape Gazette or Beer Brewers News, Minnesota DNR news, Virtual Motor head Monthly, or Freshwater Dock Yachting Yearly review, Aviation Leak and Space Technology nor Rolling Stone.

It is also not one of the local news papers or national ones for that matter although the Singapore Shipping Times is a good diversion read that reminds me of my past visits there.

While I would like to say it is one of the many popular blogs (industry or other), let alone one of the many great books out there in print or kindle, no, it is something completely different.

Granted all of the above or their virtual reality physical variant are in fact great reading material that I enjoy and do recommend (or their reasonable facsimile).

However, there is one that stands out above all others and it is called Cooks Illustrated (FTC disclosure, my wife gave me a subscription).

Is there a point to all of the above which if you could not tell, includes some tongue in cheek humor, perhaps what some might see as, skepticism or snarkyness while others might have a good laugh (to each your own)?

Yes the point is this.

Take a break from your normal wide world of work routine, stop typing or talking for a bit, sit back, maybe put some tunes on and read something to stimulate (as well as relax) the brain for a bit.

Find and enjoy some recreational or diversion reading material no matter how light or heavy, humor or serious, perhaps listen to some music and enjoy a cold (or warm) beverage perhaps even drifting into a drool producing nap. Enjoy the balance of your summer (or winter for friends down under) and take some time to read something to stimulate that gray matter between the ears located slightly behind your eyes.

Ok, now Im hungry have to go.

BTW: What is your favorite late summer reading material (and/or relaxation activity, music, food or beverage)?

Cheers gs

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

July 18, 2010March 11, 2022

July 2010 Odds and Ends: Perspectives, Tips and Articles

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 for some data, applications or environments can be the case. However there is also shifting from energy avoidance to that of being efficient, effective, productive not to mention profitable as forms of optimization. Collectively these various techniques and technologies help address or close the Green Gap and can reduce the amount of Green IT confusion in the form of boosting productivity (same goes for servers or networks) in terms of more work, IOPS, bandwidth, data moved, frames or packets, transactions, videos or email processed per watt per second (or other unit of time).

Click here to read and listen to my comments about boosting IOPs per watt, or here to learn more about the many facets of energy efficient storage and here on different aspects of storage optimization. Want to read more about the next major wave of server, storage, desktop and networking virtualization? Then click here to read more about virtualization life beyond consolidation where the emphasis or focus expands to abstraction, transparency, enablement in addition to consolidation for servers, storage, networks. If you are interested in metrics and measurements, Storage Resource Management (SRM) not to mention discussion about various macro data center metrics including PUE among others, click on the preceding links.

NAS and Shared Storage, iSCSI, DAS, SAS and more

Shifting gears to general industry trends and commentary, here are some comments on consumer and SOHO storage sharing, the role and importance Value Added Resellers (VARs) serve for SMB environments, as well as the top storage technologies that are in use and remain relevant. Here are some comments on iSCSI which continues to gain in popularity as well as storage options for small businesses.

Are you looking to buy or upgrade a new server? Here are some vendor and technology neutral tips to help determine needs along with requirements to help be a more effective informed buyer. Interested or do you want to know more about Serial Attached SCSI (6Gb/s SAS) including for use as external shared direct attached storage (DAS) for Exchange, Sharepoint, Oracle, VMware or HyperV clusters among other usage scenarios, check out this FAQ as well as podcast. Here are some other items including a podcast about using storage partitions in your data storage infrastructure, an ATE about what type of 1.5TB centralized storage to support multiple locations, and a video on scaling with clustered storage.

That is all for now, hope all is well and enjoy the content.

Cheers gs

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

June 28, 2010November 3, 2024

Gregs StorageIO Out and About Update: June 2010

With the 2010 summer solstice having occurred in the northern hemisphere that means it is time for a quick out and about update. It has been a busy winter and spring in the office, on the road as well as at home.

Some results of this recent activity have appeared in blog, on my web site as well as via other sites and venues. For example, activity or content ranges from Industry Trends and Perspectives white papers, reports, blogs, newsletter commentary, interviews, Internet TV, videos, web cast, pod casts (including several appearances on StorageMonkeys Infosmack as well as Rich Brambleys Virtumania), ask the expert (ATE) questions, twitter tweets, tips and columns. Then there were the many in person presentations, key note and seminar events, conferences, briefing sessions along with virtual conferencing and advisory consulting sessions (read and see more here).

Regarding having new content appearing in different or new venues, Silicon Angle (including a video), Newstex and Enterprise Efficiencies join the long list of industry and vertical, traditional along with new world venues that my content as well as industry trends and perspective commentary appear in. Read more about events and activities here, content here or commentary here.

Speaking of books, there is also some news in that The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) is now available on Amazon Kindle (click on links below) as well as having been translated and published in China not to mention having undergone another round of printing keeping up with demand to make more copies available via global venues.

The Green and Virtual Data Center Chineese Edition: ISBN 978-7-115-21827-8

As for what am I seeing and hearing, check out the new series of Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) short blog posts that compliment other posts as well as content found on the main web site. These ITP pieces capture what I am hearing and seeing (that is of those what I can talk about that are not under NDA of course) while out and about.

Some of the cities that I have been at while out and about doing keynote speaking and seminar events as well as for other meetings have included Minneapolis, Miami, San Diego, Beverly Hills, San Jose, San Diego (again), Hollywood (again), Austin, Miami (again), New York City, Reston, Minneapolis (again), Irvine, New York City (again), Boston, Toronto, Atlanta, Chicago, Columbus, Philadelphia, Mountain View, Mahtomedia (Minneapolis area), Boston (again) and Indianapolis, Calgary, Jasper (Alberta), Vancouver in Canada as well as Nijkerk (Netherlands) for a one day seminar covering Industry Trends and Perspectives in addition to changing planes in Atlanta, Detroit, Memphis and Las Vegas.

The Planes should be obvious, however what about automobiles you ask? How about the following taken from my rental car while driving north of LAX on the 405 after a January storm during my trip from San Diego after a morning event to Beverly Hills to do an evening keynote.

Rainbow seen from 405 north of LAX
Driving north of LAX on the 405 with a rainbow after rain storm

Another car trip a few weeks later after a different event in San Diego I had a driver from a service behind the wheel so that I could get some work done before an evening meeting. Also on the car front, after flying into Indianapolis there was a car ride to Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) to do a keynote for a CDW sponsored event in gasoline alley a few days before the big race there. While we are on the topic of automobiles and technology, if you have not seen it, check out a post I did about what NAS, NASA and NASCAR have in common.

Gasoline Alley at Indy 500 Practice during a speaking event

What about trains you ask?

VIA Rail: The Canadian Waiting for morning Train at Nijkerk Station to take me to Amsterdam Airport

Besides the normal airport trams or trains, there was a fun Amtrak Acela ride from New York City Penn station after a morning event in the city up to Boston so as to be in place for a morning event the next day. Other train activity besides airport, subway or commuter light rail in the US and Europe (Holland), there was also an overnight trip on VIA Rail Canada the Canadian from Jasper Alberta to Vancouver (some business tied into a long weekend). If you have never been to the Canadian Rockies, let alone traveled via train, check this one, it was a blast and I highly recommend it.

Lake Louise Alberta Canada Bear family seen near Jasper Alberta
Lake Louise and Jasper area bear family in Alberta Canada

It just dawned on me, what about any out and about via boats?

Other than the Boston water taxi to Logan Airport from the convention center where EMCworld was held and that I did an Internet TV interview along with @Stu and @Scott_Lowe, boat activity has been so far relegated to relaxation.

However, as all work and no play could make for a dull boy (or girl), I can update you that the out and about via boat fishing and sightseeing activity has been very good so far this fall even with high (then low, then high) water on the scenic St. Croix river way.

Here are some scenes from out and about on the St. Croix river including an eagle in its nest tending to its young who can not be seen in this photo as well as fishing (and catching and releasing).

Greg and his Fish Guide: Out and About on St. Croix River Photos by Karen Schulz Waleye Fish: Out and About on St. Croix River Photos by Karen Schulz
This is Walter: Out and About on St. Croix River Photos by Karen Schulz One of our Neighbors who had an addition to their family this year: Out and About on St. Croix River Photos by Karen Schulz

In between travels (as well as during on planes, trains and in hotel rooms) as well as relaxation breaks, I have been also working on several other projects. Some of these can be seen on the news or tips and articles as well as video and pod cast pages in addition to custom research as well as advisory consulting services. I have also been working on some other projects some of which will become visible over the next weeks and months, others not for a longer period of time yet and yet others that fall under the NDA category so that is all I have to say about that.

If you are not receiving or have seen them, the inaugural issue of the Server and StorageIO newsletter appeared in late February followed by the second edition (Spring 2010) this past week. Both can be found here and here as well as at www.storageio.com/newsletter or subscribing via newsletter@storageio.com.

A question I often get asked is what am I hearing or seeing particularly with regards to IT customers as well as with vars during my travels. Here are some photos covering some of the things that I have seen so far this year while out and about.

Super TV or Visualization device at Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) in Austin
Note all of the dell servers side by side under the screens required to drive the image.

Taking a walk inside a supercomputer (left) and Texas Supercomputer (Note the horns)

View of MTC during one of stops part of a five city server virtualizaiton series I did
Microsoft Technology Center (MTC)

view from coach class Flight travel tools
View from the back of the plane (left), Airplane long haul essentials: water, food, ipod, coffee, eye shades

Dutch boats
Boats in Holland taken after dinner before recent seminar I did in Nijkerk

Dutch snack (yum yum) food Dutch Soccer or Pub Grub
Dutch Soccer (Pub) food and snacks being enjoyed after a recent seminar in Nijkerk

Waiting at AMS for flight to MSP Airplane food and maps
Airport waiting for planes in AMS (left), more airplane snacks and a map (right)

As to what am I seeing and hearing pertaining to IT, storage, networking and server trends or issues they include among others (see the newsletter):

Whats on deck and and that I am working on?

Having had a busy fun winter and spring Im going to get some relaxation time in during a couple of week period of no travel, however there is plenty to do and get ready for. The summer months will slow down a bit on the out and about travel events scene, however not to a complete stop. In between preparing for upcoming events, advisory and consulting activities as well as researching new material and topics not to mention working on some projects that you will see or hear more about in the weeks and months to come.

For example I will be a guest on a webcast sponsored by Viridity discussing the importance of data center metrics, measurement and insight for effective management to enable energy efficient and effective data centers on July 8th. In addition, I will also be doing another five city storage virtualization series in Stamford, Cleveland, Miami, Tampa and Louisville during mid to late July among other upcoming activities including VMworld in San Francisco.

Check out the events page for more details, specific dates and venues.

What about you?

What have you been doing or have planned for your summer?

Let me know what you are seeing or hearing as well as have been doing.

In the meantime however keep these hints and tips in mind:

Have plenty of reading material (real physical books or magazines) or virtual (Kindle or other) as well as via Internet or online to read while at the beach (make sure your computer or PDA is backed up), pool side, in the backyard or elsewhere
Remember your eye shades (sun glasses or eye wear), hat and sun screen and if applicable, inspect or bug repellant (e.g. RAID is still useful)

Drink plenty of liquid fluids while outside in the summer heat including non alcoholic ones that do not have umbrellas or other interesting garnish
Have a place to backup and protect all those summer photos, videos and audio clips that you record while on your out and about adventure. However, keep in mind privacy concerns when uploading them to various social mediums. After all, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas and what happens on the web stays on the web!

Thanks to everyone involved in the recent events which can be seen here, as well for those who will be participating in upcoming ones I look forward to meeting and talking with you.

Until next time have a fun, safe and relaxing summer if you are in the northern hemisphere and for those down under, not to worry, spring is on the way soon for you as well.

Cheers gs

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

Follow via Google Feedburner here or via email subscription here.

June 10, 2010February 3, 2023

Initial Virtumania Appearance (Episode 14) with fellow vExperts

This past week I was invited to join some fellow vExperts as a first time guest on Rich Brambleys (@rbrambley and VMETC) podcast show called Virtumania.

Episode 14 (Virtualization and Networking Turf Wars) had as a theme as you can guest themes around physical, logical and virtual networking for virtual servers along with some of the politics and turf battles associated with managing those entities.

Also on the show were cohost Marc Farley (@3parfarley) of 3Par and StorageRap.com as well as regular guest Rick Vanover (@rickvanover) of RickVanover.com and other special guest David Davis (@davidmdavis) vmwarevideos.com in addition to myself.

For some fun, there is even some reference to rival gangs dancing for superiority in the Michael Jackson music video "Bad" which was produced by Greg Knieriemen (@knieriemen) of Chi Corporation for this Infosmack Production.

Check out the show here or here.

BTW: Is it just me or does Rich Brambley sound a little bit like Tom Petty without the accent?

Thanks guys, enjoyed being a guest on the show as well as talking with you all, hope to be able to do it again sometime soon.

Cheers gs

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

June 1, 2010November 26, 2023

June 2010 StorageIO Newsletter

June 2010 Newsletter

Welcome to the June 2010 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) newsletter. This follows the Spring 2010 edition building on the great feedback received from recipients.
Items that are new in this expanded edition include:

Out and About Update
Industry Trends and Perspectives (ITP)
Featured Article

You can access this news letter via various social media venues (some are shown below) in addition to StorageIO web sites and subscriptions. Click on the following links to view the June 2010 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the newsletter page to view previous editions.

Follow via Goggle Feedburner here or via email subscription here.

You can also subscribe to the news letter by simply sending an email to newsletter@storageio.com

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO newsletter, let me know your comments and feedback.

Cheers gs

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

May 26, 2010January 1, 2022

Industry Trends and Perspectives Blog Series

This is the first in a series of ongoing short industry trends and perspectives blog post briefs. These short posts compliment other longer posts along with traditional industry trends and perspective white papers, research reports, solution brief content found at www.storageioblog.com/reports.

I often get asked by people what Im seeing or hearing new (aka what is the Buzz).

Sometimes when I tell those who ask about new things or what they have not read or heard about yet, I get interesting as well as varied sometimes even funny reactions. In most cases unless the person does not agree or like the trend, the reaction shifts to one of wanting to know more including what is driving or causing the activity, its impact along with what can be done.

As some are new or emerging they may not yet be being covered in other venues, research, surveys, studies or reports. Thus do not be surprised or alarmed if there is something listed here or in one of the subsequent series post that you have not seen or read elsewhere yet while others may already be familiar. Some are emerging trends perhaps even being short lived while others will have longer legs to evolve.

Some general trends that I am seeing and hearing from IT professionals include:

Click on the above links to read more about these the first in a series of quick Industry Trends and Perspectives posts as well as watch for more in the coming weeks and months.

That is all for now. I hope you find these ongoing series of current or emerging Industry Trends and Perspectives interesting.

Cheers gs

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

May 20, 2010November 26, 2023

Upcoming Event: Industry Trends and Perspective European Seminar

Event Seminar Announcement:

IT Data Center, Storage and Virtualization Industry Trends and Perspective
June 16, 2010 Nijkerk, GELDERLAND Netherlands

Event Type	Training/Seminar
Event Type	Seminar Training with Greg Schulz of US based Server and StorageIO
Sponsor	Brouwer Storage Consultancy
Target Audience	Storage Architects, Consultants, Pre-Sales, Customer (technical) decison makers
Keywords	Cloud, Grid, Data Protection, Disaster Recovery, Storage, Green IT, VTL, Encryption, Dedupe, SAN, NAS, Backup, BC, DR, Performance, Virtualization, FCoE
Location and Venue	Ampt van Nijkerk Berencamperweg Nijkerk, GELDERLAND NL
When	Wed. June 16, 2010 9AM-5PM Local
Price	€ 450,=
Event URL	LinkedIn: https://storageioblog.com/book4.html
Contact	Gert Brouwer Olevoortseweg 43 3861 MH Nijkerk The Netherlands Phone: +31-33-246-6825 Fax: +31-33-245-8956 Cell Phone: +31-652-601-309 info@brouwerconsultancy.com
Abstract	General items that will be covered include: What are current and emerging macro trends, issues, challenges and opportunities. Common IT customer and IT trends, issues and challenges. Opportunities for leveraging various current, new and emerging technologies, techniques. What are some new and improved technologies and techniques. The seminar will provide insight on how to address various IT and data storage management challenges, where and how new and emerging technologies can co-exist as well as compliment installed resources for maximum investment protection and business agility. Additional themes include cost and storage resource management, optimization and efficiency approaches along with where and how cloud, virtualizaiton and other topics fit into existing environments. Buzzwords and topics to be discussed include among others: FC and FCoE, SAS, SATA, iSCSI and NAS, I/O Vritualization (IOV) and convergence SSD (Flash and RAM), RAID, Second Generation MAID and IPM, Tape Performance and Capacity planning, Performance and Capacity Optimization, Metrics IRM tools including DPM, E2E, SRA, SRM, as Well as Federated Management Data movement and migration including automation or policy enabled HA and Data protection including Backup/Restore, BC/DR , Security/Encryption VTL, CDP, Snapshots and replication for virtual and non virtual environments Dynamic IT and Optimization , the new Green IT (efficiency and productivity) Distributed data protection (DDP) and distributed data caching (DDC) Server and Storage Virtualization along with discussion about life beyond consolidation SAN, NAS, Clusters, Grids, Clouds (Public and Private), Bulk and object based Storage Unified and vendor prepackaged stacked solutions (e.g. EMC VCE among others) Data footprint reduction (Servers, Storage, Networks, Data Protection and Hypervisors among others.

Learn about other events involving Greg Schulz and StorageIO at www.storageio.com/events

May 4, 2010February 3, 2023

Apple iPad: Is it a Business iTool or iToy?

Apple iPad via www.apple.com

With the formal release and availability of the Apple iPad (See previous post here) along with networking capabilities including 3G and WiFi, needless to say there has been plenty of buzz in the tech sphere and beyond on both what you can do, as well as what you can not do with the new Apple iProduct. Similarly, there has been buzz from Apple co-founder and chairman Steve Jobs defending why there is no Adobe flash capabilities on the iPad or perhaps a different way, attaching flash as a non standard which is ironic for those who see many Apple products as being non standard.

What has also been getting some buzz and discussions is if the iPad is a business iTool or iToy including a recent discussion on the StorageMonkeys Infosmack 48 podcast with hosts Greg Knieriemen @Knieriemen, Marc Farley @3parfarley, guest emeritus Mark Twomey @Storagezilla and Chris Weil LeBlanc @c_weil .

Also check out the StorageMonkeys weekly Tuesday Tech Fight for May 4, 2010 (May require registration which is free)

Granted like any other desktop, portable or handheld display device with a real or virtual keyboard and some type of networking interface combined with creative programming or hacks, almost anything can be used as a monitor or display or management tool interface to a variety of technologies.

That also begs the question along with others mentioned in a post a few months ago of what is the real value for the iPad today?

Certainly there are some business or organizations that simply need a very thin client for accessing public or private cloud applications, entertainment or other web content in addition to being a personal information device or digital assistant along the lines of a traditional iPod or similar device where a PC or Mac is not needed.

Likewise down the road as pointed out here, there could be other use cases (e.g. build it and they will come).

However today for business, the question remains, is the Apple iPad a business iTool or iToy or do you simply iDont Care?

Here is a link to a related post along with poll where you can cast your vote as well as see what others are thinking about the iPad.

Cheers gs

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

Technorati tags: iPad

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