Education Archives

April 21, 2009March 7, 2022

Happy Earth Day 2009

Its that time of the year again, that’s right, earth day April 22 2009!

If you frequent this blog, visit my websites (StorageIO, The Green and Virtual Data Center or Green Data Storage), track twitter, attended any of my speaking engagements, webcast, podcast, videos, radio interviews, seen press or media coverage, not to mention read any of my reports, articles, tips or books, it should not come as a surprise that I have something to say about Green IT and closing the Green Gap.

Common themes have included awareness of the green gap and how to address or close it including discussions around IT transformation, infrastructure optimization, boosting productivity and efficiency to support business sustainability among others. While its tempting to go on and on about different trends, topics, techniques, technologies and related themes with a back drop of earth day, lets leave it at this for now in the sake of brevity and efficiency.

There’s plenty of existing content to be recycled and reused or seen and viewed for today including at some of the above links. However, rest assured, there is more content in the works pertaining to enabling Green IT with a focus around data center productivity, efficiency and sustainability, doing more with less, or, doing more with what is available.

So happy earth day 2009, chat with you again soon.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

April 19, 2009March 7, 2022

Has SSD put Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) On Endangered Species List?

Storage I/O trends

Disclosure: I have been a user, vendor, author and analyst covering and a fan (and continue to be) of SSD for over 20 years

I have thought and wanting to post about this for a while, however recently several things popped up including moderating a panel where a vendor representative told the audience that the magnetic hard disk drive (HDD) would be dead in two, at most three years. While there were a few nods from those in the audience, the majority smiled politely, chuckled, looked at their watches or returned to doing email, twitters, texting or simply rolled their eyes in a way like, yeah right, we have heard this before ( ;) ).

Likewise, I have done many events including seminars, keynotes including at a recent CMG event (the performance and capacity planning group that I have been a part of for many years), webcasts and other interactions with IT pros, vendors, vars and media. These interactions have included among other topics, IT optimization, boosting server and storage efficiency, as well as the roll of tiering IT resources to boost efficiency, achieve better productivity while boosting performance in a cost-effective way during touch economic times, in other words, the other green IT!

Then the other day, I received an email from Mary Jander over at Internet Evolution. You may remember Mary from her days over at Byte & Switch. Mary was looking for a point, counter point, perspective and sound bit to a recent blog posting on her site and basically asked if I thought that the high performance HDD would be dead in a couple of years at the cost of FLASH SSD. Having given Mary some sound bits and perspectives which appear in her Article/Blog posting, there has since been a fun and lively discourse in Marys’ Internet Evolution blog comment section which could be seen by some as the pending funeral for high performance HDDs.

There has been a lot of work taking place including by industry trade groups such as the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) among others, not to mention many claims, discussions, banter and even some trash talk about how the magnetic hard disk drives (HDD) that as a technology is over 50 years old now, is nearing the end of the road and is about to be replaced by FLASH SSD in the next two to three years depending on who you talk with or listen to.

That may very well be the case, however, I have a strong suspicion that while the high performance 3.5" Fibre Channel 15,500 Revolution per minute (15.5K RPM) HDD is nearing the end of the line, I don’t believe that the 2.5" small form factor (SFF) Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) 15.5K (maybe faster in the future?) high performance and larger capacity HDD will have met its demise in the two to three-year timeframe.

The reason I subscribe to this notion is that of a need for balancing performance, availability, capacity, energy to a given power, cooling, floor space and environmental need along with price to meet different tiers of application and data quality of service and service level needs. Simply put, there continues to be a need even with some the new or emerging enhanced intelligence capabilities of storage systems for tiered media. That is tier-0 ultra fast SSD (FLASH or RAM) in a 2.5" form factor with SATA shifting to SAS connectivity, tier-1 fast 2.5" SAS 15.5K large capacity HDDs, tier-2 2.5" SATA and SAS high-capacity, 5.4 to 10K HDDs, or, ultra large capacity SAS and SATA 3.5" HDDs to meet different performance, availability, capacity, energy and economic points.

Why not just use SSD FLASH for all high performance activity, after all it excels in reads correct? Yup, however, take a closer look at write performance which is getting better and better, even with less reliance on intelligent controllers, firmware and RAM as a buffer. However, there is still a need for a balance of Tier-0, Tier-1, Tier-2, Tier-3 etc mediums to balance different requirements and stretch strained IT budgets to do more efficiency.

Maybe I’m stuck in my ways and spend to much time talking with IT professionals including server or storage architects, as well as IT planners, purchasers and others in the trenches and not enough time drinking the cool-aid and believing the evangelists and truth squads ;). However there is certainly no denying that Solid State Devices (SSD) using either RAM or FLASH are back in the spotlight again as SSD has been in the past, this time for many reasons with adoption continuing to grow. I think that its safe to say that some HDDs will fade away like other earlier generations have, such as the 3.5" FC HDD, however other HDDs like the high performance 2.5" SAS HDDs have some time to enjoy before their funeral or wake.

What say you?

BTW, check out this popular (and its Free) StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspectives White Paper Report that looks at various data center performance bottlenecks and how to discuss them to transition towards becoming more efficient. However a warning, you might actually be inclined to jump on the SSD bandwagon.

Oh, and there’s nothing wrong with SSD, after all as I mentioned earlier, I’m a huge fan, however, I’m also a huge fan of spinning HDDs having skipped SSD in my latest computer purchases for fast 7.2K (or faster) HDDs with FLASH for portability (encrypted of course). After all, it’s also about balancing the different tiers of storage mediums to the task at hand, that is, unless you subscribe to the notion that one tool or technique should be used to solve all problems which is fine if that is your cup of tea.

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

April 18, 2009January 23, 2019

Closing the Green Gap: WSRADIO Internet Radio Interview

Last week it was an appearance in print (and on-line) in the MSP Business Journal, this week it was on-line interview (Closing the Green Gap) interview via wsradio.

The other day, I had the pleasure of being a guest of Steve Bengston on wsradio (Internet Radio) during the Price Waterhouse Cooper Startup Show where our discussion was around the different facets of Green IT, efficiency, economic and environmental sustainment, closing the Green Gap and of course my new book.

Listen in here when you get a chance.

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

April 10, 2009September 3, 2021

MSP Business Journal Names Greg Schulz an Eco-tech Warrior

In the April 10th, 2009 issue of the Minneapolis St. Paul (MSP) Business Journal, guess who was named one of three Eco-Tech Warriors? That’s right, yours truly (See the article here).

Photo by Nancy Kuehn – MSP Business Journal

What can I say, I’m flattered and appreciate the coverage. Besides seeing the finished article in the special report, the real fun was doing the photo shoot with the props including the heavy swords, those were not plastic (Hummm, Iron Chef?)!

The photo shoot with the other two “Eco-Warriors” Tom Diamond of New Boundary Technology, and Travis Pakonen of Encompass Solutions along with Nancy Kuehn our photographer as well as the artistic and project management folks from MSP Business Journal were an absolute blast to work with.

For those of you looking for policy management as well as energy management tools for desktops, workstations and PCs, checkout Tom Diamonds New Boundary Technologies and their solutions. Likewise, I hear good things from friends who have used the services of Travis Pakonen and N’Compass for their data center projects.

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

April 5, 2009March 7, 2022

Storage Effiency and Optimizaiton – Balancing Time and Space

Storage I/O trends

Here’s a link to the presentation I recently delivered at the Spring 2009 Minneapolis/St. Paul area CMG (Computer Measurement Group – CMG) March 20th, 2009 hosted by Nexus Information Systems and organized by Tom Becchetti. The theme of the event was "Is your storage efficient? There are many ways to rate your storage, how does yours stack up?". Tom organized a great event as usual with a diverse set of speakers for the well attended event graciously hosted by Keith Norbie of Nexus at their Minnetonka facility. The title of my presentation was "Storage Efficiency: Mirror Mirror On The Wall, Who or What is The Most Efficient of Them All? Finding the Correct Balance" that looked at balancing the need to reduce (or maximize) space (utilization) with time (performance) to meet different requirements including maintaining quality of service, response time and availability.

Keeping in mind that there is no such thing as a data or I/O performance recession, there is a common myth that storage optimization or efficiency is all about driving up storage space capacity utilization which can be true for some environments, applications, data or storage types. However there is also the need to maintain or boost performance, reduce response time and latency, doing more work in a more productive and efficieny manner. Not all data or storage can be consolidated to boost utilization without concern for degrading or in any other way penalizing performance, response time or availability.

Thus it is about time and space, that is, balancing data movement and processing rates with storage space capacity utilization and that sometimes, more is not better for performance when it comes to ratios or the number of components in a solution.

Likewise there is the need to balance energy avoidance with energy efficient, balancing the need to store more data in a smaller footprint using less energy and the need to process more data in less time efficiently for productivity.

These and other related themes are expanded on in more detail in my book "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC). These and other related themes will covered in one of my upcoming presentations (The Other Green — Storage Efficiency and Optimization) at StorageDecisions in Chicago the week of June 1st, 2009, as well as in various seminars and events that I will be involved in the coming weeks and months.

Thanks to all those who helped organize, support, sponsored, presented and attended the recent CMG event, look forward to seeing or hearing from you all again soon.

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

April 4, 2009March 7, 2022

Storage Decisions Spring 2009 Sessions Update

The conference lineup and details for the Spring 2009 Storage Decisions event (June 1st and 2nd) in Chicago is coming together including two talks/presentations that I will be doing. One will be in Track 2 (Disaster Recovery) titled "Server Virtualization, Business Continuance and Disaster Recovery" and the other in Track 6 (Management/Executive) titled "The Other Green — Storage Efficiency and Optimization" with both sessions leveraging themes and topics from my new book "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC).

Track 2: Disaster Recovery
Server Virtualization, Business Continuance and Disaster Recovery
Presented by Greg Schulz, Founder and Senior Analyst, StorageIO
Server virtualization has the potential to bring sophisticated business continuance (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) techniques to organizations that previously didn’t have the means to adopt them. Likewise, virtualized as well as cloud environments need to be included in a BC/DR plan to enable application and data availability. Learn tips and tricks on building an accessible BC/DR strategy and plan using server virtualization and the storage products that enable efficient, flexible green and virtual data centers.

Topics include:
* Cross technology domain data protection management
* Tiered data protection to stretch your IT budget dollar
* What’s needed to enable BC/DR for virtualized environments
* How virtualization can enable BC/DR for non-virtualized environments
* General HA, BC/DR and data protection tips for virtual environments

Track 6: Management/Executive
The Other Green — Storage Efficiency and Optimization
Throw out the "green“: buzzword, and you’re still left with the task of saving or maximizing use of space, power, and cooling while stretching available IT dollars to support growth and business sustainability. For some environments the solution may be consolation while others need to maintain quality of service response time, performance and availability necessitating faster, energy efficient technologies to achieve optimization objectives. To accomplish these and other related issues, you can turn to the cloud, virtualization, intelligent power management, data footprint reduction and data management not to mention various types of tiered storage and performance optimization techniques. The session will look at various techniques and strategies to optimize either on-line active or primary as well as near-line or secondary storage environment during tough economic times, as well as to position for future growth, after all, there is no such thing as a data recession!

Topics include:
* Energy efficiency (strategic) vs. energy avoidance (tactical)
* Optimization and the need for speed vs. the need for capacity
* Metrics and measurements for management insight
* Tiered storage and tiered access including SSD, FC, SAS and clouds
* Data footprint reduction (archive, compress, dedupe) and thin provision
* Best practices, financial incentives and what you can do today

See you in Chicago in June if not before then. Learn more about other upcoming events and activities on the StorageIO events page.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

March 8, 2009October 17, 2024

Work and Entertainment From Coast to Coast

A week ago I was in St. Petersburg, Tampa and Miami Florida for a mix of work and relaxation along with Karen (Mrs. Schulz), visiting with my cousin and her husband who lives in the St. Pete beach area for a few days before back to work. While in the St. Pete and Tampa area, for fun, we did an afternoon at Busch Garden including a ride on Montu. For those who have not ridden on Montu, here’s a video I found that someone recorded to help give you a perspective of the ride. Other fun activities included stops or time at Billys Stonecrab and Seafood joint, Kayaking, lounging pool-side, shelling at Ft. Desoto and St. Pete Beach as well as a visit to the Hurricane among others.

In Miami, the pool area at the Four Seasons including a nice cabana pool-side spot to escape the cool breeze made for a great relaxing and catch-up on some work spot while Karen relaxed in the sun. Some of the restraunts in Miami we visited when taking a break from work included Gordon Birsch and Rosa for some outstanding, made at the table side fresh Guacamole en Molcajet!.

Speaking of work, the Florida trip involved doing keynotes at events in both Tampa and Miami with a theme of IT Infrastructure Optimization with both events being well attended. Themes included doing more with less, or, doing more with what you have, addressing data footprint and data management to boost productivity, how to address the continued growth in data and need to process, move and store more data and information. A discussion point prompted the thought of if there is a data recession or not (See previous blog post and here). Other topics of discussion and interested included converged networking for voice, data and general networking, security, server and storage virtualization, performance and capacity planning, data protection and BC/DR among others.

This past week involved a lunch and learn Keynote in the Minneapolis area with a local VAR, before a quick trip to the other (left) coast for another IT Infrastructure Optimization session and keynote, this time in Los Angeles. Some common themes heard from IT professionals at this past weeks events echoed those heard in Florida as well as concern about managing encryption keys not to mention securing virtual environments and software licensing models in virtualized server environments. The trip to LA also enabled a quick visit with friend Bruce Rave of Go Deep fame who provided a great tour and sightseeing of the Hollywood music scene.

Hollywood stops included dinner at Genghis Cohens (The duck and cashew chicken were outstanding) followed by visits to the Cat and Fiddle and Infamous Rainbow Bar & Grill next door to legendary Roxy. People watching was great as was the music and ambiance including a Nikki Sixx of Motely Crew sighting at the Rainbow as well as Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN seen in hotel lobby minutes after appearing on Larry King Live.

Thanks too everyone who came out and participated in the seminar events in Tampa, Miami, Minneapolis and LA, look forward to seeing and hearing from you again soon. Now its time to get ready to head off too the airport for this weeks events and activities including stops in Las Vegas and Milwaukee among others.

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

February 28, 2009March 7, 2022

Odds and Ends – Getting Caught Up, News and Other Updates

This post is a collection of various odds and ends, news and updates as Im getting caught up on some things.

Here’s a link to the first of what will be a series of up-coming short articles appearing at Byte and Switch related to my new book "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC). The first installment appeared recently and is titled "Green IT & the Green Gap" and the theme of the installment is that in going green, you enable a business to grow, diversify, and expand its use of IT, all of which have economic benefits. Learn more about the green gap here.

Also over at Byte and Switch, Paul Travis recently did an article "Going Green & the Economic Downturn" that takes a look the shifting green focus to that around economic and cost cutting opportunities during current finical turmoil. Also on the Green front, Drew Robb has an interesting article talking about server and IT data center "Green IT Myths vs. Realities" appearing in ServerWatch. Another new green and economic sustainability for IT data center article can be found over at Greener Computing with a link here. While on the topic of my new book, writer and blogger, Heather Clancy has some comments about "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC) over at ZDNET. Dave Simpson of InfoStor fame has a blog post as well that mentions my new book, check it out here. Also, check out this posting over at Datacenterlinks blogsite as well as a post over at Green Data Center blog site.

Meanwhile inventory and book availability continue to improve at Amazon.com and other venues around the world as back-logs from pre-orders and initial book sales resulted in some sell-out or initial limited availability. My publisher CRC informs me that plenty of books are flowing out and into the distribution supply chain to meet risking demand including bulk and special promotional and educational sales. Thanks to all of you have obtained copies of my new book, drop me a note with your comments and feedback when you get a chance. Also watch for additional book news, reviews, reports and other programs to be announced over the coming weeks.

For addressing data center bottlenecks, on the tiered storage and Solid State Device (SSD) front, that’s for both RAM and FLASH based, here’s an article over at Processor.com worth a look at. Here are a couple of other recent articles over at Processor.com addressing small form factor servers and refurbished servers, as well as freeing up data center space. Steve Kovosky has an interesting blog post over at Virtualization Conversation about Virtualization: Life Beyond Consolidation building on a previous blog posting I did a few weeks back pertaining to server and storage virtualization trends and directions. Here’s a recent article by Paul Shread over at Enterprise Storage Forum about T10 Object Storage Devices (OSD) and their current status or lack of progress including Sun’s shifting focus.

Speaking of data protection for physical and virtual environments, tape, data protection management, monitoring and managing IT resource effectiveness not to mention stretching your IT budget dollar, here’s a link to an article over at CTR in which yours truly provides some commentary. Also on the data protection theme, Walaika Haskins over at TechNewsWorld has a good article about "Figuring Out the Best Way to Stash Your Data". Data dedupe continues to be a popular topic for discussion and Cindy Waxer recently wrote an article appearing at Inc. Technology pertaining to Dedupe and Disaster Recovery (DR) and Business Continence (BC). Also on the dedupe front, here’s a industry trends and perspective solutions brief over on the EMC site pertaining to policy based data dedupe deployment (don’t worry, its not a data dedupe debate document, however I suppose some of the Drs’ and Divas’ of Dedupe may see it that way which will give them something to debate ;) ) with a focus around when to use which type or mode of dedupe processing to meet different applications requirements (may require registration, however its free, the document that is).

Learn more about the above and other related topics at the StorageIO In the news, tips, events and Industry Trends White Paper as well as Books and Blog pages.

Cheers – gs

Technorati tags: Trends

February 14, 2009June 7, 2022

Just for Fun: Roses are Red…

Storage I/O trends

Ok, just for fun, Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue,

You can download for free your Redbooks from IBM,

Amazon.com

or, you can go to Amazon and pay for them too…

So that might beg the question, when will there be a download or Kindle version of my new book? Well, tell the publisher and Amazon you want a kindle version by clicking here, also, keep an eye out for reviews, chapter downloads and excerpts in different venues coming soon, not to mention some book give aways that I have heard about including at the upcoming VMworld Europe event among others.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

February 14, 2009March 7, 2022

On The Road Again: An Update

A while back, I posted about a busy upcoming spring schedule of activity and events, and then a few weeks ago, posted an update, so this can be considered the latest "On The Road Again" update. While the economy continues to be in rough condition and job reductions or layoffs continuing, or, reduction in hours or employees being asked to take time off without pay or to take sabbaticals, not to mention the race to get the economic stimulus bill passed, for many people, business and life goes on.

Airport parking lots have plenty of cars in them, airplanes while not always full, are not empty (granted there has been some fleet optimization aka aligning capacity to best suited tier of aircraft and other consolidation or capacity improvements). Many organizations cutting back on travel and entertainment (T&E) spending, either to watch the top and bottom line, avoid being perceived or seen on the news as having employees going on junkets when they may in fact being going to conferences, seminars, conventions or other educational and related events to boost skills and seek out ways to improve business productivity.

One of the reason that I have a busy travel schedule in addition to my normal analyst and consulting activities is that many events and seminars are being scheduled close to, or in the cities where IT professionals are located who might otherwise have T&E restrictions or other constraints from traveling to industry events, some of which are or will be impacted by recent economic and business conditions.

Last week I was invited to attend and speak at the FujiFilm Executive Seminar, no private jets were used or seen, travel was via scheduled air carriers (coach air-fare). FujiFilm has a nice program for those interested in or involved with tape whether for disk to tape backup, disk to disk to tape, long term archive, bulk storage and other scenarios involving the continued use and changing roles of tape as a green data storage medium for in-active or off-line data. Check out FujiFilm TapePower Center portal.

This past week I was in the big "D", that’s Dallas Texas to do another TechTarget Dinner event around the theme of BC/DR, Virtualization and IT optimization. The session was well attended by a diverse audience of IT professionals from around the DFW metroplex. Common themes included discussions about business and economic activity as well as the need to keep business and IT running even when budgets are being stretched further and further. Technology conversations included server and storage virtualization, tiered storage including SSD, fast FC and SAS disk drives, lower performance high capacity "fat" disk drives as well as tape not to mention tiered data protection, tiered servers and other related items.

The Green Gap continues to manifest itself in that when asked, most people do not have Green IT initiatives, however, when asked they do have power, cooling, floor-space, environmental (PCFE) or business economic sustainability concerns, aka, the rest of the Green story.

While some attendees have started to use some new technologies including dedupe technology, most I find are still using a combination of disk and tape with some considering dedupe for the future for certain applications. Other technologies and trends being watched, however also ones with concerns as to their stability and viability for enterprise use include FLASH based SSD, Cloud computing and thin provisioning among others. Common themes I hear from IT professionals are that these are technologies and tools to keep an eye on, or, use on a selective basis and are essentially tiered resources to have in a tool box of technologies to apply to different tasks to meet various service requirements. Hopefully the Cowboys can put a fraction of the amount of energy and interest into and improving their environment that the Dallas area IT folks are applying to their environments, especially given the strained IT budgets vs. the budget that the Cowboys have to work with for their player personal.

I always find it interesting when talking to groups of IT professionals which tend to be enterprise, SME and SMB hearing what they are doing and looking at or considering which often is in stark contrast to some of the survey results on technology adoption trends one commonly reads or hears about. Hummm, nuff said, what say you?

Hope to see you at one of the many upcoming events perhaps coming to a venue near you.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

February 1, 2009November 26, 2023

SNW (And other conferences) Want and Need You!

Not to worry, its not yet time for phrases such as “Ask not what a conference can do for you, ask what you can do for a conference…”, at least I hope until some clever marketer tries that theme to stimulate conference participation short of an IT conference bailout package.

Uncle Conference wants you!

Conferences Want and Need You

Last week I received as did many other IT industry analyst, bloggers, consultants, media and press an invitation to apply and be considered for free admission (they waive the $1,000+ registration fee) to attend and cover the upcoming Computerworld/IDG and SNIA co-produced Storage Networking World (SNW) event in Orlando April 2009. Ok, nothing out of the ordinary here, as there are several events that do the same thing where you are sent out an invite to apply and attend and if accepted to attend, your registration fee is waived. Meanwhile other venues simply send you the pre-accepted invite and thanks for prior participating forgoing the whole apply, register and be accepted game.

What I find interesting here is that out of all the usual conference, expos, seminars and so forth that I get invited to attend, or to keynote and speak at, two stood out this past week. Those being SNW and the other being upstart The Business Development (BD) Event to be held in Boston in June 2009. Big vendor centric shows like EMCworld and VMworld among others will probably continue albeit with some fine tuning. While some vendors are cutting back or postponing their customer, or media and analyst events, as well as some of the large mega analyst firms like Gartner among others are cutting back or canceling their conferences due to tough economic times, events like the TechTarget Storage Decisions which are IT customer/user focused events are being fine tuned to be more effective as well as taking the message to the people who are under travel and time restrictions via custom local events and seminars.

Likewise, traditional big industry vertical shows like SNW are having to get more aggressive to get both their paying customers (e.g. vendor sponsors, media sponsors, people who pay the registration fee) to show up and participate as well as to get the industry analysts, bloggers, consultants, media and press to show up and cover the event. I’m guessing Jon Toigo over at Drunkendata must be salivating given some of his past posts that SNW is issuing announcements on MSNBC and other venues via Marketwire inviting industry media and analyst to attend the spring SNW. I wonder if Jon Toigo will be issuing similar announcements to all industry media and analyst or if his upcoming C4 conference in May will be an exclusive and by invitation only event?

In the face of all of these changes, there’s also a new upstart event for business development and networking amongst vendors, vars, press, media, analyst, customers, consultants and others, something that SNW used to be known for the storage industry as the place to go. In June 2009, a new event, "The BD Event" will be held in Boston with a simple value proposition, avoid the high costs and restrictions of some other venues, for a relatively small fee to basically cover cost, show up and meet and do some business.

What does this all mean and what will I be doing in 2009 regarding industry activities, seminars, shows, conferences and events?

I’m pleased to announce (don’t worry, I wont be issuing a press release as I did that this past week for my new book) that I have been accepted to attend SNW in Orlando, now I need to decide if I’m actually going to attend or not. I may end up doing what I did last fall which is fly in for a day for some meetings and tie into some other activities in the area.

I like the theme of the BD event in June and have it penciled in however have not committed with the Duplessie’s yet. Storage Decisions will be on the calendar as its a great place for meeting with and hearing what’s on the mind of the IT professionals as opposed to hearing it second or third hand from others. As for other venues and events, there will be more posted on the StorageIO events page through out the year.

Ok, nuff said for now

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

January 26, 2009March 7, 2022

Do you have your copy of “The Green and Virtual Data Center” yet?

For those not familar with my new book, "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (Auerbach), or, for those who have already ordered your copy (Thank You and look for them to arrive soon) as today marks the offical publication date, or, I guess you could say the birthday for "The Green and Virtual Data Center".

Thus, I am pleased to share with you the news about the formal launch and publication (read the press release) of my new book, “The Green and Virtual Data Center”, which is released today by Auerbach/CRC-Press and is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, CRC-Press and other venues around the world.

The book focuses on the idea that IT infrastructure resources configured and deployed in a highly virtualized manner can be combined with other techniques and technologies to achieve a simplified and cost-effective delivery of IT services in a clean, green, and profitable manner. ?The Green and Virtual Data Center? covers these technologies and techniques that todays data centers should be considering while trying to maximize resources, such as power, cooling, floor space, storage, server performance, and network capacity.

Some of the topics include:
• Energy and data footprint reductions
• Cloud-based storage and computing
• Intelligent and adaptive power management
• Server, storage, and networking virtualization
• Tiered servers for storage, network, and data centers
• Energy avoidance and energy efficiency

It feels like Grand Central Station here…

Things have been busy (which is very good) and I feel like I’m at Grand Central station (Terminal) with the new year off to a flurry of activity ranging from my regular consulting, research and client advisory engagement projects, recent speaking appearances (San Jose and Tucson ), doing interviews with the media as well as vendor briefings.

Grand Central Station New York City - December 2008

Photo of Grand Central Station (aka Grand Central Terminal) New York City taken on my cell phone December 2008 after a great dinner at Michael Jordons (Thanks Richard and Dan)

Yup, its a busy time of the year with writing of articles, column and industry trends and perspective pieces as well as supporting the formal launch and release of my new book, "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (Auerbach) not to mention trying to stay warm during the recent midwest cold weather snaps as well as snow entertainment activities such as snow plowing and sledding.

Greg snow sleeding in the back yard
Greg taking a break and snow sledding in the backyard.

Speaking of appearances, keynote and other events, topics being covered vary from server to storage, data center to disaster recovery, virtualization to data protection among others as well as other themes and topics related to "The Green and Virtual Data Center".

Some upcoming speaking and keynote engagements in various cities covering various topics include (in alphabetic order) Atlanta, Birmingham, Boston, Cancun, Cincinnati, Chicago, Dallas, Denver Las Vegas, Los Angles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Orange County, Parsippany, Providence, St Louis, and Tampa with more locations and venues to be announced for summer and fall of 2009, keep an eye on the events page for more information.

(Wow, I feel like I’m on the Curtis Preston, aka Mr. Backup starter mini-tour program ;) ).

Ok, now its time to get back to doing some other things, enjoy your winter and spring while you can, time flies fast.

Cheers
gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

January 22, 2009May 17, 2021

RAID data protection remains relevant

Storage I/O trends

RAID (Redundant Array of Idle/Independent Disks) has evolved significantly since the original RAID white paper from the University of California Berkeley (Patterson, Gibson & Katz) was published 20 some years ago and in many cases is taken for granted today. There is also debate as to whether RAID is still relevant and practical given the continued increase amounts of data that needs to be protected.

RAID Examples from www.thegreenandvirtualdatacenter.com
Sample of some common RAID levels, general characteristics, caveat and benefits

RAID remains relevant today, granted, RAID continues to evolve as do the many variations including distributed and hybrid data protection schemes. Dave Raffo over at SearchStorage has a nice article on "The evolution of RAID data protection" with comments from me. Have a look at the Dave’s article (as well as here) along with some of the comments and thoughts from myself and others.

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

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