What am I hearing and seeing while out and about

It has been a busy fall 2011 which started out with VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas just before the labor day weekend.

At the CXI party in Vegas during VMworld standing with the NEXUS vMonstoerLas Vegas Strip from CXI party during VMworld with Karen of Arcola
Scenes from the CXI party (@cxi) at VMworld 2011

Besides activity in support of the launch of my new book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), I have been busy with various client research, consulting and advisory projects. In addition to Las Vegas for VMworld, out and about travel activities for attending conferences and presenting seminars have included visits in Minneapolis (local), Nijkerk Holland and Denver (in the same week) and Orlando (SNW). Upcoming out and about events are scheduled for Los Angles, Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle and a couple of trips to San Jose area before the brief thanksgiving holiday break.

My Sunday virtual office in Nijkerk before a busy weekMy Sunday virtual office in Nijkerk before a busy week
Beer and Bitter ballens on the left, coffee machine in Nijkerk on the right

Day one of two day seminar in Nijkerk

Instead of automobiles lined up a trainstation, its bicycles in NijkerkWaiting in Nijkerk for 6:30AM train to Schiphol and on to Denver
Bicycles lined up at the Nijkerk train station, waiting for the 6:30 train to Schiphol

Changing trains in Amsfort on way to SchipholBoarding Delta A333 AMS to MSP then on to DEN
Changing trains on way to Schiphol to board flight to MSP and then to DEN

Climbing out of Denver on way back to MSP, it was a long yet fun weekEvening clouds enroute from DEN to MSP
After Denver back to MSP for a few days before SNW in Orlando

While being out and about I have had the chance to meet and visit with many different people. Here are some questions and comments that I have heard while out and about:

  • What comes after cloud?
  • Are there standards for clouds and virtualization?
  • Should cost savings be the justification for going to cloud, virtual or dynamic environments?
  • How is big data different than traditional stream and flat file analytics and processing using tools such as SAS (Statistical Analysis Software)?
  • Is big data only about map reduce and hadoop?
  • Are clouds any less secure or safe for storage and applications?
  • Do clouds and virtualization removing complexity and simplify infrastructures?
  • Are cloud storage services cheaper than buying and managing your own?
  • Is object based storage a requirement for public or private cloud?
  • Do solution bundles such as EMC vBlock and NetApp FlexPods reduce complexity?
  • Why is FCoE taking so long to be adopted and is it dead?
  • Should cost savings be the basis for deciding to do a VDI or virtualization project?
  • What is the best benchmark or comparison for making storage decisions?

In addition, there continues to be plenty of cloud confusion, FUD and hype around public, private, hybrid along with AaaS, SaaS, PaaS and IaaS among other XaaS. The myth that virtualization of servers, storage and workstations is only for consolidation continues. However there are more people beginning to see the next wave of life beyond consolidation where the focus expands to flexibility, agility and speed of deployment for non aggregated workloads and applications. Another popular myth that is changing is that data footprint reduction (DFR) is only about dedupe and backup. What is changing is an awareness that DFR spans all types of storage and data from primary to secondary leveraging different techniques including archive, backup modernization, compression, consolidation, data management and dedupe along with thin provisioning among other techniques.

Archiving for email, database and file systems needs to be rescued from being perceived as only for compliance purposes. If you want or need to reduce your data footprint impact (DFR), optimize your storage for performance or capacity, enable backup, BC and DR to be performed faster, achieve Green IT and efficiency objectives, expand your awareness around archiving. While discussing archiving, focus is often on the target or data storage medium such as disk, tape, optical or cloud along with DFR techniques such as compression and dedupe or functionally including ediscovery and WORM. The other aspects of archive that need to be looked at include policies, retention, application and software plugins for Exchange, SQL, Sharepoint, Sybase, Oracle, SAP, VMware and others.

Boot storms continue to be a common theme for apply solid state devices (SSD) in support of virtual desktop inititiaves (VDI). There is however a growing awareness and discussions around shutdown storms, day to day maintenance including virus scans in addition to applications that increase the number of writes. Consequently the discussions around VDI are expanding to include both reads and writes as well as reduced latency for storage and networks.

Some other general observations, thoughts and comments:

  • Getting into Holland as a visitor is easier than returning to the U.S. as a citizen
  • Airport security screening is more thorough and professional in Europe than in the U.S.
  • Hops add latency to beer (when you drink it) and to networks (time delay)
  • Fast tape drives need disk storage to enable streaming for reads and writes
  • SSD is keeping HDDs alive, HDDs are keeping tape alive and all there roles are evolving while the technologies continue to evolve.
  • Hybrid Hard Disk Drives (HHDDs) are gaining in awareness and deployments in workstations as well as laptops.
  • Confusion exists around what are flat layer 2 networks for LANs and Sans
  • Click here to view additional comments and perspectives

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

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Trick or treat: 2011 IT Zombie technology poll

Warning: Do not be scared, however be ready for some trick and treat fun, it is after all, the Halloween season.

I like new emerging technologies and trends along with Zombie technologies, you know, those technologies that have been declared dead yet are still being enhanced, sold and used.

Zombie technologies as a name may be new for some, while others will have a realization of experiencing something from the past, technologies being declared deceased yet still alive and being used. Zombie technologies are those that have been declared dead, yet still alive enabling productivity for customers that use them and often profits for the vendors who sell them.

Zombie technologies

Some people consider a technology or trend dead once it hits the peak of hype as that can signal a time to jump to the next bandwagon or shiny new technology (or toy).

Others will see a technology as being dead when it is on the down slope of the hype curve towards the trough of disillusionment citing that as enough cause for being deceased.

Yet others will declare something dead while it matures working its way through the trough of disillusionment evolving from market adoption to customer deployment eventually onto the plateau of productivity (or profitability).

Then there are those who see something as being dead once it finally is retired from productive use, or profitable for sale.

Of course then there are those who just like to call anything new or other than what they like or that is outside of their comfort zone as being dead. In other words, if your focus or area of interest is tied to new products, technology trends and their promotion, rest assured you better be where the resources are being applied and view other things as being dead and thus probably not a fan of Zombie technologies (or at least publicly).

On the other hand, if your area of focus is on leveraging technologies and products in a productive way, including selling things that are profitable without a lot of marketing effort, your view of what is dead or not will be different. For example if you are risk averse letting someone else be on the leading bleeding edge (unless you have a dual redundant HA blood bank attached to your environment) your view of what is dead or not will be much different from those promoting the newest trend.

Funny thing about being declared dead, often it is not the technology, implementation, research and development or customer acquisitions, rather simply a lack of promotion, marketing and general awareness. Take tape for example which has been a multi decade member of the Zombie technology list. Recently vendors banded together investing or spending on marketing awareness reaching out to say tape is alive. Guess what, lo and behold, there was a flurry of tape activity in venues that normally might not be talking about tape. Funny how marketing resources can bring something back from the dead including Zombie technologies to become popular or cool to discuss again.

With the 2011 Halloween season among us, it is time to take a look this years list of Zombie technologies. Keep in mind that being named a Zombie technology is actually an honor in that it usually means someone wants to see it dead so that his or her preferred product or technology can take it place.

Here are 2011 Zombie technologies.

Backup: Far from being dead, its focus is changing and evolving with a broader emphasis on data protection. While many technologies associated with backup have been declared dead along with some backup software tools, the reality is that it is time or modernizes how backups and data protection are performed. Thus, backup is on the Zombie technology list and will live on, like it or not until it is exorcised from, your environment replaced with a modern resilient and flexible protected data infrastructure.

Big Data: While not declared dead yet, it will be soon by some creative marketer trying to come up with something new. On the other hand, there are those who have done big data analytics across different Zombie platforms for decades which of course is a badge of honor. As for some of the other newer or shiny technologies, they will have to wait to join the big data Zombies.

Cloud: Granted clouds are still on the hype cycle, some argue that it has reached its peak in terms of hype and now heading down into the trough of disillusionment, which of course some see as meaning dead. In my opinion cloud, hype has or is close to peaking, real work is occurring which means a gradual shift from industry adoption to customer deployment. Put a different way, clouds will be on the Zombie technology list of a couple of decades or more. Also, keep in mind that being on the Zombie technology list is an honor indicating shift towards adoption and less on promotion or awareness fan fare.

Data centers: With the advent of the cloud, data centers or habitats for technology have been declared dead, yet there is continued activity in expanding or building new ones all the time. Even the cloud relies on data centers for housing the physical resources including servers, storage, networks and other components that make up a Green and Virtual Data Center or Cloud environment. Needless to day, data centers will stay on the zombie list for some time.

Disk Drives: Hard disk drives (HDD) have been declared dead for many years and more recently due to popularity of SSDs have lost their sex appeal. Ironically, if tape is dead at the hands of HDDs, then how can HDDs be dead, unless of course they are on the Zombie technology list. What is happening is like tape, HDDs role are changing as the technology continues to evolve and will be around for another decade or so.

Fibre Channel (FC): This is a perennial favorite having been declared dead on a consistent basis over three decades now going back to the early 90s. While there are challengers as there have been in the past, FC is far from dead as a technology with 16 Gb (16GFC) now rolling out and a transition path for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). My take is that FC will be on the zombie list for several more years until finally retired.

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE): This is a new entrant and one uniquely qualified for being declared dead as it is still in its infancy. Like its peer FC which was also declared dead a couple of decades ago, FCoE is just getting started and looks to be on the Zombie list for a couple of decades into the future.

Green IT: I have heard that Green IT is dead, after all, it was hyped before the cloud era which has been declared dead by some, yet there remains a Green gap or disconnect between messaging and issues thus missed opportunities. For a dead trend, SNIA recently released their Emerald program which consists of various metrics and measurements (remember, zombies like metrics to munch on) for gauging energy effectiveness for data storage. The hype cycle of Green IT and Green storage may be dead, however Green IT in the context of a shift in focus to increased productivity using the same or less energy is underway. Thus Green IT and Green storage are on the Zombie list.

iPhone: With the advent of Droid and other smart phones, I have heard iPhones declared dead, granted some older versions are. However while the Apple cofounder Steve Jobs has passed on (RIP), I suspect we will be seeing and hearing more about the iPhone for a few years more if not longer.

IBM Mainframe: When it comes to information technology (IT), the king of the Zombie list is the venerable IBM mainframe aka zSeries. The IBM mainframe has been declared dead for over 30 years if not longer and will be on the zombie list for another decade or so. After all, IBM keeps investing in the technology as people buy them not to mention IBM built a new factory to assemble them in.

NAS: Congratulations to Network Attached Storage (NAS) including Network File System (NFS) and Windows Common Internet File System (CIFS) aka Samba or SMB for making the Zombie technology list. This means of course that NAS in general is no longer considered an upstart or immature technology; rather it is being used and enhanced in many different directions.

PC: The personal computer was touted as killing off some of its Zombie technology list members including the IBM mainframe. With the advent of tablets, smart phones, virtual desktops infrastructures (VDI), the PC has been declared dead. My take is that while the IBM mainframe may eventually drop of the Zombie list in another decade or two if it finds something to do in retirement, the PC will be on the list for many years to come. Granted, the PC could live on even longer in the form of a virtual server where the majority of guest virtual machines (VMs) are in support of Windows based PC systems.

Printers: How long have we heard that printers are dead? The day that printers are dead is the day that the HP board of directors should really consider selling off that division.

RAID: Its been over twenty years since the first RAID white paper and early products appeared. Back in the 90s RAID was a popular buzzword and bandwagon topic however, people have moved on to new things. RAID has been on the Zombie technology list for several years now while it continues to find itself being deployed at the high end of the market down into consumer products. The technology continues to evolve in both hardware as well as software implementations on a local and distributed basis. Look for RAID to be on the Zombie list for at least the next couple of decades while it continues to evolve, after all, there is still room for RAID 7, RAID 8, RAID 9 not to mention moving into hexadecimal or double digit variants.

SAN: Storage Area Networks (SANs) have been declared dead and thus on the Zombie technology list before, and will be mentioned again well into the next decade. While the various technologies will continue to evolve, networking your servers to storage will also expand into different directions.

tape summit resources: Magnetic tape has been on the Zombie technology list almost as long as the IBM mainframe and it is hard to predict which one will last longer. My opinion is that tape will outlast the IBM mainframe, as it will be needed to retrieve the instructions on how to de install those Zombie monsters. Tape has seen resurgence in vendors spending some marketing resources and to no surprise, there has been an increase in coverage about it being alive, even at Google. Rest assured, tape is very safe on the Zombie technology list for another decade or more.

Windows: Similar to the PC, Microsoft Windows has been touted in the past as causing other platforms to be dead, however has been added to the Zombie list for many years now. Given that Windows is the most commonly virtualized platform or guest VM, I think we will be hearing about Windows on the Zombie list for a few decades more. There are particular versions of Windows as with any technology that have gone into maintenance or sustainment mode or even discontinued.

Poll: What are the most popular Zombie technologies?

Keep in mind that a Zombie technology is one that is still in use, being developed or enhanced, sold usually at a profit and used typically in a productive way. In some cases, a declared dead or Zombie technology may only be just in its infancy getting started having either just climbed over the peak of hype or coming out of the trough of disillusionment. In other instance, the Zombie technology has been around for a long time yet continues to be used (or abused).

Note: Zombie voting rules apply which means vote early, vote often, and of course vote for those who cannot include those that are dead (real or virtual).

Ok, nuff said, enough fun, lets get back to work, at least 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)

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All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Trick or treat: Have you seen any IT Frankenstacks

Given that it is Halloween season, time for some fun.

Over the past couple of weeks various product and solution services announcements have been made that result in various articles, columns, blogs and commentary in support of them.

Ever wonder which if any of those products could actually be stitched together to work in a production environment without increasing the overall cost and complexity that they sometimes promote as their individual value proposition? Granted, many can and do work quite well when introduced into heterogeneous or existing environments with good interoperability. However what about those that look good on paper or in a webex or you tube video on their own, however may be challenged to be pieced together to work with others?

Reading product announcements

Hence in the spirit of halloween, the vision of a Frankenstack appeared.

A Frankenstack is a fictional environment where you piece various technologies from announcements or what you see or hear about in different venues into a solution.

Part of being a Frankenstack is that the various pieces may look interesting on their own, good luck trying to put them together on paper let alone in a real environment.

While I have not yet attempted to piece together any Frankenstacks lately, I can visualize various ones.

Stacking or combining different technologies, will they work together?

A Frankenstack could be based on what a vendor, VAR, or solution provider proposes or talks about.

A Frankenstack could also also be what a analyst, blogger, consultant, editor, pundit or writer pieces together in a story or recommendation.

Some Frankenstacks may be more synergistic and interoperable than others perhaps even working in a real customer environment.

Of course even if the pieces could be deployed, would you be able to afford them let alone support them (interoperability aside) without adding complexity?

You see a Frankenstack might look good on paper or on a slide deck, webex or via some other venue, however will it actually work or apply to your environment or are they just fun to talk about?

Dont get me wrong, I like hearing about new technology and products as much as anyone else, however lets have some fun with Frankenstacks and keep in perspective do they help or add complexity to your environment.

Ok, enough fun for now, let me know what you see or can put together in terms of Frankenstacks.

Keep in mind they dont actually have to work as that is what qualifies them for trick or treat and Frankenstack status.

Enjoy your Halloween season, do not be afraid, however be ready for some tricks and treats, its that time of the year.

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

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Industry trend: People plus data are aging and living longer

Lets face it, people and information are living longer and thus there are more of each along with a strong interdependency by both.

People living and data being retained longer should not be a surprise, take a step back and look at the bigger picture. There is no such thing as an information recession with more data being generated, processed, moved and stored for longer periods of time not to mention that a data object is also getting larger.

Industry trend and performance

By data objects getting larger, think about a digital photo taken on a typical camera ten years ago which whose resolution was lower and thus its file size would have been measured in kilo bytes (thousands). Today megapixel resolutions are common from cell phones, smart phones, PDAs and even larger with more robust digital and high definition (HD) still and video cameras. This means that a photo of the same object that resulted in a file of hundreds of Kbytes ten years ago would be measured in Megabytes today. With three dimensional (3D) cameras appearing along with higher resolution, you do not need to be a rocket scientist or industry pundit to figure out what that growth trend trajectory looks like.

However it is not just the size of the data that is getting larger, there are also more instances along with copies of those files, photos, videos and other objects being created, stored and retained. Similar to data, there are more people now than ten years ago and some of those have also grown larger, or at least around the waistline. This means that more people are creating and relying on larger amounts of information being available or accessible when and where needed. As people grow older, the amount of data that they generate will naturally increase as will the information that they consume and rely upon.

Where things get interesting is that looking back in history, that is more than ten or even a hundred years, the trend is that there are more people, they are living longer, and they are generating larger amounts of data that is taking on new value or meaning. Heck you can even go back from hundreds to thousands of years and see early forms of data archiving and storage with drawings on walls of caves or other venues. I Wonder if had the cost (and ease of use) to store and keep data had been lower back than would there have been more information saved? Or was it a case of being too difficult to use the then state of art data and information storage medium combined with limited capacities so they simply ran out of storage and retention mediums (e.g. walls and ceilings)?

Lets come back to the current for a moment which is another trend of data that in the past would have been kept offline or best case near line due to cost and limits or constraints are finding their way online either in public or private venues (or clouds if you prefer).

Thus the trend of expanding data life cycles with some types of data being kept online or readily accessible as its value is discovered.

Evolving data life cycle and access patterns

Here is an easy test, think of something that you may have googled or searched for a year or two ago that either could not be found or was very difficult to find. Now take that same search or topic query and see if anything appears and if it does, how many instances of it appear. Now make a note to do the same test again in a year or even six months and compare the results.

Now back to the future however with an eye to the past and things get even more interesting in that some researchers are saying that in centuries to come, we should expect to see more people not only living into their hundreds, however even longer. This follows the trend of the average life expectancy of people continues to increase over decades and centuries.

What if people start to live hundreds of years or even longer, what about the information they will generate and rely upon and its later life cycle or span?

More information and data

Here is a link to a post where a researcher sees that very far down the road, people could live to be a thousand years old which brings up the question, what about all the data they generate and rely upon during their lifetime.

Ok, now back to the 21st century and it is safe to say that there will be more data and information to process, move, store and keep for longer periods of time in a cost effective way. This means applying data footprint reduction (DFR) such as archiving, backup and data protection modernization, compression, consolidation where possible, dedupe and data management including deletion where applicable along with other techniques and technologies combined with best practices.

Will you out live your data, or will your data survive you?

These are among other things to ponder while you enjoy your summer (northern hemisphere) vacation sitting on a beach or pool side enjoying a cool beverage perhaps gazing at the passing clouds reflecting on all things great and small.

Clouds: Dont be scared, however look before you leap and be prepared

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

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Summer 2011 StorageIO News Letter

StorageIO News Letter Image
Summer 2011 Newsletter

Welcome to the Summer 2011 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) newsletter. This follows the Spring 2011 edition.

You can get access to 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 Summer 2011 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.

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 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Are Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) getting too big?

Lets start out by clarifying something, that is in terms of context or scope, big means storage capacity as opposed to the physical packaging size of a hard disk drive (HDD) which are getting smaller.

So are HDDs in terms of storage capacity getting too big?

This question of if HDDs storage capacity getting too big to manage comes up every few years and it is the topic of Rick Vanovers (aka twitter @RickVanover Episode 27 Pod cast: Are hard drives getting to big?

Veeam community podcast guest appearance

As I discuss in this pod cast with Rick Vannover of Veeam, with the 2TB and even larger future 4TB, 8 to 9TB, 18TB, 36TB and 48 to 50TB drives not many years away, sure they are getting bigger (in terms of capacity) however we have been here before (or at least some of us have). We discuss how back in the late 90s HDDs were going from 5.25 inch to 3.5 inch (now they are going from 3.5 inch to 2.5 inch), and 9GB were big and seen as a scary proposition by some for doing RAID rebuilds, drive copy or backups among other things, not to mention if putting to many eggs (or data) in one basket.

In some instances vendors have been able to combine various technologies, algorithms and other techniques to RAID rebuild a 1TB or 2TB drive in the same or less amount of time as it used to take to process a 9GB HDD. However those improvements are not enough and more will be needed leveraging faster processors, IO busses and back planes, HDDs with more intelligence and performance, different algorithms and design best practices among other techniques that I discussed with Rick. After all, there is no such thing as a data recession with more information to be generated, processed, moved, stored, preserved and served in the future.

If you are interested in data storage, check out Ricks pod cast and hear some of our other discussion points including how SSD will help keep the HDD alive similar to how HDDs are offloading tape from their traditional backup role, each with its changing or expanding focus among other things.

On a related note, here is post about RAID remaining relevant yet continuing to evolve. We also talk about Hybrid Hard Disk Drives (HHDD) where in a single sealed HDD device there is flash and dram along with a spinning disk all managed by the drives internal processor with no external special software or hardware needed.

Listen to comments by Greg Schulz of StorageIO on HDD, HHDD, SSD, RAID and more

Put on your head phones (or not) and check out Ricks pod cast here (or on the head phone image above).

Thanks again Rick, really enjoyed being a guest on your show.

Whats your take, are HDDs getting to big in terms of capacity or do we need to leverage other tools, technology and techniques to be more effective in managing expanding data footprint including use of data footprint reduction (DFR) techniques?

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

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Happy 100th birthday or anniversary wishes

I would like to take a moment to wish a happy 100th birthday (or anniversary) to entities (or items) that Im involved with in one form or another.

Both are technology and infrastructure related, both facilitate commerce and transportation and in active service.

One is a company known to many as IBM or International Business Machine Corporation that recently celebrated its 100th birthday. For anyone working or involved in some shape or form with computing or high technology, at some point in your life you most likely have directly or indirectly used something provided by IBM.

The other is the Arcola High Bridge aka Soo line railroad bridge that crosses the St. Croix River north of Stillwater (click here to see some old photos). The Arcola High Bridge (or here) is still in use where trains cross it several times a day (and night) as well as where legends and ghost stories permeate. Keep in mind that even though IBM was in business when this bridge was designed and built, the sophisticated computers and software that enables structures to be efficiently built today did not exist. You could say that this old bridge was built to last which it has, particularly in an era where much younger infrastructure items either wear out or fail.

Happy 100th anniversary Arcola High Bridge on St. Croix River

Best wishes to both and hopefully many more.

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

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Industry adoption vs. industry deployment, is there a difference?

Industry adoption and deployment may be one and the same depending on your viewpoint.

Industry Trends and Perspectives

However they can also mean different things depending on what you do or your area of interest.

For example, when I hear the term industry adoption that means that the industry (press, media, bloggers, analysts, consultants, evangelists, vendors, vars, investors) are talking about something as being common place.

On the other hand, when I hear industry deployment that means what customers or organizations are actually acquiring, deploying and routinely using on a broader scale. Sure they can and do often mean one and the same. However industry adoption in terms of things being talked about (socialized) often occurs before broad deployment.

Recently I heard a so called industry insider say that a particular technology had reached broad industry adoption. I asked the person if they meant that everyone (or at least in their social circles or community) was talking about it, aware of it with some use, or that everyone had deployed the technology. The person looked puzzled and asked what I meant and why would I care about adoption vs. deployment, there were one and the same. So I explained that there is a difference, one drives the other and that they are related, a cause and effect. Funny how some things resonate with customers however not always with so called industry insiders.

Industry Trends, Perspectives and Buzzword Bingo

Next time you hear someone tossing around buzzword bingo topics or themes in conjunction with the term industry adoption, ask them if that means people are talking about it, or that people are actually doing what is being discussed. Of course there will be people doing or deploying what is being discussed, those are the early adopters and deployers.

What does this have to do with anything?

Not much really other than to throw out some food for thought.

Perhaps if you are a customer to have some fun with the pundits, evangelist and industry insiders or when vendors and vars show up for a game of buzzword bingo. On the other hand, if you are a vendor or var, clarify with and where your customers are as well as how they evolving from adoption to deployment to demonstrate success.

Ok, nuf 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

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Summer greetings and happy holidays V2011

I will keep this simple and short.

For those of you in the US, happy fourth of July.

For those of you elsewhere, enjoy the nice weather while it lasts.

And to those who like fishing and catching, good luck.

After all, for those who at least give it or something a try, your chances of catching or succeeding increase, that is unless your version of fishing and catching is measured by simply going to the grocery store frozen food section, a seafood restaurant, or visiting your local fish monger.

A North American Bald Eagle fishing (and catching) on the St. Croix River near Stillwater MN - via www.karenofarcola.com

The above photo of a North American bald eagle was taken by Karen Schulz (Aka Karen of Arcola) while we were out fishing on the St. Croix River north of Stillwater MN. No telephoto or high powered zoom lenses or trick photography (or photo shop) were involved, we were simply out fishing (and catching) in our backyard at the right time and being in right place to have been able to catch this photo of the eagle fishing.

Have a safe and happy holiday weekend and or summer vacation (holiday for those outside the US).

Cheers Gs

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

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Full RSS archive feeds are now available for StorageIOblog

To speed up access to the StorageIO and StorageIOblog site RSS full and RSS summary feeds, older posts have been moved to a new archive RSS feed. Theese changes are only to the RSS full and summary feed files, no changes have been made to the StorageIOblog site.

View or access the full StorageIO RSS feed (httP://storageioblog.com/RSSfullArchive.xml) here.

Enjoy the faster access RSS full and summary feed, plus archived feeds. Ok, nuf said for now.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking

For those who have read any of my previous posts, seen some of my articles, news letters, videos, pod casts, web casts or in person appearances you may have heard that I have a new book coming out this summer.

Here in the northern hemisphere its summer (well technically the solstice is just around the corner) and in Minnesota the ice (from the winter) is off the lakes and rivers. Granted, there is some ice floating that fell out of coolers for keeping beverages cool. This means that it is also fishing (and catching) season on the Scenic St. Croix River.

Karen of Arcola catches first fish of 2011 season, St. Croix river, stripe bassGreg showing his first catch of the 2011 season, St. Croix walleye aka Walter or Wanda

FTC disclosures (and for fun): Karenofarcola is wearing a StorageIO baseball cap and Im wearing a cap from a vendor marketing person who sent several as they too enjoy fishing and boating. Funny thing about the cap, all of the river rats and fishing people think it is from the people who make rod reels instead of solutions that go around tape and disk reels. Note, if you feel compelled to send me baseball caps, send at least a pair so there is a backup, standby, spare or extra one for a guest. The mustang survival jacket that Im wearing with the Seadoo logo is something I bought myself. I did get a discount however since there was a Seadoo logo on it and I used to have Seadoo jet boats. Btw, that was some disclosure fun and humor!

Ok, enough of the fun stuff, lets get back to the main theme of this post.

My new book which is the third in a series of solo projects including Resilient Storage Networks: Designing Flexible Scalable Data Infrastructures (Elsevier) and The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC).

While the official launch and general availability will be later in the summer, following are some links and related content to give you advance information about the new book.

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking

Click on the above image which will take you to the CRC Press page where you can learn more including what the book is about, view a table of contents, see reviews and more. Also check out the video below to learn more as well as visit my main web site where you can learn about Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking, my other books and view (or listen to) related content such as white papers, solution briefs, articles, tips, web cast, pod cast as well as view the recent and upcoming events schedule.

I also invite you to join Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking group

You can also view the short video at dailymotion, metacage, blip.tv, veoh, flickr, and photobucket among other venues.

If you are interested in being a reviewer, send a note to cvdsn@storageio.com with your name, blog or website and contact information including shipping address (sorry no PO boxes) plus telephone (or skype) number. Also indicate if you are a blogger, press/media, free lance writer, analyst, consultant, var, vendor, investor, IT professional or other.

Watch for more news and information as we get closer to the formal launch and release, in the meantime, you can pre order your copy now at Amazon, CRC Press and other venues around the world.

Ok, time to get back to work or go fishing, nuff said

Cheers Gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Congratulations to Infosmack on episode 100

Congratulations to the Infosmack crew hosts Greg Knieriemen and Marc Farley with the Diva of Disruptive Technologies, Christina Weil on their 100th episode. This episode included Robin Harris of StorageMojo and myself as guests.

Some items discussed in the 100th episode include Infosmack Live from the upcoming Dell Storage Forum, Cisco and the future of or with EMC and VMware, NetApp merger and acquisition activity, Sony and the death of Blu-ray, streaming video and related themes among others. Give it a listen when you get a chance and congratulations on the 100th episode.

Ok, nuff said

Cheers Gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Buzzword Bingo and Acronym Update V2.011

R U (e.g. Are you) JASSD about JACD or do you have a case of JAID and JACBUS?

Will RAID RAIN on your cloud parade?

For those who like to keep up on buzzwords (for buzzword bingo) and acronyms, perhaps even FTW (e.g. For the Win), here are some old and new, fun and real ones to ponder.

As to which are real or new, fun or old, I will leave that up to you.

  • BD = Business Development or Big Data or Backup Device
  • CEO = Chief Evangelist Officer or Change Everything Often
  • CJO = Chief Jailable Officer or anyone who is a legal Chief of a company
  • CMO = Creative Movie Officer or Chief Marketing Officer (same thing)
  • CNOC = Cloud network operations center
  • CPOP = Cloud point of presence aka cloud gateway, cloud appliance, cloud middle ware, cloud shims
  • DC = Direct Current or Diet Coke or Data Center
  • DTDS+ = Disaster Tolerant Disk Subsystem (Plus)
  • EMC = Entertaining Movie Creations
  • HP = Has printers and PCs
  • IBM = Itty Bitty Machine company or I Buy Mainframes
  • iHop = International House of pancakes or iPhone bouncing on floor
  • JACBUS = Just Another Cloud Backup Service
  • JACD = Just Another Cloud Device
  • JAFD = Just Another Flash Device
  • JAiD = Just Another iSCSI Device or Just Another iProduct Device
  • JAM = Producer of Tree size SRM tools or a U.S. concert promoter
  • JASSD = Just Another SSD
  • MIA = Missing In Action or airport code for Miami International Airport
  • MSP = My Storage Please or Minneapolis St. Paul Airport code
  • NetApp = Neat effective technology And product portfolio
  • PIROMA = Ask someone you know who has been in capacity planning
  • RAID = Redundant Array of Independent Disks or bug spray
  • RAIN = Redundant Array of Independent Nodes or something that falls from the clouds
  • RPD = Revenue prevention department: Groups, entities or management layers that get in the way of getting results done
  • Truth Squads = Teams representing various vendors or organizations that try to get you to see things their way
  • WATN = Where Are They Now: Former vendors or service providers that are now MIA
  • XaaS = Plug in what ever you like for X as a Service

Ok, nuff said and fun for now

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

The data storage prayer

On a lighter note.

For those who follow or are involved with data storage religiously with a passion, then this is for you. As for others who do not get or understand what this is about, just ask those who are devout data storage followers.

Now I lay my data to sleep
I pray the lord my backups to keep
If a disk should die before I wake
I hope like heck RAID works and my resume is up to date

Nuff said, now get back to work or what ever it was you were doing before reading this and best wishes!

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved