Category: fun

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Behind the Scenes, SANta Claus Global Cloud Story

There is a ton of discussion, stories, articles, videos, conferences and blogs about the benefits and value proposition of cloud computing. Not to mention, discussion or debates about what is or what is not a cloud or cloud product, service or architecture including some perspectives and polls from me.

Now SANta does not really care about these and other similar debates I have learned. However he is concerned with who has been naughty and nice as well watching out for impersonators or members of his crew who misbehave.

In the spirit of the holidays, how about a quick look at how SANta leverages cloud technologies to support his global operations.

Many in IT think that SANta bases his operations out of the North Pole as it is convenient for him to cool all of his servers, storage, networks and telecom equipment (which it is). However its also centrally located (See chart) for the northern hemisphere (folks down under may get serviced via SANtas secret Antarctica base of operations). Just like ANC (Anchorage International Airport) is a popular cargo transient, transload and refueling base for cargo carriers, SANta also leverages the north and South Pole regions to his advantage.

Great Circle Mapper
SANtas Global Reach via Great Circle Mapper

Now do not worry if you have never heard about SANta dual redundant South Pole operations, its one of his better kept secrets. Many organizations including SANtas partners such as Microsoft that have global mega IT operations and logistics centers have followed SANtas lead of leveraging various locations outside of the pacific northwest. Granted like some of his partners and managed service providers, he does maintain a presence in Washington Columbia river basin which provides a nice PR among other benefits.

Likewise, many in business as well as those in IT think that SANta leverages cloud technologies for cost savings or avoidance which is partially the case. However he also leverages cloud, hosting, managed service provider (MSP), virtual data centers, virtual operations centers, Xaas, SaaS or SOA technologies, services, protocols and products that are transparent and complimentary to his own in house resources addressing various business and service requirement needs.

What this has to do with the holidays and clouds is that you may not realize how Santa or St. Nick if you prefer (feel free to plug in whoever you like if Santa or St. Nick does not turn your crank) extensively relies on flexible and scalable resilient technologies for boosting productivity in a cost effective manner. Some of it is IT related, some of it is not. For example, from the GPS and Radar along with recently added RNP and RNAV enhanced capabilities to his increasingly high tech bio fueled powered sleigh, not to mention his information technology (IT) that powers his global operations, old St Nick has got it together when it comes to technology.

The heart or brains of the SANta operation is his global system operations center (SOC) or network operation center (NOC) that rivals those seen at NASA among others with multiple data feeds. The SOC is a 24×365 operations function that covers all aspects from transportation, logistics, distribution, assembly or packaging, financials back office, CRM, IT and communications among other functions.

Naturally, like the Apollo moon shots whose Grumman built LEM Lunar lander had to have 100% availability in that to get off of the moon, their engines only had to fire once, however it had to work 100% of the time! This thought process is said to have had leveraged principles from SANtas operations guide where he has one night a year to accomplish the impossible.

I should mention, while I cannot disclose (due to NDA) the exact locations of the SOCs, data or logistics centers, not to mention the vendors or the technology being used, I can tell you that they are all around you! The fully redundant SOCs, data and call centers as well as logistics sites (including staff, facilities, technology) leverage different time zones for efficiency.

SANtas staff have also found that the redundant SOCs, part of an approach across Santa entire vast organization has helped to guard against global epidemics and pandemics including SARs and H1N1 among others by isolating workers while providing appropriate coverage and availability, something many large organizations have since followed.

Carrying through on the philosophy of redundant SOCs, all other aspects of SANtas operations are distributed yet with centralized coordinated management, leveraging real-time situation awareness, event and activity correlation (what we used to call or refer to as AI), cross technology domain management, proactive monitoring and planning yet with ability for on the spot decision making.

What this means is that the various locations have ability to make localized decisions on the spot. However coordinated with primary operations or mission control to streamline global operations focus on strategic activity along with exceptions handling to be more effective. Thus it is not fully distributed nor fully centralized, rather a hybrid in terms of management, technologies and the way they work.

For example, to handle the diverse applications, there are some primary large processing and data retention facilities that backup, replicate information to other peer sites as well as smaller regional remote office branch offices close to where information services are needed. To say the environment is highly virtualized would be an understatement.

Likewise, optimization is key not just to keep costs low or avoid overheating some of SANtas facilities that are located in the Arctic and Antarctic regions that could melt the ice cap; they are also optimized to keep response time as low as possible while boosting productivity.

Thus, SANta has to rely on very robust and diverse communications networking leveraging LAN, SAN, MAN, WAN, POTS and PANs among other technologies. For example, his communications portfolio is said to involves landlines (copper and optical), RF including microwave and other radio based commutations supporting or using 3G, 4G, MPLS, SONET/SCH, xWDM, Microwave and Free space optics among others.

SANtas networking and communications elves are also said to be working with 5G and 100GbE multiplexed on 256 lambda WDM trunk circuits in non core trunk applications. Of course given the airborne operations, satellite and ACARS are a must to avoid over flying a destination while remaining in positive control during low visibility. Note that Santa routinely makes more CAT 3+ low visibility landings than most of the worlds airlines, air freight companies combined.

My sources also tell me that SANta has virtual desktop capability leveraging PCoIP and other optimizations on his primary and backup sleighs enabling rapid reconfiguration for changing workload conditions. He also is fully equipped with onboard social media capabilities for updates via twitter, Face book and Linked In among others designed by his chief social networking elf.

Consequently, given the vast amount of information needed to support his operations from CRM, shipping, tracking not to mention historical and profiling needs, transactional volumes both on the data as well as voice and social media networks dwarf the stock market trading volume.

Feeding SANtas vast organizations are online highly available robust databases for transactions purposes, reference unstructured data material including videos, websites and more. Some of which look hauntingly familiar given those that are part of SANtas eWorld Helpers initiative including: Sears, Amazon, NetFlix, Target, Albertsons, Staples, EMC, Wall mart, Overstock, RadioShack, Landsend, Dell, HP, eBay, Lowes, Publix, emusic, Riteaid and Supervalu among others (Im just sayin…).

The actual size of SANta information repository is a closely regarded secret as is the exact topology, schema and content structure. However it is understood that on peak days SANtas highly distributed high performance, low latency data warehouse sees upwards of 1,225PBytes of data added, one that is rumored to make Larry Ellison gush with excitement over its growth possibilities.

How does SANta pull this all off is by leveraging virtualization, automation, efficient and enabling technologies that allow him and elves (excuse me, associates or team members) to be more productivity in their areas of focus that is the envy of the universe.

Some of their efficiency is measured in terms of:

  • How many packages can be processed per elf with minimum or no mistakes
  • Number of calls, requests, inquiries per day per elf in a friendly and understandable manner
  • Knowing who has been naughty or nice in the blink of an eye including historical profiles
  • Virtual machines (VM) or physical machine (PM) servers managed per team member
  • Databases and applications, local and remote, logical and physical per team member
  • Storage in terms of PByte and Exabyte managed to given service level per team member
  • Network circuits and bandwidth with fewest dropped packets (or packages) per member
  • Fewest misdirected packages as well as aborted landings per crew
  • Fewest pounds gained from consumption of most milk and cookies per crew

From how many packages can be processed per hour, to the number of virtual servers per person, PBytes of data managed per person, network connections and circuits per person, databases and applications per person to takes and landings (SANta has the top of the list for this one), they are all highly efficient and effective.

Likewise, SANta leverages the partners in his SANtas eWORLD Helpers initiative network to help out where of course he looks for value; however value is not just lowest price per VM, lowest cost per TByte or cost per bandwidth. For SANta it is also very focused on performance, availability, capacity and economic efficiency not to mention quality with an environmentally friendly green supply chain.

By having a green supply chain, SANta leverages from a responsible, global approach that also makes economic sense on where to manufacture and produce or procure products. Contrary to growing popular belief, locally produced may not always be the most environmentally as well as economically favorable approach. For example (read more here), instead of growing flowers and plans in western Europe where they are consumed, a process that would require more energy for heat, lights, not to mention water and other resources. SANta has bucked the trend instead relying on the economics and environmental benefit of leveraging flowers and plants grown in warmer, sunnier climates.

Granted and rest assured, SANta still has an army of elves busily putting things together in his own factories along with managing IT related activities in a economically positive manner.

SANta has also leveraged this thinking to his data and information and communications networks leveraging sites such as in the arctic where solar power can be used during summer months along with cooling economizers to offset the impact of batteries, workload is shifted around the world as needed. This approach is rumored to be the envy of the US EPA Energy Star for Server, Storage and Data Center crew not to mention their followers.

How does SANta make sure all of the data and information is protected and available? Its a combination of best practices, techniques, technologies including hardware, software, data protection management tools, disk, dedupe, compression, tape and cloud among others.

Rest assured, if it is in the technology buzzword bingo book, it is a good bet that it has been tested in one of SANtas facilities, or, partner sites long before you hear about it even under a strict NDA discussion with one of his elves (opps, I mean supplier partners).

When asked of the importance of his information and data networks, resources and cloud enabled highly virtualized efficient operations SANta responded with a simple:

Ho Ho Ho, Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night!

As you sit back and relax, reflect, recreate, recoup or recharge, or whatever it is that you do this time of the year, take a moment to think about and thank all of SANtas helpers. They are the ones that work behind the scenes in SANtas facilities as well as his partners or suppliers, some in the clouds, some on or underground to make the worlds largest single event day (excuse me, night) possible! Or, is this SANta and cloud thing all just one big fantasy?

Happy and safe holidays or whatever you want to refer to it as, best wishes and thanks!

BTW: FTC disclosure information can be found here!

Greg on Break

Me on a break during tour SANta site tour

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

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

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

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What do NAS NASA NASCAR have in common?

What do NAS NASA NASCAR have in common?

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

Updated 2/10/2018

The other day it dawned on me what do NAS, NASA NASCAR have in common?

Several things in addition to all starting with the letters NAS it turns out.

For example, they all deal with round objects, NAS or Network Attached storage involved with circular spinning disk drives, NASA or National Aeronautical Space Administration besides involved with aircraft that have tires that go round and round, or airplanes circling waiting for landing.

In the case of NASA they are also involved with sending craft or devices to circle other planets or moons and land or crash into them. Sometimes NAS along with other storage systems have disk drives that crash, similar to how NASCAR events see accidents.
NAS

Ceder Lake 3M NASCAR at dirt track - Photo (C) 2008 Karen Schulz all rights reserved

Ceder Lake dirt track 3M NASCAR night (Photo (C) 2008 Karen Schulz)

NASCAR is also involved with vehicles that dont or at least should not fly, however they do go round and round on a track, often paved however sometimes mud or dirt tracks plus high tech exists with computers and various data models, not to mention the NASCAR air force.

In addition to being involved with round objects and activities, all three are also involved in computing, generating, processing, storing and retrieving for analysis of data, not to mention high performance requirements.

NAS based storage can also be relied upon for serving the needs of NASA and NASCAR data and informational needs.

And FWIW, just for fun, look at what you get when you spell NAS, NASA or NASCAR backwards:

RACSAN
ASAN
SAN

Where To Learn More

View additional NAS, NVMe, SSD, NVM, SCM, Data Infrastructure and HDD related topics via the following links.

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

Not much actually other than to stimulate some thought, discussion as well as perhaps have some fun with technology during the holiday season.

Im sure if I put some more thought to it, more similarities would or will come to mind.

However, for now, thats it for a quick thought, what similarities do you see or know about with NAS, NASA and NASCAR?

Ok, nuf fun for now, time to work on some other posts, content and projects.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

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.

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StorageIO debuts at 79 in Technobabble top 400 analyst list

Following on the heals of being named one of three EcoTech warriors earlier in the year, and then number 5 in the top ten independent bloggers at StorageMonkeys earlier this year (plus appearing on InfoSmack), the momentum continues more recently being named as the 23rd out of the top 30 influential virtualization bloggers.

If that were not enough, I was also surprised to learn recently that I have also made a debut appearance at number 79 in the Technobabble top 400 analyst and independent blogger lists as well.

To say that Im honored and flattered would be an understatement and I thank all of the growing number of readers and commenters to the various blogs, twitter tweets along with other content at the different venues and events Im involved with.

Thanks to all of you and have a safe happy holiday season along with a prosperous new years, look forward to future conversations and discussions.

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 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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ILM = Has It Losts its Meaning

Disclaimer, warning, be advised, heads up, disclosure, this post is partially for fun so take it that way.

Remember ILM, that is, Information Lifecycle Management among other meanings.

It was a popular buzzword de jour a few years ago similar to how cloud is being tossed around lately, or in the recent past, virtualization, clusters, grids and SOA among others.

One of the challenges with ILM besides its overuse and thus confusion was what it meant, after all was or is it a product, process, paradigm or something else?

That depends of course on who you talk to and their view or definition.

For some, ILM was a new name for archiving, or storage and data tiering, or data management, or hierarchical storage management (HSM) or system managed storage (SMS) and software managed storage (SMS) among others.

So where is ILM today?

Better yet, what does ILM stand for?

Well here are a few thoughts; some are oldies but goodies, some new, some just for fun.

ILM = I Like Marketing or Its a Lot of Marketing or Its a Lot of Money
ILM = It Losts its Meaning or Its a Lot of Meetings
ILM = Information Loves Magnetic media or I Love Magnetic media
ILM = IBM Loves Mainframes or Intel Loves Memory
ILM = Infrastructure Lifecycle Management or iPods/iPhones Like Macintosh

Then there are many other variations of xLM where I is replaced with X (similar to XaaS) where X is any letter you want or need for a particular purpose or message theme. For example, how about replacing X with an A for Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), or a B for Buzzword or Backup Lifecycle Management (BLM), C for Content Lifecycle Management (CLM) and D for Document or Data Lifecycle Management (DLM). There are many others including Hardware Lifecycle Management (HLM), Product or Program Lifecycle Management (PLM) not to mention Server, Storage or Security Lifecycle Management (SLM).

While ILM or xLM specific product and marketing buzz for the most part has subsided, perhaps it is about time to reappear to give current buzzwords such as cloud a bread or rest. After all, ILM and xLM as buzzwords should be well rested after their break at the Buzzword Rest Spa (BRS) perhaps located on someday isle. You know about someday isle dont you? Its that place of dreams, a visionary place to be visited in the future.

There are already signs of the impending rested, rejuvenated and re branded appearance of ILM in the form of automated tiering, intelligent storage and data management, file virtualization, policy managed server and storage among 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

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

Greg Schulz – StorageIO, Author “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC)

Technorati tags: ILM

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Going Rouge or Rogue in IT

Given all of the hype and buzz lately around Sarah Palins new book Going Rogue, how long until we see the term or phrase used in IT? After all, we saw some jump on the cash for clunkers theme. I wonder who will be the first to jump on the Going Rogue or rogue theme bandwagon. Here are a few ideas that might stimulate some thought, or, to keep an eye out to see who jumps on the bandwagon.

Going rogue on Acadia
Going rogue on Analysts
Going rogue on Archiving
Going rogue on Automated tiering
Going rogue on Backup
Going rogue on Blade servers
Going rogue on Bloggers
Going rogue on Clouds (public or private)
Going rogue on Compliance
Going rogue on Consultants
Going rogue on Dedupe
Going rogue on Disks drives
Going rogue on FCoE
Going rogue on FLASH or SSD
Going rogue on Green IT
Going rogue on Hosting
Going rogue on IOV
Going rogue on iSCSI
Going rogue on Kindle
Going rogue on Managed service providers (MSP)
Going rogue on Media venues or reporters
Going rogue on Networking
Going rogue on OSD
Going rogue on Performance
Going rogue on Polls and surveys
Going rogue on RAID
Going rogue on Security
Going rogue on SOA
Going rogue on Social media
Going rogue on Tape
Going rogue on Testing
Going rogue on Thin provision
Going rogue on Training and certifications
Going rogue on Twitter
Going rogue on VCE
Going rogue on Vendors
Going rogue with Virtualization
Going rogue on Virtual machines
Going rogue on VMware or HyperV
Going rogue on VoIP
Going rogue on Windows
Going rogue with XaaS

Alright, enough is enough for now at the risk of being perceived as snarky, after all, this is also just in fun.

Lets sit back and see who comes up with something about going rogue from an IT perspective.

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 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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The function of XaaS(X) – Pick a letter

Remember the xSP era where X was I for ISP (Internet Service Provider) or M for Managed Service Provider (MSP) or S for Storage Service Provider, part of buzzword bingo?

That was similar to the xLM craze where X could have been I for Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), D for Data Lifecycle Management (DLM) and so forth where even someone tried to register the term ILM and failed instead of grabbing something like XLM, lest I digress.

Fast forward to today, given the wide spread use of anything SaaS among other XaaS terms, lets have a quick and perhaps fun look at what some of the different usages of the new function XaaS(X) in the IT industry today.

By no means is this an exhaustive list, feel free to comment with others, the more the merrier. Using the Basic English alphabet without numbers or extended character sets, here are some possibilities among others (some are and continue to be used in the industry):

AAnalyst, Application, Archive, Audit or Authentication
BBackup or Blogger
CCloud, Complier, Compute or Connectivity
DData management, Datawharehouse, DBA, Dedupe, Development, Disk or Docmanagement
EEmail, Encryption or Evangelist
FFiles or Freeware
GGrid or Google
HHelp, Hotline or Hype
IILM, Information, Infrastructure, IO or IT
JJobs
KKbytes
LLibrary or Linkedin
MMainframe, Marketing, Manufacturing, Media, Memory or Middleware
NNAS, Networking or Notification
OOffice, Oracle, Optical or Optimization
PPerformance, Petabytes, Platform, Policy, Police, Print or PR
QQuality
RRAID, Replication, Reporter, Research or Rightsmanagement
SSAN, Search, Security, Server, Software, Storage, Support
TTape, Technology, Testing, Tradegroup, Trends or Twittering
UUnfollow
VVAR, Virtualization or Vendor
WWeb
XXray
YYoutube
ZzSeries or zilla

Feel free to comment with others for the list, and likewise, feel free to share the list.

Cheers gs

Cheers gs
Greg Schulz – StorageIO, Author “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC)

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StorageIO aka Greg Schulz appears on Infosmack

If you are in the IT industry, and specifically have any interest or tie to data infrastructures from servers, to storage and networking including hardware, software, services not to mention virtualization and clouds, InfoSmack and Storage Monkeys should be on your read or listen list.

Recently I was invited to be a guest on the InfoSmack podcast which is about a 50 some minute talk show format around storage, networking, virtualization and related topics.

The topics discussed include Sun and Oracle from a storage standpoint, Solid State Disk (SSD) among others.

Now, a word of caution, InfoSmack is not your typical prim and proper venue, nor is it a low class trash talking production.

Its fun and informative where the hosts and attendees are not afraid of poking fun at them selves while exploring topics and the story behind the story in a candid non scripted manner.

Check it out.

Cheers – gs

Greg Schulz – StorageIOblog, twitter @storageio Author “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC)

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Blame IT on the UN in NYC this week

This week is UN week in NYC, that annual fall event that results in traffic jams that make normal traffic seem like a breeze.

What with the security lockdowns, sudden road closures, re-routes, news crews, security details and the like, it’s a wonder anything gets done. I was in NYC for about 26 hours this week at the Storage Decisions event where I presented on optimizing for performance and capacity to enable efficient and green storage as well as recording a video on cloud storage and saw or experienced first hand the delays.

This is not going to be one of those complain about how I was inconvenienced rants, rather a bit of fun

Consequently, should you have or had any issues this past week, do like others and blame the UN. For example, late for a meeting, presentation, conference call, coffee break or lunch, getting home or to the ballpark, blame it on the UN. Other potential items that you can feel free to blame on the UN in NYC this week include:

  • RAID rebuilds on those large disk drives taking to long
  • Server, workstation, desktop, laptop or iphone reboots taking to long.
  • Database consistency checks or virus scans taking to long, you know who you can blame!
  • Cannot get a cell phone, landline or wireless connection inside, outside or anywhere?
  • Vmotion taking to long to migrate a server, failover not as fast, you know the drill.
  • IT budget scrapped, yet you have to do more, guess who’s to blame this week
  • Regulatory compliance, BC/DR, data security have you locked up, yup, thats right!
  • Cant download, upload or access WebEx, FedEx or backup to cloud, yup, blame it on the UN
  • Cant get a loan or venture capital financing for your startup, it’s the UNs fault right?
  • Your kindle brook and Amazon took away the books you bought and downloaded?
  • Missed your flight, train, car pool ride in another city, you know the story.
  • Interoperability and vendor finger pointing got you in a bind, yup; it’s the UN in NYC that’s the issue.
  • Forest fires or dust storms in Australia, ice cap melting at the north pole, yup, the UN in NYC this week

Look, I was stuck in traffic, made the best of it, listened to Infosmack #20 while doing some emails, doing a few calls instead of getting all twisted up about it. I actually like visiting NYC, lots to see and do, however also nice to move on, for those who have never experience NYC during UN week, give it a try sometime.

Cheers – gs

Greg Schulz – StorageIOblog, twitter @storageio Author “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC)

Technorati tags: NYC, UN

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Happy Labor Day V2.009

Im spending a little bit of time this morning working on a few things before taking the balance of the day off to enjoy the balance of Labor Day.

However before doing so, a quick word of thanks to all of those who work hard in support of our general infrastructure, not to mention as well as the information technology and telecommunications venues we all rely upon. From the line workers out in the ditches or trenches repairing telecommunications lines or circuits damaged from storms or small rodents as well as installing new circuits to those building or maintaining other critical infrastructure items.

Lets also not forget those involved in manufacturing or support of technology devices who work hard to develop, build and maintain devices or services we all rely upon. In the data center, the folks who toil to maintain desktops or workstations, LANs, MANs, SANs, POTs and WANs along with those involved with supporting backup/recovery.

Lets also not forget about some of the technology such as servers that work under hot and cramped conditions processing larger and more time sensitive workloads or applications. Then there are the disk drives that continue to spin and the RAID controllers that labor to rebuild on the fly failed components enabling fault isolation or containment for data availability. Lest we forget the network switches and routers that move countless packets or frames of information to and fro.  

Kidding and fun aside, there are many more, countless individuals or groups representing different skills, trades and functions who labor to make the country and world for that matter work to say thanks today.

If this were a Budwieser commercial, the tag line would be “This Buds for You”, however I simply say humble and gratuitous thanks to all and have a happy labor day.

Cheers – gs

Greg Schulz – StorageIOblog, twitter @storageio Author “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC)

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Out and about update, Off to VMworld next week

For those that consider summer to be over after the labor day weekend in the northern hemisphere, well, then summer is almost over, for others, there is still plenty of nice weather to enjoy and get out and about. In addition to back to school time, its also the start of the fall conferences, symposium, lunch and learns, seminars, chugs & hugs (vendor/var/partner get together’s) schedule along with VMworld taking place next week in San Francisco (I will be there) in addition to many other events.

Having already this year been in (not counting changing planes in Atlanta, Detroit or Memphis), Atlanta, Birmingham, Boston, Cancun, Chicago, Cincinnati, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Orlando, Parsippany, Philadelphia, Portland, Princeton, Providence, Raleigh, Richmond, San Jose, Santa Ana, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa, Toronto and Tucson not to mention several other cities where I was for consulting and advisory engagements, upcoming cities I will be visiting this fall include among others Atlanta (again), Chicago (again), Cleveland, Detroit, New York City and San Francisco.

Check out events page to see what else is coming up when and where, see you sometime this fall while out and about.

Cheers – gs

Greg Schulz – StorageIOblog, twitter @storageio Author “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC)

Technorati tags: StorageIOblog, vmworld

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Buzzword Bingo 1.0 – Are you ready for fall product announcemnts?

Ever play IT buzzword bingo or perhaps you have and not realized it?

Anyone can play, its easy and you don’t even need to know or understand the words or terms.

Its actually quite common and very easy, it goes like this, someone perhaps a vendor, var, media, analysts, pundit, blogger, twitter, customer/user, financier or whomever starts rattling of terms, phrases and acronyms in a discussion until some says or yells, “Bingo”, that is what I want or want to talk about or that applies to what Im interested in.  Buzzword bingo can be multi-directional, it can be played by customers and vendors alike, it can be played via product announcements, articles, white papers, blog posts, videos, presentations or webcasts you name it.

So lets give it a try with a simple version to get started, oh, some of the acronyms have multiple meanings as well just to make the game more interesting, so remember, yell bingo when something resonates, ready? Ok, let’s go with 8 Gb Fibre Channel (8GFC), 10GbE, AVO, Agent-less, Authentication, Archiving, Backup, Backup Service Provider (BSP), BC/DR, Buffer, Bus, Benchmarking, Blade servers, Bulk Storage, CAS, Capacity Planning, Capacity per watt, CDP, Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE), CIFS, Cloud, cloud computing, cloud storage, cloud it, cloud confusion, clusters, Clustered Storage, CNA, Compliance, Compression, Converged Networks, Cores, Driver, Data Center Ethernet (DCE), DLP, Domain, D2D2D, Data management, Data migration, De-duplication, De-dupe debates, Dual Boot, DPM, eDiscovery, Energy Star, EPA, Environmental Health and Safety (EHS), Encryption, Event Correlation, eWaste, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), FCBB, File management, FLASH or flash, Gateway, Green, Grid, Hash table, Index, HA, Hypervisor, hyperv, HAL, I/O Virtualization (IOV), Inband, Inline, ITIL, InfiniBand, Infrastructure Resource Management (IRM), IOPS per watt, IPM & MAID 2.0, iSCSI, LAN, Look aside buffer, MAN, Mhz, Multi-Protocol Storage, Managed Service Processors, Provider (MSP), MIBS, MLC, Meta, NAS, NFS, NPVID, OS, Over clocking, Optimization, Partitions, Para-virtualization, PCIe, Policy Management, POTS, POST, Post processing, PIROMA, Power Cooling Floor-space EHS (PCFE), PCI SIG IOV, Pin count, Pin out, Pun up, Performance, pNFS, Removable Hard Disk Drive (RHDD), RAID 6, RAM, Replication, RoHS, Replication, REST, SAN, SaaS, SRA, SRM, SAS, SATA, Security, SLC, Snapshots, SMIS, SNMP, SOAP, SRM, SSD, Stack, Tape, Threads, Thin Provision, Tier 0, Unstructured data, VCB, VM, Vmworld, Virtualization, virtual memory, Vmotion, VMware, vcpu, VTL, WAN, WAAS, WADS, WAFS, WADM, Web 2.0 or xaaS (replace x with whatever letter you like, kind of like xSP ;) ).

Any bingos yet? Ok, enough is enough, will leave it here for now, maybe a future post for Buzzword Bingo 2.0 will include more technical terms and acronyms or excerpts from industry trade group dictionaries such as SNIA or glossaries such as those from mine and other books .

With a plethora of upcoming announcements, rest assured, there will be plenty of opportunities to brush up on buzzword bingo so get ready, practice and enjoy your next game.

Check out the news and portfolio as well as interesting links page to learn more about related topics.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

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

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

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Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the greenest of them all?

If you subscribe to the notion that Green IT is all about carbon footprints, you may be missing out on some real opportunities to go green. After all, carbon is part of the green movement, there are many other aspects including supply chain, efficiency, sustainability in addition to recycling, not to mention optimizing power, cooling footprints in order to do more work in a productive manner.

So who is the greenest of them all? Could it be Brocade, CA, Cisco, EMC, Hitachi, IBM, Intel, LSI, Microsoft, NetApp, Oracle, Symantec, VMware or 3PAR? What about the cloud crowd or perhaps one of the industry trade groups such as Green grid, SNIA GSI, Climate Savers Computing or Carbon disclosure project perhaps among others?

You might be surprised, now granted, this list is for consumer products. However, given their broad adoption, and looking at Green as more than carbon impact, and with the EPA implanting Energy Star for Servers and now Energy Star for storage in the works, not to mention factoring in the green supply chain, have a look here.

Here’s an interesting read about how the Internet is causing global warming. How ironic, given Al Gore’s carbon crusade, and the folk-lore claim about  (or mistaken have claimed) to have invented the Internet, no wonder he has been able to cash-in and transform Green to Gold.

For those interested in saving money with efficient and optimized storage (e.g. the new Green) to boost productivity, here’s an article to check out.

Ok, that’s enough "Green" fun for now.

Cheers gs

Posted on

All work and no play? Ok, how about an education half day?

This past week in between keynote talks and moderating panel discussions pertaining to IT infrastructure optimization (server, storage, networks, hardware, software, services, virtualization, etc.) in Seattle and Portland, I was able to take a rare couple of hours break and go on a non work related tour.

The tour was actually two tours in one, the 1st being the future of flight facility located adjacent (ok, across the runway) to the Boeing Everett large commercial aircraft facility, which is where the 2nd tour was.

There was a saying heard on the tour, as well as something seen on several signs and bumper stickers which is, “if it does not say Boeing, I’m not going”. Disclosure time, I did fly to Seattle on a Boeing product, however I flew home from Portland on an Airbus product, and in-between those two great cities, I traveled via Amtrak.

Having been in many other in interesting factories including those of GE Aircraft Engines, GE Appliances not to mention electrical power plants (another form of a factory) both Coal, Hydro and Nuclear as well as automotive/trucks, army tanks along with chemical manufacturing or processing sites among others, the Boeing tour is right up there if not at the top of the list.

Boeing Everett Plant - photo from Gregs iPhone
Here’s an iPhone photo of from the future of flight museum/facility of the Boeing Everett factory

To say the building is huge would be an understatement! In the above photo, on the left the blue doors are each about the size of a football field in size. The building is touted as the largest building by volume in the world, and once up close you can see why the key phrase is “by volume”. The place is huge! Click here to see some more information from Boeing about the site.

Boeing does not allow cameras, cell phones, MP3 players, purses, backpacks or fanny packs, essentially anything other than your wallet or what’s in your pocket during the tour, so sorry, no photos.  However, here are some links including a great website (flight blogger) where you can see what I saw as well as learn a lot more.

Boeing is in the process of developing two new commercial aircraft, the 747-8 and the 787 “Dream liner” (learn more here at Boeings newairplane.com site).

In the factory, on the 747 line, which is in the older part of the building (40+ years old), the first of what is the newest or essentially 3rd generation of the 40 year old 747 airplane was seen having had its fuselage sections joined hours before. In the photo found in the following link, the sections were hours away from being joined, and the vantage point of the tour can be seen in the background adjacent to where the large U.S. flag is seen.

Click here and here to see photos from Flightblogger.com of the new “next generation” 747-8F taken the day before the tour. Click here to see some images of the 787 dream liner, including this one here that had just been removed from the paint hanger and was parked on the ramp. I also saw this plane on the ramp that had just emerged from being painted.

Some perspectives that I found interesting from the tour included:

On the 747 line, there were plenty of factory sounds, pneumatic air tools, riveters, drills, hammering and activity one would expect in a large factory where there was a mix of hand building with tools and automation. However clearly, rooted in a 40+ year old technology that has been brought up to current generation standards, systems and technologies.

In the middle of the factory, where the newer 777 were being assembled, it looked like a newer program and processes including with moving assembly lines similar to what you would expect in a high volume factory. There were lots of people moving and installing things, you could see and hear work being done, however much more automated than on the larger 747 line, not surprising seeing the size of the new 747-8F.

At the opposite end of the factory, in a section that is only about 15 years old, you could tell the difference in the structure as you walk through the below factory floor access tunnels which are large enough for large automobiles to comfortably pass each other in. The tunnels were larger; there were more bulk fiber optic cables in the overhead conveyance racks and a generally newer look and feel. However once up on the observation level above the factory floor is where you could really see the difference.

At the end of the tour, we saw the brand new 787 dream liner being put together. This is a brand new plan that has yet to fly and that has been plagued by issues, some not so different to what we see with new IT technologies. The 787 is an all composite aircraft (ok, there are some small amounts of metal in some structures) that has its components built elsewhere and then flown to Everett for integration or final assembly.

In fact, back on July 8th, 2007, (e.g. 787), Boeing did a virtual physical rollout, that is, they put the incomplete plane together, painted it, rolled it out for the world to see and of course, people believed that it was ready to fly in a month or so. Guess what, most everyone fell for the demo and thought it to be real (hmmm, sounds like some trade shows I have been to or demo rooms I have seen ;) ), only to still be on the ground dealing with development issues.

Anyway, all that aside, what I saw on the 787 line were two aircraft, that were not surrounded by people with pneumatic tools, drills, riveters or making factory sounds or noises. Instead, what I saw looked more like what I see in many IT environments, which was a piece of hardware in the middle of the room, with people all around it with laptop, desktop or other workstation computers busily doing work.

There were so many workstations, laptops and other computers on the floor in makeshift cubicles, conferences rooms that there were even network switches/directors positioned at the end of row of these cubes and clusters of workers. Thus the impact of having the engineers close to where the work was being done, the impact of all of the documentation and paper (virtual paper) work that goes with new development and reliance on information systems for communications, collaborations, design, simulation, parts tracking and so forth.

The real takeaway for me was how from one end of the factory were signs of the past generation leveraging new technologies, the middle being a hybrid, and the other end being leading edge, yet so revolutionary that issues are still being worked out.

I thought to myself of some similarities between what I saw at Boeing and many IT environments. That is, extremes, the past and the future, what works today, what will be key for tomorrow, as well as hybrid environments.

Similar to IT, customers are buying, testing and deploying for early adoption new technologies such as SAS, FCoE, SSD, dedupe, thin provision, virtualization that will be key building blocks moving forward, yet at the same time leveraging the past including disk drives, tape, RAID, FC, iSCSI  and others buzzword bingo technology, techniques and three letter acronyms (TLAs). Thus I saw Boeing leveraging the past, building to the future, surviving and sustaining itself today, a balance of the old and the new, just like many IT environments.

Souvenir hat - Photo via gregs iphone

My souvenir hat

If you are in the Seattle area and have a couple of hours to spare, I highly recommend the tour!

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

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

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

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Big Fish and Small Fish – Fish story or the one that did not get away?

Its been a very busy year and we are not quite half way through 2009 yet. For those who follow or read this blog as well as other venues where I have material appear, or give interviews, quotes and perspectives, or have appeared in person, you probably have caught on that its been a busy year for me along with my book “The Green and Virtual Data Center”. However, all work and no play makes for a dull day and recently as things have finally settled down just a bit for a few weeks during the early summer time of the year, I have been able to get out and enjoy the out doors including fishing to which I must prefer over golf (I don’t have the patience for the game ;) ).

However, as is often the case when relaxing, some things can be come clear, new ideas come to mind and one such recent one is the notion of the big fish and the small fish. What caught my thoughts was that there is often the infatuation with the big fish, the big game vs. the fun of catching something small just for the fun of it.

Freshwater drum, Photo Courtesy Karen Schulz (C) 2009

Freshwater drum I caught near our home on the St. Croix River

Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy deep-sea saltwater or even great lakes fishing, I enjoy the pursuit of the elusive walleye or other game fish, however a friend recently helped me to acquaint myself with the simplicity of catching small pan fish such as sunfish aka bluegills or pumpkin seeds.

What has become fun about this over the past week or two is one, the big game or sport fish have been elusive and instead of listening to stories of what got away or what’s not biting or how bad the fishing has been, me and fishing friend decided to change the game a bit and find what was biting or just for fun, do something different. Low and behold, about a week ago we set out to see how many species of fish we could catch in a day and we ended up with about three dozen sunnies (we threw almost all of them back, e.g. released), over a dozen bass including some large ones most of which were also released, a nice channel cat which was set free to find its friend cat-fish hunter, not to mention various others including a swamp shark aka northern pike, the cousin to the muskie and distant relative, or at least a perceived similarities to the barracuda.

Being a member of "The St. Croix Hookers, Catch and Release Division", most of the fish get released, however now and then we will keep some for dinner.

The other evening, I decided to try something different again which was to use very light tackle, an ice fishing rod to be precise and fish out of a kayak for sunnies, sure enough, it was not easy, the catch was not big, however the reward was fantastic in terms of getting into some backwaters we could not normally go with the regular boats, and yes, even caught a fish and yes, there were others that got away.

Greg fishing from Kyak - Photo courtesy of Karen Schulz (c) 2009 all rights reserved
It’s not a monster, however on light line, an ice fishing rod and from a kyak, it’s a blast! (Photo courtesy of Karen Schulz (C) 2009)

Catfish caught on St. Croix River - Photo by Greg Schulz (c) 2009
Catfish Caught on St. Croix River! (Photo courtesy of Greg Schulz (C) 2009)

I find it interesting that so many vendors, especially startups are in pure pursuit of the big game, the big fish which of course should the catch it, they have a story to talk about.

However I have also seen where so many ignore revenue, footprint, mind share and success at the cost of big game fishing for what ever reasons. This is where I realized a similarity with fishing recently. The same elusive fish that everyone else from other startups to existing players are all in pursuit of, yet so often get neglected the other smaller fish that while it takes more of, help to add to the footprint and success stories to build on, not to mention gather experience.

Granted, its tough to make a meal on just small fish, however there is balance and even the biggest of vendors are showing an awareness of the need for balanced portfolio from SOHO to SMB to SME to enterprise offerings from servers, storage, I/O networking, hardware, software and services.

Food for thought when the technology fishing slows during the dog days of summer, change-up the game or the approach a bit, explore alternate opportunities, try old tricks with new techniques to keep things interesting and productive. Certainly don’t ignore where everyone else is fishing or pursuing, however, break away and try something different, or, perhaps an area or opportunity that others might be ignoring or forgetting about in their pursuit of the big one that may end up getting away!

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

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

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

Greg Schulz – StorageIO, Author “The Green and Virtual Data Center”. (CRC)
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