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

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

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

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

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

Read more about the book here

Here’s some contact informaiton pertaining to the book:

General Questions:
Greg Schulz (That’s me if you were wondering)
StorageIO
twitter.com/storageio
greg@storageio.com
+1 (651) 275-1563

Press Interviews:
Georgiana Comsa
ClassyTech PR
www.classytech.com
georgiana@classytech.com
+1 (408) 435-1500

Book Reviews:
John Wyzalek
Auerbach/CRC Press
john.wyzalek@taylorandfrancis.com
+1 (917) 351-7149

Bulk or Special Sales:
Chris Manion
Auerbach/CRC Press

chris.manion@taylorandfrancis.com
+1 (651) 998-2508

In addition to the folks at Auerbach/CRC-Taylor Francis, I would also like to thank Theron Shreve and his crew at DerryField Publishing services who assisted with layout, copyediting and other manuscript pre-production activities, as well as all the other people who helped make the book a reality.

Cheers – gs

It feels like Grand Central Station here…

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

Grand Central Station New York City - December 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers
gs

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

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All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Protecting and Storing Personal Digital Documents

Storage I/O trends

Cindy Waxer recently wrote a great article over at Bankrate.com that also appeared on CNBC.Com among other venues titled 5 digital ways to store money documents that includes commentary and industry perspectives by yours truly Greg Schulz.

Why the concern about safely and securing personal digital documents? Digital created or stored data ranges from income tax, social security, mortgage and fiance, on-line and electronic bill payments, credit cards as well as banking and retirement information that is being stored on personal computers in place of, or in addition to printed hardcopy forms.

Many organizations are encouraging consumers as well as business to shift from printed hardcopy invoices and bills towards using electronic and paperless bill payments. In some instances, organizations offer discounts for switching to electronic bill payment or transactions while others apply service fees for using traditional non electronic payment methods.

So again, why the concern about storing safely and securely your digital receipts, invoices and payment records, after all, since they are on-line, why not simply rely on whom ever you are dealing with to maintain those records? The answers are many ranging from simple availability of having ready access to your documents similar to why you would have copies of important hardcopy documents available in addition to being in a safe place. Another answer is for compliance, long thought to only the realm and area of focus for large financial institutions.

So what is one to do? Simple, protect important electronic documents as you would protect important hardcopy documents by making copies and storing them in safe secure places including off-site archives in a different location.

Some general tips, technologies and techniques for safely storing digital documents include:

  • Make multiple copies of important data files, documents, photos or other important items
  • Store copies of important files and data on encrypted removable media including placing copies off-site
  • Protect encryption keys and passwords in a safe place to unlock protected data when needed
  • Leverage removable media including disk drives, USB FLASH thumb drives, CD/DVD or magnetic tape
  • Utilize on-line web or cloud based managed service providers offering internet document storage
  • Talk to your bank to see what they offer for digital safe deposit boxes also known as cloud or managed storage services
  • Perform regular backups of computers data files as well as have a disaster recovery kit and CD (or disk drive) stored in a safe place
  • Of course there is the question of how do you know what is important and what is not important, again, what has value to you either from a financial or legal perspective as well as soft value for example priceless digital or scanned photographs, video and recordings among other sentimental documents.

    Check out Cindy’s article here and learn more at www.storageio.com.

    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

    Remember The Alamo

    Yesterday I made a quick trip down to San Antonio Texas (SAT) to do a keynote talk about "BC/DR and Virtual Environments" along with a sprinkling of IT effieincy aka Green; consolidation, power, cooling, footprint, data management and cloud topics mixed in the discussion. The dinner event was put on by TechTarget with the local host being Mobius (not to be confused with Moby, the artist). Mobius is a Texas value added reseller (VAR) and the event took place at Morton’s near the river walk in downtown SAT. This was my second trip to SAT in about two months have done a morning seminar talk about the "Wide World of Archiving – Life beyond Compliance" back in October, also downtown SAT.

    It was a great event with a lively and interesting audience who provide good feedback and conversation sharing their experiences, concerns, issues and what they are looking at or for.

    Some general take away’s that I have from talking with the IT folks who were in attendance at the event include:

  • Do you homework and due diligence with regard to using VCBs for VMware backups
  • Pay attenion to the details when re-architecting and updating data protection for virtual environments
  • iSCSI and FC as well as FCoE all have different roles and places now and into the future for virtual environments
  • Concern about clouds, they are interesting, are a tiered resource to compliment other resources
  • Cloud services need to be part of BC/DR including in plans to isolate against disruptions such what occurred with Amazon and others
  • Not all servers can be consolidated due to different reasons and issues
  • Virtualization platforms (software and appliance or storage system based) can be used for replication, migration and consolidation
  • Virtual tape libraries are being adopted while tape usage continues
  • Discussion around different tiers of storage, tiered access (e.g. iSCSI, FC, FCoE, IBA, NAS, etc) and tiered data protection
  • A common theme is doing more with less, maintaining service levels and support business growth
  • Now on a different note, from technology and trends to travel.

    If you travel enough for business like I have had, you know that its not all jet set lifestyle like people think or assume, in fact many times what I get to see of a city or venue is the view from window of a car or train on the way from an airport to a venue, a hotel and sometimes a dinner event. However now and then, even on quick trips like yesterdays where I was in SAT for 15 hours, opportunities exist to get out even if its for just a moment and take in a site or two, see some of the city or area. Last night was an example of getting a chance to see something interesting when I walked the 7-8 blocks from the venue (I had gone directly from the airport to Mortons).

    Walking back to my hotel (it was a nice evening for a walk) last night, I walked around and near the river walk and low and behold, I stopped, turned and looked and there it was, the Alamo (see photo below taken from my cell phone) in all its splendor. It actually looks a lot smaller than what I thought it would look like, however it was fun to do some inadvertent site seeing before an early morning flight home.

    The Alamo
    Remember the Alamo via Greg’s Cell Phone Camera 12/10/08

    Now lets put travel into perspective here a bit.

    When I woke up yesterday morning it was 3F at home in Stillwater, by time I got to the airport it was a balmy 9F, by mid afternoon when I arrived in SAT and stood in the taxi line, it was a down right tropical in the mid 50s F. This morning when I woke up around 5:30AM for my early morning flight home, it was a cool 35F in SAT with a forecast of getting back up into the 50s (F) today while it was a pleasant 13F when I arrived back at my office early afternoon, the fun of traveling!

    Thanks to everyone who came out to last nights event and it was great to have had a chance to meet and visit with you, hopefully next time we will have more time for follow-up questions, however feel free to drop me a note. Also thanks too the Techtarget, Mobius and Mortons folks for putting a great event together, and, remember the Alamo and if you have not been there, check it and the river walk out!

    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 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

    Downloads for fall 2008 San Francisco Storage Decisions now available

    The TechTarget Storage Media Group has posted on Bitpipe the session presentations from the recent fall (November 17-19th) 2008 San Francisco Storage Decisions event. If you have never been to a Storage Decisions event, it?s a great venue for meeting with IT and storage professionals as well as vendors who also show up to show their wares and meet with the attendees. Make no mistake about it, Storage Decisions is not a vendor to vendor meet and industry network event like SNW or a vendor sponsored user group like VMworld or EMCworld, rather, its focused on the IT and storage professional and encourages speakers to be frank and candid in their discussions of technologies, techniques and even of vendors and their solutions.

    In addition to doing a keynote session Wednesday evening November 19th on ?Hot Storage Topics for Channel Professionals? at the Storage Strategies for Channel Professionals Dinner event, I also did two presentations at Storage Decisions one in the management and executive track Management and Executive Track on Green and Efficient Storage , an (updated version from what was covered in September 2008 at New York) timely theme given my new book ?The Green and Virtual Data Center? (Auerbach) along with another session in the Storage and capacity management track of  ?Clustered and Grid Storage — From SMB, to Scientific, to Social Networking and Web 2.0? (also updated from September 2008)

    View the entire list of all Storage Decisions sessions here.

    A big thanks to all who came out last week in San Francisco at Storage Decisions and who attended the sessions enabling great discussion and insight both during the sessions, as well as during lunches, breaks and exhibition hours.

    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

    Did someone forget to tell Dell that Tape is dead?

    Storage I/O trends

    Did someone forget to send a memo to Dell that magnetic tape is dead, or, perhaps pre-occupied with other activities? Maybe no body at Dell read the “virtual” or “fictional” memo that tape is dead?

    Ok, enough with the cynicism and joking around, tape is not dead (See recent Computerworld and Dell story) and Dell is one of several vendors including IBM who still find time to talk about tape as part of a solution to different customer and environment needs.

    Sure, tape might be in or heading into its golden years or what can also be called the plateau of productivity (for customers) or profitability (for some vendors), tape does not get the marketing dollars and media coverage as its been around as a technology for a long time and their are cooler and niftier (techno term) things to discuss including disk based backup and data protection, CDP, VTLs, de-dupe debates, clusters, grids and clouds, FCoE vs. iSCSI, NAS, SAS, virtualization, OSD and pretty much anything except tape.

    However, the reality is that many organizations, particular larger organizations still use and rely on tape based data protection for backup/BC/DR as well as archive for compliance and non-compliance data retention or data preservation activities, in some cases complimenting and co-existing with disk based solutions.

    Disk to disk (D2D) based backups and data protection certainly continue to gain adoption and deployments in both large and small environments, however, the shift to disk based data protection, or, clinging to tape with a death grip does not have to be, nor should it be an all or nothing value proposition, that is, they can and do co-exist for different uses and purposes leveraging the various economics and benefits of the technologies to address various tasks and requirements.

    New and emerging technologies certainly need to be discussed, dissected, developed and deployed as they are the future for maintaining and sustaining business growth via IT service delivery in economical and reliable fashion, that is, apply what technologies makes economic and business sense at a given point in time to minimize risk while maximizing useful benefits to your business.

    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

    IT Belt Tightening and Stratigies for IT Economic Sustainment

    Storage I/O trends

    There’s been and will continue to be lots of talk around tightening IT budgets and spending. Here’s a link to a piece by Chris Preimesberger over at eWeek titled “How the ‘Down’ Macroeconomy Will Impact the Data Storage Sector”.

    Here’s another related piece by Marty Foltyn over on Internet News that looks at “Storage Technologies for a Slowing Economy”.

    A macro trend that Im seeing and hearing more often is that with the demise or should I say, falling out of favor of Green hype and Green washing, there is a growing realization of the practical aspects of boosting efficiency and productivity with a by-product of being environmental friendly while addressing economic issues.

    The so called Green Gap (See here, here, here, here, and here) exists between green hype and rhetoric which is now destined for the endangered species or extinction list, while core issues including power, cooling, floor space/footprint and environmental health & safety (EH&S) known as PCFE that need to be addressed are in fact covered under the broader green umbrella.

    With the growing realization that efficiency gains that can boost IT productivity to sustain and enable business and economic growth also help the environment, there is awareness that those initiatives and activities that address PCFE and related issues are in fact green and part of many organizations agendas and budgets. Consequently going green for the sake of going green may be falling out of favor or off of budgets for many, addressing PCFE related issues to sustain business and economic growth are gaining in popularity though not always associated with as being green.

    Thus in tough economic times where dollars and productivity become important, the new green will be that of efficiency and productivity with a by-product benefit being to help the environment, some of the themes in my book, The Green and Virtual Data Center (Auerbach) that you can pre-order now at Amazon.com and other venues around the world.

    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

    From ILM to IIM, Is this a solution sell looking for a problem?

    Storage I/O trends

    Enterprise Storage Forum has a new piece about what could be the successor to ILM from a marketing rallying cry perspective in the form of Intelligent Information Management (IIM).

    Information management is an important topic, however, given tough economic times, can IIM be joined into some other discussions about efficiency and boosting productivity to help justify its cost what ever that cost may be in terms of more hardware, software and people to carry out? With EMC and Gartner banging the drum, it will be interesting to see who else jumps on the IIM bandwagon.

    On the other hand, lets see what over variations surface perhaps an VIIM (Virtualized IIM), or a IIMaaS (IIM as a Service), or how about Cloud IIM or GIIM (Green IIM) among others like xIIM where you plug what ever letter you want in front if IIM (something that someone missed out on a few years ago by not grabbing xLM).

    While I see the importance of data management, the bottom line is going to be how to budget and build a business case when sustaining business growth in tough economic times is a common theme. Hopefully we can see some business case and justifications that can involve some self-funded, that is, the cost of adopting and deploying IIM is covered by the savings in associated hardware and software management and maintenance fees as well as a means of boosting overall IT and data management productivity.

    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

    Tape Talk – Changing Role of Tape

    Storage I/O trends

    Here’s a link to a new article over at Enterprise Storage Forum titled “The Changing Role of Tape” for those of you who still use or care to admit to using magnetic tape as part of your data protection (backup, BC, DR) and data preservation (e.g. archiving and compliance) strategies.

    Disk based solutions continue to grow in adoption for data protection, however tape remains relevant taking on different roles, similar to how disk drives are taking on different roles as FLASH and RAM based SSD continue to evolve and grow in terms of customer deployment adoption. Consequently, despite the continued hype that tape is dead, the reality is that tape remains on of if not the most energy-efficient or green storage mediums of in-active, off-line data in a given footprint and cost basis.

    Tape is still being used in many environments particularly more so in larger environments with a focus shifting towards supporting ultra-dense large full backups that have been copied from disk to disk based backups as well as for archives.

    Disk based data protection particularly with virtual tape libraries (VTLs) that combine data footprint reduction techniques such as compression, de-dupe, replication and migration to tape capabilities continue to gain in popularity as a convenient way to migrate from tape based backups to disk based backup preserving investment in existing people skills, policies, rules and software.

    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

    Escape From New York – Back from Storage Decisions NY 2008

    Storage I/O trends

    This past week I was in New York City (NYC) presenting at the IT professionals (e.g. customer) focused Storage Decisions event where I presented several sessions (See previous posting) including Green and Energy Efficient Storage Solutions ? Practical Ways to Reduce Power Consumption or Doing More with Less on Tuesday, and Clustered Storage ? From SMB, to Scientific, to Social Networking and Web 2.0 on Wednesday morning (Watch for TechTarget to announce the availability of the slides). In addition to presenting and several briefing meetings, we also recorded several new TechTalks for both IT professionals as well as channel professionals on a wide range of topics from SMB to enterprise.

    In addition to presenting at Storage Decisions, I was also the key note speaker at the Storage Strategies event for channel professionals where I discussed hot and emerging trends, technologies and opportunities for channel professionals. The event put on by TechTargets channel group including Cathy Gagne, Sue Troy and Colin Steele among many others was sponsored by EMC who presented to the channel audience their diverse solution offerings from VMware to storage and all points in between, NEC whom are now expanding their marketing story and messaging to cover their diverse storage line including the D series, servers and blade systems as well as their clustered hydrastor archiving storage system, Nexsan with their second generation MAID intelligent power management for variable performance and energy efficient storage.

    To say that things were hopping in New York this week would be an understatement with the 63rd UN general assembly taking place with past and current U.S. presidents, current candidates as well as countless foreign dignitaries in town among everyone else. At the Hilton New York City
    , which was the venue for Stg. Desc, as in previous years when its UN week, the place was crawling with not only storage professionals, vendors and industry media, there were also the broader media covering other people at the hotel for meetings including John McCain and foreign dignitaries, as well as celebrities like Ed Burns who was attending a NY FD/PD fund raiser event while across the street, there were the latest movie from Spike Lee ? Miracle at St. Anna?, and then the new release staring Richard Gere & Diane Lane ?Nights in Rodanthe? premieres took place. All that in addition to industry celebrities including Steve Foskett as well as Curtis Preston and many many others.

    Back to Storage Decisions event Once again, the TechTarget folks including Lindsey Mullen, Peter Bochner, Rich Castanga, Nicole Tierney and Carol Sliwa and many others put together an outstanding event with an audience of IT professionals. For a storage focused, non vendor event, Storage Decisions remains the premiere event for non vendor audiences. All sessions were once again very well attended by engaging professionals from a variety of different IT organizations which makes these events fantastic for their interaction with the folks in the trenches compared to some events that are more vendors centric focused.

    My talk about Green and Energy Efficient Storage Solutions solutions addressing how to do more with less including energy avoidance and energy efficiency, technologies and techniques was well attended by an engaging audience. Several different approaches to address various energy efficiency were covered and that will be further expanded on in addition to many other topics pertaining to green IT data centers in my new book ?The Green and Virtual Data Center? (Auerbach).

    For example, one of the topics covered was energy avoidance using 1st generation MAID from vendors such as Copan or second generation MAID 2.0 and inveiglement power management (IPM) or adaptive power management solutions from vendors on a rapidly growing list including Adaptec, DDN, Fujitsu, Greenbytes, HDS, HGST, NEC, Nexsan and Xyratex among others not to mention all of the vendors who have made statements of direction or have upcoming solutions soon to be delivered.

    In addition to IPM and MAID based solutions, tape and other off-line mediums including removable hard disk drives from vendors including EMC/Iomega, Fuji Film, IBM, Imation, Prostor, Quantum, Sony, SpectraLogic and Sun among others where the metric for idle or in-active data and storage is how much capacity per unit of energy per given configuration and footprint.

    Another category coveted was boosting energy efficiency for active applications and data where the metric is doing more IOPS, bandwidth, messages or emails, files or other transactions or activity per watt of energy using either RAM or FLASH SSD, or, using fast energy efficiency disk drives with vendors that include among others 3PAR, BlueArc, Curtis, Dell, DotHill, Infotrend, EMC, Fujitsu, Gear6, HDS, HGST, HP, IBM, Intel, LSI, NEC, NetApp, Samsung, Seagate, Solid Data, STEC, Sun, SGI, TMS and Violin.

    There are also the high capacity storage solutions for bulk storage where the metric is amount of capacity per watt of energy in a given footprint which is basically everyone in the industry that supports high capacity SATA disk drives not to mention the bulk and clustered storage vendors that do more with less.

    Then there is the business benefits of data footprint reduction (archive, compress, dedupe) and space optimization vendors for storage and networking ranging from Asigra, Brocade, Cisco, Datadomain, EMC, Exagrid, Falconstor, HP, NetApp, Ocarina, PKzip, Quantum, Riverbed, Sepaton, Silverpeak and Storwize among others not to mention tiered storage among other related hardware, software and management topics. Also covered where various other infrastructure resource management (IRM) topics including performance and capacity planning, space optimization, configuration and use of tools and techniques including virtualization for emulation, aggregation or consolidation as well as for management abstraction and transparency not to mention the usual thin provisioning and use of different RAID levels to boost energy efficiency themes.

    In addition to my green storage talk, I also presented on Clustered Storage(aka grid if you prefer) solutions for block and file, on-line active primary to secondary or off-line and near-line for backup and archiving solutions as well as emerging bulk storage solutions for web 2.0 or other instances where large amounts of data need to be stored on-line that in the past would have been archived for example fixed content reference data, web and research material, medical records or other images as well as social networking and entertainment media. Some of the vendors covered in this session included 3PAR, Amazon, BlueArc, Dell, EMC, Exagrid, Exanet, HP, IBM, IBRIX, Isilon, Lefthand, NEC, NetApp, Panasas, Permabit, Redhat and SGI among others.

    After a busy couple of days, on the way to the airport the other day while stuck in traffic in busy metropolis of New York City (NYC) where I was flying next to the wide open Midwest spaces of Cedar Rapids Iowa for a key note speaking engagement, a thought that came to mind was, John Carpenters ?Escape from New York? starring Kurt Russell as ?Snake Plissken?.

    Well, like ?Snake Plissken?, I made it to the airport in time for my flight to the wide open expanse of the Midwest and Cedar Rapids Iowa and then finally back home, what a week of diversity, however it was a great week.

    Thanks too all those who attended and participated in the various events this past week, it was great to meet so many new people as well as reacquaint with others or put a name and face together for so many others. I look forward to seeing and hearing from you all again soon and remember to keep an eye out for my new book, ?The Green and Virtual Data Center? (Auerbach) that you can beat the holiday shopping rush and order now at Amazon.comas well as many other fine venues around the world.

    Learn more at the TechTarget associated websites as well as at www.storageio.com and www.thegreenandvirtualdatacenter.com aka www.greendatastorage.com.

    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

    Green Storage – Practical Ways to Reduce Power Consumption

    Storage I/O trends

    The busy 2008 fall events activities continue, last week was New Orleans at Arnauds and Chicago at Morton’s where the topic was BC/DR in and for virtualized environments in a series of dinner seminar events with IT professionals. This coming week it’s off to New York City and then Ceder Rapids Iowa. In New York City, I will be there to present at Storage Decisions on several topics including Green Storage – Practical Ways to Reduce Power Consumption on Tuesday, Clustered Storage – From SMB, to Scientific, to Social Networking and Web 2.0 on Wednesday morning. For those attending Storage Decisions in New York, stop by and say hello as I will also be in the expo hall during the ask the experts (ATE) sessions on Tuesday late afternoon. For those not attending, Storage Decisions usually posts a link to the slides shortly after the event as well as watch for several new pod casts, videos, tips and related content to appear soon, some of which will be produced next week while Im in New York City.

    Also next week while in New York City, on Monday evening I will be the key-note speaker for the Storage Strategies for channel professionals event also at the New York Hilton.

    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

    technorati tags: Green Gap, Green Hype, Green IT, PCFE, The Green and Virtual Data Center, Virtualization, StorageIO, Green Washing

    Closing the Green Gap – Green washing may be endangered, however addressing real green issues is here to stay

    Storage I/O trends

    Here’s a new article I wrote that just appeared over at Enterprise Storage Forum called Closing the Green Storage Gap.

    Not all ‘green’ IT solutions or messages are created equal. Regardless of political views, the reality is that for business and IT sustainability, a focus on ecological issues and more importantly, their economic aspects cannot be ignored.

    There are business benefits to using the most energy-efficient IT solutions to meet different data and application requirements. However, vendors are busy promoting ‘green’ stories and solutions that often miss where IT organization challenges and mandates exist. This article examines the growing gap between green messaging, or ‘Green Wash,’ and how to close the gap and enable IT organization issues to be addressed today in a way that sustains business growth in an economic and ecologically friendly way.

    Have a read and a good weekend.

    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

    Links to Upcoming and Recent Webcasts and Videocasts

    Here are links to several recent and upcoming Webcast and video casts covering a wide range of topics. Some of these free Webcast and video casts may require registration.

    Industry Trends & Perspectives – Data Protection for Virtual Server Environments

    Next Generation Data Centers Today: What’s New with Storage and Networking

    Hot Storage Trends for 2008

    Expanding your Channel Business with Performance and Capacity Planning

    Top Ten I/O Strategies for the Green and Virtual Data Center

    Cheers
    Greg Schulz – StorageIO

    SMB capacity planning; Focusing on energy conservation

    Storage I/O trends

    Here’s a link to a new tip I wrote that is posted over at SearchSMBStorage on Capacity Planning and energy conservation.

    Here are some added links to other recent tips I wrote and posted at a SearchSMBStorage:

    Improve your storage energy efficiency

    Data protection for virtual server environments

    Data footprint reduction for SMBs

    Is clustered NAS for SMBs?

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

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

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