Category: Data footprint and proliferation reduction

Data footprint reduciton including archiving (email, database, files), compression (on-line and device based), de-duplicaiton (aka single instance storage, commonality factoring, differencing, etc.).

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Does Dell have a cloudy cloud strategy story (Part I)?

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

This is first of a two-part post (click here for second post) that is part of ongoing industry trends and perspective cloud conversations series that looks at Dell and their cloud strategy story. For background, some previous Dell posts are found here, here, here and here. Here is a link that has video of the live Dell Storage Customer Advisory (CAP) panel that Dell asked me to moderate back in June that touches on some related themes and topics. Btw, fwiw and for disclosure Dell AppAssure is a site advertiser on storageioblog.com ;).

Dell image

Depending on your view of what is or is not a cloud service, product or solution, naturally you will then have various opinions of where Dell is at with their cloud strategy and story.

If you consider object based storage to be part of or a component of private clouds or at least for medical, healthcare and related focus, then Dell is already there with their DX object storage solutions (Caringo based).

From a scale out, clustered or grid file system, Dell bought Exanet in a post holiday shopping sale a few years back and has invested in its development having renamed it Fluid File System and initially available as the FS7000 series (EqualLogic) and more recently expanded systems such as the FS8600 (Compellent based), EqualLogic and NX3500 (MD3000 based).

Dont be scared of clouds, learn and gain confidence with cloud and virtual data storage networking

If you view clouds as being part of services provided including via hosting or similar, Dell is already there via their Perot systems acquisitions.

If you view cloud as being part of VDI, or VDI being part of cloud, Dell is there with their tools including various acquisitions and solution bundles.

On the other hand if you view clouds as reference architectures across VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix Xen among others, guess what, Dell is also there with their VIS.

Or, if you view private clouds as being a bundled solution (server, storage, hardware, software) such as EMC vBlock or NetApp FlexPod, then Dell vStart (not to be  confused as being a service) is on the list with other infrastructure stack solutions.

OpenStack image for cloud and virtual data storage networking

How about being a technology supplier to what you may consider as being true cloud providers or enables including those who use OpenStack or other APIs and cloud tools, guess what, Dell is also there including at Rackspace (via public web info).

So the above all comes back to that Dell like many vendors who offer services, solutions and related items for data and information infrastructures have diverse offerings including servers, storage, networking, hardware, software and support. Dell like others similar to them has to find a balance between providing services that compete with their customers, as well as supplier such as to Rackspace. In this case Dell is no different from EMC who happened to move their Mozy backup service off to their VMware subsidiary and has managed to help define where VCE (and here) and ATMOS fit as products while being services capable. IBM has figured this out having a mix of old school services such as SmartCloud Services (or here), IBM Global Services and BCRS (business continuity recovery services), not to mention newer backup and storage cloud services, products and solutions they have acquired, or OEM or have reseller agreements with.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

HP has expanded their traditional focused EDS as well as other HP services along with products being joined by their Amazon like Cloud Services including compute, storage and content distribution network (CDN) capabilities. NetApp is taking the partnering route along with Cisco staying focused for at least now on being a partner supplier. Oracle, well Oracle is Oracle and they have a mix of products and services. In fact some might say Oracle is late to the cloud game however they have been in the game since the late 90s when they came out with Oracle online, granted the cloud purist will call that application service provider (e.g. ASP) vs. today’s applications as a service (AaaS) models.

Continue with the second post here, 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)

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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

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StorageIO going Dutch and Deutsch fall 2012

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Following a busy spring and summer schedule, the fall 2012 StorageIO out and about activities are underway including events on both the European and North American continents.

StorageIO events, object storage, ssd cloud, virtualization and big data

In addition to in person events, there are also some virtual activities including live and recorded video and audio sessions, as well as webcast on the fall schedule with more in the works.

Some of the fall events include SNW (past SNW posts here, here, and here) in Santa Clara, as well as SNW Europe and Power the Cloud event (Frankfurt Deutschland aka Germany) October 30 and 31st where I will be doing some meetings and briefing, along with attending sessions and the expo activities.

StorageIO modernize data protection with clouds, for virtualization and big data

On November 1st its off to Storage Expo Holland in Utrecht (here and here) where I will be presenting two sessions. One is on SSD industry trends and tips on deployment with a theme of not if, rather when, where, why and with what to use SSD. In addition I will be doing a general industry trends and perspective session on gaining confidence with clouds, virtualization, data and storage networking including object storage and backup (e.g. data protection modernization).

Storage IO travel clouds and virtualizationStorage IO travel clouds and virtualization
European travel tools and technologies

In addition to the above activities, following successful past events in Nijkerk Holland including the most recent May 2012 sessions, a new seminar has been announced focused on backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving hosted by Brouwer Consultancy on November 5th and 6th 2012. These workshop format seminars are very interactive providing independent perspectives on technology, tools, trends and what to do to address various challenges including more informed and effective IT decision-making.

Greg in action Nijkerk Storage Seminar

In addition to the new seminar that you can learn more about here, two other sessions will also be offered in Holland. These include a backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving. The other session is a backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving covering storage and networking industry trends covering clouds, virtualization and other broad topics.

Storage IO travel clouds and virtualizationStorage IO travel clouds and virtualization
Examples of Dutch refreshments

Learn more about the dutch seminars including how to register here.

Watch for more events, seminars, live video, webinars and virtual trade shows by visiting the StorageIO events page.

StorageIO events, object storage, ssd cloud, virtualization and big data

Drop me a note if you would like to schedule or arrange for a meeting, webinar, seminar or other activity at an event near you. If you planning to be in or near Holland early November, and interested in scheduling a meeting or session, send me a note or contact Brouwer Consultancy (here) to make arrangements.

Time to get ready for these and other events, ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

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

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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

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Cloud, virtualization, storage and networking in an election year

My how time flies, seems like just yesterday (back in 2008) that I did a piece titled Politics and Storage, or, storage in an election year V2.008 and if you are not aware, it is 2012 and thus an election year in the U.S. as well as in many other parts of the world. Being an election year it’s not just about politicians, their supporters, pundits, surrogates, donors and voters, it’s also a technology decision-making and acquisition year (as are most years) for many environments.

Similar to politics, some technology decisions will be major while others will be minor or renewals so to speak. Major decisions will evolve around strategies, architectures, visions, implementation plans and technology selections including products, protocols, processes, people, vendors or suppliers and services for traditional, virtual and cloud data infrastructure environments.

Vendors, suppliers, service providers and their associated industry forums or alliances and trade groups are in various sales and marketing awareness campaigns. These various campaigns will decide who will be chosen by their customers or prospects for technology acquisitions ranging from hardware, software and services including servers, storage, IO and networking, desktops, power, cooling, facilities, management tools, virtualization and cloud products and services along with related items.

The politics of data infrastructures including servers, storage, networking, hardware, software and services spanning physical, cloud and virtual environments has similarities to other political races. These include many organizations in the form of inter departmental rivalry over budgets or funding, service levels, decision-making, turf wars and technology ownership not to mention the usual vendor vs. vendor, VAR vs. VAR, service provider vs. service provider or other match ups.

On the other hand, data and storage are also being used to support political campaigns in many ways across physical, virtual and cloud deployment scenarios.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Let us not forget about the conventions or what are more commonly known as shows, conferences, user group events in the IT world. For example EMCworld earlier this year, Dell Storage Forum, or the recent VMworld (or click here to view video from past VMworld party with INXS), Oracle Open World along with many vendor analyst, partner, press and media or blogger days.

Here are some 2012 politics of data infrastructure and storage campaign match-ups:

Speaking of networks vs. server and storage or software and convergence, how about Brocade vs. Cisco, Qlogic vs. Emulex, Broadcom vs. Mellanox, Juniper vs. HP and Dell (Force10) or Arista vs. others in the race for SAN LAN MAN WAN POTS and PANs.

Then there are the claims, counter claims, pundits, media, bloggers, trade groups or lobbyist, marketing alliance or pacs, paid for ads and posts, tweets and videos along with supporting metrics for traditional and social media.

Lets also not forget about polls, and more polls.

Certainly, there are vendors vs. vendors relying on their campaign teams (sales, marketing, engineering, financing and external surrogates) similar to what you would find with a politician, of course scope, size and complexity would vary.

Surrogates include analyst, bloggers, consultants, business partners, community organizers, editors, VARs, influencers, press, public relations and publications among others. Some claim to be objective and free of vendor influence while leveraging simple to complex schemes for renumeration (e.g. getting paid) while others simply state what they are doing and with whom.

Likewise, some point fingers at others who are misbehaving while deflecting away from what they are actually doing. Hmm, sounds like the pundit or surrogate two-step (as opposed to the Potomac two step) and prompts the question of who is checking the fact checkers and making disclosures (disclosure: this piece is being sponsored by StorageIO ;) )?

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

What this all means?

Use your brain, use your eyes and ears, and use your nose all of which have dual paths to your senses.

In other words, if something sounds or looks too good to be true, it probably isn’t.

Likewise if something smells funny or does not feel right to your senses or common sense, it probably is not or at least requires a closer look or analysis.

Be an informed decision maker balancing needs vs. wants to make effective selections regardless of if for a major or minor item, technology, trend, product, process, protocol or service. Informed decisions also mean looking at both current and evolving or future trends, challenges and needs which for data infrastructures including servers, storage, networking, IO fabrics, cloud and virtualization means factoring in changing data and information life cycles and access or usage patterns. After all, while there are tough economic times on a global basis, there is no such thing as a data or information recession.

StorageIO and uncle sam want you for cloud virtualization and data storage networking

This also means gaining insight and awareness of issues and challenges, plus balancing awareness and knowledge (G2) vs. looks, appearances and campaign sales pitches (GQ) for your particular environment, priorities and preferences.

Keep in mind and in the spirit of legendary Chicago style voting, when it comes to storage and data infrastructure topics, technologies and decisions, spend early, spend often and spend for those who cannot to keep the vendors and their ecosystem of partners happy.

Note that this post is neither supported, influenced, endorsed or paid for by any vendors, VARs, service providers, trade groups, political action committees or Picture Archive Communication system (e.g. PACs), both of which deal with and in big data along with industry consortiums, their partners, customers or surrogates and neither would they probably approve of it anyway’s.

With that being said, I am Greg Schulz of StorageIO and am not running for or from anything this year and I do endorse the above post ;).

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)

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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

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Cloud conversations: confidence, certainty and confidentiality

Here is an interesting article from over at wired about proposed privacy law and court warrants for cloud data, along with this one over at information week. Both got me thinking about some things that I hear when out and about talking with IT professionals and their concerns around clouds.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Common themes at the recent modernizing data protection and new realities of cloud and virtualization event series that I was involved with pertained to cloud concerns. Some organizations are already using clouds to some degree while others are taking a cautious approach. Some are all in, while others will take longer for various reasons. Likewise some are using a mix of public, private and hybrid to compliment their environments for collaboration, shared storage, compute, content distribution, backup, archive or BC and DR among other things. These environments range from SOHO or small SMB to ROBO to workgroup to enterprise, education and government of various size.

Often the conversations would evolve around gaining confidence with clouds as well as virtualization. In the case of clouds, given that some of the services as well as products, solutions or technologies are still young, there is still a learning and maturing curve. There are also other factors including the amount of hype and FUD around clouds has some people more skeptical or cautious to move forward. Granted there are also the true cynics which tend to be offset by the cloud crowd cheerleaders thus canceling each other out.

For the non cheerleaders and non cynics, hurdles to cloud adoption (in whole or in part, public, private or hybrid) tend to start with the letter C.

My message has and continues to be that of do not be scared of clouds and virtualization, however be ready, informed and decide what your concerns are. By determining your concerns, you can then work on figuring out what to do about those.

Here is a list of common cloud concerns and comments that I hear:
Cloud cheerleader hype
Cloud critics and cynics FUD
Confidence in cloud products or services
Certainty in cloud data protection or security
Cloud certifications and standards
Compatibility and interoperability
Classes and continuing education
Confidentially, privacy and security
Costs of cloud services or products
Country where cloud data is stored

There are many other items that can be added to the list that start with the letter C, however there are also some that start with P. For example, People, Products, Process, Procedures, Practices, Paradigm, Public or Private and Protocols among others.

Its one thing to be scared of something and not know what or why you are scared. It’s another thing to know or figure out what or why you are scared or concerned and then be able to do something about it. For example learn what standards such as SNIA CDMI among others exist and how those could be of help along with other tools or best practices from others.

Thus don’t be scared of clouds or virtualization, however do your homework, decide your concerns and then find what can be done about those. If you need help, drop me a note.

In the meantime, here is some more material:
Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking
More modernizing data protection, virtualization and clouds with certainty
Cloud conversations: AWS Government Cloud (GovCloud)
Amazon cloud storage options enhanced with Glacier
Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) publishes two new cloud usage models
Data protection modernization, more than swapping out media
Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the NetFlix Fix?
What do VARs and Clouds as well as MSPs have in common?
Only you can prevent cloud data loss
The blame game: Does cloud storage result in data loss?
Cloud conversations: Loss of data access vs. data loss
Clouds are like Electricity: Dont be Scared
Poll: What Do You Think of IT Clouds?

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)

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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

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More modernizing data protection, virtualization and clouds with certainty

This is a follow-up to a recent post about modernizing data protection and doing more than simply swapping out media or mediums like flat tires on a car as well as part of the Quantum protecting data with certainty event series.

As part of a recent 15 city event series sponsored by Quantum (that was a disclosure btw ;) ) titled Virtualization, Cloud and the New Realities for Data Protection that had a theme of strategies and technologies that will help you adapt to a changing IT environment I was asked to present a keynote at the events around Modernizing data protection for cloud, virtual and legacy environments (see earlier and related posts here and here).

Quantum data protection with certainty

Since late June (taking July and most of August off) and wrapping up last week, the event series has traveled to Boston, Chicago, Palo Alto, Houston, New York City, Cleveland, Raleigh, Atlanta, Washington DC, San Diego, Los Angeles, Mohegan Sun CT, St. Louis, Portland Oregon and King of Prussia (Philadelphia area).

The following are a series of posts via IT Knowledge Exchange (ITKE) that covered these events including commentary and perspectives from myself and others.

Data protection in the cloud, summary of the events
Practical solutions for data protection challenges
Big data’s new and old realities
Can you afford to gamble on data protection
Conversations in and around modernizing data protection
Can you afford not to use cloud based data protection

In addition to the themes in the above links, here are some more images, thoughts and perspectives from while being out and about at these and other events.

Datalink does your data center suck sign
While I was traveling saw this advertisement sign from Datalink (who is a Quantum partner that participated in some of the events) in a few different airports which is a variation of the Datadomain tape sucks attention getter. For those not familiar, that creature on the right is an oversized mosquito with the company logos on the lower left being Datalink, NetApp, Cisco and VMware.

goddess of data fertility
When in Atlanta for one of the events at the Morton’s in the Sun trust plaza, the above sculpture was in the lobby. Its real title is the goddess of fertility, however I’m going to refer to it as the goddess of data fertility, after all, there is no such thing as a data or information recession.

The world and storageio runs on dunkin donuts
Traveling while out and about is like a lot of things particular IT and data infrastructure related which is hurry up and wait. Not only does America Run on Dunkin, so to does StorageIO.

Use your imagination
When out and about, sometimes instead of looking up, or around, take a moment and look down and see what is under your feet, then let your imagination go for a moment about what it means. Ok, nuff of that, drink your coffee and let’s get back to things shall we.

Delta 757 and PW2037 or PW2040
Just like virtualization and clouds, airplanes need physical engines to power them which have to be energy-efficient and effective. This means being very reliable, good performance, fuel-efficient (e.g. a 757 on a 1,500 mile trip if full can be in the neighborhood of 65 plus miles per gallon per passenger with a low latency (e.g. fast trip). In this case, a Pratt and Whitney PW2037 (could be a PW2040 as Delta has a few of them) on a Delta 757 is seen powering this flight as it climbs out of LAX on a Friday morning after one of the event series session the evening before in LA.

Ambulance waiting at casino
Not sure what to make out of this image, however it was taken while walking into the Mohegan Sun casino where we did one of the dinner events at the Michael Jordan restaraunt

David Chapa of Quantum in bank vault
Here is an image from one of the events in this series which is a restaurant in Cleveland where the vault is a dinning room. No that is not a banker, well perhaps a data protection banker, it is the one and only (@davidchapa) David Chapa aka the Chief Technology Evangelist (CTE) of Quantum, check out his blog here.

Just before landing in portland
Nice view just before landing in Portland Oregon where that evenings topic was as you might have guessed, data protection modernization, clouds and virtualization. Don’t be scared, be ready, learn and find concerns to overcome them to have certainty with data protection in cloud, virtual and physical environments.
Teamwork
Cloud, virtualization and data protection modernization is a shared responsibility requiring team work and cooperation between service or solution provider and the user or consumer. If the customer or consumer of a service is using the right tools, technologies, best practices and having had done their homework for applicable levels of services with SLAs and SLOs, then a service provider with good capabilities should be in harmony with each other. Of course having the right technologies and tools for the task at hand is also important.
Underground hallway connecting LAX terminals, path to the clouds
Moving your data to the cloud or a virtualized environment should not feel like a walk down a long hallway, that is assuming you have done your homework, that the service is safe and secure, well taken care of, there should be less of concerns. Now if that is a dark, dirty, dingy, dilapidated dungeon like hallway, then you just might be on the highway to hell vs. stairway to heaven or clouds ;).

clouds along california coastline
There continues to be barriers to cloud adoption and deployment for data protection among other users.

Unlike the mountain ranges inland from the LA area coastline causing a barrier for the marine layer clouds rolling further inland, many IT related barriers can be overcome. The key to overcoming cloud concerns and barriers is identifying and understanding what they are so that resolutions, solutions, best practices, tools or work around’s can be developed or put into place.

The world and storageio runs on dunkin donuts
Hmm, breakfast of champions and road warriors, Dunkin Donuts aka DD, not to be confused with DDUP the former ticker symbol of Datadomain.

Tiered coffee
In the spirit of not treating everything the same, have different technology or tools to meet various needs or requirements, it only makes sense that there are various hot beverage options including hot water for tea, regular and decaffeinated coffee. Hmm, tiered hot beverages?


On the lighter side, things including technology of all type will and do break, even with maintenance, so having a standby plan, or support service to call can come in handy. In this case the vehicle on the right did not hit the garage door that came off of its tracks due to wear and tear as I was preparing to leave for one of the data protection events. Note to self, consider going from bi-annual garage door preventive maintenance to annual service check-up.

Some salesman talking on phone in a quiet zone

While not part of or pertaining to data protection, clouds, virtualization, storage or data infrastructure topics, the above photo was taken while in a quiet section of an airport lounge waiting for a flight to one of the events. This falls in the class of a picture is worth a thousand words category as the sign just to the left of the sales person talking loudly on his cell phone about his big successful customer call says Quiet Zone with symbol of no cell phone conversations.

How do I know the guy was not talking about clouds, virtualization, data infrastructure or storage related topics? Simple, his conversation was so loud me and everybody else in the lounge could hear the details of the customer conversation as it was being relayed back to sales management.

Note to those involved in sales or customer related topics, be careful of your conversations in public and pseudo public places including airports, airport lounges, airplanes, trains, planes, hotel lobbies and other places, you never know who you will be broadcasting to.

Here is a link to a summary of the events along with common questions, thoughts and perspectives.

Quantum data protection with certainty

Thanks to everyone who participated in the events including attendees, as well as Quantum and their partners for sponsoring this event series, look forward to see you while out and about at some future event or venue.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers Gs

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

twitter @storageio

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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Cloud conversations: AWS Government Cloud (GovCloud)

StorageIO industry trends clouds, virtualization, data and storage networking image

Following earlier cloud conversations posts, cloud computing means many things from products to services, functionality and positioned for different layers of service delivery or capabilities (e.g. SaaS, AaaS, PaaS, IaaS and XaaS).

Consequently it is no surprise when I hear from different people their opinion, belief or perception of what is or is not a cloud, confidence or concerns, or how to use and abuse clouds among other related themes.

A common theme I hear talking with IT professionals on a global basis centers around conversations about confidence in clouds including reliability, security, privacy, compliance and confidentiality for where data is protected and preserved. This includes data being stored in different geography locations ranging from states or regions to countries and continents. What I also often hear are discussion around concerns over data from counties outside of the US being stored in the US or vice versa of information privacy laws.

StorageIO cloud travel image

Cost is also coming up in many conversations, which is interesting in that many first value propositions have been presented around cloud being cheaper. As with many things it depends, some services and usage models can be cheaper on a relative basis, just like some can be more expensive. Think of it this way, for some people a lease of an automobile can cheaper on monthly cash flow vs. buying or making loan payments. On the other hand, a buy or loan payment can have a lower overall cost depending on different factors then a lease.

As with many cloud conversations, cost and return on investment (ROI) will vary, just as how the cloud is used to impact your return on innovation (the new ROI) will also vary.

This brings me to something else I hear during my travels and in other conversations with IT; practitioners (e.g. customers and users as well as industry pundits) is a belief that governments cannot use clouds. Again, it depends on what type of government, the applications, sensitivity of data among others factors.

Some FUD (Fear uncertainty doubt) I hear includes blanket statements such as governments cannot use cloud services or cloud services do not exist for governments. Again it comes down to digging deeper into the conversation such as what type of cloud, applications, government function, security and sensitivity among other factors.

Keep in mind that there are services including those from Amazon Web Services (AWS) such as their Government Cloud (GovCloud) region. Granted, GovCloud is not applicable to all government cloud needs or types of applications or data or security clearances among other concerns.

Needless to say AWS GovCloud is not the only solution out there on a public (government focused), private or hybrid basis, there are probably even some super double secret ultra-private or hybrid fortified government clouds that most in the government including experts are not aware of. However if those do exist, certainly talking about them is also probably off-limits for discussions even by the experts.

Amazon Web Services logo

Speaking of AWS, here is a link to an analysis of their cloud storage for archiving and inactive big data called Glacier, along with analysis of AWS Cloud Storage Gateway. Also, keep in mind that protecting data in the cloud is a shared responsibility meaning there are things both you as the user or consumer as well as the provider need to do.

Btw, what is your take on clouds? Click here to cast your vote and see what others are thinking about clouds.

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 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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Amazon cloud storage options enhanced with Glacier

StorageIO industry trend for storage IO

In case you missed it, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has enhanced their cloud services (Elastic Cloud Compute or EC2) along with storage offerings. These include Relational Database Service (RDS), DynamoDB, Elastic Block Store (EBS), and Simple Storage Service (S3). Enhancements include new functionality along with availability or reliability in the wake of recent events (outages or service disruptions). Earlier this year AWS announced their Cloud Storage Gateway solution that you can read an analysis here. More recently AWS announced provisioned IOPS among other enhancements (see AWS whats new page here).

Amazon Web Services logo

Before announcing Glacier, options for Amazon storage services relied on general purpose S3, or EBS with other Amazon services. S3 has provided users the ability to select different availability zones (e.g. geographical regions where data is stored) along with level of reliability for different price points for their applications or services being offered.

Note that AWS S3 flexibility lends itself to individuals or organizations using it for various purposes. This ranges from storing backup or file sharing data to being used as a target for other cloud services. S3 pricing options vary depending on which availability zones you select as well as if standard or reduced redundancy. As its name implies, reduced redundancy trades lower availability recovery time objective (RTO) in exchange for lower cost per given amount of space capacity.

AWS has now announced a new class or tier of storage service called Glacier, which as its name implies moves very slow and capable of supporting large amounts of data. In other words, targeting inactive or seldom accessed data where emphasis is on ultra-low cost in exchange for a longer RTO. In exchange for an RTO that AWS is stating that it can be measured in hours, your monthly storage cost can be as low as 1 cent per GByte or about 12 cents per year per GByte plus any extra fees (See here).

Here is a note that I received from the Amazon Web Services (AWS) team:

Dear Amazon Web Services Customer,
We are excited to announce the immediate availability of Amazon Glacier – a secure, reliable and extremely low cost storage service designed for data archiving and backup. Amazon Glacier is designed for data that is infrequently accessed, yet still important to keep for future reference. Examples include digital media archives, financial and healthcare records, raw genomic sequence data, long-term database backups, and data that must be retained for regulatory compliance. With Amazon Glacier, customers can reliably and durably store large or small amounts of data for as little as $0.01/GB/month. As with all Amazon Web Services, you pay only for what you use, and there are no up-front expenses or long-term commitments.

Amazon Glacier is:

  • Low cost– Amazon Glacier is an extremely low-cost, pay-as-you-go storage service that can cost as little as $0.01 per gigabyte per month, irrespective of how much data you store.
  • Secure – Amazon Glacier supports secure transfer of your data over Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and automatically stores data encrypted at rest using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256, a secure symmetrix-key encryption standard using 256-bit encryption keys.
  • Durable– Amazon Glacier is designed to give average annual durability of 99.999999999% for each item stored.
  • Flexible -Amazon Glacier scales to meet your growing and often unpredictable storage requirements. There is no limit to the amount of data you can store in the service.
  • Simple– Amazon Glacier allows you to offload the administrative burdens of operating and scaling archival storage to AWS, and makes long term data archiving especially simple. You no longer need to worry about capacity planning, hardware provisioning, data replication, hardware failure detection and repair, or time-consuming hardware migrations.
  • Designed for use with other Amazon Web Services – You can use AWS Import/Export to accelerate moving large amounts of data into Amazon Glacier using portable storage devices for transport. In the coming months, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) plans to introduce an option that will allow you to seamlessly move data between Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier using data lifecycle policies.

Amazon Glacier is currently available in the US-East (N. Virginia), US-West (N. California), US-West (Oregon), EU-West (Ireland), and Asia Pacific (Japan) Regions.

A few clicks in the AWS Management Console are all it takes to setup Amazon Glacier. You can learn more by visiting the Amazon Glacier detail page, reading Jeff Barrs blog post, or joining our September 19th webinar.
Sincerely,
The Amazon Web Services Team

StorageIO industry trend for storage IO

What is AWS Glacier?

Glacier is low-cost for lower performance (e.g. access time) storage suited to data applications including archiving, inactive or idle data that you are not in a hurry to retrieve. Pay as you go pricing that can be as low as $0.01 USD per GByte per month (and other optional fees may apply, see here) depending on availability zone. Availability zone or regions include US West coast (Oregon or Northern California), US East Coast (Northern Virginia), Europe (Ireland) and Asia (Tokyo).

Amazon Web Services logo

Now what is understood should have to be discussed, however just to be safe, pity the fool who complains about signing up for AWS Glacier due to its penny per month per GByte cost and it being too slow for their iTunes or videos as you know its going to happen. Likewise, you know that some creative vendor or their surrogate is going to try to show a miss-match of AWS Glacier vs. their faster service that caters to a different usage model; it is just a matter of time.

StorageIO industry trend for storage IO

Lets be clear, Glacier is designed for low-cost, high-capacity, slow access of infrequently accessed data such as an archive or other items. This means that you will be more than disappointed if you try to stream a video, or access a document or photo from Glacier as you would from S3 or EBS or any other cloud service. The reason being is that Glacier is designed with the premise of low-cost, high-capacity, high availability at the cost of slow access time or performance. How slow? AWS states that you may have to wait several hours to reach your data when needed, however that is the tradeoff. If you need faster access, pay more or find a different class and tier of storage service to meet that need, perhaps for those with the real need for speed, AWS SSD capabilities ;).

Here is a link to a good post over at Planforcloud.com comparing Glacier vs. S3, which is like comparing apples and oranges; however, it helps to put things into context.

Amazon Web Services logo

In terms of functionality, Glacier security includes secure socket layer (SSL), advanced encryption standard (AES) 256 (256-bit encryption keys) data at rest encryption along with AWS identify and access management (IAM) policies.

Persistent storage designed for 99.999999999% durability with data automatically placed in different facilities on multiple devices for redundancy when data is ingested or uploaded. Self-healing is accomplished with automatic background data integrity checks and repair.

Scale and flexibility are bound by the size of your budget or credit card spending limit along with what availability zones and other options you choose. Integration with other AWS services including Import/Export where you can ship large amounts of data to Amazon using different media and mediums. Note that AWS has also made a statement of direction (SOD) that S3 will be enhanced to seamless move data in and out of Glacier using data policies.

Part of stretching budgets for organizations of all size is to avoid treating all data and applications the same (key theme of data protection modernization). This means classifying and addressing how and where different applications and data are placed on various types of servers, storage along with revisiting modernizing data protection.

While the low-cost of Amazon Glacier is an attention getter, I am looking for more than just the lowest cost, which means I am also looking for reliability, security among other things to gain and keep confidence in my cloud storage services providers. As an example, a few years ago I switched from one cloud backup provider to another not based on cost, rather functionality and ability to leverage the service more extensively. In fact, I could switch back to the other provider and save money on the monthly bills; however I would end up paying more in lost time, productivity and other costs.

StorageIO industry trend for storage IO

What do I see as the barrier to AWS Glacier adoption?

Simple, getting vendors and other service providers to enhance their products or services to leverage the new AWS Glacier storage category. This means backup/restore, BC and DR vendors ranging from Amazon (e.g. releasing S3 to Glacier automated policy based migration), Commvault, Dell (via their acquisitions of Appassure and Quest), EMC (Avamar, Networker and other tools), HP, IBM/Tivoli, Jungledisk/Rackspace, NetApp, Symantec and others, not to mention cloud gateway providers will need to add support for this new capabilities, along with those from other providers.

As an Amazon EC2 and S3 customer, it is great to see Amazon continue to expand their cloud compute, storage, networking and application service offerings. I look forward to actually trying out Amazon Glacier for storing encrypted archive or inactive data to compliment what I am doing. Since I am not using the Amazon Cloud Storage Gateway, I am looking into how I can use Rackspace Jungledisk to manage an Amazon Glacier repository similar to how it manages my S3 stores.

Some more related reading:
Only you can prevent cloud data loss
Data protection modernization, more than swapping out media
Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the NetFlix Fix?
AWS (Amazon) storage gateway, first, second and third impressions

As of now, it looks like I will have to wait for either Jungledisk adds native support as they do today for managing my S3 storage pool today, or, the automated policy based movement between S3 and Glacier is transparently enabled.

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)

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Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) publishes two new cloud usage models

The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) has announced and published more documents for data center customers of cloud usage. These new cloud usage models for to address customer demands for interoperability of various clouds and services before for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) among other topics which are now joined by the new Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and foundational document for cloud interoperability.

Unlike most industry trade groups or alliances that are vendor driven or centric, ODCA is consortium of global IT leaders (e.g. customers) that is vendor independent and comprises as 12 member steering committee from member companies (e.g. customers), learn more about ODCA here.

Disclosure note, StorageIO is an ODCA member, visit here to become an ODCA member.

From the ODCA announcement of the new documents:

The documents detail expectations for market delivery to the organizations mission of open, industry standard cloud solution adoption, and discussions have already begun with providers to help accelerate delivery of solutions based on these new requirements. This suite of requirements was joined by a Best Practices document from National Australia Bank (NAB) outlining carbon footprint reductions in cloud computing. NAB’s paper illustrates their leadership in innovative methods to report carbon emissions in the cloud and aligns their best practices to underlying Alliance requirements. All of these documents are available in the ODCA Documents Library.

The PaaS interoperability usage model outlines requirements for rapid application deployment, application scalability, application migration and business continuity. The SaaS interoperability usage model makes applications available on demand, and encourages consistent mechanisms, enabling cloud subscribers to efficiently consume SaaS via standard interactions. In concert with these usage models, the Alliance published the ODCA Guide to Interoperability, which describes proposed requirements for interoperability, portability and interconnectivity. The documents are designed to ensure that companies are able to move workloads across clouds.

It is great to see IT customer driven or centric groups step and actually deliver content and material to help their peers, or in some cases competitors that compliments information provided by vendors and vendor driven trade groups.

As with technologies, tools and services that often are seen as competitive, a mistake would be viewing ODCA as or in competition with other industry trade groups and organizations or vise versa. Rather, IT organizations and vendors can and should leverage the different content from the various sources. This is an opportunity for example vendors to learn more about what the customers are thinking or concerned about as opposed to telling IT organizations what to be looking at and vise versa.

Granted some marketing organizations or even trade groups may not like that and view groups such as ODCA as giving away control of who decides what is best for them. Smart vendors, vars, business partners, consultants and advisors are and will leverage material and resources such as ODCA, and likewise, groups like ODCA are open to including a diverse membership unlike some pay to play industry vendor centric trade groups. If you are a vendor, var or business partner, don’t look at ODCA as a threat, instead, explore how your customers or prospects may be involved with, or using ODCA material and leverage that as a differentiator between you and your competitor.

Likewise don’t be scared of vendor centric industry trade groups, alliances or consortiums, even the pay to play ones can have some value, although some have more value than others. For example from a storage and storage networking perspective, there are the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) along with their various groups focused on Green and Energy along with Cloud Data Management Initiative (CDMI) related topics among others. There is also the SCSI Trade Association (STA) along with the Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA) not to mention the Open Fabric Alliance (OVA), Open Networking Foundation (ONF) and Computer Measurement Group (CMG) among many others that do good work and offer value with diverse content and offerings, some of which are free including to non members.

Learn more about the ODCA here, along with access various documents including usage models in the ODCA document library here.

While you are at, why not join StorageIO and other members by signing up to become a part of the ODCA here.

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)

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Over 1,000 entries now on the StorageIO industry links page

Industry trends and perspective data protection modernization

Is your company, organization or one that you are a fan of, or represent listed on the StorageIO industry links page (click here to learn more about it).

The StorageIO industry links page has been updated with over thousand different industry related companies, vendors, vars, trade groups, part and solution suppliers along with cloud and managed service providers. The common theme with these industry links is information and data infrastructures which means severs, storage, IO and networking, hardware, software, applications and tools, services, products and related items for traditional, virtual and cloud environments.

StorageIO server storage IO networking cloud and virtualization links

The industry links page is accessed from the StorageIO main web page via the Tools and Links menu tab, or via the URL https://storageio.com/links. An example of the StorageIO industry links page is shown below with six different menu tabs in alphabetical order.

StorageIO server storage IO networking cloud and virtualization links

Know of a company, service or organization that is not listed on the links page, if so, send an email note to info at storageio.com. If your company or organization is listed, contact StorageIO to discuss how to expand your presence on the links page and other related options.

Visit the updated StorageIO industry links page and watch for more updates, and click here to learn more about the links page.

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)

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What does new EMC and Lenovo partnership mean?

EMC and EMCworld

The past several weeks have been busy with various merger, acquisitions and collaborating activity in the IT and data storage world. Summer time often brings new relationships and even summer marriages. The most recent is EMC and Lenovo announcing a new partnership that includes OEM sourcing of technology, market expansion and other initiatives. Hmm, does anybody remember who EMCs former desktop and server partner was, or who put Lenovo out for adoption several years ago?

Here is the press release from EMC and Lenovo that you can read yourself vs. me simply paraphrasing it:

Lenovo and EMC Team Up In Strategic Worldwide Partnership
A Solid Step in Lenovo’s Aspiration to Be a Player in Industry Standard Servers and Networked Storage with EMC’s Leading Technology; EMC Further Strengthens Ability to Serve Customers’ Storage Solutions Needs in China and Other Emerging Markets; Companies Agree to Form SMB-Focused Storage Joint Venture
BEIJING, China – August 1, 2012
Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) and EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) today announced a broad partnership that enhances Lenovo’s position in industry standard servers and networked storage solutions, while significantly expanding EMC’s reach in China and other key, high-growth markets. The new partnership is expected to spark innovation and additional R&D in the server and storage markets by maximizing the product development talents and resources at both companies, while driving scale and efficiency in the partners’ respective supply chains.
The partnership is a strong strategic fit, leveraging the two leading companies’ respective strengths, across three main areas:

  • First, Lenovo and EMC have formed a server technology development program that will accelerate and extend Lenovo’s capabilities in the x86 industry-standard server segment. These servers will be brought to market by Lenovo and embedded into selected EMC storage systems over time.
  • Second, the companies have forged an OEM and reseller relationship in which Lenovo will provide EMC’s industry-leading networked storage solutions to its customers, initially in China and expanding into other global markets in step with the ongoing development of its server business.
  • Finally, EMC and Lenovo plan to bring certain assets and resources from EMC’s Iomega business into a new joint venture which will provide Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems to small/medium businesses (SMB) and distributed enterprise sites.

“Today’s announcement with industry leader EMC is another solid step in our journey to build on our foundation in PCs and become a leader in the new PC-plus era,” said Yuanqing Yang, Lenovo chairman and CEO. “This partnership will help us fully deliver on our PC-plus strategy by giving us strong back-end capabilities and business foundation in servers and storage, in addition to our already strong position in devices. EMC is the perfect partner to help us fully realize the PC-plus opportunity in the long term.”
Joe Tucci, chairman and CEO of EMC, said, “The relationship with Lenovo represents a powerful opportunity for EMC to significantly expand our presence in China, a vibrant and very important market, and extend it to other parts of the world over time. Lenovo has clearly demonstrated its ability to apply its considerable resources and expertise not only to enter, but to lead major market segments. We’re excited to partner with Lenovo as we focus our combined energies serving a broader range of customers with industry-leading storage and server solutions.”
In the joint venture, Lenovo will contribute cash, while EMC will contribute certain assets and resources of Iomega. Upon closing, Lenovo will hold a majority interest in the new joint venture. During and after the transition from independent operations to the joint venture, customers will experience continuity of service, product delivery and warranty fulfillment. The joint venture is subject to customary closing procedures including regulatory approvals and is expected to close by the end of 2012.
The partnership described here is not considered material to either company’s current fiscal year earnings.
About Lenovo
Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is a $US30 billion personal technology company and the world’s second largest PC company, serving customers in more than 160 countries. Dedicated to building exceptionally engineered PCs and mobile internet devices, Lenovo’s business is built on product innovation, a highly efficient global supply chain and strong strategic execution. Formed by Lenovo Group’s acquisition of the former IBM Personal Computing Division, the Company develops, manufactures and markets reliable, high-quality, secure and easy-to-use technology products and services. Its product lines include legendary Think-branded commercial PCs and Idea-branded consumer PCs, as well as servers, workstations, and a family of mobile internet devices, including tablets and smart phones. Lenovo has major research centers in Yamato, Japan; Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, China; and Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information, see www.lenovo.com.
About EMC
EMC Corporation is a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. Fundamental to this transformation is cloud computing. Through innovative products and services, EMC accelerates the journey to cloud computing, helping IT departments to store, manage, protect and analyze their most valuable asset — information — in a more agile, trusted and cost-efficient way. Additional information about EMC can be found at www.EMC.com.

StorageIO industry trends and perspectives

What is my take?

Disclosures
I have been buying and using Lenovo desktop and laptop products for over a decade and currently typing this post from my X1 ThinkPad equipped with a Samsung SSD. Likewise I bought an Iomega IX4 NAS a couple of years ago (so I am a customer), am a Retrospect customer (EMC bought and then sold them off), used to be a Mozy user (now a former customer) and EMC has been a client of StorageIO in the past.

Lenovo Thinkpad
Some of my Lenovo(s) and EMC Iomega IX4

Let us take a step back for a moment, Lenovo was the spinout and sale from IBM who has a US base in Raleigh North Carolina. While IBM still partners with Lenovo for desktops, IBM over the past years or decade(s) has been more strategically focused on big enterprise environments, software and services. Note that IBM has continued enhancing its own Intel based servers (e.g. xSeries), propriety Power processor series, storage and technology solutions (here, here, here and here among others). However, for the most part, IBM has moved away from catering to the Consumer, SOHO and SMB server, storage, desktop and related technology environments.

EMC on the other hand started out in the data center growing up to challenge IBMs dominance of data storage in big environments to now being the industry maker storage player for big and little data, from enterprise to cloud to desktop to server, consumer to data center. EMC also was partnered with Dell who competes directly with Lenovo until that relationship ended a few years ago. EMC for its part has been on a growth and expansion strategy adding technologies, companies, DNA and ability along with staff in the desktop, server and other spaces from a data, information and storage perspective not to mention VMware (virtualization and cloud), RSA (security) among others such as Mozy for cloud backup. EMC is also using more servers in its solutions ranging from Iomega based NAS to VNX unified storage systems, Greenplum big data to Centera archiving, ATMOS and various data protection solutions among other products.

StorageIO industry trends and perspectives

Note that this is an industry wide trend of leveraging Intel Architecture (IA) along with AMD, Broadcom, and IBM Power among other general-purpose processors and servers as platforms for running storage and data applications or appliances.

Overall, I think that this is a good move for both EMC and Lenovo to expand their reach into different adjacent markets leveraging and complimenting each other strengths.

Ok, lets see who is involved in the next IT summer relationship, 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)

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Data protection modernization, more than swapping out media

backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving

Have you modernized your data protection strategy and environment?

If not, are you thinking about updating your strategy and environment?

Why modernize your data protection including backup restore, business continuance (BC), high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) strategy and environment?

backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving

Is it to leverage new technology such as disk to disk (D2D) backups, cloud, virtualization, data footprint reduction (DFR) including compression or dedupe?

Perhaps you have or are considering data protection modernization because somebody told you to or you read about it or watched a video or web cast? Or, perhaps your backup and restore are broke so its time to change media or try something different.

Lets take a step back for a moment and ask the question of what is your view of data protection modernization?

Perhaps it is modernizing backup by replacing tape with disk, or disk with clouds?

Maybe it is leveraging data footprint reduction (DFR) techniques including compression and dedupe?

Data protection, data footprint reduction, dfr, dedupe, compress

How about instead of swapping out media, changing backup software?

Or what about virtualizing servers moving from physical machines to virtual machines?

On the other hand maybe your view of modernizing data protection is around using a different product ranging from backup software to a data protection appliance, or snapshots and replication.

The above and others certainly fall under the broad group of backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving, however there is another area which is not as much technology as it is techniques, best practices, processes and procedure based. That is, revisit why data and applications are being protected against what applicable threat risks and associated business risks.

backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving

This means reviewing service needs and wants including backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving that in turn drive what data and applications to protect, how often, how many copies and where those are located, along with how long they will be retained.

backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving

Modernizing data protection is more than simply swapping out old or broken media like flat tires on a vehicle.

To be effective, data protection modernization involves taking a step back from the technology, tools and buzzword bingo topics to review what is being protected and why. It also means revisiting service level expectations and clarify wants vs. needs which translates to what if for free that is what is wanted, however for a cost then what is required.

backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving

Certainly technologies and tools play a role, however simply using new tools and techniques without revisiting data protection challenges at the source will result in new problems that resemble old problems.

backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving

Hence to support growth with a constrained or shrinking budget while maintaining or enhancing service levels, the trick is to remove complexity and costs.

backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving

This means not treating all data and applications the same, stretch your available resources to be more effective without compromise on service is mantra of modernizing data protection.

Ok, nuff said for now, plenty more to discuss later.

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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Modernizing data protection with certainty

Speaking of and about modernizing data protection, back in June I was invited to be a keynote presenter on industry trends and perspectives at a series of five dinner events (Boston, Chicago, Palo Alto, Houston and New York City) sponsored by Quantum (that is a disclosure btw).

backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving

The theme of the dinner events was an engaging discussion around modernizing data protection with certainty along with clouds, virtualization and related topics. Quantum and one of their business partner resellers started the event with introductions followed by an interactive discussion by myself, followed by David Chappa (@davidchapa ) who ties the various themes with what Quantum is doing along with some of their customer success stories.

Themes and examples for these events build on my book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking including:

  • Rethinking how, when, where and why data is being protected
  • Big data, little data and big backup issues and techniques
  • Archive, backup modernization, compression, dedupe and storage tiering
  • Service level agreements (SLA) and service level objectives (SLO)
  • Recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO)
  • Service alignment and balancing needs vs. wants, cost vs. risk
  • Protecting virtual, cloud and physical environments
  • Stretching your available budget to do more without compromise
  • People, processes, products and procedures

Quantum is among other industry leaders with multiple technology and solution offerings for addressing different aspects of data footprint reduction and data protection modernization. These include for physical, virtual and cloud environments along with traditional tape, disk based, compression, dedupe, archive, big data, hardware, software and management tools. A diverse group of attendees have been at the different events including enterprise and SMB, public, private and government across different sectors.

Following are links to some blog posts that covered first series of events along with some of the specific themes and discussion points from different cities:

Via ITKE: The New Realities of Data Protection
Via ITKE: Looking For Certainty In The Cloud
Via ITKE: Success Stories in Data Protection: Cloud virtualization
Via ITKE: Practical Solutions for Data Protection Challenges
Via David Chappas blog

If you missed attending any of the above events, more dates are being added in August and September including stops in Cleveland, Raleigh, Atlanta, Washington DC, San Diego, Connecticut and Philadelphia with more details here.

Ok, nuff said for now, hope to see you at one of the upcoming events.

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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SSD and Green IT moving beyond green washing

SSD and Green IT moving beyond green washing

Keeping in mind that there is no such thing as a data or information recession, not to mention that people and data are living longer, there is the need to discuss expanding data footprints. When researching his new article over on SearchSolidstateStorage.com John Hilliard reached out to ask about SSD, Green IT, energy efficiency and effectiveness trends and perspectives (you can read the article and my comments here).

In the past when Green IT and Green storage was mentioned, discussions focused around energy avoidance along with space capacity reduction. While storage efficiency and optimization in the context of space-saving and capacity consolidation are part of Green storage, so too are storage IO consolidation with SSD. For inactive or less frequently accessed data, storage optimization and efficiency can focus on using various data footprint reduction techniques including archive, backup and data protection modernization, compression, dedupe, data management and deletion, along with storage tiering and thin provisioning among others.

SSD and IO consolidation for Green IT and productivity

On the other hand, for active data where performance is important, the focus expands to how to be more effective and boosting productivity with IO consolidation using SSD and other technologies.

Note that if your data center infrastructure is not efficient, then it is possible that for every watt of energy consumed, a watt (or more) of energy is needed to cool. However if your data center cooling is effective with a resulting low or good PUE, you may not be seeing a 1:1 watt or energy used for storage to cooling ratio as was more common a few years ago.

IMHO while reducing carbon footprints is a noble and good thing, however if that is your own focus or value proposition for a solution such as SSD or other Green technologies and techniques including data footprint reduction, you are missing many opportunities.

Have a read of John’s article that includes some of my comments on energy efficiency and effectiveness to support enhanced productivity, or the other aspect of Green IT being economic enabling to avoid missed opportunities.

Where to learn more

Various IT industry vendor and service provider links
Green and Virtual Data Center Primer
Green and Virtual Data Center links
Green IT Confusion Continues, Opportunities Missed!
Green IT deferral blamed on economic recession might be result of green gap
Supporting IT growth demand during economic uncertain times
Industry trend: People plus data are aging and living longer
Are large storage arrays dead at the hands of SSD?
EPA Energy Star for data center storage draft 3 specification
How much SSD do you need vs. want?
More storage and IO metrics that matter
What is the best kind of IO? The one you do not have to do

Speaking of speeding up business with SSD storage

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)

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Give HP storage some love and short strokin

Server and StorageIO industry trends and perspective DAS

Following up from my last post over at InfoStor about metrics that matter, here is a link to a new piece that I did on storage vendors benchmarking and related topics. This new post looked at an storage performance council (SPC1) benchmark that HP did with their P10000 (e.g. 3PAR) storage system under assertions by some in the industry that they were short stroking to meet better performance.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

I’m surprised some creative technical marketer, blogger or prankster has yet to rework Clarence Carters (e.g. Dr. CC) iconic song into something about storage performance and capacity short strokin.


Ok, nuff said before I get a visit from the HP truth squads, in the meantime, give HP a hug and some love if so inclined.

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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