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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Server Storage I/O Network Virtualization Whats Next?

Server Storage I/O Network Virtualization Whats Next?
Server Storage I/O Network Virtualization Whats Next?
Updated 9/28/18

There are many faces and thus functionalities of virtualization beyond the one most commonly discussed which is consolidation or aggregation. Other common forms of virtualization include emulation (which is part of enabling consolidation) which can be in the form of a virtual tape library for storage to bridge new disk technology to old software technology, processes, procedures and skill sets. Other forms of virtualization functionality for life beyond consolidation include abstraction for transparent movement of applications or operating systems on servers, or data on storage to support planned and un-planned maintenance, upgrades, BC/DR and other activities.

So the gist is that there are many forms of virtualization technologies and techniques for servers, storage and even I/O networks to address different issues including life beyond consolidation. However the next wave of consolidation could and should be that of reducing the number of logical images, or, the impact of the multiple operating systems and application images, along with their associated management costs.

This may be easier said than done, however, for those looking to cut costs even further than from what can be realized by reducing physical footprints (e.g. going from 10 to 1 or from 250 to 25 physical servers), there could be upside however it will come at a cost. The cost is like that of reducing data and storage footprint impacts with such as data management and archiving.

Savings can be realized by archiving and deleting data via data management however that is easier said than done given the cost in terms of people time and ability to decide what to archive, even for non-compliance data along with associated business rules and policies to be defined (for automation) along with hardware, software and services (managed services, consulting and/or cloud and SaaS).

Where To Learn More

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

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert 2010-2018. Author of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press), as well as Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com any reproduction in whole, in part, with changes to content, without source attribution under title or without permission is forbidden.

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved. StorageIO is a registered Trade Mark (TM) of Server StorageIO.

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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)

    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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    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

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    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

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    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

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    Presentation Downloads from Storage Decisions New York 2008

    TechTarget has posted presentations for download from the recent fall 2008 Storage Descisions in New York City. In the Executive and Management Track (Track 5) you can find my presentation ?Green and Environmental Friendly Storage: Practical Ways to Achieve Energy?.

    In the Storage and Capacity Management Track (Track 3) you can find my presentation ?Clustered Storage — From SMB, to Scientific, to Social Networking and Web 2.0?.

    Cheers
    Gs

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    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

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    Green, Virtual, Servers, Storage and Networking 2008 Beijing Olympics

    Storage I/O trends

    How about those opening 2008 Beijing Olympic ceremonies on NBC last night?

    If you were like me, I had my DVR capture the event while out enjoying the nice August evening with some friends doing some relaxing and fishing (we did catch and release fish!) on the scenic St. Croix river.

    John Nelson with a small mouth bass caught and released on the St. Croix River During 2008 Beijing Olympics
    Fishing while DVR records 2008 Olympics

    John Nelson with a northern pike (swamp shark) caught and released on the St. Croix River During 2008 Beijing Olympics
    Fishing while DVR records 2008 Olympics

    A young bald eagle seen during fishing on the St. Croix river during opening of 2008 Olympic games
    A young bald eagle seen during fishing while DVR records 2008 Olympics

    The reason I bring up the Olympics, servers, storage, networking, virtualization and green topics are a couple of themes. One being all the news and content available to keep track of what is happening with the games taking place all of which is being stored on servers, storage and relying on networks to access the rich media and unstructured data via the web or traditional media. The 2008 summer games are also being described as the on-line and virtual olympics. The amount of storage being used to store digital data from the 2008 Olympics for later playback, which then gets recorded on DVRs if not watched in real-time is staggering as are the number of servers and networking capabilities being used. In addition to the video, audio, still photos, text and blogs, then there are the security cameras in Beijing generating massive amounts of digital data.

    For those who track or keep an eye or ear open towards data and storage management, the amount of data that continues to grow and number of copies that get created should be a familiar theme. Of course, you would then have heard that the magic elixir is to simply de-dupe everything. That is reduce your data footprint by eliminating all of those extra copies however easier said then done, especially when a copy of the games is being transmitted and saved to millions of DVRs or other forms of data storage servers around the world.

    For the time being, I prefer that my DVR support more usable storage capacity and real-time compression so that I can keep more copies of my favorite shows and of course the Olympics all in HDTV, which of course chews up storage space faster than a highly animated PowerPoint slide deck from your favorite vendors most recent, or, upcoming product announcements.

    The other theme is in addition to being Olympic time, as well as late summer here in the northern hemisphere or winter for our friends in the summer hemisphere, its also pre-briefing and early product announcement time for the barrage of fall server, storage, networking, I/O, software, virtualization and green related solutions. So far, Im not sure if its the Olympics or what, however the bait line on the upcoming announcements and briefings include the tags “Industry First”, “Industry Unique”, “Only Vendor”, “Only Product”, “Revolutionary”, “First Vendor” or “First Product”, “Fastest”, “Largest”, “Greenest” among other interesting spins and twists that would even make an Olympic gymnast dizzy.

    So enjoy the Olympic , keep those hard disk drives in your DVR cool while managing the usable capacity and watch for more gold medal attempts both from Beijing, as well as from your favorite IT vendors coming to a podium to you soon with their upcoming announcements, some of which may be award winning. Also check out www.greendatastorage.com which is now also pointed to by www.thegreenandvirtualdatacenter.com that has a new look and feel as well as some updated content with more on the way.

    Cheers
    gs

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

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    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

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

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    Missing Dedupe Debate Detail!

    Storage I/O trends

    The de-dupe vendors like to debate details of their solutions, ranging from compression or de-dupe ratios, to hashing and caching algorithms, to processor vs. disk vs. memory, to in-band vs. out-of-band, pre or post processing among other items. At times the dedupe debates can get more lively than a political debate or even the legendary storage virtualization debates of yester year.

    However one item that an IT professional recently mentioned that is not being addressed or talked about during the de-dupe debates is how IT customers will get around vendor lock-in. Never mind the usual lock-in debates of whose back-end storage or disk drives, whose server a de-dupe appliance software runs and so forth.

    The real concern is how data in the future will be recoverable from a de-dupe solution similar to how data can be recovered from tape today. Granted this is an apple to oranges comparison at best. The only real similarity is that a backup or archive solution sends a data stream in a tar-ball or backup or archive save set or perhaps in a file format to the tape or de-dupe appliance. Then, the VTL or de-dupe appliance software puts the data into yet another format.

    Granted not all tape media can be interchanged between different tape drives given format, generations and of course using the proper backup or archive application to un-pack the data for use. Probably a more applicable apple to oranges comparison would be how will IT personal get data back from a VTL (non de-duping) disk based storage system compared to getting data back from a VTL or de-dupe appliance.

    Today and for the foreseeable future the answer is simple, if your pain point is severe and you need the benefits of de-dupe, then the de-dupe software and appliance is your point of vendor lock-in. If vendor lock-in is a main concern, take your time, do your homework and due diligence for solutions that reduce lock-in or at least give a reasonable strategy for data access in the future.

    Welcome to the world of virtualized data and virtualized data protection. Here?s the golden rule for de-dupe and that is like virtualization, who ever controls the software and management meta data controls the vendor lock-in, good, bad or in-different, that?s the harsh reality.

    For the record, I like de-dupe technology in general as part of an overall data footprint reduction strategy combined with archiving and real-time compression for on-line and off-line data. I see a very bright future for it moving forward. I also see many of the heavy thinking and heavy lifting issues to support large-scale deployments and processing getting addressed over time allowing de-dupe to move from mid markets to large-scale mainstream adoption.

    Now, back to your regularly scheduled de-dupe debate drama!

    Cheers
    gs

    Posted on

    Do Disk based VTLs draw less power than Tape?

    The tape is dead debates rage on as they have for a decades which make for good press and discussion or debate during slow times, similar to coverage of what Britney Spears or Paris Hilton are or are not wearing.

    In the on-going debates and Greenwashing of what technology or vendor is greener to prevent global warming, some recent tape is dead flare-ups have occurred including one hinting that tape libraries can draw more power than a disk based VTL with de-dupe are discussed over on Tony Pearson of IBM fame blog site as well as Beth Pariseau of TechTarget StorageSoup site.

    I posted some comments on those sites along along with a link to a StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective report titled “Energy Savings without Performance Compromise” as an example (look for an updated version of the comparison charts in the report in the not so distant future). The report looks at how different storage tiers including on-line disk, MAID, MAID 2.0 and tape libraries vary to address different PCFE (power, cooling, floor-space, environment) issues while supporting various service levels including performance, availability, capacity and energy use.

    Additional related material can be found at www.storageio.com and www.greendatastorage.com including the Industry Trends and Perspective Report Business “Benefits of Data Footprint Reduction in general covering archiving, compression (on-line and off-line) along with de-duplication

    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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