IT Infrastructure Topics Archives

June 12, 2009March 7, 2022

Catch of the day or post of the day!

Ok, I know, its been a couple of weeks since my last post. Sure I have been tweeting now and then, attending several briefings with new emerging as well as existing vendors for up-coming announcements, not to mention getting some other content out from webcasts, to podcasts, or videos, interviews, articles, tips and presentations at various events, pertaining to Green IT, virtualization, cloud storage and computing, backup, data protection, performance, capacity planning among other topics.

Anyway, for now a quick post as I have many others that I have been wanting to do and will be doing soon, however wanted to get a few things out sooner vs. later, and after all, all work and no play makes for a dull day right?

Well, last week after spending a couple of days in Chicago at Storage Decisions where I presented a couple of sessions and recorded several videos, I had a chance to get out and do some fishing and catching. Fishing is always great, however catching (and release) is even more fun, especially when you can catch some, toss some, and keep some for dinner which is what occurred last week when my friend Rob and me ventured out for a couple of hours and found where the fish were (see picture) on the St. Croix river.

Catch of the Day

Rob on left (Bruins warm up jacket for Bass fishing), Greg on the right (Mustang PFD Jacket)

Catch of the day line-up
From right to left, bottle bass (caught at the dock ;) ), stripped bass, northern pike (swamp shark), more stripped bass, and another bottle bass (also caught at the dock).

Ok, nuff fish talk for now, back to work, get a few things done, and then maybe this weekend, get another blog post done, maybe some fishing, and enjoying the summer weather before heading off to Toronto on Monday for Storage Decisions on Tuesday, then a couple of webcasts and web radio events on Wednesday among other activities.

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

May 8, 2009May 24, 2020

Determining Computer or Server Energy Use

Recently I posted a response to a question over at IT Knowledge Exchange (e.g. ITKE) about how to determine power or energy use.

In a nutshell:

Depending on what you are looking for, or trying to accomplish, you may, or may not need a formula per say.

For example, if all you need to know is how many volts, amps, watts, kva, or btu’s are used by a particular computer or other IT device for that matter, first things first check the “tag” or “label” on the device as well as included documentation, or, on-line spec sheets and documentation.

There are also some measuring devices including among others Kill A Watt that you can plug a device into and see volts, amps, watts, and so forth.

Ok, that might have been the obvious and easy part, now on to the next step.

Often a name plate may give kva however not watts, or perhaps amps and volts however not kva or some other metric. This is where the various conversion formulas come into play.

For example, if you know volts and amps, you can get watts, if you know kva along with watts, amps or volts, you can derive the others, or, if you have btus, you can watts, or if you know watts you can get btus and so forth.

Btu/Hour = watts * 3.413
Watts = Btu/Hour * 0.293
Watts = Amps * Volts
Volts = Watts / Amps
Amps = Watts / Volts
VoltAmps (Va) = Volts * amps
KVA = (Volts * Amps) / 1000

Here’s a link to some additional conversions and formulas that along with many others are found in my new book “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC).

www.thegreenandvirtualdatacenter.com/greenmetrics.html

In “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC). book, there is an entire chapter on metrics, where and how to find them, formulas, conversions as well as other related items including determining energy costs, carbon footprints, cooling and more across servers, storage, networks, facilities along with associated management tools.

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

April 26, 2009January 23, 2019

U.S. EPA Energy Star for Server Update

Following up on previous blog posts, here’s the latest on the U.S. EPA Energy Star for Servers program (in italics below) that was received this week:

Dear Server Manufacturer or Other Industry Stakeholder,

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) welcomes your input on the attached Final Draft ENERGY STAR® Version 1.0 Computer Server specification. Also attached is the latest version of the Power and Performance Data Sheet, referenced in Section 3.C of the specification. Please note that this is the final opportunity to comment on EPA’s proposal prior to finalization.

Interested parties are encouraged to submit comments on the Final Draft specification and Power and Performance Data Sheet to Rebecca Duff, ICF International, at rduff@icfi.com no later than May 8, 2009.

The data set used to derive newly proposed I/O Idle allowances will be available for download from the ENERGY STAR Enterprise Server specification development Web page at www.energystar.gov/NewSpecs within the next several days.

Stakeholders with questions or concerns can contact Andrew Fanara, EPA, at (206) 553-6377 or fanara.andrew@epa.gov.

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

April 26, 2009January 23, 2019

U.S. EPA Looking for Industry Input on Energy Star for Storage

Following up on previous blog posts, here is some information that the U.S. EPA is looking for comments from industry on an Energy Start for enterprise storage program following on the heels of the Energy Star for Server program.

U.S. EPA Energy Star Wants and Needs You!

Here’s the message received from the EPA via their mailing list this past week (in italics below):

Dear Enterprise Storage Equipment Manufacturers and Other Interested Parties:

Please see the attached letter from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announcing their intent to pursue development of an ENERGY STAR specification for Enterprise Storage equipment. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Andrew Fanara, EPA, at fanara.andrew@epa.gov or Stephen Pantano, ICF International, at spantano@icfi.com.

Thank you for your support of ENERGY STAR.

Here’s the intro letter excerpted from the above email notification (in italics below):

April 23, 2009

Dear Enterprise Storage Equipment Manufacturers and Other Interested Parties:

This letter is intended to inform all stakeholders that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) intends to continue its efforts towards the development of an ENERGY STAR® specification for enterprise data storage equipment. Following is an outline of EPA’s general goals and next steps.

ENERGY STAR is a voluntary partnership between government, businesses, and purchasers designed to encourage the manufacture, purchase, and use of efficient products to help protect the environment. Products that earn the ENERGY STAR prevent greenhouse gas emissions by meeting strict energy efficiency guidelines. Manufacturers that qualify their products to meet ENERGY STAR requirements may use the label as a tool to educate their customers about the enhanced value of these products.

To date:
•More than 2,000 manufacturers are partnering with ENERGY STAR,
•More than 40,000 product models carry the ENERGY STAR label across more than 50 product categories,
•More than 70% of Americans recognize the ENERGY STAR label,
•Consumers have purchased more than 2.5 billion ENERGY STAR qualified products, and
•Americans, with the help of ENERGY STAR, saved enough energy in 2008 to avoid greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those from 29 million cars — while saving $19 billion on utility bills.

In the last several years, the energy saving opportunities in data centers have been well documented. However, barriers to energy efficiency still persist and need to be addressed. EPA is pursuing a dual strategy to overcome these challenges by helping purchasers more easily identify energy efficient IT equipment with the use of the ENERGY STAR designation, and by encouraging organizations to benchmark the energy performance of their data centers.

In pursuit of this strategy, EPA will introduce an ENERGY STAR Computer Server specification in the coming weeks. In addition, EPA recently conducted a scoping effort to evaluate enterprise storage products for inclusion in the ENERGY STAR program. EPA reviewed available market research and facilitated discussions with product manufacturers, industry associations, and other interested parties. EPA concluded that IT purchasers would benefit from access to standardized information about the energy performance of storage equipment made available through the ENERGY STAR program. As a result, EPA intends to begin the specification development process. Details on this process will be forthcoming in the next several weeks.

To be added to the enterprise storage e-mail distribution list, please send your full contact information to Stephen Pantano at spantano@icfi.com. To stay informed about the ENERGY STAR specification development process for computer servers and other EPA data center initiatives please visit: www.energystar.gov/datacenters.

Thank you for your continued support of ENERGY STAR and please direct additional questions to Andrew Fanara at fanara.andrew@epa.gov or Stephen Pantano of ICF International, at spantano@icfi.com.

Sincerely,

Andrew Fanara
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Climate Protection Partnerships Division ENERGY STAR Program Manager

My take on the Energy Star programs is that as long as they add value including reflecting how energy is effectively used both when IT equipment such as servers and storage are in use, as well as in energy saving or avoidance modes are reflected, they can and should be a good thing.

However industry will need to work together across different trade and focus groups as well as factor in how supporting metrics will be applicable and reflective thus accepted by IT data center environments. This means metrics and measurements for both active or working while in use energy efficiency modes such as IOPS, bandwidth, messages or transactions, files or videos per watt of energy, as well as metrics for in-active or dormant data such as capacity per watt per usable footprint. Check out Chapter 5 (Measurements and Metrics) in "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC) to learn more.

Various industry trade and focus groups including Storage Performance Council (SPC), SNIA GSI, Green Grid, SPEC and others are working on various metrics and aligning themselves to work with EPA. If you are in an IT data center involved with servers or storage, consider getting involved with one or more of these groups to help influence and shape what these programs will look like or affect your organization in the future.

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

April 21, 2009March 7, 2022

Happy Earth Day 2009

Its that time of the year again, that’s right, earth day April 22 2009!

If you frequent this blog, visit my websites (StorageIO, The Green and Virtual Data Center or Green Data Storage), track twitter, attended any of my speaking engagements, webcast, podcast, videos, radio interviews, seen press or media coverage, not to mention read any of my reports, articles, tips or books, it should not come as a surprise that I have something to say about Green IT and closing the Green Gap.

Common themes have included awareness of the green gap and how to address or close it including discussions around IT transformation, infrastructure optimization, boosting productivity and efficiency to support business sustainability among others. While its tempting to go on and on about different trends, topics, techniques, technologies and related themes with a back drop of earth day, lets leave it at this for now in the sake of brevity and efficiency.

There’s plenty of existing content to be recycled and reused or seen and viewed for today including at some of the above links. However, rest assured, there is more content in the works pertaining to enabling Green IT with a focus around data center productivity, efficiency and sustainability, doing more with less, or, doing more with what is available.

So happy earth day 2009, chat with you again soon.

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

April 19, 2009March 7, 2022

Has SSD put Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) On Endangered Species List?

Storage I/O trends

Disclosure: I have been a user, vendor, author and analyst covering and a fan (and continue to be) of SSD for over 20 years

I have thought and wanting to post about this for a while, however recently several things popped up including moderating a panel where a vendor representative told the audience that the magnetic hard disk drive (HDD) would be dead in two, at most three years. While there were a few nods from those in the audience, the majority smiled politely, chuckled, looked at their watches or returned to doing email, twitters, texting or simply rolled their eyes in a way like, yeah right, we have heard this before ( ;) ).

Likewise, I have done many events including seminars, keynotes including at a recent CMG event (the performance and capacity planning group that I have been a part of for many years), webcasts and other interactions with IT pros, vendors, vars and media. These interactions have included among other topics, IT optimization, boosting server and storage efficiency, as well as the roll of tiering IT resources to boost efficiency, achieve better productivity while boosting performance in a cost-effective way during touch economic times, in other words, the other green IT!

Then the other day, I received an email from Mary Jander over at Internet Evolution. You may remember Mary from her days over at Byte & Switch. Mary was looking for a point, counter point, perspective and sound bit to a recent blog posting on her site and basically asked if I thought that the high performance HDD would be dead in a couple of years at the cost of FLASH SSD. Having given Mary some sound bits and perspectives which appear in her Article/Blog posting, there has since been a fun and lively discourse in Marys’ Internet Evolution blog comment section which could be seen by some as the pending funeral for high performance HDDs.

There has been a lot of work taking place including by industry trade groups such as the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) among others, not to mention many claims, discussions, banter and even some trash talk about how the magnetic hard disk drives (HDD) that as a technology is over 50 years old now, is nearing the end of the road and is about to be replaced by FLASH SSD in the next two to three years depending on who you talk with or listen to.

That may very well be the case, however, I have a strong suspicion that while the high performance 3.5" Fibre Channel 15,500 Revolution per minute (15.5K RPM) HDD is nearing the end of the line, I don’t believe that the 2.5" small form factor (SFF) Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) 15.5K (maybe faster in the future?) high performance and larger capacity HDD will have met its demise in the two to three-year timeframe.

The reason I subscribe to this notion is that of a need for balancing performance, availability, capacity, energy to a given power, cooling, floor space and environmental need along with price to meet different tiers of application and data quality of service and service level needs. Simply put, there continues to be a need even with some the new or emerging enhanced intelligence capabilities of storage systems for tiered media. That is tier-0 ultra fast SSD (FLASH or RAM) in a 2.5" form factor with SATA shifting to SAS connectivity, tier-1 fast 2.5" SAS 15.5K large capacity HDDs, tier-2 2.5" SATA and SAS high-capacity, 5.4 to 10K HDDs, or, ultra large capacity SAS and SATA 3.5" HDDs to meet different performance, availability, capacity, energy and economic points.

Why not just use SSD FLASH for all high performance activity, after all it excels in reads correct? Yup, however, take a closer look at write performance which is getting better and better, even with less reliance on intelligent controllers, firmware and RAM as a buffer. However, there is still a need for a balance of Tier-0, Tier-1, Tier-2, Tier-3 etc mediums to balance different requirements and stretch strained IT budgets to do more efficiency.

Maybe I’m stuck in my ways and spend to much time talking with IT professionals including server or storage architects, as well as IT planners, purchasers and others in the trenches and not enough time drinking the cool-aid and believing the evangelists and truth squads ;). However there is certainly no denying that Solid State Devices (SSD) using either RAM or FLASH are back in the spotlight again as SSD has been in the past, this time for many reasons with adoption continuing to grow. I think that its safe to say that some HDDs will fade away like other earlier generations have, such as the 3.5" FC HDD, however other HDDs like the high performance 2.5" SAS HDDs have some time to enjoy before their funeral or wake.

What say you?

BTW, check out this popular (and its Free) StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspectives White Paper Report that looks at various data center performance bottlenecks and how to discuss them to transition towards becoming more efficient. However a warning, you might actually be inclined to jump on the SSD bandwagon.

Oh, and there’s nothing wrong with SSD, after all as I mentioned earlier, I’m a huge fan, however, I’m also a huge fan of spinning HDDs having skipped SSD in my latest computer purchases for fast 7.2K (or faster) HDDs with FLASH for portability (encrypted of course). After all, it’s also about balancing the different tiers of storage mediums to the task at hand, that is, unless you subscribe to the notion that one tool or technique should be used to solve all problems which is fine if that is your cup of tea.

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

April 18, 2009January 23, 2019

Closing the Green Gap: WSRADIO Internet Radio Interview

Last week it was an appearance in print (and on-line) in the MSP Business Journal, this week it was on-line interview (Closing the Green Gap) interview via wsradio.

The other day, I had the pleasure of being a guest of Steve Bengston on wsradio (Internet Radio) during the Price Waterhouse Cooper Startup Show where our discussion was around the different facets of Green IT, efficiency, economic and environmental sustainment, closing the Green Gap and of course my new book.

Listen in here when you get a chance.

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

April 10, 2009September 3, 2021

MSP Business Journal Names Greg Schulz an Eco-tech Warrior

In the April 10th, 2009 issue of the Minneapolis St. Paul (MSP) Business Journal, guess who was named one of three Eco-Tech Warriors? That’s right, yours truly (See the article here).

Photo by Nancy Kuehn – MSP Business Journal

What can I say, I’m flattered and appreciate the coverage. Besides seeing the finished article in the special report, the real fun was doing the photo shoot with the props including the heavy swords, those were not plastic (Hummm, Iron Chef?)!

The photo shoot with the other two “Eco-Warriors” Tom Diamond of New Boundary Technology, and Travis Pakonen of Encompass Solutions along with Nancy Kuehn our photographer as well as the artistic and project management folks from MSP Business Journal were an absolute blast to work with.

For those of you looking for policy management as well as energy management tools for desktops, workstations and PCs, checkout Tom Diamonds New Boundary Technologies and their solutions. Likewise, I hear good things from friends who have used the services of Travis Pakonen and N’Compass for their data center projects.

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

April 5, 2009March 7, 2022

Storage Effiency and Optimizaiton – Balancing Time and Space

Storage I/O trends

Here’s a link to the presentation I recently delivered at the Spring 2009 Minneapolis/St. Paul area CMG (Computer Measurement Group – CMG) March 20th, 2009 hosted by Nexus Information Systems and organized by Tom Becchetti. The theme of the event was "Is your storage efficient? There are many ways to rate your storage, how does yours stack up?". Tom organized a great event as usual with a diverse set of speakers for the well attended event graciously hosted by Keith Norbie of Nexus at their Minnetonka facility. The title of my presentation was "Storage Efficiency: Mirror Mirror On The Wall, Who or What is The Most Efficient of Them All? Finding the Correct Balance" that looked at balancing the need to reduce (or maximize) space (utilization) with time (performance) to meet different requirements including maintaining quality of service, response time and availability.

Keeping in mind that there is no such thing as a data or I/O performance recession, there is a common myth that storage optimization or efficiency is all about driving up storage space capacity utilization which can be true for some environments, applications, data or storage types. However there is also the need to maintain or boost performance, reduce response time and latency, doing more work in a more productive and efficieny manner. Not all data or storage can be consolidated to boost utilization without concern for degrading or in any other way penalizing performance, response time or availability.

Thus it is about time and space, that is, balancing data movement and processing rates with storage space capacity utilization and that sometimes, more is not better for performance when it comes to ratios or the number of components in a solution.

Likewise there is the need to balance energy avoidance with energy efficient, balancing the need to store more data in a smaller footprint using less energy and the need to process more data in less time efficiently for productivity.

These and other related themes are expanded on in more detail in my book "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC). These and other related themes will covered in one of my upcoming presentations (The Other Green — Storage Efficiency and Optimization) at StorageDecisions in Chicago the week of June 1st, 2009, as well as in various seminars and events that I will be involved in the coming weeks and months.

Thanks to all those who helped organize, support, sponsored, presented and attended the recent CMG event, look forward to seeing or hearing from you all again soon.

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

April 4, 2009March 7, 2022

Storage Decisions Spring 2009 Sessions Update

The conference lineup and details for the Spring 2009 Storage Decisions event (June 1st and 2nd) in Chicago is coming together including two talks/presentations that I will be doing. One will be in Track 2 (Disaster Recovery) titled "Server Virtualization, Business Continuance and Disaster Recovery" and the other in Track 6 (Management/Executive) titled "The Other Green — Storage Efficiency and Optimization" with both sessions leveraging themes and topics from my new book "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC).

Track 2: Disaster Recovery
Server Virtualization, Business Continuance and Disaster Recovery
Presented by Greg Schulz, Founder and Senior Analyst, StorageIO
Server virtualization has the potential to bring sophisticated business continuance (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) techniques to organizations that previously didn’t have the means to adopt them. Likewise, virtualized as well as cloud environments need to be included in a BC/DR plan to enable application and data availability. Learn tips and tricks on building an accessible BC/DR strategy and plan using server virtualization and the storage products that enable efficient, flexible green and virtual data centers.

Topics include:
* Cross technology domain data protection management
* Tiered data protection to stretch your IT budget dollar
* What’s needed to enable BC/DR for virtualized environments
* How virtualization can enable BC/DR for non-virtualized environments
* General HA, BC/DR and data protection tips for virtual environments

Track 6: Management/Executive
The Other Green — Storage Efficiency and Optimization
Throw out the "green“: buzzword, and you’re still left with the task of saving or maximizing use of space, power, and cooling while stretching available IT dollars to support growth and business sustainability. For some environments the solution may be consolation while others need to maintain quality of service response time, performance and availability necessitating faster, energy efficient technologies to achieve optimization objectives. To accomplish these and other related issues, you can turn to the cloud, virtualization, intelligent power management, data footprint reduction and data management not to mention various types of tiered storage and performance optimization techniques. The session will look at various techniques and strategies to optimize either on-line active or primary as well as near-line or secondary storage environment during tough economic times, as well as to position for future growth, after all, there is no such thing as a data recession!

Topics include:
* Energy efficiency (strategic) vs. energy avoidance (tactical)
* Optimization and the need for speed vs. the need for capacity
* Metrics and measurements for management insight
* Tiered storage and tiered access including SSD, FC, SAS and clouds
* Data footprint reduction (archive, compress, dedupe) and thin provision
* Best practices, financial incentives and what you can do today

See you in Chicago in June if not before then. Learn more about other upcoming events and activities on the StorageIO events page.

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

March 31, 2009November 26, 2023

March and Mileage Mania Wrap-up

Today’s flight to Santa Ana (SNA) Orange County California for an 18 hour visit marks my 3rd trip to the left coast in the past four weeks that started out with a trip to Los Angeles. The purpose of today’s trip is to deliver a talk around Business Continuance (BC) and Disaster recovery (DR) topics for virtual server and storage environments along with related data transformation topics themes, part of a series of on-going events.

Planned flight path from MSP to SNA courtesy of Northwest Airlines, now part of Delta

This is a short trip to southern California in that I have to be back in Minneapolis for a Wednesday afternoon meeting followed by keynoting at an IT Infrastructure Optimization Seminar downtown Minneapolis Thursday morning. Right after Thursday morning session, its off to the other coast for some Friday morning and early afternoon sessions in the Boston area, the results of which I hope to be able to share with you in a not so distant future posting.

Where has March gone? Its been a busy and fun month out on the road with in-person seminars, vendor and user group events in Minneapolis, Los Angles, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Atlanta, St. Louis, Birmingham, Minneapolis for CMG user group, Cincinnati and Orange County not to mention some other meetings and consulting engagements elsewhere including participating in a couple of webcast and virtual conference/seminars while on the road. Coverage and discussion around my new book "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC) continues expand, read here to see what’s being said.

What has made the month fun in addition to traveling around the country is the interaction with the hundreds of IT professionals from organizations of all size hearing what they are encountering, what their challenges are, what they are thinking, and in general what’s on their mind.

Some of the common themes include:

There’s no such thing as a data recession, however the result is doing more with less, or, with what you have

Confusion abounds around green hype including carbon footprints vs. core IT and business issues

There is life beyond consolidation for server and storage virtualization to enable business agility

Security and encryption remain popular topic as does heterogeneous and affordable key management

End to end IT resource management for virtual environments is needed that is scalable and affordable

Performance and quality of service can not be sacrificed in the quest to drive up storage utilization

Clouds, SSD (FLASH), Dedupe, FCoE and Thin Provisioning among others are on the watch list

Tape continues to be used complimenting disks in tiered storage environments along with VTLs

Dedupe continues to be deployed and we are just seeing the very tip of the ice-berg of opportunity

Software licensing cost savings or reallocation should be a next step focus for virtual environments

Now, for a bit of irony and humor, overheard was a server sales person talking to a storage sales person comparing notes on how they are missing their forecasts as their customers are buying fewer servers and storage now that they are consolidating with virtualization, or using disk dedupe to eliminate disk drives. Doh!!!

Now if those sales people can get their marketing folks to get them the play book for virtualization for business agility, improving performance and enabling business growth in an optimized, transformed environment, they might be able to talk a different story with their customers for new opportunities…

What’s on deck for April? More of the same, however also watch and listen for some additional web based content including interviews quotes and perspectives on industry happenings, articles, tips and columns, reports, blogs, videos, podcasts, webcasts and twitter activity as well as appearances at events in Boston, Chicago, New Jersey and Providence among other venues.

To all of those who came out to the various events in March, thank you very much and look forward to future follow-up conversations as well as seeing you at some of the upcoming future 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)

twitter @storageio

March 18, 2009October 17, 2024

Out and About Update

As part of the continuing on the road theme and series, this post is being done while traveling for this weeks adventures and events including stops in Atlanta, St. Louis and wrapping up the week in Minneapolis at the local CMG quarterly meeting event. At both last weeks events in Las Vegas and Milwaukee as well as this weeks events talking with IT professionals from various organizations, a consistent theme is that there is no data or I/O recession, however there is the need to do more with less while enabling business sustainability.

While VMware remains the dominant server virtualization platform, I’m hearing of more organizations using Citrix or other Xensource based technologies along with some Microsoft HyperV adopters in part to leverage lower cost of ownership compared to VMware in instances where not all of the feature functionality of the robust VMware technology is needed. This will be an interesting scenario to keep an eye on in the weeks and months to come to see if there are any shifting patterns on the server virtualization front while trying to stretch IT dollars further to do more.

On the Merger & Acquisition (M&A) scene, coverage of on again, off-again and recently rekindled rumored of IBM buying Sun is rampant from the Wall Street Journal to twitter and most points in between. There have been many storm clouds around Sun the past several years from a business and technology perspective, and perhaps the best thing is for Sun and IBM to combine forces and resources, bridging the gap between old physical worlds and new virtual cloud enabled worlds so to speak. Personally, I like the idea for many different reasons and think that some shape or form of an IBM and Sun deal either in entirety, or pieces is far more likely to occur and sooner, than seeing funds returned from either AIG or Bernard Madoff, the other top news items this week, nuf said for now about IBM and Sun.

Also this week, other activity included Cisco announcing that they are testing the waters to enter into the server market space to help jumpstart the converged networking space with some of my initial comments here and here. Check out StorageIO in the news page here for other comments on various IT industry trends, technologies and related activities including a recent piece by Drew Robb about The State of the Data Storage Job Market.

Lets see how this plays out with more to say later, thanks again for everyone who came out for last weeks as well as this weeks events, look forward to seeing and talking with you again soon I hope.

Cheers – gs

Technorati tags: Recession, Sustainability, Wall Street Journal, Data Center Bottlenecks, Performance, Capacity, Networking, Telephone, Data Center, Consolidation, Virtualization, VMware, Server, Storage, Software, Sun, IBM, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Atlanta, CMG, AIG, Bernard Madoff, Cisco

March 8, 2009October 17, 2024

Work and Entertainment From Coast to Coast

A week ago I was in St. Petersburg, Tampa and Miami Florida for a mix of work and relaxation along with Karen (Mrs. Schulz), visiting with my cousin and her husband who lives in the St. Pete beach area for a few days before back to work. While in the St. Pete and Tampa area, for fun, we did an afternoon at Busch Garden including a ride on Montu. For those who have not ridden on Montu, here’s a video I found that someone recorded to help give you a perspective of the ride. Other fun activities included stops or time at Billys Stonecrab and Seafood joint, Kayaking, lounging pool-side, shelling at Ft. Desoto and St. Pete Beach as well as a visit to the Hurricane among others.

In Miami, the pool area at the Four Seasons including a nice cabana pool-side spot to escape the cool breeze made for a great relaxing and catch-up on some work spot while Karen relaxed in the sun. Some of the restraunts in Miami we visited when taking a break from work included Gordon Birsch and Rosa for some outstanding, made at the table side fresh Guacamole en Molcajet!.

Speaking of work, the Florida trip involved doing keynotes at events in both Tampa and Miami with a theme of IT Infrastructure Optimization with both events being well attended. Themes included doing more with less, or, doing more with what you have, addressing data footprint and data management to boost productivity, how to address the continued growth in data and need to process, move and store more data and information. A discussion point prompted the thought of if there is a data recession or not (See previous blog post and here). Other topics of discussion and interested included converged networking for voice, data and general networking, security, server and storage virtualization, performance and capacity planning, data protection and BC/DR among others.

This past week involved a lunch and learn Keynote in the Minneapolis area with a local VAR, before a quick trip to the other (left) coast for another IT Infrastructure Optimization session and keynote, this time in Los Angeles. Some common themes heard from IT professionals at this past weeks events echoed those heard in Florida as well as concern about managing encryption keys not to mention securing virtual environments and software licensing models in virtualized server environments. The trip to LA also enabled a quick visit with friend Bruce Rave of Go Deep fame who provided a great tour and sightseeing of the Hollywood music scene.

Hollywood stops included dinner at Genghis Cohens (The duck and cashew chicken were outstanding) followed by visits to the Cat and Fiddle and Infamous Rainbow Bar & Grill next door to legendary Roxy. People watching was great as was the music and ambiance including a Nikki Sixx of Motely Crew sighting at the Rainbow as well as Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN seen in hotel lobby minutes after appearing on Larry King Live.

Thanks too everyone who came out and participated in the seminar events in Tampa, Miami, Minneapolis and LA, look forward to seeing and hearing from you again soon. Now its time to get ready to head off too the airport for this weeks events and activities including stops in Las Vegas and Milwaukee among others.

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

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: