Category: Poll

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Have SSDs been unsuccessful with storage arrays (with poll)?

Storage I/O Industry Trends and Perspectives

I hear people talking about how Solid State Devices (SSDs) have not been successful with or for vendors of storage arrays, particular legacy storage systems. Some people have also asserted that large storage arrays are dead at the hands of new purpose-built SSD appliances or storage systems (read more here).

As a reference, legacy storage systems include those from EMC (VMAX and VNX), IBM (DS8000, DCS3700, XIV, and V7000), and NetApp FAS along with those from Dell, Fujitsu, HDS, HP, NEC and Oracle among others.

Granted EMC have launched new SSD based solutions in addition to buying startup eXtremeIO (aka Project X), and IBM bought SSD industry veteran TMS. IMHO, neither of those actions by either vendor signals an early retirement for their legacy storage solutions, instead opening up new markets giving customers more options for addressing data center and IO performance challenges. Keep in mind that the best IO is the one that you do not have to do with the second best being the least impact to applications in a cost-effective way.

SSD, IO, memory and storage hirearchy

Sometimes I even hear people citing or using some other person or source to attribute or make their assertions sound authoritative. You know the game, according to XYZ or, ABC said blah blah blah blah. Of course if you say or repeat something often enough, or hear it again and again, it can become self-convincing (e.g. industry adoption vs. customer deployments). Likewise depending on how many degrees of separation exists between you and the information you get, the more that it can change from what it originally was.

So what about it, has SSD not been successful for legacy storage system vendors and is the only place that SSD has had success is with startups or non-array based solutions?

While there have been some storage systems (arrays and appliances) that may not perform up to their claimed capabilities due to various internal architecture or implementation bottlenecks. For the most part the large vendors including EMC, HP, HDS, IBM, NetApp and Oracle have done very well shipping SSD drives in their solutions. Likewise some of the clean sheet new design based startup systems, as well as some of the startups with hybrid solutions combing HDDs  and SSDs have done well while others are still emerging.

Where SSD can be used and options

This could also be an example where myth becomes reality based on industry adoption vs. customer deployment. What this means is that the myth is that it is the startups that are having success vs. the legacy vendors from an industry adoption conversation standpoint and thus believed by some.

On the other hand, the myth is that vendors such as EMC or NetApp have not had success with their arrays and SSD yet their customer deployments prove otherwise. There is also a myth that only PCIe based SSD can be of value and that drive based SSDs are not worth using which I have a good idea where that myth comes from.

IMHO it is a depends, however safe to say from what I have seen directly that there are some vendors of storage arrays, including so-called legacy systems that have had very good success with SSD. Likewise have seen where some startups have done ok with their new clean sheet designs, including EMC (Project X). Oh, at least for now I am not a believer that with the all SSD based project “X” over at EMC that the venerable VMAX  formerly known as DMX and its predecessors Symmetric have finally hit the end of the line. Rather they will be positioned and play to different markets for some time yet.

Over at IBM I don’t think the DS8000 or XIV or V7000 and SVC folks are winding things down now that they bought SSD vendor TMS who has SSD appliances and PCIe cards. Rest assured there have been success by PCIe flash card vendors both as targets (FusionIO) and cache or hybrid cache and target systems such as those from Intel, LSI, Micron, and TMS (now IBM) among others. Oh, and if you have not noticed, check out what Qlogic, Emulex and some of the other traditional HBA vendors have done with and around SSD caching.

So where does the FUD that storage systems have not had success with SSD come from?

I suspect from those who would rather not see or hear about those who have had success taking away attention from them or their markets. In other words, using Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) or some community peer pressure, there is a belief by some that if you hear enough times that something is dead or not of a benefit; you will look at the alternatives.

Care to guess what the preferred alternative is for some? If you guessed a PCIe card or SSD based appliance from your favorite startup that would be a fair assumption.

On the other hand, my educated guess (ok, its much more informed than a guess ;) ) is that if you ask a vendor such as EMC or NetApp they would disagree, while at the same time articulate benefits of different approaches and tools. Likewise, my educated guess is that if you ask some others, they will say mixed things and of course if you talk with the pure plays, take a wild yet educated guess what they will say.

Here is my point.

SSD, DRAM, PCM and storage adoption timeline

The SSD market, including DRAM, nand flash (SLC or MLC or any other xLC), emerging PCM or future mram among other technologies and packaging options is still in its relative infancy. Yes, I know there have been significant industry adoption and many early customer deployments, however talking with IT organizations of all size as well as with vendors and vars, customer deployment of SSD is far from reaching its full potential meaning a bright future.

Simply putting an SSD, card or drive into a solution does not guarantee results.

Likewise having a new architecture does not guarantee things will be faster.

Fast storage systems need fast devices (HDD, HHDD and SSDs) along with fast interfaces to connect with fast servers. Put a fast HDD, HHDD or SSD into a storage system that has bottlenecks (hardware, software, architectural design) and you may not see the full potential of the technology. Likewise put fast ports or interfaces on a storage system that has fast devices however also a bottleneck in its controller has or system architecture and you will not realize the full potential of that solution.

This is not unique to legacy or traditional storage systems, arrays or appliances as it is also the case with new clean sheet designs.

There are many new solutions that are or should be as fast as their touted marketing stories present, however just because something looks impressive in a YouTube video or slide deck or WebEx does not mean it will be fast in your environment. Some of these new design SSD based solutions will displace some legacy storage systems or arrays while many others will find new opportunities. Similar to how previous generation SSD storage appliances found roles complementing traditional storage systems, so to will many of these new generation of products.

What this all means is to navigate your way through the various marketing and architecture debates, benchmarks battles, claims and counter claims to understand what fits your needs and requires.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

What say you?

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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Trick or treat and vendor fun games

In the spirit of Halloween and zombies season, a couple of thoughts come to mind about vendor tricks and treats. This is an industry trends and perspectives post, part of an ongoing series looking at various technology and fun topics.

The first trick or treat game pertains to the blame game; you know either when something breaks, or at the other extreme, before you have even made a decision to buy something. The trick or treat game for decision-making goes something like this.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Vendor “A” says products succeed with their solution while failure results with a solution from “B” when doing “X”. Otoh, vendor “B” claims that “X” will fail when using a solution from vendor “A”. In fact, you can pick what you want to substitute for “X”, perhaps VDI, PCIe, Big Data, Little Data, Backup, Archive, Analytics, Private Cloud, Public Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, eDiscovery you name it.

This is not complicated math or big data problem requiring a high-performance computing (HPC) platform. A HPC Zetta-Flop processing ability using 512 bit addressing of 9.9 (e.g. 1 nine) PettaBytes of battery-backed DRAM and an IO capability of 9.99999 (e.g. 5 9’s) trillion 8 bit IOPS to do table pivots or runge kutta numerical analysis, map reduce, SAS or another modeling with optional iProduct or Android interface are not needed.

image of StorageIO big data HPC cloud storageimage of StorageIO big data HPC cloud storage
StorageIO images of touring Texas Advanced Computing (e.g. HPC) Center

Can you solve this equation? Hint it does not need a PhD or any other advanced degree. Another hint, if you have ever been at any side of the technology product and services decision-making table, regardless of the costume you wore, you should know the answer.

Of course the question of would “X” fail regardless of who or what “A” or “B” let alone a “C”, “D” or “F”? In other words, it is not the solution, technology, vendor or provider, rather the problem or perhaps even lack thereof that is the issue. Or is it a case where there is a solution from “A”, “B” or any others that is looking for a problem, and if it is the wrong problem, there can be a wrong solution thus failure?

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Another trick or treat game is vendors public relations (PR) or analyst relations (AR) people to ask for one thing and delivery or ask another. For example, some vendor, service provider, their marketing AR and PR people or surrogates make contact wanting to tell of various success and failure story. Of course, this is usually their success and somebody else’s failure, or their victory over something or someone who sometimes can be interesting. Of course, there are also the treats to get you to listen to the above, such as tempt you with a project if you meet with their subject, which may be a trick of a disappearing treat (e.g. magic, poof it is gone after the discussion).

There are another AR and PR trick and treat where they offer on behalf of their representative organization or client to a perspective or exclusive insight on their competitor. Of course, the treat from their perspective is that they will generously expose all that is wrong with what a competitor is saying about their own (e.g. the competitors) product.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Let me get this straight, I am not supposed to believe what somebody says about his or her own product, however, supposed to believe what a competitor says is wrong with the competition’s product, and what is right with his or her own product.

Hmm, ok, so let me get this straight, a competitor say “A” wants to tell me what somebody say from “B” has told me is wrong and I should schedule a visit with a truth squad member from “A” to get the record set straight about “B”?

Does that mean then that I go to “B” for a rebuttal, as well as an update about “A” from “B”, assuming that what “A” has told me is also false about themselves, and perhaps about “B” or any other?

Too be fair, depending on your level of trust and confidence in either a vendor, their personal or surrogates, you might tend to believe more from them vs. others, or at least until you been tricked after given treats. There may be some that have been tricked, or they tried applying to many treats to present a story that behind the costume might be a bit scary.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Having been through enough of these, and I candidly believe that sometimes “A” or “B” or any other party actually do believe that they have more or better info about their competitor and that they can convince somebody about what their competitor is doing better than the competitor can. I also believe that there are people out there who will go to “A” or “B” and believe what they are told by based on their preference, bias or interests.

When I hear from vendors, VARs, solution or service providers and others, it’s interesting hearing point, counterpoint and so forth, however if time is limited, I’am more interested in hearing from such as “A” about them, what they are doing, where success, where challenges, where going and if applicable, under NDA go into more detail.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Customer success stories are good, however again, if interested in what works, what kind of works, or what does not work, chances are when looking for G2 vs. GQ, a non-scripted customer conversation or perspective of the good, the bad and the ugly is preferred, even if under NDA. Again, if time is limited which it usually is, focus on what is being done with your solution, where it is going and if compelled send follow-up material that can of course include MUD and FUD about others if that is your preference.

Then there is when during a 30 minute briefing, the vendor or solution provider is still talking about trends, customer pain points, what competitors are doing at 21 minutes into the call with no sign of an announcement, update or news in site

Lets not forget about the trick where the vendor marketing or PR person reaches out and says that the CEO, CMO, CTO or some other CxO or Chief Jailable Officer (CJO) wants to talk with you. Part of the trick is when the CxO actually makes it to the briefing and is not ready, does not know why the call is occurring, or, thinks that a request for an audience has been made with them for an interview or something else.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

A treat is when 3 to 4 minutes into a briefing, the vendor or solution provider has already framed up what and why they are doing something. This means getting to what they are announcing or planning on doing and getting into a conversation to discuss what they are doing and making good follow-up content and resources available.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Sometimes a treat is when a briefer goes on autopilot nailing their script for 29 of a 30 minute session then use the last-minute to ask if there are any questions. The reason autopilot briefings can be a treat is when they are going over what is in the slide deck, webex, or press release thus affording an opportunity to get caught up on other things while talk at you. Hmm, perhaps need to consider playing some tricks in reward for those kind of treats? ;)

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Do not be scared, not everybody is out to trick you with treats, and not all treats have tricks attached to them. Be prepared, figure out who is playing tricks with treats, and who has treats without tricks.

Oh, and as a former IT customer, vendor and analyst, one of my favorites is contact information of my dogs to vendors who require registration on their websites for basic things such as data sheets. Another is supplying contact information of competing vendors sales reps to vendors who also require registration for basic data sheets or what should otherwise be generally available information as opposed to more premium treats. Of course there are many more fun tricks, however lets leave those alone for now.

Note: Zombie voting rules apply which means vote early, vote often, and of course vote for those who cannot include those that are dead (real or virtual).

Where To Learn More

View additiona related material 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

Watch out for tricks and treats, have a safe and fun Zombie (aka Halloween) season. See you while out and about this fall and don’t forget to take part in the ongoing zombie technology poll. Oh, and be safe with trick or treat and vendor fun games

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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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)

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: 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)

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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Does software eliminate or move location of vendor lockin?

Does software eliminate or move location of vendor lockin?

Does software eliminate or move location of vendor lockin?

I’m always interested when I hear or read a software vendor or their value added reseller (VAR) or business partner claim that their solution eliminates vendor lockin.

More often than not, I end up being amazed if not amused over the claims which usually should be rephrased as eliminating hardware vendor lock-in.

What is also amazing or amusing is that while some vendors make claims of eliminating (hardware) vendor lock-in, there is also some misdirection taking place. While some solutions may be architected to cut hardware vendor lock-in, how they are sold or packaged can force certain vendors technology into your solution. For example, the EMC Centera software in theory and architecture is hardware vendor independent, however it is sold as a solution (hardware and software), similar to how Dell sells the DX which uses software from Caringo and you guessed right, Dell hardware among many other similar scenarios from other vendors.

How about virtualization or other abstraction software tools along with cloud, object storage, clustered file systems and related tools.

StorageIO industry trends and perspectives, I/O, clouds, virtualization

Keep in mind the gold rule of management software and tools which includes virtualization, cloud stacks, clustered file systems among other similar tools. The golden rule is simply who ever controls the software and management controls the gold (e.g. your budget). In the case of a storage software tools such as virtualization, cloud or object storage, cluster or NAS system among others, while they can be correct depending on how packaged and sold of eliminating hardware vendor lock-in, the lock-in also moves.

The lock-in moves from the hardware to the software which even though a particular solution may be architected to use industry standard components, often to make it easy for acquisition, a vendor packages the solution with hardware. In other words, sure, the vendor unlocked you from one vendors hardware with their software only to lock you into theirs or somebody else’s.

Now granted, it may not be a hard lock (pun intended), rather a soft marketing and deployment packaging decision. However there are some solutions that give themselves or at least via their marketing on hardware independence only to force you into buying their tin wrapped software (e.g. an appliance) with their choice of disk drives, network components and other items.

So when a software or solution vendor claims to cut vendor lock-in, ask them if that is hardware vendor lock-in and if they are moving or shifting the point of vendor lock-in. Keep in mind that vendor lock-in does not have to be a bad thing if it provides you the customer with value. Also keep in mind that only you can prevent vendor lock-in which is like only you can prevent cloud data loss (actually its a shared responsibility ;) ).

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

Here is my point, so what if a vendor chooses to wrap their software with an appliance to make it easy for you to buy and deploy, however unless they are willing to work with you on what hardware that will be, perhaps they should think about going a bit easier on the vendor lock-in theme.

In the quest to race from hardware vendor lock-in, be aware with ears and eyes wide open to make sure that you are not fleeing from one point of lock-in to another. In other words, make sure that the cure to your vendor lock-in challenge is not going to be more painful than your current ailment.

What is your take on vendor lockin? Cast your vote and see results in the following polls.

Is vendor lockin a good or bad thing?

Who is responsible for managing vendor lockin

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert 2010-2017 (vSAN and vCloud). Author of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press), as well as Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com any reproduction in whole, in part, with changes to content, without source attribution under title or without permission is forbidden.

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

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Only you can prevent cloud data loss

Storage I/O trends

Some of you might remember the saying from Smokey the bear, only you can prevent forest fires and for those who do not know about that, click on the image below.

The reason I bring this up is that while cloud providers are responsible (see the cloud blame game) is that it is also up to the user or consumer to take some ownership and responsibility.

Similar to vendor lock-in, the only one who can allow vendor lock in is the customer, granted a vendor can help influence the customer.

The same theme applies to public clouds and cloud storage providers in that there is responsibility of providers along with government and industry regulations to help protect consumers or users. However, there is also the shared responsibility of the user and consumer to make informed decisions.

What is your perspective on who is responsible for cloud data protection?

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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Spring (May) 2012 StorageIO news letter

StorageIO News Letter Image
Spring (May) 2012 News letter

Welcome to the Spring (May) 2012 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) news letter. This follows the Fall (December) 2011 edition.

You can get access to this news letter via various social media venues (some are shown below) in addition to StorageIO web sites and subscriptions.

Click on the following links to view the Spring May 2012 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the news letter page to view previous editions.

You can subscribe to the news letter by clicking here.

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO newsletter, let me know your comments and feedback.

Nuff said for now

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 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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Various cloud, virtualization, server, storage I/O poll’s

The following are a collection of on-going industry trends and perspectives poll’s pertaining to server, storage, IO, networking, cloud, virtualization, data protection (backup, archive, BC and DR) among other related themes and topics.

In addition to those listed below, check out the comments section where additional poll’s are added over time.

Storage I/O Industry Trends and Perspectives

Here is a link to a poll as a follow-up to a recent blog post Are large storage arrays dead at the hands of SSD? (also check these posts pertaining to storage arrays and SSD and flash SSD’s emerging role).

Poll: Are large storage arrays day’s numbered?

Poll: What’s your take on magnetic tape storage?

Poll: What do you think of IT clouds?

Poll: Who is responsible for cloud storage data loss?

Poll: What are the most popular Zombie technologies?

Storage I/O Industry Trends and Perspectives

Poll: What’s your take on OVA and other alliances?

Poll: Where is most common form or concern of vendor lockin?

Poll: Who is responsible for, or preventing vendor lockin?

Poll: Is vendor lockin a good or bad thing?

Poll: Is IBM V7000 relevant?

Storage I/O Industry Trends and Perspectives

Poll: What is your take on EMC and NetApp on similar tracks or paths?

Poll: What’s your take on RAID still being relevant?

Poll: What do you see as barriers to converged networks?

Poll: Who are you?

Poll: What is your preferred converged network?

Storage I/O Industry Trends and Perspectives

Poll: What is your converged network status?

Poll: Are converged networks in your future?

Poll: What do you think were top 2009 technologies, events or vendors?

Poll: What technologies, events, products or vendors did not live up to 2009 predictions?

Storage I/O Industry Trends and Perspectives

Poll: What do you think of IT clouds?

Poll: What is your take on the new FTC blogger disclosure guidelines?

Poll: Is RAID dead?

Poll: When will you deploy Windows 7? Note: I upgraded all my systems to Windows 7 during summer of 2011

Poll: EMC and Cisco VCE, what does it mean?

Poll: Is IBM XIV still relevant?

Storage I/O Industry Trends and Perspectives

Note: Feel free to share, use and make reference to the above poll’s and their results however please remember to attribute the source.

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

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Can I ask for your support? Please vote for my blog

No Im not running for any elected office in a political or other organizational capacity, more on the voting stuff in a moment.

Let me start out by saying thank you to all of you who have and continue to read theses posts from where ever that happens to be from.

I also want to thank all of the sites and venues that pickup my blog feeds to make it easier for readers to view the content as well as thanks for all of the great comments and discussions.

Doing some recent end of year clean up and preparation for 2012, I was going back looking at some blog history and realized that StorageIOblog was launched back in late fall of 2006. For those not aware, my full blog feed is https://storageioblog.com/RSSfull.xml and there is also a brief feed at https://storageioblog.com/RSS.xml and the full archives going back to 2006 can be found at https://storageioblog.com/RSSfullArchive.xml.

Ok, now back to the voting stuff.

It is that time of the year to cast your vote over at Eric Sieberts (aka @ericsiebert) vsphere-land site where my StorageIOblog is among around 180 different IT technology blogs nominated for inclusion and balloting, many of whom are also fellow vExperts. The blogs over at vsphere-land cover diverse topics, technologies, trends and themes including servers, storage, networking, cloud, virtualization, security and related topic themes.

Here is the announcement for the 2012 vsphere-land voting.

Some of the blogs have been around for many years while there is also a category for new less than a year old. In this years voting, anyone can vote however only one ballot per person, there the top ten where you can pick up to ten different blogs and then rank those.

There are categories for virtualization, cloud and storage focused as well as for independent bloggers (e.g. non vendors) as well as for news and media venues. The blogs that are part of the balloting were all via open nomination and if yours or your favorite blog is not on the list, go easy on Eric as he made multiple attempts via different venues to make the process known (hint, make sure Eric knows of your site, however also follow him and his sites for the future).

The voting is up and running until February 7 2012 at this site here.

Check out the voting, balloting and polling process where you can select my StorageIOblog as one of ten overall selections, as well as rank it within those ten, then select StorageIOblog in the storage category as well as in the independent blogger categories if you are so inclined (thanks in advance).

Also, check out Erics great books Maximum vSphere along with VMware VI3 implementation at Amazon.com among other venues.

Ok, nuff said for now, please get out and vote and thank in advance for your interest and support.

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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Top storageio cloud virtualization networking and data protection posts

Im in the process of wrapping up 2011 and getting ready for 2012. Here is a list of the top 25 all time posts from StorageIOblog covering cloud, virtualization, servers, storage, green IT, networking and data protection. Looking back, here is 2010 and 2011 industry trends, thoughts and perspective predictions along with looking forward, a 2012 preview here.

Top 25 all time posts about storage, cloud, virtualization, networking, green IT and data protection

Check out the companion post to this which is the top 25 2011 posts located here as well as 2012 and 2013 predictions preview 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)

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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2012 industry trends perspectives and commentary (predictions)

2011 is almost over, so its wrap up time of the year as well as getting ready for 2012.

Here is a link to a post of the top 25 new posts that appeared on StorageIOblog in 2011.

As a companion to the above, here is a link to the all time top 25 posts from StorageIOblog.

Looking back, here is a post about industry trends, thoughts and perspective predictions for 2010 and 2011 (preview 2012 and 2013 thoughts and perspectives here).

Im still finalizing my 2012 and 2013 predictions and perspectives which is a work in progress, however here is a synopsis:

  • Addressing storage woes at the source: Time to start treating the source of data management and protection including backup challenges instead of or in addition to addressing downstream target destination topics.
  • Big data and big bandwidth meet big backup: 2011 was a buzz with big data and big bandwidth so 2012 will see realization that big backup needs to be addressed. Also in 2012 there will be continued realization that many have been doing big data and big bandwidth thus also big backups for many years if not decades before the current big buzzword became popular.
  • Little data does not get left out of the discussion even though younger brother big data gets all of the press and praise. Little data may not be the shining diva it once was, however the revenue annuity stream will keep many software, tools, server and storage vendors afloat while customers continue to rely on the little data darling to run their business.
  • Cloud confusion finds clarity on the horizon: Granted there will be plenty of more cloud fud and hype, cloud washing and cleaning going around, however 2012 and beyond will also find organizations realizing where and how to use different types of clouds (public, private, hybrid) too meet various needs from SaaS and AaaS to PaaS to IaaS and other variations of XaaS. Part of the clarification that will help remove the confusion will be that there are many different types of cloud architectures, products, stacks, solutions, services and products to address various needs. Another part of the clarification will be discussion of what needs to be added to clouds to make them more viable for both new, as well as old or existing applications. This means organizations will determine what they need to do to move their existing applications to some form of a cloud model while understanding how clouds coexist and compliment what they are currently doing. Cloud conversations will also shift from low cost or for free focus expanding to discussions around value, trust, quality of service (QoS), SLOs, SLAs, security, reliability and related themes.

Industry Trends and Perspectives

  • Cloud and virtualization stack battles: The golden rule of virtualization and clouds is that who ever controls the management and software stacks controls the gold. Hence, watch for more positioning around management and enablement stacks as well as solutions to see who gains control of the gold.
  • Data protection modernization: Building off of first point above, data protection modernization the past several years has been focused on treating the symptoms of downstream problems at the target or destination. This has involved swapping out or moving media around, applying data footprint reduction (DFR) techniques downstream to give near term tactical relief as has been the cause with backup, restore, BC and DR for many years. Now the focus will start to expand to how to address the source of the problem with is an expanding data footprint upstream or at the source using different data footprint reduction tools and techniques. This also means using different metrics including keeping performance and response time in perspective as part of reduction rates vs. ratios while leveraging different techniques and tools from the data footprint reduction tool box. In other words, its time to stop swapping out media like changing tires that keep going flat on a car, find and fix the problem, change the way data is protected (and when) to cut the impact down stream. This will not happen overnight, however with virtualization and cloud activities underway, now is a good time to start modernizing data protection.
  • End to End (E2E) management tools: Continue focus around E2E tools and capabilities to gain situational awareness across different technology layers.
  • FCoE and Fibre Channel continue to mature: One sure sign that Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is continuing to evolve, mature and gain initial traction is the increase in activity declaring it dead or dumb or similar things. FCoE is still in its infancy while Fibre Channel (FC) is in the process of transitioning to 16Gb with a roadmap that will enable it to continue for many more years. As FCoE continues to ramp up over next several years (remember, FC took several years to get where it is today), continued FC enhancements will give options for those wishing to stick with it while gaining confidence with FCoE, iSCSI, SAS and NAS.
  • Hard drive shortages drive revenues and profits: Some have declared that the recent HDD shortages due to Thailand flooding will cause Solid State Devices (SSD) using flash memory to dramatically grow in adoption and deployment. I think that both single level cell (SLC) and multi level cell (MLC) flash SSDs will continue to grow in deployments counted in units shipped as well as revenues and hopefully also margin or profits. However I also think that with the HDD shortage and continued demand, vendors will use the opportunity to stabilize some of their pricing meaning less discounting while managing the inventory which should mean more margin or profits in a quarter or too. What will be interesting to watch will be if SSD vendors drop the margin in an effort to increase units shipped and deployed to show market revenue and adoption growth while HDD margins rise.

Industry Trends and Perspectives

  • QoS, SLA/SLOs part of cloud conversations: Low cost or cost avoidance will continue to be the focus of some cloud conversations. However with metrics and measurements to make informed decisions, discussions will expand to QoS, SLO, SLAs, security, mean time to restore or return information, privacy, trust and value also enter into the picture. In other words, clouds are growing up and maturing for some, while their existing capabilities become discovered by others.
  • Clouds are a shared responsibility model: The cloud blame game when something goes wrong will continue, however there will also be a realization that as with any technology or tool, there is a shared responsibility. This means that customers accept responsibility for how they will use a tool, technologies or service, the provider assumes responsibility, and both parties have a collective responsibility.
  • Return on innovation is the new ROI: For years, no make that decades a popular buzz term is return on investment the companion of total cost of ownership. Both ROI and TCO as you know and like (or hate) will continue to be used, however for situations that are difficult to monitize, a new variation exists. That new variation is return on innovation which is the measure of intangible benefits derived from how hard products are used to derive value for or of soft products and services delivered.
  • Solid State Devices (SSD) confidence: One of the barriers to flash SSD adoption has been cost per capacity with another being confidence in reliability and data consistency over time (aka duty cycle wear and tear). Many enterprise class solutions have used single level cell (SLC) flash SSD which has better endurance, duty cycle or wear handing capabilities however that benefit comes at the cost of a higher price per capacity. Consequently vendors are pushing multi level cell (MLC) flash SSD that reduces the cost per capacity, however needs extra controller and firmware functionality to manage the wear leaving and duty cycle. In some ways, MLC flash is to SSD memory what SATA high-capacity desktop drives were to HDDs in the enterprise storage space about 8 to 9 years ago. What I mean by that is that more cost high performance disk drives were the norm, then lower cost higher capacity SATA drives appeared resulting in enhancements to make them more enterprise capable while boosting the confidence of customers to use the technology. Same thing is happening with flash SSD in that SLC is more expensive and for many has a higher confidence, while MLC is lower cost, higher capacity and gaining the enhancements to take on a role for flash SSD similar to what high-capacity SATA did in the HDD space. In addition to confidence with SSD, new packaging variations will continue to evolve as well.
  • Virtualization beyond consolidation: The current wave of consolidation of desktop using VDI, server and storage aggregation will continue, however a trend that has grown for a couple of years now that will take more prominence in 2012 and 2013 is realization that not everything can be consolidated, however many things can be virtualized. This means for some applications the focus will not be how many VMs to run per PM, rather, how a PM can be more effectively used to boost performance and agility for some applications during part of the day, while being used for other things at different times. For example a high performance database that normally would not be consolidated would be virtualized to enable agility for maintenance, BC, DR load balancing and placed on a fast PM with lots of fast memory, CPU and IO capabilities dedicated to it. However during off hours when little to no database activity is occurring, then other VMs would be moved onto that PM then moved off before the next busy cycle.

Industry Trends and Perspectives

  • Will applications be ready to leverage cloud: Some applications and functionality can more easily be moved to cloud environments vs. others. A question that organizations will start to ask is what prevents their applications or business functionality from going to or using cloud resources in addition to asking cloud providers what new capabilities will they extend to support old environments.
  • Zombie list grows: More items will be declared dead meaning that they are either still alive, or have reached stability to the point where some want to see them dead so that their preferred technology or topic can take root.
  • Some other topics and trends include continued growing awareness that metrics and measurements matter for cloud, virtualization, data and storage networking. This also means a growing awareness that there are more metrics that matter for storage than cost per GByte or Tbyte that include IOPS, latency or response time, bandwidth, IO size, random and sequential along with availability. 2012 and 2013 will see continued respect being given to NAS at both the high end as well as low end of the market from enterprise down to consumer space. Speaking of consumer and SOHO (Small Office Home Office), now that SMB has generally been given respect or at least attention by many vendors, the new frontier will be to move further down market to the lower end of the SMB which is SOHO, just above consumer space. Of course some vendors have already closed the gap (or at least on paper, power point, web ex or you tube video) from consumer to enterprise. Of course Buzzword bingo will continue to be a popular game.
  • Oh, btw, DevOps will also appear in your vocabulary if it has not already.

Watch for more on these and other topics in the weeks and months to come and if you and to read more now, then get a copy of Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking. Also check out the top 25 new post of 2011 as well as some of the all time most popular posts at StorageIOblog.com that can also be seen on various other venues that pickup the full RSS feed or archive feed. Also check out the StorageIO news letter for more industry trends perspectives and commentary.

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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Top 2011 cloud virtualization storage and networking posts

Im in the process of wrapping up 2011 and getting ready for 2012, here is a list of the top 25 new posts from this past year at StorageIOblog.

Looking back, here is a post about industry trends, thoughts and perspective predictions for 2010 and 2011 (preview 2012 and 2013 thoughts and perspectives here).

Here are the top 25 new blog posts from 2011

Check out the companion posts of the top 25 all time posts here as well as 2012 and 2013 predictions preview 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)

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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Fall (December) 2011 StorageIO News Letter

StorageIO News Letter Image
Fall (December) 2011 News letter

Welcome to the Fall (December) 2011 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) news letter. This follows the Summer 2011 edition.

You can get access to this news letter via various social media venues (some are shown below) in addition to StorageIO web sites and subscriptions.

 

Click on the following links to view the Fall (December) 2011 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the news letter page to view previous editions.

Follow via Goggle Feedburner here or via email subscription here.

You can also subscribe to the news letter by simply sending an email to newsletter@storageio.com

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO newsletter, let me know your comments and feedback.

Nuff said for now

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 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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What industry pundits love and loathe about data storage

Drew Robb has a good article about what IT industry pundits including vendors, analysts, and advisors loath including comments from myself.

In the article Drew asks: What do you really love about storage and what are your pet peeves?

One of my comments and perspectives is that I like Hybrid Hard Disk Drives (HHDDs) in addition to traditional Hard Disk Drives (HDD) along with Solid State Devices (SSDs). As much as I like HHDDs, I also believe that with any technology, they are not the best solution for everything, however they can also be used in many ways than being seen. Here is the fifth installment of a series on HHDDs that I have done since June 2010 when I received my first HHDD a Seagate Momentus XT. You can read the other installments of my momentus moments here, here, here and here.

Seagate Momentus XT
HHDD with integrated nand flash SSD photo courtesy Seagate.com

Molly Rector VP of marketing at tape summit resources vendor Spectra Logic mentioned that what she does not like is companies that base their business plan on patent law trolling. I would have expected something different along the lines of countering or correcting people that say tape sucks, tape is dead, or that tape is the cause problem of anything wrong with storage thus clearing the air or putting up a fight that tape summit resources. Go figure…

Another of my comments involved clouds of which there are plenty of conversations taking place. I do like clouds (I even recently wrote a book involving them) however Im a fan of using them where applicable to coexist and enhance other IT resources. Dont be scared of clouds, however be ready, do your homework, listen, learn, do proof of concepts to decide best practices, when, where, what and how to use them.

Speaking of clouds, click here to read about who is responsible for cloud data loss and cast your vote, along with viewing what do you think about IT clouds in general here.

Mike Karp (aka twitter @storagewonk ) an analyst with Ptak Noel mentions that midrange environments dont get respect from big (or even startup) vendors.

I would take that a step further by saying compared to six or so years ago, SMB are getting night and day better respect along with attention by most vendors, however what is lacking is respect of the SOHO sector (e.g. lower end of SMB down to or just above consumer).

Granted some that have traditional sold into those sectors such as server vendors including Dell and HP get it or at least see the potential along with traditional enterprise vendor EMC via its Iomega . Yet I still see many vendors including startups in general discounting, shrugging off or sneering at the SOHO space similar to those who dissed or did not respect the SMB space several years ago. Similar to the SMB space, SOHO requires different products, packaging, pricing and routes to market via channel or etail mechanisms which means change for some vendors. Those vendors who embraced the SMB and realized what needed to change to adapt to those markets will also stand to do better with the SOHO.

Here is the reason that I think SOHO needs respect.

Simple, SOHOs grow up to become SMBs, SMBs grow up to become SMEs, SMEs grow up to become enterprises and not to mention that the amount of data being generated, moved, processed and stored continues to grow. The net result is that SMBs along with SOHO storage demands will continue to grow and for those vendors who can adjust to support those markets will also stand to gain new customers that in turn can become plans for other solution offerings.

Cloud conversations

Not surprising Eran Farajun of Asigra which has been doing cloud backups decades before they were known as clouds loves backup (and restores). However I am surprised that Eran did not jump on the its time to modernize and re architect data protection theme. Oh well, will have to have a chat with Eran on that sometime.

What was surprising were comments from Panzura who has a good distributed (e.g. read also cloud) file system that can be used for various things including online reference data. Panzura has a solution that normally I would not even think about in the context of being pulled into a Datadomain or dedupe appliance type discussion (e.g tape sucks or other similar themes). So it is odd that they are playing to the tape sucks camp and theme vs. playing to where the technology can really shine which IMHO is in the global, distributed, scale out and cloud file system space. Oh well, I guess you go with what you know or has worked in the past to get some attention.

Molly Rector of Spectra also mentioned that she likes High Performance Computing, surprised that she did not throw in high productivity computing as well in conjunction with big data, big bandwidth, green, dedupe, power, disk, tape and related buzzword bingo terms.

Also there are some comments from myself about cost cutting.

While I see the need for organizations to cut costs during tough economic times, Im not a fan of simply cutting cost for the sake of cost cutting as opposed to finding and removing complexity that in turn remove costs of doing work. In other words, Im a fan of finding and removing waste, becoming more effective and productive along with removing the cost of doing a particular piece of work. This in the end meets the aim of bean counters to cut costs, however can be done in a way that does not degrade service levels or customer service experience. For example instead of looking to cut backup costs, do you know where the real costs of doing data protection exist (hint swapping out media is treating the symptoms) and if so, what can be done to streamline those from the source of the problem downstream to the target (e.g. media or medium). In other words, redesign, review, modernize how data protection is done, leverage data footprint reduction (DFR) techniques including archive, compression, consolidation, data management, dedupe and other technologies in effective and creative ways, after all, return on innovation is the new ROI.

Checkout Drews article here to read more on the above topics and themes.

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 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved