Travel Archives

March 30, 2011November 26, 2023

StorageIO V20.11 (2011) events seminars and web casts schedule

The V20.11 (e.g. 2011 or follow up from V20.10) Server and StorageIO (StorageIO) out and about events schedule continues to evolve.

In the meantime, here are a few (actually a couple dozen) seminars and web casts currently on the event calendar for 2011 that I will be speaking or presenting at. Topics and themes include Server and Storage Optimization, Clouds, Virtualization, Data Protection Modernization (HA, BC, DR, Backup/restore) along with Data Footprint Reduction (DFR including archive, compression, dedupe), End to End (E2E) Management, efficient IT data centers (and storage) among other related items.

Later this summer watch for the release of my new book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC) as well as keep an eye on the StorageIO events page for additional events or details to appear. Also check out the news page for commentary on industry activities, announcements, trends or related topics in addition to the tips (or articles) page. You can also view videos, webinars and pod casts along with news letters containing links from while out and about during 2011 activities (or from past events).

When	Venue	Event Name	Location
Nov 10, 2011		Data Center Summit BC and DR Track Key note speaker: Protect, preserve and server your organizations essential applications and information services in an affordable manner	Los Angeles, CA
Nov 8, 2011		Data Center Summit BC and DR Track Key note speaker: Protect, preserve and server your organizations essential applications and information services in an affordable manner	Seattle, WA
Nov 3, 2011		Data Center Summit BC and DR Track Key note speaker: Protect, preserve and server your organizations essential applications and information services in an affordable manner	Denver, CO
Nov 1, 2011		Data Center Summit BC and DR Track Key note speaker: Protect, preserve and server your organizations essential applications and information services in an affordable manner	Chicago, IL
Sept 29, 2011		Data Center Summit BC and DR Track Key note speaker: Protect, preserve and server your organizations essential applications and information services in an affordable manner	Minneapolis, MN
Aug 4, 2011		Data Center Summit BC and DR Track Key note speaker: Protect, preserve and server your organizations essential applications and information services in an affordable manner	San Francisco, CA
Jul 28, 2011		Data Center Summit BC and DR Track Key note speaker: Protect, preserve and server your organizations essential applications and information services in an affordable manner	Houston, TX
Jul 21, 2011		Event keynote Speaker: Data Center Summit: Virtualization, Business Continuity and Cloud Computing	Raleigh, NC
Jun 28, 2011		Data Center Summit BC and DR Track Key note speaker: Protect, preserve and server your organizations essential applications and information services in an affordable manner	Boston, MA
June 23, 2011		Data Center Summit BC and DR Track Key note speaker: Protect, preserve and server your organizations essential applications and information services in an affordable manner	New York City
June 21, 2011		Event keynote Speaker: Data Center Summit: Virtualization, Business Continuity and Cloud Computing	Tampa, FL
May 18, 2011		Keynote: 2011 Virtualization Best Practices	Irvine, CA
May 12, 2011		Keynote: 2011 Virtualization Best Practices	Chicago, IL
May 10, 2011		Keynote: 2011 Virtualization Best Practices	Dallas, TX
May 5, 2011		Keynote: 2011 Virtualization Best Practices	New York, NY
May 3, 2011		Keynote: 2011 Virtualization Best Practices	Boston, MA
Apr 28, 2011		Data Center Summit BC and DR Track Key note speaker: Protect, preserve and server your organizations essential applications and information services in an affordable manner	Dallas, TX
Apr 12, 2011		Event keynote Speaker: Data Center Summit: Virtualization, Business Continuity and Cloud Computing	St. Louis, MO
Mar 29, 2011	Webcast	Cloud and Virtual BC/DR	Webcast
Mar 24, 2011	Webcast	Tapes Evolving Data Storage Role	Webcast
Mar 15, 2011	Wildfire Grille	Keynote: Virtualization, storage and the enterprise cloud	Eden Prairie, MN
Feb 10, 2011		Guest participant – Enabling safe and secure SaaS	On demand eSeminar
Jan 31, 2011	century College	Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking: Industry Trends	Mahtomedi MN
Jan 12, 2011		Presenter – E2E Awareness and insight for cloud, virtualized and legacy IT environments See more here including viewing the webcast	Virtual event More information

Watch here for more events updates and information as well as signup for the free StorageIO news letter here.

Nuff said for now, look forward to seeing as well as hearing from you while out and about during 2011.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
twitter @storageio

February 17, 2011November 26, 2023

Winter 2011 Server and StorageIO News Letter

Winter 2011 Newsletter

Welcome to the Winter 2011 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) newsletter. This follows the Fall 2011 edition.

You can access 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 Winter 2011 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the newsletter 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.

Cheers gs

Nuff said for now

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
twitter @storageio

January 13, 2011November 26, 2023

What records will EMC break in NYC January 18, 2011?

In case you have not seen or heard, EMC is doing an event next week in New York City (NYC) at the AXA Equitable Center winter weather snow storm clouds permitting (and adequate tools or technologies to deal with the snow removal), that has a theme around breaking records. If you have yet to see any of the advertisements, blogs, tweets, facebook, friendfeed, twitter, yourtube or other mediums messages, here (and here and here) are a few links to learn more as well as register to view the event.

Click on the above image to see more

There is already speculation along with IT industry wiki leaks of what will be announced or talked about next week that you can google or find at some different venues.

The theme of the event is breaking records.

What might we hear?

In addition to the advisor, author, blogger and consultant hats that I wear, Im also in the EMCs analysts relations program and as such under NDA, consequently, what the actual announcement will be next week, no comment for now. BTW, I also wear other hats including one from Boeing even though I often fly on Airbus products as well.

If its not Boeing Im not going, except I do also fly Airbus, Embrear and Bombardiar products
Other hats I wear

However, how about some fun as to what might be covered at next weeks event with getting into a wiki leak situation?

A no brainier would be product (hardware, software, services) related as it is mid January and if you have been in the industry for more than a year or two, you might recall that EMC tends to a mid winter launch around this time of year along with sometimes an early summer refresh. Guess what time of the year it is.
Im guessing lots of superlatives, perhaps at a record breaking pace (e.g. revolutionary first, explosive growth, exponential explosive growth, perfect storm among others that could be candidates for the Storagebrain wall of fame or shame)
Maybe we will even hear that EMC has set a new record of number of members in Chads army aka the vspecialists focused on vSphere related topics along with a growing (quietly) number of Microsoft HyperV specialist.
That EMC has a record number of twitter tweeps engaged in conversations (or debates) with different audiences, collectives, communities, competitors, customers, individuals, organizations, partners or venues among others.
Possibly that their involvement in the CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) has resulted in enough savings to offset the impact of hosting the event making it carbon and environment neutral. After all, we already know that EMC has been in the CDP as in Continual or Constant Data Protection as well as Complete or Comprehensive Data Protection along with Cloud Data Protection not to mention Common Sense Data Protection (CSDP) for sometime now.
Perhaps something around the number of acquisitions, patents, products, platforms, products and partners they have amassed recently.
For investors, wishful thinking that they will be moving their stock into record territories.
Im also guessing we will hear or see a record number of tweets, posts, videos and stories.
To be fair and balanced, Im also expecting a record number of counter tweets, counter posts, counter videos and counter stories coming out of the event.

Some records I would like to see EMC break however Im not going to hold my breath at least for next week include:

Announcement of upping the game in performance benchmarking battles with record setting or breaking various SPC benchmark results submitted on their own (instead of via a competitor or here) in different categories of block storage devices along with entries for SSD based, clustered and virtualized. Of course we would expect to hear how those benchmarks and workload simulations really do not matter which would be fine, at least they would have broken some records.
Announcement of having shipped more hard disk drives (HDD) than anyone else in conjunction with shipping more storage than anyone else. Despite being continually declared dead (its not) and SSD gaining traction, EMC would have a record breaking leg to stand on if the qualify amount of storage shipped as external or shared or networked (SAN or NAS) as opposed to collective (e.g. HP with servers and storage among others).
Announcement that they are buying Cisco, or Cisco is buying them, or that they and Cisco are buying Microsoft and Oracle.
Announcement of being proud of the record setting season of the Patriots, devastated to losing a close and questionable game to the NY Jets, wishing them well in the 2010 NFL Playoffs (Im just sayin…).
Announcement of being the first vendor and solution provider to establish SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, DaaS and many other XaaS offerings via their out of this world new moon base (plans underway for Mars as part of a federated offering).
Announcement that Fenway park will be rebranded as the house that EMC built (or rebuilt).

Disclosure: I will be in NYC on Tuesday the 18th as one of EMCs many guests that they have picked up airfare and lodging, thanks to Len Devanna and the EMC social media crew for reaching out and extending the invitation.

Other guests of the event will include analysts, advisors, authors, bloggers, beat writers, consultants, columnist, customers, editors, media, paparazzi, partners, press, protesters (hopefully polite ones), publishers, pundits, twitter tweepps and writers among others.

I wonder if there will also be a record number of disclosures made by others attending the event as guests of EMC?

More after (or maybe during) the event.

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

September 3, 2010June 13, 2021

VMworld 2010 virtual roads, clouds and INXS Devil Inside

This past week I spent a few days in San Francisco attending the VMworld 2010 event which included a Wednesday evening concert with the Australian band INXS.

Despite some long lines (or queues) waiting to get into sessions, keynotes or lunch resulting in delays reminiscent of trying to put too many virtual machines (VMs) onto a given number of physical machines (PMs) in the quest to drive up utilization, the overall event was fantastic.

While at the event, I had a chance to meet up with fellow vExpert Eric Siebert whose new book Maximum vSphere made its debut. I was honored when asked by Eric to help out with his chapter on storage, learn more about Erics new book here.

Eric was just one of many people I was able to catch up with or in some cases meet for the first time face to face. Among the many fellow twitter tweeps included @3parfarley @aebarrett @charleshood @cxi @edsai @ericsiebert @hpstorageguy @iben @jmichelmetz @jtroyer @keithnorbie @KendrickColeman @MesabiGroup @PariseauTT @RayLucchesi @RickVanover @rodos @rogerlund @rootwyrm @sakacc @scott_lowe @ServerVirt_TT @SiliconValleyPR @ssauer @ssharwood @StorageOlogist @stu @Texiwill and @vmworld not to mention many others who are not on twitter.

Big thanks to @rogerlund for organizing a very impromptu ad hoc lunch discussion with a couple of other IT pros representing vary different as well as diverse spectrums of public, private, small, large and ultra large environments. I was only at the event for two days and thus there were many others that I was looking for at their booths or in the hallways (I saw @ekhnaser among others that I could not call out too in time) or in the meeting rooms as well as in the lunch hall. I look forward to seeing you all at some future event or venue.

On the food scene, while I did not have a chance to dine at one of my local favorites Brandy Hos, I did have a fantastic lunch at Henrys House of Pain (aka Henrys House of Hunan on Sansome). I also had a great outdoor dinner in the alleyway based Cafe Tiramisu where I enjoyed their signature dish. The dish which was essentially a fruit de mer (Fruit of the Sea) over linguine covered with a thin pizza crust that was baked. It was fantastic and brings a whole new dimension to the theme of a classic pot pie meets fruit de mar, give it a try!

On an even lighter or fun note, following are photos and links to some videos of the INXS event courtesy of Karen (aka Mrs Schulz). In addition to being an award winning photographer, Karens day time job is that of an applications development analyst (e.g. an IT Geekette) at a large Minnesota based Mining and Manufacturing company that is also involved in many different sticky and abrasive among other products.

Karen (Photo Courtesy Karen Sculz)

Karen took the following photos (and videos) with her Cannon Powershot S5 Digital camera.

Me heading to INXS show at VMworld 2010 (Photo Courtesy Karen Schulz)

Me sitting in the middle of the virtual highway (Photo Courtesy Karen Schulz)

INXS at VMworld 2010 (Photo Courtesy Karen Schulz)

JD Fortune of INXS at VMworld (Photo Courtesy Karen Schulz)

Kirk Pengilly and JD Fortune of INXS at VMworld 2010 (Photo Courtesy Karen Schulz)

Tim Farriss of INXS (Photo Courtesy Karen Schulz)

Here are links to some videos that Karen captured from up front near the stage during the INXS show at VMworld 2010.

Devil Inside (not to be confused with the devil is in the details of clouds, virtualization and other IT topics)

By My Side (Where a vendor or solution partner should be during and after the sale for their customers)

Disappear (What should not happen to your data or virtual machines in physical, virtual or cloud environments)

Never Tear Us Apart (What should not happen between your servers, storage, applications and data)

Need You Tonight (The call that many system admins get during their off hours)

New Sensation (What many are experience with virtualization and clouds)

Dont Change (Ironic final song of encore of a concert at conference with a theme of change)

A big tip of the hat along with thanks goes out to John Troyer of VMware as well as Sarah Shvil of the VMware Analyst Relations team for helping make it possible for me to attend as an independent IT industry analyst instead of on the coat tails of a vendors exhibit hall pass (disclosure: I paid for my own travel, lodging and dinning expenses).

Me hitching a ride on the virtual highway to the clouds and VMworld (Photo Curtsey Karen Schulz)

Hopefully with some luck, I will be able to hitch a ride and attend VMworld again next year in Las Vegas, perhaps even as a repeat vExpert as well as IT Industry Analyst.

Thats a wrap for now.

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

August 30, 2010November 26, 2023

August 2010 StorageIO News Letter

August 2010 Newsletter

Welcome to the August Summer Wrap Up 2010 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) newsletter. This follows the June 2010 edition building on the great feedback received from recipients.
Items that are new in this expanded edition include:

Out and About Update
Industry Trends and Perspectives (ITP)
Featured Article

You can access 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 August 2010 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the newsletter 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.

Cheers gs

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

August 20, 2010December 4, 2019

My Favorite Late Summer Reading Material

No it is not the Tape Times, or the Oracle Sun times, or IBM Magic Moments, or EMC Money Magazine, nor is it the Oracle Law Journal review. Sorry to say that it is not the Dedupe Discovery Debate Diaries, nor is it the Virtual Vanity Fair or NetApp Networking News.

My favorite late summer reading is not the eDiscovery Entertainment this week, or Mens Metadata Monthly and it is not the Cisco Chronicles let alone the HP national inquirer Pages.

No my favorite late summer reading is not Business Barons, NFL weekly wrap up nor Virtualization Hyperventilation Health tips. Neither is it the editorials, advertisements or cheerleading sections in the Cloud Crowd Confusion Chronicles, nor is it million miler monthly and it is not Green IT Eggs and Spam. While all good reads, it is not Wine Snob Weekly, or the Great Grape Gazette or Beer Brewers News, Minnesota DNR news, Virtual Motor head Monthly, or Freshwater Dock Yachting Yearly review, Aviation Leak and Space Technology nor Rolling Stone.

It is also not one of the local news papers or national ones for that matter although the Singapore Shipping Times is a good diversion read that reminds me of my past visits there.

While I would like to say it is one of the many popular blogs (industry or other), let alone one of the many great books out there in print or kindle, no, it is something completely different.

Granted all of the above or their virtual reality physical variant are in fact great reading material that I enjoy and do recommend (or their reasonable facsimile).

However, there is one that stands out above all others and it is called Cooks Illustrated (FTC disclosure, my wife gave me a subscription).

Is there a point to all of the above which if you could not tell, includes some tongue in cheek humor, perhaps what some might see as, skepticism or snarkyness while others might have a good laugh (to each your own)?

Yes the point is this.

Take a break from your normal wide world of work routine, stop typing or talking for a bit, sit back, maybe put some tunes on and read something to stimulate (as well as relax) the brain for a bit.

Find and enjoy some recreational or diversion reading material no matter how light or heavy, humor or serious, perhaps listen to some music and enjoy a cold (or warm) beverage perhaps even drifting into a drool producing nap. Enjoy the balance of your summer (or winter for friends down under) and take some time to read something to stimulate that gray matter between the ears located slightly behind your eyes.

Ok, now Im hungry have to go.

BTW: What is your favorite late summer reading material (and/or relaxation activity, music, food or beverage)?

Cheers gs

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

June 28, 2010January 19, 2023

Gregs StorageIO Out and About Update: June 2010

With the 2010 summer solstice having occurred in the northern hemisphere that means it is time for a quick out and about update. It has been a busy winter and spring in the office, on the road as well as at home.

Some results of this recent activity have appeared in blog, on my web site as well as via other sites and venues. For example, activity or content ranges from Industry Trends and Perspectives white papers, reports, blogs, newsletter commentary, interviews, Internet TV, videos, web cast, pod casts (including several appearances on StorageMonkeys Infosmack as well as Rich Brambleys Virtumania), ask the expert (ATE) questions, twitter tweets, tips and columns. Then there were the many in person presentations, key note and seminar events, conferences, briefing sessions along with virtual conferencing and advisory consulting sessions (read and see more here).

Regarding having new content appearing in different or new venues, Silicon Angle (including a video), Newstex and Enterprise Efficiencies join the long list of industry and vertical, traditional along with new world venues that my content as well as industry trends and perspective commentary appear in. Read more about events and activities here, content here or commentary here.

Speaking of books, there is also some news in that The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) is now available on Amazon Kindle (click on links below) as well as having been translated and published in China not to mention having undergone another round of printing keeping up with demand to make more copies available via global venues.

The Green and Virtual Data Center Chineese Edition: ISBN 978-7-115-21827-8

As for what am I seeing and hearing, check out the new series of Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) short blog posts that compliment other posts as well as content found on the main web site. These ITP pieces capture what I am hearing and seeing (that is of those what I can talk about that are not under NDA of course) while out and about.

Some of the cities that I have been at while out and about doing keynote speaking and seminar events as well as for other meetings have included Minneapolis, Miami, San Diego, Beverly Hills, San Jose, San Diego (again), Hollywood (again), Austin, Miami (again), New York City, Reston, Minneapolis (again), Irvine, New York City (again), Boston, Toronto, Atlanta, Chicago, Columbus, Philadelphia, Mountain View, Mahtomedia (Minneapolis area), Boston (again) and Indianapolis, Calgary, Jasper (Alberta), Vancouver in Canada as well as Nijkerk (Netherlands) for a one day seminar covering Industry Trends and Perspectives in addition to changing planes in Atlanta, Detroit, Memphis and Las Vegas.

The Planes should be obvious, however what about automobiles you ask? How about the following taken from my rental car while driving north of LAX on the 405 after a January storm during my trip from San Diego after a morning event to Beverly Hills to do an evening keynote.

Rainbow seen from 405 north of LAX
Driving north of LAX on the 405 with a rainbow after rain storm

Another car trip a few weeks later after a different event in San Diego I had a driver from a service behind the wheel so that I could get some work done before an evening meeting. Also on the car front, after flying into Indianapolis there was a car ride to Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) to do a keynote for a CDW sponsored event in gasoline alley a few days before the big race there. While we are on the topic of automobiles and technology, if you have not seen it, check out a post I did about what NAS, NASA and NASCAR have in common.

Gasoline Alley at Indy 500 Practice during a speaking event

What about trains you ask?

VIA Rail: The Canadian Waiting for morning Train at Nijkerk Station to take me to Amsterdam Airport

Besides the normal airport trams or trains, there was a fun Amtrak Acela ride from New York City Penn station after a morning event in the city up to Boston so as to be in place for a morning event the next day. Other train activity besides airport, subway or commuter light rail in the US and Europe (Holland), there was also an overnight trip on VIA Rail Canada the Canadian from Jasper Alberta to Vancouver (some business tied into a long weekend). If you have never been to the Canadian Rockies, let alone traveled via train, check this one, it was a blast and I highly recommend it.

Lake Louise Alberta Canada Bear family seen near Jasper Alberta
Lake Louise and Jasper area bear family in Alberta Canada

It just dawned on me, what about any out and about via boats?

Other than the Boston water taxi to Logan Airport from the convention center where EMCworld was held and that I did an Internet TV interview along with @Stu and @Scott_Lowe, boat activity has been so far relegated to relaxation.

However, as all work and no play could make for a dull boy (or girl), I can update you that the out and about via boat fishing and sightseeing activity has been very good so far this fall even with high (then low, then high) water on the scenic St. Croix river way.

Here are some scenes from out and about on the St. Croix river including an eagle in its nest tending to its young who can not be seen in this photo as well as fishing (and catching and releasing).

Greg and his Fish Guide: Out and About on St. Croix River Photos by Karen Schulz Waleye Fish: Out and About on St. Croix River Photos by Karen Schulz
This is Walter: Out and About on St. Croix River Photos by Karen Schulz One of our Neighbors who had an addition to their family this year: Out and About on St. Croix River Photos by Karen Schulz

In between travels (as well as during on planes, trains and in hotel rooms) as well as relaxation breaks, I have been also working on several other projects. Some of these can be seen on the news or tips and articles as well as video and pod cast pages in addition to custom research as well as advisory consulting services. I have also been working on some other projects some of which will become visible over the next weeks and months, others not for a longer period of time yet and yet others that fall under the NDA category so that is all I have to say about that.

If you are not receiving or have seen them, the inaugural issue of the Server and StorageIO newsletter appeared in late February followed by the second edition (Spring 2010) this past week. Both can be found here and here as well as at www.storageio.com/newsletter or subscribing via newsletter@storageio.com.

A question I often get asked is what am I hearing or seeing particularly with regards to IT customers as well as with vars during my travels. Here are some photos covering some of the things that I have seen so far this year while out and about.

Super TV or Visualization device at Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) in Austin
Note all of the dell servers side by side under the screens required to drive the image.

Taking a walk inside a supercomputer (left) and Texas Supercomputer (Note the horns)

View of MTC during one of stops part of a five city server virtualizaiton series I did
Microsoft Technology Center (MTC)

view from coach class Flight travel tools
View from the back of the plane (left), Airplane long haul essentials: water, food, ipod, coffee, eye shades

Dutch boats
Boats in Holland taken after dinner before recent seminar I did in Nijkerk

Dutch snack (yum yum) food Dutch Soccer or Pub Grub
Dutch Soccer (Pub) food and snacks being enjoyed after a recent seminar in Nijkerk

Waiting at AMS for flight to MSP Airplane food and maps
Airport waiting for planes in AMS (left), more airplane snacks and a map (right)

As to what am I seeing and hearing pertaining to IT, storage, networking and server trends or issues they include among others (see the newsletter):

Whats on deck and and that I am working on?

Having had a busy fun winter and spring Im going to get some relaxation time in during a couple of week period of no travel, however there is plenty to do and get ready for. The summer months will slow down a bit on the out and about travel events scene, however not to a complete stop. In between preparing for upcoming events, advisory and consulting activities as well as researching new material and topics not to mention working on some projects that you will see or hear more about in the weeks and months to come.

For example I will be a guest on a webcast sponsored by Viridity discussing the importance of data center metrics, measurement and insight for effective management to enable energy efficient and effective data centers on July 8th. In addition, I will also be doing another five city storage virtualization series in Stamford, Cleveland, Miami, Tampa and Louisville during mid to late July among other upcoming activities including VMworld in San Francisco.

Check out the events page for more details, specific dates and venues.

What about you?

What have you been doing or have planned for your summer?

Let me know what you are seeing or hearing as well as have been doing.

In the meantime however keep these hints and tips in mind:

Have plenty of reading material (real physical books or magazines) or virtual (Kindle or other) as well as via Internet or online to read while at the beach (make sure your computer or PDA is backed up), pool side, in the backyard or elsewhere
Remember your eye shades (sun glasses or eye wear), hat and sun screen and if applicable, inspect or bug repellant (e.g. RAID is still useful)

Drink plenty of liquid fluids while outside in the summer heat including non alcoholic ones that do not have umbrellas or other interesting garnish
Have a place to backup and protect all those summer photos, videos and audio clips that you record while on your out and about adventure. However, keep in mind privacy concerns when uploading them to various social mediums. After all, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas and what happens on the web stays on the web!

Thanks to everyone involved in the recent events which can be seen here, as well for those who will be participating in upcoming ones I look forward to meeting and talking with you.

Until next time have a fun, safe and relaxing summer if you are in the northern hemisphere and for those down under, not to worry, spring is on the way soon for you as well.

Cheers gs

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

Follow via Google Feedburner here or via email subscription here.

June 1, 2010November 26, 2023

June 2010 StorageIO Newsletter

June 2010 Newsletter

Welcome to the June 2010 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) newsletter. This follows the Spring 2010 edition building on the great feedback received from recipients.
Items that are new in this expanded edition include:

Out and About Update
Industry Trends and Perspectives (ITP)
Featured Article

You can access 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 June 2010 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the newsletter 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.

Cheers gs

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

May 20, 2010November 26, 2023

Upcoming Event: Industry Trends and Perspective European Seminar

Event Seminar Announcement:

IT Data Center, Storage and Virtualization Industry Trends and Perspective
June 16, 2010 Nijkerk, GELDERLAND Netherlands

Event Type	Training/Seminar
Event Type	Seminar Training with Greg Schulz of US based Server and StorageIO
Sponsor	Brouwer Storage Consultancy
Target Audience	Storage Architects, Consultants, Pre-Sales, Customer (technical) decison makers
Keywords	Cloud, Grid, Data Protection, Disaster Recovery, Storage, Green IT, VTL, Encryption, Dedupe, SAN, NAS, Backup, BC, DR, Performance, Virtualization, FCoE
Location and Venue	Ampt van Nijkerk Berencamperweg Nijkerk, GELDERLAND NL
When	Wed. June 16, 2010 9AM-5PM Local
Price	€ 450,=
Event URL	LinkedIn: https://storageioblog.com/book4.html
Contact	Gert Brouwer Olevoortseweg 43 3861 MH Nijkerk The Netherlands Phone: +31-33-246-6825 Fax: +31-33-245-8956 Cell Phone: +31-652-601-309 info@brouwerconsultancy.com
Abstract	General items that will be covered include: What are current and emerging macro trends, issues, challenges and opportunities. Common IT customer and IT trends, issues and challenges. Opportunities for leveraging various current, new and emerging technologies, techniques. What are some new and improved technologies and techniques. The seminar will provide insight on how to address various IT and data storage management challenges, where and how new and emerging technologies can co-exist as well as compliment installed resources for maximum investment protection and business agility. Additional themes include cost and storage resource management, optimization and efficiency approaches along with where and how cloud, virtualizaiton and other topics fit into existing environments. Buzzwords and topics to be discussed include among others: FC and FCoE, SAS, SATA, iSCSI and NAS, I/O Vritualization (IOV) and convergence SSD (Flash and RAM), RAID, Second Generation MAID and IPM, Tape Performance and Capacity planning, Performance and Capacity Optimization, Metrics IRM tools including DPM, E2E, SRA, SRM, as Well as Federated Management Data movement and migration including automation or policy enabled HA and Data protection including Backup/Restore, BC/DR , Security/Encryption VTL, CDP, Snapshots and replication for virtual and non virtual environments Dynamic IT and Optimization , the new Green IT (efficiency and productivity) Distributed data protection (DDP) and distributed data caching (DDC) Server and Storage Virtualization along with discussion about life beyond consolidation SAN, NAS, Clusters, Grids, Clouds (Public and Private), Bulk and object based Storage Unified and vendor prepackaged stacked solutions (e.g. EMC VCE among others) Data footprint reduction (Servers, Storage, Networks, Data Protection and Hypervisors among others.

Learn about other events involving Greg Schulz and StorageIO at www.storageio.com/events

April 11, 2010January 23, 2019

Seagate to say goodbye to Cayman Islands, Hello Ireland

Seagate (NASDQ: STX) corporation, the parent of the company many people in IT and data storage in particular know as Seagate the disk drive manufacturer is moving their paper headquarters from the Cayman Islands where they have been based since 2000 to Ireland.

Let me rephrase that as Seagate is not moving their Scotts Valley California headquarters of operations or any design, manufacturing or marketing to Ireland that is not already there. Rather, Seagate as a manufacturing company is moving where it is incorporated (paper corporate headquarters) from the Cayman Islands to the Emerald Island of Ireland.

Confused yet?
Do not worry, it is confusing at first. I ended up having to reread through the Seagate corporate material and remembering back to the late 1990s it all started to make sense. Seagate has over 50,000 employees located at facilities around the world including manufacturing, support, design, research and development, sales and marketing along with corporate administration among others.

Their business while focused on data storage currently is very much centered on magnetic disk drives with a much diversified portfolio including products obtained via their acquisition of Maxtor. The Seagate product portfolio includes among others high end enterprise class Fibre Channel and SAS 15,500 RPM (15.5K) high performance to high capacity SAS and SATA devices, 10K small form factor (SFF) to mid market, SMB, USB based SOHO, prosumer or consumer along with portable and specialized devices among many others including emerging SSD and hybrid devices.

However back in the late 1990s, Seagate ventured off into some other areas for a time being including owning (in part) Veritas (since divested and now part of Symantec), Xiotech (now back on its own under venture ownership including some tied to Seagate) among some other transactions. In a series of moves, merger and acquisition, divestures, restructuring, paper corporate headquarters that reads like something out of a Hollywood movie, Seagate ended up moving its place of incorporation to the Cayman Islands.

Seagate as it was known had essentially become the manufacturing company owned by a paper holding company incorporated off shore for business and tax purposes. Want to learn more, read the companies annual reports and other filings some of which can be found here.

The Business End of the Move
Without getting into the deep details of international finance, tax law or articles of business incorporation, many companies are actually incorporated in a location different from where they actualy have their headquarters. In the United States, that is often Delaware where corporations file their paper work for articles of incorporations and then locate their headquarters or primary place of business elsewhere.

Seagate SEC filings outlining move
Seagate SEC filing outlining proposed move

Outside of the United States, the Cayman Islands among other locations have been a popular location for companies to file their paper work and have a paper headquarters due to favorable tax rates and other business benefits. Perhaps you have even watched a movie or two where part of the plot involved some business transaction of a paper company located in the Cayman Island as a means of shelter business dealings. In the case of Seagate, in 2000 during a restricting their corporate (paper) headquarters was moved to the Cayman due to its favorable business climate including lower tax structure.

Dive Cayman Islands

Disclosure: While I am a certified and experienced PADI SCUBA Divemaster having visited many different venues, Cayman Island is not one of them. Likewise, while I have distant relatives never meet, I would live to visit Ireland sometime.

Why is Seagate saying goodbye to the nice warm climate of the Cayman Islands heading off to the emerald Isle?

Visit Ireland

Simple, a more favorable business climate that include international business and taxation benefits as well as Ireland is not coming under scrutiny as a tax haven by the U.S. and other governments as have the Cayman Islands (along with other locations). Let me also be clear that Seagate is not new to Ireland having had a presence there for some time (See here).

What does all of this mean?
From a technology perspective pretty much nothing as this appears to be mainly a business and financial move for the shareholders of Seagate. As for impact on shareholders, other than reading through some documents if so inclined, probably not much impact if any at all.

As for IT customers, their solution providers who are customers of Seagate this probably does not mean anything at all as it should be business as usual.

What about others parties, governments, countries or entities?

Tough to say if this is a trend of companies that will begin moving their paper headquarters from the Caymans to elsewhere so as to escape being in the spotlight of U.S. and other governments looking for additional revenues.

Perhaps a boon to Ireland if more companies decide to move their paper as well as actual company operations there as many have done over the past decades. Otherwise for the rest of us, it can make for interesting reading, conversations, speculation, debate and discussion.

And that is all that I have to say about this for now, what say you?

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

January 13, 2010March 7, 2022

EPA Server and Storage Workshop Feb 2, 2010

Following up on a recent previous post pertaining to US EPA Energy Star(r) for Servers, Data Center Storage and Data Centers, there will be a workshop held Tuesday February 2, 2010 in San Jose, CA.

Here is the note (Italics added by me for clarity) from the folks at EPA with information about the event and how to participate.

Dear ENERGY STAR® Servers and Storage Stakeholders:

Representatives from the US EPA will be in attendance at The Green Grid Technical Forum in San Jose, CA in early February, and will be hosting information sessions to provide updates on recent ENERGY STAR servers and storage specification development activities. Given the timing of this event with respect to ongoing data collection and comment periods for both product categories, EPA intends for these meetings to be informal and informational in nature. EPA will share details of recent progress, identify key issues that require further stakeholder input, discuss timelines for the completion, and answer questions from the stakeholder community for each specification.

The sessions will take place on February 2, 2010, from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM PT, at the San Jose Marriott. A conference line and Webinar will be available for participants who cannot attend the meeting in person. The preliminary agenda is as follows:

Servers (10:00 AM to 12:30 PM)

Draft 1 Version 2.0 specification development overview & progress report

Tier 1 Rollover Criteria
Power & Performance Data Sheet
SPEC efficiency rating tool development

Opportunities for energy performance data disclosure

Storage (1:30 PM to 4:00 PM)

Draft 1 Version 1.0 specification development overview & progress report
Preliminary stakeholder feedback & lessons learned from data collection

A more detailed agenda will be distributed in the coming weeks. Please RSVP to storage@energystar.gov or servers@energystar.gov no later than Friday, January 22. Indicate in your response whether you will be participating in person or via Webinar, and which of the two sessions you plan to attend.

Thank you for your continued support of ENERGY STAR.

End of EPA Transmission

For those attending the event, I look forward to seeing you there in person on Tuesday before flying down to San Diego where I will be presenting on Wednesday the 3rd at The Green Data Center Conference.

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

January 8, 2010March 7, 2022

Upcoming Events and Activities Update V2010.1

The end of year christmas and new years holiday season has come and gone which means of course that 2009 is a wrap along with the travel from being out and about.

In addition to getting some time to relax a bit (playing Wii resort, snow plowing, cooking etc.), I have also been catching up on developing some new content including articles, blogs (some yet to be post), tips as well as podcasts along with some custom research advisory projects.

Check out some recent tips, articles, videos and podcasts here along with perspecitives and comments on indusitry news here.

2009 events and activities saw visits to cities including San Jose, Tucson, Cancun Mexico, Dallas, Tampa, Miami, Los Angles, San Jose, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Atlanta, St. Louis, Birmingham, Cincinnati, Santa Ana, Minneapolis, Boston, Dallas, Boston, Chicago, Parsipanny, Raleigh, Providence, Kansas City, Denver, Chicago, Orlando, Chicago, Philadelphia, Toronto, Richmond, Columbus, Princeton, Seattle, Portland, Dallas, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Toronto, Chicago, New York, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland and Detroit among others.

This time of the year also means that the 2010 events and activities including in person keynote and presentations also known as out and about are getting underway. While the 2010 schedule of events is still being finalized, some initial events have are on the calendar, my bags are about to be packed and tickets in hand not to mention finalizing the presentation and discussion content.

In addition to some non public events including keynote presenting at some vendors annual sales (kick off) meetings, the following are some of what are currently on the calendar that you can click on the links below to learn more about the venues.

February 3, 2010 Green Data Center Conference, San Diego, CA
January 21, 2010 Dinner Event keynote Speaker Dynamic IT Infrastructure, Beverly Hills, CA
January 21, 2010 Morning keynote Speaker The Green and Virtual Data Center, San Diego, CA
January 19, 2010 Dinner Event keynote Speaker Dynamic IT Infrastructure, Miami, FL

Watch for updates to the events calendar and I look forward to seeing you all while Im out and about during 2010.

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

September 24, 2009November 26, 2023

Blame IT on the UN in NYC this week

This week is UN week in NYC, that annual fall event that results in traffic jams that make normal traffic seem like a breeze.

What with the security lockdowns, sudden road closures, re-routes, news crews, security details and the like, it’s a wonder anything gets done. I was in NYC for about 26 hours this week at the Storage Decisions event where I presented on optimizing for performance and capacity to enable efficient and green storage as well as recording a video on cloud storage and saw or experienced first hand the delays.

This is not going to be one of those complain about how I was inconvenienced rants, rather a bit of fun

Consequently, should you have or had any issues this past week, do like others and blame the UN. For example, late for a meeting, presentation, conference call, coffee break or lunch, getting home or to the ballpark, blame it on the UN. Other potential items that you can feel free to blame on the UN in NYC this week include:

RAID rebuilds on those large disk drives taking to long
Server, workstation, desktop, laptop or iphone reboots taking to long.
Database consistency checks or virus scans taking to long, you know who you can blame!
Cannot get a cell phone, landline or wireless connection inside, outside or anywhere?
Vmotion taking to long to migrate a server, failover not as fast, you know the drill.
IT budget scrapped, yet you have to do more, guess who’s to blame this week
Regulatory compliance, BC/DR, data security have you locked up, yup, thats right!
Cant download, upload or access WebEx, FedEx or backup to cloud, yup, blame it on the UN
Cant get a loan or venture capital financing for your startup, it’s the UNs fault right?
Your kindle brook and Amazon took away the books you bought and downloaded?
Missed your flight, train, car pool ride in another city, you know the story.
Interoperability and vendor finger pointing got you in a bind, yup; it’s the UN in NYC that’s the issue.
Forest fires or dust storms in Australia, ice cap melting at the north pole, yup, the UN in NYC this week

Look, I was stuck in traffic, made the best of it, listened to Infosmack #20 while doing some emails, doing a few calls instead of getting all twisted up about it. I actually like visiting NYC, lots to see and do, however also nice to move on, for those who have never experience NYC during UN week, give it a try sometime.

Cheers – gs

Greg Schulz – StorageIOblog, twitter @storageio Author “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC)

Technorati tags: NYC, UN

September 6, 2009November 26, 2023

Upcoming Out and About Events

Following up on previous Out and About updates ( here and here ) of where I have been, heres where I’m going to be over the next couple of weeks.

On September 15th and 16th 2009, I will be the keynote speaker along with doing a deep dive discussion around data deduplication in Minneapolis, MN and Toronto ON. Free Seminar, register and learn more here.

The Infrastructure Optimization and Planning Best Practices (V2.009) – Doing more with less without sacrificing storage, system or network capabilities Seminar series continues September 22, 2009 with a stop in Chicago. Free Seminar, register and learn more here.

On September 23, 2009 I will be in New York City at Storage Decisions conference participating in the Ask the Experts during the expo session as well as presenting 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, technologies and techniques that will be discussed include among others:

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

Free event, learn more and register here.

Check out the events page for other upcoming events and hope to see you this fall while Im out and about.

Cheers – gs

Greg Schulz – StorageIOblog, twitter @storageio Author “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC)

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