Out and about update, Off to VMworld next week

For those that consider summer to be over after the labor day weekend in the northern hemisphere, well, then summer is almost over, for others, there is still plenty of nice weather to enjoy and get out and about. In addition to back to school time, its also the start of the fall conferences, symposium, lunch and learns, seminars, chugs & hugs (vendor/var/partner get together’s) schedule along with VMworld taking place next week in San Francisco (I will be there) in addition to many other events.

Having already this year been in (not counting changing planes in Atlanta, Detroit or Memphis), Atlanta, Birmingham, Boston, Cancun, Chicago, Cincinnati, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Orlando, Parsippany, Philadelphia, Portland, Princeton, Providence, Raleigh, Richmond, San Jose, Santa Ana, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa, Toronto and Tucson not to mention several other cities where I was for consulting and advisory engagements, upcoming cities I will be visiting this fall include among others Atlanta (again), Chicago (again), Cleveland, Detroit, New York City and San Francisco.

Check out events page to see what else is coming up when and where, see you sometime this fall while out and about.

Cheers – gs

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

Technorati tags: StorageIOblog, vmworld

All work and no play? Ok, how about an education half day?

This past week in between keynote talks and moderating panel discussions pertaining to IT infrastructure optimization (server, storage, networks, hardware, software, services, virtualization, etc.) in Seattle and Portland, I was able to take a rare couple of hours break and go on a non work related tour.

The tour was actually two tours in one, the 1st being the future of flight facility located adjacent (ok, across the runway) to the Boeing Everett large commercial aircraft facility, which is where the 2nd tour was.

There was a saying heard on the tour, as well as something seen on several signs and bumper stickers which is, “if it does not say Boeing, I’m not going”. Disclosure time, I did fly to Seattle on a Boeing product, however I flew home from Portland on an Airbus product, and in-between those two great cities, I traveled via Amtrak.

Having been in many other in interesting factories including those of GE Aircraft Engines, GE Appliances not to mention electrical power plants (another form of a factory) both Coal, Hydro and Nuclear as well as automotive/trucks, army tanks along with chemical manufacturing or processing sites among others, the Boeing tour is right up there if not at the top of the list.

Boeing Everett Plant - photo from Gregs iPhone
Here’s an iPhone photo of from the future of flight museum/facility of the Boeing Everett factory

To say the building is huge would be an understatement! In the above photo, on the left the blue doors are each about the size of a football field in size. The building is touted as the largest building by volume in the world, and once up close you can see why the key phrase is “by volume”. The place is huge! Click here to see some more information from Boeing about the site.

Boeing does not allow cameras, cell phones, MP3 players, purses, backpacks or fanny packs, essentially anything other than your wallet or what’s in your pocket during the tour, so sorry, no photos.  However, here are some links including a great website (flight blogger) where you can see what I saw as well as learn a lot more.

Boeing is in the process of developing two new commercial aircraft, the 747-8 and the 787 “Dream liner” (learn more here at Boeings newairplane.com site).

In the factory, on the 747 line, which is in the older part of the building (40+ years old), the first of what is the newest or essentially 3rd generation of the 40 year old 747 airplane was seen having had its fuselage sections joined hours before. In the photo found in the following link, the sections were hours away from being joined, and the vantage point of the tour can be seen in the background adjacent to where the large U.S. flag is seen.

Click here and here to see photos from Flightblogger.com of the new “next generation” 747-8F taken the day before the tour. Click here to see some images of the 787 dream liner, including this one here that had just been removed from the paint hanger and was parked on the ramp. I also saw this plane on the ramp that had just emerged from being painted.

Some perspectives that I found interesting from the tour included:

On the 747 line, there were plenty of factory sounds, pneumatic air tools, riveters, drills, hammering and activity one would expect in a large factory where there was a mix of hand building with tools and automation. However clearly, rooted in a 40+ year old technology that has been brought up to current generation standards, systems and technologies.

In the middle of the factory, where the newer 777 were being assembled, it looked like a newer program and processes including with moving assembly lines similar to what you would expect in a high volume factory. There were lots of people moving and installing things, you could see and hear work being done, however much more automated than on the larger 747 line, not surprising seeing the size of the new 747-8F.

At the opposite end of the factory, in a section that is only about 15 years old, you could tell the difference in the structure as you walk through the below factory floor access tunnels which are large enough for large automobiles to comfortably pass each other in. The tunnels were larger; there were more bulk fiber optic cables in the overhead conveyance racks and a generally newer look and feel. However once up on the observation level above the factory floor is where you could really see the difference.

At the end of the tour, we saw the brand new 787 dream liner being put together. This is a brand new plan that has yet to fly and that has been plagued by issues, some not so different to what we see with new IT technologies. The 787 is an all composite aircraft (ok, there are some small amounts of metal in some structures) that has its components built elsewhere and then flown to Everett for integration or final assembly.

In fact, back on July 8th, 2007, (e.g. 787), Boeing did a virtual physical rollout, that is, they put the incomplete plane together, painted it, rolled it out for the world to see and of course, people believed that it was ready to fly in a month or so. Guess what, most everyone fell for the demo and thought it to be real (hmmm, sounds like some trade shows I have been to or demo rooms I have seen ;) ), only to still be on the ground dealing with development issues.

Anyway, all that aside, what I saw on the 787 line were two aircraft, that were not surrounded by people with pneumatic tools, drills, riveters or making factory sounds or noises. Instead, what I saw looked more like what I see in many IT environments, which was a piece of hardware in the middle of the room, with people all around it with laptop, desktop or other workstation computers busily doing work.

There were so many workstations, laptops and other computers on the floor in makeshift cubicles, conferences rooms that there were even network switches/directors positioned at the end of row of these cubes and clusters of workers. Thus the impact of having the engineers close to where the work was being done, the impact of all of the documentation and paper (virtual paper) work that goes with new development and reliance on information systems for communications, collaborations, design, simulation, parts tracking and so forth.

The real takeaway for me was how from one end of the factory were signs of the past generation leveraging new technologies, the middle being a hybrid, and the other end being leading edge, yet so revolutionary that issues are still being worked out.

I thought to myself of some similarities between what I saw at Boeing and many IT environments. That is, extremes, the past and the future, what works today, what will be key for tomorrow, as well as hybrid environments.

Similar to IT, customers are buying, testing and deploying for early adoption new technologies such as SAS, FCoE, SSD, dedupe, thin provision, virtualization that will be key building blocks moving forward, yet at the same time leveraging the past including disk drives, tape, RAID, FC, iSCSI  and others buzzword bingo technology, techniques and three letter acronyms (TLAs). Thus I saw Boeing leveraging the past, building to the future, surviving and sustaining itself today, a balance of the old and the new, just like many IT environments.

Souvenir hat - Photo via gregs iphone

My souvenir hat

If you are in the Seattle area and have a couple of hours to spare, I highly recommend the tour!

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

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

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

Catch of the day or post of the day!

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

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

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

Catch of the Day

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

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

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

Cheers gs

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

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

Hello From EMC World Bloggers Lounge

EMC Blogger Lounge at EMCworld The day is looking up, it started out early, too early with a 7AM flight to Orlando leaving a nice sunny day in MSP arriving in MCO (that’s Minneapolis and Orlando for those who don’t use IATA airport codes) during a heavy rainstorm with plenty of storm clouds in the area ;) .

Oh, for those concerned about green and flying, the Boeing 757 with a pretty full passenger load of about 150 including two search and rescue dogs (they were in the row behind me) got about 65 miles per gallon per passenger, not to shabby for the 2.5 hour flight.

Once registered at the event, I attended an analyst session this afternoon that included a question and answer discussion session with Joe Tucci and other EMC folks.

Now I’m spending a few minutes in the bloggers lounge (where there are also several twitters as well) having a much needed cappuccino and trying out my flip video camcorder.

Here’s a quick video taken with my new flip video camcorder I won in a raffle giveaway. Plenty of EMC and partner loggers as well as others have been coming and going, some you may even recognize in the video. The flip camcorder is pretty easy to use both in terms of setup, configuration, shooting 1st video, editing, and uploading for use in this blog post from EMCworld.

Time to get ready for some more meetings before a dinner event tonight and more meetings over the next couple of days, now back to your regularly scheduled programming, nuff said for now.

BTW – Anyone going to the Brocade margaritaville event tomorrow night in Orlando, just received my orange wrist band!

Cheers gs
Greg Schulz – StorageIO, Author “Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking” (CRC Press) and “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC)

Storage Decisions Spring 2009 Sessions Update

StorageDecisions Logo

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers gs

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

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Something You May Not See Everyday!

Yesterday while taking a break and enjoying the nice spring weather with Karen and the dogs, watching the annual Ice Berg races and parade, a visitor stopped by and pulled up to our dock for a visit. Now, normally we get visitors dropping by on motorcycles, bicycles, utility or other recreational vehicles along with regular automobiles. Likewise, having a river that flows into the Mississippi (taken from my hotel room in St. Louis this past week) and then onto the gulf of mexico lends it self to various having visitors stop by via water, that is by canoe, kayak, pontoon or other boating vessel. What made yesterdays visit interesting was that of a Amphicar, one of those not so common 1960’s vintage hybrid automobile aqaua cars.

Amphicar Approaching (Photo by Karen Schulz (C) 2009)Amphicar at dock (Photo by Karen Schulz (C) 2009)Amphicar leaving dock (Photo by Karen Schulz (C) 2009)Amphicar departing (Photo by Karen Schulz (C) 2009)Amphicar on land (Photo by Karen Schulz (C) 2009)

How fitting the first visitor of the spring by water was a hybrid, an aquacar, ah, finally spring is here.

Enjoy spring for those of you in the northern hemisphere, for those of you in the southern hemisphere, enjoy your fall.

Cheers gs

Technorati tags: Mississippi, Amphicar

Out and About Update

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers – gs

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

Work and Entertainment From Coast to Coast

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers
Gs

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

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Is There a Data and I/O Activity Recession?

Storage I/O trends

With all the focus on both domestic and international economic woes and discussion of recessions and depressions and possible future rapid inflation, recent conversations with IT professionals from organizations of all size across different industry sectors and geographies prompted the question, is there also a data and I/O activity recession?

Here’s the premise, if you listen to current economic and financial reports as well as employment information, the immediate conclusion is that yes, there should also be an I recession in the form of contraction in the amount of data being processed, moved and stored which would also impact I/O (e.g. DAS,, LAN, SAN, FAN or NAS, MAN, WAN) networking activity as well. After all, the server, storage, I/O and networking vendors earnings are all being impacted right?

As is often the case, there is more to the story, certainly vendor earnings are down and some vendors are shipping less product than during corresponding periods from a year or more ago. Likewise, I continue to hear from both IT organizations, vars and vendors of lengthened sales cycles due to increased due diligence and more security of IT acquisitions meaning that sales and revenue forecasts continue to be very volatile with some vendors pulling back on their future financial guidance.

However, does that mean fewer servers, storage, I/O and networking components not to mention less software is being shipped? In some cases there is or has been a slow down. However in other cases, due to pricing pressures, increased performance and capacity density where more work can be done by fewer devices, consolidation, data footprint reduction, optimization, virtualization including VMware and other techniques, not to mention a decrease in some activity, there is less demand. On the other hand, while some retail vendors are seeing their business volume decrease, others such as Amazon are seeing continued heavy demand and activity.

Been on a trip lately through an airport? Granted the airlines have instituted capacity management (e.g. capacity planning) and fleet optimization to align the number of flights or frequency as well as aircraft type (tiering) to the demand. In some cases smaller planes, in other cases larger planes, for some more stops at a lower price (trade time for money) or in other cases shorter direct routes for a higher fee. The point being is that while there is an economic recession underway, and granted there are fewer flights, many if not most of those flights are full which means transactions and information to process by the airlines reservations and operational as well as customer relations and loyalty systems.

Mergers and acquisitions usually mean a reduction or consolidation of activity resulting in excess and surplus technologies, yet talking with some financial services organizations, over time some of their systems will be consolidated to achieve operating efficiency and synergies, near term, in some cases, there is the need for more IT resources to support the increased activity of supporting multiple applications, increased customer inquiry and conversion activity.

On a go forward basis, there is the need to support more applications and services that will generate more I/O activity to enable data to be moved, processed and stored. Not to mention, data being retained in multiple locations for longer periods of time to meet both compliance and non regulatory compliance requirements as well as for BC/DR and business intelligence (BI) or data mining for marketing and other purposes.

Speaking of the financial sector, while the economic value of most securities is depressed, and with the wild valuation swings in the stock markets, the result is more data to process, move and store on a daily basis, all of which continues to place more demand on IT infrastructure resources including servers, storage, I/O networking, software, facilities and the people to support them.

Dow Jones Trading Activity Volume
Dow Jones Trading Activity Volume (Courtesy of data360.org)

For example, the amount of Dow Jones trading activity is on a logarithmic upward trend curve in the example chart from data360.org which means more transactions selling and buying. The result of more transactions is that there are also an increase in the number of back-office functions for settlement, tracking, surveillance, customer inquiry and reporting among others activities. This means that more I/Os are generated with data to be moved, processed, replicated, backed-up with additional downstream activity and processing.

Shifting gears, same things with telephone and in particular cell phone traffic which indirectly relates on IT systems particular for support email and other messaging activity. Speaking of email, more and more emails are sent every day, granted many are spam, yet these all result in more activity as well as data.

What’s the point in all of this?

There is a common awareness among most IT professionals that there is more data generated and stored every year and that there is also an awareness of the increased threats and reliance upon data and information. However what’s either not as widely discussed is the increase in I/O and networking activity. That is, the space capacity often gets talked about, however, the I/O performance, response time, activity and data movement can be forgotten about or its importance to productivity diminished. So the point is, keep performance, response time, and latency in focus as well as IOPS and bandwidth when looking at, and planning IT infrastructure to avoid data center bottlenecks.

Finally for now, what’s your take, is there a data and/or I/O networking recession, or is it business and activity as usual?

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

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

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

On The Road Again: An Update

A while back, I posted about a busy upcoming spring schedule of activity and events, and then a few weeks ago, posted an update, so this can be considered the latest "On The Road Again" update. While the economy continues to be in rough condition and job reductions or layoffs continuing, or, reduction in hours or employees being asked to take time off without pay or to take sabbaticals, not to mention the race to get the economic stimulus bill passed, for many people, business and life goes on.

Airport parking lots have plenty of cars in them, airplanes while not always full, are not empty (granted there has been some fleet optimization aka aligning capacity to best suited tier of aircraft and other consolidation or capacity improvements). Many organizations cutting back on travel and entertainment (T&E) spending, either to watch the top and bottom line, avoid being perceived or seen on the news as having employees going on junkets when they may in fact being going to conferences, seminars, conventions or other educational and related events to boost skills and seek out ways to improve business productivity.

One of the reason that I have a busy travel schedule in addition to my normal analyst and consulting activities is that many events and seminars are being scheduled close to, or in the cities where IT professionals are located who might otherwise have T&E restrictions or other constraints from traveling to industry events, some of which are or will be impacted by recent economic and business conditions.

Last week I was invited to attend and speak at the FujiFilm Executive Seminar, no private jets were used or seen, travel was via scheduled air carriers (coach air-fare). FujiFilm has a nice program for those interested in or involved with tape whether for disk to tape backup, disk to disk to tape, long term archive, bulk storage and other scenarios involving the continued use and changing roles of tape as a green data storage medium for in-active or off-line data. Check out FujiFilm TapePower Center portal.

This past week I was in the big "D", that’s Dallas Texas to do another TechTarget Dinner event around the theme of BC/DR, Virtualization and IT optimization. The session was well attended by a diverse audience of IT professionals from around the DFW metroplex. Common themes included discussions about business and economic activity as well as the need to keep business and IT running even when budgets are being stretched further and further. Technology conversations included server and storage virtualization, tiered storage including SSD, fast FC and SAS disk drives, lower performance high capacity "fat" disk drives as well as tape not to mention tiered data protection, tiered servers and other related items.

The Green Gap continues to manifest itself in that when asked, most people do not have Green IT initiatives, however, when asked they do have power, cooling, floor-space, environmental (PCFE) or business economic sustainability concerns, aka, the rest of the Green story.

While some attendees have started to use some new technologies including dedupe technology, most I find are still using a combination of disk and tape with some considering dedupe for the future for certain applications. Other technologies and trends being watched, however also ones with concerns as to their stability and viability for enterprise use include FLASH based SSD, Cloud computing and thin provisioning among others. Common themes I hear from IT professionals are that these are technologies and tools to keep an eye on, or, use on a selective basis and are essentially tiered resources to have in a tool box of technologies to apply to different tasks to meet various service requirements. Hopefully the Cowboys can put a fraction of the amount of energy and interest into and improving their environment that the Dallas area IT folks are applying to their environments, especially given the strained IT budgets vs. the budget that the Cowboys have to work with for their player personal.

I always find it interesting when talking to groups of IT professionals which tend to be enterprise, SME and SMB hearing what they are doing and looking at or considering which often is in stark contrast to some of the survey results on technology adoption trends one commonly reads or hears about. Hummm, nuff said, what say you?

Hope to see you at one of the many upcoming events perhaps coming to a venue near you.

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

SNW (And other conferences) Want and Need You!

Not to worry, its not yet time for phrases such as “Ask not what a conference can do for you, ask what you can do for a conference…”, at least I hope until some clever marketer tries that theme to stimulate conference participation short of an IT conference bailout package.

Uncle Conference wants you!

Conferences Want and Need You

Last week I received as did many other IT industry analyst, bloggers, consultants, media and press an invitation to apply and be considered for free admission (they waive the $1,000+ registration fee) to attend and cover the upcoming Computerworld/IDG and SNIA co-produced Storage Networking World (SNW) event in Orlando April 2009. Ok, nothing out of the ordinary here, as there are several events that do the same thing where you are sent out an invite to apply and attend and if accepted to attend, your registration fee is waived. Meanwhile other venues simply send you the pre-accepted invite and thanks for prior participating forgoing the whole apply, register and be accepted game.

What I find interesting here is that out of all the usual conference, expos, seminars and so forth that I get invited to attend, or to keynote and speak at, two stood out this past week. Those being SNW and the other being upstart The Business Development (BD) Event to be held in Boston in June 2009. Big vendor centric shows like EMCworld and VMworld among others will probably continue albeit with some fine tuning. While some vendors are cutting back or postponing their customer, or media and analyst events, as well as some of the large mega analyst firms like Gartner among others are cutting back or canceling their conferences due to tough economic times, events like the TechTarget Storage Decisions which are IT customer/user focused events are being fine tuned to be more effective as well as taking the message to the people who are under travel and time restrictions via custom local events and seminars.

Likewise, traditional big industry vertical shows like SNW are having to get more aggressive to get both their paying customers (e.g. vendor sponsors, media sponsors, people who pay the registration fee) to show up and participate as well as to get the industry analysts, bloggers, consultants, media and press to show up and cover the event. I’m guessing Jon Toigo over at Drunkendata must be salivating given some of his past posts that SNW is issuing announcements on MSNBC and other venues via Marketwire inviting industry media and analyst to attend the spring SNW. I wonder if Jon Toigo will be issuing similar announcements to all industry media and analyst or if his upcoming C4 conference in May will be an exclusive and by invitation only event?

In the face of all of these changes, there’s also a new upstart event for business development and networking amongst vendors, vars, press, media, analyst, customers, consultants and others, something that SNW used to be known for the storage industry as the place to go. In June 2009, a new event, "The BD Event" will be held in Boston with a simple value proposition, avoid the high costs and restrictions of some other venues, for a relatively small fee to basically cover cost, show up and meet and do some business.

What does this all mean and what will I be doing in 2009 regarding industry activities, seminars, shows, conferences and events?

I’m pleased to announce (don’t worry, I wont be issuing a press release as I did that this past week for my new book) that I have been accepted to attend SNW in Orlando, now I need to decide if I’m actually going to attend or not. I may end up doing what I did last fall which is fly in for a day for some meetings and tie into some other activities in the area.

I like the theme of the BD event in June and have it penciled in however have not committed with the Duplessie’s yet. Storage Decisions will be on the calendar as its a great place for meeting with and hearing what’s on the mind of the IT professionals as opposed to hearing it second or third hand from others. As for other venues and events, there will be more posted on the StorageIO events page through out the year.

Ok, nuff said for now

Cheers gs

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

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It feels like Grand Central Station here…

Things have been busy (which is very good) and I feel like I’m at Grand Central station (Terminal) with the new year off to a flurry of activity ranging from my regular consulting, research and client advisory engagement projects, recent speaking appearances (San Jose and Tucson ), doing interviews with the media as well as vendor briefings.

Grand Central Station New York City - December 2008

Photo of Grand Central Station (aka Grand Central Terminal) New York City taken on my cell phone December 2008 after a great dinner at Michael Jordons (Thanks Richard and Dan)

Yup, its a busy time of the year with writing of articles, column and industry trends and perspective pieces as well as supporting the formal launch and release of my new book, "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (Auerbach) not to mention trying to stay warm during the recent midwest cold weather snaps as well as snow entertainment activities such as snow plowing and sledding.

Greg snow sleeding in the back yard
Greg taking a break and snow sledding in the backyard.

Speaking of appearances, keynote and other events, topics being covered vary from server to storage, data center to disaster recovery, virtualization to data protection among others as well as other themes and topics related to "The Green and Virtual Data Center".

Some upcoming speaking and keynote engagements in various cities covering various topics include (in alphabetic order) Atlanta, Birmingham, Boston, Cancun, Cincinnati, Chicago, Dallas, Denver Las Vegas, Los Angles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Orange County, Parsippany, Providence, St Louis, and Tampa with more locations and venues to be announced for summer and fall of 2009, keep an eye on the events page for more information.

(Wow, I feel like I’m on the Curtis Preston, aka Mr. Backup starter mini-tour program ;) ).

Ok, now its time to get back to doing some other things, enjoy your winter and spring while you can, time flies fast.

Cheers
gs

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

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All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Hitting The Road Again

The phrase hitting the road can have different meaning these days with rash of layoffs, cutbacks, right-sizing and so forth that are hitting companies of all sizes include IT manufacturer, services, media and even analysts firms of the like of giant Gartner (who also canceled some of their upcoming shows/conferences) and Forseters among others large firms.

For those unfortunate who have been caught up in the various recent market dynamics and job cuts, best wishes and good luck. What I have been telling people who have been contacting me for referrels, references, looking to be hired and so forth is to check-out Carter Lusher on twitter and his blog site over at SageCircle (A site for Analyst Relations-AR folks). Also check-out Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester blog, both of whom have some tips and other useful information including how to use and leverage social media tools including twitter among others. Don’t forget the various groups within Linkedin (e.g. Linkedin Groups) and other networking groups for that matter if you have not already done so as there are various notes and information for job seekers as well as job openings looking to be filled. Speaking of social media and web 2.0 including twitter, I can be found at twitter.com/storageio.

In the context of StorageIO, I’m off traveling on the road again for what marks the start of a busy and exciting winter and early spring schedule. While I wont be able to attend the big events in Washington DC or wine tasting with friends in the Sydney (Oz) area this week, I will be in San Jose, CA (Do you know the way to San Jose?) key noting at the SNIA Symposium and then at a private event in Tucson, AZ (Sorry, not at the bone yard or IBM for this trip).

At the SNIA event, the audience will be those from the storage and networking industry in general including a mix of vendors and vars, some media and analysts and a few IT customers. The title for my keynote talk at SNIA this week will be "Storage Industry Update V2.009: Chaos and Opportunity ?What?s the Buzz!". As for the theme, well, to say that times are tough would be an understatement, yet, with the financial markets and economic chaos, for many originations, the show must go however it?s not business as usual, it?s doing more work, processing and storing more information in a given footprint and at a lower cost than in the past. Yet in all of the current chaos and conditions, there are near term tactical as well as long term strategic opportunities in the storage networking and data management ecosystem.

In Tucson, the focus will be different with an audience of IT professionals from various size business and a theme of being sponsored by Silverado technologies The theme is Enabling Virtual IT Infrastructure – Trends in Data Management, Storage Management & Security Issues in Virtualized Environments. My keynote talk will be "Storage in a Virtual Data Center: Performance, Availability, Security and Data Protection". The session looks at storage and networking trends, technologies and techniques to support and enable a virtual data center.

In addition to this weeks schedule, other upcoming events include a speaking engagement on "The Green and Virtual Data Center" at an event in Cancun in early February, stops in Dallas, Tampa, Miami, Los Angles, Birmingham and Cincinnati on the Techtarget custom events tour train as well as Las Vegas and others in April and beyond in addition to other activities. Check out the StorageIO events page for more information on these and other activities in a location near you. If you are in either San Jose or Tucson this week, or in any of the other upcoming locations, come on out, stop by and say hello as it would be great to catch up and hear what’s the buzz.

Cheers – gs

Getting Caught Up – Its Been a Busy Year

I’m taking a bit of a break during the holidays, getting caught up on some things, getting a jump on some others, doing some reflecting and planning for 2009 and doing a bit of relaxing and having some fun as well.

As I look back on 2008, I realize why it seems like just a blur having been busy writing articles, columns, FAQ and ATE, tips, white papers and solutions briefs, twitters and blog posts in addition to doing video, Webcast and pod casts while doing research and analysis consulting work in-between keynote and speaking at industry conferences, seminars and other events.

In 2008, there were the hundreds of interviews by press/media and others to provide commentary, opinions and industry trends and perspectives, the hundreds of briefings and updates as well as providing feedback to vendors and their PR folks to stay current on industry activity including evolution and innovation. In between all of that, I managed to write a new book The Green and Virtual Data Center (Auerbach) that you can order at Amazon.com, as well as get some sightseeing and relaxation in along the way.

Yes indeed, its been a busy yet good year and while I have not been everywhere, however looking back at 2008, I do feel like Ive been everywhere (Ive been everywhere Johnny Cash), at least virtually so to speak having been in Albany, Amsterdam (Netherlands), Atlanta, Bergen (Norway), Boston, Calgary, Cedar Rapids, Chicago, Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit, Freemont, Hadeland (Norway), Hamer (Norway), Houston, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, Lillehammer (Norway), Los Angles, Memphis, Minneapolis, Molde (Norway), New Orleans, New York City, Newark, Nijkrek (Netherlands), Olden (Norway), Orlando, Oslo (Norway), Plano, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Sogndal (Norway), Sonoma, St. Louis, Toronto, Tretten (Norway), Trondheim (Norway), Utrecht (Netherlands) and of course home in the Stillwater area.

What does 2009 have in store?

Like the IT industry, there will be more of the same to sum it up.

That is, more content (white papers, solution briefs, industry perspectives and commentary, articles and blogs) generated that will appear in different venues.

There will be new and more research and analysis activity around IT and data infrastructure techniques and techniques across servers, storage, I/O networking hardware & software tools, as well as more keynote and speaking events among other activities with topics around data protection and management, performance and capacity planning, green computing, SSD, data footprint reduction, business continuance (BC) and disaster recovery for virtual and physical environments, clouds, grids and clusters, virtualizaiton and I/O networking among others.

Keep an eye on the events page with several items already listed including keynoting at the SNIA January symposium along with several keynote presentations with IT professionals at custom seminars and customer events in Tucson, Cancun Mexico and Las Vegas with others in the works.

Thanks to all who helped make 2008 a tremendous and eventful year and best wishes to all for an exciting if not interesting 2009.

Cheers and best wishes – gs

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