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

Server and Storage Virtualization – Life beyond Consolidation

Storage I/O trends

Ask someone what virtualization of IT servers or storage means and the typical response is to consolidate under-utilized physical servers or storage systems to reduce power, cooling, floor space and physical hardware costs.  However I commonly hear from IT professionals that not all of their servers or storage can be consolidated for various reasons. Some reasons why IT resources such as servers or storage cannot be consolidated include among others While consolidation is one the faces or capabilities, and certainly a common usage today, there are many other quality of service (QoS), performance, politics, financial ownership, security, software compatibility and vendor support to name a few.

In the big picture, the percentage of all servers (or storage) that can be  consolidated ranges from as low as 15% to as high as 35%, or perhaps higher (or lower) depending on whose numbers you subscribe to. Likewise, the percentage of virtualized servers that have been virtualized for consolidation purposes is generally considered to be in the high 77-94% percent range based on different estimates.

What this means, is that while the benefits of leveraging consolidation via server virtualization are well-known, not all servers can be consolidated for different reasons and the same holds true for storage and other IT resources. However, this does not mean that the majority of servers, storage or other IT resources cannot be virtualized to enable transparent management for maintenance, technology updates, load-balancing, supporting business continuance (BC) or disaster recovery (DR) along with other non consolidation centric functions. In other words, with consolidation, we are just seeing the tip of the virtualization iceberg (or mountain).

There are several faces or functionality of virtualization technologies beyond consolidation including abstraction, emulation and providing transparency for enabling enhanced management and flexibility of IT resources. For example, virtual tape libraries leverage abstraction and emulation to enable new disk based technologies that combine replication, compression and de-duplication to cut  data footprint and enable BC/DR to co-exist with existing backup and data protection software, processes and procedures. Another example is using server or storage virtualization to provide an abstraction layer to support BC/DR enabling transparent movement of applications for consolidated, as well as non-consolidated servers. Technology upgrades are another time consuming and disruptive process where virtualization can be used to more seamlessly move applications and data while reducing or eliminating application downtime. In other words, the focus today is clearly on consolidation to drive up utilization and reduce costs; however there are even greater opportunities on a go forward basis for using different aspects of virtualization

Note that this does not mean however that not all servers or storage cannot be virtualized, something that is a common misperception given the perception and industry messaging that incorrectly pigeon holes virtualization to mean consolidation, and consolidation to mean virtualization. To the contrary, the reality is that there is life beyond consolidation, there are even more scenarios and far greater market opportunity for non-consolidation virtualization deployments over time, then what has already been seen for first wave of consolidation centric virtualization scenarios.

There is a very large market opportunity for virtualization of servers, storage and I/O networking in scenarios beyond consolidation for enabling transparent data and application movement, supporting BC/DR and other common time-consuming and disruptive IT infrastructure resource management tasks.

Ok, nuff said.

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

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)

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Recent StorageIO Media Coverage and Comments

BizwireeChannel LineEnterprise Storage ForumMSNBC
ProcessorSearchStorageFedTechComputer Weekly

Realizing that some prefer blogs to webs to twitters to other venues, here are some recent links among others to media coverage and comments by me on a different topics that are among others found at www.storageio.com/news.html.

  • Business Wire: Comments on The Green and Virtual Data Center Book – Jan 09
  • Search Storage: Comments on Open Source Storage – Jan 09
  • Search Storage: Comments on Clustered Storage – Jan 09
  • Storage Magazine: Comments on DR/BC Sites – Jan 09
  • SearchStorage: Comments on Fujitsu Eternus Storage – Jan 09
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments on Quest buying Monosphere – Jan 09
  • Processor: Comments on Reducing Storage Costs – Jan 09
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments on Apple Mac storage enhancements – Jan 09
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments on EMC buying Sourcelabs & Opensource – Jan 09
  • SearchStorage Oz/NZ: Comments on Hot Technologies and Hype – Jan 09
  • CNBC: Comments on Storing Digital Documents – Dec 08
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments on pNFS and Data Storage Trends – Dec 08
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments on Symantec shifting hardware spending – Dec 08
  • Search Storage: Comments on DAS being more common than perceived – Dec 08
  • IT World Canada: Comments on Sun seeing lack of Storage Industry Innovation – Dec 08
  • Search Storage: Comments on Data Movement and Migration – Dec 08
  • eChannel Line: Comments on EMC and Dell renewing their vows – Dec 08
  • eChannel Line: Comments on Adaptec and SAS/SATA adapters – Dec 08
  • eChannel Line: Comments on Dell data de-duplication strategy – Nov 08
  • Server Watch: Comments on Server Virtualization Brings Fresh Life to DAS – Nov 08
  • Tech News World: Comments on Samsung Jumbo SSD drives – Nov 08
  • Enterprise Planet: Comments on EMC Cloud Storage (ATMOS) – Nov 08
  • eChannel Line: Comments on HPs new USVP virtualization platform – Nov 08
  • Search Storage: Comments on EMCs cloud and policy based storage – Nov 08
  • Tech News World: Comments on SANdisk SSD – Nov 08
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments on HP adding storage virtualizaiton – Nov 08
  • Mainframe Executive: Comments on Green and Efficient Storage – Nov 08
  • Internet News: Comments – Symantec Trims Enterprise Vault Nov 08
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments on DAS remaining relevant – Nov 08
  • SearchSMBStorage: Comments – NAS attraction for SMBs Nov 08
  • See more at www.storageio.com/news.html

    Cheers gs

    Do you have your copy of “The Green and Virtual Data Center” yet?

    For those not familar with my new book, "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (Auerbach), or, for those who have already ordered your copy (Thank You and look for them to arrive soon) as today marks the offical publication date, or, I guess you could say the birthday for "The Green and Virtual Data Center".

    Thus, I am pleased to share with you the news about the formal launch and publication (read the press release) of my new book, “The Green and Virtual Data Center”, which is released today by Auerbach/CRC-Press and is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, CRC-Press and other venues around the world.

    The book focuses on the idea that IT infrastructure resources configured and deployed in a highly virtualized manner can be combined with other techniques and technologies to achieve a simplified and cost-effective delivery of IT services in a clean, green, and profitable manner. ?The Green and Virtual Data Center? covers these technologies and techniques that todays data centers should be considering while trying to maximize resources, such as power, cooling, floor space, storage, server performance, and network capacity.

    Some of the topics include:
     Energy and data footprint reductions
     Cloud-based storage and computing
     Intelligent and adaptive power management
     Server, storage, and networking virtualization
     Tiered servers for storage, network, and data centers
     Energy avoidance and energy efficiency

    Read more about the book here

    Here’s some contact informaiton pertaining to the book:

    General Questions:
    Greg Schulz (That’s me if you were wondering)
    StorageIO
    twitter.com/storageio
    greg@storageio.com
    +1 (651) 275-1563

    Press Interviews:
    Georgiana Comsa
    ClassyTech PR
    www.classytech.com
    georgiana@classytech.com
    +1 (408) 435-1500

    Book Reviews:
    John Wyzalek
    Auerbach/CRC Press
    john.wyzalek@taylorandfrancis.com
    +1 (917) 351-7149

    Bulk or Special Sales:
    Chris Manion
    Auerbach/CRC Press

    chris.manion@taylorandfrancis.com
    +1 (651) 998-2508

    In addition to the folks at Auerbach/CRC-Taylor Francis, I would also like to thank Theron Shreve and his crew at DerryField Publishing services who assisted with layout, copyediting and other manuscript pre-production activities, as well as all the other people who helped make the book a reality.

    Cheers – gs

    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)

    twitter @storageio

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

    RAID data protection remains relevant

    Storage I/O trends

    RAID (Redundant Array of Idle/Independent Disks) has evolved significantly since the original RAID white paper from the University of California Berkeley (Patterson, Gibson & Katz) was published 20 some years ago and in many cases is taken for granted today. There is also debate as to whether RAID is still relevant and practical given the continued increase amounts of data that needs to be protected.

    RAID Examples from www.thegreenandvirtualdatacenter.com
    Sample of some common RAID levels, general characteristics, caveat and benefits

    RAID remains relevant today, granted, RAID continues to evolve as do the many variations including distributed and hybrid data protection schemes. Dave Raffo over at SearchStorage has a nice article on "The evolution of RAID data protection" with comments from me. Have a look at the Dave’s article (as well as here) along with some of the comments and thoughts from myself and others.

    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

    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

    Green Power and Cooling Tools and Calculators

    In the course of doing research and consulting work with various IT organizations, VARs, trade groups and vendors over the past couple of years, not to mention in preparing for my new book "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (Auerbach), I have come across (see a list here) several tools, calculators and modeling or sizing utilities pertaining to power, cooling, floor-space, EH&S (PCFE) also known as green topics.

    Many vendors and organizations including APC, Dell, EMC, Emerson, IBM, HP and Sun among others have various types of green and related calculators in support of PCFE, performance and related sizing activities. These and other tools differ in what information they provide as well as the level of detail and configuration information, however, the tools are also evolving. As an example, EMC blogger Mark Twomey aka Storagezilla has a new post discussing an updated version of their updated calculator that is now web based tool for PCFE and green sizing.

    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

    Protecting and Storing Personal Digital Documents

    Storage I/O trends

    Cindy Waxer recently wrote a great article over at Bankrate.com that also appeared on CNBC.Com among other venues titled 5 digital ways to store money documents that includes commentary and industry perspectives by yours truly Greg Schulz.

    Why the concern about safely and securing personal digital documents? Digital created or stored data ranges from income tax, social security, mortgage and fiance, on-line and electronic bill payments, credit cards as well as banking and retirement information that is being stored on personal computers in place of, or in addition to printed hardcopy forms.

    Many organizations are encouraging consumers as well as business to shift from printed hardcopy invoices and bills towards using electronic and paperless bill payments. In some instances, organizations offer discounts for switching to electronic bill payment or transactions while others apply service fees for using traditional non electronic payment methods.

    So again, why the concern about storing safely and securely your digital receipts, invoices and payment records, after all, since they are on-line, why not simply rely on whom ever you are dealing with to maintain those records? The answers are many ranging from simple availability of having ready access to your documents similar to why you would have copies of important hardcopy documents available in addition to being in a safe place. Another answer is for compliance, long thought to only the realm and area of focus for large financial institutions.

    So what is one to do? Simple, protect important electronic documents as you would protect important hardcopy documents by making copies and storing them in safe secure places including off-site archives in a different location.

    Some general tips, technologies and techniques for safely storing digital documents include:

  • Make multiple copies of important data files, documents, photos or other important items
  • Store copies of important files and data on encrypted removable media including placing copies off-site
  • Protect encryption keys and passwords in a safe place to unlock protected data when needed
  • Leverage removable media including disk drives, USB FLASH thumb drives, CD/DVD or magnetic tape
  • Utilize on-line web or cloud based managed service providers offering internet document storage
  • Talk to your bank to see what they offer for digital safe deposit boxes also known as cloud or managed storage services
  • Perform regular backups of computers data files as well as have a disaster recovery kit and CD (or disk drive) stored in a safe place
  • Of course there is the question of how do you know what is important and what is not important, again, what has value to you either from a financial or legal perspective as well as soft value for example priceless digital or scanned photographs, video and recordings among other sentimental documents.

    Check out Cindy’s article here and learn more at www.storageio.com.

    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

    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

    Technorati tags: 2008, 2009, Johnny Cash, Amazon

    Is There Still Innovation For IT and Storage?

    Storage I/O trends

    Is the IT industry and specifically, storage and networking segments currently lacking from innovation? The answer to that question exists in part due to what your definition or view of innovation is and how it is measured.

    By some definitions, innovation is defined by how many startups exists as was the case in the late 90s and early 2000s when there was a large number of startup companies involving Fibre Channel, iSCSI, NAS, SRM, CDP, Backup, Compliance and Archiving among others.

    Several bloggers have recently made posts about what is or what is not innovative as well as how previous innovate hype may have led to showing up on the not so hot or where are they now lists. Some examples can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here among others.

    3Leaf, 4blox, Astaro, Attrato, Autovirt, Axxana, Candera, Caringo, Cassatt, Cleaversafe, Code42, Continuity, Cyberark, Digitalocular, Drobo, Fisec, FusionIO, Fusionio, Greenbytes, Iosafe, Monospehere, Moonwalk, Neptuney, Netrion, Nextio, Nirvanix, Numonyx, Ocarina, Open-e, Parrascale, Piviot3, Pliant, Racemi, ScaleMP, Seanodes, Stormagic, Storwize, Tarmin, Violin, Woven, XIV and Xsigo among others constantly show up in my inbox making announcements or preparing to launch, some have been around longer than others.

    There are also several startups that are still either in stealth mode or preferring to keep a low profile for now. How does this compare to what we saw in the storage and networking industry during the late 90s and early 2000s, certainly not the same number or amount of money being spent on marketing startups, however there are still startup companies to fill the void left from M&A as well as to address new opportunities including in the converged storage, networking and server sectors as well as virtualization.

    Look, here’s my point, vendors have been innovating and even more impotently, executing and delivering on prior hype and innovation with scalable and stable solutions. What of established companies such as Amazon and their S3 cloud solution are innovative or EMC with their cloud optimized storage aka Atmos are innovative? How about Sun with their open source based solutions are those innovate for the industry or for the vendor?

    As for technologies and techniques, which are innovative or evolutionary, that depends, however some candidates include among others:

  • FLASH and RAM based SSD, both as component devices for installation into laptop, desktop and servers as well as into storage systems
  • Standalone SSD storage systems with Fibre Channel, SAS and SATA interfaces.
  • Innovations for FLASH include write performance optimization and wear leveling to boost endurance and reliability
  • Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and converged enhanced Ethernet (CEE) or Data Center Ethernet (DCE)
  • If you prefer Cisco version leveraging enhanced, premium loss-less and low latency Ethernet for converged networking.
  • PCI-SIG Single-Root (SR) and Multi-Root (MR) I/O virtualization.
  • Incremental enhancements including SAS shifting from 3GB to 6GB including switched SAS
  • 40 GbE along with 100 GbE, 8 GbE Fibre Channel along with enhanced InfiniBand and enhanced NFS V4.x
  • Cloud based servers and solutions for internal (private) and public (services) use.
  • Clustered storage and clustered file systems including object based access
  • Cross technology domain and infrastructure resource management (IRM) tools to support virtual environments
  • What’s your take, is there still innovation taking place in storage and networking, or, is it all just hype and execution delivering on prior hype?

  • What is innovation and how to measure it?
  • What is the value prop of an innovate solution that makes it a viable solution?
  • Does innovation have to be adopted to be considered innovative?
  • Who is innovating and who is executing?
  • 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

    Tiered Communication and Media Venues

    Storage I/O trends

    Someone recently ask me what have I been doing as they had not seen or heard anything from me in a longtime on the web which had me a bit puzzled. Then it dawned on me, perhaps the person was focused on reading or following just one of the many different venues that I’m involved with around the world ranging from print, to web to live-in person to social networking and perhaps a site that I have not been doing much with as of late. On the flip side, I hear from others about how much they see and hear, good bad or indifferent and of all the different venues I’m involved with wondering how its all done or possible and how big of an army do I have to support all the content and venues.

    Well, that got me to thinking a bit about how people have various preferences for how they get or share information. Pondering all the different mediums available for disseminating, receiving and sharing information and discussion, do you have a preferred medium, perhaps vetted via a traditional publisher or publication or un-vetted via the rapid fire quick pace world of Twitter, IM, personal blogs and social networking?

    Do Webs, Blogs, Twitter, IM, Email, Articles, Books, Conferences, Podcasts, Magazines and other communication mediums fall under the class of tiered media and communications? IMHO sure, to each their own or many preferences.

    What do these have to do with servers, storage, I/O networks and associated data management technologies and techniques? Simple, they are all forms of communications and information exchange that different people have preferences for getting or sharing information, news and opinions.

    Now what does any of this have to do with myself and StorageIO? Simple, I realize that people have their own preferences on how they get or share information and thus give and take part in different venues and using various mediums around the world. How is StorageIO using and participating in these various mediums and venues? Read-on and see some examples. So here’s my take and what I’m doing with StorageIO to take part with different people using several diverse forms or mediums.

    For some, its via web sites such as the main StorageIO web site (www.storageio.com) where information is added with regards to news, events, books, tips and articles, white papers and reports, services and experience among other content material or information.

    StorageIO website www.storageio.com

    Some people prefer traditionally published, printed and vetted content such as "Resilient Storage Networks" (Elsevier) ISBN-10: 1555583113 or ISBN-13: 978-1555583118 or "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (Auerbach) ISBN-10: 1420086669 or ISBN-13: 978-1420086669 as well as digital versions of published books like those on Kindle.

    Books by StorageIO at www.storageio.com/books.html

    Yet another venue are events such as conferences, seminars, custom events or other live in person meetings such as those found on the StorageIO events page.

    Events at www.storageio.com/events.html

    Some people like reading blogs such as Gregs’ StorageIO Blog (www.storageioblog.com) which can also be accessed via the main StorageIO web site (www.storageio.com).

    StorageIO Blog

    For other people, the preference is reading about information, industry trends and perspectives, quotes and interviews via traditional news sources, both IT industry related as well as market verticals such as those among others at the StorageIO in the News page.

    StorageIO in the news at www.storageio.com/news.html

    Another preference is to get information via pod cast, web cast or videos including those found here, here, here, and here among others.

    Podcasts with StorageIO

    Then the new and emerging mediums including Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Plaxo, Technorati, and Linkedin, among others.

    StorageIO on twitter at www.twitter/storageio

    While the number of print based industry specific publications is on the decline, there are still some venues that print monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly venues of their pubs also digital versions to compliment web-based content such as searchstorage, enterprise storage forum and many others.

    StorageIO in Print (physical and virtual)

    Did I answer the question of how StorageIO is using and participating in different venues? If not, check out those mentioned above to learn and see more. However in a nutshell, there is a mix of working with existing venues ranging from books, to articles in journals, tips and commentary in news and other venues. There are also industry trends and perspectives white papers and solution briefs, web casts, pod casts and videos. There are live in person participating at conferences, seminars and custom events as well as regular updates on the web site and blogsite. For those who are into real-time, even more so than a blog, then there are the social sites including twitter or networking sites including Linkedin among others not to mention RSS feeds.

    Do you prefer to get news and information as it happens, or, perhaps even before it happens as the story is still un-folding, or, perhaps to wait and get the story with insight and perspectives along with the story behind the story?

    Do you have a preferred venue and medium for getting and enhancing information, or perhaps some combination of the above or others including Instant Messaging such as AOL (storageio), or email (info at storageio dot com), RSS, POTS or Plain Old Telephone System or Skype or Snail mail among many others venues, tools or aggregators and so what is it?

    Needless to say, there are plenty of changes and options for getting and giving information and the one thing we can count on being constant is change it self.

    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

    SNOW Fun and Information Technology – They Do Mix

    In the spirit of the holidays (which ever holidays you prefer), here’s a bit lighter posting (rest assured, there are plenty of upcoming more technology focused postings in the works) about what many folks in the northern hemisphere are either dreading and dealing with, or, enjoying this time of the year and that is SNOW.

    From the deserts of Las Vegas NV to New England, from Canada to Texas and most points in between and that’s just in the U.S., its that time of the year for SNOW (while friends from Oz remind me its summer down under this time of the year).

    Holiday HoundsGreg snow sleedingNetworking in the SnowLittle Leo having a SNOW snackGreg walking on "Frozen" waterGreg and Friends Sleeding and Riding on Snowplow

    With that in mind and knowing how IT or other tech savvy folks enjoy or depend on the use of acronyms, buzzwords and so forth, here are some reworked terms in the spirit of the northern hemisphere winter season. You might want to down load "Valley Winter Song" (e.g. the song from the LL Bean commercials) rom Fountains Of Wayne via Amazon.com or some other venue if you have not done so to enjoy with your snow or working on your holiday shopping list.

    Some acronyms include among others:

  • Backup Target – Where a lot of shoppers are waiting in line or stuck in traffic
  • Backup – Getting out of a snow bank, stuck in traffic, what the snow plows do sometimes
  • Battery backup – Spare or extra batteries to put into all of those new toys and gadgets
  • BC – Before Cold sets in
  • Best practices – How to use the snow removable equipment
  • Bus driver – person driving the metric transit bus full of holiday shoppers and revelers
  • Capacity planning – figuring out where to pile up the snow
  • Chain of events – Car driver on cell phone, Car hits ice, car slides into another car, chain reaction accident
  • Cloud – where the snow comes from
  • Cluster – Many cars piled up together stuck in traffic, nothing moving, see gridlock
  • Compress – Pile the snow up, let it settle
  • DAS – Direct Attached Snowplow
  • DR – Doctor to go see for your cold or back ache from shoveling snow or too much holiday cheer
  • Fibre Channel – How to get the weather channel on local cable
  • Global warming – What those dealing with snow might like to see a bit of right now
  • Generator – Essential equipment for geek’s and techno folks
  • Green – What the snow is now covering on the golf courses in much of the northern hemisphere colder areas
  • Grid – how the traffic highways are plugged with stopped cars and holiday shoppers
  • Grid lock – Encryption and security for grids or traffic jams
  • Hardware- Snow removable equipment
  • ILM – iPhone Loves Multimedia
  • InfiniBand – Giant bow around holiday presents
  • iPhone – I will call you latter
  • iSCSI – What some are referring to the slippery and dirty roads today
  • MSP – Managed snow removal professionals, or the Minneapolis / St. Paul Airport where holiday travelers may be stranded
  • Need Another Shovel (NAS)
  • Networking – Talking with your neighbors
  • NFS – Nevada Fresh Snow
  • North pole – Future location for Google to keep their storage and reduce cooling costs
  • Offline – Power outage or, snow plow gets stuck
  • Offsite – where the snow gets moved too
  • Online – where most snow bound holiday shoppers should be shopping instead of being stuck in the snow
  • Optics – Evening light shows during holiday parades
  • Outsourcing – Have someone else remove the snow
  • PC ? Payment Card
  • PCI – Payment card industry that is busy this time of the year processing credit card transactions
  • POS – Point of sale, plain old shovel
  • Provisioning – going to the store and stocking up on food, fuel and other essentials
  • RAID – Remove All Ice Daily
  • RAIN – Snow before it freezes
  • Removable Media – Chasing the news crew off your property after the nightly light show
  • Replication – Repeated snow storms in a row
  • ROI – Remove old Ice
  • SAS = Sleds and Snow
  • SANd = Stuff at the beach in the summer, stuff on the road in the winter time
  • SPAMHormel product
  • SATA – Santa without an "n"
  • Shipping tapes – How 3M gets tape from their factories to you for gift wrapping
  • Single instance – Rare snowstorm like what happened in Las Vegas
  • SLED – snow sled with a disk Dedupe – Let the snow piles shrink
  • Slide ware – Picture on the wall of a nice tropical warm place while the snowstorm is outside
  • Snapshot – Picture of the snow on a tree Restore – When the power comes back on
  • SNOW – Storage Networking Organizations West or, Storage Networking outsource World
  • Software – What goes in the Wii or play station during a snowstorm (if you have power)
  • Spanning tree – very big tree with lots of snow on it
  • SRM – Snow removable management, or, Sunday Rolls into Monday
  • Standby power – Waiting on the phone for the power company to answer during an outage
  • Tape – What 3M makes to wrap presents with
  • Tiered servers – Wait staff at a restraunt
  • Tiered storage – How snow is piled to maximize space
  • Tweet – What takes place on twitter or perhaps from eating too much sweets
  • UPS – The people in the brown trucks bringing things from Amazon and others
  • Snow plow offlineSnow plowingSnow and cold family

    Have a safe and happy holiday season and enjoy the snow while you can.

    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