Posts

February 28, 2009January 23, 2019

Shifting Industry Trend, from Purchase to Leasing?

Storage I/O trends

I’m seeing and hearing a trend talking with vendors, vars and customers of what appears to be a shifting trend from purchasing to leasing of IT equipment which for some might be as surprising as saying that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Typically, or at least looking back in time, leases tend to be popular when cash is at a premium or during rapid growth phases such as during the dot com craze bubble of last decade.

Purchasing tends to be more popular when lease rates are high or when cash reserves are enough to take advantage of buy opportunities Consequently with tight credit and focus by many organizations on cash flow and cash reserves, it should not be as much of a surprise to see a shift to leasing. However what’s a bit different from earlier economic downturns when IT organizations typically shift from purchase to lease, is the tight credit markets or ability of some organizations to finance acquisitions. Consequently it will be interesting to see if there is a shifting trend from purchasing to lease particularly as the credit markets begin to open.

What are you seeing or doing, purchasing, leasing, out-sourcing or shifting to managed service providers or doing nothing?

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

February 21, 2009January 23, 2019

US EPA EnergyStar for Servers Wants To Hear From YOU!

US EPA EnergyStar wants to hear from you!

Uncle Sam, that is, the US EPA EnergyStar team working on new programs wants to hear from IT data centers for feedback and comments on new EnergyStar for server draft 4 specifications. (Read here for some background).

For those interested, here’s what’s what via a recent note I received from the EnergyStar folks:

Dear Server Manufacturer or Other Industry Stakeholder,

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) welcomes your input on the attached Draft 4 ENERGY STAR® Version 1.0 Computer Server specification. Also attached is the latest version of the Power and Performance Data Sheet, referenced in Section 3.C of the specification.

Interested parties are encouraged to submit comments on the Draft 4 specification and Power and Performance Data Sheet to Rebecca Duff, ICF International, at rduff@icfi.com no later than March 20, 2009. Manufacturers who wish to submit Idle performance data for Blade Servers should use the attached data collection sheet. Questions regarding the data analyses can be sent to Arthur Howard, ICF International, at ahoward@icfi.com.

Masked data sets used to derive proposed Draft 4 requirements will be available for download from the ENERGY STAR enterprise server specification development Web site at www.energystar.gov/productdevelopment (Click on New Specifications in Development) within the next several days.

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

Andrew Fanara, U,S, EPA, at Data center Dynamics New York Event on March 4th
Andrew Fanara, U.S .EPA, will be available to discuss the latest Draft 4 specification and other ENERGY STAR initiatives at the upcoming 7th Annual New York Datacenter Dynamics Conference and Expo on March 4, 2009 at the Hilton on Avenue of the Americas. Datacenter Dynamics would like to offer a number of complimentary tickets to data center end users and operators that are working with EPA, DOE and NYSERDA to attend this event.

EPA will participate in the session titled A Data Center Public Policy Discussion with DOE, EPA and NYSERDA along with:

Paul Scheihing, US DOE Industrial Technologies Program, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy – US DOE
Sandy Hwang, LEED® AP – The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)

More information, including the preliminary line-up of speakers for New York, can be found at: www.datacenterdynamics.com/newyork.

The first 15 data center end users / operators that are working with the EPA, DOE, and/or NYSERDA, and are not already registered, and send their full contact details via email to chris.collins@datacenterdynamics.com will receive a complimentary ticket to attend one of these events. Note: this offer is not available to vendor/services organizations; or to sales, business development or marketing personnel.

If you have an interest in servers or storage for that matter (that’s in the works as well), reach out to Andrew Fanara, Arthur Howard (AJ) and the rest of their team to learn more and give them your feedback. In my past conversations with both Andrew and AJ, they are a delight to talk with and don’t let the EPA or EnergyStar title fool you, both are technology and business minded smart and savvy folks who want to know more about your issues, concerns and how to enhance their programs.

Click on the above links to learn more.

There, you’ve been advised!

Cheers – gs

February 19, 2009March 7, 2022

Plenty of Industry Firsts at VMworld Europe

Warning: Ok, I’m tiered and ready for a short vacation, so be advised, there is some industry and other tongue and check humor in this post, if you get it great, if not, don’t worry about it, ask around and someone can fill you in… ;).

So with VMworld Europe taking place in Cannes (that’s in the south of France and a nice place if you have not been there yet), rest assured, there will be a flurry of product, service and other announcements, some of which will use the usual industry first, industry only only, truly unique and the other usual claims. Unfortunately I wont be in Cannes as I will be in Florida next week doing a couple of keynote and sessions on IT optimization with some IT professionals in the Tampa and Miami areas.

What’s fun about being pre-briefed under NDA and/or embargo (are they the same) is hearing what the different vendors are or will be announcing and what can be even more fun, is hearing their claims of being 1st or thinking or believing they are 1st when in reality one may have just gotten off of the phone with someone else who is announcing something similar.

Rest assured, there will be some good and useful and with the right qualifiers, new, unique, 1st and so forth announcements next week especially for those who take the time to dig in to the details. So do that, look at the announcements, better yet, if you are at VMworld Europe, stop by and see the various vendors, their new solutions and ask the questions and dig into the details to learn more.

Now having said all of that, with the applicable qualifiers, I will say, that to my knowledge, from what I’m aware of based on briefings and other information that I can disclose, the industry first European appearance in the south of France in Cannes at a VMworld conference will see the first appearance and giveaway promotion by a vendor of my new book "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC) which will be taking place at the StorMagic booth (or stand) in the Innovators area of the expo hall. (did I get enough qualifiers in to make it an industry 1st? – That was some humor BTW ;) ).

I think in their category and for what they are doing (VM and storage infrastructure, data protection and management) the StorMagic SvSAN is rather interesting and deserves a closer look. While on the surface it looks like what others are doing, that is simply moving a storage software stack that might otherwise run in a tin wrapped software appliance (that’s a server or controller) vs. repackaging and stuffing into a silicon wrapped (e.g. software and memory enabled) virtual machine (VM) as many others have done. On closer inspection, SvSAN is actually enabling management of internal RAID adapter cards with integration into VMware control/management interfaces to simplify and streamline hardware, software and storage resources. (yes yes yes, I know, everybody else is already doing that – BTW – That was another attempt at some humor! ;) )

However don’t take my word, check it out yourself and let me know. Stop by the StorMagic both or stand, say hello, tell them that Greg from StorageIO sent you, signup for a giveaway of my new book, ask them to show you why they have something new and different with their new version of SvSAN VM and Storage Infrastructure management tool. You then can be the judge as to how unique and enabling their new announced capabilities are for broad market VMware environments.

Disclosure, StorMagic is not nor have they ever been a client or sponsor directly or indirectly via 3rd or 4th parities. that is, unless you consider them buying some books from my publisher or one of my publishers distributors in some way shape or form an in-direct means. (Now for some, that was an industry inside joke, for others, well, lets leave it at that for now, nuff said ;) ).

Ok, time to get packed and head out for a long weekend and get ready for next weeks busy schedule. For those heading to VMworld, enjoy and hope to see or talk with you soon. For those in Tampa and Miami, hope to see you next week, for everyone else, check out my events page as there are many events coming to cities and venues near you soon. Enjoy and try to have some fun, and to quote Wolf Gang Puck, "Live Love and Eat" :) .

Cheers – gs

Technorati tags: StorMagic, Event, Tampa, France, Miami, VMworld, Wolfgang Puck, Cannes, The Green and Virtual Data Center

February 14, 2009December 29, 2025

Just for Fun: Roses are Red…

Storage I/O trends

Ok, just for fun, Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue,

You can download for free your Redbooks from IBM,

Amazon.com

or, you can go to Amazon and pay for them too…

So that might beg the question, when will there be a download or Kindle version of my new book? Well, tell the publisher and Amazon you want a kindle version by clicking here, also, keep an eye out for reviews, chapter downloads and excerpts in different venues coming soon, not to mention some book give aways that I have heard about including at the upcoming VMworld Europe event among others.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

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

twitter @storageio

February 14, 2009December 29, 2025

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

February 4, 2009January 23, 2019

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.

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

February 1, 2009December 29, 2025

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

January 30, 2009April 27, 2025

Recent StorageIO Media Coverage and Comments

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

January 26, 2009December 29, 2025

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

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

January 22, 2009April 27, 2025

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

January 17, 2009October 17, 2024

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

January 10, 2009April 27, 2025

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

January 3, 2009January 23, 2019

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

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