Event Archives

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

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

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

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, 2009June 7, 2022

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, 2009March 7, 2022

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 1, 2009November 26, 2023

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

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