Tag: iscsi

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AWS (Amazon) storage gateway, first, second and third impressions

Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced the beta of their new storage gateway functionality that enables access of Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Services) from your different applications using an appliance installed in your data center site. With this beta launch, Amazon joins other startup vendors who are providing standalone gateway appliance products (e.g. Nasuni etc) along with those who have disappeared from the market (e.g. Cirtas). In addition to gateway vendors, there are also those with cloud access added to their software tools such as (e.g. Jungle Disk that access both Rack space and Amazon S3 along with Commvault Simpana Cloud connector among others). There are also vendors that have joined cloud access gateways as part of their storage systems such as TwinStrata among others. Even EMC (and here) has gotten into the game adding qualified cloud access support to some of their products.

What is a cloud storage gateway?

Before going further, lets take a step back and address what for some may be a fundemental quesiton of what is a cloud storage gateway?

Cloud services such as storage are accessed via some type of network, either the public Internet or a private connection. The type of cloud service being accessed (figure 1) will decide what is needed. For example, some services can be accessed using a standard Web browser, while others must plug-in or add-on modules. Some cloud services may need downloading an application, agent, or other tool for accessing the cloud service or resources, while others give an on-site or on-premisess appliance or gateway.

Generic cloud access example via Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press)
Figure 1: Accessing and using clouds (From Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press))

Cloud access software and gateways or appliances are used for making cloud storage accessible to local applications. The gateways, as well as enabling cloud access, provide replication, snapshots, and other storage services functionality. Cloud access gateways or server-based software include tools from BAE, Citrix, Gladinet, Mezeo, Nasuni, Openstack, Twinstrata among others. In addition to cloud gateway appliances or cloud points of presence (cpops), access to public services is also supported via various software tools. Many data protection tools including backup/restore, archiving, replication, and other applications have added (or are planning to add) support for access to various public services such as Amazon, Goggle, Iron Mountain, Microsoft, Nirvanix, or Rack space among several others.

Some of the tools have added native support for one or more of the cloud services leveraging various applicaiotn programming interfaces (APIs), while other tools or applications rely on third-party access gateway appliances or a combination of native and appliances. Another option for accessing cloud resources is to use tools (Figure 2) supplied by the service provider, which may be their own, from a third-party partner, or open source, as well as using their APIs to customize your own tools.

Generic cloud access example via Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press)
Figure 2: Cloud access tools (From Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press))

For example, I can use my Amazon S3 or Rackspace storage accounts using their web and other provided tools for basic functionality. However, for doing backups and restores, I use the tools provided by the service provider, which then deal with two different cloud storage services. The tool presents an interface for defining what to back up, protect, and restore, as well as enabling shared (public or private) storage devices and network drives. In addition to providing an interface (Figure 2), the tool also speaks specific API and protocols of the different services, including PUT (create or update a container), POST (update header or Meta data), LIST (retrieve information), HEAD (metadata information access), GET (retrieve data from a container), and DELETE (remove container) functions. Note that the real behavior and API functionality will vary by service provider. The importance of mentioning the above example is that when you look at some cloud storage services providers, you will see mention of PUT, POST, LIST, HEAD, GET, and DELETE operations as well as services such as capacity and availability. Some services will include an unlimited number of operations, while others will have fees for doing updates, listing, or retrieving your data in addition to  basic storage fees. By being aware of cloud primitive functions such as PUT or POST and GET or LIST, you can have a better idea of what they are used for as well as how they play into evaluating different services, pricing, and services plans.

Depending on the type of cloud service, various protocols or interfaces may be used, including iSCSI, NAS NFS, HTTP or HTTPs, FTP, REST, SOAP, and Bit Torrent, and APIs and PaaS mechanisms including .NET or SQL database commands, in addition to XM, JSON, or other formatted data. VMs can be moved to a cloud service using file transfer tools or upload capabilities of the provider. For example, a VM such as a VMDK or VHD  is prepared locally in your environment and then uploaded to a cloud provider for execution. Cloud services may give an access program or utility that allows you to configure when, where, and how data will be protected, similar to other backup or archive tools.

Some traditional backup or archive tools have added direct or via third party support for accessing IaaS cloud storage services such as Amazon, Rack space, and others. Third-party access appliance or gateways enable existing tools to read and write data to a cloud environment by presenting a standard interface such as NAS (NFS and/or CIFS) or iSCSI (Block) that gets mapped to the back-end cloud service format. For example, if you subscribe to Amazon S3, storage is allocated as objects and various tools are used to use or utilize. The cloud access software or appliance understands how to communicate with the IaaS  storage APIs and abstracts those from how they are used. Access software tools or gateways, in addition to translating or mapping between cloud APIs, formats your applications including security with encryption, bandwidth optimization, and data footprint reduction such as compression and de-duplication. Other functionality include reporting, management tools that support various interfaces, protocols and standards including SNMP or SNIA, Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMIS), and Cloud Data Management Initiative (CDMI).

First impression: Interesting, good move Amazon, I was ready to install and start testing it today

The good news here is that Amazon is taking steps to make it easier for your existing applications and IT environments to use and leverage clouds for private and hybrid adoption models with both an Amazon branded and managed services, technology and associated tools.

This means leveraging your existing Amazon accounts to simplify procurement, management, ongoing billing as well as leveraging their infrastructure. As a standalone gateway appliance (e.g. it does not have to be bundled as part of a specific backup, archive, replication or other data management tool), the idea is that you can insert the technology into your existing data center between your servers and storage to begin sending a copy of data off to Amazon S3. In addition to sending data to S3, the integrated functionality with other AWS services should make it easier to integrated with Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) and Elastic Block storage (EBS) capabilities including snapshots for data protection.

Thus my first impression of AWS storage gateway at a high level view is good and interesting resulting in looking a bit deeper resulting in a second impression.

Second impression: Hmm, what does it really do and require, time to slow down and do more home work

Digging deeper and going through the various publicly available material (note can only comment or discuss on what is announced or publicly available) results in a second impression of wanting and needing to dig deeper based on some of caveats. Now granted and in fairness to Amazon, this is of course a beta release and hence while on first impression it can be easy to miss the notice that it is in fact a beta so keep in mind things can and hopefully will change.

Pricing aside, which means as with any cloud or managed storage service, you will want to do a cost analysis model just as you would for procuring physical storage, look into the cost of monthly gateway fee along with its associated physical service running VMware ESXi configuration that you will need to supply. Chances are that if you are an average sized SMB, you have a physical machine (PM) laying around that you can throw a copy of ESXi on to if you dont already have room for some more VMs on an existing one.

You will also need to assess the costs for using the S3 storage including space capacity charges, access and other fees as well as charges for doing snapshots or using other functionality. Again these are not unique to Amazon or their cloud gateway and should be best practices for any service or solution that you are considering. Amazon makes it easy by the way to see their base pricing for different tiers of availability, geographic locations and optional fees.

Speaking of accessing the cloud, and cloud conversations, you will also want to keep in mind what your networking bandwidth service requirements will be to move data to Amazon that might not already be doing so.

Another thing to consider with the AWS storage gateway is that it does not replace your local storage (that is unless you move your applications to Amazon EC2 and EBS), rather makes a copy of what every you save locally to a remote Amazon S3 storage pool. This can be good for high availability (HA), business continuance (BC), disaster recovery (DR) and compliance among other data management needs. However in your cost model you also need to keep in mind that you are not replacing your local storage, you are adding to it via the cloud which should be seen as complimenting and enhancing your private now to be hybrid environment.

 

Walking the cloud data protection talk

FWIW, I leverage a similar model where I use a service (Jungle Disk) where critical copies of my data get sent to that service which in turn places copies at Rack space (Jungledisks parent) and Amazon S3. What data goes to where depends on different policies that I have established. I also have local backup copies as well as master gold disaster copy stored in a secure offsite location. The idea is that when needed, I can get a good copy restored from my cloud providers quickly regardless of where I am if the local copy is not good. On the other hand, experience has already demonstrated that without sufficient network bandwidth services, if I need to bring back 100s of GBytes or TBytes of data quickly, Im going to be better off bring back onsite my master gold copy, then applying fewer, smaller updates from the cloud service. In other words, the technologies compliment each other.

By the way, a lesson learned here is that once my first copy is made which have data footprint reduction (DFR) techniques applied (e.g. compress, de dupe, optimized, etc), later copies occur very fast. However subsequent restores of those large files or volumes also takes longer to retrieve from the cloud vs. sending up changed versions. Thus be aware of backup vs. restore times, something of which will apply to any cloud provider and can be mitigated by appliances that do local caching. However also keep in mind that if a disaster occurs, will your local appliance be affected and its cache rendered useless.

Getting back to AWS storage gateway and my second impression is that at first it sounded great.

However then I realized it only supports iSCSI and FWIW, nothing wrong with iSCSI, I like it and recommend using it where applicable, even though Im not using it. I would like to have seen a NAS (either NFS and/or CIFS) support for a gateway making it easier for in my scenario different applications, servers and systems to use and leverage the AWS services, something that I can do with my other gateways provided via different software tools. Granted for those environments that already are using iSCSI for your servers that will be using AWS storage gateway, then this is a non issue while for others it is a consideration including cost (time) to factor in to prepare your environment for using the ability.

Depending on the amount of storage you have in your environment, the next item that caught my eye may or may not be an issue that the iSCSI gateway supports up to 1TB volumes and up to 12 of them hence a largest capacity of 12TB under management. This can be gotten around by using multiple gateways however the increased complexity balanced to the benefit the functionality is something to consider.

Third impression: Dig deeper, learn more, address various questions

This leads up to my third impression the need to dig deeper into what AWS storage gateway can and cannot do for various environments. I can see where it can be a fit for some environments while for others at least in its beta version will be a non starter. In the meantime, do your homework, look around at other options which ironically by having Amazon launching a gateway service may reinvigorate the market place of some of the standalone or embedded cloud gateway solution providers.

What is needed for using AWS storage gateway

In addition to having an S3 account, you will need to acquire for a monthly fee the storage gateway appliance which is software installed into a VMware ESXi hypervisor virtual machine (VM). The requirements are VMware ESXi hypervisor (v4.1) on a physical machine (PM) with at least 7.5GB of RAM and four (4) virtual processors assigned to the appliance VM along with 75GB of disk space for the Open Virtual Alliance (OVA) image installation and data. You will also need to have an proper sized network connection to Amazon. You will also need iSCSI initiators on either Windows server 2008, Windows 7 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Note that the AWS storage gateway beta is optimized for block write sizes greater than 4Kbytes and warns that smaller IO sizes can cause overhead resulting in lost storage space. This is a consideration for systems that have not yet changed your file systems and volumes to use the larger allocation sizes.

Some closing thoughts, tips and comments:

  • Congratulations to Amazon for introducing and launching an AWS branded storage gateway.
  • Amazon brings trust the value of trust to a cloud relationship.
  • Initially I was excited about the idea of using a gateway that any of may systems could use my S3 storage pools with vs. using gateway access functions that are part of different tools such as my backup software or via Amazon web tools. Likewise I was excited by the idea of having an easy to install and use gateway that would allow me to grow in a cost effective way.
  • Keep in mind that this solution or at least in its beta version DOES NOT replace your existing iSCSI based storage needs, instead it compliments what you already have.
  • I hope Amazon listens carefully to what they customers and prospects want vs. need to evolve the functionality.
  • This announcement should reinvigorate some of the cloud appliance vendors as well as those who have embedded functionality to Amazon and other providers.
  • Keep bandwidth services and optimization in mind both for sending data as well as for when retrieving during a disaster or small file restore.
  • In concept, the AWS storage gateway is not all that different than appliances that do snapshots and other local and remote data protection such as those from Actifio, EMC (Recoverpoint), Falconstor or dedicated gateways such as those from Nasuni among others.
  • Here is a link to added AWS storage gateways frequently asked questions (FAQs).
  • If the AWS were available with a NAS interface, I would probably be activating it this afternoon even with some of their other requirements and cost aside.
  • Im still formulating my fourth impression which is going to take some time, perhaps if I can get Amazon to help sell more of my books so that I can get some money to afford to test the entire solution leveraging my existing S3, EC2 and EBS accounts I might do so in the future, otherwise for now, will continue to research.
  • Learn more about the AWS storage gateway beta, check out this free Amazon web cast on February 23, 2012.

Learn more abut cloud based data protection, data footprint reduction, cloud gateways, access and management, check out my book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press) which is of course available on Amazon Kindle as well as via hard cover print copy also available at Amazon.com.

Ok, nuff said for now, I need to get back to some other things while thinking about this all some more.

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

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IT and technology turkeys

Now that Halloween and talk of Zombies has past (at least for now), that means next up on the social or holiday calendar topics in the U.S. is thanksgiving which means turkey themes.

With turkey themes in mind, how about some past, current and maybe future technology flops or where are they now.

A technology turkey can be a product, trend, technique or theme that was touted (or hyped) and flopped for various reasons not flying up to, or meeting its expectations. That means that a technology turkey may have had industry adoption however lacked customer deployment.

Lets try a few, how about holographic storage, or is that still a future technology?

Were NEXT computer and the Apple Newton turkeys?

Disclosure: I have a Newton that has not been used since the mid 90s.

Is ATA over Ethernet (AoE) a future turkey candidate along with FCoE aka Fibre Channel over Ethernet (or here or here), or is that just some peoples wishful thinking regarding FCoE being a turkey?

Speaking of AoE, what ever happened to Zetera (aka Hammer storage) the iSCSI alternative of a few years ago?

To be fair how about IPFC not to be confused with FCIP (Fibre Channel frames mapped to IP for distance) or iFCP not to be confused with FCoE or iSCSI. IPFC mapped IP as upper level protocol (ULP) onto Fibre Channel coexisting with FCP and FICON. There were only a few adopters of IPFC that used it as a low latency channel to channel (CTC) mechanism for open systems before InfiniBand and other technologies matured.

Im guessing that someone will step up to defend the honor of Microsoft Windows Vista, however until then, IMHO it is or was a Turkey. While on the topic of operating systems, anyone have an opinion on IBMs OS2? Speaking of PCs, how about the DEC Rainbow and its sibling the Robin? Remember when IBM was in the PC business before selling it off to Lenovo, how about the IBM PCjr, turkey candidate or not?

HP should be on the turkey list with their now ex CEO Leo Apotheker whom they put out to pasture, on the technology front, anybody remember AutoRAID?

How about the Britton Lee Database machine which today would be referred to as a storage appliance or application optimized storage system such as the Oracle Exadata II (or Oracle Exadata I based on HP hardware) among others. Note that Im not saying Exadata I or Exadata II are turkeys as that will be left to your own determination. Both are cool from a technology standpoint, however there is more to having neat or interesting technology to move from announcement to industry adoption to customer deployment, things that Oracle has been having some success with.

Speaking of Oracle, remember when Sun bought the Encore storage system and renamed it the A7000 (not to be confused with the A5000 aka Photon) in an attempt to compete against the EMC Symmetrix. The Encore folks after Sun went on to their next project and still today call it DataCore. Meanwhile Sun discontinued the A7000 after a period of time similar to what they did with other acquisitions such as Pirus which became the 6920 which was end of lifed as part of a deal where Sun increased their resell activity of HDS which too has since been archived. Hmmm, that begs the question of what happens with Oracle acquiring Pillar with an earn out scheme where if there is revenue there is a payout, if there is no revenue then there is a tax write off.

What about big data, will that become a turkey following in the footsteps of other former high flyers such as cloud, virtualization, data classification, CDP, Green IT and SOA among many others. IMHO that depends upon what your view or definition along with expectations of big data is as a buzzword bingo topic. Depending on your view, that will determine if the above will join others that fade away from the limelight shifting into productive modes for customers and profitable activity for vendors.

Want to read what others have to say about technology turkeys or flops?

Here is what ibitimes has to say about technology flops (aka) turkeys, with Infoworlds lineup here, Computerworlds list is here. Meanwhile a couple from mashable here and here, Cnet weighs in here, with another list over at investorplace found here, and checkout the list at Money here with the telegraph represented here. Of course you could Google to find more however you would probably also stumble upon Googles own flops or technology turkeys including wave.

What is your take as to other technology turkeys past, present or future?

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

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Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking book released

Ok, it’s now official, following its debut at the VMworld 2011 book store last week in Las Vegas, my new book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press) is now formally released with general availability announced today along with companion material located at https://storageioblog.com/book3 including the Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking LinkedIn group page launched a few months ago. Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CVDSN) a 370 page hard cover print is my third solo book that follows The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press 2009) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier 2004).

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking Book by Greg Schulz
CVDSN book was on display at VMworld 2011 book store last week along with a new book by Duncan Epping (aka @DuncanYB ) and Frank Denneman (aka @frankdenneman ) titled VMware vSphere 5 Clustering Technical Deepdive. You can get your copy of Duncan and Franks new book on Amazon here.

Greg Schulz during book signing at VMworld 2011
Here is a photo of me on the left visiting a VMworld 2011 attendee in the VMworld book store.

 

Whats inside the book, theme and topics covered

When it comes to clouds, virtualization, converged and dynamic infrastructures Dont be scared however do look before you leap to be be prepared including doing your homework.

What this means is that you should do your homework, prepare, learn, and get involved with proof of concepts (POCs) and training to build the momentum and success to continue an ongoing IT journey. Identify where clouds, virtualization and data storage networking technologies and techniques compliment and enable your journey to efficient, effective and productive optimized IT services delivery.

 

There is no such thing as a data or information recession: Do more with what you have

A common challenge in many organizations is exploding data growth along with associated management tasks and constraints, including budgets, staffing, time, physical facilities, floor space, and power and cooling. IT clouds and dynamic infrastructure environments enable flexible, efficient and optimized, cost-effective and productive services delivery. The amount of data being generated, processed, and stored continues to grow, a trend that does not appear to be changing in the future. Even during the recent economic crisis, there has been no slow down or information recession. Instead, the need to process, move, and store data has only increased, in fact both people and data are living longer. CVDSN presents options, technologies, best practices and strategies for enabling IT organizations looking to do more with what they have while supporting growth along with new services without compromising on cost or QoS delivery (see figure below).

Driving Return on Innovation the new ROI: Doing more, reducing costs while boosting productivity

 

Expanding focus from efficiency and optimization to effectiveness and productivity

A primary tenant of a cloud and virtualized environment is to support growing demand in a cost-effective manner  with increased agility without compromising QoS. By removing complexity and enabling agility, information services can be delivered in a timely manner to meet changing business needs.

 

There are many types of information services delivery model options

Various types of information services delivery modes should be combined to meet various needs and requirements. These complimentary service delivery options and descriptive terms include cloud, virtual and data storage network enabled environments. These include dynamic Infrastructure, Public & Private and Hybrid Cloud, abstracted, multi-tenant, capacity on demand, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) among others.

Convergence combing different technology domains and skill sets

Components of a cloud and virtual environment include desktop, servers, and storage, networking, hardware, and software, services along with APIs and software stacks. This include virtual and physical desktops, data, voice and storage networks, LANs, SANs, MANs, WANs, faster blade and rack servers with more memory, SSD and high-capacity storage and associated virtualization tools and management software. True convergence combines leveraging technology and people, processes and best practices aligned to make the most of those resources to deliver cost-effective services delivery.

 

Best people, processes, practices and products (the four Ps)

Bringing all the various components together is the Ps (people skill sets, process, practices and products). This means leveraging and enhancing people skill sets and experience, process and procedures to optimize workflow for streamlined service orchestration, practices and policies to be more effectively reducing waste without causing new bottlenecks, and products such as racks, stacks, hardware, software, and managed or cloud services.

 

Service categories and catalogs, templates SLO and SLA alignment

Establishing service categories aligned to known service levels and costs enables resources to be aligned to applicable SLO and SLA requirements. Leveraging service templates and defined policies can enable automation and rapid provisioning of resources including self-service requests.

 

Navigating to effective IT services delivery: Metrics, measurements and E2E management

You cannot effectively manage what you do not know about; likewise, without situational awareness or navigation tools, you are flying blind. E2E (End to End) tools can provide monitoring and usage metrics for reporting and accounting, including enabling comparison with other environments. Metrics include customer service satisfaction, SLO and SLAs, QoS, performance, availability and costs to service delivered.

 

The importance of data protection for virtual, cloud and physical environments

Clouds and virtualization are important tools and technologies for protecting existing consolidated or converged as well as traditional environments. Likewise, virtual and cloud environments or data placed there also need to be protected. Now is the time to rethink and modernize your data protection strategy to be more effective, protecting, preserving and serving more data for longer periods of time with less complexity and cost.

 

Packing smart and effectively for your journey: Data footprint reduction (DFR)

Reducing your data footprint impact leveraging data footprint reduction (DFR) techniques, technologies and best practices is important for enabling an optimized, efficient and effective IT services delivery environment. Reducing your data footprint is enabled with clouds and virtualization providing a means and mechanism for archiving inactive data and for transparently moving it. On the other hand, moving to a cloud and virtualized environment to do more with what you have is enhanced by reducing the impact of your data footprint. The ABCDs of data footprint reduction include Archiving, Backup modernization, Compression and consolidation, Data management and dedupe along with Storage tiering and thin provisioning among other techniques.

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking book by Greg Schulz

How the book is laid out:

  • Table of content (TOC)
  • How the book is organized and who should read it
  • Preface
  • Section I: Why the need for cloud, virtualization and data storage networks
  • Chapter 1: Industry trends and perspectives: From issues and challenges to opportunities
  • Chapter 2: Cloud, virtualization and data storage networking fundamentals
  • Section II: Managing data and resources: Protect, preserve, secure and serve
  • Chapter 3: Infrastructure Resource Management (IRM)
  • Chapter 4: Data and storage networking security
  • Chapter 5: Data protection (Backup/Restore, BC and DR)
  • Chapter 6: Metrics and measurement for situational awareness
  • Section III: Technology, tools and solution options
  • Chapter 7: Data footprint reduction: Enabling cost-effective data demand growth
  • Chapter 8: Enabling data footprint reduction: Storage capacity optimization
  • Chapter 9: Storage services and systems
  • Chapter 10: Server virtualization
  • Chapter 11: Connectivity: Networking with your servers and storage
  • Chapter 12: Cloud and solution packages
  • Chapter 13: Management and tools
  • Section IV: Putting IT all together
  • Chapter 14: Applying what you have learned
  • Chapter 15: Wrap-up, what’s next and book summary
  • Appendices:
  • Where to Learn More
  • Index and Glossary

Here is the release that went out via Business Wire (aka Bizwire) earlier today.

 

Industry Veteran Greg Schulz of StorageIO Reveals Latest IT Strategies in “Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking” Book
StorageIO Founder Launches the Definitive Book for Enabling Cloud, Virtualized, Dynamic, and Converged Infrastructures

Stillwater, Minnesota – September 7, 2011  – The Server and StorageIO Group (www.storageio.com), a leading independent IT industry advisory and consultancy firm, in conjunction with  publisher CRC Press, a Taylor and Francis imprint, today announced the release of “Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking,” a new book by Greg Schulz, noted author and StorageIO founder. The book examines strategies for the design, implementation, and management of hardware, software, and services technologies that enable the most advanced, dynamic, and flexible cloud and virtual environments.

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking

The book supplies real-world perspectives, tips, recommendations, figures, and diagrams on creating an efficient, flexible and optimized IT service delivery infrastructures to support demand without compromising quality of service (QoS) in a cost-effective manner. “Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking” looks at converging IT resources and management technologies to facilitate efficient and effective delivery of information services, including enabling information factories. Schulz guides readers of all experience levels through various technologies and techniques available to them for enabling efficient information services.

Topics covered in the book include:

  • Information services model options and best practices
  • Metrics for efficient E2E IT management and measurement
  • Server, storage, I/O networking, and data center virtualization
  • Converged and cloud storage services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS)
  • Public, private, and hybrid cloud and managed services
  • Data protection for virtual, cloud, and physical environments
  • Data footprint reduction (archive, backup modernization, compression, dedupe)
  • High availability, business continuance (BC), and disaster recovery (DR)
  • Performance, availability and capacity optimization

This book explains when, where, with what, and how to leverage cloud, virtual, and data storage networking as part of an IT infrastructure today and in the future. “Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking” comprehensively covers IT data storage networking infrastructures, including public, private and hybrid cloud, managed services, virtualization, and traditional IT environments.

“With all the chatter in the market about cloud storage and how it can solve all your problems, the industry needed a clear breakdown of the facts and how to use cloud storage effectively. Greg’s latest book does exactly that,” said Greg Brunton of EDS, an HP company.

Click here to listen and watch Schulz discuss his new book in this Video about Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking book by Greg Schulz video.

About the Book

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking has 370 pages, with more than 100 figures and tables, 15 chapters plus appendices, as well as a glossary. CRC Press catalog number K12375, ISBN-10: 1439851735, ISBN-13: 9781439851739, publication September 2011. The hard cover book can be purchased now at global venues including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Digital Guru and CRCPress.com. Companion material is located at https://storageioblog.com/book3 including images, additional information, supporting site links at CRC Press, LinkedIn Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking group, and other books by the author. Direct book editorial review inquiries to John Wyzalek of CRC Press at john.wyzalek@taylorfrancis.com (twitter @jwyzalek) or +1 (917) 351-7149. For bulk and special orders contact Chris Manion of CRC Press at chris.manion@taylorandfrancis.com or +1 (561) 998-2508. For custom, derivative works and excerpts, contact StorageIO at info@storageio.com.

About the Author

Greg Schulz is the founder of the independent IT industry advisory firm StorageIO. Before forming StorageIO, Schulz worked for several vendors in systems engineering, sales, and marketing technologist roles. In addition to having been an analyst, vendor and VAR, Schulz also gained real-world hands on experience working in IT organizations across different industry sectors. His IT customer experience spans systems development, systems administrator, disaster recovery consultant, and capacity planner across different technology domains, including servers, storage, I/O networking hardware, software and services. Today, in addition to his analyst and research duties, Schulz is a prolific writer, blogger, and sought-after speaker, sharing his expertise with worldwide technology manufacturers and resellers, IT users, and members of the media. With an insightful and thought-provoking style, Schulz is also author of the books “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC Press, 2009) which is on the Intel developers recommended reading list and the SNIA-endorsed reading book “Resilient Storage Networks: Designing Flexible Scalable Data Infrastructures” (Elsevier, 2004). Schulz is available for interviews and commentary, briefings, speaking engagements at conferences and private events, webinars, video and podcast along with custom advisory consultation sessions. Learn more at https://storageio.com.

End of press release.

Wrap up

I want to express thanks to all of those involved with the project that spanned over the past year.

Stayed tuned for more news and updates pertaining to Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking along with related material including upcoming events as well as chapter excerpts. Speaking of events, here is information on an upcoming workshop seminar that I will be involved with for IT storage and networking professionals to be held October 4th and 5th in the Netherlands.

You can get your copy now at global venues including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Digital Guru and CRCPress.com.

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

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StorageIO going Dutch again: October 2011 Seminar for storage professionals

Greg Schulz of StorageIO in conjunction with or dutch partner Brouwer Storage Consultancy will be presenting a two day workshop seminar for IT storage, virtualization, and networking professionals Monday 3rd and Tuesday 4th of October 2011 at Ampt van Nijkerk Netherlands.

Brouwer Storage ConsultanceyThe Server and StorageIO Group

This two day interactive education seminar for storage professionals will focus on current data and storage networking trends, technology and business challenges along with available technologies and solutions. During the seminar learn what technologies and management techniques are available, how different vendors solutions compare and what to use when and where. This seminar digs into the various IT tools, techniques, technologies and best practices for enabling an efficient, effective, flexible, scalable and resilient data infrastructure.

The format of this two seminar will be a mix of presentation and interactive discussion allowing attendees plenty of time to discuss among themselves and with seminar presenters. Attendees will gain insight into how to compare and contrast various technologies and solutions in addition to identifying and aligning those solutions to their specific issues, challenges and requirements.

Major themes that will be discussed include:

  • Who is doing what with various storage solutions and tools
  • Is RAID still relevant for today and tomorrow
  • Are hard disk drives and tape finally dead at the hands of SSD and clouds
  • What am I routinely hearing, seeing or being asked to comment on
  • Enabling storage optimization, efficiency and effectiveness (performance and capacity)
  • Opportunities for leveraging various technologies, techniques,trends
  • Supporting virtual servers including re-architecting data protection
  • How to modernize data protection (backup/restore, BC, DR, replication, snapshots)
  • Data footprint reduction (DFR) including archive, compression and dedupe
  • Clarifying cloud confusion, don’t be scared, however look before you leap
  • Big data, big bandwidth and virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI)

In addition this two day seminar will look at what are some new and improved technologies and techniques, who is doing what along with discussions around industry and vendor activity including mergers and acquisitions. In addition to seminar handout materials, attendees will also receive a copy Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press) by Greg Schulz that looks at enabling efficient, optimized and effective information services delivery across cloud, virtual and traditional environments.

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking Book

Buzzwords and topic themes to be discussed among others include E2E, FCoE and DCB, CNAs, SAS, I/O virtualization, server and storage virtualization, public and private cloud, Dynamic Infrastructures, VDI, RAID and advanced data protection options, SSD, flash, SAN, DAS and NAS, object storage, big data and big bandwidth, backup, BC, DR, application optimized or aware storage, open storage, scale out storage solutions, federated management, metrics and measurements, performance and capacity, data movement and migration, storage tiering, data protection modernization, SRA and SRM, data footprint reduction (archive, compress, dedupe), unified and multi-protocol storage, solution bundle and stacks.

For more information or to register contact Brouwer Storage Consultancy

Brouwer Storage Consultancy
Olevoortseweg 43
3861 MH Nijkerk
The Netherlands
Telephone: +31-33-246-6825
Cell: +31-652-601-309
Fax: +31-33-245-8956
Email: info@brouwerconsultancy.com
Web: www.brouwerconsultancy.com

Brouwer Storage Consultancey

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

Ok, nuff said for now

Cheers Gs

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

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

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Getting SASy, the other shared storage option for disk and SSD systems

Here is a link to a recent guest post that I was invited to do over at The Virtualization Practice (TVP) pertaining to Getting SASsy, the other shared server to storage interconnect for disk and SSD systems. Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) is better known as an interface for connecting hard disk drives (HDD) to servers and storage systems; however it is also widely used for attaching storage systems to physical as well as virtual servers. An important storage requirement for virtual machine (VM) environments with more than one physical machine (PM) server is shared storage. SAS has become a viable interconnect along with other Storage Area Network (SAN) interfaces including Fibre Channel (FC), Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and iSCSI for block access.

Read more here.

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

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Dude, is Dell going to buy Brocade?

Some IT industry buzz this week is around continued speculation (or here) of who will Dell buy next and will it be Brocade.

Brocade was mentioned as a possible acquisition by some in the IT industry last fall after Dell stepped back from the 3PAR bidding war with HP. Industry rumors or speculations are not new involving Dell and Brocade some going back a year or more (or here or here).

Dell

Last fall I did a blog post commenting that I thought Dell would go on to buy someone else (turned out to be Compellent and Insight One). Those acquisitions by Dell followed their purchases of companies including Scalent, Kace, Exanet, Perot, and Ocarina among others. In that post, I also commented that I did not think (at least at that time) that Brocade would be a likely or good fit for Dell given their different business models, go to market strategy and other factors.

Dell is clearly looking to move further up into the enterprise space which means adding more products and routes to market of which one is via networking and another involves people with associated skill sets. The networking business at Dell has been good for them along with storage to complement their traditional server and workstation business, not to mention their continued expansion into medical, life science and healthcare related solutions. All of those are key building blocks for moving to cloud, virtual and data storage networking environments.

Dell has also done some interesting acquisitions around management and service or workflow tools with Scalent and Kace not to mention their scale out NAS file system (excuse me, big data) solutions via Exanet and data footprint reduction tools with Ocarina, all of which have plays in the enterprise, cloud and traditional Dell markets.

But what about Brocade?

Is it a good fit for Dell?

Dell certainly could benefit from owning Brocade as a means of expanding their Ethernet and IP businesses beyond OEM partnerships, like HP supplementing their networking business with 3COM and IBM with Blade networks.

However, would Dell acquiring Brocade disrupt their relationships with Cisco or other networking providers?

If Dell were to make a bid for Brocade, would Huawei (or here) sit on the sidelines and watch or jump in the game to stir things up?

Would Cisco counter with a deal Dell could not refuse to tighten their partnership at different levels perhaps even involving something with the UCS that was discussed on a recent Infosmack episode?

How would EMC, Fujitsu, HDS, HP, IBM, NetApp and Oracle among others, all of who are partners with Brocade respond to Dell now becoming their OEM supplier for some products?

Would those OEM partnerships continue or cause some of those vendors to become closer aligned with Cisco or others?

Again the question, will Huawei sit back or decide to enter the market on a more serious basis or continue to quietly increase their presences around the periphery?

Brocade could be a good fit for Dell giving them a networking solution (both Ethernet via the Foundry acquisition along with Fibre Channel and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)) not to mention many other pieces of IP including some NAS and file management tools collecting dust on some Brocade shelf somewhere. What Dell would also get is a sales force that knows how to sell to OEMs, the channel and to enterprise customers, some of whom are networking (Ethernet or Fibre Channel) focused, some who have broader diverse backgrounds.

While it is possible that Dell could end up with Brocade along with a later bidding battle (unless others just let a possible deal go as is), Dell would find itself in new and unfamiliar waters similar to Brocade gaining its feet moving into the Ethernet and IP space after having been comfortable in the Fibre Channel storage centric space for over a decade.

While the networking products would be a good fit for Dell assuming that they were to do such a deal, the diamond in the rough so to speak could be Brocade channel, OEM and direct sales contact team of sales people, business development, systems engineers and support staff on a global basis. Keep in mind that while some of those Brocadians are network focused, many have connected servers and storage from mainframe to open systems across all vendors for years or in some cases decades. Some of those people who I know personally are even talented enough to sell ice to an Eskimo (that is a sales joke btw).

Sure the Brocadians would have to be leveraged to keep selling what they have done, a task similar to what NetApp is currently facing with their integration of Engenio.

However that DNA could help Dell set up more presences in organizations where they have not been in the past. In other words, Dell could use networking to pull the rest of their product lines into those accounts, vars or resellers.

Hmmm, does that sound like another large California based networking company?

Dell

After all, June is a popular month for weddings, lets see what happens next week down in Orlando during the Dell Storage Forum as some have speculated might be a launching pad for some type of deal.

Here are some related links to more material:

  • HP Buys one of the seven networking dwarfs and gets a bargain
  • Dell Will Buy Someone, However Not Brocade (At least for now)
  • While HP and Dell make counter bids, exclusive interview with 3PAR CEO David Scott
  • Acadia VCE: VMware + Cisco + EMC = Virtual Computing Environment
  • Did someone forget to tell Dell that Tape is dead?
  • Data footprint reduction (Part 1): Life beyond dedupe and changing data lifecycles
  • Data footprint reduction (Part 2): Dell, IBM, Ocarina and Storwize
  • What is DFR or Data Footprint Reduction?
  • Could Huawei buy Brocade?
  • Has FCoE entered the trough of disillusionment?
  • More on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)
  • Dude, is Dell doing a disk deal again with Compellent?
  • Post Holiday IT Shopping Bargains, Dell Buying Exanet?
  • Back to school shopping: Dude, Dell Digests 3PAR Disk storage
  • Huawei should buy brocade
  • NetApp buying LSIs Engenio Storage Business Unit

    • Ok, nuff said for now

    Cheers Gs

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

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

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    Is FCoE Struggling to Gain Traction, or on a normal adoption course?

    Here is an article by Drew Robb over at Enterprise Storage Forum about Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and its state of adoption. Drews article includes comments and perspectives from myself around where FCoE is going and why it is on a long road and not a sprint for a short temporal technology play (e.g. not a quick passing fad or bandwagon trend).

    If you measure FCoE adoption in months, sure, its been slow to gain adoption and deployment similar to how Ethernet, Fibre Channel (FC) and even iSCSI took time to evolve. Part of the time involved is for developing the standards, implementing the technology as well as expanding the capabilities of the new tools. Another part of the time required for technologies that are targeted to be around for a decade or more include ecosystem maturity, education not to mention customers being comfortable with along with having budget to buy the new items.

    I have previously said that FCoE was in the trough of disillusionment and depending on your view, that could be either entering, exiting or there to stay. Not surprisingly some cheerleaders thought that saying FCoE was in the trough of disillusionment was being cynical, while some cynics were cheerleading.

    My point around FCoE is that any technology or paradigm that goes through a hype cycle that will actually have long term legs or be around for years if not decades goes through a post initial hype disillusionment phase before reappearing. Technologies or trends that go through the trough of disillusionment that will eventually reappear sometimes go to Some Day Isle for rest and relaxation (R and R). Some Day Isle for those not familiar with it is a visional or fictional place that some day you will go to, a wishful happy place so to speak that is perfect for hyperbole R and R. After some R and R, these trends, technologies or techniques often reappear well rested and ready for the next wave of buzz, fud, hype and activity.

    Certainly there have been and will continue to be more battles or matches tied to early deployments along with plenty of hype or FUD. After all, if FCoE were to simply pack up and go away like some cynics or naysayers suggest, what will they have to talk, blog, write or speak about? Similarly if FCoE magically goes mainstream tomorrow, the cheerleaders will have to find a new bandwagon or Shiny New Toy (SNT) to rally around.

    Also as I have said in the past, its not if, rather when FCoE will be deployed in yours or your customers environment along with how and using what tools or technologies. Another question to pose around FCoE as a converged technology is will you use it in a true converged manner meaning adapting how server, storage and networking resources are managed including best practices? Or, will you use FCoE in a hybrid SAN or LAN mode using traditional SAN and LAN management practice and separate teams perhaps even battling over who owns the tools or technology.

    Fwiw, in case you did not pick up on it from my previous posts, tips, articles and coverage in books, I think that FCoE has a very bright future as does NAS and iSCSI along with shared SAS as complimentary technologies when used for the applicable scenario.

    What is your take, Is FCoE struggling to gain traction?

    Is FCoE on a normal technology evolution path and timeline?

    Is it too early to tell what the future holds for FCoE?

    Is FCoE too little to late and if so why?

    Ok, nuff said for now.

    Cheers gs

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

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

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    NetApp buying LSIs Engenio Storage Business Unit

    Storage I/O trends

    This has been a busy week as on Monday Western Digital (WD) announced that they were buying the disk drive business from Hitachi Ltd. (e.g. HGST) for about $4.3 billion USD. The deal includes about $3.5B in cash and 25 million WD common shares (e.g. $750M USD) which will give Hitachi Ltd. about ten (10) percent ownership in WD along with adding two Hitachi persons onto the WD board of directors. WD now moves into the number one hard disk drive (HDD) spot above Seagate (note Hitachi is not selling HDS) in addition to giving them a competitive positioning in both the enterprise HDD as well as emerging SSD markets.

    Today NetApp announced that they have agreed to purchase portions of the LSI storage business known as Engenio for $480M USD.

    The business and technology that LSI is selling to NetApp (aka Engenio) is the external storage system business that accounted for about $705M of their approximate $900M+ storage business in 2010. This piece of the business represents external (outside of the server) shared RAID storage systems that support Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), iSCSI, Fibre Channel (FC) and emerging FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) with SSD, SAS and FC high performance HDDs as well as high capacity HDDs. NetApp has block however there strong suit (sorry netapp guys) is file while Engenio strong suit is block that attaches to gateways from NetApp as well as others in addition to servers for scale out NAS and cloud.

    What NetApp is getting from LSI is the business that sells storage systems or their components to OEMs including Dell, IBM (here and here), Oracle, SGI and TeraData (a former NCR spin off) among others.

    What LSI is retaining are their custom storage silicon, ICs, PCI RAID adapter and host bus adapter (HBA) cards including MegaRAID, 3ware along with SAS chips, SAS switches, PCI SSD card and the Onstor NAS product they acquired about a year ago. Other parts of the LSI business which makes chips for storage, networking and communications vendors is also not affected by this deal.

    In other words, the sign in front of the Wichita LSI facility that used to say NCR will now probably include a NetApp logo once the deal closes.

    For those not familiar, Tom Georgens current CEO of NetApp is very familiar with Engenio and LSI as he used to work there (after leaving a career at EMC). In fact Mr. Georgens was part of the most recent attempt to spin the external storage business out of LSI back in the mid 2000s when it received the Engenio name and branding. In addition to Tom Georgens, Vic Mahadevan the current NetApp Chief Strategy Officer recently worked at LSI and before that at BMC, Compaq and Maxxan among others.

    What do I mean by the most recent attempt to spin the storage business out of LSI? Simple, the Engenio storage business traces its lineage back to NCR and what become known as Symbiosis Logic that LSI acquired as part of some other acquisitions.

    Going back to the late 90s, there was word on the street that the then LSI management was not sure what to do with storage business as their core business was and still is making high volume chips and related technologies. Current LSI CEO Abhi Talwalkar is a chip guy (nothing wrong with that) who honed his skills at Intel. Thus it should not be a surprise that there is a focus on the LSI core business model of making their own as well as producing silicon (not the implant stuff) for IT and consumer electronics (read their annual report).

    As part of the acquisition, LSI has already indicated that they will use all or some of the cash to buy back their stock. However I also wonder if this does not open the door for Abhi and his team to do some other acquisitions more synergic with their core business.

    What does NetApp get:

    • Expanded OEM and channel distribution capabilities
    • Block based products to coexist with their NAS gateways
    • Business with an established revenue base
    • Footprint into new or different markets
    • Opportunity to sell different product set to existing customers

    NetApp gets an OEM channel distribution model to complement what they already have (mainly IBM) in addition to their mainly direct sales and with VARs. Note that Engenio went to an all OEM/distribution model several years ago maintaining direct touch support for their partners.

    Note that NetApp is providing financial guidance that the deal could add $750M to FY12 which is based on retaining some portion of the existing OEM business however moving into new markets as well as increasing product diversity with existing direct customers, vars or channel partners.

    NetApp also gets to address storage market fragmentation and enable OEM as well as channel diversification including selling to other server vendors besides IBM. The Engenio model in addition to supporting Dell, IBM, Oracle, SGI and other server vendors also involves working with vertical solution integrator OEMs in the video, entertainment, High Performance Compute (HPC), cloud and MSP markets. This means that NetApp can enter new markets where bandwidth performance is needed including scale out NAS (beyond what NetApp has been doing). This also means that NetApp gets a product to sell into markets where back end storage for big data, bulk storage, media and entertainment, cloud and MSP as well as other applications leverage SAS, iSCSI or FC and FCoE beyond what their current lineup offers. Who sells into those spaces? Dell, HP, IBM, Oracle, SGI and Supermicro among others.

    What does LSI get:

    • $480M USD cash and buy back some stock to keep investors happy
    • Streamline their business or open door for new ones
    • Perhaps increase OEM sales to other new or existing customers
    • Perhaps do some acquisitions or be acquired

    What does Engenio get:
    A new parent that hopefully invest in the technology and marketing of the solution sets as well as leverage or take care of the installed base of customers

    What do the combined Engenio and NetApp OEMs and partners get:
    With combination of the organizations, hopefully streamlined support, service, and marketing, product enhancements to address new or different needs. Possibly comfort in knowing that Engenio now has a home and its future somewhat known.

    What about the Engenio employees?
    The reason I bring this up is wondering what happens to those who have many years invested and their LSI stock which I presume they keep hoping that the sale gives them a future return on their investment or efforts. Having been in similar acquisitions in the past, it can be a rough go however if the acquirer has a bright future, than enough said.

    Some random thoughts:

    Is this one of those industry trendy, sexy, cool everybody drooling type deals with new and upcoming technology and marketing buzz?
    No

    Is this one of those industry deals that has good upside potential if executed upon and leveraged?
    Yes

    Netapp already has a storage offering why do they need Engenio?
    No offense to NetApp, however they have needed a robust block storage offering to complement their NAS file serving and extensive software functionality to move into to different markets. This is not all that different from what EMC needed to do in the late 90s extending their capabilities from their sole cash cow platform Symmetrix to acquire DG to have a mid range offering.

    NetApp is risking $480M on a business with technologies that some see or say is on the decline, so why would they do such a thing?
    Ok, lets set the technology topics aside, from a pure numbers perspective, lets take two scenarios and Im not a financial person so go easy on me please. What some financial people have told me with other deals is that its sometimes about getting a return on cash vs. it not doing anything. So with that and other things in mind, say NetApp just lets $480M sit in the bank, can they get 12 per cent or better interest? Probably not and if they can, I want the name of that bank. What that means is that for a five year period, if they could get that rate of return (12 percent), they would only make $824M-480M=$344M on the investment (I know, there are tax and other financial considerations however lets keep simple). Now lets take another scenario, assume that NetApp simply rides a decline of the business at say a 20 percent per year rate (how many business are growing or in storage declining at 20 percent per year?) for five years. That works out to about a $1.4B yield. Lets take a different scenario and assume that NetApp can simply maintain an annual run rate of $700-750M for that five years, that works out to around $3.66B-480M=$3.1B revenue or return on investment. In other words, even with some decline, over a five year period, the OEM business pays for the deal alone and perhaps helps funds investment in technology improvement with the business balance being positive upside.

    Now both of those are extreme scenarios so lets take something more likely such as NetApp being able to simply maintain a 700-750M run rate by keeping some of the OEM business, finding new markets for challenge and OEM as well as direct, expanding footprint into their markets. Now that math gets even more interesting. Having said all of that, NetApp needs to keep investing in the business and products to get those returns which might help explain the relative low price to run rate.

    Is this a good deal for NetApp?
    IMHO yes, as long as NetApp does not screw it up. If NetApp can manage the business, invest in it, grow into new markets instead of simple cannibalization, they will have made a good deal similar to what EMC did with DG back in the late 90s. However NetApp needs to execute, leverage what they are buying, invest in it and pick up new business to make up for the declining business with some of the OEMs.

    With several hundred thousand systems or controllers having been sold over the years (granted how many are actually running is your guess as good as mine), NetApp has a footprint to leverage with their other products. For example, should IBM, Dell or Oracle completely walk away from those installed footprints, NetApp can move in with firmware or other upgrades to support plus up sell with their NAS gateways to add value with compression, dedupe, etc.

    What about NetApps acquisition track record?
    Fair question although Im sure the NetApp faithful wont like it. NetApp has had their ups and downs with acquisitions (Topio, Decru, Spinaker, Onaro, etc), perhaps with this one like EMC in the late 90s who bought DG to overcome some rough up and down acquisitions can also get their mojo on. (See this post).While we are on the topic of acquisitions, NetApp recently bought Akorri and last year Bycast which they now call StorageGrid that has been OEMd in the past by IBM. Guess what storage was commonly used under the IBM servers running the Bycast software? If you guessed XIV you might want to take a mulligan or a do over. Btw, HP also has OEMd the Bycast software. If you are not familiar with Bycast and interested in automated movement, tiering, policy management, objects and other buzzwords, ping your favorite NetApp person as it is a diamond in the rough if leveraged beyond healthcare capabilities.

    What does this mean for Xyratex and Dothill who are NetApp partners?
    My guess is that for now, the general purpose enclosures would stay the same (e.g. Xyratex) until there is a business case to do something different. For the high density enclosures, that could be a different scenario. As for others, we will have to wait and see.

    Will NetApp port OnTap into Engenio?
    The easiest and fastest thing is to do what NetApp and Engenio OEM customers have already been doing, that is, place the Engenio arrays behind the NetApp fas vfiler. Note that Engenio has storage systems that speak SAS to HDDs and SSDs as well as able to speak SAS, iSCSI and FC to hosts or gateways. NetApp has also embraced SAS for back end storage, maybe we will see them leverage a SAS connection out of their filers in the future to SAS storage systems or shelves instead of FC loop?

    Speaking of SAS host or server attached storage, guess what many cloud, MSP, high performance and other environment are using for storage on the back end of their clusters or scale out NAS systems?
    Yup, SAS.

    Guess what gap NetApp gets to fill joining Dell, HP, IBM and Oracle who can now give a choice of SAS, iSCSI or FC in addition or NAS?
    Yup, SAS.

    Care to guess what storage vendor we can expect to hear downplay SAS as a storage system to server or gateway technology?
    Hmm

    Is this all about SAS?
    No

    Will this move scare EMC?
    No, EMC does not get scared, or at least that is what they tell me.

    Will LSI buy Fusion IO who has or is filing their documents to IPO or someone else?
    Your guess or speculation is better than mine. However LSI already has and is retaining their own PCIe SSD card.

    Why only $480M for a business that did $705M in 2010?
    Good question. There is risk in that if NetApp does not invest in the product, marketing, relationships that they will not see the previous annual run rate so it is not a straight annuity. Consequently NetApp is taking risk with the business and thus they should get the reward if they can run with it. Another reason is that there probably were not any investment bankers or brokers running up the price.

    Why didnt Dell buy Engenio for $480M?
    Good question, if they had the chance, they should have however it probably would not have been a good fit as Dell needs direct sales vs. OEM sales.

    Ok, nuff said (for now)

    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

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    Dude, is Dell doing a disk deal again with Compellent?

    Over in Eden Prairie (Minneapolis Minnesota suburb) where data storage vendor Compellent (CML) is based, they must be singing in the hallways today that it is beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.

    Sure we had another dusting of snow this morning here in the Minneapolis area and the temp is actually up in the balmy 20F temperature range (was around 0F yesterday) and holiday shopping is in full swing.

    The other reason I think that the Compellent folks are thinking that it feels a lot like Christmas are the reports that Dell is in exclusive talks to buy them at about $29 per share or about $876 million USD.

    Dell is no stranger to holiday or shopping sprees, check these posts out as examples:

    Dell Will Buy Someone, However Not Brocade (At least for now)

    Back to school shopping: Dude, Dell Digests 3PAR Disk storage (we now know Dell was out bid)

    Data footprint reduction (Part 2): Dell, IBM, Ocarina and Storwize

    Data footprint reduction (Part 1): Life beyond dedupe and changing data lifecycles

    Post Holiday IT Shopping Bargains, Dell Buying Exanet?

    Did someone forget to tell Dell that Tape is dead?

    Now some Compellent fans are not going to be happy with only about $29 a share or about $876 million USD price given the recent stock run up into the $30 plus range. Likewise, some of the Compellent fans may be hoping for or expecting a bidding war to drive the stock back up into the $30 range however keep in mind that it was earlier this year when the stock adjusted itself down into the mid teens.

    In the case of 3PAR and the HP Dell budding war, that was a different product and company focused in a different space than where Compellent has a good fit.

    Sure both 3PAR and Compellent do Fibre Channel (FC) where Dells EqualLogic only does iSCSI, however a valuation based just on FC would be like saying Dell has all the storage capabilities they need with their MD3000 series that can do SAS, iSCSI and FC.

    In other words, there are different storage products for different markets or price bands and customer application needs. Kind of like winter here in Minnesota, sure one type of shovel will work for moving snow or you can leverage different technologies and techniques (tiering) to get the job done effectively the same holds for storage solutions.

    Compellent has a good Cadillac product that is a good fit for some SMB environments. However the SMB space is also where Dell has several storage products some of which they own (e.g. EqualLogic), some they OEM (MD3000 series and NX) as well as resell (e.g. EMC CLARiiON).

    Can the Compellent product replace the lowered CLARiiON business that Dell has itself been shifting more to their flagship EqualLogic product?

    Sure however at the risk of revenue cannibalization or worse, introduction of revenue prevention teams.

    Can the Compellent product then be positioned lower down under the EqualLogic product?

    Sure, however why hold it back not to mention force a higher priced product down into that market segment.

    Can the Compellent product be taken up market to compete above the EqualLogic head to head with the larger CLARiiON systems from EMC or comparable solutions from other vendors?

    Sure, however I can hear choruses of its sounding a lot like Christmas from New England, the bay area and Tucson among others.

    Does this mean that Dell is being overly generous and that this is not a good deal?

    No, not at all.

    Sure it is the holiday season and Dell has several billion dollars of cash laying around however that in itself does not guarantee a large handout or government sized bailout (excuse me, infusion). At $30 or more, that would be overly generous simply based on where the technology fits as well as aligns to the market realities. Consequently, at $29, this is a great deal for Compellent and also for Dell.

    Why is it a good deal for Dell?

    I think that it is as much about Dell getting a good deal (ok, paying a premium) to acquire a competitor that they can use to fill some product gaps where they have common VARs. However I also think that this is very much about the channel and the VAR as much if not more than it is just about a storage product. Servers are part of the game here which in turn supports storage, networking, management tools, backup/recovery, archiving and services.

    Sure Dell can maybe take some cost out of the Compellent solution by replacing the Supermicro PCs that are the hardware platform for their storage controllers with Dell servers. However the bigger play is around further developing its channel and VAR ecosystems, some of whom were with EqualLogic before Dell bought them. This can also be seen as a means of Dell getting that partner ecosystem to sell overall, more dell products and solutions instead of those from Apple, EMC, Futjisu, HP, IBM, Oracle and many others.

    Likewise, I doubt that Mr. Dell is paying a premium simply to make the Compellent shareholders and fans happy to create monetary velocity to stimulate holiday shopping and economic stimulus. However, for the fans, sure, while drowning your sorrows in egg nogg of holiday cheer that you are not getting $30 or higher, instead buy a round for your mates and toast Dell for your holiday gift.

    The real reason I think this is a good reason for Dell is that from a business and financial perspective, assuming they stick to the $29 range, it is a good bargain for both parties. Dell gets a company who has been competing with their EqualLogic product in some cases with the same VARs or resellers. Sure it gets a Fibre Channel based product however Dell already has that with the MD3000 series which I realize is less function laden then Compellent or EqualLogic; however it is also more affordable for a different market.

    If Dell can close on the deal sticking to its offer which they have the upper hand on, execute including rolling out a strategy as well as product positioning plan. Then educate their own teams as well as VARs and customers of what products fit where and when in such a manner that does not cause revenue prevention (e.g. one product or team blocking the other) or cannibalization instead expanding markets, they can do well.

    While Compellent gets a huge price multiple based on their revenue (about $125M USD), if Dell can get the product revenue up from the $125 to $150 million plateau to around $250 to $300 million without cannibalizing other Dell products, the deal pays for itself in many ways.

    Keep in mind that a large pile of cash sitting in the bank these days is not exactly yielding the best returns on investment.

    For the Compellent fans and shareholders, congratulations!

    You have gotten or perhaps are about to get a good holiday gift so knock of the complaining that you should be getting more. The option is that instead of $28 per share, you could be getting 28 lumps of coal in your Christmas stocking.

    For the Dell folks, assuming the deal is done on their terms and that they can quickly rationalize the product overlap, convey and then execute on a strategy while keeping the revenue prevention teams on the sidelines you too have a holiday gift to work with (some assembly will be required however). This also is good for Dell outside of storage which may turn out to be one of the gems of the deal in keeping or expanding VARs selling Dell based servers and associated technologies.

    For EMC who was slapped in the face earlier this year when Dell took a run at 3PAR, sure there will be more erosion on the lower end CLARiiOn as has been occurring with the EqualLogic. However Dell still needs a solution to effectively compete with EMC and others at the higher end of the SMB or lower end of the enterprise market.

    Sure the EqualLogic or Compellent products could be deployed into such scenarios; however those solutions are then playing on a different field and out of their market sweet spots.

    Lets see what happens shall we.

    In the meantime, what say you?

    Is this a good deal for Dell, who is the deal good for assuming it goes through and at the terms mentioned, what is your take?

    Who benefits from this proposed deal?

    Note that in the holiday gift giving spirit, Chicago style voting or polling will be enabled.

    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

    Posted on

    Has FCoE entered the trough of disillusionment?

    This is part of an ongoing series of short industry trends and perspectives blog posts briefs based on what I am seeing and hearing in my conversations with IT professionals on a global basis.

    These short posts compliment other longer posts along with traditional industry trends and perspective white papers, research reports, videos, podcasts, webcasts as well as solution brief content found a www.storageio.com/reports and www.storageio.com/articles.

    Has FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) entered the trough of disillusionment?

    IMHO Yes and that is not a bad thing if you like FCoE (which I do among other technologies).

    The reason I think that it is good that FCoE is in or entering the trough is not that I do not believe in FCoE. Instead, the reason is that most if not all technologies that are more than a passing fad often go through a hype and early adopter phase before taking a breather prior to broader longer term adoption.

    Sure there are FCoE solutions available including switches, CNAs and even storage systems from various vendors. However, FCoE is still very much in its infancy and maturing.

    Based on conversations with IT customer professionals (e.g those that are not vendor, vars, consultants, media or analysts) and hearing their plans, I believe that FCoE has entered the proverbial trough of disillusionment which is a good thing in that FCoE is also ramping up for deployment.

    Another common question that comes up regarding FCoE as well as other IO networking interfaces, transports and protocols is if they are temporal (temporary short life span) technologies.

    Perhaps in the scope that all technologies are temporary however it is their temporal timeframe that should be of interest. Given that FCoE will probably have at least a ten to fifteen year temporal timeline, I would say in technology terms it has a relative long life for supporting coexistence on the continued road to convergence which appears to be around Ethernet.

    That is where I feel FCoE is at currently, taking a break from the initial hype, maturing while IT organizations begin planning for its future deployment.

    I see FCoE as having a bright future coexisting with other complimentary and enabling technologies such as IO Virtualization (IOV) including PCI SIG MRIOV, Converged Networking, iSCSI, SAS and NAS among others.

    Keep in mind that FCoE does not have to be seen as competitive to iSCSI or NAS as they all can coexist on a common DCB/CEE/DCE environment enabling the best of all worlds not to mention choice. FCoE along with DCB/CEE/DCE provides IT professionals with choice options (e.g. tiered I/O and networking) to align the applicable technology to the task at hand for physical or

    Again, the questions pertaining to FCoE for many organizations, particularly those not going to iSCSI or NAS for all or part of their needs should be when, where and how to deploy.

    This means that for those with long lead time planning and deployment cycles, now is the time to putting your strategy into place for what you will be doing over the next couple of years if not sooner.

    For those interested, here is a link (may require registration) to a good conversation taking place over on IT Toolbox regarding FCoE and other related themes that may be of interest.

    Here are some links to additional related material:

    • FCoE Infrastructure Coming Together
    • 2010 and 2011 Trends, Perspectives and Predictions: More of the same?
    • SNWSpotlight: 8G FC and FCoE, Solid State Storage
    • NetApp and Cisco roll out vSphere compatible FCoE solutions
    • Fibre Channel over Ethernet FAQs
    • Fast Fibre Channel and iSCSI switches deliver big pipes to virtualized SAN environments.
    • Poll: Networking Convergence, Ethernet, InfiniBand or both?
    • I/O Virtualization (IOV) Revisited
    • Will 6Gb SAS kill Fibre Channel?
    • Experts Corner: Q and A with Greg Schulz at StorageIO
    • Networking Convergence, Ethernet, Infiniband or both?
    • Vendors hail Fibre Channel over Ethernet spec
    • Cisco, NetApp and VMware combine for ‘end-to-end’ FCoE storage
    • FCoE: The great convergence, or not?
    • I/O virtualization and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE): How do they differ?
    • Chapter 9 – Networking with your servers and storage: The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC)
    • Resilient Storage Networks: Designing Flexible Scalable Data Infrastructures (Elsevier)

    That is all for now, hope you find these ongoing series of current or emerging Industry Trends and Perspectives posts of interest.

    Of course let me know what your thoughts and perspectives are on this and other related topics.

    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

    Posted on

    July 2010 Odds and Ends: Perspectives, Tips and Articles

    Here are some items that have been added to the main StorageIO website news, tips and articles, video podcast related pages that pertain to a variety of topics ranging from data storage, IO, networking, data centers, virtualization, Green IT, performance, metrics and more.

    These content items include various odds and end pieces such as industry or technology commentary, articles, tips, ATEs (See additional ask the expert tips here) or FAQs as well as some video and podcasts for your mid summer (if in the northern hemisphere) enjoyment.

    The New Green IT: Productivity, supporting growth, doing more with what you have

    Energy efficient and money saving Green IT or storage optimization are often associated to mean things like MAID, Intelligent Power Management (IPM) for servers and storage disk drive spin down or data deduplication. In other words, technologies and techniques to minimize or avoid power consumption as well as subsequent cooling requirements which for some data, applications or environments can be the case. However there is also shifting from energy avoidance to that of being efficient, effective, productive not to mention profitable as forms of optimization. Collectively these various techniques and technologies help address or close the Green Gap and can reduce the amount of Green IT confusion in the form of boosting productivity (same goes for servers or networks) in terms of more work, IOPS, bandwidth, data moved, frames or packets, transactions, videos or email processed per watt per second (or other unit of time).

    Click here to read and listen to my comments about boosting IOPs per watt, or here to learn more about the many facets of energy efficient storage and here on different aspects of storage optimization. Want to read more about the next major wave of server, storage, desktop and networking virtualization? Then click here to read more about virtualization life beyond consolidation where the emphasis or focus expands to abstraction, transparency, enablement in addition to consolidation for servers, storage, networks. If you are interested in metrics and measurements, Storage Resource Management (SRM) not to mention discussion about various macro data center metrics including PUE among others, click on the preceding links.

    NAS and Shared Storage, iSCSI, DAS, SAS and more

    Shifting gears to general industry trends and commentary, here are some comments on consumer and SOHO storage sharing, the role and importance Value Added Resellers (VARs) serve for SMB environments, as well as the top storage technologies that are in use and remain relevant. Here are some comments on iSCSI which continues to gain in popularity as well as storage options for small businesses.

    Are you looking to buy or upgrade a new server? Here are some vendor and technology neutral tips to help determine needs along with requirements to help be a more effective informed buyer. Interested or do you want to know more about Serial Attached SCSI (6Gb/s SAS) including for use as external shared direct attached storage (DAS) for Exchange, Sharepoint, Oracle, VMware or HyperV clusters among other usage scenarios, check out this FAQ as well as podcast. Here are some other items including a podcast about using storage partitions in your data storage infrastructure, an ATE about what type of 1.5TB centralized storage to support multiple locations, and a video on scaling with clustered storage.

    That is all for now, hope all is well and enjoy the content.

    Cheers gs

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

    Posted on

    Industry Trends and Perspectives: Tiered Storage, Systems and Mediums

    This is part of an ongoing series of short industry trends and perspectives blog posts briefs.

    These short posts compliment other longer posts along with traditional industry trends and perspective white papers, research reports, solution brief content found at www.storageio.com/reports.

    Two years ago we read about how the magnetic disk drive would be dead in a couple of years at the hand of flash SSD. Guess what, it is a couple of years later and the magnetic disk drive is far from being dead. Granted high performance Fibre Channel disks will continue to be replaced by high performance, small form factor 2.5" SAS drives along with continued adoption of high capacity SAS and SATA devices.

    Likewise, SSD or flash drives continue to be deployed, however outside of iPhone, iPod and other consumer or low end devices, nowhere near the projected or perhaps hoped for level. Rest assured the trend Im seeing and hearing from IT customers is that some will continue to look for places to strategically deploy SSD where possible, practical and affordable, there will continue to be a roll for disk and even tape devices on a go forward basis.

    Also watch for more coverage and discussion around the emergence of the Hybrid Hard Disk Drive (HHDD) that was discussed about four to five years ago. The HHDD made an appearance and then quietly went away for some time, perhaps more R and D time in the labs while flash SSD garnered the spotlight.

    There could be a good opportunity for HHDD technology leveraging the best of both worlds that is continued pricing decreases for disk with larger capacity using smaller yet more affordable amounts of flash in a solution that is transparent to the server or storage controller making for easier integration.

    Related and companion material:
    Blog: ILM = Has It Losts its Meaning
    Blog: SSD and Storage System Performance
    Blog: Has SSD put Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) On Endangered Species List
    Blog: Optimize Data Storage for Performance and Capacity Efficiency

    That is all for now, hope you find this ongoing series of current and emerging Industry Trends and Perspectives interesting.

    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

    Posted on

    Industry Trends and Perspectives: Converged Networking and IO Virtualization (IOV)

    This is part of an ongoing series of short industry trends and perspectives blog posts briefs.

    These short posts compliment other longer posts along with traditional industry trends and perspective white papers, research reports, solution brief content found at www.storageio.com/reports.

    The trends that I am seeing with converged networking and I/O fall into a couple of categories. One being converged networking including unified communications, FCoE/DCB along with InfiniBand based discussions while the other being around I/O virtualization (IOV) including PCIe server based multi root IO virtualization (MRIOV).

    As is often the case with new technologies the trend of some saying these are the next great things thus drop everything and adopt them now as they are working and ready for prime time mission critical deployment. Then there are those who say no, stop, do not waste your time on these as they are temporary, they will die and go away anyway. In between, there is reality which takes a bit of balancing the old with the new, look before you leap, do your homework, and do not be scared however have a strategy and a plan on how to achieve it.

    Thus is FCoE a temporal or temporary technology? Well, in the scope that all technologies are temporary however it is their temporal timeframe that should be of interest. Thus given that FCoE will probably have at least a ten to fifteen year temporal timeline, I would say in technology terms it has a relative long life for supporting coexistence on the continued road to convergence which appears to be Ethernet.

    Related and companion material:
    Video: Storage and Networking Convergence
    Blog: I/O Virtualization (IOV) Revisited
    Blog: I/O, I/O, Its off to Virtual Work and VMworld I Go (or went)
    Blog: EMC VPLEX: Virtual Storage Redefined or Respun?

    That is all for now, hope you find this ongoing series of current and emerging Industry Trends and Perspectives interesting.

    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

    Posted on

    Upcoming Event: Industry Trends and Perspective European Seminar

    Event Seminar Announcement:

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

    Event TypeTraining/Seminar
    Event TypeSeminar Training with Greg Schulz of US based Server and StorageIO
    SponsorBrouwer Storage Consultancy
    Target AudienceStorage Architects, Consultants, Pre-Sales, Customer (technical) decison makers
    KeywordsCloud, Grid, Data Protection, Disaster Recovery, Storage, Green IT, VTL, Encryption, Dedupe, SAN, NAS, Backup, BC, DR, Performance, Virtualization, FCoE
    Location and VenueAmpt van Nijkerk Berencamperweg
    Nijkerk, GELDERLAND NL
    WhenWed. June 16, 2010 9AM-5PM Local
    Price€ 450,=
    Event URLLinkedIn: https://storageioblog.com/book4.html
    ContactGert 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

    AbstractGeneral 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