Have you modernized your data protection strategy and environment?
If not, are you thinking about updating your strategy and environment?
Why modernize your data protection including backup restore, business continuance (BC), high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) strategy and environment?
Is it to leverage new technology such as disk to disk (D2D) backups, cloud, virtualization, data footprint reduction (DFR) including compression or dedupe?
Perhaps you have or are considering data protection modernization because somebody told you to or you read about it or watched a video or web cast? Or, perhaps your backup and restore are broke so its time to change media or try something different.
Lets take a step back for a moment and ask the question of what is your view of data protection modernization?
Perhaps it is modernizing backup by replacing tape with disk, or disk with clouds?
How about instead of swapping out media, changing backup software?
Or what about virtualizing servers moving from physical machines to virtual machines?
On the other hand maybe your view of modernizing data protection is around using a different product ranging from backup software to a data protection appliance, or snapshots and replication.
The above and others certainly fall under the broad group of backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving, however there is another area which is not as much technology as it is techniques, best practices, processes and procedure based. That is, revisit why data and applications are being protected against what applicable threat risks and associated business risks.
This means reviewing service needs and wants including backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving that in turn drive what data and applications to protect, how often, how many copies and where those are located, along with how long they will be retained.
Modernizing data protection is more than simply swapping out old or broken media like flat tires on a vehicle.
To be effective, data protection modernization involves taking a step back from the technology, tools and buzzword bingo topics to review what is being protected and why. It also means revisiting service level expectations and clarify wants vs. needs which translates to what if for free that is what is wanted, however for a cost then what is required.
Certainly technologies and tools play a role, however simply using new tools and techniques without revisiting data protection challenges at the source will result in new problems that resemble old problems.
Hence to support growth with a constrained or shrinking budget while maintaining or enhancing service levels, the trick is to remove complexity and costs.
This means not treating all data and applications the same, stretch your available resources to be more effective without compromise on service is mantra of modernizing data protection.
Losing data means that you have no backup or copy of the information thus it is gone. This means there are no good valid backups, snapshots, copies or archives that can be used to restore or recover the information.
Losing access to data means that there is a copy of it somewhere however it will take time to make it usable (no data was actually lost). How long you have to wait until the data is restored or recovered will vary and during that time it may seem like data was lost.
Second, industry hype for and against clouds serves as a lighting rod for when things happen.
Lighting recently struck (or at least virtually) with some outages (see links below) including at Google Gmail.
Cloud crowd cheerleaders may need a hug to feel good while they or their technology get tossed about a bit. Google announced that they had a service disruption recently however that data was not lost, only loss of access for a period of time.
Lets take a step back before going forward.
With the Google Gmail disruption, following on previous incidents, true cynics and naysayers will probably jump on the anti cloud FUD feeding frenzy. The true cloud cynics will tell the skeptics all about cloud challenges perhaps never having had actually used any service or technology themselves.
Cloud crowd cheerleaders are generally a happy go lucky bunch with virtual beliefs and physical or real emotions. Cloud crowd cheerleaders have a strong passion for their technology or paradigm taking it various serious in some instances perceiving attacks or fud against cloud as an attack on them or their belief. Some cheerleaders will see this post as snarky or cynical (ok, get over it already).
Then there are the skeptics or interested audience who are not complete cynics or cheerleaders (those in the middle 80 percent of the above chart).
Generally speaking they want to learn more, understand issues to work around or take appropriate steps and institute best practices. They see a place for MSP or cloud services for some things to compliment what they are currently doing and tend to be the majority of audiences outside of special interest, vendor or industry trade groups.
Some additional thoughts, comments and perspectives:
Loss of data means you cannot get it back to a specific RPO (Recovery Point Objective or how much data you can afford to lose). Loss of access to data means that you cannot get to your data until a specific RTO (Recovery Time Objective).
Tiered data protection, RTO and RPOs, align technique and technology to SLO needs
RTO and RPOs
RAID and replication provide accessibility to data not data protection. The good news with RAID and replication or mirroring is if you make a change to the data it is copied or protected. The bad news is if it is deleted or corrupted that error or problem is also replicated.
Backup, snapshots, CDP or other time interval based techniques protect data against loss however may require time to restore, recovery or refresh from. A combination of data availability and accessibility along with time interval based protection are needed (e.g. the two previous above items should be combined). CDP should also mean complete, consistent, coherent or comprehensive data protection including data in application or VM buffers.
Any technology will fail either on its own or via human intervention or lack of configuration. It is not if rather when as well as how gracefully a failure along with fault isolation occurs and is remediate (corrected). There is generally speaking, no such thing as a bad technology, rather poor or inappropriate use, configuration or deployment of it.
Protect onsite data with offsite mediums including MSP or cloud backup services while keeping a local onsite copy. Why keep an onsite local copy when using a cloud? Simple, when you lose access to the cloud or MSP for extended periods of time, if needed you have a copy of data to work with (assuming it is still valid). On other hand, important data that is onsite needs to be kept offsite. Hence cloud and MSP should compliment what is done for data protection and vise versa. Thats what I do, is what you do?
The technology golden rule which applies to cloud and virtualization is whoever controls the management of the technology controls the gold. Leverage CDP, which is Commonsense Data Protection or Cloud Data Protection. Hops are great in beer (as well as some other foods) however they add latency including with networks. Aggregation can cause aggravation, not everything can be consolidated, however much can be virtualized.
Data Storage in the Cloud: Read Your SLA Carefully
Closing thoughts and comments (for now) regarding clouds.
Its not if, rather when, where, why, how and with what will you leverage a cloud or MSP technologies, products, service, solution or architectures to compliment your environment.
How will cloud or MSP work for you vs. you working for it (unless you actually do work for one of them).
Dont be scared of clouds or virtualization, however look before you leap!
BTW, for those in the Minneapolis St. Paul area (aka the other MSP), check out this event on March 15, 2011. I have been invited to talk about optimizing your data storage and virtual environments and be prepared to take advantage of cloud computing opportunities as they mature.
What do VARs and Clouds as well as MSPs have in common?
Several things it turns out:
Some Value Added Resellers (VARS) (links to VAR related content and comments here, here and here) sell cloud services or solutions
Some VARs are also cloud or managed solutions providers (MSPs) themselves, thus some cloud or MSPs are VARs
Some VARs, cloud and MSPs compete on lowest or cheapest price
Some VARs, cloud and MSPs have diverse product offering portfolios
Some VARs, cloud and MSPs compete on value (e.g. not price)
Some VARs, cloud and MSPs value is in the trust, security and peace of mind that they provide to their client
For some, the value of a given VAR, cloud or MSP is the ability to shop around for a resource to get the lowest price.
For others, the value of a given VAR, cloud or MSP is the ability to get the best value which may not be the lowest price rather the most effective overall cost per services with trust, security, experience and peace of mind provided.
Value to often is confused with being cheap or lowest cost.
Value can also mean a higher price that includes more thus providing a better effective option (e.g. super size it).
On the other hand, higher priced should not be confused with always being a better product, service or solution.
You may find that the initial low cost requires other add on fees or activation charges, surcharges for use or activity along with optional services to make the solution useful all resulting in an overall higher amount to be paid.
Lowest cost may result in a bargain now and then if that fits your needs.
Value can also mean a better option providing an improved return on investment if a solution or service meets and exceeds your needs and expectations.
As an example, I recently switched from a cloud backup MSP (Mozy) not due to cost (costs would have gone down with their recent service plan announcement) rather I needed more value and functionality. With my new cloud backup MSP I get more functionality and capability that I can continue to grow into even though the price per GByte is higher than with my previous provider. What made the change of positive is what I get in the higher fee per GByte that in the end, actually makes it more affordable, not cheaper, just better value and return on investment.
For some low cost is value while for others, value is more than lowest cost including what you get for a given fee including trust, security, service and experience among other items. Different people will have different requirements or needs for what is or is not value.
If you do not like the term value, then try price performer.
Bottom line for now, with VARs, MSPs and Cloud (Public or private) dont be scared, however look before you leap!
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
Is vendor lockin caused by vendors, their partners or by customers?
In my opinion vendor lockin can be from any or all of the above.
What is vendor lockin
Vendor lockin is a situation where a customer becomes dependent or locked in by choice or other circumstances to a particular supplier or technology.
What is the difference between vendor lockin, account control and stickiness?
Im sure some marketing wiz or sales type will be happy to explain the subtle differences. Generally speaking, lockin, stickiness and account control are essentially the same, or at least strive to obtain similar results. For example, vendor lockin too some has a negative stigma. However vendor stickiness may be a new term, perhaps even sounding cool thus it is not a concern. Remember the Mary Poppins song a spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down? In other words sometimes changing and using a different term such as sticky vs vendor lockin helps make the situation taste better.
Is vendor lockin or stickiness a bad thing?
No, not necessarily, particularly if you the customer are aware and still in control of your environment.
I have had different views of vendor lockin over the years.
These have varied from when I was a customer working in IT organizations or being a vendor and later as an advisory analyst consultant. Even as a customer, I had different views of lockin which varied depending upon the situation. In some cases lockin was a result of upper management having their favorite vendor which meant when a change occurred further up the ranks, sometimes vendor lockin would shift as well. On the other hand, I also worked in IT environments where we had multiple vendors for different technologies to maintain competition across suppliers.
As a vendor, I was involved with customer sites that were best of breed while others were aligned around a single or few vendors. Some were aligned around technologies from the vendors I worked for and others were aligned with someone elses technology. In some cases as a vendor we were locked out of an account until there was a change of management or mandates at those sites. In other cases where lock out occurred, once our product was OEMd or resold by an incumbent vendor, the lockout ended.
Some vendors do a better job of establishing lockin, account management, account control or stickiness than compared to others. Some vendors may try to lock a customer in and thus there is perception that vendors lock customers in. Likewise, there is a perception that vendor lockin only occurs with the largest vendors however I have seen this also occur with smaller or niche vendors who gain control of their customers keeping larger or other vendors out.
Sweet, sticky Sue Bee Honey
Vendor lockin or stickiness is not always the result of the vendor, var, consultant or service provider pushing a particular technology, product or service. Customers can allow or enable vendor lockin as well, either by intent via alliances to drive some business initiative or accidentally by giving up account control management. Consequently vendor lockin is not a bad thing if it brings mutual benefit to the suppler and consumer.
On the other hand, if lockin causes hardship on the consumer while only benefiting the supplier, than it can be a bad thing for the customer.
Do some technologies lend themselves more to vendor lockin vs others?
Yes, some technologies lend themselves more to stickiness or lockin then others. For example, often big ticket or expensive hardware are seen as being vulnerable to vendor lockin along with other hardware items however software is where I have seen a lot of stickiness or lockin around.
However what about virtualization solutions after all the golden rule of virtualization is whoever controls the virtualization (hardware, software or services) controls the gold. This means that vendor lockin could be around a particular hypervisor or associated management tools.
How about bundled solutions or what are now called integrated vendor technology stacks including PODs (here or here) or vBlocks among others? How about databases, do they enable or facilitate vendor lockin? Perhaps, just like virtualization or operating systems or networking technology, storage system, data protection or other solutions, if you let the technology or vendor manage you, then you enable vendor lockin.
Where can vendor lockin or stickiness occur?
Application software, databases, data or information tools, messaging or collaboration, infrastructure resource management (IRM) tools ranging from security to backup to hypervisors and operating systems to email. Lets not forget about hardware which has become more interoperable from servers, storage and networks to integrated marketing or alliance stacks.
Another opportunity for lockin or stickiness can be in the form of drivers, agents or software shims where you become hooked on a feature functionality that then drives future decisions. In other words, lockin can occur in different locations both in traditional IT as well as via managed services, virtualization or cloud environments if you let it occur.
Keep these thoughts in mind:
Customers need to manage their resources and suppliers
Technology and their providers should work for you the customer, not the other way around
Technology providers conversely need to get closer to influence customer thinking
There can be cost with single vendor or technology sourcing due to loss of competition
There can be a cost associated with best of breed or functioning as your own integrator
There is a cost switching from vendors and or their technology to keep in mind
Managing your vendors or suppliers may be easier than managing your upper management
Vendors sales remove barriers so they can sell and setting barriers for others
Virtualization and cloud can be both a source for lockin as well as a tool to help prevent it
As a customer, if lockin provides benefits than it can be a good thing for all involved
Ultimately, its up to the customer to manage their environment and thus have a say if they will allow vendor lockin. Granted, upper management may be the source of the lockin and not surprisingly is where some vendors will want to focus their attention directly, or via influence of high level management consultants.
So while a vendors solution may appear to be a locked in solution, it does not become a lockin issue or problem until a customer lets or allows it to be a lockin or sticky situation.
What is your take on vendor lockin? Cast your vote and see results in the following polls.
Is vendor lockin a good or bad thing?
Who is responsible for managing vendor lockin
Where is most common form or concern of vendor lockin
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved. StorageIO is a registered Trade Mark (TM) of Server StorageIO.
Do you have a web, internet, backup or other IT cloud service provider of some type?
Do you pay for it, or is it a free service?
Do you take your service provider for granted?
Does your service provider take you or your data for granted?
Does your provider offer some form of service level objectives (SLO)?
For example, Recovery Time Objectives (RTO), Recovery Point Objectives (RPO), Quality of Service (QOS) or if a backup service alternate forms of recovery among others?
So what happens when there is a service disruption, do you threaten to leave the provider and if so, how much does that (or would it) cost you to move?
A couple of weeks ago I was using on a Delta airlines flight from LAX to MSP returning from a west coast speaking engagement event.
During the late evening three hour flight, I was using the gogo inflight wifi service to get caught up on some emails, blog items along with other work items in addition to doing a few twitter tweets while flying high over the real clouds from my virtual office.
During that time, I saw a twitter tweet from Devang Panchigar (@storageNerve) commenting that his hosting service provider Bluehost was down or offline. This caught my attention as Bluehost is also my service provider and a quick check verified that my sites and services were still working. I subsequently sent a tweet to Devang indicating that Bluehost or at least from looking at my sites and services were still functioning, or at least for the time being as I was about to find out. Long story short, about 20 to 25 minutes later, I noticed that I could not longer get to any of my sites, low and behold my Bluehost services were also now offline.
Overall, I have been pleased with Bluehost as a service provider including finding their call support staff very accommodating and easy to work with when I have questions or need something taken care of. Normally I would have simply called Bluehost to see what was going on, however being at about 38,000 feet above the clouds, a quick conversation was not going to be possible. Instead, I checked some forums that revealed Bluehost was experiencing some electrical power issues with their data center (I believe in Utah). Looking at some of the forums as well as various twitter comments, I also decided to check to see if Bluehost CEO Matt Heaton blog was functioning (it was).
It would have been too easy to do one of those irate customer type posts telling them how bad they were, how I was dropping them like a hot potato and then doing a blog post telling everyone to never use them again or along those lines that are far to common and often get deleted as spam.
Instead, I took a different approach (you could have read it here however I just checked and it has been deleted). My comment on Matts blog post took a week or so to be moderated (now since deleted). Essentially my post took the opposite approach of going off on the usual customer tirade instead commenting how ironic that a hosting service for my web site which contains content information about resilient data infrastructure themes was offline.
Now I realize that I am not paying for a high end no downtime always available hosting service, however I also realize that I am paying for a more premium package vs. a basic subscription or even a for free service. While I was not happy about the one hour of downtime around midnight, it was comforting to know that no data was lost and my sites were only offline for a short period of time.
I hope Bluehost continues to improve on their services to stay out of the news for a major disruption as well as minimize or eliminate downtime for their for fee based services.
I also hope that Bluehost CEO Matt Heaton continues to listen to what his customers have to say while improving his services to keep us as customers instead of taking us for granted as some providers or vendors do.
Thanks again to Devang for the tip that there was a service disruption, after all, sometimes we take services for granted and in other situations some service providers take their customers for granted.
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
Remember the xSP era where X was I for ISP (Internet Service Provider) or M for Managed Service Provider (MSP) or S for Storage Service Provider, part of buzzword bingo?
That was similar to the xLM craze where X could have been I for Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), D for Data Lifecycle Management (DLM) and so forth where even someone tried to register the term ILM and failed instead of grabbing something like XLM, lest I digress.
Fast forward to today, given the wide spread use of anything SaaS among other XaaS terms, lets have a quick and perhaps fun look at what some of the different usages of the new function XaaS(X) in the IT industry today.
By no means is this an exhaustive list, feel free to comment with others, the more the merrier. Using the Basic English alphabet without numbers or extended character sets, here are some possibilities among others (some are and continue to be used in the industry):
A
Analyst, Application, Archive, Audit or Authentication
B
Backup or Blogger
C
Cloud, Complier, Compute or Connectivity
D
Data management, Datawharehouse, DBA, Dedupe, Development, Disk or Docmanagement
E
Email, Encryption or Evangelist
F
Files or Freeware
G
Grid or Google
H
Help, Hotline or Hype
I
ILM, Information, Infrastructure, IO or IT
J
Jobs
K
Kbytes
L
Library or Linkedin
M
Mainframe, Marketing, Manufacturing, Media, Memory or Middleware
N
NAS, Networking or Notification
O
Office, Oracle, Optical or Optimization
P
Performance, Petabytes, Platform, Policy, Police, Print or PR
Q
Quality
R
RAID, Replication, Reporter, Research or Rightsmanagement
S
SAN, Search, Security, Server, Software, Storage, Support
T
Tape, Technology, Testing, Tradegroup, Trends or Twittering
U
Unfollow
V
VAR, Virtualization or Vendor
W
Web
X
Xray
Y
Youtube
Z
zSeries or zilla
Feel free to comment with others for the list, and likewise, feel free to share the list.
Cheers gs
Cheers gs Greg Schulz – StorageIO, Author “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC)
The other day, I had the pleasure of being a guest of Steve Bengston on wsradio (Internet Radio) during the Price Waterhouse Cooper Startup Show where our discussion was around the different facets of Green IT, efficiency, economic and environmental sustainment, closing the Green Gap and of course my new book.
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
In the April 10th, 2009 issue of the Minneapolis St. Paul (MSP) Business Journal, guess who was named one of three Eco-Tech Warriors? That’s right, yours truly (See the article here).
What can I say, I’m flattered and appreciate the coverage. Besides seeing the finished article in the special report, the real fun was doing the photo shoot with the props including the heavy swords, those were not plastic (Hummm, Iron Chef?)!
The photo shoot with the other two “Eco-Warriors” Tom Diamond of New Boundary Technology, and Travis Pakonen of Encompass Solutions along with Nancy Kuehn our photographer as well as the artistic and project management folks from MSP Business Journal were an absolute blast to work with.
For those of you looking for policy management as well as energy management tools for desktops, workstations and PCs, checkout Tom Diamonds New Boundary Technologies and their solutions. Likewise, I hear good things from friends who have used the services of Travis Pakonen and N’Compass for their data center projects.
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
Today’s flight to Santa Ana (SNA) Orange County California for an 18 hour visit marks my 3rd trip to the left coast in the past four weeks that started out with a trip to Los Angeles. The purpose of today’s trip is to deliver a talk around Business Continuance (BC) and Disaster recovery (DR) topics for virtual server and storage environments along with related data transformation topics themes, part of a series of on-going events.
Planned flight path from MSP to SNA courtesy of Northwest Airlines, now part of Delta
This is a short trip to southern California in that I have to be back in Minneapolis for a Wednesday afternoon meeting followed by keynoting at an IT Infrastructure Optimization Seminar downtown Minneapolis Thursday morning. Right after Thursday morning session, its off to the other coast for some Friday morning and early afternoon sessions in the Boston area, the results of which I hope to be able to share with you in a not so distant future posting.
Where has March gone? Its been a busy and fun month out on the road with in-person seminars, vendor and user group events in Minneapolis, Los Angles, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Atlanta, St. Louis, Birmingham, Minneapolis for CMG user group, Cincinnati and Orange County not to mention some other meetings and consulting engagements elsewhere including participating in a couple of webcast and virtual conference/seminars while on the road. Coverage and discussion around my new book "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC) continues expand, read here to see what’s being said.
What has made the month fun in addition to traveling around the country is the interaction with the hundreds of IT professionals from organizations of all size hearing what they are encountering, what their challenges are, what they are thinking, and in general what’s on their mind.
Some of the common themes include:
There’s no such thing as a data recession, however the result is doing more with less, or, with what you have
Confusion abounds around green hype including carbon footprints vs. core IT and business issues
There is life beyond consolidation for server and storage virtualization to enable business agility
Security and encryption remain popular topic as does heterogeneous and affordable key management
End to end IT resource management for virtual environments is needed that is scalable and affordable
Performance and quality of service can not be sacrificed in the quest to drive up storage utilization
Clouds, SSD (FLASH), Dedupe, FCoE and Thin Provisioning among others are on the watch list
Tape continues to be used complimenting disks in tiered storage environments along with VTLs
Dedupe continues to be deployed and we are just seeing the very tip of the ice-berg of opportunity
Software licensing cost savings or reallocation should be a next step focus for virtual environments
Now, for a bit of irony and humor, overheard was a server sales person talking to a storage sales person comparing notes on how they are missing their forecasts as their customers are buying fewer servers and storage now that they are consolidating with virtualization, or using disk dedupe to eliminate disk drives. Doh!!!
Now if those sales people can get their marketing folks to get them the play book for virtualization for business agility, improving performance and enabling business growth in an optimized, transformed environment, they might be able to talk a different story with their customers for new opportunities…
To all of those who came out to the various events in March, thank you very much and look forward to future follow-up conversations as well as seeing you at some of the upcoming future events.
