pc Archives

August 1, 2012November 25, 2019

What does new EMC and Lenovo partnership mean?

The past several weeks have been busy with various merger, acquisitions and collaborating activity in the IT and data storage world. Summer time often brings new relationships and even summer marriages. The most recent is EMC and Lenovo announcing a new partnership that includes OEM sourcing of technology, market expansion and other initiatives. Hmm, does anybody remember who EMCs former desktop and server partner was, or who put Lenovo out for adoption several years ago?

Here is the press release from EMC and Lenovo that you can read yourself vs. me simply paraphrasing it:

Lenovo and EMC Team Up In Strategic Worldwide Partnership
A Solid Step in Lenovo’s Aspiration to Be a Player in Industry Standard Servers and Networked Storage with EMC’s Leading Technology; EMC Further Strengthens Ability to Serve Customers’ Storage Solutions Needs in China and Other Emerging Markets; Companies Agree to Form SMB-Focused Storage Joint Venture
BEIJING, China – August 1, 2012
Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) and EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) today announced a broad partnership that enhances Lenovo’s position in industry standard servers and networked storage solutions, while significantly expanding EMC’s reach in China and other key, high-growth markets. The new partnership is expected to spark innovation and additional R&D in the server and storage markets by maximizing the product development talents and resources at both companies, while driving scale and efficiency in the partners’ respective supply chains.
The partnership is a strong strategic fit, leveraging the two leading companies’ respective strengths, across three main areas:

First, Lenovo and EMC have formed a server technology development program that will accelerate and extend Lenovo’s capabilities in the x86 industry-standard server segment. These servers will be brought to market by Lenovo and embedded into selected EMC storage systems over time.
Second, the companies have forged an OEM and reseller relationship in which Lenovo will provide EMC’s industry-leading networked storage solutions to its customers, initially in China and expanding into other global markets in step with the ongoing development of its server business.
Finally, EMC and Lenovo plan to bring certain assets and resources from EMC’s Iomega business into a new joint venture which will provide Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems to small/medium businesses (SMB) and distributed enterprise sites.

“Today’s announcement with industry leader EMC is another solid step in our journey to build on our foundation in PCs and become a leader in the new PC-plus era,” said Yuanqing Yang, Lenovo chairman and CEO. “This partnership will help us fully deliver on our PC-plus strategy by giving us strong back-end capabilities and business foundation in servers and storage, in addition to our already strong position in devices. EMC is the perfect partner to help us fully realize the PC-plus opportunity in the long term.”
Joe Tucci, chairman and CEO of EMC, said, “The relationship with Lenovo represents a powerful opportunity for EMC to significantly expand our presence in China, a vibrant and very important market, and extend it to other parts of the world over time. Lenovo has clearly demonstrated its ability to apply its considerable resources and expertise not only to enter, but to lead major market segments. We’re excited to partner with Lenovo as we focus our combined energies serving a broader range of customers with industry-leading storage and server solutions.”
In the joint venture, Lenovo will contribute cash, while EMC will contribute certain assets and resources of Iomega. Upon closing, Lenovo will hold a majority interest in the new joint venture. During and after the transition from independent operations to the joint venture, customers will experience continuity of service, product delivery and warranty fulfillment. The joint venture is subject to customary closing procedures including regulatory approvals and is expected to close by the end of 2012.
The partnership described here is not considered material to either company’s current fiscal year earnings.
About Lenovo
Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is a $US30 billion personal technology company and the world’s second largest PC company, serving customers in more than 160 countries. Dedicated to building exceptionally engineered PCs and mobile internet devices, Lenovo’s business is built on product innovation, a highly efficient global supply chain and strong strategic execution. Formed by Lenovo Group’s acquisition of the former IBM Personal Computing Division, the Company develops, manufactures and markets reliable, high-quality, secure and easy-to-use technology products and services. Its product lines include legendary Think-branded commercial PCs and Idea-branded consumer PCs, as well as servers, workstations, and a family of mobile internet devices, including tablets and smart phones. Lenovo has major research centers in Yamato, Japan; Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, China; and Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information, see www.lenovo.com.
About EMC
EMC Corporation is a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. Fundamental to this transformation is cloud computing. Through innovative products and services, EMC accelerates the journey to cloud computing, helping IT departments to store, manage, protect and analyze their most valuable asset — information — in a more agile, trusted and cost-efficient way. Additional information about EMC can be found at www.EMC.com.

StorageIO industry trends and perspectives

What is my take?

Disclosures
I have been buying and using Lenovo desktop and laptop products for over a decade and currently typing this post from my X1 ThinkPad equipped with a Samsung SSD. Likewise I bought an Iomega IX4 NAS a couple of years ago (so I am a customer), am a Retrospect customer (EMC bought and then sold them off), used to be a Mozy user (now a former customer) and EMC has been a client of StorageIO in the past.

Some of my Lenovo(s) and EMC Iomega IX4

Let us take a step back for a moment, Lenovo was the spinout and sale from IBM who has a US base in Raleigh North Carolina. While IBM still partners with Lenovo for desktops, IBM over the past years or decade(s) has been more strategically focused on big enterprise environments, software and services. Note that IBM has continued enhancing its own Intel based servers (e.g. xSeries), propriety Power processor series, storage and technology solutions (here, here, here and here among others). However, for the most part, IBM has moved away from catering to the Consumer, SOHO and SMB server, storage, desktop and related technology environments.

EMC on the other hand started out in the data center growing up to challenge IBMs dominance of data storage in big environments to now being the industry maker storage player for big and little data, from enterprise to cloud to desktop to server, consumer to data center. EMC also was partnered with Dell who competes directly with Lenovo until that relationship ended a few years ago. EMC for its part has been on a growth and expansion strategy adding technologies, companies, DNA and ability along with staff in the desktop, server and other spaces from a data, information and storage perspective not to mention VMware (virtualization and cloud), RSA (security) among others such as Mozy for cloud backup. EMC is also using more servers in its solutions ranging from Iomega based NAS to VNX unified storage systems, Greenplum big data to Centera archiving, ATMOS and various data protection solutions among other products.

StorageIO industry trends and perspectives

Note that this is an industry wide trend of leveraging Intel Architecture (IA) along with AMD, Broadcom, and IBM Power among other general-purpose processors and servers as platforms for running storage and data applications or appliances.

Overall, I think that this is a good move for both EMC and Lenovo to expand their reach into different adjacent markets leveraging and complimenting each other strengths.

Ok, lets see who is involved in the next IT summer relationship, 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

April 29, 2012December 31, 2022

More Storage IO momentus HHDD and SSD moments part II

This follows the first of a two-part series on my latest experiences with Hybrid Hard Disk Drives (HHDD’s) and Solid State Devices (SSD’s). In my ongoing last momentus moment post I discussed what I have done with HHDD’s and setting the stage for expanded SSD use. I have the newer HHDD’s, e.g. Seagate Momentus XT II 750GB (8GB SLC nand flash) installed and have since bought another from Amazon as well as having some of the older 500GB (4GB SLC nand flash) in various systems. Those are all functioning great, however still waiting and looking forward to the rumored firmware enhancements to boost write capabilities.

This brings me up to the latest momentus moment which now includes SSD’s.

Well its two years later and I now have a 256GB (usable capacity is lower) Samsung SSD that I bought from Amazon.com and installed in one of my laptops and just as when I made the first switch to HHDD’s, I also have a backup copy/clone to fall back to in case of emergency.

Was it worth the wait? Yes, particularly using the HHDD’s to bridge the gap and enable some productivity gain which more than paid for them based on some different projects. I’m already seeing productivity improvements that will make future upgrades more easy to justify (to myself).

I deviated from my strategy a bit and installed the SSD about six months earlier than I was planning to do so because of a physical barrier. That physical barrier was my new traveling laptop only accepts 7mm height 2.5 inch small form factor devices and the 750GB HHDD that I had planned on installing was 2.5mm to thick which pushed up the SSD installation.

What will become of the 750GB HHDD? Its being redeployed to help speed up file serving, backups and other functions.

Will I replace the HHDD’s in my other workstations and laptops now with SSD’s? Across the board no, not yet, however there is one other system that is a prime candidate to maybe upgrade in a month or two (maybe less).

Will I stick with the Samsung SSD’s or look at other options? I’m keeping my options open and using this as a gauge to test and compare other options in a real world working environment as opposed to a lab bench test simulation. In other words, taking the next step past the lab test and product reviews, gaining comfort and confidence and then trying out with real use activity.

What will happen in the future as I install more SSD’s and have surplus HHDD’s? Redeployed them of course into file or NAS servers, backup targets that in turn will replace HDD’s that will either get retired, or redeployed to replace older, smaller capacity, higher cost to handle HDD’s used for offsite protection.

I tried using the software that came with the SSD to do the cloning and should have known better, however wanted to see what the latest version of ghost was like (it was a waste of time to be polite). Instead I used Seagate Discwizard (aka Acronis) which requires at least one Seagate product (source or target) for cloning.

Cloning from the Seagate HHDD that have been previously cloned from the Hitachi HDD that came with the laptop, was a none issue. However, I wanted to see what would happen if I attached the Samsung SSD to the Seagate Goflex cable and clone directly from the Hitachi HDD, it worked. Hence another reason to have some of the Seagate Goflex cables (USB and eSATA) like the ones I bought at Amazon.com around in your toolbox.

While I do not have concrete empirical numbers to share, cloning from a HDD to a SSD is shall we say fast, however, what’s really fun to watch is cloning from a HHDD to a SSD using an eSata (GoFlex) connector adapter. The reason I say that it is fun is that you don’t have to sit and wait for hours, it’s not minutes to move 100s of GBs, however you can very much see the progress bar move at a good pace.

Also, I put the HHDD on an eSata port and try that out as a backup or data dump target if you have the need for speed, capacity and cost effectiveness, yes its fast, has lots of capacity and so forth. Now if Seagate and Synology or EMC Iomega would get their acts together and add support for the HHDD’s in those different unified SMB and SOHO NAS solutions, that would be way cool.

Will I be racing to put SSD’s in my other laptops or workstations soon? Probably not as there are things in the works and working their way into and through the market place that I wanted to wait for, and thus will wait for now, that is unless a more interesting opportunity pops up.

Related links on SDD, HHDD and HDD
More Storage IO momentus HHDD and SSD moments part I
More Storage IO momentus HHDD and SSD moments part II
IO IO it is off to Storage and IO metrics we go
New Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid drive (SSD and HDD)
Other Momentus moments posts here here, here, here and here
SSD and Storage System Performance
Speaking of speeding up business with SSD storage
Are Hard Disk Drives (HDD’s) getting too big?
Has SSD put Hard Disk Drives (HDD’s) On Endangered Species List?
Why SSD based arrays and storage appliances can be a good idea (Part I)
Why SSD based arrays and storage appliances can be a good idea (Part II)
IT and storage economics 101, supply and demand
Researchers and marketers dont agree on future of nand flash SSD
EMC VFCache respinning SSD and intelligent caching (Part I)
EMC VFCache respinning SSD and intelligent caching (Part II)
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part I: Spinning up to speed on SSD
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part II: The call to duty, SSD endurance
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part III: What type of SSD is best for you?
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part IV: What type of SSD is best for your needs

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

April 29, 2012December 31, 2022

More Storage IO momentus HHDD and SSD moments part I

This is the first of a two part series on my latest experiences with HHDD and SSD’s

About two years ago I wanted to start installing solid state devices (SSD’s) into my workstations and laptops. Like many others, I found the expensive price for the limited capacity gains of the then generation SSD’s did not make for a good business decision based on my needs. Don’t get me wrong, I have been a huge fan of SSD for decades as an IT user, vendor, analysts, consultant and consumer and still am. In fact I have some SSD’s used for different purposes as well as many Hard Disk Drives (HDD) and Hybrid Hard Disk Drives (HHDD’s). Almost two years ago when I first tested the HHDD’s, I did an first post in this ongoing series and this two-part post is part of that string of experiences observed evolving from HDD’s to HHDD’s to SSD’s

Image courtesy of Seagate.com

As a refresher, HHDD’s like the Seagate Momentus XT combine a traditional 7,200 RPM 2.5 inch 500GB or 750GB HDD with an integrated single level cell (SLC) nand flash SSD within the actual device. The SSD in the HHDD’s is part of the HDD’s controller complementing the existing DRAM buffer by adding 4GB (500GB models) or 8GB (750GB models) of fast nand flash SSD cache. This means that no external special controller, adapter, data movement or migration software are required to get the performance boost over a traditional HDD and the capacity above a SSD at an affordable cost. In other words, the HHDD’s bridge the gap between those who need large capacity and some performance increases, without having to spend a lot on a lower capacity SSD.

However based on my needs or business requirements two years ago I found the justification to get all the extra performance of SSD not quite there when. Back two years ago my thinking was that it would be about two maybe three years before the right point for a mix of performance, availability (or reliability e.g. duty cycles), capacity and economics aligned.

Note that this was based on my specific needs and requirements as opposed to my wants or wishes (I wanted SSD back then, however my budget needed to go elsewhere). My requirements and performance needs are probably not the same as yours or others might be. I also wanted to see the incremental technology, product and integration improvements ranging from duty cycle or program/erase cycles (P/E) with newer firmware and flash translation layers (FTLs) among other things. Particularly with multilevel cell (MLC) or enhanced multilevel cell (eMLC) which helps bring the cost down while boosting the capacity, I’m seeing enough to have more confidence in those devices. Note that for the past couple of years I have used single level cell (SLC) nand flash SSD technology in my HHDD’s, the same SSD flash technology that has been found in enterprise class storage.

While I wanted SSD’s two years ago in my laptops and workstations to improve productivity which involves a lot of content creation in addition to consumption, however as mentioned above, there were barriers. So instead of sitting on the sidelines, waiting for SSD’s to either become lower cost, or more capacity for a given cost, or wishing somebody would send me some free stuff (that may or may not have worked), I took a different route. That route was to try the HHDD’s such as Seagate Momentus XT.

Disclosure: Seagate sent me my first HHDD for first testing and verifications before buying several more from Amazon.com and installing them in all laptops, workstations and a server (not all servers have the HHDD’s, or at least yet).

The main reason I went with the HHDD’s two years ago and continue to use them today is to bridge the gap and gain some benefit vs. waiting and wishing and talking about what SSD’s would enable me to do in the future while missing out on productivity enhancements.

The HHDD’s also appealed to me in that my laptops are space constrained for putting two drives and playing the hybrid configuration game of installing both a small SSD and HDD and migrating data back and forth. Sure I could do that for in the office or carry an extra external device around however been there, done that in the past and want to move away from those types of models where possible.

Ok, nuff said for now, lets resume this discussion in part II.

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

November 7, 2011April 18, 2022

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

May 4, 2010February 3, 2023

Apple iPad: Is it a Business iTool or iToy?

Apple iPad via www.apple.com

With the formal release and availability of the Apple iPad (See previous post here) along with networking capabilities including 3G and WiFi, needless to say there has been plenty of buzz in the tech sphere and beyond on both what you can do, as well as what you can not do with the new Apple iProduct. Similarly, there has been buzz from Apple co-founder and chairman Steve Jobs defending why there is no Adobe flash capabilities on the iPad or perhaps a different way, attaching flash as a non standard which is ironic for those who see many Apple products as being non standard.

What has also been getting some buzz and discussions is if the iPad is a business iTool or iToy including a recent discussion on the StorageMonkeys Infosmack 48 podcast with hosts Greg Knieriemen @Knieriemen, Marc Farley @3parfarley, guest emeritus Mark Twomey @Storagezilla and Chris Weil LeBlanc @c_weil .

Also check out the StorageMonkeys weekly Tuesday Tech Fight for May 4, 2010 (May require registration which is free)

Granted like any other desktop, portable or handheld display device with a real or virtual keyboard and some type of networking interface combined with creative programming or hacks, almost anything can be used as a monitor or display or management tool interface to a variety of technologies.

That also begs the question along with others mentioned in a post a few months ago of what is the real value for the iPad today?

Certainly there are some business or organizations that simply need a very thin client for accessing public or private cloud applications, entertainment or other web content in addition to being a personal information device or digital assistant along the lines of a traditional iPod or similar device where a PC or Mac is not needed.

Likewise down the road as pointed out here, there could be other use cases (e.g. build it and they will come).

However today for business, the question remains, is the Apple iPad a business iTool or iToy or do you simply iDont Care?

Here is a link to a related post along with poll where you can cast your vote as well as see what others are thinking about the iPad.

Cheers gs

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

Technorati tags: iPad

February 4, 2010September 26, 2022

Industry trends and perspectives thoughts on iPad for business

In case you did not hear, Apple announced the iTouch on steroids aka iPad last week.

Apple iPad via www.apple.com

Is it a phone? No, its not an iPhone

Is it a PC? Well, not in the context of the traditional PC or Mac book

What is the iPad or more importantly, what is the possible business angle?

First as to what is it, it might be easier to describe what it is not.

As mentioned above, it is not an iPhone, granted you can get an iPad with 3G or WiFi for data access (similar to how iTouch has WiFi). Likewise, the iPad is not a PC in the context of running applications traditionally found on Windows PCs or Mac devices.

Does that mean the iPad is simply an iTouch or iPod for entertainment on steroids? Well, Maybe!

What is it?
As far as what is the iPad, here is a link to its specifications, some of which have resulted in confusion. For example, I have seen many comments about how the iPad does not have a camera. Well, not built in however there is an optional external camera if you need one.

As a side note, Im curious as to the net effect of how many PBytes of storage, TBytes of network bandwidth, and ExaHertz (I made that one up) of processing cycles were consumed via downloads or people watching the news of the iPad launch?

However, Im seeing additional uses for the iPad compared to the iTouch given its larger physical screen size and data access options, even if it is not a phone. For example, I can see scenarios in education where if the publishers get on board, can make a real transition from text books to eBooks to Goggle scanned books, however given the economics involved, and the already Amazon (e.g. Kindle) vs. Apple (iPad) Elephant wars, it will be interesting to watch.

Yet another area where I can see iPads being used closer to business will be as an internet, web or cloud content access on ramps, or, portals to access cloud based applications including office suites, email, calendaring payroll, shopping among others.

Likewise I can see where iPads may have custom applications ported to them, or, made accessible via safe secure connections. In other words, there is a scenario where iPads could catch on as a truly thin lightweight multifunction PC alternative.

For some additional thoughts on possible iPad use cases, I recently did a podcast with Andrew Burton of SearchSMB at TechTarget that can be accessed here or here.

iPad receiving mixed responses
Back to the iPad which is getting mixed responses.

There have also been comments about lack of Blue tooth capabilities for the iPad. Again, there is Blue tooth support on the iPad, however the question is really about what that can be used for, or, not used for. For example, there is an optional external keyboard that is attached via docking port, however, there is still no support for Blue tooth enabled deices like my Stowaway folding keyboard. Another question I have is how would the iPad work in my Sync Blue tooth enabled F150 including for use as a turn by turn, or large screen version of moving maps similar to iPhone?

Other iPad knocks include discussions around lack of a camera, that is, if you do not buy the optional external camera. There is also talk of a lack of an Adobe Flash player (at least initially), not to be confused with some headlines that say iPad lacks flash confusing with a perceived of lack of flash SSD memory or storage (iPad actually relies on flash aka SSD memory for storage).

Yet another knock has been that while it looks like an oversize iPhone, and that it will have an optional version with 3G cell technology for communicating with web or data services, it will not be usable as a phone per say. Hmm, wonder how long it will take for Skype, Vonage or others to appear on the iPad?

One of the questions or discussion points that come up regarding iPhones and now the iPad is the impact on what some already describe as an overloaded wireless network for ATT customers which includes me. Here (and here and here) are a couple of links to recent announcements and news about what ATT has done, and will be doing including investing $2B USD to upgrade their networks.

via www.att.com

General observations:
There appear to be a couple of bandwagons with this announcement:

The usual its Apple or iSomething so its very significant
The its a SNT (Shiny New Toy)
And, then others who are not quite sure where it fits or why.

Of course, there are the cynics along with skeptics (not to be confused with being one and the same). Some are cynics and discount anything from Apple like their counter parts who discount anything from Microsoft or others that are not part of their preference. However there also seems to be some skepticism among traditional Apple or iSomething fans regarding the iPad, needless to say, they are not doing iCartwheels over the announcement.

I think there is an even larger audience out there waiting to see, hear and learn if there is a play for the iPad, or, if new markets and opportunities will evolve around it for example as an alternative to Kindle, as an alternative to PCs for schools, or as a cloud content on-ramp. In other words, for markets where a PC is not needed. I think that there will be custom applications written for it, similar to those seen on custom platforms used by FedEx, UPS and many others.

There is also going to be the giveaway market where vendors will use iPad as a GUI display for their systems to be more hip that the PC or alternative to giving away Kindles.

PC and Mac People Via www.apple.com

Whats the verdict?
I think the jury is still out, Im not going to race out to the first in my neighborhood to have the shiny new toy (SNT), however I see a place for using it down the road as a content access device or running apps currently on iPhones where that platform is too small.

For example, a medical device maker who runs certain apps on iPhones yet their doctors or support staff find the iPhone to be smaller than desirable may like the iPad. However, apple may need to support .NET or other open or pseudo open interfaces for the platform lest they end up with a simple browser platform.

Given that Im going to skip the first generation of iPad waiting for the next version, similar to what I have done with the original Mac, the initial Apple Mac notebook, Newton, iPod and iPhone, its going to be awhile before I have my own iPad.

Whats your take on the iPad? Cast your vote and see what others are thinking in the following poll.

Cheers gs

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

Technorati tags: iPad

February 26, 2008November 22, 2019

Mainframe, CMG, Virtualization, Storage and “Zombie Technologies”

In case you missed the news, IBM today announced a new mainframe the z10, yes, that’s right, the mother of all “Zombie Technologies” (and I say this with all due respect), you know, technologies that are declared dead yet are viable, working and still living thus purchasable. Some other examples of Zombie technologies include magnetic tape which was declared dead at least ten years ago if not longer yet continues to evolve, granted a bit slower and with fewer vendors, yet the technology is still economically viable when paired up with disk to disk based backup as an off-line (read no power required) medium for preserving idle and inactive archive data. Another example of a Zombie technology is the printer as you may recall we were supposed to be completely paperless by now, yeh right.

Then there is Fibre Channel which was declared still born over a decade ago yet shows plenty of signs of life in the form of 8GFC (8Gb Fibre Channel) and emerging FCoE even with iSCSI waging another assault to kill the FC beast. Even the venerable 50 year old magnetic disk drive has been declared a dead technology with the re-emergence of SSD in the form of DRAM and FLASH yet magnetic hard disk drives (HDD) continue to be manufactured and shipped in record numbers making it a member of the Zombie technology club, a club that has some pretty esteemed members and more on the way.

I forget how many decades ago it was now that the IBM mainframe was declared dead and granted we have seen the exodus of Hitachi, Amdahl, NEC and others from the active marketplace developing and selling IBM plug compatible mainframes (PCMs). However the venerable mainframe from IBM like the energizer bunny keeps ticking and finding new roles including leveraging its built-in logical partition (LPAR) capabilities to support virtual machines, something that has been available for at least a few decades to enable being leveraged as a consolidation platform of not only legacy zOS (aka revamped MVS) and zVM (not to be confused with VMware) as well native Linux.

Shifting gears a bit, last week I had the pleasure of key-noting at a local Computer Measurement Group (CMG) event, a group that I have been involved with presenting at their events around the world for over a decade. Last weeks theme at the CMG event was Is Storage and I/O Still Important in a Virtual World? If you are not familiar with the CMG folks and you have an interesting in servers, storage, I/O and networking along with performance, capacity planning and virtualization these are some people to get to know. Granted the organization has its roots back in the mainframe era and thus the organization is a gazillion years old, yet, younger than the mainframe however not by much. Over the past several years with the advent of lower cost hardware and the attitude of hardware is cheap, just throw more hardware at the problem has in part led to the decline of what CMG once was as an organization.

However, given the collective knowledge base and broad background, skills and areas of interest spanning servers, storage, I/O, networking, virtualization, hardware, software, mainframe and open systems among others, given the current focus on addressing IT data center power, cooling, floor space and associated ecological and economic related topics (see www.greendatastorage.com) CMG has an opportunity to revive itself even more so than it has over the past few years. That is, CMG assuming its leaders and members can recognize the opportunity can stand up to take a lead role in tying together the skills and knowledge to implement cross technology domain IT infrastructure resource management including working with facilities personal to insure adequate resources (servers, storage, networking, power, cooling and floor space) are available when and where needed moving forward not to mention help shape and guide the server, storage and networking industry groups and forums on applicable metrics and measurement usage. If you are not familiar with CMG, check them out, it’s a good group with a lot of good subject matter expertise to tap into.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

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

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