Tag: SRM

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NetApp and Akorri: An E2E cross technology domain SRA play

The other day NetApp announced that it was planning on doing another acquisition following on their recent purchase of Bycast (policy based storage and management software).

This time, NetApp is doing yet another software acquisition of Infrastructure Resource Management (IRM) as well as End to End (E2E) cross technology domain management and Storage or Systems Resource Analysis (SRA) startup Akorri which also builds on its past acquisition of SRA solution Onaro.

Is this a good move by NetApp?

Assuming they got a good price, yes, this has very potential for NetApp assuming they can assimilate the solution as well as articulate where it fits complimenting its other management tools including SANscreen (aka Onaro).

Is Akorii a good product?

Yes, most of the customers and var partners of Akorri that I talk to have great things to say and having looked into the technology, it has lots of good potential for NetApp. However, there is a common theme around Akorri that has been its high price, something that was also heard from Onaro customers before NetApp did that acquisition. If NetApp can leverage its direct as well as partner touch to reduce the cost of sale for Akorri as well as rationalize the pricing or at least better articulate the value proposition to make it a must have vs nice to have, they can do well.

The importance of E2E awareness of IT resources across different technology domains (or focus areas) is that you can not effectively manage what you do not have timely access or visibility into. Hence the theme of session being You cannot effectively manage what you do not know about in a timely manner. I recently did a couple of Industry Trends and Perspectives webcast events around the topic and themes of End to End (E2E) awareness and cross domain (or technology) management insight for cloud, virtual and other abstracted as well as physical IT environments.

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

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E2E Awareness and insight for IT environments

I recently did a couple of Industry Trends and Perspectives webcast events around the topic and themes of End to End (E2E) awareness and cross domain (or technology) management insight for cloud, virtual and other abstracted as well as physical IT environments.

The importance of E2E awareness of IT resources across different technology domains (or focus areas) is that you can not effectively manage what you do not have timely access or visibility into. Hence the theme of session being You cannot effectively manage what you do not know about in a timely manner.

Here is the abstract for the webcast:

Virtualization, clouds and other forms of abstraction help IT organizations enable flexible and scalable services delivery. While abstraction of underlying resources simplifies services delivery from an IT customers perspective, additional layers of technology along with interdependencies still need to be tracked as well as managed.  A key enabler for IT organizations is having end to end (E2E) situational awareness of available resources and how they are being used. By having timely situational awareness across various technology domains, IT organizations gain insight into how resources can be more effectively deployed in an efficient manner.

Join independent IT industry analyst, author and blogger Greg Schulz as he looks at common challenges as well as opportunities for leveraging E2E situational awareness to remove blind spots from efficient effective IT services delivery. Greg will look several scenarios including among others cost reduction, maximize resource usage, shrink migration and data consolidation times for cloud, virtual and traditional IT environments while maintaining or enhancing IT services delivery.

If you are interested in IT Infrastructure Resource Management (IRM) of servers, storage, IO networking, virtualization, cloud, backup or restore, optimization as well as cloud or legacy environments and metrics, I invite you to view the following web cast.

E2E cross domain awareness webcast

Click on the above image to access the BrightTalk web cast from their recent Virtualization Summit series (may require registration)

If you are interested, here is a link to a previous post I did on E2E management, SRA (systems or storage resource analysis) and management insight along with a recent related white paper sponsored by SANpulse that you can access here.

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

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End to End (E2E) Systems Resource Analysis (SRA) for Cloud and Virtual Environments

A new StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) white paper titled “End to End (E2E) Systems Resource Analysis (SRA) for Cloud, Virtual and Abstracted Environments” is now available at www.storageioblog.com/reports compliments of SANpulse technologies.

End to End (E2E) Systems Resource Analysis (SRA) for Virtual, Cloud and abstracted environments: Importance of Situational Awareness for Virtual and Abstracted Environments

Abstract:
Many organizations are in the planning phase or already executing initiatives moving their IT applications and data to abstracted, cloud (public or private) virtualized or other forms of efficient, effective dynamic operating environments. Others are in the process of exploring where, when, why and how to use various forms of abstraction techniques and technologies to address various issues. Issues include opportunities to leverage virtualization and abstraction techniques that enable IT agility, flexibility, resiliency and salability in a cost effective yet productive manner.

An important need when moving to a cloud or virtualized dynamic environment is to have situational awareness of IT resources. This means having insight into how IT resources are being deployed to support business applications and to meet service objectives in a cost effective manner.

Awareness of IT resource usage provides insight necessary for both tactical and strategic planning as well as decision making. Effective management requires insight into not only what resources are at hand but also how they are being used to decide where different applications and data should be placed to effectively meet business requirements.

Learn more about the importance and opportunities associated with gaining situational awareness using E2E SRA for virtual, cloud and abstracted environments in this StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) white paper compliments of SANpulse technologies by clicking here.

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

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Its US Census time, What about IT Data Centers?

It is that once a decade activity time this year referred to as the US 2010 Census.

With the 2010 census underway, not to mention also time for completing and submitting your income tax returns, if you are in IT, what about measuring, assessing, taking inventory or analyzing your data and data center resources?

US 2010 Cenus formsUS 2010 Cenus forms
Figure 1: IT US 2010 Census forms

Have you recently taken a census of your data, data storage, servers, networks, hardware, software tools, services providers, media, maintenance agreements and licenses not to mention facilities?

Likewise have you figured out what if any taxes in terms of overhead or burden exists in your IT environment or where opportunities to become more optimized and efficient to get an IT resource refund of sorts are possible?

If not, now is a good time to take a census of your IT data center and associated resources in what might also be called an assessment, review, inventory or survey of what you have, how its being used, where and who is using and when along with associated configuration, performance, availability, security, compliance coverage along with costs and energy impact among other items.

IT Data Center Resources
Figure 2: IT Data Center Metrics for Planning and Forecasts

How much storage capacity do you have, how is it allocated along with being used?

What about storage performance, are you meeting response time and QoS objectives?

Lets not forget about availability, that is planned and unplanned downtime, how have your systems been behaving?

From an energy or power and cooling standpoint, what is the consumption along with metrics aligned to productivity and effectiveness. These include IOPS per watt, transactions per watt, videos or email along with web clicks or page views per watt, processor GHz per watt along with data movement bandwidth per watt and capacity stored per watt in a given footprint.

Other items to look into for data centers besides storage include servers, data and I/O networks, hardware, software, tools, services and other supplies along with physical facility with metrics such as PUE. Speaking of optimization, how is your environment doing, that is another advantage of doing a data center census.

For those who have completed and sent in your census material along with your 2009 tax returns, congratulations!

For others in the US who have not done so, now would be a good time to get going on those activities.

Likewise, regardless of what country or region you are in, its always a good time to take a census or inventory of your IT resources instead of waiting every ten years to do so.

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

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SMB capacity planning; Focusing on energy conservation

Storage I/O trends

Here’s a link to a new tip I wrote that is posted over at SearchSMBStorage on Capacity Planning and energy conservation.

Here are some added links to other recent tips I wrote and posted at a SearchSMBStorage:

Improve your storage energy efficiency

Data protection for virtual server environments

Data footprint reduction for SMBs

Is clustered NAS for SMBs?

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

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StorageIO Spring Keynote and Speaking tour V2.008

Several new keynote and speaking engagements involving myself have been added to the StorageIO events page including among others:

April 8th, 2008 – SNW Orlando FL
Beyond Green-Wash:
IT Data Center Power, Cooling, Floor Space and Environmental (PCFE) Topics and Trends V2.008
This talk will move past what are the issues and reasons for going green and get right to the point of what you can do today leveraging various technologies, techniques and best practices to address PCFE and green environmental issues including EHS, low power and economic sustainment in an environmental friendly manner as well as what to include in a long term green strategy for your data center.

Chicago, May 13th-15th – StorageDecisions
Clustered Storage:
From SMB, to Scientific, to Social Networking and Web 2.0
The growth of structured and unstructured data continues at an explosive rate in most environments resulting in a constantly expanding data footprint requiring data and storage management resources. Similarly, the relative ease of use of NFS and Windows CIFS file sharing based storage, also known as Network Attached Storage (NAS), has led to a proliferation of NAS and Windows file servers which are not all that different from how the ease of use of personal computers (PCs) resulted in desktop and server sprawl. With the focus of many IT organizations today to do more with less, or, do more with what you have, clustered storage and clustered file serving have become a popular option to support modular, scalable and flexible growth. Clustered storage including clustered file serving, grid and web 2.0 based storage solutions are no longer confined to the specific high performance scientific applications they are commonly associated. Clustered storage serving is commonly being deployed to support a wide diversity of applications including commercial, entertainment or media, Web 2.0 and social networking along with grid, cloud and traditional scientific needs.

This session takes a look at among other topics:
? Look at what different clustered storage vendors are claiming and how their solutions differ
? Fact vs. Fiction, Myths and Realties of clustered storage
o Grid vs. Clusters, Cluster vs. Grid, what?s the differences
o Clustered storage is only for ultra large environments like Google
o Clustered file serving is only for high performance (HPC) environments
o SMBs and bulk storage applications can not benefit from clustered storage
? What are the caveats to be aware of when deploying clustered storage?
? What are some emerging trends and solutions to keep an eye on for clustered storage
? What are some questions that some vendors do not want you to ask about their solutions!

Green and Environmental Friendly Storage:
Practical Ways to Achieve Energy Efficiency
Green is in-and every storage vendor out there has a green story to tell. Despite the vendor and industry hyperbole about the environmental benefits of their products, there are still no standard metrics by which to measure and compare power consumption or energy efficiency claims. The challenge is sorting out and closing the gap between vendor green messaging and IT data center issues including power, cooling, floor space and other environmental topics including RoHS and e-waste disposal. This session looks at several practical techniques and technologies that you can leverage today to achieve an energy efficiency data center to sustain business growth in an economical and ecological friendly manner.

Topics that will be covered include among others:
? How truthful are vendor claims and what is ?Green wash?
? Facts and Fiction, Myths and Realities:
o Storage is cheaper to buy than to power
o Power avoidance vs. energy efficiency
o Are Solid State Devices (SSD) the silver bullet?
o Dedupe vs. Archive vs. Compression vs. Consolidation
? What?s real and achievable today, what are your options?
? Measuring and determining energy efficiency with emerging metrics
? How to do more with what you have and avoid forklift upgrades
? Who is the ?Greenest of them all? and where to learn more

I will also be keynoting at several TechTarget seminar series events around the U.S. including
StorageIO events page located here.

Cheers
GS

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Chargeback for storage

TechTarget SearchStorage recently put out a piece on chargeback for storage that includes some commentary by myself on the topic including some common myths about chargeback of what it is and how it is done.

A common misperception is that chargeback requires actual invoicing and monetizing of IT resource use including servers, storage and networks where in some cases, charge back is not as much about generating invoices as it is for accounting and resource usage tracking.

Granted, if you are in a services oriented environment, rest assured there is monetization needing to take place, however, informational charge back initiatives are also useful for budgeting, planning and awareness of IT services and usage.Have a read here.

Cheers
GS