Tag: StorageDecisions

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Time In and Around Clouds

This past week I spent some time in, around and above the clouds literally and figutively. I was in the Netherlands the past few days doing a seminar with Brouwer Storage as well as key note presentation on Wednesday at the Dutch StorageExpo in Utrecht (a fabulous event with lots of buzz and activity, nice job Marloes!) before flying home today from my favorite airport (Amsterdam Schiphol).

(Following photo’s were taken this past summer on an early morning flight from my phone camera)
View of morning clouds from the air
Getting ready to land on a morning flight going through some clouds

Another view of morning clouds from the air just before landing
More morning clouds

Looking out at the wing of an Northwest Airlines Airbus A320 while in the clouds
Low visibility as you can barely see the wingtip

In addition to flying above the clouds over the Atlantic (not the above photos), the fall clouds at home where it was snowing when I left and then raining when I returned, with wind and clouds (some occasional sun) while in Holland, and then the industry buzz around EMC’s cloud and clustered storage solution announcement (also here and here and here and here) called Atmos (aka the solution code named hulk and maui), this week had a strong cloud theme along with a dose of policy management.

Meeting regularly with IT professionals from organizations of all size as well as various vendors and vars around the world, is a great way to avoid having your thinking end up to much in the clouds, instead, staying rooted as to where IT issues and pain points are vs. where they are perceived to be.

However, the long plane ride with no cell phone or email or web access also made for some great time to relax and watch the clouds go by. In a few days I?m back in the air again as next week I will be in San Francisco presenting at Storage Decisions. Next weeks topics will include a session updated with new content looking at “Clustered Storage: From SMB, to Scientific, to File Serving, to Commercial, Social Networking and Web 2.0” and grids among other topics.

If you are in the area, stop by and say hello next Monday and Tuesday at the San Francisco Hilton.

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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Hot Storage Topics Converge on Chicago Next Week

Storage I/O trends

Next week in Chicago (May 12th) at Storage Strategies, the event for channel professional held the evening before StorageDecisions I will be talking about Hot Storage Topics for 2008 including addressing data protection for virtual environments, power cooling floor space environmental (PCFE) aka green items and the “Green Gap”, data footprint reduction for both on-line active and changing data using real-time data compression, archiving for in-active or dormant data and de-dupe for backup data. Also on the list of hot topics will be clustered NAS and clustered storage for Web 2.0 along with other timely and relevant items.

At the StorageDecisions event, I will be talking about ?Green and Environmental Friendly Storage? Tuesday morning May 13th in the presentation ?Practical Ways to Achieve Energy Efficiency – Power, Cooling, Floor-Space and Environmental (PCFE) Issues and Trends? looking at different issues including the ?Green Gap? or disconnect between messaging and common IT data center issues along with various options to boost efficiency for both active and in-active data and storage resources.

Also while at StorageDecisions next week, on Wednesday the 14th I will be talking about clustered storage including clustered NAS in the session ?Clustered Storage – ?From SMB, to Scientific, to File Serving, to Commercial, Social Networking and Web 2.0?. Given some recent vendor technology announcements and statements of direction, Web 2.0 and unstructured data are gaining popularity as are the confusing options or different types of clustered storage solutions including ?Cluster Wanna Bee?s?. If you are in Chicago next week, stop in and check out the event and if you can attend any of my sessions, stop by and say hello.

Cheers
GS

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SNW Spring 2008

The Spring 2008 edition of SNW was this past week in Orlando FL and I spent a couple of days there for some briefings as well as give a presentation.

From an attendance standpoint, certainly it did not feel or look like one of the largest SNW events that I have been to over that past several years and yes there were in fact some real IT personal there, however nothing like on the scale of what you would see at a Storage Decisions, VMworld or any of the other customer/IT personal focused show.

However keeping in mind that SNW is first a vendor and SNIA event that just happens to have some IT customers attending. This edition of SNW seemed more sparse given the size of the venue and how spread out things were along with the high degree of over-subscription or number of concurrent sessions (which had from 7 to up to 8 sessions at the same time) that are trying to be squeezed into a small timeframe with a relatively small audience compared to other events.

For me it was time well spent with the great meetings and ad-hoc discussions that I had in the short period while in Orlando even with the decline in attendance compared to past years. There is a shift going on and there are certainly many other large events to compete with SNW for attendees and participants many of which particularly for IT customers seem to be growing in popularity.

IMHO its time for the SNW show organizers to take a good look at the model of SNW Europe for some ideas on how to tweak and tune the US-based event especially if they want to continue to do a twice a year event.

Here’s a link to download a copy of my presentation Beyond Green-wash: Power, Cooling, Floor-space, Environmental (PCFE) and green Issues, Trends and Solutions from SNW.

On the StorageIO website you can find links to industry Trends and Perspective white papers as well as other content addressing PCFE and green related issues including MAID, Intelligent Power Management and MAID 2.0, SSD, Virtualization and Data Footprint Reduction among others.

Drop me a note or comment about what you are encountering or your thoughts or any interesting findings about IT data center PCFE and green issues and check out storageioblog.com if you have not recently done so.

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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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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Trains Going “Green”, ah, well, maybe “Blue”…

With all of the global focus on going green, saving the planet, green IT and green storage all of which are good when like so many other things when done in moderation, the focus especially around IT and even aviation tends to be around green house gas (GHG), Co2/Carbon Offsets and so forth. Well, when I read this article about what India is doing to make their trains more green it got me thinking, perhaps a more moderate or balanced approach to green messaging should include more looking down at the ground than up in the sky.

That is, focus on some additional issues including ewaste with rules such as RoHS, WEEE among others in addition to the focus on reducing carbon and GHGs. By spending some time looking down as opposed to just looking up so to speak, you can reduce the chances of stepping in something undesirable as well as seeing real issues including power, cooling, floor space, environmental (PCFE) related items that can be addressed as well as on a go forward basis.

Interested in green IT and storage along with associated PCFE topics? I will be presenting at SNW in Orlando in April as well as Storage Decisions in May in Chicago on those and other related topics, learn more at the StorageIO events page. If you will be at any of those venues, stop by and say hello.

Cheers
GS