June 2017 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructures Update Newsletter

Volume 17, Issue VI

Hello and welcome to the June 2017 issue of the Server StorageIO update newsletter.

For those of you in the northern hemisphere it is time for summer holidays, while in the southern hemisphere its winter time. That means there is a lot going on outside of work, however June has also seen a lot of activity in and around IT data infrastructure along with data centers. Check out some of the industry trends news and updates below.

Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials SDDI SDDC

A quick update following up from the May newsletter is that my new book is now available via Amazon.com, CRC Press and other venues in hardcopy hardcover as well as electronic versions. Think of this as the soft launch with a formal launch and more information being rolled out soon. For now, you can visit the landing page for Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials – Cloud, Converged, and Virtual Fundamental Server Storage I/O Tradecraft (CRC PRess/Taylor Francis/Auerbach) at storageio.com/book4 to learn more including view table of contents, preface, how organized among other items.

In This Issue

Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO update newsletter.

Cheers GS

Data Infrastructure and IT Industry Activity Trends

Some recent Industry Activities, Trends, News and Announcements include:

Cavium announced 10, 25, 50 and 50Gbps Ethernet server storage I/O NIC solutions (e.g. FastLine 41000 series).

The NVMe Express trade group (e.g. nvmexpress.org) announced the completion of NVMe 1.3 specification. New optional features include support for mobile platforms and book, along with scaling for enterprise as well as cloud environments. Learn more about specifications at the NVMexpress.org site as well as more NVMe material at thenvmeplace.com.

Keep in mind that if the answer is NVMe, what are the questions along with various options from front end to back-end, NVMe and PCIe, NVMeoF, U.2/8639, M2/NGFF among others.

The Fibre Channel Industry Association announced FC-NVMe interoperability plugfest and Gen 6 32GFC activity to support next generation data infrastructures and data centers.

Storage vendor Tegile announced they are joining the growing ranks of vendors adding NVMe support with their InteliFlash OS 3.7 along with other enhancements.

For those of you who are involved with Windows Servers environments along with server, storage and I/O networks, check out Darryl VanderPeijl multi-part series on RDMA, DCB, PFC, ETS and related topics.

HPE and Hedvig announced solutions combing forces to address hybrid cloud storage needs.

IBM and Cisco announced enhancements around their converged (Cisco powered servers) solution for VDI and Hybrid cloud workloads.

Big Data and Analytics vendor Mapr announced enhancements to their converged data management platform for cloud scale data fabrics.

Panzura has enhanced its Freedom software defined storage management solution with version 7 to support expanded unstructured data growth while easing management functions, along with performance updates.

Red Hat announced Ceph Storage 2.3 including Ceph 10.2 (Jewel) combing an NFS gateway.

Scality announced enhancements to its Ring software defined storage cloud and object solution including enhanced security along with data protection capabilities.

Check out other industry news, comments, trends perspectives here.

 

Server StorageIOblog Posts

Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

View other recent as well as past StorageIOblog posts here

Server StorageIO Commentary in the news

Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

Via EnterpriseStorageForum: 5 Hot Storage Technologies to Watch
Storage can be held back by slow I/O performance, which caused expensive compute resources and memory to be consumed. NVMe reduces wait time while increasing the amount of effective work, enabling higher-profitability compute. The storage I/O capabilities of flash can be fed across PCIe faster to enable multi-core processors to complete more useful work in less time.

Via EnterpriseStorageForum: 10-Year Review of Data Storage
The adoption of hybrid cloud and hybrid converged server storage has appeared more rapidly than many expected. And despite firm pronouncements of their demise, FC, tape and HDD are still very much with us.

Via CDW: Your IT Department Can Help Your Companys Bottom Line Heres How
Not only are the servers more robust performance wise, but they’ve got more compute capability, can handle more workloads, have more memory and also have better resiliency.

Via EnterpriseStorageForum: Top 10 Tips for Software-Defined Storage Deployment
Dell 14g PowerEdge Servers give you greater compute and IO capability, as well as the density you need, NVMe and 25 Gig Ethernet on board,

Via CDW: Meeting IoTs Demands for Networking

View more Server, Storage and I/O trends and perspectives comments here

Events and Activities

Recent and upcoming event activities.

Sep. 13-15, 2017 – Fujifilm IT Executive Summit – Seattle WA

August 28-30, 2017 – VMworld – Las Vegas

June 22, 2017 – Webinar – GDPR and Microsoft Environments

May 11, 2017 – Webinar – Email Archiving, Compliance and Ransomware

See more webinars and activities on the Server StorageIO Events page here.

Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

Useful links and pages:
Microsoft TechNet – Various Microsoft related from Azure to Docker to Windows
storageio.com/links – Various industry links (over 1,000 with more to be added soon)
objectstoragecenter.com – Cloud and object storage topics, tips and news items
OpenStack.org – Various OpenStack related items
storageio.com/protect – Various data protection items and topics
thenvmeplace.com – Focus on NVMe trends and technologies
thessdplace.com – NVM and Solid State Disk topics, tips and techniques
storageio.com/converge – Various CI, HCI and related SDS topics
storageio.com/performance – Various server, storage and I/O benchmark and tools
VMware Technical Network – Various VMware related items

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Multi-year Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert (and vSAN). Author of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press), as well as Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio.

Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com any reproduction in whole, in part, with changes to content, without source attribution under title or without permission is forbidden.

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved.

Old School, New School, Current and Back to School (With Poll)

Storage I/O trends

Old School, New School, Current and Back to School

Are you old school or new school?

If you are new school or old school, then will you be stuck on those school’s of thought or advanced to the current and future schools?

Old School

From the old school folks you will hear things along the lines of that is how we do or did it. Also you might hear things along the lines of lets use what we have as long as we can make it work to fix problems while learning from mistakes. Also from old school you may here things like new school is only focused on the newest latest greatest shiny technology. Not to mention themes such as we have to stick around and clean up and take care of the mess left when new schoolers move to their next focus.

New School

On the other hand from new school you may hear snarky comments about old school either in kidding and jest, as a way to put down to promote self up in status. Some other new school perspectives are focus on the newest technology that can be used wherever with focus on the tool, product or service as opposed to sometimes lack of focus on the problem to address. Another theme can be don’t worry about the future, we will either throw away what we have and get something new, or leave it up to somebody else to take care, after all, the old schoolers are good at doing that.

Current and Future School

Storage I/O trends

Then there are the current and future schoolers that are hybrid, combing the best of old-school leveraging their experiences with openness to explore new things of the new schoolers. The current or future schoolers are a blend of risk-averse yet willing to explore and find new ways to fix problems vs. simply moving, masking or leaving issues behind. The new or current schoolers are keen on learning lessons and mistakes of the past to avoid making them in the future.

Likewise they are also dialed into using both new and old tools, technologies and techniques in new ways vs. simply using new things in old ways. Another characteristics of the new or future schoolers is that they are open and willing to create converged teams to leverage converged technologies. Not only are they dialed into the new technology, trends and techniques, they are also dialed into how to use them for different things, situations and apply to business or other needs as opposed to just a focus on the tech.

This means that they are willing and interested in learning other skills, crafts capabilities vs. creating old or new silos or fiefdoms of technology. These new schoolers could care less who is a cloud, virtual, server, storage, networking, database, applications, backup, security, hardware or software person as they are focused on all of those as data infrastructure professionals.

What this all means

Stay in School and be a student of the game

Some of you might be old school while others are may be new school or what ever is current trendy and cool. However new schoolers to become future or current schoolers can learn from the old schoolers. Likewise the old schoolers can learn a new thing or two as well as help transfer some knowledge experience to the new schoolers to become future schoolers. Granted old schoolers can settle in to their comfort zone while new schoolers can stay out front of the curve and both watch the rise of the new and future schoolers.

Are you old school, new school, current or no school, cast your vote and see results below:

Some more reading:

Who or what is your sphere of influence?
How many degrees separate you and your information?
Technology buying, do you decide on G2 or GQ?
What does gaining industry traction or adoption mean too you?
Industry adoption vs. industry deployment, is there a difference?
Pulling Together a Converged Team
People, Not Tech, Prevent IT Convergence

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

Trick or treat: Have you seen any IT Frankenstacks

Given that it is Halloween season, time for some fun.

Over the past couple of weeks various product and solution services announcements have been made that result in various articles, columns, blogs and commentary in support of them.

Ever wonder which if any of those products could actually be stitched together to work in a production environment without increasing the overall cost and complexity that they sometimes promote as their individual value proposition? Granted, many can and do work quite well when introduced into heterogeneous or existing environments with good interoperability. However what about those that look good on paper or in a webex or you tube video on their own, however may be challenged to be pieced together to work with others?

Reading product announcements

Hence in the spirit of halloween, the vision of a Frankenstack appeared.

A Frankenstack is a fictional environment where you piece various technologies from announcements or what you see or hear about in different venues into a solution.

Part of being a Frankenstack is that the various pieces may look interesting on their own, good luck trying to put them together on paper let alone in a real environment.

While I have not yet attempted to piece together any Frankenstacks lately, I can visualize various ones.

Stacking or combining different technologies, will they work together?

A Frankenstack could be based on what a vendor, VAR, or solution provider proposes or talks about.

A Frankenstack could also also be what a analyst, blogger, consultant, editor, pundit or writer pieces together in a story or recommendation.

Some Frankenstacks may be more synergistic and interoperable than others perhaps even working in a real customer environment.

Of course even if the pieces could be deployed, would you be able to afford them let alone support them (interoperability aside) without adding complexity?

You see a Frankenstack might look good on paper or on a slide deck, webex or via some other venue, however will it actually work or apply to your environment or are they just fun to talk about?

Dont get me wrong, I like hearing about new technology and products as much as anyone else, however lets have some fun with Frankenstacks and keep in perspective do they help or add complexity to your environment.

Ok, enough fun for now, let me know what you see or can put together in terms of Frankenstacks.

Keep in mind they dont actually have to work as that is what qualifies them for trick or treat and Frankenstack status.

Enjoy your Halloween season, do not be afraid, however be ready for some tricks and treats, its that time of the year.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

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

Who is responsible for vendor lockin?

Who is responsible for vendor lockin?

data infrastructure server storage I/O vendor lockin

Updated 1/21/2018

Who is responsible for vendor lockin?

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

Additional learning experiences along with common questions (and answers), as well as tips can be found in Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials book.

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert 2010-2017 (vSAN and vCloud). Author of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press), as well as Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com any reproduction in whole, in part, with changes to content, without source attribution under title or without permission is forbidden.

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.

Buzzword Bingo 1.0 – Are you ready for fall product announcemnts?

Ever play IT buzzword bingo or perhaps you have and not realized it?

Anyone can play, its easy and you don’t even need to know or understand the words or terms.

Its actually quite common and very easy, it goes like this, someone perhaps a vendor, var, media, analysts, pundit, blogger, twitter, customer/user, financier or whomever starts rattling of terms, phrases and acronyms in a discussion until some says or yells, “Bingo”, that is what I want or want to talk about or that applies to what Im interested in.  Buzzword bingo can be multi-directional, it can be played by customers and vendors alike, it can be played via product announcements, articles, white papers, blog posts, videos, presentations or webcasts you name it.

So lets give it a try with a simple version to get started, oh, some of the acronyms have multiple meanings as well just to make the game more interesting, so remember, yell bingo when something resonates, ready? Ok, let’s go with 8 Gb Fibre Channel (8GFC), 10GbE, AVO, Agent-less, Authentication, Archiving, Backup, Backup Service Provider (BSP), BC/DR, Buffer, Bus, Benchmarking, Blade servers, Bulk Storage, CAS, Capacity Planning, Capacity per watt, CDP, Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE), CIFS, Cloud, cloud computing, cloud storage, cloud it, cloud confusion, clusters, Clustered Storage, CNA, Compliance, Compression, Converged Networks, Cores, Driver, Data Center Ethernet (DCE), DLP, Domain, D2D2D, Data management, Data migration, De-duplication, De-dupe debates, Dual Boot, DPM, eDiscovery, Energy Star, EPA, Environmental Health and Safety (EHS), Encryption, Event Correlation, eWaste, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), FCBB, File management, FLASH or flash, Gateway, Green, Grid, Hash table, Index, HA, Hypervisor, hyperv, HAL, I/O Virtualization (IOV), Inband, Inline, ITIL, InfiniBand, Infrastructure Resource Management (IRM), IOPS per watt, IPM & MAID 2.0, iSCSI, LAN, Look aside buffer, MAN, Mhz, Multi-Protocol Storage, Managed Service Processors, Provider (MSP), MIBS, MLC, Meta, NAS, NFS, NPVID, OS, Over clocking, Optimization, Partitions, Para-virtualization, PCIe, Policy Management, POTS, POST, Post processing, PIROMA, Power Cooling Floor-space EHS (PCFE), PCI SIG IOV, Pin count, Pin out, Pun up, Performance, pNFS, Removable Hard Disk Drive (RHDD), RAID 6, RAM, Replication, RoHS, Replication, REST, SAN, SaaS, SRA, SRM, SAS, SATA, Security, SLC, Snapshots, SMIS, SNMP, SOAP, SRM, SSD, Stack, Tape, Threads, Thin Provision, Tier 0, Unstructured data, VCB, VM, Vmworld, Virtualization, virtual memory, Vmotion, VMware, vcpu, VTL, WAN, WAAS, WADS, WAFS, WADM, Web 2.0 or xaaS (replace x with whatever letter you like, kind of like xSP ;) ).

Any bingos yet? Ok, enough is enough, will leave it here for now, maybe a future post for Buzzword Bingo 2.0 will include more technical terms and acronyms or excerpts from industry trade group dictionaries such as SNIA or glossaries such as those from mine and other books .

With a plethora of upcoming announcements, rest assured, there will be plenty of opportunities to brush up on buzzword bingo so get ready, practice and enjoy your next game.

Check out the news and portfolio as well as interesting links page to learn more about related topics.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

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

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

Comfort Zones – Stating What Might Be Obvious to Some…

Storage I/O trends

Over the past couple of weeks I have talked with many IT professionals who work in IT data centers of varying size from different locations around the world. A couple of interesting patterns or trends if you prefer I have noticed are that while IT and storage professionals in general see disk based backup as the future and for some instances, a good tool today, there is still very much a comfort factor with magnetic tape.

The most cited reasons for continued use of tape being affordability, low power requirements, portability (assuming media is encrypted and secure) and familiar or comfort and confidence with the technology. A related trend or pattern is that while many IT professionals see the value and benefit of SSD including FLASH and RAM, there is also a concern or lack of confidence in the first so called enterprise class FLASH based SSD technology.

A related trend should hardly be a surprise in that enterprise customers I talk to who cling to tape as a data retention medium (even when using disk based backups) are also the most likely to have an early adopter aversion towards FLASH based enterprise storage. During discussions, what I also hear is that given time SSD including both RAM and enhanced or next generation FLASH will be adopted and deployed along magnetic hard disk drives (HDDs) and that HDDs will be used more in the future for backups and other data protection tasks.

Thus the consensus is that while HDDs have been declared dead by some with the arrival of FLASH and SSD, HDDs have joined the “Zombie” list of technologies declared dead, yet that continue to be produced and bought by customers. Other “Zombie” technologies include the IBM Mainframe, Fibre Channel, Magnetic Tapes, Copper based Ethernet and Printers among others. So with the magnetic HDD being over 50 years old, its safe to assume that magnetic HDD will be around for many more years, especially now that HDDs are on the “Zombie” technology list, a rather esteemed list I might add!

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

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

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved