Server Storage I/O Cables Connectors Chargers & other Geek Gifts

Server Storage I/O Cables Connectors Chargers & other Geek Gifts

server storage I/O trends

This is part one of a two part series for what to get a geek for a gift, read part two here.

It is that time of the year when annual predictions are made for the upcoming year, including those that will be repeated next year or that were also made last year.

It’s also the time of the year to get various projects wrapped up, line up new activities, get the book-keeping things ready for year-end processing and taxes, as well as other things.

It’s also that time of the year to do some budget and project planning including upgrades, replacements, enhancements while balancing an over-subscribed holiday party schedule some of you may have.

Lets not forget getting ready for vacations, perhaps time off from work with some time upgrading your home lab or other projects.

Then there are the gift lists or trying to figure out what to get that difficult to shop for person particular geek’s who may have everything, or want the latest and greatest that others have, or something their peers don’t have yet.

Sure I have a DJI Phantom II on my wish list, however also have other things on my needs list (e.g. what I really need and want vs. what would be fun to wish for).

DJI Phantom helicopter drone
Image via DJI.com, click on image to learn more and compare models

So here are some things for the geek or may have everything or is up on having the latest and greatest, yet forgot or didn’t know about some of these things.

Not to mention some of these might seem really simple and low-cost, think of them like a Lego block or erector set part where your imagination will be your boundary how to use them. Also, most if not all of these are budget friendly particular if you shop around.

Replace a CD/DVD with 4 x 2.5″ HDD’s or SSD’s

So you need to add some 2.5" SAS or SATA HDD’s, SSD’s, HHDD’s/SSHD’s to your server for supporting your VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, KVM, Xen, OpenStack, Hadoop or legacy *nix or Windows environment or perhaps gaming system. Challenge is that you are out of disk drive bay slots and you want things neatly organized vs. a rat’s nest of cables hanging out of your system. No worries assuming your server has an empty media bay (e.g. those 5.25" slots where CDs/DVDs or really old HDD’s go), or if you can give up the CD/DVD, then use that bay and its power connector to add ones of these. This is a 4 x 2.5" SAS and SATA drive bay that has a common power connector (molex male) with each drive bay having its own SATA drive connection. By each drive having its own SATA connection you can map the drives to an on-board available SATA port attached to a SAS or SATA controller, or attach an available port on a RAID adapter to the ports using a cable such as small form factor (SFF) 8087 to SATA.

sas storage enclosuresas sata storage enclosure
(Left) Rear view with Molex power and SATA cables (Right) front view

I have a few of these in different systems and what I like about them is that they support different drive speeds, plus they will accept a SAS drive where many enclosures in this category only support SATA. Once you mount your 2.5" HDD or SSD using screws, you can hot swap (requires controller and OS support) the drives and move them between other similar enclosures as needed. The other thing I like is that there are front indicator lights as well as by each drive having its own separate connection, you can attach some of the drives to a RAID adapter while others connected to on-board SATA ports. Oh, and you can also have different speeds of drives as well.

Power connections

Depending on the type of your server, you may have Molex, SATA or some other type of power connections. You can use different power connection cables to go from one type (Molex) to another, create a connection for two devices, create an extension to reach hard to get to mounting locations.

Warning and disclosure note, keep in mind how much power you are drawing when attaching devices to not cause an electrical or fire hazard, follow manufactures instructions and specification doing so at your own risk! After all, Just like Clark Grizzwald in National Lampoon Christmas Vacation who found you could attach extension cord to splitters to splitters and fan-out to have many lights attached, you don’t want to cause a fire or blackout when you plug to many drives in.


National Lampoon Christmas Vacation

Measuring Power

Ok so you do not want to do a Clark Grizzwald (see above video) and overload a power circuit, or perhaps you simply want to know how many watts, amps or quality of your voltage is.

There are many types of power meters along with various prices, some even have interfaces where you can grab event data to correlate with server storage I/O networking performance to do things such as IOP’s per watt among other metrics. Speaking of IOP’s per watt, check out the SNIA Emerald site where they have some good tools including a benchmark script that uses Vdbench to drive hot band workload (e.g. basically kick the crap out of a storage system).

Back to power meters, I like the Kill A Watt series of meters as they give good info about amps, volts, power quality. I have these plugged into outlets so I can see how much power is being used by the battery backup units (BBU) aka UPS that also serve as power surge filters. If needed I can move these further downstream to watch the power intake of a specific server, storage, network or other device.

Kill A Watt Power meter

Standby and backup power

Electrical power surge strips should be a given or considered common sense, however what is or should be common sense should be repeated so that it remains common sense, you should be using power surge strips or other devices.

Standby, UPS and BBU

For most situations a good surge suppressor will cover short power transients.

APC power strips and battery backup
Image via APC and model similar to those that I have

For slightly longer power outages of a few seconds to minutes, that’s where battery backup up (BBU) units that also have surge suppression comes into play. There are many types, sizes with various features to meet your needs and budget. I have several of theses in a couple of different sizes not only for servers, storage and networking equipment (including some WiFi access points, routers, etc), I also have them for home things such as satellite DVR’s. However not everything needs to stay on while others simply need to stay on long-enough in order to shutdown manually or via automated power off sequences.

Alternate Power Generation

Generators are not just for the rich and famous or large data center, like other technologies they are available in different sizes, power capacity, fuel sources, manual or automated among other things.

kohler residential generator
Image via Kohler Power similar to model that I have

Note that even with a typical generator there will be a time gap from the time power goes off until the generator starts, stabilizes and you have good power. That’s where the BBU and UPS mentioned above comes into play to bridge those time gaps which in my cases is about 25-30 seconds. Btw, knowing how much power your technology is drawing using tools such as the Kill A Watt is part of the planning process to avoid surprises.

What about Solar Power

Yup, whether it is to fit in and be green, or simply to get some electrical power when or where it is not needed to charge a battery or power some device, these small solar power devices are very handy.

solar charger
Image via Amazon.com
solar battery charger
Image via Amazon.com

For example you can get or easily make an adapter to charge laptops, cell phones or even power them for normal use (check manufactures information on power usage, Amps and Voltage draws among other warnings to prevent fire and other things). Btw, not only are these handy for computer related things, they also work great for keeping batteries on my fishing boat charged so that I have my fish finder and other electronics, just saying.

Fire suppression

How about a new or updated smoke and fire detection alarm monitor, as well as fire extinguisher for the geek’s software defined hardware that runs on power (electrical or battery)?

The following is from the site Fire Extinguisher 101 where you can learn more about different types of suppression technologies.

Image via Fire Extinguisher 101
  • Class A extinguishers are for ordinary combustible materials such as paper, wood, cardboard, and most plastics. The numerical rating on these types of extinguishers indicates the amount of water it holds and the amount of fire it can extinguish. Geometric symbol (green triangle)
  • Class B fires involve flammable or combustible liquids such as gasoline, kerosene, grease and oil. The numerical rating for class B extinguishers indicates the approximate number of square feet of fire it can extinguish. Geometric symbol (red square)
  • Class C fires involve electrical equipment, such as appliances, wiring, circuit breakers and outlets. Never use water to extinguish class C fires – the risk of electrical shock is far too great! Class C extinguishers do not have a numerical rating. The C classification means the extinguishing agent is non-conductive. Geometric symbol (blue circle)
  • Class D fire extinguishers are commonly found in a chemical laboratory. They are for fires that involve combustible metals, such as magnesium, titanium, potassium and sodium. These types of extinguishers also have no numerical rating, nor are they given a multi-purpose rating – they are designed for class D fires only. Geometric symbol (Yellow Decagon)
  • Class K fire extinguishers are for fires that involve cooking oils, trans-fats, or fats in cooking appliances and are typically found in restaurant and cafeteria kitchens. Geometric symbol (black hexagon)

Wrap up for part I

This wraps up part I of what to get a geek V2014, continue reading part II here.

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

Part II 2014 Server Storage I/O Geek Gift ideas

Part II 2014 Server Storage I/O Geek Gift ideas

server storage I/O trends

This is part two of a two part series for what to get a geek for a gift, read part one here.

KVM switch

Not to be confused with a software defined network (SDN) switch for the KVM virtualization hypervisor, how about the other KVM switch?

kvm switch
My KVM switch in use, looks like five servers are powered on.

If you have several servers or devices that need a Keyboard Video Mouse connection, or are using A/B box or other devices, why not combine using a KVM switch. I bought the Startech shown above from Amazon which works out to be under $40 a port (connection) meaning I do not have to have Keyboards, Video monitors or Mouse for each of those systems.

With my KVM shown above, I have used the easy setup to name each of the ports via the management software so that when a button is pressed, not only does the applicable screen appear, also a graphic text message overlay tell me which server is being displayed. This is handy for example as I have some servers that are identical (e.g. Lenovo TS140s) running VMware that a quick glance can help me verify I’m on the right one (e.g. without looking at the VMware host name or IP). This feature is also handy during power on self test (POST) when the servers physical or logical (e.g. VMware, Windows, Hyper-V, Ubuntu, Openstack, etc..) identity is known. Another thing I like about these is that on the KVM switch there is a single VGA type connector, while on the server end there is a VGA connector for attaching to the monitor port of the device, and a break out cable with USB for attaching to server to get Keyboard and Mouse.

Single drive shoe box

Usually things are in larger server or storage systems enclosures, however now and then there is the need to supply power to a HDD or SSD along with a USB or eSATA interface for attaching to a system. These are handy and versatile little aluminum enclosures.

single drive sata enclosuredisk enclosure

Note that you can now also find these types of cables that can do same or similar function for in side a server connection (check out this cable among others at Amazon)

USB-SATA cable

It would be easy to assume that everybody would have these by now particular since everybody (depending on who you listen to or what you read) has probably converted from a HDD to SSD. However for those who have not done an HDD to SSD, or simply a HDD to newer HDD conversion, or that have an older HDD (or SSD) lying around, these cables come in very handy. attach one end (e.g. the SATA end) to a HDD or SSD and the other to a USB port on a laptop, tablet or server. Caveat however with these is that they generally only have power (via USB) for a 2.5″ type drive so for a larger more power-hungry 3.5″ device, you would need a different powered cable, or small shoe box type enclosure.

eSATA cable
(Left) USB to SATA and (Right) eSATA to SATA cables

Mophie USB charger

There are many different types of mobile device chargers available along with multi-purpose cables. I like the Mophie which I received at an event from NetApp (Thanks NetApp) and the flexible connector I received from Dyn while at AWS re:Invent 2014 (Thanks Dyn, I’m also a Dyn customer fwiw).
power chargerpower cable
(Left) Mophie Power station and (Right) multi-connector cable

The Mohpie has USB connector so that you can charge it via a charging station or via a computer, as well as attach a USB to Apple or other device connector. There is also a small connector for attach to other devices. This is where the dandy Dyn device comes into play as it has a USB as well as Apple and many other common connectors as shown in the figure below. Google around and I’m sure you can find both for sale, or as giveaways or something similar.

SAS SATA Interposer

sas interposerserver storage power
(Left) SAS to SATA interposer (Right) Molex power with SATA connector to SAS

Note that the above are intended for passing a SAS signal from a device such as HDD or SSD to a SAS based controller that happens to have SATA mechanical or keyed interfaces such as with some servers. This means that the real controller needs to be SAS and the attached drives can be SATA or SAS keeping in mind that a SATA device can plug into a SAS controller however not vise versa. You can find the above at Amazon among other venues. Need a dual-lane SAS connector as an alternative to the one shown above on the right, then check this one out at Amazon.

Need to learn more about the many different facets of SAS and related technologies including how it coexists with iSCSI, Fibre Channel (FC), FCoE, InfiniBand and other interfaces, how about getting a free copy of SAS SANs for Dummies?

SAS SANS for dummies

There are also these for doing board level connections

esata connectorsata to esata cablesata male to male gender changer
Some additional SAS and SATA drive connectors

In the above on the left are a female to female SATA cable with a male to male SATA gender changer attached to be used for example between a storage device and the SATA connector port on a servers motherboard, HBA or RAID controller. In the middle are shown some SATA female to female cables, as well as a SATA to eSATA (external SATA) cable (middle), and on the right are some SATA Male to SATA Male gender changes also shown being used on the left in the above figures.

Internal Power cable / connectors

If you or your geek are doing things in the lab or other environment adding and reconfiguring devices such as some of those mentioned above (or below), sooner or later there will be the need to do something with power cables and connectors.

power meter
Various cables, adapters and extender

In the above figure are shown (top to bottom) a SATA male to molex, SATA female to SATA male and to its right SATA female to Molex. Below that are two SATA females to Molex, below that is a SATA male to dual Molex and on the bottom is a single SATA to dual SATA. Needless to say there are many other combinations of connectors as well as different genders (e.g. Male or Female) along with extenders. As mentioned above, pay attention to manufacturers recommend power draw and safety notices to prevent accidental electric shock or fire.

Intel Edison kit for IoT and IoD

Are you or your geek into the Internet of Things (IoT) or Internet of Devices (IoD) or other similar things and gadgets? Have you heard about Intel’s Edison breakout board for doing software development and attachment of various hardware things? Looking for something to move beyond a Raspberry Pi system?

Intel Edison boardIntel Edison kits
Images via Intel.com

Over the hills, through the woods WiFi

This past year I found Nanostation extended WiFi devices that solved a challenge (problem) which was how to get a secure WiFi signal up to a couple hundred yards through a thick forest between some hill’s.


Image via UBNT.com, check out their other models as well as resources for different deployments

The problem was it was to far and too many tree’s with leaves use a regular WiFi connection and too far to run cable if I did not need to. I found the solution by getting a pair of the Nanostation M2 putting them into bridge mode, then doing some alignment with their narrow beam antennas to bounce a signal through the woods. For those who simply need to go a long distance, these devices can be reconfigured to go several km’s line of sight. Click on the image above to see other models of the Nanostation as well as links to various resources on how they can be used for other things or deployments.

How about some software

  • UpDraft Backup – This is a WordPress blog plugin that I use to back up my entire web including the templates, plug-ins, MySQL database and all other related components. While my dedicated private server gets backed up by my service provider (Bluehost), I wanted an extra detail of protection along with a copy placed at a different place (e.g. at my AWS account). Updraft is an example of an emerging class of tools for backing up and protecting cloud based and cloud born data. For example EMC recently acquired cloud backup startup Spanning who has the ability of protecting Salesforce, Google and other cloud based data.
  • Visual ESXtop – This is a great free tool that provides a nice interface and remote access for doing ESXtop functions normally accomplished from the ESXi console.
  • Microsoft Diskspd – If you or your geek is into server storage I/O performance and benchmark that has a Windows environment and looking for something besides Iometer, have them download the Microsoft Diskspd free utility.
  • Futuremark PCmark – Speaking of server storage I/O performance, check out Futuremark PCmark which will give your computer a great workout from graphics and video to compute, storage I/O and other common tasks.
  • RV Tools – Need to know more about your VMware virtual environment, take a quick inventory or something else, then your geek should have a copy of RV Tools from Robware.
  • iVMControl – For that vgeek how wants to be able to do simple VMware tasks from an iPhone, check out iVMControl tools. Its great, I don’t use it a lot, however there are times where I don’t need to or want to use a tablet or PC to reach my VMware environment, that’s when this virtual gadget comes into play.

Livescribe Digital Pen and Paper

How about a Livescribe digital pen and paper? Sure you can use a PC, Apple or other tablet, however some things are still easier done on a traditional paper and virtual pen. I got one of these about a year ago and use it for note taking, mocking up slides for presentations and in some cases have used this for creating figures and other things. It would be easy to see and place the Livescribe and a Windows or other tablet as an either or competitive however for me, I still see where they are better together addressing different things, at least for now.

livescribe digital penlivescribe digital pen

(Left) using my Livescribe and Echo digital pen (Right) resulting exported .Png

Tip: I you noticed in the above left image (e.g. the original) the lines in the top figure, compared to the lines in the figure on the right are different. If you encounter your livescribe causing lines to run on or into each other it is because your digital pen tip is sticking. It’s easy to check by looking at the tip of your digital pen and see if the small red light is on or off, or if it stays on when you press the pen tip. If it stays on, reset the pen tip. Also when you write, make sure to lift up on the pen tip so that it releases, otherwise you will get results like those shown on the right.

livescribe digital penlivescribe digital pen
(Left) Livescribe Digital Desktop (Middle) Imported Digital Document (Right) Exported PNG

Also check out this optional application that turns a Livescribe Echo pen like mine into a digital tablet allowing you to draw on-screen with certain applications and webinar tools.

Some books for the geek

Speaking of reading, for those who are not up on the No SQL and alternative SQL based databases including Mongo, Hbase, Riak, Cassandra, MySQL, add Seven Databases in Seven Weeks to your liust. Click on the image to read my book review of it as well as links to order it from Amazon. Seven Databases in Seven Weeks (A Guide to Modern Databases and the NoSQL Movement) is a book written Eric Redmond (@coderoshi) and Jim Wilson (@hexlib), part of The Pragmatic Programmers (@pragprog) series that takes a look at several non SQL based database systems.

seven database nosql

Where to get the above items

  • Ebay for new and used
  • Amazon for new and used
  • Newegg
  • PC Pit stop
  • And many other venues

What this all means

Note: Some of the above can be found at your favorite trade show or conference so keep that in mind for future gift giving.

What interesting geek gift ideas or wish list items do you have?

Of course if you have anything interesting to mention feel free to add it to the comments (keep it clean though ;) or feel free to send to me for future mention.

In the meantime have a safe and happy holiday season for what ever holiday you enjoy celebrating anytime of the year.

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

Morning Summer Storms Walking Through The Midwest

Storage I/O trends

It is June 21st which means closet enough to Summer solstice to say it’s also Summer here in Minnesota.

Being Prepared

Summers in Minnesota also means severe thunderstorms with lightning, strong winds and heavy rain along with hail, sometimes even tornadoes or straight line winds.

APC UPS

When those occur it is also not uncommon for the electrical power to go off which normally should not be an issue as the battery backed Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) and surge protectors take care of the electronics until the generator kicks in.

Kohler Generator image

Except that did not happen early this morning, I mean the storm did however the generator failed to turn on automatically as it should have. Thus I woke up to the sound of UPS and other alert alarms beeping until I pressed the reset button on the generator.

Back to the morning storm

However that is not the purpose of this post, although it does set up the story in that I was too awake and with the generator running and standby electrical power, decided to make some coffee (Dunkin donut) and check the storm using online radar.

Fortunately I had coffee including spare or redundant for just for when.

non redundant coffee redundant coffee three redundant coffee quad redundant coffee five redundant coffee
Left to right non redundant, dual, triple, quad and five way coffee protection.

While looking at the online Intellicast radar, I saw the following image which at first thought I was dreaming as coffee had not kicked in, or distracted from the storm outside.

thunderstorm
Morning storm walking across midwest, click image to view video or click here

Look at the above image, use your imagination a bit, can you see the rough shape of what looks like a person walking in the middle of the storm? See the legs, body or torso, shoulder or arms?

Watch this video (click on the above image) and see if you can visualize the storm walking (imagine the legs in yellow) along with body and arms (also in yellow) moving as though pushing the storm along to the east.

On the other hand if you can’t see or visualize the storm walking, no worries, meanwhile I am going to have some more coffee, take care of some other things while enjoying the storm along with sunrise.

Coffee cups

Speaking of sunrise, keep in mind red sky at night sailors delight, red sky in the morning, sailors warning.

Hope everybody is safe and dry, enjoy the weather while it lasts.

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

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the NetFlix Fix?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Amazon Web Services (AWS)

I received the following note from Amazon Web Services (AWS) about an enhancement to their Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service that can be seen by some as an enhancement to service or perhaps by others after last weeks outages, a fix or addressing a gap in their services. Note for those not aware, you can view current AWS service status portal here.

The following is the note I received from AWS.

 

Announcing Multiple IP Addresses for Amazon EC2 Instances in Amazon VPC

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Dear Amazon EC2 Customer,

We are excited to introduce multiple IP addresses for Amazon EC2 instances in Amazon VPC. Instances in a VPC can be assigned one or more private IP addresses, each of which can be associated with its own Elastic IP address. With this feature you can host multiple websites, including SSL websites and certificates, on a single instance where each site has its own IP address. Private IP addresses and their associated Elastic IP addresses can be moved to other network interfaces or instances, assisting with application portability across instances.

The number of IP addresses that you can assign varies by instance type. Small instances can accommodate up to 8 IP addresses (across 2 elastic network interfaces) whereas High-Memory Quadruple Extra Large and Cluster Computer Eight Extra Large instances can be assigned up to 240 IP addresses (across 8 elastic network interfaces). For more information about IP address and elastic network interface limits, go to Instance Families and Types in the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

You can have one Elastic IP (EIP) address associated with a running instance at no charge. If you associate additional EIPs with that instance, you will be charged $0.005/hour for each additional EIP associated with that instance per hour on a pro rata basis.

With this release we are also lowering the charge for EIP addresses not associated with running instances, from $0.01 per hour to $0.005 per hour on a pro rata basis. This price reduction is applicable to EIP addresses in both Amazon EC2 and Amazon VPC and will be applied to EIP charges incurred since July 1, 2012.
To learn more about multiple IP addresses, visit the Amazon VPC User Guide. For more information about pricing for additional Elastic IP addresses on an instance, please see Amazon EC2 Pricing.
Sincerely,

The Amazon EC2 Team

We hope you enjoyed receiving this message. If you wish to remove yourself from receiving future product announcements and the monthly AWS Newsletter, please update your communication preferences.

Amazon Web Services LLC is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. Amazon.com is a registered trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. This message produced and distributed by Amazon Web Services, LLC, 410 Terry Ave. North, Seattle, WA 98109-5210.

End of AWS message

 

Server and StorageIO industry trends and perspective DAS

Either way you look at it, AWS (disclosure I’m a paying EC2 and S3 customer) is taking responsibility on their part to do what is needed to enable a resilient, flexible, scalable data infrastructure. What I mean by that is that protecting data and access to it in cloud environments is a shared responsibility including discussing what went wrong, how to fix and prevent it, as well as communicating best practices. That is both the provider or service along with those who are using those capabilities have to take some ownership and responsibility on how they get used.

For example, last week a major thunderstorms rolled across the U.S. causing large-scale power outages along the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and in particular in the Virginia area where one of Amazons availability zones (US East-1) has data centers located. Keep in mind that Amazon availability zones are made up of a collection of different physical data centers to cut or decrease chances of a single point of failure. However on June 30, 2012 during the major storms on the East coast of the U.S. something did go wrong, and as is usually the case, a chain of events resulted in or near a disaster (you can read the AWS post-mortem here).

The result is that AWS based out of the Virginia availability zone were knocked off line for a period which impacted EC2, Elastic Block Storage (EBS), Relational Database Service (RDS) and Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) capabilities for that zone. This is not the first time that the Virginia availability zone has been affected having met a disruption about a year ago. What was different about this most recent outage is that a year ago one of the marquee AWS customers NetFlix was not affected during that outage due to how they use multiple availability zones for HA. In last weeks AWS outage NetFlix customers or services were affected however not due to loss of data or systems, rather, loss of access (which to a user or consumer is the same thing). The loss of access was due to failure of elastic load balancing not being able to allow users access to other availability zones.

Server and StorageIO industry trends and perspective DAS

Consequently, if you choose to read between the lines on the above email note I received from AWS, you can either look at the new service capabilities as an enhancement, or AWS learning and improving their capabilities. Also reading between the lines you can see how some environments such as NetFlix take responsibility in how they use cloud services designing for availability, resiliency and scale with stability as opposed to simply using as a cost cutting tool.

Thus when both the provider and consumer take some responsibility for ensuring data protection and accessibility to services, there is less of a chance of service disruptions. Likewise when both parties learn from incidents or mistakes or leverage experiences, it makes for a more robust solution on a go forward basis. For those who have been around the block (or file) a few times thinking that clouds are not reliable or still immature you may have a point however think back to when your favorite or preferred platform (e.g. Mainframe, Mini, PC, client-server, iProduct, Web or other) initially appeared and teething problems or associated headaches.

IMHO AWS along with other vendors or service providers who take responsibility to publish post-mortem’s of incidents, find and fix issues, address and enhance capabilities is part of the solution for laying the groundwork for the future vs. simply playing to a near term trend theme. Likewise vendors and service providers who are reaching out and helping to educate and get their customers to take some responsibility in how they can use services for removing complexity (and cost) to enhance services as opposed to simply cutting cost and introducing risk will do better over the long run.

As I discuss in my book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), do not be scared of clouds, however be ready, do your homework, learn and understand what needs to be done or done differently. This means taking a shared responsibility one that the service provider should also be taking with you not to mention identifying new best practices, tools to be used along with conducting proof of concepts (POCs) to learn what to do and what not to do.

Some related information:
Only you can prevent cloud data loss
The blame game: Does cloud storage result in data loss?
Cloud conversations: Loss of data access vs. data loss
Clouds are like Electricity: Dont be Scared
AWS (Amazon) storage gateway, first, second and third impressions
Poll: What Do You Think of IT Clouds? (Cast your vote and see results)

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

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved