StorageIOblog full RSS feed (http://storageioblog.com/RSsfull.xml)

IT and storage economics 101, supply and demand

Thu, 2 Feb 2012 13:14:15

IT and storage economics 101, supply and demand

By Greg Schulz

In my 2012 (and 2013) industry trends and perspectives predictions I mentioned that some storage systems vendors who managed their costs could benefit from the current Hard Disk Drive (HDD) shortage. Most in the industry would say that is saying what they have said, however I have an alternate scenario. My scenario is that for vendors who already manage good (or great) margins on their HDD sales and who can manage their costs including inventories stand to make even more margin. There is a popular myth that there is no money or margin in HDD or for those who sell them which might be true for some.

Without going into any details, lets just say it is a popular myth just like saying that there is no money in hardware or that all software and people services are pure profit. Ok, lets leave sleeping dogs lay where rest (at least for now).

Why will some storage vendors make more margin off of HDD when everybody is supposed to be adopting or deploying solid state devices (SSD). Or Hybrid Hard Disk Drives (HHDD) in the case of workstation, desktop or laptops? Simple, SSD adoption (and deployment) is still growing and a lot of demand generator incentives available. Likewise HDD demand continues to be strong and with supplies affected, economics 101 says that some will raise their prices, manage their expenses, make more profits which can be used to help fund or stimulate increased SSD or other initiatives.

Storage, IT and general Economics 101

Economics 101 or basics introduces the concept of supply and demand along with revenue minus costs = profits or margin. If there is no demand yet a supply of a product exists then techniques such as discounting, bundling or other forms of adding value to incentivize customers to make a purchase. Bundling can include offering some other product, service or offering that could be as simple as an extended warranty to motivate sellers. Beyond discounts, coupons, two for one, future buying credits, gift cards or memberships for frequent buyers (or flyers) are other forms of stimulating sales activity.

Likewise if there is a supply or competition for a given market of a product or alternative, vendors or those selling the products including value added resellers (VARS) may sacrifice margin (profits) to meet revenue as well as unit shipped (e.g. expand their customer and installed base footprint) goals.

Currently in the IT industry and specifically around data storage even with increased and growing adoption and demand deployment around SSD, there is also a large supply in different categories. For example there are several fabrication facilities (FABs) that produce the silicon dies (e.g. chips) that form nand flash SSD memories including Intel, Micron, the joint Intel and Micron Fab (IMF) and Samsung. Even with continued strong demand growth, the various FABs seem to have enough capacity at least for now. Likewise manufactures of SSD drive form factor products with SAS or SATA interfaces for attaching to existing servers, storage or appliances including Intel, Micron, Samsung, Seagate, STEC and SANdisk among others seem to be able to meet demand. Even PCIe SSD card vendors have come under pressure of supply and demand. For example the high flying startup FusionIO recently saw its margins affected due to competition which includes Adaptec, LSI, Texas Memory Systems (TMS) and soon EMC among others. In the SSD appliance and storage system space there are even more vendors with what amounts to about one every month or so coming out of stealth. Needless to say there will be some shakeout in the not so distant future.

On the other hand, if there is a demand however limited supply, assuming that the market will support it, prices can be increased from what discounts had applied. Assuming that costs are kept inline any subsequent increase in average selling price (ASP) minus costs should result in higher margins.

Another variation is if there is strong demand and shortage of supply such as what is occurring with hard disk drives (HDD) due to recent flooding in Thailand, not only prices increase, there can also be changes to warranties or other services and incentives. Note some of HDD manufactures such as Western Digital were more affected by the flooding than Seagate. Likewise the Thailand flooding was not limited to just HDD having also affected other electronic chip and component suppliers. Even though HDDs have been declared dead by many in the SSD camps along with their supporters, record number of HDDs are produced every year. Note that economics 101 also tells us that even though more devices are produced and sold, that may not show a profit based on their cost and price. Like the CPU processor chips produced by AMD, Broadcom, IBM and Intel among others that are high volume, with varying margins, the HDD and nand flash SSD market is also high volume with different margins.

As an example, Seagate recently announced strong profits due to a number of factors even though enterprise drive supply and shipments were down while desktop drives were up. Given that many industry pundits have proclaimed a disaster for those involved with HDDs due to the shortage, they forgot about economics 101 (supply and demand). Sure marketing 101 says that HDDs are dead and if there is a shortage then more people will buy SSDs however that also assumes that people are a) ready to buy more SSDs (e.g. demand) and b) vendors or manufactures have supply and c) that those same vendors or manufactures are willing to give up margin while reducing costs to boost profits.

Note that costs typically include selling, general and administrative, cost of goods, manufacturing, transportation and shipping, insurance, research and development among others. If it has been awhile since you looked at one, take a few minutes sometime to look at public companies and their quarterly securities exchange commission (SEC) financial filings. Those public filing documents are a treasure trove of information for those who sift through them and where many reporters, analysts and researchers find information for what they are working or speculating on. These documents show total sales, costs, profits and losses among other things. Something that vendors may not show in these public filings which means you have to look or read between the lines or get the information elsewhere is how many units were actually shipped or the ASP to get an idea of the amount of discounting that is occurring. Likewise sales and marketing expenses often get lumped into or under general selling and administration (SGA). A fun or interesting metric is to look at the percentage of SGA dollars spent per revenue and profits.

What I find interesting is to get an estimate of what it is costing an organization to do or sustain a given level of revenue and margin. For example, while some larger vendors may seem to spend more on selling and marketing, on a percentage basis, they can easily be out spent by smaller startups. Granted the larger vendor may be spending more actually dollars however those are spread out over a larger sales and revenue basis.

What does this all mean?

Look at multiple metrics that have both a future trend or forecast as well as trailing or historical perspective view. Look at both percentages as well as dollar amounts as well as both revenue and margin while keeping units or number of devices (or copies) sold also into perspective. For example its interesting to know if a vendors sales were down 10% (or up) quarter over quarter, or versus the same quarter a year ago or year over year. It is also interesting to keep the margin in perspective along with SGA costs in addition to cost of product acquired for sale. Also important is to get a gauge of if sales were down, yet margins are up, how many devices or copies were sold to get a gauge on expanding footprint which could also be a sign of future annuity (follow up sales opportunities). What Im watching is over the next couple of quarters is to see how some vendors leverage the Thailand flooding and HDD as well as other electronic component supply shortages to meet demand by managing discounts, costs and other items that contribute to enhanced margins.

Rest assured there is a lot more to IT and storage economics, including advanced topics such as Return on Investment (ROI) or Return on Innovation (The new ROI) and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) among others that maybe we will discuss in the future.

Ok, nuff fun for now, lets get back to work.

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

AWS (Amazon) storage gateway, first, second and third impressions

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:31:13

AWS (Amazon) storage gateway, first, second and third impressions

By Greg Schulz

Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced the beta of their new storage gateway functionality that enables access of Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Services) from your different applications using an appliance installed in your data center site. With this beta launch, Amazon joins other startup vendors who are providing standalone gateway appliance products (e.g. Nasuni, Ctera, etc) along with those who have disappeared from the market (e.g. Cirtas). In addition to gateway vendors, there are also those with cloud access added to their software tools such as (e.g. Jungle Disk that access both Rack space and Amazon S3 along with Commvault Simpana Cloud connector among others). There are also vendors that have joined cloud access gateways as part of their storage systems such as TwinStrata among others. Even EMC (and here) has gotten into the game adding qualified cloud access support to some of their products.

What is a cloud storage gateway?

Before going further, lets take a step back and address what for some may be a fundemental quesiton of what is a cloud storage gateway?

Cloud services such as storage are accessed via some type of network, either the public Internet or a private connection. The type of cloud service being accessed (figure 1) will decide what is needed. For example, some services can be accessed using a standard Web browser, while others must plug-in or add-on modules. Some cloud services may need downloading an application, agent, or other tool for accessing the cloud service or resources, while others give an on-site or on-premises appliance or gateway.

Figure 1: Accessing and using clouds (From Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press))

Cloud access software and gateways or appliances are used for making cloud storage accessible to local applications. The gateways, as well as enabling cloud access, provide replication, snapshots, and other storage services functionality. Cloud access gateways or server-based software include tools from BAE, Citrix, Gladinet, Mezeo, Nasuni, Openstack, Twinstrata and Zadara among others. In addition to cloud gateway appliances or cloud points of presence (cpops), access to public services is also supported via various software tools. Many data protection tools including backup/restore, archiving, replication, and other applications have added (or are planning to add) support for access to various public services such as Amazon, Goggle, Iron Mountain, Microsoft, Nirvanix, or Rack space among several others.

Some of the tools have added native support for one or more of the cloud services leveraging various applicaiotn programming interfaces (APIs), while other tools or applications rely on third-party access gateway appliances or a combination of native and appliances. Another option for accessing cloud resources is to use tools (Figure 2) supplied by the service provider, which may be their own, from a third-party partner, or open source, as well as using their APIs to customize your own tools.

Figure 2: Cloud access tools (From Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press))

For example, I can use my Amazon S3 or Rackspace storage accounts using their web and other provided tools for basic functionality. However, for doing backups and restores, I use the tools provided by the service provider, which then deal with two different cloud storage services. The tool presents an interface for defining what to back up, protect, and restore, as well as enabling shared (public or private) storage devices and network drives. In addition to providing an interface (Figure 2), the tool also speaks specific API and protocols of the different services, including PUT (create or update a container), POST (update header or Meta data), LIST (retrieve information), HEAD (metadata information access), GET (retrieve data from a container), and DELETE (remove container) functions. Note that the real behavior and API functionality will vary by service provider. The importance of mentioning the above example is that when you look at some cloud storage services providers, you will see mention of PUT, POST, LIST, HEAD, GET, and DELETE operations as well as services such as capacity and availability. Some services will include an unlimited number of operations, while others will have fees for doing updates, listing, or retrieving your data in addition to basic storage fees. By being aware of cloud primitive functions such as PUT or POST and GET or LIST, you can have a better idea of what they are used for as well as how they play into evaluating different services, pricing, and services plans.

Depending on the type of cloud service, various protocols or interfaces may be used, including iSCSI, NAS NFS, HTTP or HTTPs, FTP, REST, SOAP, and Bit Torrent, and APIs and PaaS mechanisms including .NET or SQL database commands, in addition to XM, JSON, or other formatted data. VMs can be moved to a cloud service using file transfer tools or upload capabilities of the provider. For example, a VM such as a VMDK or VHD is prepared locally in your environment and then uploaded to a cloud provider for execution. Cloud services may give an access program or utility that allows you to configure when, where, and how data will be protected, similar to other backup or archive tools.

Some traditional backup or archive tools have added direct or via third party support for accessing IaaS cloud storage services such as Amazon, Rack space, and others. Third-party access appliance or gateways enable existing tools to read and write data to a cloud environment by presenting a standard interface such as NAS (NFS and/or CIFS) or iSCSI (Block) that gets mapped to the back-end cloud service format. For example, if you subscribe to Amazon S3, storage is allocated as objects and various tools are used to use or utilize. The cloud access software or appliance understands how to communicate with the IaaS storage APIs and abstracts those from how they are used. Access software tools or gateways, in addition to translating or mapping between cloud APIs, formats your applications including security with encryption, bandwidth optimization, and data footprint reduction such as compression and de-duplication. Other functionality include reporting, management tools that support various interfaces, protocols and standards including SNMP or SNIA, Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMIS), and Cloud Data Management Initiative (CDMI).

First impression: Interesting, good move Amazon, I was ready to install and start testing it today

The good news here is that Amazon is taking steps to make it easier for your existing applications and IT environments to use and leverage clouds for private and hybrid adoption models with both an Amazon branded and managed services, technology and associated tools.

This means leveraging your existing Amazon accounts to simplify procurement, management, ongoing billing as well as leveraging their infrastructure. As a standalone gateway appliance (e.g. it does not have to be bundled as part of a specific backup, archive, replication or other data management tool), the idea is that you can insert the technology into your existing data center between your servers and storage to begin sending a copy of data off to Amazon S3. In addition to sending data to S3, the integrated functionality with other AWS services should make it easier to integrated with Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) and Elastic Block storage (EBS) capabilities including snapshots for data protection.

Thus my first impression of AWS storage gateway at a high level view is good and interesting resulting in looking a bit deeper resulting in a second impression.

Second impression: Hmm, what does it really do and require, time to slow down and do more home work

Digging deeper and going through the various publicly available material (note can only comment or discuss on what is announced or publicly available) results in a second impression of wanting and needing to dig deeper based on some of caveats. Now granted and in fairness to Amazon, this is of course a beta release and hence while on first impression it can be easy to miss the notice that it is in fact a beta so keep in mind things can and hopefully will change.

Pricing aside, which means as with any cloud or managed storage service, you will want to do a cost analysis model just as you would for procuring physical storage, look into the cost of monthly gateway fee along with its associated physical service running VMware ESXi configuration that you will need to supply. Chances are that if you are an average sized SMB, you have a physical machine (PM) laying around that you can throw a copy of ESXi on to if you dont already have room for some more VMs on an existing one.

You will also need to assess the costs for using the S3 storage including space capacity charges, access and other fees as well as charges for doing snapshots or using other functionality. Again these are not unique to Amazon or their cloud gateway and should be best practices for any service or solution that you are considering. Amazon makes it easy by the way to see their base pricing for different tiers of availability, geographic locations and optional fees.

Speaking of accessing the cloud, and cloud conversations, you will also want to keep in mind what your networking bandwidth service requirements will be to move data to Amazon that might not already be doing so.

Another thing to consider with the AWS storage gateway is that it does not replace your local storage (that is unless you move your applications to Amazon EC2 and EBS), rather makes a copy of what every you save locally to a remote Amazon S3 storage pool. This can be good for high availability (HA), business continuance (BC), disaster recovery (DR) and compliance among other data management needs. However in your cost model you also need to keep in mind that you are not replacing your local storage, you are adding to it via the cloud which should be seen as complimenting and enhancing your private now to be hybrid environment.

Walking the cloud data protection talk

FWIW, I leverage a similar model where I use a service (Jungle Disk) where critical copies of my data get sent to that service which in turn places copies at Rack space (Jungledisks parent) and Amazon S3. What data goes to where depends on different policies that I have established. I also have local backup copies as well as master gold disaster copy stored in a secure offsite location. The idea is that when needed, I can get a good copy restored from my cloud providers quickly regardless of where I am if the local copy is not good. On the other hand, experience has already demonstrated that without sufficient network bandwidth services, if I need to bring back 100s of GBytes or TBytes of data quickly, Im going to be better off bring back onsite my master gold copy, then applying fewer, smaller updates from the cloud service. In other words, the technologies compliment each other.

By the way, a lesson learned here is that once my first copy is made which have data footprint reduction (DFR) techniques applied (e.g. compress, de dupe, optimized, etc), later copies occur very fast. However subsequent restores of those large files or volumes also takes longer to retrieve from the cloud vs. sending up changed versions. Thus be aware of backup vs. restore times, something of which will apply to any cloud provider and can be mitigated by appliances that do local caching. However also keep in mind that if a disaster occurs, will your local appliance be affected and its cache rendered useless.

Getting back to AWS storage gateway and my second impression is that at first it sounded great.

However then I realized it only supports iSCSI and FWIW, nothing wrong with iSCSI, I like it and recommend using it where applicable, even though Im not using it. I would like to have seen a NAS (either NFS and/or CIFS) support for a gateway making it easier for in my scenario different applications, servers and systems to use and leverage the AWS services, something that I can do with my other gateways provided via different software tools. Granted for those environments that already are using iSCSI for your servers that will be using AWS storage gateway, then this is a non issue while for others it is a consideration including cost (time) to factor in to prepare your environment for using the ability.

Depending on the amount of storage you have in your environment, the next item that caught my eye may or may not be an issue that the iSCSI gateway supports up to 1TB volumes and up to 12 of them hence a largest capacity of 12TB under management. This can be gotten around by using multiple gateways however the increased complexity balanced to the benefit the functionality is something to consider.

Third impression: Dig deeper, learn more, address various questions

This leads up to my third impression the need to dig deeper into what AWS storage gateway can and cannot do for various environments. I can see where it can be a fit for some environments while for others at least in its beta version will be a non starter. In the meantime, do your homework, look around at other options which ironically by having Amazon launching a gateway service may reinvigorate the market place of some of the standalone or embedded cloud gateway solution providers.

What is needed for using AWS storage gateway

In addition to having an S3 account, you will need to acquire for a monthly fee the storage gateway appliance which is software installed into a VMware ESXi hypervisor virtual machine (VM). The requirements are VMware ESXi hypervisor (v4.1) on a physical machine (PM) with at least 7.5GB of RAM and four (4) virtual processors assigned to the appliance VM along with 75GB of disk space for the Open Virtual Alliance (OVA) image installation and data. You will also need to have an proper sized network connection to Amazon. You will also need iSCSI initiators on either Windows server 2008, Windows 7 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Note that the AWS storage gateway beta is optimized for block write sizes greater than 4Kbytes and warns that smaller IO sizes can cause overhead resulting in lost storage space. This is a consideration for systems that have not yet changed your file systems and volumes to use the larger allocation sizes.

Some closing thoughts, tips and comments:

Congratulations to Amazon for introducing and launching an AWS branded storage gateway.
Amazon brings trust the value of trust to a cloud relationship.
Initially I was excited about the idea of using a gateway that any of may systems could use my S3 storage pools with vs. using gateway access functions that are part of different tools such as my backup software or via Amazon web tools. Likewise I was excited by the idea of having an easy to install and use gateway that would allow me to grow in a cost effective way.
Keep in mind that this solution or at least in its beta version DOES NOT replace your existing iSCSI based storage needs, instead it compliments what you already have.
I hope Amazon listens carefully to what they customers and prospects want vs. need to evolve the functionality.
This announcement should reinvigorate some of the cloud appliance vendors as well as those who have embedded functionality to Amazon and other providers.
Keep bandwidth services and optimization in mind both for sending data as well as for when retrieving during a disaster or small file restore.
In concept, the AWS storage gateway is not all that different than appliances that do snapshots and other local and remote data protection such as those from Actifio, EMC (Recoverpoint), Falconstor or dedicated gateways such as those from Nasuni among others.
Here is a link to added AWS storage gateways frequently asked questions (FAQs).
If the AWS were available with a NAS interface, I would probably be activating it this afternoon even with some of their other requirements and cost aside.
Im still formulating my fourth impression which is going to take some time, perhaps if I can get Amazon to help sell more of my books so that I can get some money to afford to test the entire solution leveraging my existing S3, EC2 and EBS accounts I might do so in the future, otherwise for now, will continue to research.
Learn more about the AWS storage gateway beta, check out this free Amazon web cast on February 23, 2012.

Learn more abut cloud based data protection, data footprint reduction, cloud gateways, access and management, check out my book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press) which is of course available on Amazon Kindle as well as via hard cover print copy also available at Amazon.com.

Ok, nuff said for now, I need to get back to some other things while thinking about this all some more.

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

Cloud and travel fun

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:26:26

Cloud and travel fun

By Greg Schulz

Warning if you are a cloud purist who does not take lightly to fun in and around all types of clouds, well, try to have some fun, otherwise enjoy this fun in and around clouds post.

On a recent trip to a video recording studio in the Boston (BOS) area, I took a few photos with my iPhone of traveling above, in and around clouds. In addition, during the trip I also used cloud based services from the airplane (e.g. Gogo WiFi) for cloud backup and other functions.

View of a GE CFM56 powering a Delta A320 journey to the clouds

Easy to understand cloud emergency and contingency procedures

Example of cloud marketing and value add services

Clouds are clearing nearing destination Boston aka IATA: BOS

Example of easy to understand converged cloud networking

GE Aviation plant in Lynn MA below GE CFM56 jet engine

Back at Logan, long day of travel, video shoot, time for a nap.

From a different trip, wrapping up a cloud focused day, at Cloud Expo in Santa Clara CA in November.

Here are some additional links about out and about, clouds, travel, technology, trends and fun:
Commentary on Clouds, Storage, Networking, Green IT and other topics
Cloud, virtualization and storage networking conversations
What am I hearing and seeing while out and about

Oh, what was recorded in the video studios on that day?

Why something about IT clouds, virtualization, storage, networking and other related topics of course that will be appearing at some venue in the not so distant future.

Ok, nuff fun for now, lets get back to work.

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

Can I ask for your support? Please vote for my blog

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:16:16

Can I ask for your support? Please vote for my blog

By Greg Schulz

No Im not running for any elected office in a political or other organizational capacity, more on the voting stuff in a moment.

Let me start out by saying thank you to all of you who have and continue to read theses posts from where ever that happens to be from.

I also want to thank all of the sites and venues that pickup my blog feeds to make it easier for readers to view the content as well as thanks for all of the great comments and discussions.

Doing some recent end of year clean up and preparation for 2012, I was going back looking at some blog history and realized that StorageIOblog was launched back in late fall of 2006. For those not aware, my full blog feed is http://storageioblog.com/RSSfull.xml and there is also a brief feed at http://storageioblog.com/RSS.xml and the full archives going back to 2006 can be found at http://storageioblog.com/RSSfullArchive.xml.

Ok, now back to the voting stuff.

It is that time of the year to cast your vote over at Eric Sieberts (aka @ericsiebert) vsphere-land site where my StorageIOblog is among around 180 different IT technology blogs nominated for inclusion and balloting, many of whom are also fellow vExperts. The blogs over at vsphere-land cover diverse topics, technologies, trends and themes including servers, storage, networking, cloud, virtualization, security and related topic themes.

Here is the announcement for the 2012 vsphere-land voting.

Some of the blogs have been around for many years while there is also a category for new less than a year old. In this years voting, anyone can vote however only one ballot per person, there the top ten where you can pick up to ten different blogs and then rank those.

There are categories for virtualization, cloud and storage focused as well as for independent bloggers (e.g. non vendors) as well as for news and media venues. The blogs that are part of the balloting were all via open nomination and if yours or your favorite blog is not on the list, go easy on Eric as he made multiple attempts via different venues to make the process known (hint, make sure Eric knows of your site, however also follow him and his sites for the future).

The voting is up and running until February 7 2012 at this site here.

Check out the voting, balloting and polling process where you can select my StorageIOblog as one of ten overall selections, as well as rank it within those ten, then select StorageIOblog in the storage category as well as in the independent blogger categories if you are so inclined (thanks in advance).

Also, check out Erics great books Maximum vSphere along with VMware VI3 implementation at Amazon.com among other venues.

Ok, nuff said for now, please get out and vote and thank in advance for your interest and support.

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

Should you feel sorry for revenue prevention departments

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:33:44

Should you feel sorry for revenue prevention departments

By Greg Schulz

Does your organization have or do you work with a revenue prevention department or revenue prevention team?

For those not familiar, a revenue prevention team or department is an expression that refers to those who get in the way of selling, closing and generating revenue for an organization.

In a sales dominated organization, the revenue prevention team or department might be refereed to as those who do not do what sales wants when and how they want it. Anything other than what sales wants is seen as getting in the way of revenue. Sometimes sales will see marketing, engineering, manufacturing, quality control, human resources, finance and accounting or legal as revenue prevention departments. In other instances, the revenue prevention team or department of some sales organizations will refer to those in customer or prospects organizations that get in the way or slow down the process of closing the deal. Yet another example can be outsiders or third parties such as consultants, analysts, advisors or others who are brought into the sales process by a customer or prospect and seen by a sales organizations as a barrier to revenue prevention obstacle.

On the other hand, sales can also be seen as a revenue prevention department when as a whole or on a smaller or personal basis they get in the way of actually bringing in the deals. For example a sales based revenue prevention department, team or individual may be spending too much time selling however not enough actually closing or getting the real deal. This can be due to different reasons such as the sales rep trying to sell the wrong solution to a particular customer or prospect needs, or simply not being able to close the deal.

If you have never seen the movie Glengary Glen Ross take a few minutes and check at least the highlights out including the classic lines such as ABC: Always Be Closing or Coffee is for Closers.

Now lets get back to revenue prevention in the context of this post which are some revenue prevention scenarios.

Should you feel sorry for the vendor or var who misses their revenue or sales forecast while they were busy trying to sell something new and forgetting to take the order on the existing items?

Should you feel sorry for the vendor or var whose disk or storage sales are down because their customers and prospects headed their advise from last couple of years to dedupe everything?

Well, if their dedupe sales are not making up for the shortfall, no, you should not feel sorry for them nor their investors.

Should you feel sorry for the vendor or var whose server sales and associated software including hyper visors and tools are down because their customers and prospects headed their advise from last couple of years to virtualize everything?

Well, if the corresponding increase in services, new tools, engagements for data protection and other modernization do not make up for it then no.

Should you feel sorry for the vendor or var whose laptop, desktop and workstation along with corresponding pull of other items has resulted in business going elsewhere while they have sold VDI?

How about should you feel sorry for the vendor or var whose customers or prospects are no longer buying as much hardware, software or services as they headed the advise and went to Goggle, Amazon or some other cloud?

Ok, do you get my point?

In the quest to increase opportunity, boost revenue, expand into adjacent markets and technologies there is a balancing act of generating awareness, moving customer and prospect into new areas while keeping the revenue prevention team on the bench to avoid disrupting annuities or current revenue streams.

In other words, embrace the new, avoid clinging to the old with a death grip, be careful with leading beading edge without a dual redundant blood bank (or at least a backup plan). Put another way, find a balance of taking orders for what your customers want while selling them on where you want them to go.

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

My Server and Storage IO holiday break projects

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:33:44

My Server and Storage IO holiday break projectsl

By Greg Schulz

Happy new years!

Following up from a flurry of posts in the closing days of 2011 including industry trends perspective predictions for 2012 and 2013, top blog posts from 2011, top all time posts, along with a couple of other items here and here, its time to get back to 2012 activity. Also if you missed it, here is the Fall (December) 2011 StorageIO news letter.

Actually I have been busy working on some other projects the past several weeks most of which are NDA so not much else can be said about them, however there are some other things Im working on that will show themselves in the weeks and months to come. Here is a link to a webinar and live chat that I did the first week of January on CDP (Continuous Data Protection) and how it can be applied to many different environments.

But lets take a step back for a moment and let me share with you some of the things I did or started during the holiday break between christmas and the new years.

Like many others, I found time to relax and get away from normal work activities during the recent holiday season.

However like many of you that may also be techniques or geeks or wanna be geeks at heart, I could not get away from server, storage, IO, networking, data protection, video and other things completely. I used some time to discuss a few projects that I had wanted to do or that I had started before the holidays and here is a synopsis.

Increased storage capacity on a DVR by about 5x In order to get this to work, I modified a 3.5 enclosure with a power supply to accept a 2.5 1.5TB SATA HDD with an eSATA connection, the easy part was then attaching it to the external eSATA port on my DVR. The hard part was then waiting for the DVR to reconfigure and start recording information again. Also as part of upgrading the external storage on the DVR was to get the media share option to do more than basic things leveraging audio and video real time trans coding using the Tversity software along with various codecs on a media server.

Another project involved upgrading a 500GB HHDD to a 750GB HHDD and did some testing Shortly before the holidays I received a new 750GB Seagate Momentus XT II HHDD to compare to my exiting 500GB previous generation model. I have been using the 750GB HHDD for over a month now and it is amazing to see so much space in a laptop that also has good performance. Some follow up activities are to go back and analyze some performance data that I collected before and after the upgrade. This includes both workload simulation of reads, writes, random, sequential of different IO size as well as comparing Windows startup and shutdown speed and impact to build on what I did last summer (see this post). More on these in the not so distance future.

Speaking of clouds, I had a chance to do some more testing with my Amazon EC2 and EBS accounts in addition to cleaning up my S3 pool in addition to my other cloud backup and storage providers accounts. This also involved refining some data protection backup/restore and archive frequency and retention settings. In addition to refinements for cloud based backup, Im also in the process of transitioning from Imation Odyssey Removable Hard Disk Drives (RHDD) to much larger capacity 2.5 portable RHDDs that are used for offsite bulk copies. Part of the migration includes seeing that end of year master or gold backups and archives were made and safely secured elsewhere in addition to having data sent to the cloud.

Another project involved doing some more testing and simulations with my SSD along with more windows boot and shutdown tests mentioned above. More on these results in a future post.

Sometime (actually not very much) was also spent adding some new shares to my Iomega IX4 NAS which is filling up so I also did some more research on what I will upgrade or replace it with. While Iomega has been great (knock on wood), Synology is also looking interesting as a future solution however keeping my options open for now. Right now Im leaning towards keeping the IX4 and adding another NAS filer using the two for different purposes.

Some other server, storage and IO projects also included upgrading some networking components, and to finish decommissioning old drives making them secure for safe disposal when the time comes.

I also was able to spend time on non tech items including outside enjoying the nice weather, cutting up some fallen trees and roasting them on a bonfire among other things.

Ok, nuff said for now, time to get back to work.

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

A conversation from SNW 2011 with Jenny Hamel

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 14:41:14

A conversation from SNW 2011 with Jenny Hamel

By Greg Schulz

Here (.qt) and here (.wmv) is a video from an interview that I did with Jenny Hamel (@jennyhamelsd6) during the Fall 2011 SNW event in Orlando Florida.

Topics covered during the discussion include:

Importance of metrics that matter for gaining and maintaining IT situational awareness
The continued journey of IT to improve customer service delivery in a cost effective manner
Reducing cost and complexity without negatively impacting customer service experience
Participating in SNW and SNIA for over ten years on three different continents

Industry trends, buzzword bingo (SSD, cloud, big data, virtualization), adoption vs. deployment
Increasing efficiency along with effectiveness and productivity
Stretching budgets to do more without degrading performance or availability
How customers can navigate their way around various options, products and services
Importance of networking at events such as SNW along with information exchange and learning
Why data footprint reduction is similar to packing smartly when going on a journey
Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (now available on Kindle and other epub formats)

View the video from SNW fall 2011 here (.qt) or here (.wmv).

Check out other videos and pod casts here or at StorageioTV.com

Speaking of industry trends, check out the top 25 new posts from 2011, along with the top 25 all time posts and my comments (predictions) for 2012 and 2013.

Ok, nuff said

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

2012 industry trends perspectives and commentary (predictions)

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:51:15

2012 industry trends perspectives and commentary (predictions)

By Greg Schulz

2011 is almost over, so its wrap up time of the year as well as getting ready for 2012.

Here is a link to a post of the top 25 new posts that appeared on StorageIOblog in 2011.

As a companion to the above, here is a link to the all time top 25 posts from StorageIOblog.

Looking back, here is a post about industry trends, thoughts and perspective predictions for 2010 and 2011 (preview 2012 and 2013 thoughts and perspectives here).

Im still finalizing my 2012 and 2013 predictions and perspectives which is a work in progress, however here is a synopsis:

Addressing storage woes at the source: Time to start treating the source of data management and protection including backup challenges instead of or in addition to addressing downstream target destination topics.

Big data and big bandwidth meet big backup: 2011 was a buzz with big data and big bandwidth so 2012 will see realization that big backup needs to be addressed. Also in 2012 there will be continued realization that many have been doing big data and big bandwidth thus also big backups for many years if not decades before the current big buzzword became popular.

Little data does not get left out of the discussion even though younger brother big data gets all of the press and praise. Little data may not be the shining diva it once was, however the revenue annuity stream will keep many software, tools, server and storage vendors afloat while customers continue to rely on the little data darling to run their business.

Cloud confusion finds clarity on the horizon: Granted there will be plenty of more cloud fud and hype, cloud washing and cleaning going around, however 2012 and beyond will also find organizations realizing where and how to use different types of clouds (public, private, hybrid) too meet various needs from SaaS and AaaS to PaaS to IaaS and other variations of XaaS. Part of the clarification that will help remove the confusion will be that there are many different types of cloud architectures, products, stacks, solutions, services and products to address various needs. Another part of the clarification will be discussion of what needs to be added to clouds to make them more viable for both new, as well as old or existing applications. This means organizations will determine what they need to do to move their existing applications to some form of a cloud model while understanding how clouds coexist and compliment what they are currently doing. Cloud conversations will also shift from low cost or for free focus expanding to discussions around value, trust, quality of service (QoS), SLOs, SLAs, security, reliability and related themes.

Cloud and virtualization stack battles: The golden rule of virtualization and clouds is that who ever controls the management and software stacks controls the gold. Hence, watch for more positioning around management and enablement stacks as well as solutions to see who gains control of the gold.

Data protection modernization: Building off of first point above, data protection modernization the past several years has been focused on treating the symptoms of downstream problems at the target or destination. This has involved swapping out or moving media around, applying data footprint reduction (DFR) techniques downstream to provide near term tactical relief as has been the cause with backup, restore, BC and DR for many years. Now the focus will start to expand to how to address the source of the problem with is an expanding data footprint upstream or at the source using different data footprint reduction tools and techniques. This also means using different metrics including keeping performance and response time in perspective as part of reduction rates vs. ratios while leveraging different techniques and tools from the data footprint reduction tool box. In other words, its time to stop swapping out media like changing tires that keep going flat on a car, find and fix the problem, change the way data is protected (and when) to reduce the impact down stream. This will not happen overnight, however with virtualization and cloud activities underway, now is a good time to start modernizing data protection.

End to End (E2E) management tools: Continue focus around E2E tools and capabilities to gain situational awareness across different technology layers.

FCoE and Fibre Channel continue to mature: One sure sign that Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is continuing to evolve, mature and gain initial traction is the increase in activity declaring it dead or dumb or similar things. FCoE is still in its infancy while Fibre Channel (FC) is in the process of transitioning to 16Gb with a roadmap that will enable it to continue on for many more years. As FCoE continues to ramp up over next several years (remember, FC took several years to get where it is today), continued FC enhancements will provide options for those wishing to stick with it while gaining confidence with FCoE, iSCSI, SAS and NAS.

Hard drive shortages drive revenues and profits: Some have declared that the recent HDD shortages due to Thailand flooding will cause Solid State Devices (SSD) using flash memory to dramatically grow in adoption and deployment. I think that both single level cell (SLC) and multi level cell (MLC) flash SSDs will continue to grow in deployments counted in units shipped as well as revenues and hopefully also margin or profits. However I also think that with the HDD shortage and continued demand, vendors will use the opportunity to stabilize some of their pricing meaning less discounting while managing the inventory which should mean more margin or profits in a quarter or too. What will be interesting to watch will be if SSD vendors drop margin in an effort to increase units shipped and deployed to show market revenue and adoption growth while HDD margins rise.

QoS, SLA/SLOs part of cloud conversations: Low cost or cost avoidance will continue to be the focus of some cloud conversations. However with metrics and measurements to make informed decisions, discussions will expand to QoS, SLO, SLAs, security, mean time to restore or return information, privacy, trust and value also enter into the picture. In other words, clouds are growing up and maturing for some, while their existing capabilities become discovered by others.

Clouds are a shared responsibility model: The cloud blame game when something goes wrong will continue, however there will also be a realization that as with any technology or tool, there is a shared responsibility. This means that customers accept responsibility for how they will use a tool, technologies or service, the provider assumes responsibility, and both parties have a collective responsibility.

Return on innovation is the new ROI: For years, no make that decades a popular buzz term is return on investment the companion of total cost of ownership. Both ROI and TCO as you know and like (or hate) will continue to be used, however for situations that are difficult to monitize, a new variation exists. That new variation is return on innovation which is the measure of intangible benefits derived from how hard products are used to derive value for or of soft products and services delivered.

Solid State Devices (SSD) confidence: One of the barriers to flash SSD adoption has been cost per capacity with another being confidence in reliability and data consistency over time (aka duty cycle wear and tear). Many enterprise class solutions have used single level cell (SLC) flash SSD which has better endurance, duty cycle or wear handing capabilities however that benefit comes at the expense of a higher price per capacity. Consequently vendors are pushing multi level cell (MLC) flash SSD that reduces the cost per capacity, however needs additional controller and firmware functionality to manage the wear leaving and duty cycle. In some ways, MLC flash is to SSD memory what SATA high capacity desktop drives were to HDDs in the enterprise storage space about 8 to 9 years ago. What I mean by that is that more expense high performance disk drives were the norm, then lower cost higher capacity SATA drives appeared resulting in enhancements to make them more enterprise capable while boosting the confidence of customers to use the technology. Same thing is happening with flash SSD in that SLC is more expensive and for many has a higher confidence, while MLC is lower cost, higher capacity and gaining the enhancements to take on a role for flash SSD similar to what high capacity SATA did in the HDD space. In addition to confidence with SSD, new packaging variations will continue to evolve as well.

Virtualization beyond consolidation: The current wave of consolidation of desktop using VDI, server and storage aggregation will continue, however a trend that has been growing for a couple of years now that will take more prominence in 2012 and 2013 is realization that not everything can be consolidated, however many things can be virtualized. This means for some applications the focus will not be how many VMs to run per PM, rather, how a PM can be more effectively used to boost performance and agility for some applications during part of the day, while being used for other things at different times. For example a high performance database that normally would not be consolidated would be virtualized to enable agility for maintenance, BC, DR load balancing and placed on a fast PM with lots of fast memory, CPU and IO capabilities dedicated to it. However during off hours when little to no database activity is occurring, then other VMs would be moved onto that PM then moved off before the next busy cycle.

Will applications be ready to leverage cloud: Some applications and functionality can more easily be moved to cloud environments vs. others. A question that organizations will start to ask is what prevents their applications or business functionality from going to or using cloud resources in addition to asking cloud providers what new capabilities will they extend to support old environments.

Zombie list grows: More items will be declared dead meaning that they are either still alive, or have reached stability to the point where some want to see them dead so that their preferred technology or topic can take root.

Some other topics and trends include continued growing awareness that metrics and measurements matter for cloud, virtualization, data and storage networking. This also means a growing awareness that there are more metrics that matter for storage than cost per GByte or Tbyte that include IOPS, latency or response time, bandwidth, IO size, random and sequential along with availability. 2012 and 2013 will see continued respect being given to NAS at both the high end as well as low end of the market from enterprise down to consumer space. Speaking of consumer and SOHO (Small Office Home Office), now that SMB has generally been given respect or at least attention by many vendors, the new frontier will be to move further down market to the lower end of the SMB which is SOHO, just above consumer space. Of course some vendors have already closed the gap (or at least on paper, power point, web ex or you tube video) from consumer to enterprise. Of course Buzzword bingo will continue to be a popular game.

Oh, btw, DevOps will also appear in your vocabulary if it has not already.

Watch for more on these and other topics in the weeks and months to come and if you and to read more now, then get a copy of Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking. Also check out the top 25 new post of 2011 as well as some of the all time most popular posts at StorageIOblog.com that can also be seen on various other venues that pickup the full RSS feed or archive feed. Also check out the StorageIO news letter for additional industry trends perspectives and commentary.

Ok, nuff said

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

Top 2011 cloud virtualization storage and networking posts

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:51:15

Top 2011 cloud virtualization storage and networking posts

By Greg Schulz

Im in the process of wrapping up 2011 and getting ready for 2012. Here is a list of the top 25 new posts from this past year at StorageIOblog.

Looking back, here is a post about industry trends, thoughts and perspective predictions for 2010 and 2011 (preview 2012 and 2013 thoughts and perspectives here).

Top storageio cloud virtualization networking and data protection posts

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:51:15

Top storageio cloud virtualization networking and data protection posts

By Greg Schulz

Im in the process of wrapping up 2011 and getting ready for 2012. Here is a list of the top 25 all time posts from StorageIOblog covering cloud, virtualization, servers, storage, green IT, networking and data protection. Looking back, here is 2010 and 2011 industry trends, thoughts and perspective predictions along with looking forward, a 2012 preview here.

Top 25 all time posts about storage, cloud, virtualization, networking, green IT and data protection

Check out the companion post to this which is the top 25 2011 posts located here as well as 2012 and 2013 predictions preview here.

Ok, nuff said

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

Fall (December) 2011 StorageIO News Letter

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 10:11:22

Fall (December) 2011 StorageIO News Letter

By Greg Schulz

Fall (December) 2011 News letter

Welcome to the Fall (December) 2011 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) news letter. This follows the Summer 2011 edition.

You can get access to this news letter via various social media venues (some are shown below) in addition to StorageIO web sites and subscriptions.

Click on the following links to view the Fall (December) 2011 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the news letter page to view previous editions.

Follow via Goggle Feedburner here or via email subscription here.

You can also subscribe to the news letter by simply sending an email to newsletter@storageio.com

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO newsletter, let me know your comments and feedback.

Ok, nuff said

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

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking now on Kindle

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 23:32:23

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking now on Kindle

By Greg Schulz

It only makes sense that a book about Clouds, Virtualization, Data Storage and Networking be available via a cloud service in electronic format. Today Amazon and my publisher (CRC Press Taylor and Francis) released a Kindle version of my new book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking which joins the previously released hardcopy version also available at Amazon.com among other venues.

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking has been declared The New Enterprise Tech Bible by noted industry blogger and host of the Nekkid Tech (@NekkidTech) pod cast Greg Knieriemen (@Knieriemen). Check out Episode #11 (The Enterprise Tech Bible) of the Nekkid Tech pod cast show here.

Comments and reviews about Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking can be found at Amazon.com along with those from Stephen Guendert, PhD (@DrSteveGuendert) at CMG MeasureIT (@cmgnews) who says: Gregs latest book is the ibuprofen that will make these cloud computing information overload headaches go away. Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking is the single source you can read to get a clear understanding of the fundamentals of the cloud.

Greg Brunton, EDS, an HP Company commented: With all the chatter in the market about cloud storage and how it can solve all your problems, the industry needed a clear breakdown of the facts and how to use Cloud cloud storage effectively. Gregs latest book does exactly that.

Want to know more besides viewing the Google preview above?

Check out this free PDF download of Chapter 1 and view a PDF flyer with more information about the book including discount codes for ordering via the CRC Press or visit the StorageIO books page. In addition to Amazon Kindle version, other ebook formats including (PDF) are available here (bookdepository.com), and here (CRCnetBase) including each chapter.

View this post which has links too more information about cloud conversations and discussions.

Ok, nuff said

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

What industry pundits love and loathe about data storage

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:16:14

What industry pundits love and loathe about data storage

By Greg Schulz

Drew Robb has a good article about what IT industry pundits including vendors, analysts, and advisors loath including comments from myself.

In the article Drew asks: What do you really love about storage and what are your pet peeves?

One of my comments and perspectives is that I like Hybrid Hard Disk Drives (HHDDs) in addition to traditional Hard Disk Drives (HDD) along with Solid State Devices (SSDs). As much as I like HHDDs, I also believe that with any technology, they are not the best solution for everything, however they can also be used in many ways than being seen. Here is the fifth installment of a series on HHDDs that I have done since June 2010 when I received my first HHDD a Seagate Momentus XT. You can read the other installments of my momentus moments here, here, here and here.

HHDD with integrated nand flash SSD photo courtesy Seagate.com

Molly Rector VP of marketing at magnetic tape vendor Spectra Logic mentioned that what she does not like is companies that base their business plan on patent law trolling. I would have expected something different along the lines of countering or correcting people that say tape sucks, tape is dead, or that tape is the cause problem of anything wrong with storage thus clearing the air or putting up a fight that tape is alive. Go figure...

Another of my comments involved clouds of which there are plenty of conversations taking place. I do like clouds (I even recently wrote a book involving them) however Im a fan of using them where applicable to coexist and enhance other IT resources. Dont be scared of clouds, however be ready, do your homework, listen, learn, do proof of concepts to decide best practices, when, where, what and how to use them.

Speaking of clouds, click here to read about who is responsible for cloud data loss and cast your vote, along with viewing what do you think about IT clouds in general here.

Mike Karp (aka twitter @storagewonk ) an analyst with Ptak Noel mentions that midrange environments dont get respect from big (or even startup) vendors.

I would take that a step further by saying compared to six or so years ago, SMB are getting night and day better respect along with attention by most vendors, however what is lacking is respect of the SOHO sector (e.g. lower end of SMB down to or just above consumer).

Granted some that have traditional sold into those sectors such as server vendors including Dell and HP get it or at least see the potential along with traditional enterprise vendor EMC via its Iomega . Yet I still see many vendors including startups in general discounting, shrugging off or sneering at the SOHO space similar to those who dissed or did not respect the SMB space several years ago. Similar to the SMB space, SOHO requires different products, packaging, pricing and routes to market via channel or etail mechanisms which means change for some vendors. Those vendors who embraced the SMB and realized what needed to change to adapt to those markets will also stand to do better with the SOHO.

Here is the reason that I think SOHO needs respect.

Simple, SOHOs grow up to become SMBs, SMBs grow up to become SMEs, SMEs grow up to become enterprises and not to mention that the amount of data being generated, moved, processed and stored continues to grow. The net result is that SMBs along with SOHO storage demands will continue to grow and for those vendors who can adjust to support those markets will also stand to gain new customers that in turn can become plans for other solution offerings.

Not surprising Eran Farajun of Asigra which has been doing cloud backups decades before they were known as clouds loves backup (and restores). However I am surprised that Eran did not jump on the its time to modernize and re architect data protection theme. Oh well, will have to have a chat with Eran on that sometime.

What was surprising were comments from Panzura who has a good distributed (e.g. read also cloud) file system that can be used for various things including online reference data. Panzura has a solution that normally I would not even think about in the context of being pulled into a Datadomain or dedupe appliance type discussion (e.g tape sucks or other similar themes). So it is odd that they are playing to the tape sucks camp and theme vs. playing to where the technology can really shine which IMHO is in the global, distributed, scale out and cloud file system space. Oh well, I guess you go with what you know or has worked in the past to get some attention.

Molly Rector of Spectra also mentioned that she likes High Performance Computing, surprised that she did not throw in high productivity computing as well in conjunction with big data, big bandwidth, green, dedupe, power, disk, tape and related buzzword bingo terms.

Also there are some comments from myself about cost cutting.

While I see the need for organizations to cut costs during tough economic times, Im not a fan of simply cutting cost for the sake of cost cutting as opposed to finding and removing complexity that in turn remove costs of doing work. In other words, Im a fan of finding and removing waste, becoming more effective and productive along with removing the cost of doing a particular piece of work. This in the end meets the aim of bean counters to cut costs, however can be done in a way that does not degrade service levels or customer service experience. For example instead of looking to cut backup costs, do you know where the real costs of doing data protection exist (hint swapping out media is treating the symptoms) and if so, what can be done to streamline those from the source of the problem downstream to the target (e.g. media or medium). In other words, redesign, review, modernize how data protection is done, leverage data footprint reduction (DFR) techniques including archive, compression, consolidation, data management, dedupe and other technologies in effective and creative ways, after all, return on innovation is the new ROI.

Checkout Drews article here to read more on the above topics and themes.

Ok, nuff said

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

New Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid drive (SSD and HDD)

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 23:11:11

New Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid drive (SSD and HDD)

By Greg Schulz

Seagate recently announced the next generation Momentus XT Hybrid Hard Disk Drive (HHDD) with a capacity of 750GB in a 2.5 inch form factor and MSRP of $245.00 USD including integrated NAND flash solid state device (SSD). As a refresher, the Momentus XT is a HHDD in that it includes a 4GB nand flash SSD integrated with a 500GB (or larger) 7,200 RPM hard disk drive (HDD) in a single 2.5 inch package.

HHDD with integrated nand flash SSD photo courtesy Seagate.com

This is the fifth installment of a series that I have been doing since June 2010 when I received my first HHDD a Seagate Momentus XT. You can read the other installments of my momentus moments here, here, here and here.

Whats is new with the new generation.
Besides additional storage space capacity up to 750GB (was 500GB), there is twice as much single level cell (SLC) nand flash memory (8GB vs. 4GB in previous generation) along with an enhanced interface using 6Gb per second SATA that supports native command queuing (NCQ) for better performance. Note that NCQ was available on the previous generation Momentus XT that used a 3Gb SATA interface. Other enhancements include a larger block or sector size of 4096 bytes vs. traditional 512 bytes on previous generation storage devices.

This bigger sector size results in less overhead with managing data blocks on large capacity storage devices. Also new are caching enhancements are FAST Factor Flash Management, FAST Factor Boot and Adaptive Memory Technology. Not to be confused with EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering the other FAST; Seagate FAST is technology that exists inside the storage drive itself. FAST Factor boot enables systems to boot and be productive with speeds similar to SSD or several times faster than traditional HDDs.

The FAST Factor Flash Management provides the integrated intelligence to maximize use of the nand flash or SSD capabilities along with spinning HDD to boot performance, maintain compatibility with different systems and their operating systems. In addition to performance and interoperability, data integrity and SSD flash endurance are also enhanced for investment protection. The Adaptive Memory technology is a self learning algorithm to provide SSD like performance for frequently used applications and data to close the storage capacity too performance gap that has been increasing along with data center bottlenecks.

Some questions and discussion comments:

When to use SSD vs. HDD vs. HHDD?
If you need the full speed of SSD to boost performance across all data access and cost is not an issue for available capacity that is where you should be focused. However if you are looking for lowest total cost of storage capacity with no need for performance, than lower cost high capacity HDDs should be on your shopping list. On the other hand, if you want a mix of performance and capacity at an effective price, than HHDDs should be considered.

Why the price jump compared to first generation HHDD?
IMHO, it has a lot to do with current market conditions, supply and demand.

With recent floods in Thailand and forecasted HDD and other technology shortages, the lay of supply and demand applies. This means that the supply may be constrained for some products causing demand to rise for others. Your particular vendor or supplier may have inventory however will be less likely to heavily discount while there are shortages or market opportunities to keep prices high. There are already examples of this if you check around on various sites to compare prices now vs. a few months ago. Granted it is the holiday shopping season for both individuals as well as organizations spending the last of their available budgets so more demand for available supplies.

What kind of performance or productivity have I seen with HHDDs?
While I have not yet tested and compared the second generation or new devices, I can attest to the performance improvements resulting in better productivity over the past year using Seagate Momentus XT HHDDs compared to traditional HDDs. Here is a post that you can follow to see some boot performance comparisons as part of some virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) sizing testing I did earlier this year that included both HHDD and HDD.

	HHDD desktop 1	HDD desktop 1	HHDD desktop 2
Avg. IOPS	334	69 to 113	186 to 353
Avg. MByte sec	5.36	1.58 to 2.13	2.76 to 5.2
Percent IOPS read	94	80 to 88	92
Percent MBs read	87	63 to 77	84
Mbytes read	530	201 to 245	504
Mbytes written	128	60 to 141	100
Avg. read latency	2.24ms	8.2 to 9.5ms	1.3ms
Avg. write latency	10.41ms	20.5 to 14.96ms	8.6ms
Boot duration	120 seconds	120 to 240 sec	120

Click here to read the entire post about the above table

When will I jump on the SSD bandwagon?
Great question, I have actually been on the SSD train for several decades using them, selling them, covering, analyzing and consulting around them along with other storage mediums including HDD, HHDD, cloud and tape. I have some SSDs and will eventually put them into my laptops, workstations and servers as primary storage when the opportunity makes sense.

Will HHDDs help backup and other data protection tasks?
Yes, in fact I initially used my Momentus XTs as backup or data protection targets along with for moving large amounts of data between systems faster than what my network could support.

Why not use a SSD?
If you need the performance and can afford the price, go SSD!

On the other hand, if you are looking to add a small 64GB, 128GB or even 256GB SSD while retaining a larger capacity, slower and lower cost HDD, an HHDD should be considered as an option. By using an HHDD instead of both a SSD and HDD, you will eliminate the need of figuring out how to install both in space constrained laptops, desktop or workstations. In addition, you will eliminate the need to either manually move data between the different devices or avoid having to acquire software or drivers to do that for you.

How much does the new Seagate Momentus XT HHDD cost?
Manufactures Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) is listed at $245 for a 750GB version.

Does the Momentus XT HHDD need any special drivers, adapters or software?
No, they are plug and play. There is no need for caching or performance acceleration drivers, utilities or other software. Likewise no needs for tiering or data movement tools.

How do you install an HHDD into an existing system?
Similar to installing a new HDD to replace an existing one if you are familiar with that process. If not, it goes like this (or uses your own preferred approach).

Attach a new HHDD to an existing system using a cable
Utilize a disk clone or image tool to make a copy of the existing HDD to HHDD
Note that the system may not be able to be used during the copy, so plan ahead.
After the clone or image copy is made, shutdown system, remove existing HDD and replace it with the HHDD that was connected to the system during the copy (remember to remove the copy cable).
Reboot the system to verify all is well, note that it will take a few reboots before the HHDD will start to learn your data and files along with how they are used.
Regarding your old HDD, save it, put it in a safe place and use it as a disaster recovery (DR) backup. For example if you have a safe deposit box or somewhere else safe, put it there for when you will need it in the future.

Seagate Momentus XT and USB to SATA cable

Can an HHDD fit into an existing slot in a laptop, workstation or server?
Yes. In fact, unlike a HDD and SSD combination, that requires multiple slots or forcing one device to be external, HHDDs like the Momentus XT simply use the space where your current HDD is installed.

How do you move data to it?
Beyond the initial installation described above, the HHDD appears as just another local device meaning you can move data to or from it like any other HDD, SSD or CD.

Do you need automated tiering software?
No, not unless you need it for some other reason or if you want to use an HHDD as the lower cost, larger capacity option as a companion to a smaller SSD.

Do I have any of the new or second generation HHDDs?
Not yet, maybe soon and I will do another momentus moment point when that time arrives. For the time being, I will continue to use the first generation Momentus XT HHDDs

Bottom line (for now), If you are considering a large capacity, HDDs check out the HHDDs for an added performance boost including faster boot times in addition to accessing other data quicker.

On the other hand if you want an SSD however your budget restricts you to a smaller capacity version, look into how an HHDD can be a viable option for some of your needs.

Ok, nuff said

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

Speaking of speeding up business with SSD storage

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 23:11:11

Speaking of speeding up business with SSD storage

By Greg Schulz

Solid state devices (SSD) are a popular topic gaining both industry adoption and customer deployment to speed up storage performance. Here is a link to a recent conversation that I had with John Hillard to discuss industry trends and perspectives pertaining to using SSD to boost performance and productivity for SMB and other environments.

SSDs can be a great way for organizations to do IO consolidation to reduce costs in place of using many hard disk drives (HDDs) grouped together to achieve a certain level of performance. By consolidating the IOs off of many HDDs that often end up being under utilized from a space capacity basis, organizations can boost performance for applications while reducing, or reusing HDD based storage capacity for other purposes including growth.

You can read a transcript of the conversation and listen to the pod cast here, or download the MP3 audio here.

Ok, nuff said about SSD (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

Cloud, virtualization and storage networking conversations

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 18:18:18

Cloud, virtualization and storage networking conversations

By Greg Schulz

Here is a link to a series cloud, virtualization and storage networking conversations posts that Im doing over at IT-Toolbox. Each post in the series covers various topics along with a frequently asked question that I encounter pertaining to clouds, virtualization and storage networking.

Check out the cloud, virtualization and storage networking conversations series here.

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

How to write, publish and promote a book or blog

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 13:45:54

How to write, publish and promote a book or blogs

By Greg Schulz

Have you ever read an article, blog post or a book and said to yourself that you could do that, perhaps even better?

Well, unless you have already done so, what are you waiting for to write a book, blog, article or create some other form of content using different mediums or venues?

The other evening I attended a local Stillwater (Artreach St Croix) event (Publishers Forum) with my wife (karenofarcola.com). Karen is working on getting her first book (fiction for children and young adults) published so she was interested in meeting the different publishers. For me I wanted to learn about the local publishers, hear what they had to say in addition to meeting the purveyor of a local book store (Valley Book Seller) who helped promote the event.

It was interesting listening to the panel made up of a nonprofit publisher (Milkweed Editions), a full service self publishing venue (Beaver Pond Press) and regional publishing house (Tristin Publishing).

Having formally published books (e.g. with traditional publishers (Elseiver and CRC/Taylor Francis), ISBNs, Library of Congress (LOC) registration) along with contributing on other projects, not to mention over a thousand articles, tips, reports, white papers, solution briefs, videos and other content, I often get asked what does it take to write a book, blog or other material.

I also get told by people that they could do a better job to which I ask them then why dont they do something about it vs. simply saying that they could do something better.

Back to the Art Reach St Croix publishers forum event, the attendees were mainly aspiring authors looking to get their first works published. Having already been down the path that many in the room were looking to go (get published) it was interesting to hear the various questions and discussion topics. Some of those questions were about the process of self publishing vs. working with the publisher (large or small) in addition to how much costs or how to get discovered. It was also great to hear the panelist discuss some of the hurdles authors face in getting their books published along with promoting their works.

I learned several years ago before I did my first solo book was a tip that another author told me of the importance of promotion. That is your publisher will help enable, however it is up to you the author to promote your works by creating a platform or means of interacting with different audiences. Consequently it was fun to hear the panelist talk with the authors on the importance of creating a platform including a blog, twitter, Google Plus, facebook, doing articles and appearances to help create awareness. What was fun to watch were the authors who seemed to be more comfortable with creating their works and then waiting for the results to occur as opposed to helping make their work a success.

Anyways, for those who are aspiring to write a book, blog or article, or even for those who are content being arm chair authors or Monday morning quarterbacks, here is a link to a series about how to write a book or blog. The series (how to write a book or blog) can be read over at the VMware communities site that Im contributing for as a vExpert.

Oh, and for you aspiring authors or bloggers wondering about creating and developing a platform, what you are reading here is an example of doing just that. In other words, my platform includes what you are reading here in addition to on my regular blog or other venues including Google Plus (G+), Facebook, LinkedIn and twitter among other venues.

So what are you waiting for, go get your book or blog or article written, published and start promoting it.

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

Do you know HDS or what it means?

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:14:15

Do you know HDS or what it means?s

By Greg Schulz

How much do you know about HDS?

When you hear HDS in the context of information technology do you think of Hitachi Data Systems?

Along with a bunch of other IT industry advisors, analysts, bloggers, consultants, financiers and pundits or influencers, Im attending a event being sponsored by HDS this week in San Jose California (SJC).

For those not familiar, as a division of the much larger Japan based conglomerate named Hitachi, HDS sells various types of data storage systems and associated management tools along with services.

While on the airplane from Seattle (SEA) to SJC the other night (Disclosure: HDS picked up the one way coach ticket) it occurred to me different things that HDS could refer to besides Hitachi Data Systems.

In addition to being the International Airtranspot Transport Association (IATA) code for Hoedspruit Airport in South Africa where HDS is in the process of buying Shoeden Data Systems (SDS), here are some other possibilities of what HDS could mean.

Hadoop Data Solutions
Half height Disk Shelve
Hardware Disks and Software
Has Dedupe Solutions
Has Disaster recovery Solutions
Has Disk Story
Has Disks Servers
Has Diverse Solutions
Has Done Servers
Have Daily Schnitzel (in Vienna aka Wien)

HDDs Depend on Software
Healthcare Data Systems
Helps Datacenters Save
Helps Data Survives
Helps Data Synchronize
Helps Delete Spam
Helps Dell Servers
Helps Disk Spin
High Density SAS
Houses Data on SSD
How Data Saved
Hu (Yoshida) Discusses Storage
Huge Disk System
HVAC Down Stairs (Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning)
Hybrid Data Systems

Ok, nuff said for now in case the HDS influence folks dont have a sense of influence humor.

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

IT and technology turkeys

Tue, 8 Nov 2011 00:01:02

Congratulations to IBM for releasing XIV SPC results

By Greg Schulz

Now that Halloween and talk of Zombies has past (at least for now), that means next up on the social or holiday calendar topics in the U.S. is thanksgiving which means turkey themes.

With turkey themes in mind, how about some past, current and maybe future technology flops or where are they now.

Roast Turkey
© 2006 Peggy Trowbridge Filippone

A technology turkey can be a product, trend, technique or theme that was touted (or hyped) and flopped for various reasons not flying up to, or meeting its expectations. That means that a technology turkey may have had industry adoption however lacked customer deployment.

Lets try a few, how about holographic storage, or is that still a future technology?

Were NEXT computer and the Apple Newton turkeys?

Disclosure: I have a Newton that has not been used since the mid 90s.

Is ATA over Ethernet (AoE) a future turkey candidate along with FCoE aka Fibre Channel over Ethernet (or here or here), or is that just some peoples wishful thinking regarding FCoE being a turkey?

Speaking of AoE, what ever happened to Zetera (aka Hammer storage) the iSCSI alternative of a few years ago?

To be fair how about IPFC not to be confused with FCIP (Fibre Channel frames mapped to IP for distance) or iFCP not to be confused with FCoE or iSCSI. IPFC mapped IP as upper level protocol (ULP) onto Fibre Channel coexisting with FCP and FICON. There were only a few adopters of IPFC that used it as a low latency channel to channel (CTC) mechanism for open systems before InfiniBand and other technologies matured.

Im guessing that someone will step up to defend the honor of Microsoft Windows Vista, however until then, IMHO it is or was a Turkey. While on the topic of operating systems, anyone have an opinion on IBMs OS2? Speaking of PCs, how about the DEC Rainbow and its sibling the Robin? Remember when IBM was in the PC business before selling it off to Lenovo, how about the IBM PCjr, turkey candidate or not?

HP should be on the turkey list with their now ex CEO Leo Apotheker whom they put out to pasture, on the technology front, anybody remember AutoRAID?

How about the Britton Lee Database machine which today would be referred to as a storage appliance or application optimized storage system such as the Oracle Exadata II (or Oracle Exadata I based on HP hardware) among others. Note that Im not saying Exadata I or Exadata II are turkeys as that will be left to your own determination. Both are cool from a technology standpoint, however there is more to having neat or interesting technology to move from announcement to industry adoption to customer deployment, things that Oracle has been having some success with.

Speaking of Oracle, remember when Sun bought the Encore storage system and renamed it the A7000 (not to be confused with the A5000 aka Photon) in an attempt to compete against the EMC Symmetrix. The Encore folks after Sun went on to their next project and still today call it DataCore. Meanwhile Sun discontinued the A7000 after a period of time similar to what they did with other acquisitions such as Pirus which became the 6920 which was end of lifed as part of a deal where Sun increased their resell activity of HDS which too has since been archived. Hmmm, that begs the question of what happens with Oracle acquiring Pillar with an earn out scheme where if there is revenue there is a payout, if there is no revenue then there is a tax write off.

What about big data, will that become a turkey following in the footsteps of other former high flyers such as cloud, virtualization, data classification, CDP, Green IT and SOA among many others. IMHO that depends upon what your view or definition along with expectations of big data is as a buzzword bingo topic. Depending on your view, that will determine if the above will join others that fade away from the limelight shifting into productive modes for customers and profitable activity for vendors.

Want to read what others have to say about technology turkeys or flops?

Here is what ibitimes has to say about technology flops (aka) turkeys, with Infoworlds lineup here, Computerworlds list is here. Meanwhile a couple from mashable here and here, Cnet weighs in here, with another list over at investorplace found here, and checkout the list at Money here with the telegraph represented here. Of course you could Google to find more however you would probably also stumble upon Googles own flops or technology turkeys including wave.

What is your take as to other technology turkeys past, present or future?

Ok, nuff said for now

Cheers Gs

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

twitter @storageio

Congratulations to IBM for releasing XIV SPC results

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:11:12

Congratulations to IBM for releasing XIV SPC results

By Greg Schulz

Over the past several years I have done an annual post about IBM and their XIV storage system and this is the fourth in what has become a series. You can read the first one here, the second one here, and last years here and here after the announcement of the IBM V7000.

IBM XIV Gen3
IBM recently announced the generation 3 or Gen3 version of XIV along with releasing for the first time public performance comparison benchmarks using storage performance council (SPC) throughout SPC2 workload.

The XIV Gen3 is positioned by IBM as having up to four (4) times the performance of earlier generations of the storage system. In terms of speeds and feeds, the Gen3 XIV supports up to 180 2TB SAS hard disk drives (HDD) that provides up to 161TB of usable storage space capacity. For connectivity, the Gen3 XIV supports up to 24 8Gb Fibre Channel (8GFC) or for iSCSI 22 1Gb Ethernet (1 GbE) ports with a total of up to 360GBytes of system cache. In addition to the large cache to boost performance, other enhancements include leveraging multi core processors along with an internal InfiniBand network to connect nodes replacing the former 1 GbE interconnect. Note, InfiniBand is only used to interconnect the various nodes in the XIV cluster and is not used for attachment to applications servers which is handled via iSCSI and Fibre Channel.

IBM and SPC storage performance history
IBM has a strong history if not leading the industry with benchmarking and workload simulation of their storage systems including Storage Performance Council (SPC) among others. The exception for IBM over the past couple of years has been the lack of SPC benchmarks for XIV. Last year when IBM released their new V7000 storage system benchmarks include SPC were available close to if not at the product launch. I have in the past commented about IBMs lack of SPC benchmarks for XIV to confirm their marketing claims given their history of publishing results for all of their other storage systems. Now that IBM has recently released SPC2 results for the XIV it is only fitting then that I compliment them for doing so.

Benchmark brouhaha
Performance workload simulation results can often lead to applies and oranges comparisons or benchmark brouhaha battles or storage performance games. For example a few years back NetApp submitted a SPC performance result on behalf of their competitor EMC. Now to be clear on something, Im not saying that SPC is the best or definitive benchmark or comparison tool for storage or other purpose as it is not. However it is representative and most storage vendors have released some SPC results for their storage systems in addition to TPC and Microsoft ESRP among others. SPC2 is focused on streaming such as video, backup or other throughput centric applications where SPC1 is centered around IOPS or transactional activity. The metrics for SPC2 are Megabytes per second (MBps) for large file processing (LFP), large database query (LDQ) and video on demand delivery (VOD) for a given price and protection level.

What is the best benchmark?
Simple, your own application in as close to as actual workload activity as possible. If that is not possible, then some simulation or workload simulation that closets resembles your needs.

Does this mean that XIV is still relevant?
Yes

Does this mean that XIV G3 should be used for every environment?
Generally speaking no. However its performance enhancements should allow it to be considered for more applications than in the past. Plus with the public comparisons now available, that should help to silence questions (including those from me) about what the systems can really do vs. marketing claims.

How does XIV compare to some other IBM storage systems using SPC2 comparisons?

System	SPC2 MBps	Cost per SPC2	Storage GBytes	Price tested	Discount	Protection
DS5300	5,634.17	$74.13	16,383	417,648	0%	R5
V7000	3,132.87	$71.32	29,914	$223,422	38-39%	R5
XIV G3	7,467.99	$152.34	154,619	1,137,641	63-64%	Mirror
DS8800	9,705.74	$270.38	71,537	2,624,257	40-50%	R5

In the above comparisons, the DS5300 (NetApp/Engenio based) is a dual controller (4GB of cache per controller) with 128 x 146.8GB 15K HDDs configured as RAID 5 with no discount applied to the price submitted. The V7000 system which is based on the IBM SVC along with other enhancements consists of dual controllers each with 8GB of cache and 120 x 10K 300GB HDDs configured as RAID 5 with just under a 40% discount off list price for system tested. For the XIV Gen3 system tested, discount off list price for the submission is about 63% with 15 nodes and a total of 360GB of cache and 180 2TB 7.2K SAS HDDs configured as mirrors. The DS8800 system with dual controllers has a 256GB of cache, 768 x 146GB 15K HDDs configured in RAID5 with a discount between 40 to 50% off of list.

What the various metrics do not show is the benefit of various features and functionality which should be considered to your particular needs. Likewise, if your applications are not centered around bandwidth or throughput, then the above performance comparisons would not be relevant. Also note that the systems above have various discount prices as submitted which can be a hint to a smart shopper where to begin negotiations at. You can also do some analysis of the various systems based on their performance, configuration, physical footprint, functionality and cost plus the links below take you to the complete reports with more information.

DS8800 SPC2 executive summary and full disclosure report

XIV SPC2 executive summary and full disclosure report

DS5300 SPC2 executive summary and full disclosure report

V7000 SPC2 executive summary and full disclosure report

Bottom line, benchmarks and performance comparisons are just that, a comparison that may or may not be relevant to your particular needs. Consequently they should be used as a tool combined with other information to see how a particular solution might be a fit for your specific needs. The best benchmark however is your own application running as close to possible realistic workload to get a representative perspective of a systems capabilities.

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

What am I hearing and seeing while out and about

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 19:18:17

What am I hearing and seeing while out and about

By Greg Schulz

It has been a busy fall 2011 which started out with VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas just before the labor day weekend.

Scenes from the CXI party (@cxi) at VMworld 2011

Besides activity in support of the launch of my new book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), I have been busy with various client research, consulting and advisory projects. In addition to Las Vegas for VMworld, out and about travel activities for attending conferences and presenting seminars have included visits in Minneapolis (local), Nijkerk Holland and Denver (in the same week) and Orlando (SNW). Upcoming out and about events are scheduled for Los Angles, Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle and a couple of trips to San Jose area before the brief thanksgiving holiday break.

Beer and Bitter ballens on the left, coffee machine in Nijkerk on the right

Day one of two day seminar in Nijkerk

Bicycles lined up at the Nijkerk train station, waiting for the 6:30 train to Schiphol

Changing trains on way to Schiphol to board flight to MSP and then to DEN

After Denver back to MSP for a few days before SNW in Orlando

While being out and about I have had the chance to meet and visit with many different people. Here are some questions and comments that I have heard while out and about:

What comes after cloud?
Are there standards for clouds and virtualization?
Should cost savings be the justification for going to cloud, virtual or dynamic environments?
How is big data different than traditional stream and flat file analytics and processing using tools such as SAS (Statistical Analysis Software)?
Is big data only about map reduce and hadoop?
Are clouds any less secure or safe for storage and applications?
Do clouds and virtualization removing complexity and simplify infrastructures?
Are cloud storage services cheaper than buying and managing your own?
Is object based storage a requirement for public or private cloud?
Do solution bundles such as EMC vBlock and NetApp FlexPods reduce complexity?
Why is FCoE taking so long to be adopted and is it dead?
Should cost savings be the basis for deciding to do a VDI or virtualization project?
What is the best benchmark or comparison for making storage decisions?

In addition, there continues to be plenty of cloud confusion, FUD and hype around public, private, hybrid along with AaaS, SaaS, PaaS and IaaS among other XaaS. The myth that virtualization of servers, storage and workstations is only for consolidation continues. However there are more people beginning to see the next wave of life beyond consolidation where the focus expands to flexibility, agility and speed of deployment for non aggregated workloads and applications. Another popular myth that is changing is that data footprint reduction (DFR) is only about dedupe and backup. What is changing is an awareness that DFR spans all types of storage and data from primary to secondary leveraging different techniques including archive, backup modernization, compression, consolidation, data management and dedupe along with thin provisioning among other techniques.

Archiving for email, database and file systems needs to be rescued from being perceived as only for compliance purposes. If you want or need to reduce your data footprint impact (DFR), optimize your storage for performance or capacity, enable backup, BC and DR to be performed faster, achieve Green IT and efficiency objectives, expand your awareness around archiving. While discussing archiving, focus is often on the target or data storage medium such as disk, tape, optical or cloud along with DFR techniques such as compression and dedupe or functionally including ediscovery and WORM. The other aspects of archive that need to be looked at include policies, retention, application and software plugins for Exchange, SQL, Sharepoint, Sybase, Oracle, SAP, VMware and others.

Boot storms continue to be a common theme for apply solid state devices (SSD) in support of virtual desktop inititiaves (VDI). There is however a growing awareness and discussions around shutdown storms, day to day maintenance including virus scans in addition to applications that increase the number of writes. Consequently the discussions around VDI are expanding to include both reads and writes as well as reduced latency for storage and networks.

Some other general observations, thoughts and comments:

Getting into Holland as a visitor is easier than returning to the U.S. as a citizen
Airport security screening is more thorough and professional in Europe than in the U.S.
Hops add latency to beer (when you drink it) and to networks (time delay)
Fast tape drives need disk storage to enable streaming for reads and writes
SSD is keeping HDDs alive, HDDs are keeping tape alive and all there roles are evolving while the technologies continue to evolve.
Hybrid Hard Disk Drives (HHDDs) are gaining in awareness and deployments in workstations as well as laptops.
Confusion exists around what are flat layer 2 networks for LANs and Sans
Click here to view additional comments and perspectives

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

SNW Fall 2011 revisited and SNIA Emerald program

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 14:15:16

SNW Fall 2011 revisited and SNIA Emerald program

By Greg Schulz

Blog post: SNW Fall 2011 revisited

A couple of weeks ago I traveled down to Orlando Florida for a few days to attend the fall 2011 SNW (Storage Networking World) produced in conjunction by IDG Computerworld and the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA).

While at the Orlando event, SNIA executive director Leo Legar asked me how many SNWs I had attended and my responses was on which continent?

My answer was part in fun however also serious as I have been attending SNWs (in addition to other SNIA events) for over ten years in both North and South America as well as in Europe including presenting SNIA tutorials and SNW sessions.

SNW is always good for meeting up with old friends and acquaintances along with meeting new ones including twitter tweeps (hashtag #snwusa #snw2011 @sniacloud @snwusa) and the recent event was no exception. Granted SNW is smaller than it was during its peak in the mid 2000s however it was great to go for a couple of days of meetings, checking out the expo hall and some sessions as well as getting out and about meeting people involved with servers, storage, networking, virtualization, cloud, hardware, software and services.

SNW remains as its name implies (Storage Networking World) an event around networking as in conversations, learning, knowledge exchange, information gathering and meetings not to mention the hands on lab. I found the two days I was there adequate to get the meetings and other activities I had planned, along with time for impromptu meetings. ANother observation was that during the peak of the large mega SNW events, while there were more meetings, they were also much shorter along the lines of speed dating vs. those a couple of weeks ago where there was time to have quality conversations.

Some of the news at the recent SNW event, involved SNIA and their Green Storage Initiative (GSI) announcing the availability of the Emerald program Green IT storage energy metrics that have been in the works for several years. The SNIA Emerald program consists of specifications, taxonomies, metrics and measurements standards to gauge various types of storage power or energy usage to gauge its effectiveness. In other words, yes, Green IT and Green storage are still alive, they just are not as trendy to talk about as they were a few years ago which a shift in focus towards productivity, effective use and supporting growth to help close the green gap and missed IT as well as business opportunities.

Also during the recent SNW event, I did a book signing event sponsored by SNIA. If you have not done so, check out the SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI) who arranged for several of my new book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking to be given away. Book signings are fun in that I get to meet lots of people and hear what they are doing, encountering, looking for, have done, concerned or excited about. It was handy having SNIA CSI material available at the table as I was signing books and visiting with people to be able to give them information about things such as CDMI not to mention hearing what they were doing or looking for. Note to SNIA, if we do this again, lets make sure to have someone from the CSI at the table to join in the fun and conversations as there were some good ones. Learn more about the activities of the SNIA CSI including their Cloud Data Management Initiative (CDMI) here.

Thanks again to SNIA for arranging the book signing event and for those who were not able to get a copy of my new book before they ran out, my publisher CRC Press Taylor and Francis has arranged a special SNIA and SNW discount code. To take advantage of the SNIA and SNW discount code, go to the CRC Press web site (here) and apply the discount code KVK01 during checkout for catalog item K12375 (ISBN: 9781439851739).

Thanks again to Wayne Adams (@wma01606), Leo Legar and Michael Meleedy among others who arranged for a fantastic fall 2011 SNW event along with everyone who participated in the book signing event and other conversations while in Orlando and to those who were involved virtually via twitter.

Ok, nuff said, enough fun, lets get back to work, at least 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

Trick or treat: 2011 IT Zombie technology poll

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:13:14

Trick or treat: 2011 IT Zombie technology poll

By Greg Schulz

Warning: Do not be scared, however be ready for some trick and treat fun, it is after all, the Halloween season.

I like new emerging technologies and trends along with Zomboe technologies, you know, those technologies that have been declared dead yet are still being enhanced, sold and used.

Zombie technologies as a name may be new for some, while others will have a realization of experiencing something from the past, technologies being declared deceased yet still alive and being used. Zombie technologies are those that have been declared dead, yet still alive enabling productivity for customers that use them and often profits for the vendors who sell them.

Some people consider a technology or trend dead once it hits the peak of hype as that can signal a time to jump to the next bandwagon or shiny new technology (or toy).

Others will see a technology as being dead when it is on the down slope of the hype curve towards the trough of disillusionment citing that as enough cause for being deceased.

Yet others will declare something dead while it matures working its way through the trough of disillusionment evolving from market adoption to customer deployment eventually onto the plateau of productivity (or profitability).

Then there are those who see something as being dead once it finally is retired from productive use, or profitable for sale.

Of course then there are those who just like to call anything new or other than what they like or that is outside of their comfort zone as being dead. In other words, if your focus or area of interest is tied to new products, technology trends and their promotion, rest assured you better be where the resources are being applied and view other things as being dead and thus probably not a fan of Zombie technologies (or at least publicly).

On the other hand, if your area of focus is on leveraging technologies and products in a productive way, including selling things that are profitable without a lot of marketing effort, your view of what is dead or not will be different. For example if you are risk averse letting someone else be on the leading bleeding edge (unless you have a dual redundant HA blood bank attached to your environment) your view of what is dead or not will be much different from those promoting the newest trend.

Funny thing about being declared dead, often it is not the technology, implementation, research and development or customer acquisitions, rather simply a lack of promotion, marketing and general awareness. Take tape for example which has been a multi decade member of the Zombie technology list. Recently vendors banded together investing or spending on marketing awareness reaching out to say tape is alive. Guess what, lo and behold, there was a flurry of tape activity in venues that normally might not be talking about tape. Funny how marketing resources can bring something back from the dead including Zombie technologies to become popular or cool to discuss again.

With the 2011 Halloween season among us, it is time to take a look this years list of Zombie technologies. Keep in mind that being named a Zombie technology is actually an honor in that it usually means someone wants to see it dead so that his or her preferred product or technology can take it place.

Here are 2011 Zombie technologies.

Backup: Far from being dead, its focus is changing and evolving with a broader emphasis on data protection. While many technologies associated with backup have been declared dead along with some backup software tools, the reality is that it is time or modernizes how backups and data protection are performed. Thus, backup is on the Zombie technology list and will live on, like it or not until it is exorcised from, your environment replaced with a modern resilient and flexible protected data infrastructure.

Big Data: While not declared dead yet, it will be soon by some creative marketer trying to come up with something new. On the other hand, there are those who have done big data analytics across different Zombie platforms for decades which of course is a badge of honor. As for some of the other newer or shiny technologies, they will have to wait to join the big data Zombies.

Cloud: Granted clouds are still on the hype cycle, some argue that it has reached its peak in terms of hype and now heading down into the trough of disillusionment, which of course some see as meaning dead. In my opinion cloud, hype has or is close to peaking, real work is occurring which means a gradual shift from industry adoption to customer deployment. Put a different way, clouds will be on the Zombie technology list of a couple of decades or more. Also, keep in mind that being on the Zombie technology list is an honor indicating shift towards adoption and less on promotion or awareness fan fare.

Data centers: With the advent of the cloud, data centers or habitats for technology have been declared dead, yet there is continued activity in expanding or building new ones all the time. Even the cloud relies on data centers for housing the physical resources including servers, storage, networks and other components that make up a Green and Virtual Data Center or Cloud environment. Needless to day, data centers will stay on the zombie list for some time.

Disk Drives: Hard disk drives (HDD) have been declared dead for many years and more recently due to popularity of SSDs have lost their sex appeal. Ironically, if tape is dead at the hands of HDDs, then how can HDDs be dead, unless of course they are on the Zombie technology list. What is happening is like tape, HDDs role are changing as the technology continues to evolve and will be around for another decade or so.

Fibre Channel (FC): This is a perennial favorite having been declared dead on a consistent basis over three decades now going back to the early 90s. While there are challengers as there have been in the past, FC is far from dead as a technology with 16 Gb (16GFC) now rolling out and a transition path for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). My take is that FC will be on the zombie list for several more years until finally retired.

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE): This is a new entrant and one uniquely qualified for being declared dead as it is still in its infancy. Like its peer FC which was also declared dead a couple of decades ago, FCoE is just getting started and looks to be on the Zombie list for a couple of decades into the future.

Green IT: I have heard that Green IT is dead, after all, it was hyped before the cloud era which has been declared dead by some, yet there remains a Green gap or disconnect between messaging and issues thus missed opportunities. For a dead trend, SNIA recently released their Emerald program which consists of various metrics and measurements (remember, zombies like metrics to munch on) for gauging energy effectiveness for data storage. The hype cycle of Green IT and Green storage may be dead, however Green IT in the context of a shift in focus to increased productivity using the same or less energy is underway. Thus Green IT and Green storage are on the Zombie list.

iPhone: With the advent of Droid and other smart phones, I have heard iPhones declared dead, granted some older versions are. However while the Apple cofounder Steve Jobs has passed on (RIP), I suspect we will be seeing and hearing more about the iPhone for a few years more if not longer.

IBM Mainframe: When it comes to information technology (IT), the king of the Zombie list is the venerable IBM mainframe aka zSeries. The IBM mainframe has been declared dead for over 30 years if not longer and will be on the zombie list for another decade or so. After all, IBM keeps investing in the technology as people buy them not to mention IBM built a new factory to assemble them in.

NAS: Congratulations to Network Attached Storage (NAS) including Network File System (NFS) and Windows Common Internet File System (CIFS) aka Samba or SMB for making the Zombie technology list. This means of course that NAS in general is no longer considered an upstart or immature technology; rather it is being used and enhanced in many different directions.

PC: The personal computer was touted as killing off some of its Zombie technology list members including the IBM mainframe. With the advent of tablets, smart phones, virtual desktops infrastructures (VDI), the PC has been declared dead. My take is that while the IBM mainframe may eventually drop of the Zombie list in another decade or two if it finds something to do in retirement, the PC will be on the list for many years to come. Granted, the PC could live on even longer in the form of a virtual server where the majority of guest virtual machines (VMs) are in support of Windows based PC systems.

Printers: How long have we heard that printers are dead? The day that printers are dead is the day that the HP board of directors should really consider selling off that division.

RAID: Its been over twenty years since the first RAID white paper and early products appeared. Back in the 90s RAID was a popular buzzword and bandwagon topic however, people have moved on to new things. RAID has been on the Zombie technology list for several years now while it continues to find itself being deployed at the high end of the market down into consumer products. The technology continues to evolve in both hardware as well as software implementations on a local and distributed basis. Look for RAID to be on the Zombie list for at least the next couple of decades while it continues to evolve, after all, there is still room for RAID 7, RAID 8, RAID 9 not to mention moving into hexadecimal or double digit variants.

SAN: Storage Area Networks (SANs) have been declared dead and thus on the Zombie technology list before, and will be mentioned again well into the next decade. While the various technologies will continue to evolve, networking your servers to storage will also expand into different directions.

Tape: Magnetic tape has been on the Zombie technology list almost as long as the IBM mainframe and it is hard to predict which one will last longer. My opinion is that tape will outlast the IBM mainframe, as it will be needed to retrieve the instructions on how to de install those Zombie monsters. Tape has seen resurgence in vendors spending some marketing resources and to no surprise, there has been an increase in coverage about it being alive, even at Google. Rest assured, tape is very safe on the Zombie technology list for another decade or more. <<

Windows: Similar to the PC, Microsoft Windows has been touted in the past as causing other platforms to be dead, however has been added to the Zombie list for many years now. Given that Windows is the most commonly virtualized platform or guest VM, I think we will be hearing about Windows on the Zombie list for a few decades more. There are particular versions of Windows as with any technology that have gone into maintenance or sustainment mode or even discontinued.

Poll: What are the most popular Zombie technologies?

Keep in mind that a Zombie technology is one that is still in use, being developed or enhanced, sold usually at a profit and used typically in a productive way. In some cases, a declared dead or Zombie technology may only be just in its infancy getting started having either just climbed over the peak of hype or coming out of the trough of disillusionment. In other instance, the Zombie technology has been around for a long time yet continues to be used (or abused).

[polldaddy poll="5592038"]

Note: Zombie voting rules apply which means vote early, vote often, and of course vote for those who cannot include those that are dead (real or virtual).

Ok, nuff said, enough fun, lets get back to work, at least 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

The blame game: Does cloud storage result in data loss?

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:13:14

The blame game: Does cloud storage result in data loss?

By Greg Schulz

I recently came across a piece by Carl Brooks over at IT Tech News Daily that caught my eye, title was Cloud Storage Often Results in Data Loss. The piece has an effective title (good for search engine: SEO optimization) as it stood out from many others I saw on that particular day.

What caught my eye on Carls piece is that it reads as if the facts based on a quick survey point to clouds resulting in data loss, as opposed to being an opinion that some cloud usage can result in data loss.

My opinion is that if not used properly including ignoring best practices, any form of data storage medium or media could result or be blamed for data loss. For some people they have lost data as a result of using cloud storage services just as other people have lost data or access to information on other storage mediums and solutions. For example, data has been lost on tape, Hard Disk Drives (HDDs), Solid State Devices (SSD), Hybrid HDDs (HHDD), RAID and non RAID, local and remote and even optical based storage systems large and small. In some cases, there have been errors or problems with the medium or media, in other cases storage systems have lost access to, or lost data due to hardware, firmware, software, or configuration including due to human error among other issues.

Technology failure: Not if, rather when and how to decrease impact
Any technology regardless of what it is or who it is from along with its architecture design and implementation can fail. It is not if, rather when and how gracefully along with what safeguards to decrease the impact, in addition to containing or isolating faults differentiates various products or solutions. How they automatically repair and self heal to keep running or support accessibility and maintain data integrity are important as is how those options are used. Granted a failure may not be technology related per say, rather something associated with human intervention, configuration, change management (or lack thereof) along with accidental or intentional activities.

Walking the talk
I have used public cloud storage services for several years including SaaS and AaaS as well as IaaS (See more XaaS here) and knock on wood, have not lost any data yet, loss of access sure, however not data being lost.

I follow my advice and best practices when selecting cloud providers looking for good value, service level agreements (SLAs) and service level objectives (SLOs) over low cost or for free services.

In the several years of using cloud based storage and services there has been some loss of access, however no loss of data. Those service disruptions or loss of access to data and services ranged from a few minutes to a little over an hour. In those scenarios, if I could not have waited for cloud storage to become accessible, I could have accessed a local copy if it were available.

Had a major disruption occurred where it would have been several days before I could gain access to that information, or if it were actually lost, I have a data insurance policy. That data insurance policy is part of my business continuance (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) strategy. My BC and DR strategy is a multi layered approach combining local, offline and offsite as along with online cloud data protection and archiving.

Assuming my cloud storage service could get data back to a given point (RPO) in a given amount of time (RTO), I have some options. One option is to wait for the service or information to become available again assuming a local copy is no longer valid or available. Another option is to start restoration from a master gold copy and then roll forward changes from the cloud services as that information becomes available. In other words, I am using cloud storage as another resource that is for both protecting what is local, as well as complimenting how I locally protect things.

Minimize or cut data loss or loss of access
Anything important should be protected locally and remotely meaning leveraging cloud and a master or gold backup copy.

To cut the cost of protecting information, I also leverage archives, which mean not all data gets protected the same. Important data is protected more often reducing RPO exposure and speed up RTO during restoration. Other data that is not as important is protected, however on a different frequency with other retention cycles, in other words, tiered data protection. By implementing tiered data protection, best practices, and various technologies including data footprint reduction (DFR) such as archive, compression, dedupe in addition to local disk to disk (D2D), disk to disk to cloud (D2D2C), along with routine copies to offline media (removable HDDs or RHDDs) that go offsite, Im able to stretch my data protection budget further. Not only is my data protection budget stretched further, I have more options to speed up RTO and better detail for recovery and enhanced RPOs.

If you are looking to avoid losing data, or loss of access, it is a simple equation in no particular order:

Strategy and design
Best practices and processes
Various technologies
Quality products
Robust service delivery
Configuration and implementation
SLO and SLA management metrics
People skill set and knowledge
Usage guidelines or terms of service (ToS)

Unfortunately, clouds like other technologies or solutions get a bad reputation or blamed when something goes wrong. Sometimes it is the technology or service that fails, other times it is a combination of errors that resulted in loss of access or lost data. With clouds as has been the case with other storage mediums and systems in the past, when something goes wrong and if it has been hyped, chances are it will become a target for blame or finger pointing vs. determining what went wrong so that it does not occur again. For example cloud storage has been hyped as easy to use, dont worry, just put your data there, you can get out of the business of managing storage as the cloud will do that magically for you behind the scenes.

The reality is that while cloud storage solutions can offload functions, someone is still responsible for making decisions on its usage and configuration that impact availability. What separates various providers is their ability to design in best practices, isolate and contain faults quickly, have resiliency integrated as part of a solution along with various SLAs aligned to what the service level you are expecting in an easy to use manner.

Does that mean the more you pay the more reliable and resilient a solution should be?
No, not necessarily, as there can still be risks including how the solution is used.

Does that mean low cost or for free solutions have the most risk?
No, not necessarily as it comes down to how you use or design around those options. In other words, while cloud storage services remove or mask complexity, it still comes down to how you are going to use a given service.

Shared responsibility for cloud (and non cloud) storage data protection
Anything important enough that you cannot afford to lose, or have quick access to should be protected in different locations and on various mediums. In other words, balance your risk. Cloud storage service provider toned to take responsibility to meet service expectations for a given SLA and SLOs that you agree to pay for (unless free).

As the customer you have the responsibility of following best practices supplied by the service provider including reading the ToS. Part of the responsibility as a customer or consumer is to understand what are the ToS, SLA and SLOs for a given level of service that you are using. As a customer or consumer, this means doing your homework to be ready as a smart educated buyer or consumer of cloud storage services.

If you are a vendor or value added reseller (VAR), your opportunity is to help customers with the acquisition process to make informed decision. For VARs and solution providers, this can mean up selling customers to a higher level of service by making them aware of the risk and reward benefits as opposed to focus on cost. After all, if a order taker at McDonalds can ask Would you like to super size your order, why cant you as a vendor or solution provider also have a value oriented up sell message.

Additional related links to read more and sources of information:

Choosing the Right Local/Cloud Hybrid Backup for SMBs
E2E Awareness and insight for IT environments
Poll: What Do You Think of IT Clouds?
Convergence: People, Processes, Policies and Products
What do VARs and Clouds as well as MSPs have in common?
Industry adoption vs. industry deployment, is there a difference?
Cloud conversations: Loss of data access vs. data loss
Clouds and Data Loss: Time for CDP (Commonsense Data Protection)?
Clouds are like Electricity: Dont be scared
Wit and wisdom for BC and DR
Criteria for choosing the right business continuity or disaster recovery consultant
Local and Cloud Hybrid Backup for SMBs
Is cloud disaster recovery appropriate for SMBs?
Laptop data protection: A major headache with many cures
Disaster recovery in the cloud explained
Backup in the cloud: Large enterprises wary, others climbing on board
Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011)
Enterprise Systems Backup and Recovery: A Corporate Insurance Policy

Poll: Who is responsible for cloud storage data loss?

[polldaddy poll="5588729"]

Taking action, what you should (or not) do
Dont be scared of clouds, however do your homework, be ready, look before you leap and follow best practices. Look into the service level agreements (SLAs) associated with a given cloud storage product or service. Follow best practices about how you or someone else will protect what data is put into the cloud.

For critical data or information, consider having a copy of that data in the cloud as well as at or in another place, which could be in a different cloud or local or offsite and offline. Keep in mind the theme for critical information and data is not if, rather when so what can be done to decrease the risk or impact of something happening, in other words, be ready.

Data put into the cloud can be lost, or, loss of access to it can occur for some amount of time just as happens with using non cloud storage such as tape, disk or ssd. What impacts or minimizes your risk of using traditional local or remote as well as cloud storage are the best practices, how configured, protected, secured and managed. Another consideration is the type and quality of the storage product or cloud service can have a big impact. Sure, a quality product or service can fail; however, you can also design and configure to decrease those impacts.

Wrap up
Bottom line, do not be scared of cloud storage, however be ready, do your homework, review best practices, understand benefits and caveats, risk and reward. For those who want to learn more about cloud storage (public, private and hybrid) along with data protection, data management, data footprint reduction among other related topics and best practices, I happen to know of some good resources. Those resources in addition to the links provided above are titled Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press) that you can learn more about here as well as find at Amazon among other venues. Also, check out Enterprise Systems Backup and Recovery: A Corporate Insurance Policy by Preston De Guise (aka twitter @backupbear ) which is a great resource for protecting data.

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

Commentary on Clouds, Storage, Networking, Green IT and other topics

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:13:14

Commentary on Clouds, Storage, Networking, Green IT and other topics

By Greg Schulz

Rather than doing a bunch of separate posts, here is a collection of different perspectives and commentary on various IT and data storage industry activity.

In this link are comments and perspectives regarding thin provisioning including how it works as well as when to use it for optimizing storage space capacity. Speaking of server and storage capacity, here in this link are comments on what server and storage would be needed to support an SMB office of 50 people (or more, or less) along with how to back it up.

For those interested or in need of managing data and other records in this link are comments on preparing yourself for regulatory scrutiny.

Storage networking interface or protocol debates (battles) can be interesting, in this link, see the role of iSCSI SANs for data storage environments. Lets not forget about Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) which is discussed in this link and here in this link. Here in this link are comments about how integrated rackem, stackem and package bundles stack up. To support increased continued demand for managed service providers (MSP), cloud and hosted services providers are continuing to invest in their infrastructures, so read some comments here. While technology plays a role particular as it matures, there is another barrier to leveraging converged solutions and that is organizational, read some perspectives and thoughts here.

Storage optimization including data footprint reduction (DFR) can be used to cut costs as well as support growth. In this link see tips on reducing storage costs and additional perspectives in this link to do more with what you have. Here in this link are some wit and wisdom comments on the world of disaster recovery solutions. Meanwhile in this link are perspectives for choosing the right business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) consultant. In this link are comments on BC and DR including planning for virtualization and life beyond consolidation. Are disk based dedupe and virtual tape libraries a hold over for old backup, or a gateway to the future, see some perspectives on those topics and technologies in this link.

Here are some more comments on DR and BC leveraging the cloud while perspectives on various size organizations looking at clouds for backup in this piece here. What is the right local, cloud or hybrid backup for SMBs, check out some commentary here while viewing some perspectives on cloud disaster recovery here. Not to be forgotten, laptop data protection can also be a major headache however there are also many cures discussed in this piece here.

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Green Storage Initiative (GSI) debut their Emerald power efficiency measurement specification recently, read some perspectives and comments in this link here. While we are on the topic of data center efficiency and effectiveness, here in this link are perspectives on micro servers or mini blade systems. Solution bundles also known as data center in a box or SAN in a CAN have been popular with solutions from EMC (vBlocks) and NetApp (FlexPods) among others, read perspectives on them in this link.

What would a conversation involving data storage and IT (particularly buzzword bingo) be without comments about Big Data and Big Bandwidth which you can read here.

Want to watch some videos, from Spring 2011 SNW, check out starting around the 15:00 to 55:00 time scale in this video from the Cube where various topics are discussed. Interested in how to scale data storage with clustered or scale up and out solutions, check out this video here or if you want to see some perspectives on data de duplication watch this clip.

Here is a video discussing SMBs as the current sweet spot for server virtualization with comments on the SMB virtualization dark side also discussed here. Meanwhile here are comments regarding EMC Flashy announcements from earlier this year on the Cube. Check out this video where I was a guest of Cali Lewis and John MacArthur on the Cube from the Dell Storage Forum discussing a range of topics as well as having some fun. Check out these videos and perspectives from VMworld 2011.

Whats your take on choosing the best SMB NAS? Here are some of my perspectives on choosing a SMB NAS storage system. Meanwhile here are some perspectives on enterprise class storage features finding their way into SMB NAS storage systems.

Meanwhile industry leaders EMC and NetApp have been busy enhancing their NAS storage solutions that you can read comments here.

Are you familiar with the Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA)? Here are some comments about OVA and other server virtualization topics.

Whats your take on Thunderbolt the new interconnect Apple is using in place of USB, here are my thoughts. Meanwhile various other tips and Ask the Expert (AtE) and discussion can be found here.

Check out the above links, as well view more perspectives, comments and news here, here, here, here and here.

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

Trick or treat: Have you seen any IT Frankenstacks

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:13:14

Trick or treat: Have you seen any IT Frankenstacks

By Greg Schulz

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?

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.

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

Convergence: People, Processes, Policies and Products

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 12:44:55

Convergence: People, Processes, Policies and Products

By Greg Schulz

Converged and dynamic infrastructures, cloud and virtual environments are popular themes and industry trends with different levels of adoption and deployment occurring. Although are you focusing on products, or the other Ps, that is people, processes and policies (or more here).

The reason I bring this up is quite often I hear discussions that are centered around the products (or services) providing various benefits, return on investment or cost saving opportunities.

Very little discussions are heard around whats being done or enabled by vendors and service providers, or what is being adopted by customers to tie in people, process and policy convergence.

Put another way, the discussions focus around the new technology or service while forgetting or assuming that the people, process and policies will naturally fall into place.

Will customer policies, process or procedures along with internal organizational (e.g. politics) issues with how people leverage those converged products also evolve?

I assert that while there are benefits that can be obtained from leveraging new enabling technologies (hardware, software, networks, services) their full potential will not be realized until policies, process, people skill sets and even more important, organizational or intradepartmental turf wars and boundaries are also addressed.

Converged family team

This does not mean consolidating different groups, rather it can mean thawing out relations between groups if there are challenges, establishing an abstraction or virtual layer, a virtual team to cut across different technology domains combing various skill sets, new best practices, policies and procedures in order to streamline management of physical and virtual resources.

Chuck Hollis (aka twitter @ChuckHollis) of EMC has an interesting blog post (here) that ties in the themes of different IT groups working or not having situational awareness that is worth a read. You can also read this Industry Trends and Perspective solution brief that I did earlier this year on the topic of Removing Organizational Barriers for Leveraging Technology Convergence.

Here are some additional related posts:

What is your organization doing (or have done) to enable convergence factoring in people, processes, policies and products or is it a non issue for you?

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

Why VASA is important to have in your VMware CASA

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 18:36:15

Why VASA is important to have in your VMware CASA

By Greg Schulz

Here is a link to a recent guest post that I was invited to do over at The virtualization Practice (TVP) pertaining to VMware vSphere V5.0 VASA.

This new post follows up on one that I did about a month ago pertaining to recent vSphere V5.0 storage and IO enhancements including Storage DRS (SDRS).

VMware vSphere Storage Aware API (VASA) is an Applications Programming Interface (API) that provides insight and awareness into supported storage systems configuration, current health, status and capabilities that can be used for enabling various management activities.

Practical Email optimization and archiving strategies

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 12:34:56

Practical Email optimization and archiving strategies

By Greg Schulz

Email is a popular tool for messaging, calendaring, and managing contacts along with attachments in most organizations.

Given the popularity of email and diverse ways that it is used for managing various forms of unstructured data attachments including photos, video, audio, spreadsheets, presentations and other document objects, there are corresponding back end challenges. Those back end challenges including managing the data storage repositories (e.g. file systems and storage systems) that are used for preserving and serving email documents along with enabling regulatory or compliance mandates.

Email archiving is an important enabler for regulatory compliance and e-discovery functions. However there is another important use for E-mail archiving which as a data footprint reduction (DFR) technique and technology enables storage optimization, being green and supporting growth while stretching budgets further. There is after all no such thing as a data or information recession and all one has to do to verify the trend is to look at your own email activity.

There are however constraints on time, budgets and demands to do more while relying on more information and email has become a central tool for messaging including social media networking, handling of attachments and means to manage all of that data.

DFR enables more data to be stored, retained, managed and maintenance in a cost effective manner. This includes storing more data managed per person, where when the additional data being retained adds value to an organization. Also included is keeping more data readily accessible, not necessarily instantly accessible, however but within minutes instead of hours or days depending on service requirements.

Here is a link to a recent article that I did presenting five tips and strategies for optimizing e-mail using archiving.

Hopefully many of you will find these to be common sense tips being implemented, however if not, now is the time to take action to stretch your resources further to do more.

In general email optimization tips include:

Set policies for retention and disposal
Establish filters and rules
Index and organize your inbox
Archive messages regularly
Perform routine cleanup and optimization
Leverage cloud data protection services and solutions

When it comes to archiving projects, walk before you run, establish success to build upon for broader deployment of E-mail archiving by finding and address low hanging fruit opportunities.

Instead of trying to do to much, find opportunities that can be addressed and leveraged as examples to build business cases to move forward.

By having some success stories and proof points, these can be used to help convince management to support additional steps not to mention getting them to back your policies to achieve success.

An effective way to convince management these days is to show them how by taking additional Email archiving steps you can support increased growth demand, reduce costs while enhancing productivity not to mention adding compliance and ediscovery capabilities as side benefits.

You can read more here and here, 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

HDS buys BlueArc, any surprises here?

Thu, 8 Sep 2011 15:15:16

HDS buys BlueArc, any surprises here?

By Greg Schulz

Technically here in the northern hemisphere it is still summer, so there is another summer wedding to announce.

The other day Hitachi Data Systems (aka HDS) announced that they finally tied the knot buying their Network Attached Storage (NAS) partner BlueArc whom they have been in a OEM premarital arrangement for the last five years or so (wow, was that a long engagement or what?). HDS being a subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd. a Japanese company it should be no surprise that they operate in a cool, calculated conservative manner with products that have over the past several decades been known for delivering resiliency, functionality, performance and value.

To those in the IT and specifically data storage industry, the only surprise about HDS buying BlueArc should be what took them so long to do so myself included. With unstructured data, big data, high performance computing, high productivity computing (aka HPC), and big bandwidth needs expanding, it only makes sense that HDS finally ties the knot formally acquiring BlueArc signaling what I hope are a few things for their collective future together.

Things that I hope HDS can accomplish with their acquisition of BlueArc include among others:

Leverage the BlueArc hardware and performance combine with the HDS software suite to expand further upstream (and downstream) as well as into different adjacent markets leveraging their success over the long courtship where both parties got to know each other more.
Signal to the industry that they are truly committed to a long term NAS product solution strategy. HDS has been doing a good job of sticking with BlueArc for the past five or so years having had several previous NAS partner relationships including with NetApp, NSS and others besides their own internal projects.
Expand their focus to lead with NAS pulling storage with it in addition to using NAS to accessorize (or bling aka Mr. T starter kit to go with Mr. T storage videos) storage systems which means of course, going more direct toe to toe with the likes of former partner NetApp, EMC, HP (with IBRIX), IBM and Dell among many others. Ironically former HDS partner NetApp acquired the Engenio storage group from LSI whose products competed with HDS in some spaces, while BlueArc was a Engenio partner.
Continue to develop both the hardware and software feature functionality around the BlueArc products in addition to further integration across the joint product lines for both traditional, as well as clustered, scale out, bulk, big data, big bandwidth and HPC environments.
Sharpen their NAS message and solution offerings including providing the support, tools and programs to enable both their joint direct sales forces as well as their partner value added reseller (VAR) and channel networks.

Check out (here) some additional comments and perspectives by Ray Lucchesi (aka twitter @raylucchesi) over on his blog pertaining to HDS buying BlueArc.

Congratulations to both HDS and BlueArc along with best wishes, this is a deal that is good for both, now, or once the honeymoon is over, lets see how this is executed upon building on their prior joint success to expand into new market opportunities on a global basis. HDS has tools and people to move into and leverage these new as well as existing opportunities, lets see how they can execute on those hopefully not spending too much time or money on the honeymoon while their competitors are out being busy in some of those same accounts in this last month of an important sales quarter (all quarters are important when it comes to sales).

Disclosure for those interested and FWIW: BlueArc had been a client of StorageIO a few years ago, however not currently. HDS is not nor have they been a client of StorageIO, however in prior life I was a customer of theirs in addition to being a partner and supplier when I was on the vendor side of the table.

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

Check out these top 50 IT blogs

Thu, 8 Sep 2011 14:15:16

Check out these top 50 IT blogs

By Greg Schulz

The other day I saw something come in via the net about a top 50 IT blog list from Biztech Magazine, so being curious I clicked on the link (after making sure that it was safe).

To my surprise, I saw my blog (aka Gregs StorageIOblog) listed near the top (they sorted by blog name order) of the top 50 IT blog sites that they listed.

Im honored to have been included in such an esteemed and diverse list of blogs spanning various technologies, topics and IT focus areas.

Congratulations to all that made the list as well as others blogs that you will want to add to your reading lists including those mentioned over on Calvin Zitos (aka @hpstorageguy) blog.

Check out the top 50 IT blog list here.

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

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking book released

Wed, 7 Sep 2011 13:14:15

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking book released

By Greg Schulz

Ok, its now official, following its debut at the VMworld 2011 book store last week in Las Vegas, my new book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press) is now formally released with general availability announced today along with companion material located at http://storageio.com/book3.html including the Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking LinkedIn group page launched a few months ago. Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CVDSN) a 370 page hard cover print is my third solo book that follows The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press 2009) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier 2004).

CVDSN book was on display at VMworld 2011 book store last week along with a new book by Duncan Epping (aka @DuncanYB ) and Frank Denneman (aka @frankdenneman ) titled VMware vSphere 5 Clustering Technical Deepdive. You can get your copy of Duncan and Franks new book on Amazon here.

Here is a photo of me on the left visiting an VMworld 2011 attendee in the VMworld book store.

Whats inside the book, theme and topics covered

When it comes to clouds, virtualization, converged and dynamic infrastructures Dont be scared however do look before you leap to be be prepared including doing your homework.

What this means is that you should do your homework, prepare, learn, and get involved with proof of concepts (POCs) and training to build the momentum and success to continue an ongoing IT journey. Identify where clouds, virtualization and data storage networking technologies and techniques compliment and enable your journey to efficient, effective and productive optimized IT services delivery.

There is no such thing as a data or information recession: Do more with what you have

A common challenge in many organizations is exploding data growth along with associated management tasks and constraints, including budgets, staffing, time, physical facilities, floor space, and power and cooling. IT clouds and dynamic infrastructure environments enable flexible, efficient and optimized, cost-effective and productive services delivery. The amount of data being generated, processed, and stored continues to grow, a trend that does not appear to be changing in the future. Even during the recent economic crisis, there has been no slow down or information recession. Instead, the need to process, move, and store data has only increased, in fact both people and data are living longer. CVDSN presents options, technologies, best practices and strategies for enabling IT organizations looking to do more with what they have while supporting growth along with new services without compromising on cost or QoS delivery (see figure below). Driving Return on Innovation the new ROI: Doing more, reducing costs while boosting productivity

Expanding focus from efficiency and optimization to effectiveness and productivity

A primary tenant of a cloud and virtualized environment is to support growing demand in a cost-effective manner with increased agility without compromising QoS. By removing complexity and enabling agility, information services can be delivered in a timely manner to meet changing business needs.

There are many types of information services delivery model options

Various types of information services delivery modes should be combined to meet various needs and requirements. These complimentary service delivery options and descriptive terms include cloud, virtual and data storage network enabled environments. These include dynamic Infrastructure, Public & Private and Hybrid Cloud, abstracted, multi-tenant, capacity on demand, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) among others.

Convergence combing different technology domains and skill sets

Components of a cloud and virtual environment include desktop, servers, and storage, networking, hardware, and software, services along with APIs and software stacks. This include virtual and physical desktops, data, voice and storage networks, LANs, SANs, MANs, WANs, faster blade and rack servers with more memory, SSD and high-capacity storage and associated virtualization tools and management software. True convergence combines leveraging technology and people, processes and best practices aligned to make the most of those resources to deliver cost effective services delivery.

Best people, processes, practices and products (the four Ps)

Bringing all of the various components together is the Ps (people skill sets, process, practices and products). This means leveraging and enhancing people skill sets and experience, process and procedures to optimize workflow for streamlined service orchestration, practices and policies to be more effectively reducing waste without causing new bottlenecks, and products such as racks, stacks, hardware, software, and managed or cloud services.

Service categories and catalogs, templates SLO and SLA alignment

Establishing service categories aligned to known service levels and costs enables resources to be aligned to applicable SLO and SLA requirements. Leveraging service templates and defined policies can enable automation and rapid provisioning of resources including self service requests.

Navigating to effective IT services delivery: Metrics, measurements and E2E management

You cannot effectively manage what you do not know about; likewise, without situational awareness or navigation tools, you are flying blind. E2E (End to End) tools can provide monitoring and usage metrics for reporting and accounting, including enabling comparison with other environments. Metrics include customer service satisfaction, SLO and SLAs, QoS, performance, availability and costs to service delivered.

The importance of data protection for virtual, cloud and physical environments

Clouds and virtualization are important tools and technologies for protecting existing consolidated or converged as well as traditional environments. Likewise, virtual and cloud environments or data placed there also need to be protected. Now is the time to rethink and modernize your data protection strategy to be more effective, protecting, preserving and serving more data for longer periods of time with less complexity and cost.

Packing smart and effectively for your journey: Data footprint reduction (DFR)

Reducing your data footprint impact leveraging data footprint reduction (DFR) techniques, technologies and best practices is important for enabling an optimized, efficient and effective IT services delivery environment. Reducing your data footprint is enabled with clouds and virtualization providing a means and mechanism for archiving inactive data and for transparently moving it. On the other hand, moving to a cloud and virtualized environment to do more with what you have is enhanced by reducing the impact of your data footprint. The ABCDs of data footprint reduction include Archiving, Backup modernization, Compression and consolidation, Data management and dedupe along with Storage tiering and thin provisioning among other techniques.

How the book is laid out:

Table of content (TOC)
How the book is organized and who should read it
Preface
Section I: Why the need for cloud, virtualization and data storage networks
Chapter 1: Industry trends and perspectives: From issues and challenges to opportunities
Chapter 2: Cloud, virtualization and data storage networking fundamentals
Section II: Managing data and resources: Protect, preserve, secure and serve
Chapter 3: Infrastructure Resource Management (IRM)
Chapter 4: Data and storage networking security
Chapter 5: Data protection (Backup/Restore, BC and DR)
Chapter 6: Metrics and measurement for situational awareness
Section III: Technology, tools and solution options
Chapter 7: Data footprint reduction: Enabling cost effective data demand growth
Chapter 8: Enabling data footprint reduction: Storage capacity optimization
Chapter 9: Storage services and systems
Chapter 10: Server virtualization
Chapter 11: Connectivity: Networking with your servers and storage
Chapter 12: Cloud and solution packages
Chapter 13: Management and tools
Section IV: Putting IT all together
Chapter 14: Applying what you have learned
Chapter 15: Wrap up, whats next and book summary
Appendices:
Where to Learn More
Index and Glossary

Here is the release that went out via Business Wire (aka Bizwire) earlier today.

Industry Veteran Greg Schulz of StorageIO Reveals Latest IT Strategies in Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking Book
StorageIO Founder Launches the Definitive Book for Enabling Cloud, Virtualized, Dynamic, and Converged Infrastructures

Stillwater, Minnesota – September 7, 2011 – The Server and StorageIO Group (www.storageio.com), a leading independent IT industry advisory and consultancy firm, in conjunction with publisher CRC Press, a Taylor and Francis imprint, today announced the release of “Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking,” a new book by Greg Schulz, noted author and StorageIO founder. The book examines strategies for the design, implementation, and management of hardware, software, and services technologies that enable the most advanced, dynamic, and flexible cloud and virtual environments.

The book supplies real-world perspectives, tips, recommendations, figures, and diagrams on creating an efficient, flexible and optimized IT service delivery infrastructures to support demand without compromising quality of service (QoS) in a cost-effective manner. “Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking” looks at converging IT resources and management technologies to facilitate efficient and effective delivery of information services, including enabling information factories. Schulz guides readers of all experience levels through various technologies and techniques available to them for enabling efficient information services.

Topics covered in the book include:

Information services model options and best practices
Metrics for efficient E2E IT management and measurement
Server, storage, I/O networking, and data center virtualization
Converged and cloud storage services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS)
Public, private, and hybrid cloud and managed services
Data protection for virtual, cloud, and physical environments
Data footprint reduction (archive, backup modernization, compression, dedupe)
High availability, business continuance (BC), and disaster recovery (DR)
Performance, availability and capacity optimization

This book explains when, where, with what, and how to leverage cloud, virtual, and data storage networking as part of an IT infrastructure today and in the future. “Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking” comprehensively covers IT data storage networking infrastructures, including public, private and hybrid cloud, managed services, virtualization, and traditional IT environments.

“With all the chatter in the market about cloud storage and how it can solve all your problems, the industry needed a clear breakdown of the facts and how to use cloud storage effectively. Greg's latest book does exactly that,” said Greg Brunton of EDS, an HP company.

Click here to listen and watch Schulz discuss his new book in this video.

About the Book

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking has 370 pages, with more than 100 figures and tables, 15 chapters plus appendices, as well as a glossary. CRC Press catalog number K12375, ISBN10: 1439851735, ISBN13: 9781439851739, publication September 2011. The hard cover book can be purchased now at global venues including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Digital Guru and CRCPress.com. Companion material is located at http://storageio.com/book3.html including images, additional information, supporting site links at CRC Press, LinkedIn Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking group, and other books by the author. Direct book editorial review inquiries to John Wyzalek of CRC Press at john.wyzalek@taylorfrancis.com (twitter @jwyzalek) or +1 (917) 351-7149. For bulk and special orders contact Chris Manion of CRC Press at chris.manion@taylorandfrancis.com or +1 (561) 998-2508. For custom, derivative works and excerpts, contact StorageIO at info@storageio.com.

About the Author

Greg Schulz is the founder of the independent IT industry advisory firm StorageIO. Before forming StorageIO, Schulz worked for several vendors in systems engineering, sales, and marketing technologist roles. In addition to having been an analyst, vendor and VAR, Schulz also gained real world hands on experience working in IT organizations across different industry sectors. His IT customer experience spans systems development, systems administrator, disaster recovery consultant, and capacity planner across different technology domains, including servers, storage, I/O networking hardware, software and services. Today, in addition to his analyst and research duties, Schulz is a prolific writer, blogger, and sought-after speaker, sharing his expertise with worldwide technology manufacturers and resellers, IT users, and members of the media. With an insightful and thought-provoking style, Schulz is also author of the books “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC Press, 2009) which is on the Intel developers recommended reading list and the SNIA-endorsed reading book “Resilient Storage Networks: Designing Flexible Scalable Data Infrastructures” (Elsevier, 2004). Schulz is available for interviews and commentary, briefings, speaking engagements at conferences and private events, webinars, video and podcast along with custom advisory consultation sessions. Learn more at http://storageio.com.

End of press release.

Wrap up

I want to express thanks to all of those involved with the project that spanned over the past year.

Stayed tuned for more news and updates pertaining to Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking along with related material including upcoming events as well as chapter excerpts. Speaking of events, here is information on an upcoming workshop seminar that I will be involved with for IT storage and networking professionals to be held October 4th and 5th in the Netherlands.

You can get your copy now at global venues including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Digital Guru and CRCPress.com.

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

StorageIO going Dutch again: October 2011 Seminar for storage professionals

Tue, 6 Sep 2011 22:11:22

StorageIO going Dutch again: October 2011 Seminar for storage professionals

By Greg Schulz

Greg Schulz of StorageIO in conjunction with or dutch partner Brouwer Storage Consultancy will be presenting a two day workshop seminar for IT storage, virtualization, and networking professionals Monday 3rd and Tuesday 4th of October 2011 at Ampt van Nijkerk Netherlands.

This two day interactive education seminar for storage professionals will focus on current data and storage networking trends, technology and business challenges along with available technologies and solutions. During the seminar learn what technologies and management techniques are available, how different vendors solutions compare and what to use when and where. This seminar digs into the various IT tools, techniques, technologies and best practices for enabling an efficient, effective, flexible, scalable and resilient data infrastructure.

The format of this two workshop seminar will be a mix of presentation and interactive discussion allowing attendees plenty of time to discuss among themselves and with seminar presenters. Attendees will gain insight into how to compare and contrast various technologies and solutions in addition to identifying and aligning those solutions to their specific issues, challenges and requirements.

Major themes that will be discussed include:

Who is doing what with various storage solutions and tools
Is RAID still relevant for today and tomorrow
Are hard disk drives and tape finally dead at the hands of SSD and clouds
What am I routinely hearing, seeing or being asked to comment on
Enabling storage optimization, efficiency and effectiveness (performance and capacity)
Opportunities for leveraging various technologies, techniques,trends
Supporting virtual servers including re-architecting data protection
How to modernize data protection (backup/restore, BC, DR, replication, snapshots)
Data footprint reduction (DFR) including archive, compression and dedupe
Clarifying cloud confusion, dont be scared, however look before you leap
Big data, big bandwidth and virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI)

In addition this two day seminar will look at what are some new and improved technologies and techniques, who is doing what along with discussions around industry and vendor activity including mergers and acquisitions. In addition to seminar handout materials, attendees will also receive a copy Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press) by Greg Schulz that looks at enabling efficient, optimized and effective information services delivery across cloud, virtual and traditional environments.

Buzzwords and topic themes to be discussed among others include E2E, FCoE and DCB, CNAs, SAS, I/O virtualization, server and storage virtualization, public and private cloud, Dynamic Infrastructures, VDI, RAID and advanced data protection options, SSD, flash, SAN, DAS and NAS, object storage, big data and big bandwidth, backup, BC, DR, application optimized or aware storage, open storage, scale out storage solutions, federated management, metrics and measurements, performance and capacity, data movement and migration, storage tiering, data protection modernization, SRA and SRM, data footprint reduction (archive, compress, dedupe), unified and multi-protocol storage, solution bundle and stacks.

For more information or to register contact Brouwer Storage Consultancy

Brouwer Storage Consultancy
Olevoortseweg 43
3861 MH Nijkerk
The Netherlands
Telephone: +31-33-246-6825
Cell: +31-652-601-309
Fax: +31-33-245-8956
Email: info@brouwerconsultancy.com
Web: www.brouwerconsultancy.com

Learn about other events involving Greg Schulz and StorageIO at www.storageio.com/events

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

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking book VMworld 2011 debut

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 18:17:16

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking book VMworld 2011 debut

By Greg Schulz

Following up from a previous preview post about my new book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press) for those for those attending VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas Monday August 29 through Thursday September 1st 2011, you can pick up your copy at the VMworld book store.

Book signing at VMworld 2011

On Tuesday August 30 at 1PM local time, I will be at the VMworld store signing books. Stop by the book store and say hello, pickup your copy of Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press). Also check out the other new releases by fellow vExpert authors during the event. I have also heard rumors that some exhibitors among others will be doing drawings, so keep an eye out in the expo hall and go visit those showing copies of my new book.

The VMworld book store hours are:

Monday 8:30am to 7:30pm
Tuesday 8:30am to 6:00pm
Wednesday 8:30am to 8:00pm
Thursday 8:00am to 2:00pm

For those not attending VMworld 2011, you can order your copy from different venues including Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, DigitalGuru and CRC Press among others.

Learn more about Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press) at http://storageio.com/book3.html

Look forward to seeing you at the various VMworld events in Las Vegas as well as at other upcoming venues.

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

2011 Summer momentus hybrid hard disk drive (HHDD) moment

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 16:13:12

2011 Summer momentus hybrid hard disk drive (HHDD) moment

By Greg Schulz

This is the fourth in a series of posts (others are here, here and here) that I have been doing for over a year now taking a moment now and then to share some of my experiences with using hybrid hard disk drives (HHDD) along side my hard disk drives (HDD) and solid state drives (SSD).

It has been a several months now since applying the latest firmware (SD25) which resulted in even better stability that was further enhanced when upgrading a few months ago to Windows 7 on all systems with the Seagate Momentus XT HHDD installed in them. One additional older system was recently upgraded from a slower, lower capacity 3.5 inch form factor SATA HDD to a physically smaller 2.5 inch HHDD. The net result is that system now boots in a fraction of the time, shuts down faster, work on it is much more productive and capacity was increased by three and half times.

Why use an HHDD when you could get an SSD?

With flash SSD devices continuing to become more affordable for a given price capacity point, why did I not simply install some of those devices instead of using the HHDDs?

With the money saved from buying the 500GB Momentus XT on Amazon.com (under $100 USD) vs. buying a smaller capacity SSD, I was also able to double the amount of DRAM in that system furthering its useful life plus buying some time to decide what to replace it with while having extra funds for other projects.

Sure I would like to have more and larger capacity SSDs to go along with those I already have, however there is balancing budget with needs and improving productivity (needs vs. wants).

To expand more on why the HHDD at this time vs. SSD, want some more SSD devices to coexist with those I already have and use for different functions. Looking to stretch my budget further, the HHDDs are a great balance of being almost and in some cases as fast as SSDs while at the cost of a high capacity HDD. In other words Im getting the best of both worlds which is a 7,200 RPM 2.5 inch 500GB HDD (e.g. for space capacity) that has 4GB of single layer cell (SLC) flash (e.g. SSD) and 32MB of DRAM as buffers (for read and write performance) to help speed up read and write operations.

Given for what Im using them for, I do not need the consistent higher performance of an SSD across all of my data which brings up the other benefit, Im able to retain more data on the device as a buffer or cache instead of having to go to a NAS or other storage repository to get it. Even though the amount of data being stored on the HHDD is increasing, not all of it gets backed up locally or to my cloud provider as there is already a copy(s) elsewhere. Instead, a small subset of data that is changing or very important gets routinely protected locally and remotely to the cloud enabling easier and faster restores when needed. Now if you have a large budget or someone is willing to buy or give you one, sure, go ahead and get one of the high capacity SSDs (preferably SLC based if concerned about endurance) however there are some good MLC ones out there as well.

Step back a bit, what is an HHDD?

Hybrid hard disk drives (HHDDs) such as the Seagate Momentus XT are, as their name implies, a combination of large- to medium-capacity HDDs with FLASH SSDs. The result is a mix of performance and capacity in a cost effective footprint. HHDDs have not seen much penetration in the enterprise space and may not see much more, given how many vendors are investing in the firmware and associated software technology to achieve hybrid results using a mix of SSDs and high capacity disk drives along with the lack of awarness that they exist.

Where HHDDs could have some additional traction is in secondary or near-line solutions that need some performance enhancements while having a large amount of capacity in a cost-effective footprint. For now, HHDDs are appearing mainly in desktops, laptops, and workstations that need lots of capacity with some performance but without the high price of SSDs. Before I installed the HHDDs in my laptops, I initially used one as a backup and data movement device, and I found that large, gigabyte-sized files could be transferred as fast as with SSDs and much faster than via my WiFi based network and NAS. The easiest way to characterize where HHDDs fit is where you want an SSD for performance, but your applications do not always need speed and you need a large amount of storage capacity at an affordable price.

SSDs are part of the future, however HDDs have a lot of life in them including increased capacities, both are best used where their strengths can be maximized, thus HHDDs are a great compliment or stepping stone for some applications. Note, Seagate recently announced that they have shipped over one million HHDDs in just over a years time.

I do find it interesting though when I hear from those who claim that the HDD is dead and that SSD is the future yet they do not have SSDs in their systems let alone do they have or talk about HHDDs, hmmmm.

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

Supporting IT growth demand during economic uncertain times

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 14:13:12

Supporting IT growth demand during economic uncertain times

By Greg Schulz

Doing more with less, doing more with what you have or reducing cost have been the mantra for the past several years now.

Does that mean as a trend, they are being adopted as the new way of doing business, or simply a cycle or temporary situation?

Reality is that many if not most IT organizations are and will remain under pressure to stretch their budgets further for the immediate future. Over the past year or two some organizations saw increases in their budgets however also increased demand while others saw budgets fixed or reduced while having to support growth. On the other hand, there is no such thing as an information recession with more data being generated, moved, processed, stored and retained for longer periods of time.

Something has to give as shown in the following figure which is that on one curve there is continued demand and growth, while another curve shows need to reduce costs while another reflects the importance of maintaining or enhancing service level objectives (SLOs) and quality of service (QoS).

One way to reduce costs is to inhibit growth while another is to support growth by sacrificing QoS including performance, response time or availability as a result of over consolidation, excessive utilization or instability as a result of stretching resources to far. Where innovation comes into play is finding and fixing problems vs. moving or masking them or treating symptoms vs. the real issue and challenge. Innovation also comes into play by identifying both near term tactical as well as longer term strategic means of taking complexity and cost out of service delivery and the resources needed to support them. For example determining the different resources and processes involved in delivering an email box of a given size and reliability. Another being supporting a virtual machine (VM) with a given performance and capacity capability. Yet another scenario is a file share or home directory of a specific size and availability. By streamlining work flows, leveraging automation and other tools to enforce policies as well as adopting new best practices complexity and thereby costs can be reduced. The net rest is a lower cost to provide a given service to a specific level which when multiplied out over many users or instances, results in cost savings however also productivity gains.

The above is all good and well for longer term strategic and where you want to go or get to, however what can be done right now today?

Here are a few tips to do more with what you have while supporting growth demands

If you have service level agreements (SLAs) and SLOs as part of your service category, review with your users as to what they need vs. what they would like to have. What you may find is that your users want or expect a given level of service, yet would be happy and ok with moving to a cloud service that had lower SLO and SLA expectations if lower cost. The previous scenario would be an indicator that you users want and thus you give them a higher level of service, yet their requirements are actually lower than what is expected. On the other hand if you do not have SLOs and SLAs aligned with cost for the services then set them up and review customer or client expectations, needs vs. wants on a regular basis. You might find out that you can stretch your budget by delivering a lower (or higher) class of services to meet different users requirements than what was assumed to be the case. In the case of supporting a better class of service, if you can use an SSD enabled solution to reduce latency or wait times and boost productivity, more transactions or page views or revenue per hour, that could prompt a client to request that capability to meet their business needs.

Reduce your data footprint impact in order to support growth using the ABCDs of data footprint reduction (DFR), that is Archive (email, file, database), Backup modernization, Compression and consolidation, Data management and dedupe, storage tiering among other techniques.

Storage, server virtualization and optimization using capacity consolidation where practical and IO consolidation to fast storage and SSD where possible. Also review storage configuration including RAID and allocation to identity if any relatively easy changes can improve performance, availability, capacity and energy impact.

Investigate available upgrades and enhancements to your existing hardware, software and services that can be applied to provide breathing room within current budgets while evaluating new technologies.

Find and fix problems vs. chasing false positives that provide near term relief only to have the real issue reappear. Maximize your budgets by identifying where people time and other resources are being spent due to processes, work flows, technology configuration complexity or bottlenecks and address those.

Enhance and leverage existing management measurements to gain more insight along with implementing new metrics for End to End (E2E) situational awareness of your environment which will enable effective decision making. For example you may be told to move some function to the cloud as it will be cheaper, yet if you do not have metrics to indicate one way or the other, how can that be an informed decision? If you have metrics that show your cost for the same service being moved to a cloud or managed service provider as well as QoS, SLO, SLA, RTO, RPO and other TLAs, then you can make informed decisions. That decision may still be to move functions to a cloud or other service even if in fact it is more expensive compared to what you can provide it for in order that your resources can be directed to supporting other important internal functions.

Look for ways to reduce cost of a service delivered as opposed to simply cutting costs. They sound like one and the same, however if you have metrics and measurements providing situational awareness to know what the cost of a service is, you can also then look at how to streamline those services, remove complexity, reduce workflow, leverage automation there by removing cost. The goal is the same, however how you go about removing cost can have an impact on your return on innovation not to mention customer satisfaction.

Also be an informed shopper, have a forecast or plan on what you will need and when, along with what you must have (core requirements) vs. what you would like to have or want. When looking at options, balance what is needed and then if you can get what you want or would like for little or no extra cost if they add value or enable other initiatives. Part of being an informed shopper is having support of the business to be able to procure what you want or need which means aligning technology resources and their cost to delivery of business functions and services.

What you need vs. what you want
In a recent interview with the AP) the reporter wanted to know my comments about spending vs. saving during economic tough times (you can read the story here). Basically my comments were to spend within your means by identifying what you need vs. what you want, what is required to keep the business running or improve productivity and remove cost as opposed to acquiring nice to have things that can wait. Sure I would like to have a new 85 to 120" 3D monitor for my workstation that could double as a TV, however I do not need or require it.

On the other hand, I recently upgraded an existing workstation adding a Hybrid Hard Disk Drive (HHDD) and some additional memory, about a $200USD investment that is already paying for itself via increased productivity. That is instead of enjoying a cup of dunkin donut coffee while waiting for some tasks to complete on that system, Im able to get more done in a given amount of time boosting productivity.

For IT environments this means looking at expenditures to determine what is needed or required to keep things running while supporting near term strategic and tactical initiatives or pet projects.

For vendors and vars, if things have not been a challenge yet, now they will need to refine their messages to show more value, return on innovation (ROI) in terms of how to help their customers or prospects stretch resources (budgets, people, skill sets, products, services, licenses, power and cooling, floor space) further to support growth, while removing costs without compromising on service delivery. This also means a shift in thinking of short term or tactical cost cutting to longer term strategic approaches of reducing costs to deliver a service or resources.

Related links pertaining to stretching your resources, doing more with what you have, increasing productivity and maximizing your budget to support growth without compromising on customer service.

Saving Money with Green IT: Time To Invest In Information Factories
Storage Efficiency and Optimization: The Other Green
Shifting from energy avoidance to energy efficiency
Saving Money with Green Data Storage Technology
Green IT Confusion Continues, Opportunities Missed!
Storage Efficiency and Optimization: The Other Green
PUE, Are you Managing Power, Energy or Productivity?
Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking
Is There a Data and I/O Activity Recession?
More Data Footprint Reduction (DFR) Material

What is your take?

Are you and your company going into a spending freeze mode, or are you still spending, however placing or having constraints put on discretionary spending?

How are you stretching your IT budget to go further?

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

VMware vSphere v5 and Storage DRS

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 14:13:12

VMware vSphere v5 and Storage DRS

By Greg Schulz

Here is a link to a recent guest post that I was invited to do over at The Virtualization Practice (TVP) pertaining to the recent VMware vSphere 5.0 announcement. A theme of the vSphere 5.0 launch is reducing complexity, enabling automation, and supporting scaling with confidence for cloud and virtual environments. As a key component for supporting cloud, virtual and dynamic infrastructure environments, vSphere V5.0 includes many storage related enhancements and new features including Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (SDRS).

Measuring Windows performance impact for VDI planning

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 14:13:12

Measuring Windows performance impact for VDI planning

By Greg Schulz

Here is a link to a recent guest post that I was invited to do over at The Virtualization Practice (TVP) pertaining to measuring the impact of Windows Boot performance and what that means for planning for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) initiatives.

With Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDI) initiatives adoption being a popular theme associated with cloud and dynamic infrastructure environments a related discussion point is the impact on networks, servers and storage during boot or startup activity to avoid bottlenecks. VDI solution vendors include Citrix, Microsoft and VMware along with various server, storage, networking and management tools vendors.

A common storage and network related topic involving VDI are boot storms when many workstations or desktops all startup at the same time. However any discussion around VDI and its impact on networks, servers and storage should also be expanded from read centric boots to write intensive shutdown or maintenance activity as well.

Having an understanding of what your performance requirements are is important to adequately design a configuration that will meet your Quality of Service (QoS) and service level objectives (SLOs) for VDI deployment in addition to knowing what to look for in candidate server, storage and networking technologies. For example, knowing how your different desktop applications and workloads perform on a normal basis provides a baseline to compare with during busy periods or times of trouble. Another benefit is that when shopping for example storage systems and reviewing various benchmarks, knowing what your actual performance and application characteristics are helps to align the applicable technology to your QoS and SLO needs while avoiding apples to oranges benchmark comparisons.

Check out the entire piece including some test results using the hIOmon tool from hyperIO to gather actual workstation performance numbers.

Keep in mind that the best benchmark is your actual applications running as close to possible to their typical workload and usage scenarios.

Also keep in mind that fast workstations need fast networks, fast servers and fast storage.

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

Getting SASy, the other shared storage option for disk and SSD systems

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 14:13:12

Getting SASy, the other shared storage option for disk and SSD systems

By Greg Schulz

Here is a link to a recent guest post that I was invited to do over at The Virtualization Practice (TVP) pertaining to Getting SASsy, the other shared server to storage interconnect for disk and SSD systems. Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) is better known as an interface for connecting hard disk drives (HDD) to servers and storage systems; however it is also widely used for attaching storage systems to physical as well as virtual servers. An important storage requirement for virtual machine (VM) environments with more than one physical machine (PM) server is shared storage. SAS has become a viable interconnect along with other Storage Area Network (SAN) interfaces including Fibre Channel (FC), Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and iSCSI for block access.

Industry trend: People plus data are aging and living longer

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:15:16

Industry trend: People plus data are aging and living longer

By Greg Schulz

Lets face it, people and information are living longer and thus there are more of each along with a strong interdependency by both.

People living and data being retained longer should not be a surprise, take a step back and look at the bigger picture. There is no such thing as an information recession with more data being generated, processed, moved and stored for longer periods of time not to mention that a data object is also getting larger.

By data objects getting larger, think about a digital photo taken on a typical camera ten years ago which whose resolution was lower and thus its file size would have been measured in kilo bytes (thousands). Today megapixel resolutions are common from cell phones, smart phones, PDAs and even larger with more robust digital and high definition (HD) still and video cameras. This means that a photo of the same object that resulted in a file of hundreds of Kbytes ten years ago would be measured in Megabytes today. With three dimensional (3D) cameras appearing along with higher resolution, you do not need to be a rocket scientist or industry pundit to figure out what that growth trend trajectory looks like.

However it is not just the size of the data that is getting larger, there are also more instances along with copies of those files, photos, videos and other objects being created, stored and retained. Similar to data, there are more people now than ten years ago and some of those have also grown larger, or at least around the waistline. This means that more people are creating and relying on larger amounts of information being available or accessible when and where needed. As people grow older, the amount of data that they generate will naturally increase as will the information that they consume and rely upon.

Where things get interesting is that looking back in history, that is more than ten or even a hundred years, the trend is that there are more people, they are living longer, and they are generating larger amounts of data that is taking on new value or meaning. Heck you can even go back from hundreds to thousands of years and see early forms of data archiving and storage with drawings on walls of caves or other venues. I Wonder if had the cost (and ease of use) to store and keep data had been lower back than would there have been more information saved? Or was it a case of being too difficult to use the then state of art data and information storage medium combined with limited capacities so they simply ran out of storage and retention mediums (e.g. walls and ceilings)?

Lets come back to the current for a moment which is another trend of data that in the past would have been kept offline or best case near line due to cost and limits or constraints are finding their way online either in public or private venues (or clouds if you prefer).

Thus the trend of expanding data life cycles with some types of data being kept online or readily accessible as its value is discovered.

Here is an easy test, think of something that you may have googled or searched for a year or two ago that either could not be found or was very difficult to find. Now take that same search or topic query and see if anything appears and if it does, how many instances of it appear. Now make a note to do the same test again in a year or even six months and compare the results.

Now back to the future however with an eye to the past and things get even more interesting in that some researchers are saying that in centuries to come, we should expect to see more people not only living into their hundreds, however even longer. This follows the trend of the average life expectancy of people continues to increase over decades and centuries.

What if people start to live hundreds of years or even longer, what about the information they will generate and rely upon and its later life cycle or span?

Here is a link to a post where a researcher sees that very far down the road, people could live to be a thousand years old which brings up the question, what about all the data they generate and rely upon during their lifetime.

Ok, now back to the 21st century and it is safe to say that there will be more data and information to process, move, store and keep for longer periods of time in a cost effective way. This means applying data footprint reduction (DFR) such as archiving, backup and data protection modernization, compression, consolidation where possible, dedupe and data management including deletion where applicable along with other techniques and technologies combined with best practices.

Will you out live your data, or will your data survive you?

These are among other things to ponder while you enjoy your summer (northern hemisphere) vacation sitting on a beach or pool side enjoying a cool beverage perhaps gazing at the passing clouds reflecting on all things great and small.

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

Have you heard of 2DRS data protection technology?

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 21:11:12

Have you heard of 2DRS data protection technology?

By Greg Schulz

Have you heard of 2DRS as a data storage technology?

If not, dont worry, you would probably be in a minority if you said yes.

Anyway, Phil White of ECCTek has been sending lots of material about 2DRS (2 dimensional error correction code: ECC) over the past few months.

In a nutshell, if you have an interest in data integrity, low level data storage topics, RAID, SSD or HDDs, you may want to have a look. I have no affiliation with Phil, ECCtek or 2DRS, nor can I vouch for what ECCtek is doing. However as he has been persistent (in a polite way), time to share some info and you can decide what to do with it.

The following is from Phil:

Hello,

You may be able to start a project to develop a 2D-RS product in your company.

You may be able to write and publish an article promoting the 2D-RS ideas.

You may be able to send me e-mail addresses of others who may be interested in the 2D-RS ideas.

You could forward this e-mail to others who may be interested in the 2D-RS ideas.

I am asking you to please take the time you need to read the web pages at the end of this e-mail, and please think seriously about the ideas and ask questions if something is unclear.

After you have read the web pages and thought about the ideas, I am asking that you please do one or more of the following things:

Start a project to develop a 2D-RS product in your company.
Write and publish an article to promote the 2D-RS ideas.
Send me e-mail addresses of others who may be interested in the 2D-RS ideas.
Forward this e-mail to others.

Regards,

Phil White
President
ECC Technologies, Inc. (ECC Tek)
4750 Coventry Road East
Minnetonka, MN 553453909
Phone: (952)9352885
Fax: (952)9352491
www.ecctek.com

Web Pages
ECC Teks Web Site
ECC Tek Company Profile
PRS Patent

2D ECC Concepts
2D RS HDDs
2D RS HDD Products
2D RS SSDs
2D RS Storage Systems
2D RS Comments
2D RS A
2D RS Believers

Basic ECC Concepts
Finite Fields, RS Codes and RS RAID
Finite Fields with 4bit Elements

I will leave it up to you if you want to check out what Phil has to say and if or where 2D may or may not be relevant.

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

Summer 2011 StorageIO News Letter

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:55:55

Summer 2011 StorageIO News Letter

By Greg Schulz

Summer 2011 Newsletter

Welcome to the Summer 2011 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) newsletter. This follows the Spring 2011 edition.

You can access this news letter via various social media venues (some are shown below) in addition to StorageIO web sites and subscriptions.

Click on the following links to view the Summer 2011 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the newsletter page to view previous editions.

Follow via Goggle Feedburner here or via email subscription here.

You can also subscribe to the news letter by simply sending an email to newsletter@storageio.com

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO newsletter, let me know your comments and feedback.

Cheers gs

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

Dell Storage Forum 2011 revisited

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 23:55:55

Dell Storage Forum 2011 revisited

By Greg Schulz

About a month ago I was invited by Dell to make a quick trip down to Orlando to attend the Dell Storage Forum 2011 (e.g. twitter #dellsf11). Given that on Tuesday June 7th Minneapolis was having a heat wave with 100 degree (F) temperatures, it was actually cooler in Orlando.

Make no mistake however, there were plenty of technologies that were cool and being kept cool at the Hilton adjacent to Disney as Dell continues to expand their footprint into the hot data storage market. The event brought together three aspects of the Dell storage story which were the mergers of the recently acquired Compellent user group with the Dell Equallogic user group along with the rest of the Dell storage and data management lineup. While the limelight was focused on Compellent and Equalogic, the Dell disk Dudes (and Dudettes e.g. Gina Rosenthal aka twitter @gminks and Sheryl Koenigsberg aka twitter @storagediva ) have been involved with storage for many years in addition to the recent acquisitions.

During the event I was invited to tag along with Roger Lund (twitter @rogerlund) an IT customer of Dells and Ed Saipetch (twitter @edsai) an Dell partner to go talk with the Dell NAS dudes (aka Unified, clustered, grid, rain, big data, bulk, scale out NAS) team formerly known as Exanet. The team is mix of Dell, former Exanet and new members who have been relatively quietly enhancing their technology in addition to creating packaged solution bundles with other Dell products such as the FS7500 (coupled with EqualLogic). For those not familiar with Exanet, have a read here or hear and for those not familiar with scale out NAS (aka bulk, grid, clustered, big data, etc) have a read here.

There are lots of interesting things in the works or possible and the team that we spoke with are full of energy, ideas, support from management not to mention having some interesting technology tools to work with ranging from Ocarina (data footprint reduction aka DFR), Kace, Scalent, Powervault MD series, servers and micro servers, not to mention EqualLogic and Compellent among others including those from various partners.

NAS was not the only thing cool at the event, there was the Dell object storage solution (aka DX) based on Caringo CAS (Content Addressable Storage) OEM software technology that has been the Rx (prescription) for healthcare, medical and other archives. Keep in mind that Dell also earlier this year acquired Insight one that just happens to be involved with healthcare and medical data or information management.

Speaking of archives and objects there was also some activity this past week with Dell and Rainstor making an announcement of their joint solutions in addition. Speaking of making sure that data on Dell storage remains available, accessible and protected, preserved and served, there were also backup/restore as well as many other pieces of technology, services and solutions. There was also a good presence by Dell partners at the event including Brocade, Commvault, Quantum and Symantec among others.

Here is a link to a video from when I was a guest with hosts Cali Lewis and John McArthur on the Wikibon/Silicon Angle The Cube show while at the Dell Event. During the discussion we had some fun as well as discussed not to be scared of clouds and virtualization, however look before you leap, doing your homework to be prepared along with other themes in my new book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press).

Speaking of Dell, I had a nice conversation with Michael Dell during the storage beers tweet up. Did we talk about SMB or SOHO NAS, SSD, tape, HHDD, Brocade, block vs. file vs. object, data footprint reduction, big backup vs. big data, clouds, 3PAR, Equallogic vs. Compellent, HP vs. EMC?

Nope, we talked about the Dallas Mavericks (who went on to win the NBA title for 2011), social media and other items. If you have never meet Michael Dell, he is one of the most relaxed, confident and approachable CEOs of any big or large company I have meet.

In addition to visiting with Michael Dell, I also had the pleasure of meeting many other great people from Dell, their partners and others face to face including many twitter tweeps. All in all it was a great day and a half trip down to the Dell event, look forward to seeing and hearing more from Dell in the future.

Oh, and for disclosure purposes, Dell covered my RT coach class airfare while I picked up my own hotel, airport transfers, parking and incidentals.

Thanks again to Gina Rosenthal for making it all happen!

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), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004) twitter @storageio

Unified storage systems showdown: NetApp FAS vs. EMC VNX

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 23:44:44

By Greg Schulz

Unified storage systems showdown: NetApp FAS vs. EMC VNX

Unified storage systems that support concurrent block, file and in some cases object based access have become popular in terms of industry adoption as well as customer deployments with solutions from many vendors across different price bands, or market (customer) sectors. Two companies that are leaders in this space are also squared off against each other (here and here) to compete for existing, each others, as well as new customers in adjacent or different markets. Those companies are EMC and NetApp that I have described as two similar companies on parallel tracks offset by time.

Recently I was asked to provide some commentary about unified storage systems in general, as well as EMC and NetApp that you can read here, or view additional commentary on related themes here, here and here. EMC has a historical block based storage DNA that has evolved to file and object based while NetApp originated in the file space having moved into block based storage along with object based access. EMC converged various product technologies including those developed organically (e.g. internally) as well as via acquisition as part of their unified approach. NetApp who has had a unified produce has more recently added a new line of block products with their acquisition of Engenio from LSI. Obviously there are many other vendors with unified storage solutions that are either native (e.g. the functionality is built into the actual technology) or by parterning with others to combine their block or file based solutions as a unified offering.

What is unified storage, what does it enable, and why is it popular now?
Over the past couple of years, multifunction systems that can do both block- and file-based storage have become more popular. These systems simplify the acquisition process by removing the need to choose while enabling flexibility to use something else later. NAS solutions have evolved to support both NFS and CIFS and other TCP-based protocols, including HTTP and FTP, concurrently. NAS or file sharing based storage continues to gain popularity because of its ease of use and built-in data management capabilities. However, some applications, including Microsoft Exchange or databases, either require block-based storage using SAS, iSCSI, or Fibre Channel, or have manufacture configuration guidelines for block-based storage.

Multi protocol storage products enable the following:

Acquisition and installation without need for a specialist

Use by professionals with varied skills

Reprovisioning for different applications requirements

Expansion and upgrades to boost future capacity needs

Figure 1 shows variations of how storage systems, gateways, or appliances can provide multiple functionality support with various interfaces and protocols. The exact protocols, interfaces, and functionality supported by a given system, software stack, gateway, or appliance will vary by specific vendor implementation. Most solutions provide some combination of block and file storage, with increasing support for various object-based access as well. Some solutions provide multiple block protocols concurrently, while others support block, file, and object over Ethernet interfaces. In addition to various front-end or server and application-facing support, solutions also commonly utilize multiple back-end interfaces, protocols, and tiered storage media.

Figure 1: Multi protocol and function unified storage examples

For low end SMB, ROBO, workgroup, SOHO, and consumers, the benefit of multi protocol and unified storage solutions is similar to that of a multifunction printer, copier, fax, and scanner that is, many features and functionality in a common footprint that is easy to acquire, install, and use in an affordable manner.

For larger environments, the value proposition of multi protocol and multi functionality is the flexibility and ability to adapt to different usage scenarios that enable a storage system to take on more personalities. What this means is that by being able to support multiple interfaces and protocols along with different types of media and functionality, a storage system becomes multifunctional. A multifunction storage system may be configured for on-line primary storage with good availability and performance and for lower-cost, high-capacity storage in addition to being used as backup target. In other scenarios, a multifunction device may be configured to perform a single function with the idea of later redeploying it to use a different personality or mode of functionality.

An easy way to determine whether you need multi protocol storage is to look at your environment and requirements. If all you need is FC, FCoE, SAS, iSCSI, or NAS, and a multi protocol device is going to cost you more, it may not be a good fit.

If you think you may ever need multi protocol capability, and theres no extra charge for it, go ahead. If youre not being penalized in performance, extra management software fees, functionality or availability, and you have the capability, why wouldnt you implement a unified storage system?

Look for products that have the ability to scale to meet your current and future storage capacity, performance, and availability needs or that can coexist under common management with additional storage systems.

Vendors of unified storage in addition to EMC and NetApp include BlueArc, Fujitsu, Dell, Drobo, HDS (with BlueArc), HP, IBM, Huawei, Oracle, Overland, Quantum, Symantec and Synology among others.

So what does this all mean? Simple, if you are not already using unified storage in some shape or form, either at work or perhaps even at home, most likely it will be in your future. Thus the question of not if, rather when, where, with what and how.

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), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004) twitter @storageio

SMB, SOHO and low end NAS gaining enterprise features

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 23:33:33

By Greg Schulz

SMB, SOHO and low end NAS gaining enterprise features

Here is a link to an interview that I did providing industry trends, perspectives and commentary on how Network Attached Storage (NAS) aka file and data sharing for the Small Medium Business (SMB), Small Office Home Office (SOHO) and consumer or low end offerings are gaining features and functionality traditionally associated with larger enterprise, however without the large price. In addition, here is a link to some tips for small business NAS storage and to another perspective on how choosing an SMB NAS is getting easier (and here for comments on unified storage).

Click on the image below to listen to a pod cast that I did with comments and perspectives involving SMB, SOHO, ROBO and low end NAS.

If your favorite or preferred product or vendor was not mentioned in the above links, dont worry, as with many media interviews there is a limited amount of time or narrow scope so those mentioned were among others in the space.

Speaking of others, there are many others in the broad and diverse SMB, SOHO, ROBO and consumer NAS and unified storage space. For example there are QNAP, SMC, Huawei, Buffalo, Synology and Starwind among many others. There is a lot of diversity in this NAS space. You've got Buffalo Technology, Cisco, Dlink, Dell, Data Robotic Drobo, EMC Iomega, Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co. via Microsoft, Intel, Overland Storage Snap Server, Seagate Black Armour, Western Digital Corp., and many others. Some of these vendors are household names that you would expect to see in the upper SMB, mid sized environments, and even into the enterprise.

For those who have other favorites or want to add another vendor to those already mentioned above, feel free to respond with a polite comment below. Oh and for disclosure, I bought my SMB or low end NAS from Amazon.com and it is an Iomega IX4.

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), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004) twitter @storageio

Whats your take on open virtualization alliance and VMware?

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 22:33:44

By Greg Schulz

Whats your take on open virtualization alliance and VMware?

Have you heard about the open virtualization alliance (OVA), their kernel based virtual machine (KVM) and their diverse membership list?

If not, here is a link to the OVA FAQ, also take a moment and read this here that talks about OVA along with some perspectives commentary from others as well as myself.

Figure 1: Generic representation of virtual machines (VMs) and virtualized environment

In a nutshell, OVA can be seen by the faithful as a move or ploy to catch up and buck the success trend of VMware. To those who are not on the VMware bandwagon, this could be seen as a move to level the playing field for virtual machines, kernels and servers.

Yet to others, this can be seen as DejaVu to past attempts at operating systems or other technology alliances to bring parity to the ranks of those not at the top of the technology list of a particular topic, product or theme. For example, a decade or two ago, there were the various Unix groups (remember SCO etc?) that were attempted involving the late Ray Norda of Novell fame in a quest to battle Microsoft among others.

The industry road side is littered with alliances that either still exist yet collecting dust or that faltered. For storage people does anybody remember Aperi and how those in the IBM lead storage management alliance were all singing Kumbaya around a virtual campfire and later partnering with SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association)? Speaking of SNIA, anybody remember the various supported solutions forums (SSFs) popular back in the early 2000s as a means to demonstrate and stimulate interoperability between different vendors technologies?

Alliances are not bad, however generally to be successful, they have to exist for the right reasons in addition to being well funded, have strong leadership that also means having clear objectives to minimize chances of compromise by committee. While we are talking about alliances, have you heard about the Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA)? The ODCA alliance of which StorageIO is a member is a bit different than many IT related groups in that it is customer or non vendor focused. ODCA has good potential for doing some interesting things as long as they do not get bogged down in bureaucracy as is to often the case with industry driven trade groups, associations or alliances.

Lets see how these and other alliances move forward or what becomes of them, not to mention the expanding awareness around vi rtualization, life beyond consolidation (and here).

Whats your take on OVA and other alliances? Click here to cast your vote and see what others think.

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), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004) twitter @storageio

Are Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) getting too big?

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 18:04:04

By Greg Schulz

Are Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) getting too big?

Lets start out by clarifying something, that is in terms of context or scope, big means storage capacity as opposed to the physical packaging size of a hard disk drive (HDD) which are getting smaller.

So are HDDs in terms of storage capacity getting to big?

This question of if HDDs storage capacity getting to big to manage comes up every few years and it is the topic of Rick Vanovers (aka twitter @RickVanover Episode 27 Pod cast: Are hard drives getting to big?

As I discuss in this pod cast with Rick Vannover of Veeam, with the 2TB and even larger future 4TB, 8 to 9TB, 18TB, 36TB and 48 to 50TB drives not many years away, sure they are getting bigger (in terms of capacity) however we have been here before (or at least some of us have). We discuss how back in the late 90s HDDs were going from 5.25 inch to 3.5 inch (now they are going from 3.5 inch to 2.5 inch), and 9GB were big and seen as a scary proposition by some for doing RAID rebuilds, drive copy or backups among other things, not to mention if putting to many eggs (or data) in one basket.

In some instances vendors have been able to combine various technologies, algorithms and other techniques to RAID rebuild a 1TB or 2TB drive in the same or less amount of time as it used to take to process a 9GB HDD. However those improvements are not enough and more will be needed leveraging faster processors, IO busses and back planes, HDDs with more intelligence and performance, different algorithms and design best practices among other techniques that I discussed with Rick. After all, there is no such thing as a data recession with more information to be generated, processed, moved, stored, preserved and served in the future.

If you are interested in data storage, check out Ricks pod cast and hear some of our other discussion points including how SSD will help keep the HDD alive similar to how HDDs are offloading tape from their traditional backup role, each with its changing or expanding focus among other things.

On a related note, here is post about RAID remaining relevant yet continuing to evolve. We also talk about Hybrid Hard Disk Drives (HHDD) where in a single sealed HDD device there is flash and dram along with a spinning disk all managed by the drives internal processor with no external special software or hardware needed.

Put on your head phones (or not) and check out Ricks pod cast here (or on the head phone image above).

Thanks again Rick, really enjoyed being a guest on your show.

Whats your take, are HDDs getting to big in terms of capacity or do we need to leverage other tools, technology and techniques to be more effective in managing expanding data footprint including use of data footprint reduction (DFR) techniques?

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), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004) twitter @storageio

Happy 100th birthday or anniversary wishes

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 16:54:32

By Greg Schulz

Happy 100th birthday or anniversary wishes

I would like to take a moment to wish a happy 100th birthday (or anniversary) to entities (or items) that Im involved with in one form or another.

Both are technology and infrastructure related, both facilitate commerce and transportation and in active service.

One is a company known to many as IBM or International Business Machine Corporation that recently celebrated its 100th birthday. For anyone working or involved in some shape or form with computing or high technology, at some point in your life you most likely have directly or indirectly used something provided by IBM.

The other is the Arcola High Bridge aka Soo line railroad bridge that crosses the St. Croix River north of Stillwater (click here to see some old photos). The Arcola High Bridge (or here) is still in use where trains cross it several times a day (and night) as well as where legends and ghost stories permeate. Keep in mind that even though IBM was in business when this bridge was designed and built, the sophisticated computers and software that enables structures to be efficiently built today did not exist. You could say that this old bridge was built to last which it has, particularly in an era where much younger infrastructure items either wear out or fail.

Best wishes to both and hopefully many more.

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), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004) twitter @storageio