StorageIOblog

Availability or lack there of: Lessons From Our Frail & Aging Infrastructure

July 23, 2010 – 1:36 pm
I have a new blog post over at Enterprise Efficiency about aging infrastructures including those involved with IT, Telcom and related ones. As a society, we face growing problems repairing and maintaining the vital infrastructure we once took for granted. Most of these incidents involve aging, worn-out physical infrastructure desperately in need of repair or replacement. But infrastructure doesn't have to be old or even physical to cause problems when it fails. The IT systems and applications all around us form a digital infrastructure that most enterprises take for granted until it's not there. Bottom line, there really isn't much choice. You can either pay up front now to update aging infrastructures, or, wait and pay more later. Either way, there will be a price to pay and you can not realize a cost savings until you actually embark on that endeavor. Here is the link to the full ...

Posted in Cloud, IT Industry Activity, IT Infrastructure Topics, Infrastructure Resource Management, Storage Architecture and Access, server | View Comments

July 2010 Odds and Ends: Perspectives, Tips and Articles

July 18, 2010 – 2:23 pm
Here are some items that have been added to the main StorageIO website news, tips and articles, video podcast related pages that pertain to a variety of topics ranging from data storage, IO, networking, data centers, virtualization, Green IT, performance, metrics and more. These content items include various odds and end pieces such as industry or technology commentary, articles, tips, ATEs (See additional ask the expert tips here) or FAQs as well as some video and podcasts for your mid summer (if in the northern hemisphere) enjoyment. The New Green IT: Productivity, supporting growth, doing more with what you have Energy efficient and money saving Green IT or storage optimization are often associated to mean things like MAID, Intelligent Power Management (IPM) for servers and storage disk drive spin down or data deduplication. In other words, technologies and techniques to minimize or avoid power consumption as well as subsequent cooling requirements which ...

Posted in Data and Information Management, Data archiving and preservation, Data footprint and proliferation reduction, Data protection, Education, Green, I/O Networking, IT Industry Activity, IT Infrastructure Topics, Infrastructure Resource Management, Performance and Capacity, Power and Cooling, Site related, Storage Architecture and Access, Storage and Storage Management Tools, metrics, server, virtualization | View Comments

A Storage I/O Momentus Moment

July 11, 2010 – 8:31 pm
I recently asked for and received from Seagate (See recent post about them moving their paper head quarters to Ireland here) a Momentus XT 500GB 7200 RPM 2.5 Hybrid Hard Disk Drive (HHDD) to use in an upcoming project. That project is not to test a bunch of different Hard Disk Drives (HDDs), HHDDs, Removable HDD (RHDDs) or Solid State Devices (read more about SSDs here and here or storage optimization here) in order to produce results for someone for a fee or some other consideration. Do not worry, I am not jumping on the bandwagon of calling my office collection of computers, storage, networks and software the StorageIO Independent hands on test lab. Instead, my objective is to actually use the Momentus XT in conjunction with other storage I/O devices ranging from notebook or laptop, desktop or server, NAS and cloud ...

Posted in Cloud, Data and Information Management, I/O Networking, IT Industry Activity, IT Infrastructure Topics, Infrastructure Resource Management, Performance and Capacity, Storage Architecture and Access, fun, metrics, server | View Comments

Two companies on parallel tracks moving like trains offset by time: EMC and NetApp

July 1, 2010 – 3:36 pm
I see some similarities and parallels between two competing companies. Those companies happen to be in the same sector (e.g. IT data storage) however offset by time (about a decade or) subject to continued execution by both. Those two companies are EMC and NetApp. Some people might assert that these two companies are complete opposites. Perhaps claiming that one is on the up swing while the other on the down path (have heard claims and counter claims of both being on the other path). I will leave the discussion or debate of which is on the up and which is on the down path to the twittervile and blogsphere ultimate tag team mud wrestling arena or You Tube video rooms. I see EMC and NetApp a bit differently which you can take it for what that is, simply an opinion or perspective having been ...

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Gregs StorageIO Out and About Update: June 2010

June 28, 2010 – 5:49 pm
With the 2010 summer solstice having occurred in the northern hemisphere that means it is time for a quick out and about update. It has been a busy winter and spring in the office, on the road as well as at home. Some results of this recent activity have appeared in blog, on my web site as well as via other sites and venues. For example, activity or content ranges from Industry Trends and Perspectives white papers, reports, blogs, newsletter commentary, interviews, Internet TV, videos, web cast, pod casts (including several appearances on StorageMonkeys Infosmack as well as Rich Brambleys Virtumania), ask the expert (ATE) questions, twitter tweets, tips and columns. Then there were the many in person presentations, key note and seminar events, conferences, briefing sessions along with virtual conferencing and advisory consulting sessions (read and see more ...

Posted in Cloud, Data archiving and preservation, Data footprint and proliferation reduction, Data protection, Data security, Education, Green, I/O Networking, IT Industry Activity, IT Infrastructure Topics, Infrastructure Resource Management, Performance and Capacity, Personal Computing, Power and Cooling, Storage Architecture and Access, Storage and Storage Management Tools, Travel, food, fun, metrics, server | View Comments

Supreme Court Rules Sarbox intact, Oversight Board Changes

June 28, 2010 – 10:38 am
Today the US Supreme Court ruled on a Nevada case involving constitutionality of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley (Sarbox) accounting regulations pertaining to appointments to the independent public company accounting oversight board. The Supreme Court ruled that the Sarbox regulations or law remains intact, however the process or controls around the oversight board must change. My interpretation and perspective from reading a few different reports is that Sarbox as you know and love (or hate) it is essentially still intact. However what has changed or will be is that individual board members can now be removed or at least in an easier manner. Instead of the request to strike down the Sarbox regulations, the Supreme Court instead appears to have left the regulations intact instead ruling that board members can be changed or removed. What does this all mean? Perhaps not much ...

Posted in Data and Information Management, Data archiving and preservation, Data protection, Data security, IT Industry Activity | View Comments

Initial Virtumania Appearance (Episode 14) with fellow vExperts

June 10, 2010 – 2:14 pm
This past week I was invited to join some fellow vExperts as a first time guest on Rich Brambleys (@rbrambley and VMETC) podcast show called Virtumania. Episode 14 (Virtualization and Networking Turf Wars) had as a theme as you can guest themes around physical, logical and virtual networking for virtual servers along with some of the politics and turf battles associated with managing those entities. Also on the show were cohost Marc Farley (@3parfarley) of 3Par and StorageRap.com as well as regular guest Rick Vanover (@rickvanover) of RickVanover.com and other special guest David Davis (@davidmdavis) vmwarevideos.com in addition to myself. For some fun, there is even some reference to rival gangs dancing for superiority in the Michael Jackson music video "Bad" which was produced by Greg Knieriemen (@knieriemen) of Chi Corporation for this Infosmack Production. Check out the show here or here. BTW: Is ...

Posted in Education, I/O Networking, IT Industry Activity, IT Infrastructure Topics, server, virtualization | View Comments

VMware vExpert 2010: Thank You, Im Honored to be named a Member

June 10, 2010 – 1:16 pm
This week while traveling I received an email note from John Troyer of VMware informing me that I have been nominated and selected as a VMware vExpert for 2010. To say that I was surprised and honored would be an understatement. Thus, I would like to thank all those involved in the nominations, evaluation and selection process for being named to this esteemed group. I would also like to say congratulations, best wishes and hello to all of the other 2010 vExperts. Im Looking forward to being involved and participating in the VMware vExpert community. Cheers gs Greg Schulz - Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) twitter @storageio

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June 2010 StorageIO Newsletter

June 1, 2010 – 4:52 am
June 2010 Newsletter Welcome to the June 2010 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) newsletter. This follows the Spring 2010 edition building on the great feedback received from recipients. Items that are new in this expanded edition include: Out and About Update ...

Posted in Cloud, Data and Information Management, Data protection, Data security, Education, I/O Networking, IT Industry Activity, IT Infrastructure Topics, Infrastructure Resource Management, Power and Cooling, Site related, Storage Architecture and Access, Storage and Storage Management Tools, Travel, metrics, server | View Comments

Industry Trends and Perspectives: Public and Private IT Clouds

May 26, 2010 – 9:53 pm
This is part of an ongoing series of short industry trends and perspectives blog posts briefs. These short posts compliment other longer posts along with traditional industry trends and perspective white papers, research reports, solution brief content found at www.storageio.com/reports. Are you clear on cloud conversation issues, topics and trends? Or, are you confused and looking for clarification of what is (or not) a public vs. private cloud? If you are part of the second group, welcome to the majority of IT professionals that includes customers as well as some VARs and vendors not to mention press, media or bloggers as well as analysts and other industry pundits. A couple of customer trends that Im seeing are that public clouds in terms of backup as a service (BaaS), Backup Service Provider (BSP), Managed Service Provider (MSP), Cloud Backup Service (CBS) or hosted backup ...

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