- A new focus on storage advice
- Storage Sprawl Podcast: Ignore virtualization no longer
- Newsworthy Seagate ships 750GB desktop drive
- What were they thinking?
- Newsworthy: StoneFly delivers RAID6
- Newsworthy: New perpendicular drive from Seagate
- Why are storage folks not blogging?
- Maxtor podcast on new upcoming products
- Diskeeper 10
- Emulex opens to fabric routers
February 15, 2008 | Comments: (0)
InfoWorld's storage expert zooms in on best practices for planning, selecting, and deploying new storage technology
Notice anything different this week? That's right, Storage Insider has a new name. From here on out, it's all about advice. Why the change? There are several reasons, the most important of which is to better align this space with my day-to-day hands-on experience putting the latest technologies through their paces.
The storage industry has changed significantly since Storage Insider launched in 2002 -- and not just in terms of technical advances. Storage vendors' communications strategies have also changed, leaving behind the controlled trumpeting of six years ago to give way to today’s much more relaxed talks.
For example, at the turn of the millennium, the idea of letting employees publish their own blogs was considered blasphemy at many storage companies. Corporate "messages" were carefully filtered and groomed before being released to the public or press.
At that time, a "Storage Insider" approach was needed to vet the vendors’ rubber-stamped messaging and to provide counterpoints and perspective. In fact, InfoWorld was one of the pioneers in bringing storage news served side by side with commentary.
Today, there is abundance of storage news commentary from independent bloggers and a wide array of tech publications. Moreover, the number of storage-vendor employees talking from unofficial -- but company-sponsored, nevertheless -- pulpits has increased from zero to a number that I find hard to quantify.
As a result, opinions on the day's storage news is not hard to come by. On any storage topic, you can find a wide range of viewpoints, a plethora of contrary assessments, sometimes spiced with open and confusing disputes, often from rival vendors.
It's time for more meaningful advice to rise above the cacophony of opinion. After all, I too spend much of my time in the storage trenches. From now on, consider this space an extension of my daily experience testing -- and wrestling with -- storage products. Storage Adviser will distill my experience in the belly of the beast and serve you with tried-and-true advice.
Ready to get under the hood?
Posted by Mario Apicella on February 15, 2008 03:00 AM
October 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Storage Sprawl Podcast: Ignore virtualization no longer
Startup Incipient introduces a virtualization solution that resides within a Cisco switch module -- and presents the opportunity to reconsider block virtualization
LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on October 5, 2006 06:19 AM
April 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Newsworthy Seagate ships 750GB desktop drive
Posted by Mario Apicella on April 26, 2006 06:52 AM
April 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)
What are the most serious physical threats to your data center? I am sure that there is a survey published somewhere on this topic, but bear with me, I am too busy (lazy perhaps) to look for it.
However I would bet that the risk of your storage array being hit by a bullet is very low. Don't you agree?
Which is why I found bizarre that HP went thru all the cost and the trouble to move an XP12000 to the National Technical Systems ballistics center in Camden, Arkansas, only to have the array shot in cold blood.
Unbelievable? Don't trust just my word: Here's the video of the shooting from HP.
Does this carefully aimed shot prove anything? I don't think so, unless of course you have a data center in a very bad neighborhood in Bagdad or similarly tormented places.
If you do, just make sure to hang a target at the right place on the side of the array, as shown in the movie clip, and hope that whoever will do the shooting will be as accurate as the folks at the NTS lab.
Posted by Mario Apicella on April 24, 2006 08:55 AM
April 18, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Newsworthy: StoneFly delivers RAID6
Posted by Mario Apicella on April 18, 2006 04:19 AM
April 18, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Newsworthy: New perpendicular drive from Seagate
Posted by Mario Apicella on April 18, 2006 04:15 AM
April 12, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Why are storage folks not blogging?
I have finally updated the blogroll for The Storage Network. Well, almost updated, I should say. A blogroll is never really finished and more entries will follow shortly.
Was this a big job? No, not really. I like to keep only storage bloggers in my blogroll, and as you can see I don't have to take my socks off to count all the entries.
Moreover, if I narrow down to only the bloggers that work for a storage company their number becomes, embarrassingly, much smaller.
Is it just me? Am I missing a big crowd of storage bloggers? I don't think so, and the proof is that, give or take a few entries, other blogrolls in the same space are not any longer or much longer than mine.
In my opinion storage bloggers should be a bigger crowd. I don't have hard numbers to back this up (please let me know if you do) but in my estimate the storage industry employs thousands and thousands of knowledge workers.
So, why aren't more of these smart people blogging?
A couple of reasons come to mind.
The first is that either those folks don't care, or are too busy to engage in this "frivolous" activity. Perhaps they consider blogging a temporary craze that will fade soon, so why bother.
A second possible reason is that many people working for a storage company can't share their comments and ideas on a public forum because doing so would violate corporate rules.
My answer to the first reason is: No way!
Blogging is not a passing fad. Techniques and tools may and will change, but going back to a pre-blog era is as unthinkable as it would be suppressing newspapers, magazines, books and live broadcasts: it ain't going to happen.
I don't have much of an answer for the second reason, but those vendors who think that every public word spoken by their employees should be filtered by a PR agent remind me of the worst and most oppressive dictatorships.
My advice to those corporate watchdogs is to loosen up. Set clear rules on what should and should not be made public, and then open the gates and let the kids play as some of your competitors are already doing.
Time to get off my soapbox now, but let me remind first that The Storage Network is open to anyone who wants to talk about storage: readers and vendors' employees are equally welcome to join.
Just drop me an email and I will open an account for you: it's free and you don't get spammed for trying.
Posted by Mario Apicella on April 12, 2006 07:36 AM
April 10, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Maxtor podcast on new upcoming products
If you have a laptop running out of disk space or even if you want to learn an easy way to keep your working file in synch at home and at the office don't miss this podcast from Mike Williams, GM and VP of Maxtor's Branded Products Group.
Wait, there is more.
Is the security of data on your laptop keeping you awake at night? Need an easy way to share files between your PC and your entertainment center? Want to know what Maxtor is up to with Project Fusion?
If you answered yes at least once don't miss this podcast.
Posted by Mario Apicella on April 10, 2006 07:36 AM
March 23, 2006 | Comments: (0)
I am trying out the latest version of Diskeeper. Works well for now, but it's too soon to report on.
However, I found out that Diskeeper has its own blog, and it's worth visiting even if you don't use the product because there are some interesting articles.
One of the latest posts tells about the end of a debate with Microsoft on what to do with free space after a defrag: pool together or not, this is the question. Check it out.
Posted by Mario Apicella on March 23, 2006 09:06 AM
March 16, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Emulex opens to fabric routers
It was perhaps inevitable for Emulex to take on also routing, after extending from the traditional HBA domain to embedded switches, fabric switches and I/O controllers.
The company opens this new product line with two units that bear telling but somewhat uninspired names: Emulex Storage Router 725 and 735.
I am not raising any flag here: considering that in January Emulex was celebrating the shipment of more than 10 million ports of InSpeed embedded storage switches, it's safe to assume that its customers are not intrigued just by fancy product names.
The 725 and the 735 look pretty much the same because these two 1U routers share the same chassis and have the same line up of connections.
However, you would use the 725 to connect servers to the fabric without installing expensive FC HBAs: a GbE port or two, built in in most machines is all what's needed after you install the router.
Isn't the 725 a self defeating strategy for a company like Emulex that sells also FC HBAs? Perhaps, but other vendors are selling similar routers already (check out for example this week's Storage Insider), so proposing the 725 Emulex is reclaiming its market share in that segment.
By contrast, the 735, which is an FCIP (FC over IP) router, brings Emulex products into the all new segment of connecting remote fabrics. Using built in hardware-based compression the 735 should easily saturate a T3, according to Emulex.
Virtualization, N-port ID virtualization or NPIV to be accurate, is another new frontier that Emulex has been patrolling for about a year, I believe.
In plain English, NPIV means creating a virtual HBA for a virtual machine in environment such as VMWare ESX or Xen 3. In fact, at the recent CeBIT in Hannover, Emulex and Novell put up a demo of NPIV involving the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, LightPulse HBAs and Xen 3.
However interesting, that technology is still work in progress, I learned during a recent conversation with director of product marketing John Chevalier, which is not a surprise considering that systems' virtualization is struggling to acquire a well deserved but still controversial space in the enterprise.
But I am digressing: This is a topic for perhaps another place, another time.
Posted by Mario Apicella on March 16, 2006 06:44 AM
March 14, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Amazon to sell a Web of storage
Starting today, Amazon is making available its sophisticated storage network to developers, for a fee.
If your only kind of interactions with Amazon were online transactions to buy goods, you may have missed that the company is already offering numerous Web Services to developers. Wondering why?
The charter of Amazon Web Services is to provide developers with building block technologies that help them innovate.explains Adam Selipsky, VP of Product Management and Developer Relations for Amazon Web Services.
The new storage service, S3, which stands for Simple Storage Services, is the logical extension to the services that Amazon is already providing.
What makes S3 different from any other storage service I know of, is that you can only store or retrieve data via API, using REST or SOAP interfaces.
You can store objects of up to 5GB in a single operation, but Amazon puts no limit to the total amount of storage you can use.
The cost involves a transfer fee and a monthly storage fee. For example, moving 100GB to S3 would cost a one time fee of $20, plus a storage fee of $15 per month.
Obviously a dedicated local drive on your server would cost less, but not if you try to emulate the reliability and the ubiquitous nature of data stored on S3.
I asked Selipsky if it's possible that users will in the future exceed the overall capacity of the systems supporting S3 but he doesn't seem concerned.
"We think that developers are going to build all sorts of application on S3" says Selipsky. "The only thing I am sure of is that we will be surprised by the way people innovate".
Posted by Mario Apicella on March 14, 2006 08:31 AM
September 19, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Are you ready for "StorageWorks AppIQ"?
I am writing this just before jumping on a plane. One of the things you learn quickly in my job is that you never have control over the weather, nor over the news.
So care to hear what's my take on HP buying AppIQ even if I have to keep it short? Good, read on.
Neither company company should require an introduction, but if you need a brush up, here is one for AppIQ, and a more recent one for HP.
So what's going to happen if the acquisition goes through in 45 days as expected?
I imagine that the market shares of "StorageWorks AppIQ" (or whatever name they will decide) will jump even higher. HP is pretty good at flexing its sales muscles, for example putting together difficult_to_refuse bundles, so I wouldn't be surprised if AppIQ would be offered, already installed on a Proliant, as an add on for an EVA or XP array.
In the past HP was not shy to make pacts even with the devil (sorry EMC) trying to bring some sense to its storage management applications. Now, when the deal completes they will have the golden boy of storage management on their side. Messing things up should be difficult, but you never know...
What about AppIQ competitors, will they face more hardship? I am not going to fumble around with this, yes, unless the Command Central, Control Center or who-else of the World will come up with really captivating novelties, customers will move away.
The last I heard from AppIQ, they were promoting a multivendor effort to create open standards for storage management. Not sure if that will stand under HP rules, but if it does, the other vendors should jump on it.
Gotta go now, but we'll talk about this again, I'm sure.
Posted by Mario Apicella on September 19, 2005 07:45 AM
March 14, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Here's a video making fun of IT people and their experience with "tape-based backup" www.backuptrauma.com (starring John Cleese, with an appearance by Michael Dorn.) - enjoy!
Posted by on March 14, 2005 07:05 AM
February 22, 2005 | Comments: (0)
Making the financial case for iSCSI?
Speak to iSCSI old timers these days and you'll grasp in their comments a certain tone of vindication often stronger than concerns for the new competition from EMC.
Although EMC was already offering iSCSI and is not after all the only major vendor to offer IP storage for the mid-tier, it's understandable that the Clariion news legitimate iSCSI as reputable transport for networked storage.
Obviously, potential customers will be the first to be reassured, but let's be frank, also some industry analysts will realize now that an Ethernet connection between servers and storage is not an oddity after all.
Back to those iSCSI old-timers, not only they are not worried but some are blatantly defiant. In fact, I've already been asked by one of those vendors to do a head- to-head comparison with one of the Clariion models.
Are you listening EMC? That's a gauntlet thrown at your Clariion, if I ever saw one.
Obviously a joust where both knights wear the iSCSI storage armour will be more balanced and more interesting. For example, gone will be the abismal cost difference between FC and Ethernet networking gears, which will move the battle to more proper fields, such as performance, management tools and resilience.
Wondering how much that cost difference could be for your company? Sanrad, another IP storage knight has made available the IP SAN Builder a Web application that estimates how much your storage network would cost in both FC and IP flavors. Check it out.
Posted by Mario Apicella on February 22, 2005 02:34 PM
January 04, 2005 | Comments: (0)
When the speed of light is not enough
A reader describes a very interesting problem they are facing:
"We have been looking for solutions that support SAN replication over WAN links... When using for instance an 1800 mile Ds-3 circuit with 50ms of latency it appears that TCP/IP flow control will lower the throughput to something like 6GB per hour rather than 25GB per hour with a latency of 5ms... "
I don't have a test bed handy to verify those numbers but the throughput loss seems about right. The problems is that long distance between sites translates into high latency, which together with the chatty nature of TCP/IP makes even a respectable DS-3 connection look like a slowpoke.
In essence, when planning data transfers across a WAN it's important to consider the impact of both latency and bandwidth. And the reliability of the connection (packet loss, restore time, SLA...etc..)
Are there solutions to this? Of course there are, but let's hear from that reader again first.
"It seems that some vendors are requiring a Sonet connection and others are employing a non IP solution that has higher throughput... Do you have any insights?"
Here is my take. It will cost you, but removing the latency or its bad effects is a sure way to increase throughput. Search Google for C/DWDM and SONET/SDH to better understand what those vendors are suggesting.
Depending on your application, another possible approach could be deploying a WAFS (WAN file services) solution. (please Google this also ).
That's what I have , but may be we'll hear what vendors in this area have to suggest.
Posted by Mario Apicella on January 4, 2005 09:52 AM
December 08, 2004 | Comments: (0)
Roll call for storage professionals
If you've been looking for a Weblog exclusively focused on storage, we expect you're not alone. The time couldn't be more ripe for a comprehensive and independent storage blog, and with your help, we're going to make it happen.
Welcome to "The Storage Network", the first forum in Weblog format that wants to become the meeting point for all storage enthusiasts.
We invite all product managers, engineers, and other storage professionals to begin sharing ideas, comments, and, naturally, their suggestions for improving storage products and technologies.
After a quick registration process you will be able to post, independently and without restrictions, anything you want to say about any storage topic and, if you so desire, to reference other blogs and URLs in your message.
Our goal is to provide a captivating technical forum, in which implementers and managers of storage solutions, and vendors of storage products, can share ideas and opinions in a free and open exchange.
Feel free to speak your mind. We want to hear of the wonders -- or the pain -- that you experienced with specific products. However, please refrain from mean-spirited mudslinging and shameless marketing. We're all professionals here, and we expect the language and tone of contributions to reflect that. Bad behavior will be confronted by the blog police.
To join "The Storage Network" email me me your contact information (please include name, title, company, e-mail and telephone number) and start making history, well, at least for what storage is concerned.
See you online.
The opinions expressed on "The Storage Network" represent the personal views of each forum participant and are not of, and should not be attributed to, InfoWorld or IDG.
Posted by Mario Apicella on December 8, 2004 12:34 PM
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