Storage Adviser | Mario Apicella

An unblinking look at disaster recovery

Mario Apicella — 2008-05-16T03:00:00-08:00

I recently received a message in my inbox reminding me of the importance of disaster recovery: The Atlantic hurricane season begins on June 1 -- setting the stage for heavy losses and damage. ... Yet, most real-world problems -- while potentially devastating -- are much less spectacular. Unforeseen problems, like unidentified software bugs, can cause big problems when servers shut down or decentralized software fails. While I do agree that computer hiccups can be very disruptive, images from the terrible earthquake that recently hit China and those from the devastating cyclone that swept Myanmar put disaster recovery into grave perspective.... READ MORE

Solid-state upgrades: Risky business

Mario Apicella — 2008-05-09T03:00:00-08:00

Hardware upgrades can be a blast. Slide 2GB more RAM in your machine and everything just works faster and smoother. Updating a laptop or desktop with an SSD (solid-state drive), however, can be tricky and not so rewarding, as I am finding. I haven't tested any enterprise-class SSDs yet, but I want to share some of my findings testing flash SSD devices on laptops and desktops. In short, your machines may not be able to keep up with the drives' speed, and unfortunately there is no easy way to tell beforehand what will happen with your specific system. What I... READ MORE

Storage that takes care of itself

Mario Apicella — 2008-05-02T03:00:00-08:00

I've said it before, but I'll say it again: SFF (small form factor) drives allow you to squeeze more spindles into the same rack space, giving you better performance in the same real estate. As an bonus, using 2.5-inch drives reduces the amount of electricity you use and creates less heat than using their larger cousins, essentially making your storage array less demanding on your wallet and on the electric grid. Naysayers will object that SFF drives cannot compete when capacity is the main objective. True, with a maximum capacity of 500GB, SFF drives deliver half of what 3.5-inch drives... READ MORE

An interview with the real McCoy

Mario Apicella — 2008-04-28T03:00:30-08:00

There is a growing appetite for storage performance in the data center that old fashioned disk drives don't seem to be able to satisfy. Solid state drives are becoming the new stars of performance hungry applications, but with so many vendors and no unifying product standard is there a common ground for those drives? In an exclusive e-mail interview with Jim McCoy, chairman of Pliant Technology, a new company that will soon begin shipping their own SSD products, we try to find an answer to that question. InfoWorld: What is Pliant Technology? McCoy: Pliant Technology is developing a new class... READ MORE

No easy green strategy for storage

Mario Apicella — 2008-04-25T03:00:00-08:00

I find it ironic that Seagate chose Earth Day to celebrate the shipment of its billionth disk drive. After all, increased drive dependency in the datacenter is fast transforming into an unsustainable energy demand. Of course, the blame does not fall entirely on drive vendors. For the most part, they are simply responding to opportunity. But this Earth Day billionth-drive milestone can't help but remind me of oil companies feasting on record profits while consumers struggle with high prices at the pump. Think I'm exaggerating the environmental impact of the electricity used in the datacenter? Consider this: According to an... READ MORE

Smart array may signal storage shift

Mario Apicella — 2008-04-18T03:00:00-08:00

Although you often find statements that seem critical of disk drives in this column, I never criticize disk drives per se, but rather how we use them. As of late, I've been interested in the innovative use of disk drives in storage arrays. The latest news from Xiotech fits right into this discussion, providing further proof that the storage industry is fast turning evolution into revolution in rethinking its approach to disk drives. [ For recent disk drive commentary, see "Upgrading to solid state," "Time to bury big-drive 'diskosaurs'," and "Diskosaurs bite back." ] As you may have read, Xiotech... READ MORE

FCoE catches fire at SNW

Mario Apicella — 2008-04-11T03:00:00-08:00

Storage Networking World came and went this week, and judging from the hype, FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) is coming out of the conference with a head full of steam. Understandably so, I may add, because this technology, which only a year ago was little more than a jot on a napkin, is poised to make its mark on the storage market. Of course, running FC transport over Ethernet has never been impossible from a technical perspective. Politics, as this rather animated discussion proves, have played a large role in ensuring the two technologies have grown up in isolation. Fast-forward... READ MORE

"Diskosaurs" bite back

Mario Apicella — 2008-04-04T03:00:00-08:00

In last week's Storage Adviser, I argued in favor of reducing your enterprise storage footprint, championing the energy and space consumption benefits of replacing 3.5-inch "diskosaurs" with SFF (small form factor) drives. Well, it appears the diskosaurs are biting back, as four Seagate 1TB Barracuda ES.2 drives landed in my lab. The 3.5-inch drives, which Seagate will make available next week, are packed with features that remind you why large-form-factor drives still have a significant role to play when capacity and manufacturing flexibility are the major concerns. The new large Barracuda Similarly to other members of the family, this new... READ MORE

Time to bury big-drive "diskosaurs"

Mario Apicella — 2008-03-28T03:00:00-08:00

The EonStor B12 from Infortrend represents an intriguing proposition: an enterprise-class storage solution in miniature, built on 2.5-inch SAS drives. One look at this small-form-factor vision of the future, and you'll be reconsidering the long-term viability of behemoth arrays. When I first heard about the B12, I was drawn to its potential to reduce power consumption, as well as its small footprint. I have since had the opportunity to begin putting the EonStor B12S through its paces. I will publish the results of my testing in a future review. Here, however, are some initial impressions. First, the array and the... READ MORE

Upgrading to solid state

Mario Apicella — 2008-03-21T03:00:00-08:00

Now that loose SSDs (solid state drives) are available, you may be wondering how best to take advantage of the technology. Here's a breakdown of where retrofitting current machines with solid state could reap worthwhile rewards. Imation, one of the first vendors to market loose SSDs, is currently offering two SSD lines. One, a 2.5-inch drive with either 16GB or 32GB capacity; the other, a 3.5-inch device that stores up to 64GB. Both offer SATA connectivity. Of the two offerings, the 2.5-inch format finds a natural home in laptops, allowing you to exploit one of solid state's major advantages over... READ MORE

Infiniband: Back from the dead again?

Mario Apicella — 2008-03-14T03:00:00-08:00

The need for I/O virtualization and lack of practical short-term alternatives breathes new life into Infiniband For many IT managers, Infiniband immediately brings HPC (high-performance computing) to mind. In fact, this much-snubbed connectivity protocol has found vindication in HPC, where its minimal latency, sustained transfer rate, and gentle impact on CPU cycles have found much appreciation. It's not that Infiniband is unknown among the lower tiers of enterprise computing, but vendors have predominantly favored other protocols, such as FC (Fibre Channel) and, more recently, the controversial newcomer, iSCSI. Which is a pity, because Infiniband could very well be the ultimate... READ MORE

Sleeping laptops leave encryption at risk

Mario Apicella — 2008-03-07T03:05:44-08:00

Equipped with a can of air spray and sophisticated data hunting techniques, attackers can rebuild disk encryption keys from fragments of data in memory Just when you thought you could sleep easy with disk encryption, here comes a wake-up call from the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. In just a few pages, the center's research team proves that disk encryption is easy to defeat if your attacker is skilled and determined enough.When the laptop is in sleep mode, whatever is stored in memory remains in memory, including encryption keys. Big deal, you might think, the laptop asks... READ MORE

The death knell for RAID?

Mario Apicella — 2008-02-29T03:00:00-08:00

Ingenuity in storage is evolutionary -- but clustered storage could be the revolution that replaces RAID Defining the single-most significant change in storage I have seen throughout the years could easily lead to multiple discussion threads. After all, technological achievements are plentiful. Take the emergence of SATA and SAS, for example; or the staggering increase in capacity of a wide range of storage media; or the ongoing acceptance of Ethernet as an alternative to Fibre Channel for block storage connectivity. The list could go on almost indefinitely. Yet examining the individual tiles of the increasingly complicated storage puzzle more often... READ MORE

Virtualizing the whole shebang

Mario Apicella — 2008-02-22T14:37:00-08:00

VMware and LeftHand Networks up the virtualization ante with a joint offering Last week, at VMworld Europe in beautiful Cannes, LeftHand was showing, I am told, the Virtualization Solution Kits (VSK), a joint offering with VMware that promises to bring together the best of virtualization to SMBs and beyond. I had to skip Cannes this time, but I installed in my lab the nuts and bolts of the kit. Essentially, the solution kits offer well calibrated doses of VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 (VI3) and LeftHand VSA, Virtual SAN Appliance for VMware. For the full scoop on the products involved, peruse... READ MORE

A new focus on storage advice

Mario Apicella — 2008-02-15T03:00:00-08:00

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... READ MORE