Bringing storage to the storefront

Consider for example, that all our Weblogs are now easily within reach from the home page. Moreover, our inked cover page this week titles " blogging for business", a sentence that not long ago many would have considered (some perhaps still do) an oxymoron.

So, what does this prove? Are we getting carried away with the concept of blogs? I don't think so, and probably, as you're reading one right now, you'll agree.

Even assuming that you hate blogs I am not going to attempt a conversion, nor to preach the power of blogs or the virtues of other powerful tools, such as furl, flickr, del.icio.us, Wiki etc..

If you really need to shed light on those topics, visit Jon Udell's corner: there is so much to learn there.

The point I am trying to make is that many revolutionary technologies are possible today also because we enjoy an unprecedented storage bonanza. Yes, storage is dirty cheap as never before, which makes possible innovative business models.

Think of Google offering 1GB of gmail space for free just to about anyone, and ask yourself if the same offer would stand with storage space costing 100 times as much.

I am not exaggerating: during an unrelated conversation with vendor Isilon, they offered some interesting tidibits, one being that only five years ago storage was 100 times more expensive.

(BTW, keep an eye on Isilon, they are coming up with new stuff but I am not at liberty to talk about yet.)

Back to the point, it's fair to compare the effects of low price storage with the (now gone) low price for gasoline. Arguably, the popularity of automobiles and their impact on our culture would not have been possible without the cheap gas of the 50s.

Low cost storage is having a similar positive impact on the popularity of data-guzzling applications such as the ones mentioned before.

In the 50s, our parents and grandparents proudly parked their cars, symbols of a new freedom, in front of their house. Similarly, we are showing off those applications, also a symbol, but of our newly acquired freedom to communicate urbi et orbi, on the storefront.

It's all right with me, but let's not forget that storage is the hidden foundation of that storefront.

Backup to tapes is not everybody's data protection

I used to think that, but no longer. There's another issue that can totally
mess up the best-laid plans for tape backup: if your backup software cannot
recognize the tape and/or drive.

Sound far-fetched? I'm going through this, now, over (Veritas) BackupExec. And in researching my problem, I've discovered a slew of other state-of-the-art equipment installations with the same problem. If the software cannot properly recognize the data on the tape, then that's a critical weakness in the loop.

It's hard to disagree with that, but I am not quite sure what's going on here, so I ask Scott to offer more details.

The problem's BackupExec, and it's certainly not the first time we've had
issues with BackupExec. Scott says. Then he continues:

My point was: the reliability of the tape can be fantastic, but if the software's flakey, that might be the weak link (as it is for me, currently). The integrity of this old HP tape drive is not at issue (using the built-in Server backup utility, backups and restores work), but only the software that made the backup at issue (BackupExec) in the first place can restore the files, and that's where the problem lies.

This last sentence from Scott is a quintessential explanation of why so many IT managers are turning their back to the complex paradigm of backup software plus tape drive plus tape medium for data protection.

We often forget that's a legacy from the mainframe era and try to apply the same method to all computing environments, including home PCs, for crying out loud.

A large data center may have the resources to build redundancy in their data protection strategy, but a small to medium- size structure simply doesn't have the time or the money or the people to mimic the same approach.

When that simple but often evasive truth becomes apparent people will look for a different approach. In fact, Scott continues:

Thanks for responding; I enjoyed the article, but we're in the process of
switching to disk-based backups exclusively. And following is the active thread at Veritas discussing my current BackupExec problem.

Sorry to hear about your problem, Scott. I hope that someone will chip in with a solution. Good luck.

SAS drives coming of age

It may be worth reading this news article from IDG in its entirety, but, to give a quick summary, HP is getting ready to offer SAS drives in its products, possibly as soon as May.

While this is a worthy scoop in itself, perhaps the most interesting part of the story is that HP will offer SFF (small form factor), 2.5" SAS drives in its servers, blade systems and storage arrays.

HP is the first to make a public announcements about SAS products, but it's reasonable to assume that other vendors will follow suit because this technology open opportunities that are too good to pass on.

At this early stage neither HP nor other vendors are making public product specs updated for SAS, but we can still do some guessing on what to expect.

Some of the benefits of mounting SFF drives are easy to guess: less noise, less heat produced, hence enclosures that are easier to cool, and obviously more capacity per rack unit.

Now let's weave over that picture another layer of major benefits, these typical of SAS , such as smarter connectivity on each port, with either a single point- to-point connection or a fan-out to multiple devices. This flexibility of SAS ports can be exploited to build enclosures with high capacity or fast data transfers.

SAS has small cables and small ports, which makes possible building two connections on each 2.5" drive. Link that dual path to two different controllers and you attain redundancy that has nothing to envy to high end FC (fibre channel) solutions.

Not less important, SAS and SATA (serial ATA) drives can attach to the same controller, which gives customers the option to size the best mix of capacity and performance in each enclosure.

SATA drives are less expensive and probably will remain more capacious than SAS, which means that an array with mixed drives will be less expensive than one with just serial SCSI.

So, judging from these benefits, what should we expect from the news SAS products? Smaller enclosures? Larger density? Less environmental burden? More reliability? Less expensive storage?

Probably the correct answer is "all of the above" but customers, as usual, will have the ultimate say.

Still hungry for SAS? Try this article written by Tonya Comer from HP for the SCSI Trade Association.

Dreaming of the invisible WAN

However, to simplify think of WiMAX as wireless broadband that can stretch farther and carry more bits per second. The actual distance and bandwidth offered by providers of WiMAX services will begin to unfold probably next year, but the technology has potential to cover distances up to thirty miles and to carry along a bandwidth of 75 Mbps (yes, megabit per second).

What has this to do with storage? Nothing yet, but recent news about AT&T announcing a test of WiMAX as last mile connectivity between customers and its own wired broadband network got me thinking.

AT&T doesn't own much real estate in the local loop (although the acquisition by SBC will change that), and using WiMAX could avoid paying fees to local telephone companies.

We'll see how the test from AT&T goes, but until then let's dream, shall we?
Let me imagine a world, in a not too distant future, where we have surrounded our planet with a mesh of high bandwidth WiMAX signal. Think of it: an invisible WAN easily accessible from everywhere using laptops and other mobile devices.

You may be old enough to remember, or knowledgeable enough to know, that our first popular LANs hummed at just 4Mbps. although shortly after we jumped on "mind boggling" 10Mbps connections.

That may seem like standing still compared to current 1GbE (going soon to 10Gbps) connections, but was fast enough to create central repositories for our data, as opposed to the local drive, and setting the foundations of networked storage.

If successful (and why should not be?) WiMAX will probably have a similar revolutionary impact on computing. When was the last time your laptop connected to the equivalent of multiple T1 lines, on the road and without wires?

Ubiquitous high speed connections open a wealth of possibilities and unfortunately new risks. We better start thinking now how to better protect our data when the invisible WAN will open infinite access points to our storage network, alas, also for the crooks.

Just for fun - backup?

Better SAN monitoring and diagnostic on the horizon?

You shouldn't be upset if, despite having some of their products in your glass room, the Finisar name didn't ring a bell: storage vendors know that name all too well and are probably its most likely customers.

Nevertheless Finisar sells also to end users. In fact, the company offers a variety of network diagnostic tools, that often combine some slick hardware with smart applications.

Not long ago InfoWorld published a review of one of those tools.

Why am I remembering Finisar? Because the company just announced the acquisition of InterSAN, another company well known to storage vendors because of its PathLine, a storage management application that automates monitoring and diagnostic activities across the network.

Do you see a similarity of products between the two companies? I do, but to clarify no overlap, actually they seem to be complementary. Interestingly, Finisar had begun on this path last fall, with a licensing agreement to use the OEM kit of PathLine.

They must have liked what they saw in PathLine quite a bit, don't you think?

Do we really need larger laptop drives?

When it comes to celebrating what's faster, larger and more compact, I am probably as guilty as anybody, but shouldn't we be a little more critical and conservative in our judgment?

Take for example the latest news from Fujitsu about a new larger 2.5" drive.

Reading that laptop users will soon be able to carry around a hefty 120GB drive, I was more concerned that excited. Perhaps my brain is on strike at the moment, but I can't think of a scenario where a user actually needs all that capacity.

Even admitting that some users may need the space, how are they going to backup all that data? There isn't really a good data protection solution for laptops, and even though many companies backup their employees' laptops when docked, that approach leaves those machines unprotected when they are on the road (and more vulnerable).

To be fair to Fujitsu and their new drive, I am not drawing the line at the 120GB mark. Dozens of models mount 100 GB drives, and properly protecting those machines is not less difficult.

How about laptops with 80 or 60 GB drives, aren't they hard to backup as well? Obviously they are, and it's unfortunate that PC vendors are not much help. For example, this is what a well know vendor has to say:

You should back up your files regularly to diskettes or a writable CD, if
you have a CD-R or CD-RW drive...

I'm tempted to ask when was the last time they actually did a backup to (or a restore from) diskettes, but I won't.

Actually, I won't even reveal the name of that vendor because it would be unfair: the Internet is full of such pearls of wisdom from various vendors, probably a legacy of when 20MB marked a capacious drive.

I would like to close with a note of optimism but can't find one. What we are facing is a rather simple technological problem: those hard drives are growing way too big for our laptop breeches, which can expose us the users to loosing data.

While we wait for a technological breakthrough (a 1TB, thumb-sized backup device?) that could be years away, we should perhaps guide vendors to manufacture those laptops slightly differently.

For example, rather than a single 120 GB drive, I would like to have two devices of 60 GB each, and the ability to set RAID 1 mirroring. How about a fingerprint reader to lock strangers out? Wouldn't be great being able to lock also the hard drive?

Perhaps a more secure laptop will cost more, but protecting our privacy and piece of mind is well worth the extra cost.

Doing data security by exception

In case you are not familiar with those names, Decru and Neoscale both offer solutions to secure your storage infrastructure. How? Essentially using a better authentication scheme than just passwords, and various levels of fast, seamless data encryption.

Decru had this to say on the recent Choicepoint fiasco:

" ..we believe that the responsibility for data security belongs to the companies that house the data."

Difficult to disagree, but was that point really under debate? I probably don't know the facts well enough but don't remember Choicepoint denying its responsibility.

Also, in the Choicepoint episode data protection techniques such as encryption would probably not have made any difference.

However, data encryption helps if one of your media gets lost or is stolen. Take for instance the recent mysterious disappearance of those magnetic tapes at Bank of America.

So far there has been no indication of any disclosure, and I really don't know if those customer records were encrypted or not, but as a customer, I would feel a lot better knowing that they were.

Moving tapes to an outside vault, as Bank of America was doing, is a common daily activity in many data centers. If you haven't yet , could be worth adding another exception to your security checklist: "What if my tapes get lost?"

If the answer to that question is as unpleasant as a root canal, adding encryption could be the pain killer. And your customers would be grateful.