October 30, 2009 -- There is an IT operations manager/storage professional on the run this Halloween and he has 30 hours to get as far away from Manchester University as possible.
Simon Painter, an IT engineer for storage vendor BlueArc, is participating in a "jailbreak" this weekend in an effort to raise funds for KidsCan, a pediatric cancer treatment research organization based in the UK.
Painter and his friend David Wood are competing with 100 others in a race to get as far away from the starting point as they can without spending any money. They may raise some eyebrows, as they will be donning orange prison-like jumpsuits and flip-flops for the trip.
Aside from travel documents and an emergency credit card, the duo will be toting a mobile phone with them as they beg, borrow and "blag" their way across Europe. The team will use the phone to update their location on Twitter and Facebook.
Painter hopes to make his way to Zimbabwe by the end of the contest. Participants have reportedly made it as far away as New Zealand and Australia in past races.
You can sponsor Painter's "escape," track his progress and see a live map of his location on the Jailbreak for KidsCan website.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
One vendor too many?
October 23, 2009 -- The end users I speak with approach the buying process in different ways. Some opt for a single vendor – the so-called "one throat to choke" strategy. Others buy storage from multiple vendors to keep everyone honest. Most feel the multi-vendor approach is the way to go, but it's a slippery slope. How many vendors does it take before the pros outweigh the cons?
In a new report, "How Efficient Is Your Enterprise Storage Environment?," Forrester Research senior analyst Andrew Reichman outlines some best practices for "multisourcing" along with ways to measure key performance indicators (KPIs) for storage efficiency.
Reichman believes multisourcing storage can give customers the upper hand in negotiations and reduce vendor lock-in, but there is a risk to having too many vendors in the mix.
He says having too many vendors on hand can dramatically increase cost of management and reduce overall efficiency. For instance, managing different storage platforms can require different skill sets. More platforms in the data center require higher management and training costs.
He also says that negotiating a better price is a balancing act. Reichman writes, "Vendors often give deeper discounts to those who buy more of their gear. So, while negotiation power can be improved with competition, actually buying from many vendors can limit volumes and therefore discounts over time. Bids should be competitive, and exit strategies considered, but it makes sense from a pricing perspective to pool purchases with a smaller number of vendors once the negotiations are done."
No two environments are the same, but a good rule of thumb is to have no more than three different types of storage on the floor to keep costs under control and minimize complexity.
Multisourcing is one piece of the puzzle. Forrester's storage analysts also offer best practices for measuring capacity utilization and allocation, tier ratios, and staffing.
The full report can be found on Forrester's website.
In a new report, "How Efficient Is Your Enterprise Storage Environment?," Forrester Research senior analyst Andrew Reichman outlines some best practices for "multisourcing" along with ways to measure key performance indicators (KPIs) for storage efficiency.
Reichman believes multisourcing storage can give customers the upper hand in negotiations and reduce vendor lock-in, but there is a risk to having too many vendors in the mix.
He says having too many vendors on hand can dramatically increase cost of management and reduce overall efficiency. For instance, managing different storage platforms can require different skill sets. More platforms in the data center require higher management and training costs.
He also says that negotiating a better price is a balancing act. Reichman writes, "Vendors often give deeper discounts to those who buy more of their gear. So, while negotiation power can be improved with competition, actually buying from many vendors can limit volumes and therefore discounts over time. Bids should be competitive, and exit strategies considered, but it makes sense from a pricing perspective to pool purchases with a smaller number of vendors once the negotiations are done."
No two environments are the same, but a good rule of thumb is to have no more than three different types of storage on the floor to keep costs under control and minimize complexity.
Multisourcing is one piece of the puzzle. Forrester's storage analysts also offer best practices for measuring capacity utilization and allocation, tier ratios, and staffing.
The full report can be found on Forrester's website.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Brocade, Cisco eye mobile services market
October 16, 2009 -- Cisco jumped into the Fibre Channel market with the MDS family. Brocade jumped into the Ethernet market with the acquisition of Foundry Networks. Both companies are jockeying for position in the nascent converged networking (CEE and FCoE) market. And, it appears, the companies are escalating the fight in yet another area – wireless networking and mobile computing.
Brocade and Cisco each added to their respective mobile arsenals this week. Brocade took the partnership route, while Cisco opened up its wallet.
Cisco announced a deal to acquire Starent Networks, a supplier of IP-based mobile infrastructure solutions for mobile and converged carriers. Cisco paid roughly $2.9 billion for Starent and the acquisition is expected to close during the first half of calendar year 2010.
Starent's stock-in-trade is providing multimedia intelligence, core network functions and services to manage access from any 2.5G, 3G, and 4G radio network to a mobile operator's packet core network.
A quote from Cisco's official announcement:
"Cisco and Starent Networks share a common vision and bring complementary technologies designed to accelerate the transition to the Mobile Internet, where the network is the platform for Service Providers to launch, deliver and monetize the next generation of mobile multimedia applications and services," said Pankaj Patel, senior vice president/general manager for Cisco's Service Provider Business.
Cisco says service providers have been actively investing in the market as global mobile data traffic is expected to more than double every year through 2013, according to the Cisco Visual Networking Index.
Brocade has noticed the market potential as well. The company inked an OEM deal with the Enterprise Mobility Solutions business unit of Motorola this week to collaborate on wireless LAN (WLAN), voice-over-WLAN, mobile unified communications/fixed mobile convergence (FMC), cloud computing and wireless broadband technologies.
The companies established an OEM reseller agreement, through which, Brocade will rebrand and resell a number of Motorola's enterprise wireless LAN solutions and resell Motorola wireless security products as an extension of its own IP/Ethernet product portfolio.
According to the companies, "this collaboration also lays the foundation for a new category of wireless and mobility services delivered by service providers using cloud enabled infrastructure solutions from Motorola and Brocade."
The companies plan to use cloud computing architectures and enable voice, video and data applications to work over 3G, 4G or WiFi networks.
Brocade and Cisco each added to their respective mobile arsenals this week. Brocade took the partnership route, while Cisco opened up its wallet.
Cisco announced a deal to acquire Starent Networks, a supplier of IP-based mobile infrastructure solutions for mobile and converged carriers. Cisco paid roughly $2.9 billion for Starent and the acquisition is expected to close during the first half of calendar year 2010.
Starent's stock-in-trade is providing multimedia intelligence, core network functions and services to manage access from any 2.5G, 3G, and 4G radio network to a mobile operator's packet core network.
A quote from Cisco's official announcement:
"Cisco and Starent Networks share a common vision and bring complementary technologies designed to accelerate the transition to the Mobile Internet, where the network is the platform for Service Providers to launch, deliver and monetize the next generation of mobile multimedia applications and services," said Pankaj Patel, senior vice president/general manager for Cisco's Service Provider Business.
Cisco says service providers have been actively investing in the market as global mobile data traffic is expected to more than double every year through 2013, according to the Cisco Visual Networking Index.
Brocade has noticed the market potential as well. The company inked an OEM deal with the Enterprise Mobility Solutions business unit of Motorola this week to collaborate on wireless LAN (WLAN), voice-over-WLAN, mobile unified communications/fixed mobile convergence (FMC), cloud computing and wireless broadband technologies.
The companies established an OEM reseller agreement, through which, Brocade will rebrand and resell a number of Motorola's enterprise wireless LAN solutions and resell Motorola wireless security products as an extension of its own IP/Ethernet product portfolio.
According to the companies, "this collaboration also lays the foundation for a new category of wireless and mobility services delivered by service providers using cloud enabled infrastructure solutions from Motorola and Brocade."
The companies plan to use cloud computing architectures and enable voice, video and data applications to work over 3G, 4G or WiFi networks.
Friday, October 9, 2009
The future of storage is cloudy
October 9, 2009 -- Cloud computing and cloud storage are here to stay. The number of vendors with cloud offerings continues to multiply and I don't envy the end user trying to evaluate vendors and services.
Just this week we have seen a big push in the cloud storage market. IBM officially announced its cloud storage intentions with a declaration that it will enter the storage cloud space with the launch of the IBM Smart Business Storage solution, IBM Information Archive and new consulting services.
The IBM Smart Business Storage Cloud is a private cloud based on low-cost components with support for multiple petabytes of capacity, billions of files and scale-out performance. Big Blue's storage cloud is based on technologies including the IBM General Parallel File System have and storage and server technologies like XIV and BladeCenter.
Earlier in the week, Symantec released Veritas FileStore, a new clustered file system aimed at enterprise customers looking to build public or private storage clouds. FileStore is comprised of software-based appliances that run on commodity x86 server nodes and talk to clients using CIFS, FTP, HTTP or NFS. On the back-end, the FileStore nodes aggregate existing Fibre Channel and iSCSI SANs and JBODs as a shared storage pool. A FileStore system can scale up to 16 nodes and 2PB of total capacity.
Seagate also chimed in. Seagate's storage software arm, i365, announced a cloud storage-based replication service for medium-sized businesses as part of its push into the cloud storage space.
Terry Cunningham, i365's senior vice president and general manager, told me i365 is changing the way it approaches the cloud.
"Our offerings have been rip-and-replace in the past, and that is an unreasonable request for customers. Now we're agnostic and work with legacy backup packages," he said. "We can now get to the cloud without gutting the infrastructure."
All of these storage clouds are here or on the horizon and there are a few questions customers should be asking themselves as they try to pick a vendor. What types of metadata is required to ensure portability, compliance and security in the cloud? Can data be provided back to users in a format that can be ingested by a new service provider?
The storage industry is aware of some of the cloud confusion out there. It's a concern from both a perception and a technical standpoint.
"Cloud storage is not a fad like the one we may have witnessed with xSPs and storage service providers back in the year 2000 timeframe," says SNIA chairman Wayne Adams. "Cloud storage is here to stay and we need to develop common terminology and standards for building cloud infrastructures."
Stay tuned for more information about what the SNIA has in store for the cloud in our Cloud Storage topic center. The cloud news is sure to be fast and furious from next week's Storage Networking World conference.
Just this week we have seen a big push in the cloud storage market. IBM officially announced its cloud storage intentions with a declaration that it will enter the storage cloud space with the launch of the IBM Smart Business Storage solution, IBM Information Archive and new consulting services.
The IBM Smart Business Storage Cloud is a private cloud based on low-cost components with support for multiple petabytes of capacity, billions of files and scale-out performance. Big Blue's storage cloud is based on technologies including the IBM General Parallel File System have and storage and server technologies like XIV and BladeCenter.
Earlier in the week, Symantec released Veritas FileStore, a new clustered file system aimed at enterprise customers looking to build public or private storage clouds. FileStore is comprised of software-based appliances that run on commodity x86 server nodes and talk to clients using CIFS, FTP, HTTP or NFS. On the back-end, the FileStore nodes aggregate existing Fibre Channel and iSCSI SANs and JBODs as a shared storage pool. A FileStore system can scale up to 16 nodes and 2PB of total capacity.
Seagate also chimed in. Seagate's storage software arm, i365, announced a cloud storage-based replication service for medium-sized businesses as part of its push into the cloud storage space.
Terry Cunningham, i365's senior vice president and general manager, told me i365 is changing the way it approaches the cloud.
"Our offerings have been rip-and-replace in the past, and that is an unreasonable request for customers. Now we're agnostic and work with legacy backup packages," he said. "We can now get to the cloud without gutting the infrastructure."
All of these storage clouds are here or on the horizon and there are a few questions customers should be asking themselves as they try to pick a vendor. What types of metadata is required to ensure portability, compliance and security in the cloud? Can data be provided back to users in a format that can be ingested by a new service provider?
The storage industry is aware of some of the cloud confusion out there. It's a concern from both a perception and a technical standpoint.
"Cloud storage is not a fad like the one we may have witnessed with xSPs and storage service providers back in the year 2000 timeframe," says SNIA chairman Wayne Adams. "Cloud storage is here to stay and we need to develop common terminology and standards for building cloud infrastructures."
Stay tuned for more information about what the SNIA has in store for the cloud in our Cloud Storage topic center. The cloud news is sure to be fast and furious from next week's Storage Networking World conference.
Friday, October 2, 2009
SMB DR preparedness is not what it seems
October 2, 2009 -- Perception is not reality when it comes to disaster recovery preparedness in the small and medium-sized business (SMB) world.
In a former life, I stocked shelves and handled inventory for a large, upscale retail outfit. Being the geek that I am, I took notice of the IT setup in the store, including a small tape drive buried under boxes and irregular garments. It was painfully obvious that it was not being used properly. In fact, I doubted whether any of the staff knew what it was.
Eventually I asked a manager about it and was informed that yes, it was part of the store manager's job to perform daily tape backups of the store's transaction and sales information.
However, in my tenure as stock-boy extraordinaire that tape drive was never used. Not once. It boggled my mind. But it seems that some things never change.
According to the findings of Symantec's "2009 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey," reveal that SMBs are confident in their DR plans. Eighty-two percent of respondents say they are somewhat/very satisfied with their disaster plans, and 84% say they feel somewhat/very protected in case of a disaster.
The reality of the situation, despite how confident they feel, is grim. According to the survey, SMBs do not back up their computer systems as frequently as they should: Only 23% backup their computer systems daily and less than half back up weekly.
The average SMB has experienced three outages within the past 12 months, with the leading causes being virus or hacker attacks, power outages or natural disasters. The approximate impact on the bottom line per outage is $15,000 per day. That's real money for small businesses.
The large retail chain I worked for is still in business. They continue to thrive. I can't speak to whether they have experienced outages or whether downtime has cost them cash or customers.
Perhaps the perception-reality gap is more evidence that consolidating and centralizing the backup process makes sense. Having a tape drive at a remote location doesn't ensure your data will be protected when an outage hits.
Symantec makes several useful recommendations to SMB customers in its report, which can be found on the company's website.
Keep up on the latest DR and business continuity news in our DR topic center.
In a former life, I stocked shelves and handled inventory for a large, upscale retail outfit. Being the geek that I am, I took notice of the IT setup in the store, including a small tape drive buried under boxes and irregular garments. It was painfully obvious that it was not being used properly. In fact, I doubted whether any of the staff knew what it was.
Eventually I asked a manager about it and was informed that yes, it was part of the store manager's job to perform daily tape backups of the store's transaction and sales information.
However, in my tenure as stock-boy extraordinaire that tape drive was never used. Not once. It boggled my mind. But it seems that some things never change.
According to the findings of Symantec's "2009 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey," reveal that SMBs are confident in their DR plans. Eighty-two percent of respondents say they are somewhat/very satisfied with their disaster plans, and 84% say they feel somewhat/very protected in case of a disaster.
The reality of the situation, despite how confident they feel, is grim. According to the survey, SMBs do not back up their computer systems as frequently as they should: Only 23% backup their computer systems daily and less than half back up weekly.
The average SMB has experienced three outages within the past 12 months, with the leading causes being virus or hacker attacks, power outages or natural disasters. The approximate impact on the bottom line per outage is $15,000 per day. That's real money for small businesses.
The large retail chain I worked for is still in business. They continue to thrive. I can't speak to whether they have experienced outages or whether downtime has cost them cash or customers.
Perhaps the perception-reality gap is more evidence that consolidating and centralizing the backup process makes sense. Having a tape drive at a remote location doesn't ensure your data will be protected when an outage hits.
Symantec makes several useful recommendations to SMB customers in its report, which can be found on the company's website.
Keep up on the latest DR and business continuity news in our DR topic center.
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