Storage Nation

In my discussions with customers, I often ask the "V" question: how are you doing with virtualization? Occasionally I get an interesting response: they're entrenched IBM customer, and they point to the use of virtualization on their mainframe, and perhaps their big AIX boxen, and say they're largely virtualized.  Asked and answered. I need to ask them a better question: how are you doing with pooling of resources? The Bigger The Better Any time you pool resources, you're angling for a better outcome.  Lower cost-to-serve through scale efficiencies.  The ability to load-level across multiple, shifting demands.  Being able to react quickly to new and unforseen demands.  Efficient processes that manage resources in the aggregate, rather than individually

My last post was a set of links to articles on the proposed acquisition of 3PAR by Dell.  The problem with that list was that is was woefully incomplete and neglected some of my favorite bloggers and writers.  Oy Vay!  I mean, how could I have left these posts off?   Much grovelling.  So here is a new list – a shorter list that people interested in this should read, including a newcomer named Brad from the "valley of the nerds".  David Vellante, Founder of Wikibon Joerg Hallbauer, storage blogger Andrew Reichman, blogger from Forrester  Chris Evans, AKA The StorageArchitect Martin Glassborrow, AKA Storagebod   Chris Mellor, writer from The Register   Tom Trainer, storage analyst   Mark Peters, analyst from ESG   Twilight in the Valley of the Nerds    

There is no question that I'm going to get a lot of ribbing from friends of mine in the business when they read about this. After all, I was at Convergenet prior to it's acquisition by Dell and then again years later at EqualLogic when it was acquired by Dell and – as some have teased me about the inevitability of another Dell acquisition – it now appears that Dell intends to acquire 3PAR too .

This is an older video I shot from late last year with Chakri Avala from Symantec and and Karl Swarz for 3PAR demoing how thin reclamation for Symantec Storage Foundation works.

Derek Seaman posted in his blog yesterday about capacity thinning, zero reclamation technologies and included a test of 3PAR's Thin Persistence software. In his post he lists the steps he took to run the test, including the setup and final results.

The whole idea of a storage company making a video that reaches “viral status” is very interesting to me since I like making videos and I work for a storage company.  There are several problems with making a viral storage video including the relative size of the storage community, which is not large enough to generate large numbers of viewers and then there is the matter that competitors tend to not promote each others work very much, which creates a dampening effect on the whole word of mouth thing that I have associated with viral media. So, I get the idea of trying to promote a video, because you need a big lift beyond the industry to do it and you need to take advantage of the dynamics of the online video world. If you follow this link and read it ,  you’ll get an idea of how corporation can make viral videos. But not all viral videos are corporate – there are some that make it on creativity, execution and timing.  Although its against very steep odds, a non-corporate video video can succeed if its interesting and compelling enough for people to want to share it with others.  Being outrageous helps a lot.  The question remains – if most viral videos result from corporate marketing programs, what does that say about the definition of viral – is it only the most numbers of viewers, or is it something else?

3PAR customers like that fact that 3PAR arrays are so easy and fast to manage. In this video, Robert Cockerill from Thames River Capital in London talks about all the various things he does, his Windows-based infrastructure, how 3PAR’s thin provisioning helps him manage it all and how simple it was to protect it with 3PAR Remote Copy.

Today is the grand opening of a new cartoon strip, Ineption (Click the cartoon to see a larger image)

A short while ago, Microsoft announced their plans to create a stack platform appliance for Azure .  This was done, presumably, to deal with the competitive threat from VMware , which is part of the V-Block-centered Acadia business venture.  Sorry Microsoft, but IMHO, this is a clear signal that the cloud stack has been catapulted to the stratosphere of hype.  There are a couple assumptions about clouds in a can that show the ready-fire-aim nature of these types of solutions. The first is that clouds in a can will provide an on-ramp for private cloud infrastructures to to use public cloud infrastructures in the future.  Oh yes, and how exactly will that work?  Vaporware drawn on white boards with clouds in the middle?  The allure of an easier future through stacks rivals any of the malarkey that our industry has ever produced. The second assumption is that customers will save money with stacks and appliances.

As the IT industry rapidly transitions and matures, all sorts of traditional topics are now up for a fresh round of discussion. One of these topics that I'm getting frequently dragged into is storage management — what will it look like going forward?