Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

I arrived in beautiful Chicago today for the Storage Decisions show at the Hilton here.  What a great event this is - loads of interested and committed storage users and some of the best minds in the business get together to talk about how we all do this thing we call storage!

I was glad to see Jon Toigo here - while I may not always agree with him, he certainly has vast experience in the storage industry.  And I appreciate his role as the iconoclast of storage.  We both agree that the real action in the industry happens at a whole different layer than just storing and moving bits.

Before sitting down with Jon, I was pleased to chat with my good friends, Curtis Preston and Bill Peldzus, both of whom have, over the years, proved themselves advocates of end user concerns.

I’ll also be looking for Greg Schulz, Mark Staimer, Arun Taneja, and Steve Duplessie and his crew from ESG.  See what I mean about the best minds in the industry?

Of course, the hotel is crawling with TechTarget’s staff, including Rich C and Rich F from Storage magazine, Dave Raffo from SearchStorage.com, and Amy, Lindsey and the folks who run the show.

If you’re here, please do come up and introduce yourself.  If not, there are three more shows scheduled for this year!

Tags:Arun Taneja, Chicago, Enterprise Strategy Group, Greg Schulz, Jon Toigo, Mark Staimer, Steve Duplessie, Storage Decisions, Storage Magazine, TechTarget

Yeah, we live in bizarre world of copyrighted conflicts…  It seems like someone is always trying to exercise control over “their content” and using copyright as their bludgeon.

First, let me clue you in to a secret.  I’m a car nut.  More precisely, I love the engineering of cars - and once delighted in documenting esoteric details of engines, transmissions, and chassis on Wikipedia.  I still delight in seeing unusual engines, and have been known to take the odd photograph of them, too.

Others also suffer from this engine fixation.  Witness the regular “Engine of the Day” feature over at Gawker Media’s popular auto blog, Jalopnik.

I love reading these stories, but today’s entry (on Ford’s bad Windsor V8 engine) seemed awfully familiar to me.  Or rather, the photo did.  See, that photo was taken by me, but you wouldn’t know it from reading Jalopnik.  It’s ripped off from Wikimedia Commons, where it’s licensed GFDL and CC-by-SA.  This means that professional publishers like Jalopnik can’t use my image without attribution.

Now, some people might be flattered by this kind of use.  In fact, I was flattered by this the first time it happened.  But this isn’t the first time Jalopnik has used my photo without attribution.  It’s not even the second time.  No, this is the third time Jalopnik has used a photo I took without attribution.  I bet Gawker wouldn’t be happy to have someone use their copyrighted content without permission or attribution, but it seems just fine for them to do it!  I even offered these photos for free use as long as they attributed me, but even that wasn’t satisfactory…

I previously wrote about my experience with photos used by a German newspaper who used one of my car photos, as well as a well-known Linux hacker who ripped off an article I wrote for his book.  This stuff happens all the time, in fact.

What can we do?  I’m not sure how to fix it, but one thing I will say is that I’m certainly not happy with Jalopnik or Gawker Media.  If anyone has a suggestion on how to deal with this situation, I’d love to hear it.

Update: Murilee Martin, writer of these three entries, has added attribution to me for two of them after I emailed him, Ray Wert, and Nick Denton.  Will they do a better job in the future?  We shall see…

Tags:automobiles, Copyright, engines, Ford, Gawker Media, Jalopnik, photography, Wikimedia, Wikipedia

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) has been a hot topic of discussion in the enterprise storage world lately, but many end users are just now hearing about it.  Although some folks seem to think it’s here with a vengance, others doubt that it will ever make the splash it promises, with 8 Gb FC, iSCSI, and even AoE (ATA over Ethernet) showing more promise.  There has been some back and forth, and even a little backpedaling.

What do you think?  If you’re a Plaxo user, I created a poll over there to see if folks think it will rise, and when.

Tags:8 Gb, AoE, Ethernet, FCoE, Fibre Channel, iSCSI, Plaxo

Ever been to the TechTarget Storage Decisions conference?  It’s my favorite trade show, since it’s totally focused on end users - instead of being a product showcase, Storage Decisions is all about what real people need to do with their enterprise storage infrastructure.  Sure, there’s lots of technical product talk, but none of the speakers work for the hardware or software companies.  And did I mention that attendance is free?

If this sounds good to you, then now is the time to register for the Chicago show, coming up from May 13 through 15.  If you can attend, I strongly recommend coming in the day before the show so you don’t miss the kickoff on Tuesday morning.

As for me, I’ve got two sessions at the show this year, both on Wednesday the 14th.  Come in the morning for my Deep Dive Into Email Archiving Products, incorporating lots of the ideas I got from my Storage Magazine article and Webcast on the subject.  That afternoon, I’ll be presenting a shortened version of my Storage Virtualization Seminar, covering everything you wanted to know about virtualization technology in an hour instead of a day!  I’ll also be at the Ask the Experts Booth on the show floor on Tuesday evening if you’d like to come up and introduce yourself.

If you can’t make Chicago in May, how about Toronto in June, New York in September, or San Francisco in November?

Tags:Chicago, conference, Email archiving, Storage Decisions, storage virtualization, TechTarget, virtualization

Wow!  EMC has apparently purchased WysDM Software, maker of a most excellent range of data protection and storage management software.  This is a great move for EMC, and if everyone at WysDM is as happy as my old StorageNetworks co-worker, Alan Atkinson, seems to be in this InternetNews article, their offices must be something to see!  It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of guys…

Thanks to Storagezilla for breaking the news.  Someone should probably update the WysDM web site, too…

Tags:EMC, StorageNetworks, WysDM

I’m working on a new feature article for Storage Magazine focused on selecting an enterprise email archiving product.  This is something I’ve done quite a bit of work around, so I decided to redirect it into a “bride magazine” type “ten things to look for” item.  If you too know about the field of email archiving products, how about weighing in with a comment or email with your opinion?

Without further ado:

The ten technical things some email archiving products do and others do not do*

1. Capture all messages - Can the archiving system really guarantee that every message is captured?  Really?  Even if a user does the old “double-delete” and gets rid of every copy on the system before the “archive sweep” happens?
2. Search and e-discovery - It’s amazing to me that some archiving systems have really terrible search capabilities.  But more important is whether they can handle real e-discovery requests from the legal department.
3. Record user metadata - Capturing what users do with a message (read, file, ignore, forward) is a tough nut to crack, and it might just be impossible with some archiving technologies!
4. Archive stuff other than email - Some are general archives that can take just about any content, while others are purpose-built for email.  I am hemming and hawing on whether this is critical in an email archiving product, and which is preferrable…
5. Security and chain of custody - How secure is the archive content?  If the answer is “kinda” then your legal department is not going to be happy!
6. Ingest an existing mail store or PST file - It’s great when an archiving system can capture every email once it’s installed, but it’s a whole other matter to be able to pull in pre-existing content.  But beware!  You have to flag this stuff as possibly incomplete and perhaps even unreliable!
7. Integrate with mail clients - What does the end user see?  Is it an unfamiliar web link or a reassuring Outlook window?  What about Outlook Web Access users?  Or the 8,000 other email clients?
8. Allow off-line access - Can a user access the archive when they’re on a plane?  Can they see it on the train?  Would they, could they in the park?  Will you, will you when your data center goes dark?
9. Integrate with third-party tools - How well will the archive really serve legal if it can’t export messages to their favorite search tool?  Note - some can even talk directly with these products!
10. Integrate with mobile users - Ok, I am on an iPhone in the enterprise crusade, but I’ll admit that lots of folks use BlackBerries and Windows Mobile (and Symbian) too.  How can they access the archive?

I’ve worked with most of the products out there, and know who can and can’t do these things.  But not all are important to everyone, so I just can’t say “this product is best.”  But I’m very interested in your opinion.  What key technical differentiators would you suggest?

* Not the actual article title!

Tags:BlackBerry, Email archiving, iPhone, Microsoft, Outlook, Storage Magazine, Symbian, TechTarget, Windows Mobile

I travel for work. I also travel for pleasure. You could say I travel a lot - not as much as some but definitely a lot. For example, I’ve spent at least one day in another state almost every week so far in 2008. Although getting there is never really fun, it can be made slightly better by mixing in some of the latest and greatest social services from our fabulous Internet. Read on and see why I love Kayak, TripIt, and FlyerTalk.

Continue Reading »

Tags:FlyerTalk, Kayak, travel, TripIt

Lotsa people use and love data de-duplication (to hyphen or not - that is the question) technology for backup and archiving, but it looks like this tech is about to bust out for primary, live, real, mainstream, what-you-are-using-to-store-your-stuff storage. Big news!

First up was the company now officially called NetApp, which officially blessed the use of their advanced single instance storage (A-SIS) de-dupe tech for primary storage use as of now. They added block-based de-dupe way back when, and even said people could use it for primary storage, but it doesn’t look like that happened much. So the new release of OnTap 7G includes performance tweaks and more powerful blessing from the company, making this the first play for primary storage de-dupe that I know of. Some have been (predictably) skeptical of Network Appliance NetApp’s A-SIS technology, but others appreciate the results…

Next is the smarties over at Hifn, who make super (de)duper storage controller hardware that often finds its way into OEM products. On Monday, the company announced availability of a card that can handle de-duplication, compression, and encryption, though not all three at once and only at 250 megabyte per second speed. And it looks like a partnership with Freescale Semiconductor will give a big performance boost later in the year, enabling gigabyte per second throughput and all three functions at once. This could really be something, with upstart OEMs launching de-duping storage arrays for little bucks before Storage Decisions comes to San Francisco!

Image by Gila Brand, used according to Creative Commons 2.5 license

Tags:de-duplication, deduplication, Hifn, NetApp, OnTap

Imagine there was someone many people loved to hate, but grudgingly loved just the same because of their incredible prowess. In Red Sox Nation, that would be Alex Rodriguez, who we follow year after year with a mix of admiration, envy, and anger as he seems to make all the right moves for the wrong team. Lots of IT people feel the same about Microsoft, whose runaway success is only slightly tempered by occasional schadenfreude when a misstep is made. In our little corner of the world, storage pros have even more reason to wonder how Microsoft can continue to make good move after good move.

It wasn’t always like this - be thankful if you don’t remember FTEDIT! But ever since Windows 2000, Redmond has made improvement after improvement, remaking “bad (SAN) citizen” Windows into Martha Stewart. But unlike the latter, Microsoft hasn’t called much attention to its skills, and this is a shame…

Take iSCSI - Microsoft was an early supporter of the protocol, releasing an excellent software iSCSI driver as a free download. They also bundle a limited (but continuously-improving) volume manager with all modern versions of Windows. Then there’s VSS, which is the first hardware-independent (even hardware-free!) snapshot API I know of. I’ve written articles (1, 2) on Windows storage technologies which go into these in more detail.

But one question that came up in my virtualization seminar made me realize that I forgot one key piece of Gates-tech: MPIO. See, Microsoft has also been bundling a free hardware-independent multipath I/O driver in server editions of Windows since 2003, but lots of folks haven’t gotten the memo. It’s good stuff: A generic driver with device-specific modules (DSMs) for different storage array and network types. MPIO handles transparent multi-path failover (for availability) and load balancing (for performance).

If you have iSCSI, you simply must try MPIO since Microsoft’s own free DSM supports about everything you need, and compatibility is required for logo support. And if you’re on Fibre Channel, you’re probably in luck, too, since most major vendors provide DSMs for their arrays (but some might not be free, I’m told).

So there you have it. Another excellent (and free!) Microsoft product that you (probably) never heard of, cutting out proprietary solutions (at least for Windows Server…)

Tags:Fibre Channel, iSCSI, LDM, Microsoft, MPIO, volume management, VSS, Windows

Network Appliance is no more. The company that made the second enterprise storage device I ever used, added the terms “filer” and “appliance” to the enterprise IT lexicon, and long suffered from a confusing array of names, is now officially called NetApp.

This is probably a good idea. A company needs a single name, and NetApp is what lots of people (even me) have long called the company. Plus, it’s never good to have your company name be the same as one of your products, at least when you make more than one. And NetApp has lots of different products, many of which are not network appliances…

They’ve added a new logo, too, which ironically looks like a thick blue dolmen to me, but was probably supposed to evoke a door and the letter, N. I always liked the old round peg in a round hole idea, myself… But then again, I always kinda liked yellow and purple and silver storage devices, too!

Remember the old days, when it was Apple Computer, HP still stood for Hewlett-Packard, Sun for Stanford University Network, and EMC for Evil Machine Company? (Just kidding, guys, I know it was Egan, Marino and Einstein’s equation…) But the world will end if IBM ever changes its logo!

Update: More coverage:

• Marc Farley liked the old logo better
• Robin Harris is wined and dined by NetApp in New York - where’s my invite, guys?
• Rajeev Karamchedu thinks it looks like an IBM lego house…
• Zerowait calls it a staple and compares it to New Coke - Ouch!
• The Register is even less complimentary…

Image by Andrew Dunn courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, cc-by-sa-2.0

Tags:Apple, EMC, HP, IBM, NetApp, Network Appliance, Sun