Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat» Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Long-Term Versus Longer-Term Archiving

Stephen — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:46:03 +0000

How will you retain records for the long haul? It depends on how you define “long”. Nearly everyone (individual and business alike) has certain records to retain for years, and some may need retention for decades or centuries. How can you accomplish this?

First, consider whether to store records as atoms or bits. You can convert paper to data or vice versa, and there are pros and cons to both:

Properly handled physical (paper or film) records should last for hundreds of years and can remain readable without software or devices. But they’re hard to search (you need an index), and paper is bulky, heavy, and difficult to work with.
Digital records can either be stored offline or kept “alive,” but questions remain about their long-term reliability and readability. Living records can be easy to search and use, and digital storage can be very space-efficient, but data tends to pile up “out of sight.”

Long-term storage of records on physical media is proven - think about papyrus, tablets, gold or nickel discs, film, and paper. But will digital media fare as well? Data tapes and disks can degrade over time, and manufacturer reliability specs are based on accelerated testing, not actual experience. Regardless of media type, careful handling can extend media life.

But will you still be able to read it? Tapes and optical disks require additional hardware to read, while disk drives are paired with their read heads. Software applications are needed to read and interpret data (backup, archiving, compression, encryption, deduplication, database) as well. What about content format? Should you use ASCII, XML, PDF/A?

I’ll be presenting a webinar on this topic tomorrow, Wednesday, December 3, at 2:00 PM Eastern time. Register on-line at the AIIM web site and join me for the discussion!

You might also want to read these other posts…

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Long-Term Versus Longer-Term Archiving
Read more posts categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal

Can’t Get There From Here

Stephen — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 02:18:05 +0000

I’m currently making my travel plans for my final storage virtualization seminar. Or, to be precise, trying to make my plans. You see, apparently one cannot (reasonably) get from Cleveland to Toronto, even though they’re only 193 miles apart.

Want a direct flight? That’ll be $1,080 round trip on an Air Canada Dash-8. But it only takes 1:15 to get there! For comparison, I could fly to London (UK) from Cleveland for $650 round trip.
Ok, let’s connect then! That’ll run at least $650 on American (or over a grand on United) and take 4 hours, connecting through Chicago. Or you can connect through Washington DC on multiple airlines.
Hmmm… Amtrak? It’s cheap at $120 round trip, but the journey there takes 13 hours, and it’ll take a whopping 19 hours to get home! London (UK) is only 12 hours away (with a connection!)
Ok, Amtrak goes straight to Buffalo in 3 hours. Then it’s another hour and a half to Toronto by car. And there’s only one train per day. And it arrives at 3:30 in the freaking morning.
How about driving? That’s a 300 mile, 5-hour journey. Just long enough to be too painful.
Might as well walk. Google says it’ll take just 4 days!

Any suggestions?

You might also want to read these other posts…

Physical Security for the Road Warrior

Stephen — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:00:54 +0000

You can never be totally secure, but basic precautions like this simple cable lock for laptops can help

This is part of an ongoing series of longer articles I am posting on Sundays.

In this digital age, it is easy to overlook the critical element of physical security. Put simply, it is often far more efficient to steal or gain access to a physical object like a laptop or flash drive than to break into a computer system. And despite the sanitary and controlled environments many mobile employees often travel in, risks to personal safety are real. Therefore, it is sensible to consider the physical security needs of the road warrior.(...)
Read the rest of Physical Security for the Road Warrior (487 words)

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Physical Security for the Road Warrior
Read more posts categorized as Personal

Storage Folks Are Talking 10-Gig and FCoE

Stephen — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:07:17 +0000

I continue to be amazed by the level of interest I’m seeing in Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and 10 Gb Converged Ethernet among storage people. As I noted after my Charlotte virtualization seminar, end users at the largest enterprises seem to think that FCoE is their future, not just one of several options.

But when will 10 Gb and FCoE arrive? Dave Raffo and I discussed the topic after Storage Decisions, and he just wrote an article on the topic, 10GigE still seeking killer app. Here are some points that came up in our discussion:

Shipping and supported 10 Gb HBAs and CNAs are the key requirement, and it looks like the schedules of Microsoft, VMware, Sun, and Linus Torvalds will determine when the floodgates open
iSCSI people are talking 10 Gb, too, and they might end up adopting it first with software initiators
Interest in FCoE is focused at the largest enterprise shops, and I’m seeing a distinct line between “iSCSI shops” and “(future) FCoE shops” with very little overlap (as I previously noted, iSCSI and FCoE aren’t mortal enemies, and FCoE will rule in the largest environments)
No one is talking about 8 Gb Fibre Channel - they have all decided that 10 Gb FCoE or iSCSI is the next step for block storage
InfiniBand has its believers (and they are rabid fans!), but the users I talk to are, as a rule, heading toward FCoE rather than IB for their future connectivity
There is a tiny bit of user interest in moving back to SAS-enabled DAS for virtual server environments
Everyone I talk to is shocked there isn’t a 10 Gb iSCSI array on the market yet, and we all expect to see this before FCoE
Although some vendors have announced FCoE products, they’re not here yet - and it will be another year still before we see production deployment

You might also want to read these other posts…

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Storage Folks Are Talking 10-Gig and FCoE
Read more posts categorized as Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage

Top Ten Innovative Enterprise Storage Hardware Products

Stephen — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 22:27:25 +0000

Looking around at the enterprise storage landscape, it is plain that certain archetypes rule: Monolithic enterprise arrays, dual-controller modular arrays, standard-sized hard disk units, NAS servers, tape libraries. Are these really the optimal designs for storage in our modern open systems world?

On the contrary, I suggest that the enterprise storage world we know was shaped by singular innovative products of the past. Without these, the IT world might look very different.

So let’s take a walk through history, identifying the ten most innovative and important enterprise storage hardware products. But let me note first that this list could be 100 items long, and we all have our favorites. Lots of the storage blogging world contributed their ideas, too!(...)
Read the rest of Top Ten Innovative Enterprise Storage Hardware Products (1,731 words)

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Top Ten Innovative Enterprise Storage Hardware Products
Read more posts categorized as Computer history, Enterprise storage

Making Plans for Storage Decision San Francisco

Stephen — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:47:42 +0000

Next week is the final Storage Decisions conference of 2008, Storage Decisions San Francisco! I’ll be in the Bay area from Sunday night through Wednesday, and invite you to say hello if you’re in the area as well!

If you’re attending the conference, here’s my schedule:

Monday, 9:45 AM - 10:45 AM: DATA RETENTION & RETRIEVAL track: Deep Dive Into Email Archiving Products
Monday, 4:30 PM - 7:00 PM: Exhibit Hall Reception
Monday, 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM: Ask the Experts in the Exhibit Hall
Monday, 7:30 PM - Late: Dinner (You’re invited! See below!)
Tuesday, 1:00 PM - 2:45 PM: Lunch in the Exhibit Hall
Tuesday, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM: STORAGE & CAPACITY MANAGEMENT track: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Virtualization - In One Hour!

Join Me For Dinner on Monday!

A bunch of storage folks have said they’re interested in getting together for a dinner on Monday night. Let’s do it!

What: Dinner and conversation
When: 7:30 PM on Monday the 17th until we get tired
Where: Start at the San Francisco Hilton, then off for Sushi, Mexican, or Italian (help me decide!)
Who: Anyone who wants to come along!
How: Contact me through email, a comment on this page, or twitter!

See you in San Francisco!

You might also want to read these other posts…

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Making Plans for Storage Decision San Francisco
Read more posts categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage

BackType Is Closing The Blog Comment Hole

Stephen — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 05:02:08 +0000

I am an avid reader of RSS feeds, relying on Google Reader to keep me up to date with the latest industry news. But there is a hole in the world of blogs - comments are a dead end. I literally read hundreds of blogs and occasionally leave a comment, but I rarely go back to see if anyone else follows up.

Disqus and Intense Debate proposed to close this comment hole by replacing the comment capability of participating blogs with a centralized system. Automattic, maker of the popular WordPress blog software, even recently acquired Intense Debate. But these systems merely add another destination to check for comments and replies.

I wished for some ability to follow comments automatically, right within Google Reader, and now I (nearly) have it! BackType is a clever service that tracks blog comments, associating them with their authors through the URLs many people use when posting. Users of this service can then “claim” their comments (via these URLs) and associate them with their account.

But that’s not the part that hooked me. Once you have an account, you can look up your favorite comment authors and “follow” them through BackType, subscribing to an RSS feed to follow the comments they leave in the future. This even works for people who don’t have a BackType account - anyone using a common URL can be followed in this way. And BackType integrates with nifty network-of-networks lifestream aggregator, FriendFeed.

BackType isn’t perfect, but it’s constantly being improved. It only checks certain blogs. You can submit them through a bookmarklet, but it would be nice if it had a wider set already. I’d also love to be able to automatically “follow” any comments left for a blog post after I comment. In other words, add all comments, no matter who writes them, to my feed for that one post.

But BackType is good enough already that I heartily recommend it. Follow me!

You might also want to read these other posts…

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | BackType Is Closing The Blog Comment Hole
Read more posts categorized as Personal

EMC Atmos Versus VMware VDC-OS: Will The Real Cloud Strategy Please Stand Up?

Stephen — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:03:42 +0000

As I guessed on Friday, EMC has officially announced their Maui Atmos software layer today, calling it the “industry’s first COS (cloud-optimized storage) offering”, “a new era for IT”, and “a new category of storage.” So the new era for IT is a cloud with globally-distributed object stores with policy management?

Great! But I thought the new era for IT was a cloud with choice, mobility, and application support, as trumpeted by EMC’s VMware subsidiary! Wasn’t Cloud vServices from VDC-OS supposed to be the prototype cloud strategy for the datacenter?

What we have here is a simple clash of marketing amusingly taking place at (nearly) the same company. VMware figured out how to extend their server virtualization products outside the confines of the data center, and laid that technology out as a strategy with the trendy “cloud” name. Meanwhile, mother EMC is working on next-generation content storage software and decides to roll that out as a strategy and also jumps on the “cloud” meme. What’s an IT manager to do?(...)
Read the rest of EMC Atmos Versus VMware VDC-OS: Will The Real Cloud Strategy Please Stand Up? (983 words)

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | EMC Atmos Versus VMware VDC-OS: Will The Real Cloud Strategy Please Stand Up?
Read more posts categorized as Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage

Flash Forward or Flash Back?

Stephen — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 16:00:52 +0000

This is part of an ongoing series of longer articles I am posting every Sunday.

The tech industry has been buzzing about solid state drives (SSDs) again lately, but many questions remain. Even after many major vendors (Apple, EMC, and Dell to name a few) have introduced NAND flash-based disk into their core products, it is unclear whether non-disk storage will fly or flop. I’m betting it will find a nice niche, but that traditional spinning disks are here for a good long time.(...)
Read the rest of Flash Forward or Flash Back? (911 words)

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Flash Forward or Flash Back?
Read more posts categorized as Apple, Computer history, Enterprise storage

EMC About To Take Us To Maui…

Stephen — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:14:33 +0000

Update: Maui is now Atmos! See my post, EMC Atmos Versus VMware VDC-OS: Will The Real Cloud Strategy Please Stand Up?

Remember all the talk about a year ago about EMC’s mysterious new storage product, code-name “Maui”? It was teased and pulled by Storagezilla, and rumored by one and all… Well, it wasn’t at EMC World, and people were starting to claim it might just be so much vapor.

Well, the rumor from unnamed people within EMC is that it’s coming. Really soon. Like next week. Here come the drums!

Apparently, it’s a software layer that manages a global pool of storage, including replication, synchronization, and protection. Think of it as super storage virtualization, an internal storage cloud. It sounds something like Cleversafe, and a little like one of my favorite cool flops, MangoSoft Medley. Of course, this is just what I’ve gathered from outside - no one will tell me anything officially!

You might also want to read these other posts…

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | EMC About To Take Us To Maui…
Read more posts categorized as Computer history, Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage