Thin provisioning is a topic that is interesting to me. Now, I have to warn you ahead of time that I’ve been a critic of thin provisioning for a long, long time. So, you’re really not going to get a big cheer leader “rah rah” session here.

I feel like too many people use technologies like thin provisioning more for political and management problems than technical problems. But recently I have come around to seeing that thin provisioning has good uses. It has some positive aspects. But, I’ve also discovered a lot about how it really is and how it really works, and it’s not quite as wonderful as people like to say.

But, let’s start at the beginning. Why are we doing this at all? Why do we care about thin provisioning? This is why: Storage is not getting cheaper.

If you went to buy a disk ten years ago, you’re going to spend about the same as would today, but you’re going to get a lot more capacity – a lot more capacity!

This is a big fallacy of enterprise storage. I used to call it the CompUSA problem, but then they went out of business. So, I guess I’ll have to call it the Best Buy problem. The idea that I can go into a store and buy two terabytes of disk for two $100 bills and have change left over.

Well, that’s an issue for enterprise storage, right? Because what happens when you try to actually do real enterprise storage provisioning in a corporation? You end up with people pushing back on you saying, “Hey, wait! How come you’re charging me so much? For the price that I’m paying per month in internal chargebacks I can just go buy this capacity. And I have to pay that every single month?”

I hear this again and again from a lot of the pundits (people who don’t actually do anything in storage) who say, “ah, it’s just a spinning disk. All the enterprise guys they’re bending you over and taking advantage of you, and they are taking too much money out of your pocket for all this.”

Well, the truth is that probably a lot of them are overpricing. But, in my opinion, the cost of capacity is basically irrelevant. That doesn’t mean it’s zero, but it’s basically irrelevant. The reason is that everything else about storage is growing so rapidly that the dropping cost of disk capacity really isn’t helping.

The fact is that we have terrible utilization of enterprise resources anyway, and it’s not getting any better. In fact, most companies today have about the same storage utilization that they did ten years ago. Somewhere between 20 and 30 percent, if you look soup to nuts.

It hasn’t improved because they are “doing storage” the same way. If you’ve got file systems and you’ve got SCSI and you’ve got block storage and all that kind of stuff, guess what? Your utilization is going to be just as bad now as it was then because the technology just isn’t there.

And often it’s the business processes: There is a big problem with how provisioning, forecasting, purchasing, and the rest is done. So, storage costs just keep rising, and the dropping cost of disk capacity is only a minimal component.

Let’s talk about real-world cost. This is a graph that I made for one customer, and it doesn’t necessarily represent everybody. I’m not IDC. I don’t have some kind of universal numbers. I don’t know if they have the universal numbers either, but I definitely don’t.

This is what I found. With hardware and software, it was less than 10 percent of the entire cost of delivering storage services.

What does that mean? That means that if you reduce the cost and hardware and software by 50 percent (which would be a tremendous win by anybody’s standards) you’ve then affected your cost of storage by just five percent.

That’s basically irrelevant. You work really hard to do all this stuff and you’re really not getting anything.

For the next segment of this discussion, we’ll take a look at storage utilization.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Storage is Not Getting Cheaper
This post was categorized as Computer History, Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Office 2011 finally brings Outlook and Visual Basic to the Mac

I already called out Amazon as the “go-to” place to buy Office 2011 for Mac OS X, but when the official Office for Mac blog spilled the beans on Black Friday deals, I had to take a look. Sure enough, Amazon.com is still the cheapest place to get Office 2011:

It’s really surprising that so few retaillers offer any discount at all on this (high-margin) software. You’ve got to get it from somewhere like MacMall or Amazon to save much of anything!

Note: Some of these links include affiliate codes that help pay for this blog. For example, buying an Amazon Kindle with this link sends a few bucks my way! But I don't write this blog to make money, and am happy to link to sites and stores that don't pay anything. I like Amazon and buy tons from them, but you're free to buy whatever and wherever you want.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Amazon Is Still The Best Place To Buy Office 2011 For Mac
This post was categorized as Apple, Deals. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Fabrik, maker of SOHO storage devices like this G-Safe, has been acquired by Hitachi GST

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (hereafter referred to as HGST) just bought Fabrik, the company that produces and distributes consumer storage devices as SimpleTech and pro/AV storage using the G-Technology name.

We in the enterprise storage sector are all too familiar with the epic battles between Hitachi Data Systems (let’s call them HDS) and EMC, both providers of storage systems to the enterprise IT market. And last year EMC purchased consumer drive maker Iomega, pushing out some impressive storage systems that combine the best of both companies.

So is Hitachi’s combination with SimpleTech a response or challenge to EMC’s acquisition of Iomega? In a word, no.

First there is the small issue that HGST is an entirely different company from HDS. Both are subsidiaries of the massive Hitachi, Ltd. of Japan, but to conflate them into one company would be a disservice:

• HGST is much more like Seagate Technologies or Western Digital – a maker of hard disk drive mechanisms, the core components of modern data storage devices from the consumer to enterprise space.
• HDS is much more like EMC or NetApp – a maker of storage systems and software aimed at the enterprise IT market.
• Parent company Hitachi, Ltd. makes all sorts of stuff, from appliances to monorails (no kidding!) and so is much like Mitsubishi or Fujitsu.

Where EMC is actively expanding Iomega’s marketing into a supplier of tiny storage systems for entry-level IT and lab use, we shouldn’t expect the same synergistic offerings from HDS and SimpleTech or G-Technology. Instead, we should look at this as a response to Seagate’s purchase of Maxtor and Toshiba’s consolidation with Fujitsu’s disk unit: HGST will have a much better consumer channel for its disk drive mechanisms and will be better able to compete with those companies and Western Digital in places like Staples and Best Buy.

This is not to say that SimpleTech and G-Technology doesn’t compete with Iomega, mind you. In fact, Fabrik’s two brands were head-to-head with EMC’s little sister in just about every corner of their markets, and they make some cool devices for the SOHO market. Check out the [re]drive, G-Drive Mini SSD, and G-Speed XL if you don’t believe me!

Sounds like a win for them, but not a game-changer for enterprise storage.

This article can also be found on Gestalt IT: Does Hitachi+SimpleTech = EMC+Iomega?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Does Hitachi+SimpleTech = EMC+Iomega?
This post was categorized as Apple, Enterprise storage, Everything, Gestalt IT, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

This post is part of my series focused on switching from PC to Mac.

• How To Buy Discount Apple Computers
• Got Some AppleCare For Cheap
• Switch! or How the Mac (Finally) Won Me Over
• Switch Day 1: This Mac is Hot!
• Switch Day 58: Ten Pros and Cons of the MacBook Pro

Do Not Want!

First, let’s talk about what not to buy:

1. If you want the best price, do not walk into your local Apple or Best Buy store and pick up a system.  They always charge full retail plus sales tax (where applicable).  Of course, the friendly selection and purchase process at the Apple store might be worth a few hundred to some people, but my own visits were simply reconnaissance - helping me pick which model to buy and choose between the glossy and matte screens.
2. Do not buy a model near the end of its life.  Check the MacRumors Buyers’ Guide to see whether the model will be replaced soon.  Your best deal will be on discontinued models, but if you want the latest system, remember that Apple generally does not discount current models as they age.  A notable exception was the recent price drop on the top-of-the-line MacBook Air with the solid-state disk.
3. Do not expect to get a dime knocked off a build-to-order system from Apple.  You can sometimes get interesting configurations from resellers at some discount, however.
4. Buy the minimum RAM configuration.  Apple is notorious for gouging on RAM upgrades – they currently charge $200 for 4 GB of RAM, twice as much as you would pay for the chips alone.  And it’s easy to upgrade RAM in almost all Apple systems.
5. Don’t bother spending extra for a larger hard drive.  Here again, you can get a much better deal if you shop around, and you can probably buy a bigger drive than anything Apple offers, too.  My MacBook Pro is packing 320 GB, and it wasn’t that hard to upgrade.
6. Don’t waste your time looking for a great deal on MacBook batteries or power adapters.  These things are notoriously unreliable and never discounted much.  Just buy them from Apple.
7. Finally, since customer support is such a major factor in the Apple switch, only buy from authorized resellers.  You don’t want to get shafted with a grey-market device when you need service.

Getting Your Deal

Ok, so what should you look for?  Here’s my take:

1. My best advice:  Consider an “outdated” system.  My MacBook Pro is the previous model, without the multi-touch trackpad or Penryn CPU, but it was manufactured in April, two months after the new model was introduced.  Apple continues making old models, and MacMall and MacConnection blow them out for about 20% less than their original price.  This is your best source for discounted Apple computers!
2. Pick your system and configuration and stick to it.  Find out the model number – I bought an MA895LL/A, which is a Late-2007 15″ MacBook Pro with a 2.2 GHz CPU and matte screen.  It can get really confusing with different product generations sharing the same common name, but you can’t go wrong with the official MA/MB model number!
3. Check the Holy Trinity: Amazon, MacMall, and MacConnection.  Price the whole thing out, including shipping and tax if applicable.  One of these three will almost certainly have the best deal.
4. If you qualify for an educational discount, find out what the price would be and use this as a benchmark.  For current systems, this is probably the best price.
5. Apple’s online clearance store sometimes has good deals on refurbished systems.  But you have to keep checking and act fast!
6. Watch out for rebates.  Although they’re unreliable, and you have to stay on top of them to make sure you get the money, this is the primary discount vehicle for Apple systems.  So you have to grin and bear it.
7. Consider bundles.  Amazon offers discounted AppleCare, MacConnection offers free VMware Fusion, and MacMall offers free Parallels.  If you want these things, this can seal the deal.  But I bought Fusion and left Parallels on the table at MacMall, and you can add AppleCare at any time in the first year.

Note: Some of these links include affiliate codes that help pay for this blog. For example, buying an Amazon Kindle with this link sends a few bucks my way! But I don't write this blog to make money, and am happy to link to sites and stores that don't pay anything. I like Amazon and buy tons from them, but you're free to buy whatever and wherever you want.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | How To Buy Discount Apple Computers
This post was categorized as Apple, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Update: My MacBook Pro is now rocking a Toshiba 640 GB hard disk drive!

Read on for details on swapping a disk in a MacBook Pro, finding a great deal on the drive, and how to get Boot Camp and VMware Fusion to work again after you do it!  Surprisingly, this was the hardest part…

This post is part of my series focused on the MacBook Pro.

• Don’t Be Jealous Of The New MacBook Pros!
• Upgraded! 320 GB in a MacBook Pro!
• SanDisk ExpressCard Flash Media Adapter: Nifty MacBook Pro Accessory!
• How I Get 7 Hours of MacBook Pro Battery Life
• Panic! Green Light and MacBook Pro Keyboard is Half Dead!
• Low-Power USB Ports Haunt My MacBook Pro

Now for some particulars and lessons learned:

• The MacBook Pro is not an easy machine to install hardware in!  Although the RAM is readily accessible, all other components are sealed inside that sleek silver case, and it was not meant to be opened.  It is certainly doable for most people, provided they have the right tools, but closing it back up again is tricky!  There are 19 screws, both Phillips #0 and Torx T6, and the correct screwdriver is a must-have.  Apple must use some serious gorilla snot on the LED/IR cable to attach it to the drive inside, as it took much fussing to cleanly remove it.  And getting the front tabs “clicked” took some fussing and more pressure than I wanted to exert!
• I chose a Verbatim SmartDisk 320 GB FireWire/USB Portable hard drive as a donor.  It contains a very nice Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD3200BEVT drive that should be compatible with most mainstream notebooks since it’s just 9.5 mm tall.  This is a modern unit with two 160 GB platters, 3.0 Gb/s “SATA II” interface with native command queueing, and is fast and quiet.
• Why buy an portable drive instead of a bare hard disk?  Because Best Buy had the Verbatim on sale at $129, while the bare drive itself (sitting just down the aisle) was marked $179, that’s why!  Plus, the case can be re-used (see below).
• My MacBook had a 120 GB Fujitsu MH2120BH drive, which is a 2-platter 1.5 Gb/s SATA unit with modern perpendicular recording technology.  It fit nicely in the leftover Verbatim external drive case!  Sadly the case is flimsy compared to the very nice metal Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini I use on the PC side.  But at least the FireWire interface is fast.
• I used SuperDuper to clone the Mac’s internal drive and then booted with the FireWire drive just to make sure it worked.  Very nice!  Then I cracked the MacBook and swapped the drives.

You might also be interested in my post on upgrading the hard disk drive in a new Mac Mini!

Some notes in particular for folks like me who Boot Camp and VMware Fusion and upgrade their drives:

• I chose Winclone (an OS X app) to back up the Boot Camp partition prior to the drive swap.  Worked like a charm, creating a 22 GB image of my 55 GB partition.
• To keep everything “native”, you must use Boot Camp Assistant to repartition the new drive after the upgrade.  But Assistant requires you to use GPT to partition the drive, and Verbatim shipped it with APM, so I had to repartition it in Disk Utility before using it.
• I wanted to have two partitions – one for OS X and another for my Home directory.  This is standard storage industry best practice and what I do on my Windows machines.  But Boot Camp Assistant can’t handle this, and OS X doesn’t make it easy either.  So it’s all one partition now.  Boo!
• The new Boot Camp partition has to be as large or larger than the old one for Winclone to restore to it.  I wasn’t using all my space and wanted to reduce it but couldn’t.  So even though I “only” have 22 GB of data in my Boot Camp partition, I had to devote 56 GB to it.  I’ll resize it later if I can.  Either way, I’ve still got over 200 GB free in my OS X partition!  Update: A utility called Camp Tune claims to allow you to resize your Boot Camp partition.  I’ll test it and report back!
• VMware Fusion works great with Boot Camp partitions normally, but falls on its face when you replace the drive like I did.  Fusion kept trying to use an invalid configuration for the new Boot Camp partition, and there is no easy way to make it work again after you’ve changed it.  But I found the answer – you have to delete /Users//Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines/Boot Camp, reboot into Boot Camp, and restart OS X before Fusion will correctly detect and configure the partition!  This is crazy stuff, but it works now!

All in all, I’m really enjoying the Mac.  Many OS X features are great (though some are lousy) and the hardware is superb.  But it is the ability to run Windows, both natively and using Fusion, that really seals the deal for me.  This really is the ultimate laptop, with a nice desktop UNIX, serious Windows performance, and now as much RAM and disk as anyone is likely to need.  At least until the 500 GB drives arrive next month…

Greg Ferro just did exactly the same thing, and I got a kick out of the name of his post!

Note: Some of these links include affiliate codes that help pay for this blog. For example, buying an Amazon Kindle with this link sends a few bucks my way! But I don't write this blog to make money, and am happy to link to sites and stores that don't pay anything. I like Amazon and buy tons from them, but you're free to buy whatever and wherever you want.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Upgraded! 320 GB in a MacBook Pro!
This post was categorized as Apple, Personal, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

I wonder why they decided to clear it out. It was brand new, and had never appeared on their shelves that I noticed. It couldn’t have been displayed for more than a month or two since it was the new 1001 model. Oh well, their loss, my gain!

I’ve also monkeyed with my media server. I was running Unslung as my OS on the NSLU2, but I got sick of its weirdness, and it kept running out of memory. So I wiped it and went for SlugOS/BE (aka OpenSlug), a very trimmed down OS for the Slug. The Firefly Media Server people don’t officially support it, but I was able to get it running in short order. It seems much more stable and responsive. And I replaced the old Linksys build of Samba with version 3, which is much speedier and uses far less CPU time. I’m happy!

As an aside, did you know that Best Buy will haggle on their clearance items? Ask the manager, and they can easily knock off 15% to 25% from the yellow-sticker price!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2007. | Another Roku Soundbridge
This post was categorized as Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.