I am biased against FCoE because it’s too new to be blithely and broadly recommended for production enterprise use. That’s all. Yes, the standards are standardized and there are products extant. But that’s not enough for me.
Four Fundamental Best Practices for Enterprise IT
September 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Although many people are cynical about the whole idea of best practices, I’m a believer. I think that such beasts do exist, just that too many companies, analysts and especially consultants spend too much time applying the label to whatever works in their best interest at the time. To counteract this cesspool of non-best practices, I thought it best to put down a few ideas of my own. Following are four fundamental best practices I have distilled from almost 20 years in enterprise IT. I wonder if you agree with them.
Why Do I Ignore NAS?
May 7, 2010 By 4 Comments
Why does network-attached storage (NAS) have such a poor reputation? This isn’t what the vendors want to be talking about, but some recent product announcements and discussions led to this thought. IT folks as a whole don’t trust NAS for real work, and 20 years of effort from big names like Sun, Microsoft, NetApp, IBM, and the rest hasn’t changed that.
The Techie/Business Schism
April 29, 2010 By 1 Comment
IT is fixated on endless technology upgrades but fails to adequately address the human side of the equation. The schism between application developers and infrastructure managers is reflected in many current controversial topics, and IT infrastructure must radically change its course to avoid it being left in the dust.
Use Process Solutions For Process Problems, Technical Solutions For Technical Ones
April 27, 2010 By 1 Comment
If there is a universal best practice, it’s the simple idiom, “use the right tool for every job”. We in IT spend so much time trying to fit square pegs into round holes, it becomes second nature. But the time has come to adopt a new best practice: Use process solutions to solve process problems, and technical solutions to solve technical ones.
Back From the Pile: Interesting Content From the Week of May 9, 2009
May 11, 2009 By 2 Comments
It was an interesting week, with a cloud computing summit in Washington DC, the release of Windows Storage Server 2008, and discussions of best practices and non-compete agreements. Apple MacBook Users: Turn off This Bluetooth Default Setting Now – Now I know what turned on my MacBook Pro in the bag: My BlueTooth mouse! Enterprise [...]
SAN School Podcast Series Posted
July 8, 2008 By Leave a Comment
TechTarget recently uploaded three podcast versions of my SAN School series from Storage Decisions last year. These are audio-only, but I might be able to dig up the accompanying slides. If you’re interested in this, please leave a note below or contact me through email. So without further ado, I present three lessons on SAN [...]
Where the SAN Stands
July 7, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Real Video: Where the SAN Stands Curious about the current state of SAN technology? Stephen Bigelow of TechTarget interviewed me (last summer) about SAN options, and the video is now live on their BitPipe site. Topics covered include combined iSCSI and FC SANs, ups and downs of modular storage and oversubscribed switches, next-generation SAN management [...]
