January 31, 2012

HP’s Mighty Stumble

How could a company as mighty and diverse as HP have had so many executive management issues?

HP stumbled mightily in 2011, and it had nothing to do with product or people. Even sales remained strong, though the PC business is changing. HP’s mighty stumble was a crisis of confidence due to a chain of shenanigans at the very top. This culminated with the short reign of Léo Apotheker, leaving HP to reassure the market of its strategy.

Eight Unresolved Questions About FCoE

It's not going to be this easy to bridge Fibre Channel and Ethernet!

What elements remain unresolved to make FCoE truly world-class? What should the vendors be prioritizing?

Networking Field Day and OpenFlow Symposium

I'll be returning to San Jose for another Tech Field Day event this week

This week I’m traveling to the San Jose, CA area for two events I’ve organized: The OpenFlow Symposium and the second Networking-focused Tech Field Day. I’ll be surrounded by some of the smartest and most interesting folks in networking all week, which is both daunting and exciting for a storage guy like me.

Multi-Hop FCoE Is Not Ready For Prime Time (Yet)

This big V8 is a "mild hybrid", delivering some of the benefit and all of the feel-good without changing the world...

I know that a number of FCoE-related standards are settled, and I know that there are products in the market and even some limited multi-vendor compatibility. I even accept that some customers are deploying real “Full Monty FCoE” in production. But I just can’t recommend that technology yet: It’s not prudent, widespread, and low-risk, so I say it’s not ready for prime time.

Changes in Technology Drive Changes in IT Organizations and Roles

Servers, storage, and networks may be interconnected, but most large IT organizations keep the administrative teams from mixing. But the next-generation virtual data center might change that!

Lots of my IT infrastructure management clients are talking about how the advent of Ethernet/IP and virtualization is changing the roles of storage, server, and network administrators. The evolution of the storage role in particular in enterprise IT organizations has been a topic of particular interest to me for a while: I definitely remember thinking about [...]

Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, March 25, 2011

This regular series features highlights from the week.
A special video message for NerdBlurt and #HDSday folks …
Evolving vs. Arriving
Cisco’s CleanAir vs the Atheros vendors
MetaGeek – Gestalt IT Wireless Tech Field Day
Hands on with the Metageek Wi-Spy DBx

Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, February 18, 2011

It was a busy week, with Tech Field Day 5 posts coming fast and furious. Now we are on to planning Wireless Field Day, coming in mid-March!

Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, February 4, 2011

I spent last week tying up loose ends before Tech Field Day 5 in San Jose. It’s going to be a great event, with presentations by Symantec, Drobo, Xangati, NetEx, InfoBlox, HP, and a new company making their US launch! In the mean time, I am working hard to wrap up the Small Enterprise Storage Array Buyers’ Guide for DCIG and continuing my regular work – spreading the word about state of the art IT! I’ve been researching VMware extensively, and building a home lab server, in preparation for my Storage for Virtual Servers seminar, too.

Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, January 28, 2011

This regular series features highlights from the week. I was pretty busy at the Exec Event this week, but did sneak out a few posts about VMware hardware compatibility (SATA/PATA and FCoE CNAs) as well as a review of the Samsung pico-projector I bought for Tech Field Day 4.

Every Company Is Gunning For Someone Else

Everyone has a target on their backs, but they all aim in different directions

One of the amusing aspects of being self-employed is watching all the giants battle it out. Every company is gunning for someone, but the amazing thing is that they rarely have each other in their sights: NetApp is gunning for EMC who’s more focused on HP who wants to knock off Oracle who’s fixated on IBM. It sounds very “high school romance” but this is deadly-serious business.