• My writing:
  • Join the Tech Field Day 6 Delegates at VMunderground Beantown Party as a Service (BPaaS)!
  • Dragon Dictate for Mac: Utterly Frustrating
  • You Really Can Have a Complete Backup System Up and Running in 10 Minutes!
  • Foskett Services Develops How-To Video Content For Druva Software
  • Announcing “Virtual” Tech Field Day 6!
  • Boxcar Growl Plugin Not Working?
  • What Exactly Is Symantec V-Ray?
  • Local Snapshots in Mac OS X Lion Time Machine: Is It A Good Idea?
• Videos from Interop and EMC World:
  • Introducing Ciphertex at Interop 2011
  • Synology RackStation RS2211 at Interop
  • Ryan Woodings demonstrates the Metageek iPad app
  • Jussi Kiviniemi talks about Ekahau and Metageek
  • Interviewing Thomas Jones at EMC World
• Other great stuff:
  • Greg Ferro noted GoldenEggs x86-64 Server Comparison and Visualisation
  • Jason Boche’s cool Co-scheduling Visualized

Subscribe to my Google Reader feed or follow me on Twitter to see these in real-time.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, May 27, 2011
This post was categorized as Everything. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

As I wrote, this got longer and longer. So I’ve split it up into a series of posts:

• Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camcorder Review
• Azden SMX-10 Stereo Shotgun and Generic OLM-10 Lavalier Microphone Review
• Zoom H1 “Handy Recorder”: Hands-On Review
• Sony NEX-5 Camera Review

Recent Examples

Here are some example videos made with the equipment described above.

Symantec Donating to Teacher Exchange

A bit yellow (there’s no white balance on the Zi8) but this was a very dim and noisy location with a hastily-recruited camera-woman (thanks, Gina!). If I hadn’t had a good mic the recording would have been ruined by the environment, but everything worked out fine in the end.

Drobo S Unboxing

This was shot with the Zi8 on a tripod and the lav mic clipped to my shirt. It was a quiet environment, and the long lav wire allowed me to move around freely.

Introducing Ciphertex at Interop

Another show-floor video where I used the Zi8 and Azden mic handheld. It was a bright but very noisy location with a moving subject – a real challenge for a handheld mic!

Meeting Thomas Jones at EMC World

Another recruited cameraman for a hand-held shot with the Zi8 and Azden mic. Thomas asked about the mic, prompting me to write all of this!

Stephen’s Stance

Good equipment can make the difference between an amateurish embarrassment and professional production when it comes to video recording. The combination of the Zi8 and my pair of microphones collect good enough source material to keep me in the latter category. Combined with the capabilities of Apple’s iMovie software, I can produce respectable videos anywhere I happen to find myself.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | My “On the Road” Video Recording Kit
This post was categorized as Apple, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

We should all step up to support math and science education

Although I am a big believer in personal face-to-face meetings, it often seems like a waste of energy to attend big tech conferences. I’m certainly making the rounds this year, having already made multiple trips to the West Coast and even the UK, and heading out again three times next month. That’s why I was pleased to see that one of the conferences I’m speaking at is trying to do some good for the local community: Interop will donate to math and science related projects in Las Vegas, and I encourage others to do the same.

Donors Choose

I’ve been involved with DonorsChoose.org before, encouraging friends and fans of Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day to support a classroom project and the general cause of science and technology education for girls. I have also given to the charity personally and respect it very much.

Donors Choose allows donors literally to choose specific classroom projects to support, acting as a sort of grant program for schools in need. Teachers outline specific requests, and donors decide which projects to fund. This is one of the most transparent and direct charities I know of.

Some may question why schools need extra funding at all, but no one involved in the American public education system would raise such doubts. School systems are strapped for cash, and can rarely fund classroom supplies and enrichment programs. In fact, teachers are expected to buy their own supplies using their meager salaries, and the IRS caps deductibility of these purchases at just $250.

The Conference Connection

Contrast the situation of public school teachers and students in cities like San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Dallas with the extravagant trade shows that take place there, and it’s almost enough to make you cry. Corporations spend thousands of dollars on fancy booths and flashing tchotchkes, while attendees fly in, ride around in taxis, and stay at hotels. Meanwhile, often just across the street, students lack basic supplies, up-to-date textbooks, and facilities productive to learning.

This is why I applaud Interop and United business media for their support of DonorsChoose.org. They are encouraging attendees, exhibitors, and speakers to donate directly, and are linking completed evaluation forms to corporate donations to the charity. For every evaluation form filled out, Interop will donate an (unspecified) amount of money to DonorsChoose.org classroom projects.

I encourage everyone attending Interop (and EMC World, which is also in Las Vegas that week) to support this effort by donating directly to the Interop giving page at DonorsChoose.org.

And I’ll do one better:

I will personally match any contributions to Donors Choose made by attendees at my two sessions, up to a maximum of $1000. If you come to my session, and are willing to donate to this worthy cause, I will join you in supporting it. Since I am cheap and don’t gamble, Donors Choose may help schools in Las Vegas get more money from me then United Airlines, Hilton Hotels, and the taxi services!

Stephen’s Stance

All of us must examine our lifestyle and consider helping others. Contributing to support math and science education is perhaps the most worthy cause, since it is an investment in our future. The students we help through Donors Choose are the next generation of IT product vendors and users, and we must all give back to the community. I look forward to seeing you at Interop and EMC World, and hearing how you will help drain my checkbook!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Interop: Giving Back To Local Schools Through DonorsChoose.org
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

My friend Matt Simmons has a similar calendar for SysAdmins, but mine is a little different. Where he focuses more on user groups and the like, I’m focusing on big events like Interop, EMC World, and Cisco Live.

This is a public calendar, and is offered as a service. I welcome suggestions for additions or corrections – just email me!

Like Matt, I’m going to put some boundaries around the calendar, however:

1. This is intended for an enterprise IT infrastructure audience. I’ll only include events that I deem to be of interest to these folks.
2. I can’t include every webinar and presentation everywhere in the world. I’m using some editorial control to see whether the event really merits inclusion in my opinion. Go ahead and suggest it, but please don’t get sore if I don’t put it in.

So there you have it! You can subscribe using ICS, view it as HTML, or just access it by clicking the menu above. Enjoy!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Introducing The Enterprise IT Infrastructure Events Calendar
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

The Human Element

People used to read trade magazines and scour conference halls to uncover product and technology gems, but this kind of research is better done online today. The other day, a friend-of-a-friend tweeted a request to suggest “NAS storage in the $3k to $5k range.” Knowing I would have some suggestions, my friend retweeted the request and I fired back a list of suggestions. Since we were on Twitter, my reply included links to the companies that made the products in question. Back in the old days, this product search might have lasted weeks or months, but I bet jjx had her research done in hours.

EMC World airport bus interview: Karl Lewis of UofM from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

So why go to a trade show if not to discover products? It’s all about the people. Increasingly, trade events like EMC World and Storage Networking World are becoming venues to meet people who were previously mere online avatars. They are for building friendships, business development, and cementing real connection and community. A look at my recent trade-show videos on Vimeo will reveal that most of my own interaction is personal, and the relationships built there could never be forged online.

David Scammell talks SNW and SpiceWorks from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

The new people I have met, like Karl Lewis and David Scammell, will become part of my own community, and I will become part of theirs. We would have never met without the Internet (Karl recognized me from my blog, and David spotted me on Twitter), but we would never have become friends without real human interaction.

Devolving the Conference

Tech Field Day Overview (Short) from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

The same can be said of the Gestalt IT community. We were friendly before we met, but our interactions at Tech Field Day cemented a surprisingly strong bond, especially between the delegates and presenting vendor staff. We are much more a community now than before these events. This is the main reason we will continue the Field Day event series: It brings a new kind of community to life! This kind of interaction might have happened at old-school conferences, but the specific (some might say peculiar) nature of the Field Day (invite-only, independent, and blogger-centric) makes it unique.

Another event I really look forward to is Greg and VaNessa Duplessie’s BD Event. It’s like the Field Day in that it distills a single element from the old trade show days to its purest form. In this case it is the business-to-business back-channel discussion that gets the focus. The BD Event is all about business development, and every part of it is designed to foster the sharing of ideas and opportunities between business people. I love the concept, and I hope I will see a tremendous crowd at the Boston event next month!

Watch live video from The Cube LIVE from EMC World 2010 on Justin.tv

Even traditional conferences are changing. EMC World had a tremendous blogger lounge set up, including an amazing live video setup. SiliconAngle brought us “The Cube“, a live webcast that brought the social elements of the blogger lounge to a massive online audience. My hat is off to NiceFishFilms for their technical expertise, yet it was the human element, getting such diverse people together in the same place, that made it all work.

Stephen’s Stance

The Internet will certainly change many elements of the traditional trade show, but it will never kill the need for real interaction. I look forward to the next clever twist on the conference, complementing Gestalt IT’s Field Day, the BD Event, and The Cube, but do not worry that we will all some day remain in our secluded caves. We are social people, and nothing beats meeting someone face to face.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Nothing Beats Meeting In Person
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Was EMC World 2010

“Private cloud” wasn’t just the message of EMC World 2010, it was the slogan. The phrase was everywhere, from the airport to the taxis to the cycle rickshaws to the convention center walls. But end users seemed as confused as ever when talking to me, and EMC’s own show video proves the point: EMC’s customers are using virtualization and public cloud talking points, not the private cloud concepts EMC is pitching!

What is your cloud-computing strategy?

The first video asks for cloud strategy on Day 1 of the show.

1. “Putting together a solution for existing customers … to provide them the opportunity to leverage all of the capacity on demand … for emergency projects … as well as the cost savings” – Ok, so this guy is presumably a service provider of some sort. And his cloud strategy is to offer existing capacity to existing customers in emergencies. I’m not all that excited by this prospect, but I’m sure they’ll appreciate “the cost savings.”
2. “It’s still in development and it’s being defined by each of the different areas” – So he’s not really clear on that cloud thing, though he does get that storage, compute, and VM are different. I feel for you, brother, and hope you get answers at the show!
3. “We are in stage 2 of cloud evolution where we are trying to virtualize the core and mission critical applications” – Sounds like his company is trying to get server virtualization done first before working too hard on cloud. That’s probably a good IT strategy, but not really a cloud computing strategy.
4. “We’re talking about virtualization at my company” – This admitted “behind the curve” guy is also not too worried about cloud right now.
5. “We are talking about sharing data, talking about legal things like privacy; we have to put it somewhere and the private cloud is for collaboration.” – I talked to this guy at the show and he’s super-smart. He understands the cloud concept, is working toward it, and is doing the right things to get there. But he didn’t really mention this in the video.

There aren’t a lot of strategies mentioned here. And it doesn’t seem like their strategies match up with EMC’s private cloud vision going into the show. Let’s see how that changes over the three days of the event.

What are the business opportunities that the cloud will create?

Day 2 attendees would have been relentlessly pounded by EMC’s private cloud messaging. So what are they saying now?

1. “It allows us to virtualize and spread our services to different locations that we wouldn’t be able to provide the services to before.” – He starts with a private cloud pitch (equating cloud with virtualization) but then shifts to a location independence that’s not easily attainable with private cloud. If you can’t provide services to a location now, how does private cloud fix this? I can see accessing a public service over the Internet fixing this, but EMC’s big-iron infrastructure-centric vision of private cloud ain’t gonna help.
2. “What we’ve done is moved about 95% virtualized, so we’ve moved a lot of our applications, mission-critical applications, into the virtualized world, so our cloud is going good.” – Great for you! Seriously, this guy has a virtualization dream and he’s totally satisfied with that as his cloud. Sounds like EMC has very little selling to do here and he’s not all that interested in any new cloud vision.
3. “We have a private cloud. It’s great. It’s flexible. The business … needs to turn on a dime … so cloud computing is the way to go for us.” – Ok, so here again we have a company that already has a private cloud (presumably this is his synonym for server virtualization) and loves it. This is great, but it’s again hard to see what his cloud is and if it’s aligned with EMC’s vision.
4. “Different companies will be able to share data among each other a lot faster and quicker, instead of flying it to each other; it saves time and money.” – This guy is talking about public cloud, clearly. I haven’t heard data sharing and interchange used as a selling point for private cloud. To the contrary, data security is the primary FUD of private cloud proponents.
5. “We know we have components we need today but looking at the whole cloud it’s constantly changing so the industry will have to respond to the different niche markets within those clouds.” – These are not the words of someone who is sold on private cloud. He sounds like a skeptic, or perhaps a realist, who is sick of hearing half-baked cloud schemes and is politely asking for more business-aligned solutions. Amen, brother, I’m with you!

The gist from these folks, and those I talked to, is that cloud is just a new word for virtualization and “we’ve got that.” Have we moved on from the cloud meme yet? Or is this a sign of massive misunderstanding about what cloud really is and can be? Simply put, the EMC World attendees don’t see cloud as something they have to go out and buy right now. That’s probably not the message EMC wanted to send…

What did you learn?

Although the “what did you learn” video is much more on-message, it’s not clear that customers came out of EMC World with any actionable knowledge about private cloud. One attendee says, “cloud is not just vaporware anymore,” while another agrees, “we need to consolidate and think in terms of the cloud.” Yet most are still enthusing about storage features (“new Symmetrix features” and “VPLEX”) rather than the wholesale change to IT that the cloud represents. As the last guy says, “think about the future.” EMC itself ought to heed this advice!

What did I learn from these videos? That customers aren’t getting the message but are pretty good at learning the words. Most IT practitioners still don’t see the coming business/IT schism and don’t grasp that cloud is much bigger than virtualization. But they’re trying hard to figure it out. I hope they look farther than the singular vision they got from EMC World.

I’m not trying to lampoon EMC or these show attendees. Far from it! This stuff is hard to grasp, and many companies are sending conflicting messages (if not outright FUD). I’m trying to stay on top of the messaging and I find it difficult. Imagine how hard it is for your average business person!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Could EMC World Attendees Have Missed The Private Cloud Message?
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Case Study: Social Media at EMC World

Watch live video from The Cube LIVE from EMC World 2010 on Justin.tv
Watch this social media panel from the show, for example. John Troyer and Len Devanna, two of the more genuinely interesting and socially-credible people I know, spend much of the discussion talking about the benefits of social media to their companies (VMware and EMC, respectively). It’s a bit disturbing, really, to hear just how successful these companies are at influencing opinion, fostering loyalty, and driving sales by leveraging social media. These guys are not “salesy”, yet their companies are benefiting in dozens of ways from their efforts.

Social media was everywhere at EMC World. Product announcements and keynotes were covered and discussed live on Twitter, including by yours truly. The event also generated dozens of blog posts, hours of video, and even a tie-in promotion leveraging Foursquare! Again, I was involved in this frenzy, posting a video interview and blog entries on Iomega, STEC, EMC, and the VPLEX. None of this would have happened if EMC hadn’t consciously reached out and included social media in their event planning.

Considering all this, it is surprising that social media was probably not a major element of the overall EMC World budget. I am certain that the blogger lounge (complete with a barista) cost tens of thousands of dollars, yet this is insignificant compared to the show’s other costs – hiring Counting Crows, renting the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center (the largest and most expensive space in New England), and setting up a huge show floor, complete with a dozen motor coaches. Indeed, most of the attendees (including the bloggers) even paid an entry fee and travel costs to attend the show. As I point out in the video, EMC’s budget for this one event could pay for all social media efforts the company will make for the next hundred years!

The Next Wave

Although social media is making a huge impact on companies like EMC (and they are investing huge amounts of time and money to make this happen), it may be surprising to learn that I’m not worried about their impact. Social media can’t be taken over by corporations any more than the Internet itself can. Although they will certainly try to bend public opinion to their way of seeing things, the Internet (thankfully) remains too fluid to contain.

Let’s say (and this isn’t far from the truth, to hear some tell it) EMC, VMware, and Cisco hired every independent enterprise storage, virtualization, and network blogger, pundit, and gadfly, using social media as the ultimate recruiting pool. Each of these folks would now have to spend some or all of their time focusing on the technologies and experiences that relate to their day jobs. This opens opportunities for others to step up and fill the niches they once claimed – nature abhors a vacuum, after all.

We are already seeing this happen. Although four Tech Field Day and Gestalt IT community members have now joined related companies (Scott, Ed, Simon, and Rich), they remain credible contributors to the enterprise IT community. We still have plenty of unaffiliated folks as well, with new ones added all the time. Take a look at the contributions of people like Ilja Coolen, Craig Stewart, Matt Davis, Edward Aractingi, Dan Hughes, and so many others. Each gets far less readership and attention than he deserves, and each will undoubtedly step up and claim a spot in the IT community. Social media is designed to allow people to say what they have and democratic enough to bring them attention.

“All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again*.”

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Relax: The Corporate World Can’t Co-Opt Social Media
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Native Avamar support in the ix12-300r? That's new!

Chocolate and Peanut Butter

EMC’s Avamar backup product deserves much more press than it gets. Global deduplication is the secret sauce, allowing high efficiency for backups, both in terms of capacity and bandwidth usage. This means that Avamar is very well-suited for small business and remote office use.

Iomega’s new ix12 is similarly well-suited in this environment. It includes flexible storage allocation, both iSCSI SAN and NAS, and is bursting with features, from replication to webcam support. The 12-drive array fits perfectly into the small-business and remote-office markets with a low $5k-$10k price tag.

Avamar’s backup deduplication technology and Iomega’s “just right” small-business storage is a real “chocolate-and-peanut butter” combination. Both target the same markets and mixing them together is even better than selling them apart. Integrated Avamar client support makes the ix12 even more compelling, and will likely drive Avamar sales as well.

I talked to the Iomega execs at EMC World and they confirmed that this support will be included in the shipping ix12 software but was not yet supported by the company. They expect Avamar qualification to come later in the year, but I suspect that customer interest could accelerate this timetable. If you are interested in the combination, let Iomega and Avamar know!

ix12 Impressions

My release-day review of the ix12-300r was based on press materials and a briefing, but getting a hands-on look at the device revealed details beyond the Avamar support. I was quite pleased by the build quality of the array: It is solidly constructed and the connectors, fans, and power supplies looked to be of high quality. The designers seem to have paid attention to cooling and airflow, important in a box containing 12 spinning hard disk drives. The dual power supplies are hot-swappable and seemed fairly robust as well.

I also spotted two empty PCI Express slots at the rear of the ix12. One wonders what use Iomega will put these to. One can imagine adding additional gigabit or 10 gigabit Ethernet controllers, but solid-state storage (SSD) would be much more interesting. The ix12′s LifeLink software has been enhanced fore more-flexible RAID configuration; I wonder if it also includes the ability to tier storage to SSD. A mini array with EMC’s FAST technology would be compelling, but the use of SSD as a cache (FAST Cache?) might be simpler to implement.

Clearly, the ix12-300r is much more than a SATA-expanded ix4-200r. Iomega is adding real valuable business features to the system and moving it ever closer to the EMC and Dell CLARiiON products. Yet the price is still well below those systems. Chocolate and peanut butter, anyone?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | EMC Mixes Avamar Into Iomega ix12-300r
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, 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.

STEC has introduced ZeusRAM, a SDRAM-based drive

The ZeusRAM is small (just 8 GB) but STEC claims massive performance: 80,000 IOPS for both read and write (versus 80,000 read and 45,000 write for the 6 Gb SAS ZeusIOPS) and 500 MB/s sustained read and write (versus 350 and 300 for the ZeusIOPS). These numbers are well beyond the capabilities of whole shelves of traditional hard disk drives.

Should it lose power, the ZeusRAM will de-stage its content to flash RAM using power stored on internal super-capacitors. This is a major differentiator from in-system RAM disks which require whole-system battery backup and software to de-stage.

STEC has not announced pricing or availability information for the ZeusRAM drive at this point. We noted much interest in the drive from EMC staff at the EMC World show, and would not be surprised to see the ZeusRAM show up in a future Symmetrix or CLARiiON.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | STEC Spills the Beans on ZeusRAM SSD
This post was categorized as 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.

The Non-Box Company

EMC moved out of the “box company” role in 2003, purchasing Legato Systems to move into enterprise backup software and Documentum for enterprise content management, but this was only a warm-up. Many were puzzled by the 2003 purchase of virtualization pioneer, VMware, but it has played out to be one of the shrewdest moves of the decade. Although their revenue remains small in comparison to the parent company, VMware is arguably more important today to the modern data center than EMC itself. Later purchases like System Management Arts (SMARTS), Configuresoft, and RSA further expanded EMC’s footprint.

More telling are the moves VMware has made. SpringSource, Zimbra, and GemStone add up to very much a non-infrastructure world for the “infrastructure company.” EMC is clearly moving into the application platform space, leveraging this reach to consolidate their control over the underlying infrastructure.

Moving On Up

This seems to be the real EMC vision: Move up the stack, offer a compelling IT strategy, and move tons of heavy datacenter gear. This isn’t unique; It’s a re-play of IBM’s game plan from decades past. But EMC finds itself in a moment of transformation for corporate IT: Application development teams no longer care about infrastructure, and the rest of IT must finally transform itself to keep up with their needs.

Read my thoughts on The Techie/Business Schism for more on this IT transformation

Make no mistake: IT is in the middle of a revolution, not a simple equipment transition (think mainframe-mini-micro). Rather, the new world of IT is application-centric and big enterprise iron is becoming less visible and strategic. Surely, future IT architects will be able to deploy monolithic integrated blocks or stacks (like the EMC/Cisco vBlock), but many will choose to deploy lighter scale-out systems based on commodity hardware. The choice will be made based on finance or business strategy, not technological capabilities because higher-layer software will make hardware increasingly irrelevant.

Selling the Strategy

What is an avowed infrastructure company like EMC to do? Many of their competitors are doubling down on advanced storage hardware, but the smart ones are focusing on software instead. EMC is certainly moving towards a common hardware platform differentiated by software “personality” but their strategy must go well beyond this. The company must focus on the new IT world, selling product as a foundation for the next generation of applications, not merely a “faster/better” storage box for today’s apps.

Yet it would be foolish to make a wholesale move and abandon existing systems and protocols. EMC’s revenue stream depends on continued Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and NAS array sales even as they transition to systems that bear little resemblance to today’s Symmetrix or Celerra. They must develop and market a forward-looking strategy yet not abandon their cash cows.

In other words, EMC must say one thing while, for the most part, doing something entirely different. This “run the business while changing the business” challenge has been the downfall of many. The few who have successfully transitioned are the exception rather than the rule. EMC has a tough road ahead, but my conversations with company insiders at EMC World this week show that they are well aware of the challenge. This puts them well ahead of many in the storage industry, and explains my continuing focus on EMC.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | EMC’s Tough Road to the Post-Infrastructure Future
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.