Understanding the accumulation of data
The history of technology moves in fits and starts, but one trend trumps all else: An inevitable shift from fine-tuned specialized gear to general-purpose commodity building blocks. We see it in both hardware and software, and at all levels of the industry, from chips and wafers to operating systems and networking devices. Take a step back and you’ll certainly agree: Commodity hardware always wins (eventually).
The storage industry got a lot more competitive this morning, as Dell announced plans to buy 3Par. This is the latest round in a well-established race for the enterprise storage dollar, challenging superpower (and Dell partner) EMC in the high-end SAN space. What does this acquisition say about the industry as a whole? Where are we headed?
I’m pleased to be heading back to Interop this spring with two sessions on enterprise storage. Although significantly changed from the old “Networld + Interop” days, the event is enjoyable and technical, with many interesting sessions and speakers. And the New York show at least had plenty of end user attendees!
Predictions are perilous: Get it right and you look like a mere trend-watcher; get it wrong and you look like a fool. So I’m doing something different this year: I’m going to make predictions for 2009 now that it’s over, and reflect on just how smart I am (not) to have made them.
It was a week of HAM in the enterprise storage industry and angry arguments in the CloudCamp camp. But things looked up at the end with a productive discussion about backups. Google sent us a wave, but nobody was happy when GM threatened to collapse. Enterprise Storage HDS’ HAM-Fisted Announcement did not impress, with many wondering [...]
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST) just bought Fabrik (SimpleTech and G-Technology). So is Hitachi’s combination with SimpleTech a response or challenge to EMC’s acquisition of Iomega? In a word, no.
The first storage performance horseman is spindles: If you don’t have enough disk units, performance will suffer. I have been laying out storage on enterprise arrays since the dark ages, and one of the first lessons I learned was allocating data to avoid hotspots. I remember spending hours back in the 1990′s hunched over custom Excel spreadsheets [...]
This is the second entry in my Top-Ten in Storage series. Not every innovative product can succeed in the market, and no matter how good some ideas seem, they can fail to make much of an impact. The truth is, people buy solutions, not technologies. This list includes products so cool, so ahead of their [...]
We’re taking my Building Virtual Infrastructure presentation to Columbus Ohio at the end of the month. Cool! I live in Ohio, and don’t get much opportunity to speak at events here. There’s also Backup Central Live! with W. Curtis Preston the next day, if you want to go to both!
I’ve always loved my Wi-Fi iPad, but the Verizon LTE iPad (third-generation) is too awesome to overlook. Apart from the “retina” display and voice dictation, the killer app is unlocked roaming on just about any carrier network. Yes, you can use your Verizon iPad Verizon iPad on AT&T, Vodafone, or even Verizon!
The mobile phone network landscape is incredible confusing. I pulled together the following overview to help myself make sense of it, and I thought it might benefit my readers, too.
I don’t get much chance to read for pleasure, but two things I’ve been reading recently spurred my imagination. After reliving the advent of modern transportation in the solid non-fiction Jet Age by Sam Howe Verhovek, I stumbled upon two pieces of speculative fiction from an unlikely source that predated everything presented there.
Even though I grew up on the other side of the great baseball divide, I have always loved going to New York City. Next week, I return again, but this time I’m bringing a whole new event to the city: This is the first time the New York audience gets to see my Building Virtual Infrastructure presentation!
I’m really thrilled about the improvements Microsoft is making to the core SMB protocol in Windows Server 2012. But it won’t really matter if nobody but Microsoft supports the new protocol. So I like to call out to all the enterprise storage vendors: Let me hear your support for SMB3.0!
Microsoft is about to release the third major revision to their ubiquitous network storage protocol, SMB. Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V 3 will really highlight this technology, and I predict it will transform the way people think about networked storage for Windows systems. But SMB 3 is big in another way, too: there are tons of new features, and not all will be implemented by everyone.
If you’ve traveled much, you’ve probably run across “unlocked” mobile phones and devices. If you own an Android or iPhone smart phone, you probably also heard about “jailbreaking”. It seems like lots of people are confused about these two things, so I decided to write down a quick post explaining them.
IBM has really stepped up their game this year, and they will highlight all this at their upcoming storage technology conference, Edge2012. I’m really looking forward to seeing what IBM Edge is all about, and I’ll be attending and speaking at the event in June.
I am thrilled to return to speak at Interop next week, though not so much about returning to Las Vegas for the third time already this year. This time around, I’ll be on two Interop panel discussions in Mike Fratto’s storage track. If you will be at Interop and would like to meet up, let [...]