Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat » Nigel Poulton Archives – Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat http://blog.fosketts.net Understanding the accumulation of data Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:40:43 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v= Dell Storage Forum – London, UK http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/12/20/dell-storage-forum-uk/ http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/12/20/dell-storage-forum-uk/#comments Tue, 20 Dec 2011 22:06:29 +0000 Stephen http://blog.fosketts.net/?p=6547

I’m very pleased to have been invited to attend the Dell Storage Forum in London on January 9-12. I’ve been closely following Dell’s progress in the field of enterprise storage, and look forward to learning more at this event. Even better, I have been told that many of my friends in the enterprise storage community will be joining me in London, including Chris Evans, Nigel Poulton, Martin Glassborow, and many others.

This post is really something of a placeholder at this point, and I will be updating it with information as the event approaches.

Ok, a bit more information. I’ve been told the following folks will be there, and I’m really looking forward to seeing them again!

Then there are all the great folks from Dell itself who’ll be there:

Even if you’re not coming to Dell Storage Forum, you can join the crew in London for storagebeers on Tuesday evening at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street. Greg Knieriemen and Ed Saipetch will be recording the Nekkid Tech podcast, and it looks like a huge number of storage folks will be there.

More information about this event is available at the following links:

If you are interested in my tech travel preparations, I recommend reading the following articles:

Disclaimer: As is the case with many similar events, Dell is paying my travel and living expenses to attend the Storage Forum. But if you think I’m going to write about Dell just because I went to this event you’ve got it exactly backwards. I’m going to attend the Storage Forum because Dell is a critical company in my area of expertise and I will be writing about them regardless. I’ll just be better informed (and better armed) thanks to this event.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Dell Storage Forum – London, UK
This post was categorized as Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

]]> http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/12/20/dell-storage-forum-uk/feed/ 0 Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, March 4, 2011 http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/03/05/pile-interesting-links-march-4-2011/ http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/03/05/pile-interesting-links-march-4-2011/#comments Sat, 05 Mar 2011 17:58:26 +0000 Stephen http://blog.fosketts.net/?p=5057 I spent this week at the 2011 Microsoft MVP Summit in Redmond, WA. It was an excellent trip, full of great information that I can’t talk about: Microsoft is the only company I have an NDA with! But I can say that no one should count that company out. Although Apple, Google, and Facebook (?!) get all the attention, Microsoft is making some good moves. The Kinnect and Windows Phone 7 show that innovation and creativity is alive and well in Redmond!

Now for some highlights from the week:

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, March 4, 2011
This post was categorized as Apple, Enterprise storage, Everything, 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.

]]> http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/03/05/pile-interesting-links-march-4-2011/feed/ 0 Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, January 14, 2011 http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/01/17/pile-interesting-links-january-14-2011/ http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/01/17/pile-interesting-links-january-14-2011/#comments Mon, 17 Jan 2011 13:49:34 +0000 Stephen http://blog.fosketts.net/?p=4774 This regular series features highlights from the week. It was another big one for me, with my Network Computing writing gig starting up, the announcement of my Storage for Server Virtualization seminar series, and the finalization of Tech Field Day for February.

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, January 14, 2011
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.

]]> http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/01/17/pile-interesting-links-january-14-2011/feed/ 0 Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, December 24, 2010 http://blog.fosketts.net/2010/12/27/pile-interesting-links-december-24-2010/ http://blog.fosketts.net/2010/12/27/pile-interesting-links-december-24-2010/#comments Mon, 27 Dec 2010 17:01:58 +0000 Stephen http://blog.fosketts.net/?p=4613 Happy end-of-the-year week! I’ll be posting an 11-part series on thin provisioning starting today, but last week was eventful as well. I introduced my enterprise IT events calendar and wrote more about HP’s expiring ink and my HP printer’s demise. It was also time to write about The Four Stages of Vendor Blogging and advising my clients to Always Punch Above Their Weight.

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

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, December 24, 2010
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Everything, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

]]> http://blog.fosketts.net/2010/12/27/pile-interesting-links-december-24-2010/feed/ 0 The Truth About HP’s Tech Day http://blog.fosketts.net/2009/10/01/hp-tech-day/ http://blog.fosketts.net/2009/10/01/hp-tech-day/#comments Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:17:19 +0000 Stephen http://blog.fosketts.net/?p=2323 HP invited bloggers to Colorado to show off their storage offerings at Tech Day 2009

HP invited bloggers to Colorado to show off their storage offerings at Tech Day 2009

Well that was interesting! I spent Monday and Tuesday with a dozen bloggers in Colorado Springs learning about HP’s key StorageWorks products from the executives and engineers of that storied company. Throughout the event, we listened, asked tough questions, and tweeted incessantly. HP Tech Day generated an avalanche of publicity for the company, including press articles and cries of FUD and misdirection.

Here is the truth: HP and Ivy did a darn fine job of putting together a set of sessions to tell us what they have. They presented folks who really knew their stuff, warts and all. They invited a variety of independent voices and let us ask and say anything we wanted with no expectations, let alone an NDA. This was a stellar event, and every other IT company should be asking why they didn’t do it first.

Won’t Be Fooled

But what was HP Tech Day really all about? Did they brainwash us into thinking the EVA was exciting? Did HP hoodwink and misdirect us from noticing the gaps and overlaps in their product line? Were we dazzled enough to no longer question their storage strategy? Of course not! Robin Harris has seen it all before. Rich Brambley can dissect a presentation with the best of them. Nigel Poulton questions everything he sees. This was not a love-fest, and there were some seriously uncomfortable moments for the HP crew.

We were all savvy enough to know what the score was: HP (and especially their StorageWorks product line) has never received much press or blogger attention. They invited us in to spread the word about their products and get blog exposure. And it worked! The storage Twitter-sphere was dominated with #HPTechDay postings for days, and attendees did indeed blog about the stuff they saw. It was a success from HP’s perspective, and now that we know more about their products we will likely cover them in the future.

I personally never blogged much about HP products. I compared them to Ford, called one product an all-time cool flop, and covered their acquisition of LeftHand and Ibrix, but that’s about it. I didn’t even notice that they had started selling LSI’s StoreAge-based virtualization platform, and didn’t know enough about their other product releases over the last two years to mention them. If it hadn’t been for Calvin Zito and the HP Tech Day, I probably wouldn’t mention them in the future, either. They just weren’t on my radar.

We Were Educated

This has changed as a result of Tech Day. I now know that EVA is still pretty much what I thought it was but that it is fairly simple to configure. I now know that HP has two lines of deduplication appliances, and that one is homegrown. I now know that HP develops and sells a FC SAN virtualization platform based on the LSI/StoreAge product. This was great product exposure for HP: Even though I still don’t think I’ll focus on these offerings, at least I now know that they exist.

We also saw some more interesting content: HP plans to leverage their excellent ProLiant server and blade technology to underpin a line of commodity-based storage and consolidated virtualization offerings. This is exciting stuff, and builds on HP’s base and their recent acquisitions. The most interesting concept I saw was a combination of a blade chassis and ultra-dense storage system with VMware ESX, LeftHand, Ibrix, and HP’s management software. They definitely plan to challenge Cisco/EMC and IBM in this market.

But the best part of the event was the people of HP. The company was smart enough to bring in the techies rather than executive marketing droids. They gave us straight and honest answers about their product capabilities and their place within the company, sometimes to the chagrin of others in the room. We saw conflicting definitions, product line overlaps, internal competition, and got a feel for the realities of this massive company. Every company is like this, but most would never admit what we already know. By not showering us with slick FUD, HP won our respect in a way that I would not have thought possible.

Colorado Take-Away

The event was great. Every other IT company should wise up and do the same. But I bet they won’t have the nerve to do it as openly, and I expect HP will be more careful next time too. As for HP’s products, let me lay out my honest opinion:

  1. LeftHand was a bargain. HP could replace their entire sub-XP block storage product line with LeftHand variants based on commodity Intel hardware. I think they should.
  2. Ibrix is too new to judge, but will likely take a seat next to LeftHand in a unified commodity-based scale-out SAN/NAS platform.
  3. I hope HP hasn’t lost focus on their excellent Hitachi-based XP line, since it’s the only challenger they have to EMC Symmetrix at the high end of the market.
  4. HP’s excellent server and blade hardware should be leveraged throughout the company and oddball hardware should be curtailed.
  5. HP has an interesting lineup of Windows Storage Server and Windows Home Server hardware aimed at the low-end SOHO and SMB market. I’m not a Windows hater, but wouldn’t it be cool to have a super-low-end LeftHand variant there too?
  6. I wonder if HP’s home-grown in-line deduplication (the D2D line) could replace the Sepaton-sourced post-process VLS line or vice-versa if an acquisition of that company happens.
  7. I don’t “get” SVSP, the LSI/StoreAge SAN virtualization platform. It’s nice and it seems to work, but why introduce a FC SAN virtualization platform at this point? Maybe it sells when integrated with EVA, but not as a standalone product.
  8. Where are all the storage arrays that use 2.5″ disk drives that HP talked about over the last few years? And where are the flash solid state drives?
  9. They were like deer in the headlights with no story when I asked about sub-LUN automated tiered storage since even full-LUN automation has not yet been released. Might EMC get there first?
  10. As for the absence of DCB and FCoE, HP seems to think that Virtual Connect and Flex-10 are good enough for now. HP will OEM a CNA soon and might possibly consider the Cisco Nexus 4000. Maybe. They had better have a more-convincing story when this stuff takes off next year!
  11. Most importantly, where is the cloud strategy? I applaud HP for not overusing the current buzzword, but it almost seems like they are avoiding the topic entirely.

I am left thinking that HP is like a boxed puzzle. All of the pieces are there, but they haven’t been put into place yet. Let’s hope Dave Donatelli and his crew can help them work it out when he takes his post as czar of servers, networking, and storage next year. For now, I’ve gained a lot of respect for the people of HP and a pile of knowledge about their storage products. And HP has gained my attention.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | The Truth About HP’s Tech Day
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Everything, 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.

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