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 this as iSCSI and Cisco came on the scene a few years back, but the question of integration of storage, server, network, and application management areas is as old as IT.

Back in 2005, I wrote a column in Storage magazine, asking Who Watches the SAN? Although there were (and still are) reasons one might consider handing SAN management over to the network team, such as the use of iSCSI, Cisco FC, or (soon) FCoE, I concluded that many network teams just aren’t ready to take on SAN management. Storage is different – extremely sensitive to latency and outages and burdened with interconnect concepts that are similar, but not identical, to their network cousins. So most people are better off leaving SAN management in the hands of storage people, regardless of whether their SAN is made up of FC or iSCSI.

The Virtual Data Center

Things are changing, however. The modern data center is evolving to virtualize all three major IT infrastructure components: Servers, storage, and networks. Over the last year or so, we’ve seen the first fully-virtual infrastructure built, with all three areas combined in a single box, soup-to-nuts. Consider a VMware ESX server with virtual servers talking over virtual networks to a virtual storage array from FalconStor or LeftHand – it’s an entire data center in a box!

Server admins are normally tasked with everything “in the box”, including VMFS and virtual network connectivity, just as they always had to manage volume managers and path management software back in the “physical server” world. I doubt this will change. So we could see not just storage but network folks excluded entirely from the next-generation virtual datacenter!

This doesn’t have to be how things end up, though. I strongly believe that network and storage pros have critical insight into their areas, and cutting them out would be a tragic loss akin to what happened when open systems folks decided not to pay attention to the lessons of the mainframe generation. We would effectively repeat a decade of experience and learning that could, with minor modifications, be brought right into the modern world.

There are three things to do:

1. Re-combine the stovepipe IT infrastructure organizations (server, storage, network) into a single management organization with specialists in these areas and others like virtualization and cloud computing.
2. Spend the time and money to cross-train everyone to re-apply their experience and skills in this new world. Storage folks, for example, must know a good bit about server virtualization or their skills will have much less value!
3. Bring the mainframe, security, and records management folks to the party, too! They all have essential insights, and a failure to give them a seat at the table would be a critical loss.

Database and Applications

Then there are the DBAs and IT application folks. These teams have always been held at arms-length in the open systems world, and much closer on the mainframe side (especially the database people!) I think there has been a feeling that there were enough interests at the IT infrastructure planning meetings already without mixing them in as well! The current response is a service-based approach, where IT infrastructure adds an analyst role to develop SLAs and standard service offerings and act as a liaison between ITI and IT Apps.

This is probably enough for a conventional system, but there are changes here as well. Virtual appliances can step right into the apps arena, and the database/storage hybrid devices from Oracle/HP, Netezza, and the rest tromp right through the DBA world. Then there are the “webby dubby” (Web 2.0) storage services/devices like Amazon S3, Nirvanix, and EMC Atmos to consider.

Stephen’s Stance

I think we’re seeing another serious change to the status quo: Right after the data center is virtualized and IT infrastructure is recombined, applications themselves will fundamentally transform, demanding a merger of the current IT infrastructure and IT applications groups. This could all come within five years, or it could be delayed or diverted by organizational infighting and intransigence. It will be very interesting to see how it plays out!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Changes in Technology Drive Changes in IT Organizations and Roles
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.

Storage Magazine has returned with an online edition

Although the dead-tree version of TechTarget’s excellent Storage Magazine is no more, the company today released the premiere issue of its online counterpart! Available as both a web-based magazine and a PDF download, Storage Magazine Online continues with many of the same editors and writers, including Rich Castagna at the helm.

You can still subscribe to the online edition too, so you needn’t miss an issue! Existing qualified subscribers should receive an email today outlining the shift from paper to bits.

One article I’d personally like to highlight is my own piece on consolidated archiving. I put a great deal of effort into the article, and I welcome your comments!

I wish the TechTarget all the best with this transition, and urge you all to check out their work. Now if they would only add all of the back issues as downloadable PDFs as well!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Introducing Storage Magazine Online!
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Storage magazine: seven years' proof of excellence

All things must pass, but it is with a heavy heart that I note that TechTarget‘s excellent Storage magazine has shipped its last issue. No official word has been posted by the company, but it is now widely reported. All print publications are feeling squeezed by a move to online readership which robs print of advertising revenue with its quicker turnaround and lower cost. Like its ancestor, Byte, and PC Magazine, Storage will continue online at searchstorage.com as well as through a controlled-circulation PDF newsletter. I do not yet know which of the excellent staff (writers, illustrators, and editors) of Storage will remain with these online efforts.

A History of Excellence

The final issue of Storage magazine was recently mailed - I grabbed a few extras if you want one!

Storage magazine was launched in March of 2002 to be “the best magazine dedicated to storage,” in the words of Editor in Chief, Mark Schlack, and it was. It stood out from the crowd right away, with square “perfect” binding and high-quality printing and design. Inside that first issue, one was greeted by fresh and engaging layout and artwork that was both clever and humorous. These would become the trademark of the magazine.

But content was king at Storage, and this is the area with which I am most proud to have been associated. The very first issue featured insightful pieces by Steve Duplessie, Rich Friedman, Richard Scannell, Dennis Martin, Darryl Brooks, and others. They were joined by a who’s-who of the industry, including Jon Toigo, Marc Farley, Alan Radding, Jerome Wendt, W. Curtis Preston, Jim Damoulakis, Tony Prigmore, Marc Staimer, Randy Kerns, and Tom Halfhill, and that was just in the first year! Just about every independent voice in the industry was represented over the next six years.

It was precisely that independence that brought credibility to the magazine. Although they eventually ended their provocative Behind the Firewall insider-tips page, they never allowed the magazine to become an advertorial. Like the companion Storage Decisions conference and seminar series, TechTarget managed both to remain editorially independent and to gather strong support from the industry. No doubt it was the wisdom and experience of the editorial staff, Schlack, Friedman, and Rich Castagna, who ensured balance rather than cheerleading or FUD to dominate the pages. They received recognition, as well: Just look at TechTarget’s award page for a list of “bests”!

My Own Experience

Storage impressed with its design, illustrations, and photography as well as its editorial excellence

Storage even found a place for yours truly in their pages: I wrote the Integration column every other month for two years before moving to the Best Practices column through 2007. I also contributed almost a dozen feature articles over the years, the last of which just missed the final issue. I was proud to be listed as a Contributing Editor for all of those years as well, and gave everything I could to keep Storage “the best,” including quoted commentary in many issues.

Every one of my interactions with Storage magazine was positive. The editors always knew how to edit my work to bring out the best. Although I am not truly a journalist, I have learned many things from Mark, Rich, Rich, and the others. And I remain honored to be listed alongside the luminaries whose work appeared next to mine.

I also want to call attention to the standout look of the magazine: I talked to many of the photographers featured on the pages, having had my own photo taken a few times as well as my editorial subjects, and they were truly professionals, drawing out the best in us. The illustrations that graced my columns and articles deserve repeated praise, too, always amazing me with their clever twists on what I wrote.

Storage magazine deserves its place in the enterprise storage industry, as well as the publishing world in general. But more importantly, it earned a place on my bookshelf, and it will remain there. I cannot praise it higher. Thanks for seven great years, and I look forward to working with TechTarget and the excellent staff of Storage in the future!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Remembering Storage Magazine
This post was categorized as Computer History, 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.

I’ve covered these considerations previously, but let’s just mention them again here.  Each is covered in more detail in the article and in my webinar, but I welcome comments and questions here.

1. How complete is the archive?
2. Does it record what people do?
3. Can the archive ingest an existing mail store or PST files?
4. Can the archive handle multiple email systems?
5. What about non-message content?
6. What about deduplication?
7. Will the legal department be happy?
8. How does search work?
9. Can the archive easily integrate with third-party tools?
10. What will users think?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | 10 Key Considerations for Email Archiving
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Most of the sessions were worthwhile, but I’d like to highlight a few of the sessions that I attended:

• Rich Castagna’s What Storage Managers Are Buying – always a highlight of the show, Storage Magazine’s survey results
• W. Curtis Preston’s Deduplication: The Perfect Solution to the Perfect Storm – it’s nice to have some sanity brought to the feverish talk of deduplication
• Ray Lucchesi’s Virtual DR – highlighting the value brought to disaster recovery from server virtualization (I missed this at the show)
• Marc Staimer’s Hidden Gotchas of Server Virtualization – I missed this one too, but Marc is brilliant and the content is right on

My two sessions are also available:

• Deep Dive Into Email Archiving Solutions – wherein I present my eleven points of differentiation and extoll the virtues of email archiving
• Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Storage Virtualization (In One Hour) – Overstuffed with content from my storage virtualization seminar

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Download Storage Decisions Presentations
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So how will you make your choice?  I previously talked about the essential differentiators, and now I’ve refined these into a more complete list I’m calling “The Eleven Essential Elements of Email Archiving”.  I capitalize this because it is the basis for much of my recent writing and speaking:  I just wrapped up an article for Storage magazine on the subject, to be published next month, and spoke on the topic at Storage Decisions in Chicago.

If you missed the show last week (or really really liked it!) and can’t wait for the magazine, may I suggest tuning in tomorrow for TechTarget’s Email and File Archiving Virtual Seminar?  You can catch my session at 1:30 Eastern, with a live Q&A session following.  Or you can tune in at 9 AM for the whole day-long extravaganza, featuring sessions from other good folks from Contoural and elsewhere.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Email Archiving: Just Can’t Get Enough
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

I arrived in beautiful Chicago today for the Storage Decisions show at the Hilton here.  What a great event this is – loads of interested and committed storage users and some of the best minds in the business get together to talk about how we all do this thing we call storage!

I was glad to see Jon Toigo here – while I may not always agree with him, he certainly has vast experience in the storage industry.  And I appreciate his role as the iconoclast of storage.  We both agree that the real action in the industry happens at a whole different layer than just storing and moving bits.

Before sitting down with Jon, I was pleased to chat with my good friends, Curtis Preston and Bill Peldzus, both of whom have, over the years, proved themselves advocates of end user concerns.

I’ll also be looking for Greg Schulz, Mark Staimer, Arun Taneja, and Steve Duplessie and his crew from ESG.  See what I mean about the best minds in the industry?

Of course, the hotel is crawling with TechTarget’s staff, including Rich C and Rich F from Storage magazine, Dave Raffo from SearchStorage.com, and Amy, Lindsey and the folks who run the show.

If you’re here, please do come up and introduce yourself.  If not, there are three more shows scheduled for this year!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Hello from Storage Decisions Chicago
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Without further ado:

The ten technical things some email archiving products do and others do not do*

1. Capture all messages – Can the archiving system really guarantee that every message is captured?  Really?  Even if a user does the old “double-delete” and gets rid of every copy on the system before the “archive sweep” happens?
2. Search and e-discovery – It’s amazing to me that some archiving systems have really terrible search capabilities.  But more important is whether they can handle real e-discovery requests from the legal department.
3. Record user metadata – Capturing what users do with a message (read, file, ignore, forward) is a tough nut to crack, and it might just be impossible with some archiving technologies!
4. Archive stuff other than email – Some are general archives that can take just about any content, while others are purpose-built for email.  I am hemming and hawing on whether this is critical in an email archiving product, and which is preferrable…
5. Security and chain of custody – How secure is the archive content?  If the answer is “kinda” then your legal department is not going to be happy!
6. Ingest an existing mail store or PST file – It’s great when an archiving system can capture every email once it’s installed, but it’s a whole other matter to be able to pull in pre-existing content.  But beware!  You have to flag this stuff as possibly incomplete and perhaps even unreliable!
7. Integrate with mail clients – What does the end user see?  Is it an unfamiliar web link or a reassuring Outlook window?  What about Outlook Web Access users?  Or the 8,000 other email clients?
8. Allow off-line access – Can a user access the archive when they’re on a plane?  Can they see it on the train?  Would they, could they in the park?  Will you, will you when your data center goes dark?
9. Integrate with third-party tools – How well will the archive really serve legal if it can’t export messages to their favorite search tool?  Note – some can even talk directly with these products!
10. Integrate with mobile users – Ok, I am on an iPhone in the enterprise crusade, but I’ll admit that lots of folks use BlackBerries and Windows Mobile (and Symbian) too.  How can they access the archive?

I’ve worked with most of the products out there, and know who can and can’t do these things.  But not all are important to everyone, so I just can’t say “this product is best.”  But I’m very interested in your opinion.  What key technical differentiators would you suggest?

* Not the actual article title!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Key Technical Differences Between Email Archiving Products?
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Storage Decisions 2008 dates and locations:

• Chicago, May 13-15
• Toronto, June 5-6
• New York, September 23-25
• San Francisco, November 4-6

The format is being tweaked this year (as has the editorial direction of Storage Magazine) to include more in-depth technical content, and I’m sure the show will remain excellent. If you haven’t been, you’ve missed out – there are no product vendors on stage or even in the sessions, so it’s very focused on real-world users of storage technologies, and the sessions have always been top notch!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Storage Decisions 2008 Dates Are Announced!
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Overall, I was impressed with many of these products this last year, but certainly CommVault, HDS, ProStor, Xsigo, and Akorri (winners all) stood out with important products. I too was surprised to see the absence of some heavyweights: Symantec’s strength in archiving and backup didn’t net them an award, and both Emulex and QLogic were skipped for the 8 Gb FC market. EMC was overlooked, too, but I’m certain that will be remedied for 2008 after the flurry of excellent new products announced these last few months.

Backup Software

• Winners: CommVault’s Simpana 7.0 – an impressive product that brings a very wide range of data protection features in an integrated package. They’d be in my top three! Next was the intriguing RecoverGuard from Continuity Software, a product which intrigues me. Finally, Yosemite’s amazingly priced FileKeeper Professional took bronze – I definitely would have put this up there, too!
• Strong contenders: EVault’s solution would have been my pick since it effectively tackles a real need – mobile and SMB data protection! Also, Symantec’s strong NetBackup 6.5 upgrade deserved more attention.

Backup Hardware

• Winners: NEC’s HydraStor HS8 isn’t a platform I’m familiar with – I’ll have to take the judges at their word! But I can’t argue with silver and bronze winners, Copan and ProStor’s cool RDX – both are truly revolutionary products and deserve the spotlight.
• Strong contenders: I would definitely have added Gresham’s Clareti VTL to the list – it’s much more than “just a VTL” and I hope it gets some more attention!

Disk and Disk Subsystems

• Winners: Seagate’s Momentus 5400 FDE.2 deserves considerable attention, bringing built-in hardware encryption to the mobile data market – every mobile disk should have this technology! NetApp’s FAS2000 (silver) is nice enough, but I was much more impressed with the bronze-winning USP V from HDS this year.
• Strong contenders: I would have given the USP V the top prize for 2007, but I can’t argue with the little Seagate disk. The AMCC 3ware 9600 RAID adapter deserves some attention, too.

Storage Management Software

• Winners: Akorri’s BalancePoint (gold) impresses me much like bronze-winning Onaro’s Application Insight does. Both make the big leap from “storage” to “application data”, and both are worthy winners. I’ve never used the silver-winning Finisar NetWisdom product, but it looks like others are impressed with it.
• Strong contenders: This was a crowded field, and Symantec, WysDM, Quantum StorNext, and the rest probably came close. I agree with the Akorri placing, but would have picked one of these instead of the potentially mis-categorized Finisar product.

Networking Equipment

• Winners: Xsigo took the top honors with their InfiniBand-based VP780 platform. This is truly a next-generation product, and it is getting serious attention and traction, and deserved a spot on the list! Riverbed’s excellent Optimization System (silver) also deserved its ranking, but I’m not familiar enough with the Storwize product to know if it’s truly bronze-worthy.
• Strong contenders: I would have tipped either QLogic or Emulex‘s 8 Gb offerings for a spot. Despite my jokes, 8 Gb FC is an important element of the modern SAN and both companies have carved out a compelling product, but apparently neither shipped in volume until this month…

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Reacting to TechTarget’s Storage Products of the Year
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.