I think this sentiment is just as valid today as when I posted it in 2008!

Although many discussions in the storage industry focus on the relative merits of one protocol or another, the conversation occasionally turns to the core issue at hand: We continue to patch together a system based on outdated concepts. Most storage protocols continue to mimic direct attached storage, and most of our so-called networks act as point to point channels. An ultra-modern virtualized storage infrastructure with all the latest bells and whistles still holds the concepts of block and file at its core. Whenever the storage industry has tried to bring about real storage management they have been stymied by a lack of context for data.

No amount of virtualization, and no new protocol, will fix this. Put simply, we need a storage revolution.

Channels, Blocks, and Files

Most innovation in the 1980s and early 1990s focused on moving storage out of the server. SCSI allowed disk to exist in a separate cabinet, RAID allowed multiple physical disks to become a single virtual one, and these were mixed to become the prototype storage array. Although SCSI allowed one-to-many connectivity, it was never a true peer-to-peer network, even once it was mixed with network concepts in the form of Fibre Channel.

Even today, SAN storage is focused on providing faster, more flexible, and feature-packed direct-attached storage. A modern virtual SAN hides a complex arrangement of caching, data protection, tiered storage, replication, and deduplication, masquerading the lot as a simple, lowly disk drive. It is sad but true that all of our work as an industry has been dedicated to recreating what we started with.

Networked file-based storage is no better. Although NAS devices have all the advanced features of their SAN cousins, they must present a simple file tree to the host to retain compatibility. File virtualization merely presents a larger homogenous tree.

Inside the server, too, features and complexity are hidden to retain a familiar file system format. Volume managers can do anything a virtualization device can, but must present their output as a simple (though virtual) disk drive. File systems, too, have added features but still present a familiar tree of mount points, inodes, and files. Even ZFS, possibly the most advanced combination of volume management and file system technology yet, must present a simple tree of storage to applications.

The Metadata Roadblock

This outdated paradigm, of disks and file trees, is ill-suited to today’s storage challenges. Data must be categorized so actions can be taken to preserve or destroy it based on policies. Data must be searchable so users and applications can find what they want. Data must be flexible so it can be used in new ways. Our antiquated notions are not capable of meeting these challenges.

One simple problem is that we lack context for our data. Most file systems merely assign to a file a name, location, owner, and security attributes. The most advanced can contain extended metadata, but this is rarely seen in practice since many applications cannot agree on how to use this data. Microsoft’s Office suite can store and share extended file attributes, for example, but these live inside the file rather than in the file system. The promise of expanded Office attributes is only realized in conjunction with a content management system like SharePoint which lies above the lowly file system.

What if the storage system could keep this data instead? What if it could logically group files according to project or client, mining keywords and authors, and maintaining revisions? These concepts are not new, having been implemented in content management systems for years, and certain elements appeared in file systems, like Apple’s HFS and VMS’ Files-11, for decades.

Cut Down the Tree

File metadata would allow advanced features, but truly taking advantage of them requires a more fundamental shift in the way applications access files. Rather than sticking to a traditional hierarchy of directories in a tree (which was, after all, simply a primitive metadata system), we should remove the tree altogether. Allow files to become data objects, identified by arbitrary attributes and managed according to an overarching policy.

This future vision is decidedly different from our current notion of storage, but is not so far off. Many organizations now rely on central data warehouses based on SQL-language relational databases. As many storage managers have grumbled, databases tend to ignore storage management concepts entirely, managing their own content independently.

But not all applications need a database back-end, so another initiative seeks to provide generic object storage for wider use. Called content-addressable storage or CAS, these devices have traditionally been used only for archival purposes, since that was their first market application. As vendors break free of proprietary interfaces in favor of open ones like XAM, CAS could transform storage itself by eliminating both file and block storage at once.

Similar concepts are already at work in the so-called Web 2.0 world. Non-traditional databases like Google BigTable, Amazon S3, and Hadoop allow massive scalability for object storage. API-sharing initiatives with many Web 2.0 companies can be seen as similar prototypical object storage frameworks. Any of these could be leveraged to provide a new world of data storage, and many are gaining traction even now.

Stephen’s Stance

Although traditional block storage is here to stay for disk drives, and tree-type file systems are likely to remain the foundation of operating system storage, new object-based concepts could change the world in fundamental ways. As applications become “web aware”, they also become object aware, increasing the likelihood of such a storage revolution. For the majority of applications, this new world would be a welcome one indeed.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | We Need a Storage Revolution
This post was categorized as Apple, Computer History, 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.

Virtualization decouples physical infrastructure from logical resources

Virtualization of IT systems decouples physical infrastructure from logical resources, hiding complexity and enabling new capabilities. However, not all potential benefits of virtualization have meaningful value outside IT circles: Too many of our discussions revolve around the very complexity that virtualization technology should be hiding! True business value is derived from transformed virtual resources in the next-generation data center, not the incremental capacity gains of virtual servers. But how will we get there, and what will this future look like?

The Problem with Virtual Servers

Implementation of virtualization technology to date has merely delivered condensation of physical resources: 250 physical servers are condensed onto 20 physical servers, but 250 virtual server images remain. True, this does result in the reduction of data center footprint, from rack space to power and cooling, enabling moderate cost savings. But these are not examples of real consolidation, let alone business transformation.

Many have lamented this “virtual server sprawl” and suggested alternative methods of consolidating low-utilization applications into larger, more flexible “resource servers”. For example, numerous SQL servers can be combined on a single central server with more focused management. But these larger resource servers are not normally virtualized since their concentrated I/O demands can overtax current server virtualization platforms. Therefore, consolidation and virtualization remain separate.

This is the problem with conventional server virtualization. It enables us to condense data center demands for some systems, but delivers very little else apart from new backup and management headaches. Certainly we can provision servers more quickly, and we might be able to recover from a disaster more easily, but these are IT-facing benefits that other business entities care little about.

Storage and Network Virtualization

Virtualization of storage and network resources face even higher barriers. Where server virtualization has quickly delivered incremental “green” savings, these benefits are harder to come by in other areas.

Storage virtualization primarily delivers flexibility. SAN or NAS systems can be combined into larger pools, allowing existing resources to be better utilized or provisioned more quickly. But there is only a little cost avoidance to be gleaned from more efficient use of storage capacity. Real cost savings would require reduction of infrastructure, and constant data growth makes this extremely difficult to achieve. Other benefits, like enhanced data migration or heterogeneous replication, ought to be invisible to the business anyway.

Network virtualization lags even further behind. Only a few shops have attempted to use technology like InfiniBand to enable flexible virtual connectivity, though the future Converged Enhanced Ethernet concept is beginning to spark some interest. Here again, financial benefits from network virtualization technology are limited to a moderate reduction in future equipment cost.

Transforming the Data Center

In all three instances (server, storage, and network), the financial benefits are merely the sideshow. The underlying benefit from virtualization of IT infrastructure comes from the extension of IT systems outside the data center, a change on the order of the advent of minicomputers or the spread of open systems.

VMware recently laid out a serious and compelling vision of this future Virtual Data Center as VDC-OS. Their concept is evolutionary and radical at once, with the simple virtual server infrastructure of today augmented with increasingly uniform and flexible storage and network layers. This culminates in a truly virtual data center, where running server images can move from device to device, location to location, and even out to the cloud.

VMware’s brilliance is in leveraging what works today (virtual server images on ESX) to build a foundation for complete virtualization of physical resources. But virtual servers running on VDC-OS remain tied to the present: They run the same operating systems and will likely remain bound to the same “one (virtual) server per application” world view that pervades open systems today. This leads to exactly the same situation of server sprawl that has proven a management nightmare.

Others are extending the web hosting concept to enable custom applications to be run on the scalable, flexible, multi-homed servers that run the world’s biggest Internet applications. Google and Amazon’s visions are decidedly post-data center, with applications, rather than server images, being the primary unit, and database-style storage replacing conventional blocks and files. Use of these web-oriented application platforms has so far been limited to entirely new systems built from scratch to take advantage of them, limiting their appeal to current IT environments.

Where Is the Business Value?

Yet, most discussions of these virtualization strategies (mine included) fails when it comes to demonstrating real business value. We must move away from quickly-forgotten cost savings and focus instead on profoundly transforming how IT serves business goals. Virtualized infrastructure allows flexibility and scalability, changing how everything in IT works.

Whether it uses conventional operating systems and applications or re-engineered web-enabled solutions, virtualized infrastructure fundamentally changed our world. Organizations would be free to physically move their systems, even outsourcing or offshoring the infrastructure component entirely. They could move to an on-demand purchasing model for logical capacity, not just bits and bytes.

In the process, they would render current server platforms, operating systems, and storage devices irrelevant. Undoubtedly, attaining this future remains a while off, but IT professionals should consider its implications. Much of what we do is focused on making the “plumbing” work efficiently rather than serving the needs of the business. Where do we stand once the perennial issues of performance, availability, and scalability are solved?

photo by Roy Smith

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Where Will Virtualization of Data Center Infrastructure Take Us?
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

How granular is your storage? This question is just as relevant today as when I first published this article in 2008!

Many storage challenges focus on correlating high-level uses of data (such as applications) with the nuts and bolts of storage infrastructure. These discussions often revolve around the conflict between data management, which demands an ever-smaller unit of management, and storage management, which benefits most from consolidation. Developing data management capability that is both granular enough for applications and scalable enough for storage is one key to the future of storage.

Storage Management: Scaling Up

As I discussed in a previous Sunday Series piece, Turning the Page on RAID, the data storage industry has traditionally focused on reducing granularity. Disk capacity has expanded, and RAID technology has multiplied this by combining multiple physical drive mechanisms into a single virtual one. Storage virtualization technologies, from the SAN to the server, have also often been touted primarily as a mechanism to reduce heterogeneity. From a technical perspective, therefore, granularity has been an obstacle to overcome.

The core organizational best practice for storage management is the reduction of complexity and the enforcement of standardization. Consolidation of storage arrays and file servers is a common goal, as IT seeks to benefit from economies of scale. The goal of both initiatives is the creation of a storage utility or managed storage service. This mirrors efforts on the server and network sides to consolidate and virtualize hardware.

Although both technological and organizational factors have traditionally driven granularity out of storage, this does not have to be the case. Virtual pools of storage are ideal for providing storage on demand, as disk-focused RAID groups give way to more flexible sub-disk storage arrangements. And an operational focus on standardized storage service offerings has the potential to enable scalable management of these smaller units.

Filing Service

File-based protocols would seem to have more potential for granular storage management, but they have been undermined by the hierarchical nature of modern file storage. Whether the connection to a file server uses NFS, CIFS, or AFP, the key unit of management is actually the shared directory, not the file. All files in the share \\firefly\backups would be located on the same server and would be managed as a unit.

NAS virtualization can change this somewhat, as can more specialized NAS servers. Although Microsoft DFS enables consolidation and virtualization of NAS shares, it does not allow subdivision of shares below the directory level – all files in a directory must be placed on the same server. Tricks like stubbing and links allow for some movement, but these do not solve the core issue. Specialized virtual NAS devices from F5 (the ARX, nee Acopia), NetApp, BlueArc, Symantec, and others have the ability to move files individually, providing as much a virtualized storage environment as any block-focused enterprise array. Avere is also beginning to talk about granular file management.

But even an ideal virtualized file server lacks the kind of granularity demanded by users. They care about data, not files, and most applications consolidate their data storage into a few files. Consider a database, for example, where users want each record treated uniquely but storage devices see just a few much larger files. We need a storage revolution, where someone creates an ideal storage platform in which each individual record or object includes custom metadata and is managed independently. This would truly be a massive change, however, and it is not clear that all applications will follow the object storage model of Google and Amazon.

Small is Beautiful

Barring a revolution in data management, our best hope is to allow greater granularity in storage management. As mentioned above, virtualization technology has the potential to enable management and protection of any unit of storage, right down to the individual block or record. But the reality of storage virtualization has not matched its promise.

What is needed is greater integration. Each layer of virtualization (file system, volume manager, hypervisor, network, array, and RAID) also hides necessary details from lower layers. Consider the case of a virtual server snapshot: The application and filesystem must be in a quiesced state to allow a snapshot to be taken at the storage level, but the storage array has no intrinsic information about how its capacity is used. A given LUN might contain dozens of servers on a shared VMFS volume, so all must be snapped together.

Integration can be enabled by sharing more information through APIs. VMware leverages Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) integration for shared storage so a VMFS snapshot can call the operating system and even applications (Windows Server 2003 only, for now) to prepare the data. Similarly, VSS can communicate directly with supported iSCSI and Fibre Channel arrays, calling a snapshot at the right moment. And Microsoft is, no doubt, enhancing VSS as we speak.

As virtualization technology matures, expect this type of integration to improve. We hope to see more APIs exposed by VMware and Microsoft, allowing communication up and down the stack to break through the information barrier. Imagine a future where a standard API like VSS can pass a message through VMware, Xen, and Hyper-V to the underlying storage array to initiate a snap. I predict that this kind of integration-enabled granularity is not too far off.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Granularity: The Hidden Challenge of Storage Management
This post was categorized as Computer History, 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.

You can never be totally secure, but basic precautions like this simple cable lock for laptops can help

This is part of an ongoing series of longer articles I am posting on Sundays.

In this digital age, it is easy to overlook the critical element of physical security. Put simply, it is often far more efficient to steal or gain access to a physical object like a laptop or flash drive than to break into a computer system. And despite the sanitary and controlled environments many mobile employees often travel in, risks to personal safety are real. Therefore, it is sensible to consider the physical security needs of the road warrior.

Protecting Your Data

Road warriors love gadgets, but so do thieves. According to a 2008 Ponemon Institute study for Dell, over 12,000 laptop computers are lost in US airports each week, and 70% of these are never reclaimed. Other studies have shown similar losses at public places like restaurants, hotels, and parking lots. Thumb drives, portable hard drives, and smart phones share the top of the most-stolen list with laptop computers.

Portable drives are particularly easy to snatch

Because these are often crimes of opportunity, the simplest protective measure is to keep these devices under ones personal control at all times. Never ask a stranger to watch your bag, and do not leave computers or peripherals unattended in conference rooms or hotels.

Special care is needed when passing through airport security: Never put your laptop or other valuable items through the scanner first, since you may be delayed while passing through the metal detector. Instead, place them in the middle or rear of your items so they will remain inside the x-ray machine until you emerge on the other side to retrieve them.

Most hotel rooms have safes available, and these should be used whenever you must leave your laptop or other valuables behind. Although they are not foolproof, they are much more secure than car trunks, cable locks, or bell desks. If a safe is not available or is too small, use a Kensington-type lock to secure your laptop computer to a bulky and sturdy object like a desk. These will not stop a determined thief, but should be enough to discourage a snatcher.

Protecting Yourself

Many of us wrongly assume we are safe in the familiar surroundings of offices, hotels, airports, and restaurants. The rolling suitcase, airline ticket, and laptop bag marks us as targets even in these environments, and serve as enticing evidence of loot to be had.

One of the best ways of protecting one’s safety when traveling is always to be aware and prepared. Get directions ahead of time instead of asking, staring at your PDA or GPS, or driving around. Consider whether your surroundings put you at risk: Select hotels in safer neighborhoods or where access is more controlled. Avoid public transportation when toting cumbersome bags, even if you would happily take the bus or subway alone. Spending a bit more money is preferable to losing your valuables or coming to harm.

When you are away from the office or hotel, dress like a local and watch out for too-friendly strangers. Most people are helpful to others, but avoid those who ask prying questions of offer extravagant services. Con-men often prey on travelers, waiting near hotels, airports, and offices. For example, never take an un-licensed limousine or taxi since these nearly always end up being more costly or risky than desired.

Business travel can be enjoyable, but one must always be careful to avoid becoming a victim!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Physical Security for the Road Warrior
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.

The tech industry has been buzzing about solid state drives (SSDs) again lately, but many questions remain. Even after many major vendors (Apple, EMC, and Dell to name a few) have introduced NAND flash-based disk into their core products, it is unclear whether non-disk storage will fly or flop. I’m betting it will find a nice niche, but that traditional spinning disks are here for a good long time.

Apple’s Flashing Success

When Apple switched from hard disks to flash in their mainstream product line, the world was abuzz with the novelty: Would flash displace hard drives? Sure, the company still offered disk-based storage for those needing vast capacity, but most people found that 8 GB or so of storage was plenty for daily use. Of course, instead of the MacBook Air, I’m talking about the iPod family, which contains just a single disk-based model.

Like the Air, the iPod demonstrates that what matters in the “take it with you” market is portability in the form of low weight, perceived durability, and compact dimensions. And NAND flash excels when it comes to packaging. The flash-based iPod is an excellent semaphore for this market segment in other ways, too. Audio files are fairly small, so music users don’t need all that much storage, relatively speaking. They will gladly ignore the cost per GB, too, at such small capacity points: iPod Nano buyers pay ten times more per GB than iPod Classic buyers.

In the case of the iPod, the compact size and joggable durability afforded by the flash iPods is worth the money to most buyers, not that flash player has sufficient capacity to meet their needs. The MacBook Air teaches a slightly different lesson: Although reviewers are quick to point out that the speed and battery life difference between the hard disk and NAND flash versions of the mini notebook are negligible, early buyers were happy to pay $1000 extra to skip the disk. In this case, they paid for quick access time, light weight, and durability that exist as much in their perception as in real-world benchmarks.

EMC’s Heavyweight Champion

In the exact opposite corner of the data storage world lurks EMC’s top-line Symmetrix DMX storage array. When the company announced the availability of NAND flash drives as their top-tier choice for storage, it turned the heads of the whole enterprise storage industry. Although the technology implementation is substantially different from Apple’s iPod, EMC’s move suggests that another group of customers exists who are similarly unimpressed by a low cost per GB: Enterprise application managers.

Many have suggested that enterprise flash is not yet competitive in terms of price, capacity, reliability, or even performance. And they have publicly disagreed with EMC CEO, Joe Tucci, who claimed effective parity after 2010 at last year’s EMC World event. After all, today’s enterprise flash drives are far more than ten times more expensive than their spinning brothers, and disk capacity continues to march higher by the month.

But the comparison is not about the cost of apples or oranges. In the enterprise storage space, flash drives sot at the top of the pyramid, with just a few units added into the traditional tiered storage mix as a “tier zero” of maximum performance. It is not as simple as pulling out a set of 146 GB FC drives and replacing them with a similar number of flash units. Instead, a few key applications or data sets are migrated up to the pinnacle, with the rest of the stack remaining the same.

There is huge promise when this tiered model is combined with storage virtualization, especially the automated variety. If the tiny percentage of storage that truly needs top-tier performance could be moved to a few solid state disks, the whole stack will benefit from reduced device contention. If automation could make the decision on a block-by-block basis, the effectiveness would be much greater.

I Still Remember

There is another kind of solid state disk in play, too. For over two decades, company after company has pushed the idea of packaging high-performance DRAM as a disk substitute for enterprise storage, just as EMC has now done with NAND. These RAM-based disks offer even higher performance and prices than their flash-based cousins, and none has taken the industry by storm.

Way back when a tiny EMC was one purveyor of solid state storage, I recall the philosophical conundrum posed by the devices: Is it better to package DRAM as storage and use it in a conventional manner or to use that same memory as a cache for actual disks? The market voted for the latter, with EMC and others introducing in-array cache to accelerate RAID to great effect. System memory expanded in parallel, with modern servers optimally caching data in three or more levels internally as well.

Where Does the Flash Go?

For most uses, this is precisely the correct configuration. The priciest and quickest “storage” is placed close to the CPU, with performance and cost dropping and capacity increasing as one moves outward.

Where does flash belong, then? Apple teaches us that NAND flash delivers the goods when it comes to the portable market, and it is likely that the use of this technology in this area will only continue to grow. And EMC shows that there is a need for higher performance in the enterprise storage world as well, though perhaps not enough for pure DRAM devices.

The message is clear: As long as the cost of disk continues to lead, NAND flash will remain a niche product. There are certainly markets for NAND-based devices, from portable computing to the enterprise, but disk just works too well to be displaced. While one can never see too far into the future of storage, it seems clear that conventional hard disks will remain the dominant media for a few more generations of technology at least.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Flash Forward or Flash Back?
This post was categorized as Apple, Computer History, Enterprise storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

This is part of an ongoing series of longer articles I will be posting every Sunday.

This is not a political blog, and this will not be a political post. But there is something to be learned about marketing from the way that political campaigns market their candidates, and this is a lesson for all time.

Watching the polls on FiveThirtyEight, the push and pull between moonbats and wingnuts on Electicker, and the strongly opposed views expressed in the letters to the editor section of my local paper, I began to ask myself how two obviously different candidates could be so close in the polls. Are Americans really divided almost equally between these two men, their running mates, and their platforms? How can so many people want the old senator and the unqualified governor? How can so many want the pairing of un-American and crazy senators?

I began comparing them to Coke and Pepsi, McDonald’s and Burger King, and I realized I was right. These candidates are marketed with extreme precision to maximize their appeal to the widest set of American voters. I imagine that their intrinsic qualities could eliminate them from consideration for some and cement their appeal to others, but the bulk of the electorate is swinging on the messaging. And this simple fact explains why Obama/Biden is now leading against McCain/Palin.

Demicans and Republicrats?

Sometimes, during election time, the candidates speeches can seem to be eerily similar. This was especially the case at the debates, where both Obama and McCain hit the same notes, made the same points, and seemed to be delivering the same messages: Change, fairness, helping the economy, foreign policy strength, and energy independence.

A reasonable person could easily have seen their own beliefs reflected in either candidate. And as in every election, roughly half of all Americans seem to be rooting for one candidate, and half for the other. Are we really divided, red versus blue, or is there something else at work here?

Now let us consider the stump speeches, conventions, and deeper conversations that each candidate has had. Although they pander to their listeners, as was made plain recently, with Obama praising both the Tampa Bay Rays and Philadelphia Phillies, and Palin rooting for these two as well as the Boston Red Sox, they also try to draw out distinctions.

These candidates are very much not the same. Their views differ greatly on major issues of the day, from tax structures to international relations to energy. A thoughtful listener hears a message of trickle-down economics versus lower- and middle-class support, of hawkishness versus engagement, and of increased supply versus alternatives and conservation from McCain and Obama, respectively. Nowhere is the difference more apparent than in the health plans of the two candidates: One is decidedly free-market while the other is government-driven.

Marketing takeaway: Sometimes, two products with distinct and meaningful differences can be so cleverly positioned that some rational people can’t tell them apart!

Going Negative

Ohio residents are deluged with anti-Obama mailings like these from the state Republican Committee

But these issues don’t get as much coverage as hot buttons like abortion, gay rights, and civil liberties. And nothing wins like pointing out the negatives of the other guy.

Carefully-selected name-calling seems to be the tactic of choice: Palin and McCain are careful to not exactly call Obama a communist, a terrorist, or a non-American, but their speeches seem to leave their listeners with these impressions. Similarly, Obama and Biden have been using words like “erratic” to draw a conclusion from the listener that McCain is senile, and thus too old to be president, or even downright crazy.

The Obama side has been carefully tiptoeing around questioning McCain’s age, just as the McCain side has been with the fact that Obama is black. Neither wants to come out and say these things for fear of alienating voters, but both wants to plant the seed in the listener’s mind. This is especially true when the other guy or his fans slip up, like Murtha’s “racist area” comment or the shouts of Republican rally attendees.

Marketing takeaway: Negative positioning of a competing product can take many forms, from blatant attacks to subtle “meme implants”, but the overt messaging of true believers can be much more damaging!

Feedback Loop

The exhaustive coverage of polling at Pollster, RealClearPolitics, and especially FiveThirtyEight really boggles the mind. I’m something of a math nut, so Nate Silver’s explanations of the intricacies of political polling has been a blast to watch unfold. The mechanics of polling vary somewhat and are prone to error, but the combination of these different polls becomes a powerful predictor of the future. And I’m not the only one watching!

Each campaign has its own poll watchers and spin masters, and these are constantly reacting to up-to-the-minute feedback from the voters. Not only are they dissecting the 40 or so polls that we see, they are commissioning their own polls to figure out how one issue or another can be positioned to maximize their appeal. It’s a tug of war between two slick machines.  American national politics is like the Segway two-wheeled scooter – constantly taking input from the tilt sensors to keep it perfectly balanced.

Marketing takeaway: When powerful opposing forces have the same data, it’s easy to play to a draw!

Winning

Obama's mailings don't even mention John McCain - they're all about energizing voters to turn out at the polls

One would think that these well-funded and informed campaigns would always reach a stalemate, and indeed national polls routinely show a near-even split between Obama and McCain, just as they do nearly every year. Yet, most elections are called fairly decisively, and this year is tilting strongly towards Obama.

How can this be? Simply put, it is not public opinion that declares a winner. No amount of positioning can force a consumer to buy a car he can’t afford – he has to decide to go out there and buy it. Analysis of past elections shows that elections are normally decided based on the enthusiasm behind a candidate rather than the general opinion of the electorate. Democrats weren’t all that enthusiastic about Kerry, Gore, Dukakis, Mondale, and the rest, just as Republicans weren’t too enthusiastic about George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole.

And yes, Republicans really aren’t all that energized by John McCain, either. Sure, they’d like him to win. And yes, they don’t want the un-American socialist in office. But if it wasn’t for Palin, they wouldn’t even be bothering with the man many Republicans have long regarded with scorn as a traitor and outsider to their party.

Contrast this with the fire in the Obama supporters. They love him even more than the right loves Palin, and that’s really saying something! Most analysts expect a strong pro-Obama turnout on Tuesday and expect it will match the pro-Bush, pro-Clinton, and pro-Reagan partisan turnout. Although the margin will still be close due to habitual voters on both sides, this push for the candidate should be enough to ensure victory.

Marketing takeaway: Don’t mistake desire for a sale – your customers can’t just like what you’re selling or dislike what the other guy offers, they have to be willing to buy!

What We Can Learn

I think this election cycle has a lot to teach us, both as marketers and consumers. And in the end, both buyer and seller have to be wary of the tactics used to play the game.

1. Keep your eye on the ball!  Don’t assume that the intrinsic qualities of a product, service, or person will drive success. People tend to overlook the forest and concentrate on the trees, deciding based on small and even inconsequential features rather than large and rational factors.
2. Watch what others are saying for and against you! It’s hard to control word of mouth, and it’s much easier to plant a seed of doubt than prove virtue.
3. Butting heads results in a draw! In a game between two equal foes, no amount of effort will force victory.
4. Play for victory, not just success! As in sports, a good defense is a requirement, but you’ll never win without a risky drive to score.

More on this topic:

• Marketing lessons from the US election by Seth Godin
• Ten marketing lessons from the Barack Obama Presidential campaign by David Meerman Scott
• Election Day Marketing 2008 by The Rogue Marketer
• Marketing – Obama style is winning style by Results Revolution
• Simple by Timothy Coote

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | What Elections Teach Us About Marketing
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.

This is part of an ongoing series of longer articles I will be posting every Sunday.

Balancing work and life has never been easy, and this is especially true for the knowledge worker. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that we keep our jobs in our heads at all times, and modern electronics like the BlackBerry and laptop tend to keep it at our fingers as well. When our jobs require us to travel, work can effectively separate us entirely from our lives for days or weeks at a time. Road warriors must consciously try to focus on life, even as work pulls their attention away.

Always On

First, let us focus on the element of time: How many hours do you spend on work? White collar “knowledge workers” enjoy great flexibility when it comes to scheduling – most of us can pencil in an early exit, long lunch, or late arrival with just a little shuffling of appointments. But we also tend to work at odd hours and locations, firing up our laptops for a late-night spreadsheet session or taking a call from the UK (or farther East) before dawn.

Flexible schedules mean less delineation between work and non-work, and those of us who are focused on excellence in our work can find ourselves saying “sure, I’ll be there” even when we ought to be focused elsewhere. It can seem almost selfish to ignore a call when driving, resting, or playing golf, but this is exactly what we must do to avoid always being on duty.

This is especially true when it comes to friends and family. We owe them our focus when we are with them, and must consciously turn our attention to them and away from work. Of course we must sometimes sacrifice personally if the urgency of work is too great, but we must not always decide that work takes precedence over life.

Out and Away

When work requires us to travel, attaining balance is doubly difficult. We are tempted to maximize our effectiveness while on the road, since we are away anyway, and can easily put in extremely long hours just to have something to do. But again, we must turn ourselves away and focus on our own lives and loved ones.

My first rule of business travel is to remember those at home. Time zone changes make calling to check in especially hard, but entering an appointment can help remind you of the time at home. Before you go, try to get a list of important events happening back home so you can continue to be involved just as you would be if you were not on the road. A little interest and concern can go a long way!

My second rule is to always find something interesting to do wherever you go. Hotels, office buildings, and airports are largely identical, and chain restaurants thrive on their predictability. I recommend looking up local museums and musical performances, since these vary greatly from city to city and also tend to take on some of the local character. Ask your hosts to suggest a local delicacy or independent restaurant to visit for a literal flavor of the city. Consider vegetarian or ethnic restaurants for some real variety, and use yelp.com to find top-rated eateries.

All considered, don’t let yourself be taken advantage of by work. It is acceptable to give exceptional effort to your job, but far less so to have this become the normal expectation. One should never settle for accommodations or treatment from work that we would not be willing to offer to ourselves.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Out of the Office and Away From Home
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.

This is part of an ongoing series of longer articles I will be posting every Sunday as part of an experiment in offering more in-depth content.

There has been a lot of discussion in the storage industry about Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), making it the toast of Storage Networking World, but this technology remains relatively unknown to end users. Like so many storage protocols before it, the $10,000 question is whether FCoE will take off like iSCSI or fizzle as a niche product like FCIP, DAFS, and so many others.

If it does succeed, another critical question is what this means for iSCSI, Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, and to a lesser extent AoE, expanded SAS, and other options for SAN storage. The enterprise data center is poised for a complete change in server connectivity, with 10 Gb Ethernet converged network adapters (CNAs) and new core switches carrying both network and storage traffic, and this holds promise, especially in virtualized environments. But CNAs do not equal FCoE, and iSCSI, conventional Fibre Channel, and other protocols are roaring ahead. What impact will FCoE really have?

Why FCoE Matters

With 8 Gb Fibre Channel and alternative storage solutions leveraging InfiniBand now available (and with 10 Gb iSCSI imminent), many would ask why we need another enterprise block storage medium. In real-world applications, FCoE at 10 Gb will likely deliver roughly the same performance as 8 Gb native FC. But FCoE will be one or two years late and (initially) more expensive. Although active standards participation and “plug fests” mean FCoE will likely be more interoperable than Fibre Channel was in its early years, the lack of support from operating system manufacturers is troubling. Plus, users will soon be able to build a very similar infrastructure by mixing iSCSI and 10 Gb Ethernet, and this will include all the advantages of IP and solid support.

So why pay more for the same performance from an untested protocol? It’s all about the future, and enterprise users will go where the market goes, just as wide availability of VHS tapes buried Betamax. Storage, network, and SAN vendors alike are lining up solidly behind FCoE as the next-generation enterprise interconnect. Although InfiniBand plays Betamax in this home video metaphor, with superior technology and availability, FCoE’s VHS camp has all the market ammunition. To paraphrase the (alleged) words of Bob Metcalfe, no matter what the technology looks like, the future of networking will be called Ethernet.

The biggest storage vendors are behind FCoE simply because they see that converging and leveraging I/O technology makes sense for them. They can swap out the physical and data link layers from Fibre Channel to Ethernet relatively easily, so the FCoE switch is an easier change than iSCSI. It is likely that they will be able to leverage commodity Ethernet hardware to reduce (their, not your) cost and increase profit margins once this switch is made. Plus, FCoE will potentially increase SAN attachment rates (and thus enterprise storage market penetration) thanks to the potential availability of converged network adapters (CNAs) on the server side, and the cost-effectiveness that sharing a CNA between network and storage implies. From the storage side, FCoE is all good.

Also see my posts on FCoE versus iSCSI and Cisco VFrame

The drive is similar on the network side. The era of differentiated SAN and LAN producers is over – all of the major networking and SAN vendors are repositioning themselves as next-generation I/O providers, setting up a battle in the network space to rival the mainframe shakeout of the 1980s and the PC wars of the 1990s. Converged I/O is the business model for connectivity vendors, and most are taking up the “data center Ethernet” (DCE) charge (also called “converged enhanced or enterprise Ethernet” or CEE) which includes FCoE as the storage protocol for virtual I/O. iSCSI is still there in a DCE world, but FCoE will take center stage for the enterprise market.

Counting the Benefits of FCoE

It may seem strange to declare an upstart like FCoE the winner when established options like InfiniBand, conventional Fibre Channel, and iSCSI are already out in the market, but this examination of the vendors indicates that it is indeed the case. Is this a case of the tail (vendors) wagging the dog (consumers)? Perhaps, but they will come along willingly given the strong case presented by converged and virtualized I/O.

Enterprise buyers are ready for a next-generation SAN technology, and some are beginning to look at 8 Gb Fibre Channel. The few that really need performance will certainly buy 8 Gb FC today, but this has little bearing on the overall prospect for FCoE. When an application requires performance and money is available, purchases will be made regardless of future strategy.

Enterprise storage and network architects are beginning to consider the implications of server consolidation and virtualization. As they see footprint shrink thanks to compact or blade servers and server virtualization, they will begin to question the proliferation of interconnects on the back end required to keep up with the I/O demands of these super servers. Already, virtual I/O purveyors like Xsigo are making hay in this market, and, as mentioned above, their SAN and LAN vendors are spreading the message, too. It won’t be long before they are convinced.

Also see my posts on VMware VDC-OS and VDC-OS vStorage

Many people mistakenly assume that DCE means pushing all protocols through a single LAN, but this is not the case. These networks will be engineered like SANs from the start, with redundant connections and transparent failover. Although storage and network connectivity will share the same physical “pipe”, they will certainly be segregated on separate VLANs and protected with quality of service technologies. They have to be separated – FCoE (lacking IP) will require a totally different network topology than LAN connections.

So Who Buys FCoE?

Note that, throughout this discussion, I am referring only to the large-scale enterprise data center storage market. Smaller corporate environments have already embraced iSCSI en masse, expanding the penetration of consolidated storage concepts beyond anything Fibre Channel could ever accomplish. And small office and home networks are beginning to embrace these concepts as well, but are relying on protocols like CIFS and AFP for file servers and may begin to look at ATA over Ethernet (AoE) and proprietary protocols like the one pushed by Zetera/NetGear instead of iSCSI.

This leaves us with a layer cake of appropriate protocols from the smallest to largest networks. But all have one thing in common: They are all converged and they are all carried in Ethernet packets. Bob Metcalfe was right!

Update: Storagebod points out that FCoE might see its first application in inter-switch links and other similar storage network infrastructure connections. And Chris Mellor at The Register points out that SAS is already displacing FC as an internal drive interconnect.

See my posts on Gestalt IT for similar enterprise IT infrastructure commentary

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Reality Check: The FCoE Forecast
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.

Homes now need data storage as well as closets...

This is part of an ongoing series of longer articles I will be posting every Sunday as part of an experiment in offering more in-depth content.

Along with my professional focus on enterprise storage systems, I’m enamored of home networking, and recently passed the three terabyte mark at home! This got me thinking about where home storage is heading.

As you can see in the photo, my office closet is overflowing with computer equipment (and one sweet guitar), but my data storage is much better organized. I have a hacked Linksys NSLU2 with 500 GB as a file server, a 500 GB PC backup disk, a 160 GB Time Machine disk, 1 TB of TiVo storage, and the rest. But wouldn’t it be nice if this could all be combined into some kind of super home server?

Past Failures: Home Servers

Home storage appliances and servers have come and gone over the year, with none seeming to make much of a mark. The market remains littered with UPNP media servers and home NAS boxes dashed on the shoals of an unappreciative public. Nearly every home network device company has produced one or two home storage servers, none of which have succeeded. Although I use a Linksys NSLU2 at home, I had to hack its Linux software and completely replace Linksys’ features to create a useful device! The un-hacked NAS devices of Buffalo, Western Digital, Netgear, and the rest have generally failed to find buyers as well. So far, consumers seem content with simple USB and FireWire external drives.

The most adventurous home storage servers came from Zetera and Ximeta, both of whom relied on proprietary IP SAN protocols. Note that these were SAN products, sharing block storage over Ethernet, rather than conventional NAS solutions. Both required drivers, limiting client support. The one Zetera buyer I know was pleased by the performance but never used the device as anything but a large hard drive for one PC.

Then there is Microsoft. Recall that the latest Windows Home Server is only their latest attempt to enter this market, and yet I know of no one who has adopted the device. The same can be said of the various media center servers from Microsoft and others. At this point, it seems likely that the future of home storage servers will not come from Microsoft, though their two XBox generations have great potential as clients.

Even EMC has entered the market with their nifty (but largely unnoticed) LifeLine product and Iomega acquisition. Supporting file services and backup for computers as well as audio and video for media players, EMC positions LifeLine much like their Retrospect backup product, but goes further in offering a complete software solution for hardware OEMs wanting to offer a non-Windows home server. Although an impressive offering, it is too early to tell if EMC will have much success with this product.

The Sleek, Shiny Elephant in the Living Room

Of course, there is one company that sells media players and servers by the bushel, complete with sleek, shiny interfaces. Apple’s tremendous success with the iPod has led to their iTunes software becoming the dominant media organization platform, complete with its own proprietary discovery and sharing protocol. Now, with the Apple TV and video iPods, the company is broadening into more media categories. Surely their dominance here puts them in a special position when it comes to setting the stage for a home server or storage revolution.

They also have a strong position in the world of dedicated home storage. Their Airport products are among the only routers to be widely implemented with shared storage. Although many other companies offer similar products, low customer understanding means that these functions are not widely used. And the new Time Capsule device is surely already the most widely-used home NAS product.

But Apple has not yet shown any home server strategy. Administering multiple iTunes servers can be frustrating for users, with no inter-iTunes synchronization or centralization capability. Although the Mac Mini, Apple TV, or Time Capsule could certainly be seen as a home server, the company does not position them as such in the market. Indeed, some iTunes users like myself rely on compatible third party media servers like Firefly and TwonkyVision rather than using iTunes itself. Still, rumors of an Apple home server persist.

One issue for Apple is their reliance on proprietary protocols. Although the Bonjour discovery protocol is certainly simpler than UPnP in practice, Apple stands alone in relying on it. They also steadfastly stick to AFP for NAS and DAAP for remote media streaming. This limits the number of third-party clients and servers that can be used with their hardware and software.

The Future is Friendly

Although Apple has not yet tipped a home storage strategy beyond Time Capsule and Airport Extreme, they are best positioned to deliver a real home storage solution. A simple step would be to create an iTunes media server integrated with Time Capsule and add client/server media synchronization. The company already has OS X backup and file services integrated, and this move would further centralize the digital home around Apple products. But the company’s reliance on closed protocols like DAAP is worrisome, since it locks consumers into nearly all-Apple solutions.

Microsoft’s Media Center and Home Server combination, based around UPnP, shows great promise, with many compatible third-party clients and servers already available. But my own experience with the solution has not been at all positive (I still can’t get my Roku SoundBridge, Vista Ultimate laptop, and Media Center PC to see each other!), leading me to question the viability of this option.

Although Apple or Microsoft could come to dominate, I suspect the future of home storage is out of both companies hands. A number of others are working on improved home server experiences, including EMC’s LifeLine and the expanding use of Debian Linux and open source tools. But all could be sidelined by improved Internet-based services. Google, Microsoft, and Apple continue to expand their online consumer suites with greater storage, synchronization, multimedia integration, and all have the potential to reduce or eliminate the need for in-home storage.

Although I cannot yet tell which service will win, one thing is certain: Consumers demand friendly, flexible solutions. They don’t want to fuss with their media, and they don’t want simple shared storage. They want integration with multiple devices and flexibility to access their content on any device. The first company to offer a simple, flexible storage server for the home will surely be on the right track!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | The Future of Home Storage
This post was categorized as Apple, Computer History, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

I am not the typical enterprise storage user. In fact, I am not an enterprise storage user at all – I am a consultant focused for over a decade on assisting enterprises with their storage architecture and strategy, working with businesses of all sizes. My background is both a blessing and a curse – I have seen far more enterprise storage environments in much more detail than most people, but I am unable to truly empathize with my corporate storage compatriots since it’s not really my gear and data that I am working with.

Based on this experience, what does the future hold? Where is enterprise storage heading? Read on for my thoughts.

Fibre Channel

Although the commoditizing storage market would seem ripe for stagnation, the opposite is happening. In fact, the enterprise storage market has continued to diversify, with iSCSI recently expanding the options for storage connectivity to a new market and FC seeing rapid uptake in the virtual server arena. Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), whether or not part of the datacenter Ethernet push, is joining virtualized I/O technology based on InfiniBand as the next wave in connectivity. Simply put, the market is not standing still.

Focus on the new world of storage area network (SAN) connectivity can take away from the basics, however. Traditional switched Fibre Channel (FC) remains the healthy market leader, and the recent upgrade to 8 Gb speed has attracted customer attention. Although they are unlikely to run out and perform a mass upgrade, 8 Gb FC is as as much of an inevitability as 4 and 2 Gb before it. The switch will be made, and customers will upgrade organically.

One of the big beneficiaries of 8 Gb FC will be those with virtual servers. This new hardware is coming just as N_Port ID virtualization (NPIV) is maturing, and this technology, which enables multiple servers to share a single FC interface, in combination with a doubling of bandwidth will make modern Fibre Channel tech extremely attractive to virtual server shops.

Even those who do not adopt 8 Gb FC connectivity in their SAN will benefit from the upshift in throughput, as native 8 Gb disks appear and enterprise arrays are redesigned to accept them, just as devices like the DMX-4 from EMC benefited from 4 Gb FC back ends.

IP Storage: iSCSI and NAS

As far as iSCSI goes, those of us who saw the promise of this technology can finally declare victory. Every storage device that matters offers iSCSI as a connectivity option, and most buyers are considering adopting it. It is being weighed fairly against FC, and the promise of reduced heterogeneity and cost are proving attractive to many. In fact, it is wrong to continually compare it against FC, since many iSCSI buyers would never adopt an FC SAN due to concerns about cost or learning curve. Indeed, much of the uptake in iSCSI comes from areas where SAN was never adopted, and iSCSI’s growth can be partly attributed to these happy customers spreading the technology wider than originally intended.

A hidden benefit of iSCSI adoption is the technologies and techniques that have come along with it. Clustering of smaller storage systems has become a common option for scalability, and has proven itself against old modular “head/shelf” arrays. Although the rate of adoption for security technologies like CHAP and IPsec in iSCSI remains low, they are far more common than their FC relatives. And Microsoft’s simplified and universal iSCSI drivers, which include multi-path and snapshot technologies, have been much more successful than their proprietary equivalents.

Let us not forget humble old network attached storage (NAS), either. File server consolidation to NAS filers continues to be a healthy (but less flashy) market, and NAS virtualization is on the rise as these devices proliferate. And some in the server virtualization community are beginning to consider NFS for their servers, especially when it comes to VMware. NAS definitely still has life and legs and will benefit from the shift to 10 Gb Ethernet just like iSCSI and FCoE.

The Future

As for the future, it is clear that most storage vendors are lining up behind Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) . Although true I/O virtualization, as envisioned by datacenter Ethernet (DCE) and InfiniBand, may not gain traction outside the largest data centers, FCoE seems to be the inevitable next generation for massive enterprise storage. Just about every vendor is committed to it, and the customers I have spoken to accept it as the future. Although 8 Gb FC might delay FCoE in some cases, it will almost certainly be the predominant SAN connectivity mechanism for large block storage devices within five years.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | A Consultant’s View Of The Enterprise Storage Market
This post was categorized as Computer History, 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.