May 19, 2012

The Bridge: Veritas Thin (Provisioning) API

Thin provisioning needs communication to function, and zero page reclaim is only the array side of the story. WRITE_SAME helps reduce I/O load, but the server needs to use it. Wouldn’t it be nice if the operating system, file system, or volume manager would use these commands to help recover capacity?

Zero Page Reclaim: Savior of Thin Provisioning?

On the storage side, arrays can only use the information they have to deallocate: The data that’s stored on them. They don’t know what application is using it, what file system it is. But, somewhere along the line, someone had a big idea and said, “wait a second, what if we look for pages that are all zeros?” We’ll talk about pages a bit later, but for now, let’s talk about zeros. A zero is kind of a smoke signal coming up from over the hills that says, “there’s nothing valuable here.”

Huawei Symantec Enters The United States Storage and Security Market

Huawei Symantec recently introduced their SAN, NAS, and security offerings for the United States market

Surprise! Huawei Symantec has arrived in the United States, ready to take on the midrange storage and network security market with a line of devices that have proven their worth in the international market for three years. I sat down with the company’s management at Storage Networking World and quizzed them on their plans and aspirations for growth.

Could Oracle’s Next Acquisition Be HP or NetApp?

Larry Ellison is on a tear at Oracle. Who will he buy next?

Oracle has its sights set very high. Although the company is best-known for its namesake database software, a steady string of acquisitions has transformed the company (and its colorful leader, Larry Ellison) into an industry powerhouse. Much speculation revolves around Oracle’s next move, and a surprising meme is developing, suggesting that the company is looking at making another massive purchase. Could HP or NetApp follow Sun into the hands of Oracle?

The Enterprise IT Acquisition Game

The players are lining up for the biggest acquisition game enterprise IT has witnessed in a while

Today is the (a?) day of reckoning in the 3Par saga, with Dell widely expected to make a counter-offer higher than HP’s bid. But this mega deal, like the Data Domain war before it, sends a strong signal to the enterprise IT world: It’s open season on data storage companies! But the rising superpowers are also likely looking at networking as an area of expansion. The game is afoot!

Thin Provisioning and Cloud Storage: My Interop 2010 Topics

Screen shot 2010-03-16 at 2.53.35 PM

I’m pleased to be heading back to Interop this spring with two sessions on enterprise storage. Although significantly changed from the old “Networld + Interop” days, the event is enjoyable and technical, with many interesting sessions and speakers. And the New York show at least had plenty of end user attendees!

Symantec’s Thin API: The Plot Thickens

Last week, I lauded Symantec for introducing an API in Storage Foundation which will interact with the thin storage capabilities of supported arrays. Since then, I’ve learned more about this capability, and I am writing this update to share that knowledge. As I noted last week, the press release was a bit hard to follow and [...]

Symantec’s Thin API Is A Step In The Right Direction

Symantec announced that their widely-used Veritas Storage Foundation software (more commonly known as Veritas Volume Manager and filesystem) will now include thin provisioning, migration, and a new API which allows it to directly communicate with thin-capable storage arrays. This is a smart step, certainly, and ought to be useful, but storage managers should still try [...]

Reacting to TechTarget’s Storage Products of the Year

TechTarget’s Storage magazine today announced the winners of their annual Products of the Year awards, and it’s an impressive array of technologies. Although I did not contribute to the voting this year, I heartily endorse the outcomes! Overall, I was impressed with many of these products this last year, but certainly CommVault, HDS, ProStor, Xsigo, [...]

How Long Should Companies Retain Email?

One of the key questions asked of me in my current position at Contoural is this one: How long should we (the client company)  save our email messages?  Not surprisingly, I encounter a wide variety of answers to this question – Legal and IT usually wants a short retention time, while end users seem to [...]