This regular series features highlights from the week.

• Tech Field Day related
  • One of the biggest announcements at Tech Field Day was Druva, launched at our event. Their presentation drew quite a bit of attention! Can Druva succeed at mobile backup?
  • The delegates wanted to share their advice for presenters: How To Give an A+ Presentation at Tech Field Day and Presenting at Tech Field Day
  • Another hit presentation was Drobo’s new business products: Tech Field Day #5 wrap-up – Day 1 – Drobo and Drobo – My visit from Tech Field Day
  • Then there was Xangati, which had a shortened presentation. TFD5: Xangati – Stepping stone to Skynet or datacenter “DRS”
  • The big kick-off was Symantec: Impressions of Symantec from Tech Field Day
  • Gestalt IT Tech Field Day #5 Experience
  • HP StoreOnce – the basics of HP deduplication
  • The HP coffee machine was a hit, too: Introducing Chai Field Day and Joking around with the HP EBC coffee machine
• Other great posts
  • I’ve been a proponent of the Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive. But not everyone is happy: Users frustrated with Seagate’s next-gen hybrid drive
  • I talked to Sonia Lelli about SAN management in virtual environments. Wanted: SAN management tools for a virtualized environment
  • A great Steve Duplessie piece: Why is Everyone so Fired Up About Big Data?
  • Greg Ferro is right on (as usual): Your Cloud Future Is In China
  • Great news for Greg Knieriemen, Marc Farley, and company: Infosmack Podcast to be distributed by The Register
  • I was glad to have Matthew Norwood’s help with this: Wrapping My Head Around The Nexus1000v – Part 1

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, February 18, 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.

See my companion piece, When To Embargo Blog News (And When Not To), over at Foskett Services

A similar error happened this morning, with NetApp’s Israeli site reportedly scooping the company’s own embargo regarding some product enhancements. This time, I hadn’t even had my briefing when the news hit Storage Newsletter and The Register. This sparked a discussion on Twitter regarding embargoes, and I thought it was time to lay down my own opinion on the matter.

Embargoes Are Useful

Embargoes help us all. I love that I can get inside information ahead of announcements, giving me time to consider the implications of new technology releases. I’m not scoop driven (though I’ve sometimes gotten the scoop) so I’m less interested in timeliness than I am in the depth of insight I can get from a briefing.

So I usually welcome embargoed briefings from companies I cover. I’m always ready to listen to interesting content, and usually ask tough questions during these calls. I want to know why a product decision has been made and what it’s good for, not just that it exists.

But I won’t write about everything. I am not a professional reporter, and I don’t get a bonus for being first or most-read. I use my blog to talk to the world, as well as a mechanism for me to record my own thoughts on topics interesting to me. I’m not trying to maximize pageviews or ad impressions.

So I will often refuse a briefing if I’m not interested in a company’s announcement, and will even cut off a call midway through if it seems like a waste of both my and the company’s time. (I hope they understand the sincerity in that move) I will also sometimes decide not to write about a relevant topic if I can’t find something I want to say about it. I’m not going to parrot everyone else’s coverage just to have said something!

Stephen’s Stance

I’d like to lay out my opinion on embargoes very clearly:

1. I honor embargoes I agree to – Contact me and if I say I won’t publish until a set date and time, you can bet I won’t.
2. Set a date and time – It’s frustrating when companies haven’t decided when an announcement “goes live” or don’t include a time zone.
3. Don’t break your own embargo – This happens all the time. Please don’t hold me to a higher standard than you follow yourself!
4. Embargoes are not NDAs – As spelled out in my other post, don’t confuse these terms. Embargoes are not NDAs and vice versa.
5. Try to be relevant – I write about enterprise and consumer technology, especially data storage. Don’t pitch me on unrelated topics.
6. Don’t pester me – If I overlook your briefing request, go ahead and contact me a second time. But don’t pester me for weeks especially on irrelevant topics. I get about a dozen requests a week and can’t attend to all of them!
7. Give me time and information – Don’t expect me to react positively to a press release or tardy 15 minute briefing. I need time to ask questions and digest your announcement or I’ll just skip it.
8. I will be skeptical – I’m not going to write a summary of your press release. I will interrupt your slides. I will question your numbers. Send me a sample to test and I’ll really test it.

I really respect and enjoy working with many PR professionals, and I have a serious distaste for the “un-professionals” out there. Reach out to me in a positive way and I’ll happily work within your embargo!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | My Stance on Embargoes
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.

Hybrid Hard Drives: Take Two

Thar she blows! Seagate's hybrid ssd/hard disk drive is real!

The new drive family sports 4 GB of NAND flash and 32 MB of DRAM operating in tandem as a cache. It is a 2.5″ model, and since Seagate doesn’t currently produce a drive fatter than 9.5 mm one can assume it is a two-platter model and will work in most laptops. It sports a 3 Gb/s SATA interface with native command queueing (NCQ), nicely up to date but nothing special.

There are three models in the Momentus XT line, all with the same 4 GB/32 MB cache:

Unlike the previous-generation H-HDD drives, the new Seagates have fully-integrated SSD cache featuring speedy SLC chips. The dependence on the host operating system to make caching decisions was one of the things that sunk H-HDDs in the past, but this looks to be an entirely different solution. Seagate looks to have integrated the flash as an extension of the RAM cache and is using the drive’s own logic to determine what to cache and when. This will not only be more-generally applicable (not requiring a special OS) but will likely work better, since on-drive cache management has improved greatly over the years.

Stephen’s Stance

Assuming I’m right about Seagate’s fully-integrated cache architecture, this drive ought to blow away everything else on the market. The Register includes test results showing SSD-like performance for many workloads, yet this drive is half the cost and twice the capacity. It beats the 10k VelociRaptor drive in every test and will absolutely smoke any “normal” 7200 or 5400 rpm laptop drive. Feel free to exclaim “wow!” at this point.

How excited am I? How about this: Although I upgraded it just last month with a 640 GB Toshiba hard disk drive, I want a Momentus XT in my MacBook Pro. I’d rather have one of these than a straight SSD, considering the mix of performance, capacity, and price. Maybe I can move the Toshiba into an MCE Technologies OptiBay?

I will be watching this release with great interest. Word is that Seagate will officially unveil the drive in a webcast on Wednesday, May 26. I look forward to a flood of performance tests from my favorite consumer sites, and expect it will interest the enterprise guys, too (this means you, Howard!) Could hybrid drives finally be getting real?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Smoking-Fast Laptops: Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid SSD Disk Drive Confirmed!
This post was categorized as Apple, Enterprise storage, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Enterprise IT

• Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle Your Reliance On Backup Tapes – What’s wrong with backup tapes? They’re inaccessible, making them unsuitable for most applications. My latest post for my Enterprise Storage Strategies blog.
• Is Licensing Turning vSphere Into Vista? – A group post for Gestalt IT suggesting that VMware’s tiered licensing strategy for the vSphere 4 family might cause anguish for customers
• Infosmack Episode 2 – EMC, David Donatelli and Non-Compete Agreements – I joined the StorageMonkeys Infosmack podcast to discuss EMC, Dave Donatelli, and con-compete agreements with Greg Knieriemen, Marc Farley of 3Par and StorageRap, and Tony Asaro of the INI Group
• IT utilities, the biggest game in town – Chris Mellor of The Register suggests that the biggest IT vendors are positioning to lock up the IT market.
• The Non-Compete Clause Debate….. - Steve Duplessie muses on the pros and cons of non-compete agreements and what they mean for the IT industry
• Who’s the pot & who’s the kettle? - W. Curtis Preston reacts to the skirmishes between Tony Asaro and the EMC bloggers
• The Only VMware-certified NAS in its Category: Why the Iomega StorCenter ix4-200r Will Resonate with Small Businesses - Jerome Wendt expands on the Iomega StorCenter Pro ix4-200r
• Don’t focus too much on costs, cloud computing is about business agility - CapGemini reminds us that cloud computing isn’t just about reducing costs
• What we talk about when we talk about cloud computing - The Google Enterprise blog lays down some of the hard facts about building a cloud on your own
• Review: Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System - Chris Evans provides one of the best reviews yet of Sun’s Amber Road open source-based storage systems
• Brocade Pokes Cisco in the Eye, Switches for IBM - A great headline and solid reporting by Om Malik on one of the first reactions to Cisco UCS
• TheInfoPro: Analysis or Marketing? - StorageMonkeys continues their probing of the storage analyst community
• A “Tweeterview” with Stephen Foskett, Nirvanix Consulting Director - Sunshine interviews me about Nirvanix, storage, and my new role

Apple

• Achieving Email Bliss with IMAP, Gmail, and Apple Mail – A deep, long post on GMail, IMAP, Mac OS X Mail, and how to get all three to play nicely together.
• Monitor Your Mac Remotely With iStat for iPhone - I love iStat for Mac OS X and the iPhone and had been meaning to write a review. This AppleBlog post is just about what I might have written!

Life

• There Goes Chrysler – NPR’s awesome Planet Money blog reported the breaking news of Chrysler’s bankruptcy
• The Venture Capital Math Problem and The Venture Capital Math Problem (continued) – Fred Wilson points out that there can be no such thing as unlimited venture capital
• Is it time to cut the Ethernet access cable? – Has pervasive wireless Ethernet made wired ports unnecessary?
• Interview with Micah Baldwin, Father of FollowFriday – Micah calls me out as someone who is doing interesting things on Twitter!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Back From the Pile: Interesting Content From the Week of May 2, 2009
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.

Well 3PAR is on the fence no longer. Marketing VP, Craig Nunes, has informed Chris Mellor of The Register that 3PAR will use flash as “tier-0″ storage in their InServe arrays. It is not clear how the company will integrate flash with their current strategy of wide-striping data across as many spindles as possible, but their post-RAID virtualized architecture ought to be able to make excellent use of the performance that flash drives bring, provided they have automated block-based tiering. And answering my question from the other day, 3PAR is definitely in the “flash is a disk” camp.

This is not an official announcement, and no dates or suppliers are given beyond the promise that the InServe is ready to handle FC SSD drives today. I look forward to Marc’s take on this!

Update: Marc’s response was sort of a non-response. He admits that SSDs are on the radar but insists that they’re not on the release roadmap, denies that there is “some sort of like weird greco wrestling match” between him and Craig Nunes (boy, that’s a relief!), and promotes 3PAR’s Dynamic Optimization technology, which I wasn’t aware of. I’d like to hear more, Marc!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | 3PAR Reserves A Seat At The Solid State Disk Drive Table
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.

The pistol shot heard this week was the starting gun for FCoE, not the execution of iSCSI

To hear this week’s storage industry news reports, one might think that Wagner’s fat lady came to Storage Networking World (SNW), singing her song as the iSCSI world collapses. Storagebod wonders what iSCSI’s death will look like. Chris Mellor at The Register says “Game Over” as NetApp, QLogic, Emulex and VMware join EMC and Cisco in singing the praises of Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). Mellor suggests that the protocol will devalue Dell’s EqualLogic investment, as if HP’s acquisition of LeftHand wasn’t enough, even as fellow Register-ite, Bryan Betts disagrees.

But The Register didn’t invent the “FCoE kills iSCSI” meme – it’s just natural to imagine that these two protocols would be in a fight to the death. And if it’s a duel, then this year’s SNW conference would seem to be the first volley, as EMC introduced a FCoE Connectrix switch (based on Cisco), NetApp announced the first native FCoE array, and everyone qualified Emulex and QLogic adapters. However, despite these announcements, it’s way too early to bury iSCSI!

FCoE and iSCSI are similar in concept:

• Both rely on Ethernet physical connectivity
• Both transmit SCSI packets
• Both are aimed at date center users

But there are major differences as well:

• iSCSI is routable in an IP network
• iSCSI can use IP services like IPsec
• Software initiators can give iSCSI connectivity to any server, regardless of hardware
• FCoE will require converged network adapters (CNAs), while iSCSI can run on any Ethernet adapter
• FCoE will start at 10 Gb, while iSCSI can operate at just about any speed

Looking at this list, one might realize that FCoE is really a competitor for faster-than-4 Gb Fibre Channel. It’s not just a data center product, it’s an enterprise (read high-end and expensive) product, and that’s exactly where it will flourish. I have no doubt that Cisco and Brocade will successfully transition their Fibre Channel product lines to FCoE, and that QLogic and Emulex will sell a gazillion CNAs. But what about the rest of the market?

VMware’s adoption has shown that there is a taste for shared, networked storage outside the rarified budgets of the enterprise world. So far, no storage protocol has won the midrange and virtual server market, with Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and NFS duking it out along side internal SAS and SATA and the odd InfiniBand and external SAS solution. Although CNAs and FCoE ought to work fine in the virtual data center, not everyone will have a taste for them. There will always be plenty of folks who just want inexpensive external networked storage arrays, and iSCSI is the best thing they’re likely to see any time soon!

And iSCSI isn’t done evolving. Folks like Mellor, Chuck Hollis, and Storagebod are lauding FCoE at 10 gigabit speeds, but seem to forget that iSCSI can run at that speed, too. It can also run on the same CNAs and enterprise switches. And although wide(r)-area SANs aren’t common, I’m beginning to see some interest in leveraging the routability and other advanced features of IP in the storage world. iSCSI still has some cards to play! And the non-enterprise space isn’t nearly as awful as some make it sound – it is and will remain a bigger, more diverse market than the high end, and there are some serious buyers that will never get into FCoE.

Right now, the SAN world is expanding like it hasn’t done for years. iSCSI deployments are accelerating, growing the whole market. Sure, FCoE will probably completely replace old-school Fibre Channel over the next five years. But it will have to share the market with the now well-established iSCSI. It looks to me like Dell and HP made smart investments.

Update: More coverage on the topic:

• Doug Rainbolt from Alacritech is skeptical of the drivers for FCoE
• David Dale from NetApp feels that FCoE is unlikely to intrude on the iSCSI “sweet spot”

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

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Is the FCoE Starting Pistol Aimed at iSCSI?
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.

(how’d I do, Chris?)

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | The Register Gulps Down Blocks and Files
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.