Chuck's Blog

Updates To The Capacity Post

To say I started a bit of a ruckus is an understatement.

48 hours later, I thought I'd share with you what we've learned through this exercise.

Your Useable Capacity May Vary ...

In the US, every car sold has a standardized EPA rating on fuel economy.  Using a quaint measurement system of "miles per gallon", it's not precise, but it does give buyers a rough measure of comparative fuel efficiency. 

And, of course, has given rise to the frequent disclaimer that "your mileage may vary".

Storage arrays may have a roughly analagous measure as well: usable capacity vs. raw capacity.

And is it time to start comparing the capacity efficiency of storage arrays the way we do cars?

IT Is Inherently Green

I kind of reached a personal breaking point with all of this green IT discussion the other day.

I was on a panel, and this person went on and on about inefficient servers, inefficient data centers, people need to get with it, and so on.  Finally, I had my turn.

Sure, I said, everything that consumes energy has its role to play, but let's look at how the intelligent use of IT technology makes an impact in reducing energy, carbon footprint, etc. -- outside the data center.

And maybe we should be promoting increased use of IT as an intelligent enhancer or replacement for other activities that perhaps aren't so beneficial to the environment.

IBM DS5000 Storage: It Gets Even Weirder

Much was made recently about IBM's "stealth" announcement of their XIV array, with most of the announcement duties falling to EMC's own Storage Anarchist, in what has to be the ultimate scoop in the storage blogosphere.

Just now, someone sent me a public link to an IBM Europe website announcing what seems to be an entirely new storage array for IBM: the DS5000.

Which brings up some interesting questions.

The Growing Case For Information Governance

I like to spot shifts in the discussion, and sometimes I stumble across something that ends up being bigger than I first thought.

About 18 months ago, I started to see that there was a fundamental structural problem in how organizations were managing information.

IT had the mandate and the resources to manage information, but the business wasn't fully engaged in the discussion around essential information management policy tradeoffs: balancing costs, risks and value.

And I suggested that we'd see a growing interest in what I dubbed "information governance" -- a cross-functional, executive-level approach to managing the information portfolio in largely the same way that the CFO thinks about managing the financial portfolio. 

I thought it wrong to characterize it as solely an IT problem: it's going to be a business problem.  Or put differently: if we're going to thrive in the information economy, we're going to have to start thinking about information as money.

And I believe that this particular topic is getting more attention in the boardroom.

EMC Unified Storage -- Good Things Come In Smaller Packages

Today, EMC launched the new Celerra NX4 entry-level unified storage array, and gave the successful NS20 and NS40 a healthy capacity bump.

But, once you look beyond speeds and feeds, there's a story here about how EMC is taking its competencies in larger systems, and delivering them in smaller -- and more usable -- packages.

It's Fun Watching The Flash Wars

I don't know about you, but I love watching the back-and-forth in this industry.

Especially when something big and disruptive enters the discussion -- like flash being the long-term potential replacement for more and more uses of "rotating rust" -- that is, disk drives.

Do You Know Where Your Information Is?

As part of my various duties here at EMC, I get the occasional privilege of introducing new ideas and new lines of thought to our customers and partners on a regular basis.

Understandably, a few of these newer discussions don't do so well, and they get dropped from the rotation.

Others catch on.  Over time, I see more head-nodding, more engagement, more questions, more discussion.  There's almost an invisible line that gets crossed at some point.

And -- at least from a personal level -- I think we've crossed that line with the information risk management and data loss prevention discussion.

It's now something most people want to talk about at some level.

Kicking Over A Hornet's Nest

A while back, I wrote a controversial post ("The Great Data Placement Debate") where I offered that certain storage architectures -- due to their mandatory obscuring of physical drive geometries -- would stymie users that were looking to get a performance bump through judicious use of things like enterprise flash drives.

Well, like kicking over any hornet's nest, you learn a few things.

And here's what I learned.

FCoE: Looking Past The Bluster

It's no secret, I'm a big fan of FCoE technology -- not only in its own right, but in the broader context of unified fabrics for the data centers of tomorrow.

Chris Mellor over at Blocks and Files scored a great interview with someone who's laying it out clearly and concisely -- just what you need to know, and no hype.

Check it out here.