Chuck's Blog

EMC's Leadership Meeting

Sorry I've been away from the keyboard the past few days. 

Every year EMC holds a beginning-of-the-year "kickoff" meeting to bring people together.

And, if you're an EMC watcher like I am, it's always interesting to see how the themes -- and the company -- has evolved year to year

Timely Reading

This morning's WSJ had a great op-ed piece referring to Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. 

Atlas Shrugged is the "second most influential book for Americans today" after the Bible, according to a joint survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club

Given the current economic and political situation, I think it's time for yet another re-reading. 

If you haven't ever read it, maybe you should.

Storage Architecture Q+A

I get asked all sorts of interesting questions, some of which sound easy to answer, but turn out to be a bit more difficult to do so once you dig into them.

As an example, I was asked to provide a quick, not-too-technical answer to the key differences between grid, scale-out, clustered and scale-up approaches to storage.

Sure, that's easy to do when it's one storage geek talking to another, but it's a bit harder to do if you're talking to someone with more of a general interest.

So, let me try my best, and please remember I'm dramatically oversimplifying here.

If you think that I've missed something, please help out in the comments section below :-)

The Informationist Revisted

Blogging over several years can be an interesting experience. 

You have an idea, you explore it for a bit, and then you move on.  But, thanks to the wonder of search engines, people still can stumble on your post as though it was written yesterday, and comment with an entirely new perspective.

Such is the case with one of my more popular (as opposed to infamous) posts -- Are You An Informationist?

Back in November of 2006 (!) I thought that we would be seeing a new set of skills and behaviors emerge as we all started to grapple with the unique dynamics of this stuff called information -- an entirely new source of wealth, costs and risks.

And -- to this day -- people are still finding the post, and occasionally comment. 

So, what's changed since 2006?

The 2009 EMC Information Calendar

More Flash Goodness

If you've been reading the industry press, you're probably aware that enterprise flash made a lot of the top ten lists for 2008.  Yes, EMC was out early in Jan of 2008 with availability, but during the year most storage vendors came around and grudgingly admitted that they'd be doing enterprise flash at some point.

While we're all waiting for the other vendors to deliver, you might be interested in several applied technology whitepapers EMC has recently published, showing the impact of enterprise flash drives on Oracle, Exchange and (soon) SQLserver.

Lots of juicy details to consume, and a few "aha" moments for all ... enjoy!

Oracle on Symmetrix using EFDs

Oracle on CLARiiON using EFDs

Exchange on Symmetrix using EFDs

Exchange on CLARiiON using EFDs

General backgrounder on Symmetrix and EFDs.

I'll update this post in a bit when the SQLserver materials go up.

Key Themes for 2009

Welcome back everyone -- to 2009. 

It doesn't promise to be an easy year, does it? 

If I had to pick one key theme to focus on, it'd be "accelerated change" -- things are going to start happening much faster than before.  Tough economic conditions have a way of doing that.

On a personal note, it was wonderful to take two weeks off, and stay well away from blackberries and browsers.  But now I'm itching to get back into the swing of things, hence this rather lengthy post.