Chuck's Blog

Backup and The Private Cloud

OK, so I'm on a theme here. 

The concepts around private clouds have been introduced and discussed, and there are even a few large enterprises who have declared they're building one.

I'm now very interested in looking at the operational impact -- going from IT topic to IT topic -- and seeing how familiar discussions change radically -- and for the better -- when thinking about private clouds. 

The last post was about securing the private cloud; this one's about backup.

And, as we'll see, how we think about something as familiar (and essential) as backup might be up for some wonderful re-thinking in this world.

Accelerating Virtualization And The Private Cloud

I really haven't met anyone recently who thinks that virtualizing as much of their environment as possible isn't a good idea -- at least in the abstract.

I mean, if you're a career IT person, it's a pretty attractive prospect.

Sure, there are issues, challenges and concerns.  If doing this was easy, everyone would be doing it already, right?

This specific discussion comes up when I'm discussing private clouds with an enterprise customer.

Generally speaking, they like what they see, and ask how they should get started.

The inevitable response?  You've got to get busy virtualizing as much of your environment as you can.  The sooner, the better.

So, what's holding you back?

And that can lead to some interesting responses.

Moving On

Big news in our corner of the world. Dave Donatelli is leaving EMC to join HP.

Steve D did me a great service of netting it out.

Dave has always been one of those rare individuals who transformed everything around him for the better: EMC's storage business, our culture -- even my own career and personality.

I'm going to miss him an awful lot.  I wish him well.

Securing The Private Cloud

So much to write about, so little time. 

I guess I'm going to have to think carefully about the topics I write about going forward -- I could easily spend every day doing nothing but blog posts on interesting topics.  Sure, that'd be fun, but my day job would seriously suffer.

A few interesting announcements last week that we can correlate:

• VMware's vSphere announcement -- all about the private cloud
• The Jericho Forum issued their best practices around secure cloud computing
• VMware and RSA made an interesting announcement as part of last week's RSA Conference

Put it all together?

It's all about securing the private cloud ...

Cisco and HP Square Off In Server Land

We all enjoy it when vendors face off on key technologies -- like next-generation server architectures. 

Not only is it fun to watch, but intense competitive pressures are good for customers and good for the industry.  And we've only seen the first few salvos in what should prove to be a sustained battle for data center supremacy

Now, my biases should be clear (rooting for Cisco!) -- but, with the latest round of HP announcements, you can begin to see some very distinct differences in architectural thinking between the two companies.

vSphere as an I/O Engine

As more and more people consider bigger and bigger workloads running in virtual containers, the discussion inevitably turns to I/O throughput and latency.

Now, VMware is no slouch at driving big I/O workloads.  I shared one proof-point discussion from testing done last year in this regard on a previous post.

But today, VMware took a big leap forward in this regard with EMC's announcement of PowerPath/VE.

So, why should you care?

The Real Impact of vSphere

Another milestone day today -- VMware announces their "cloud operating system" -- vSphere.

Much will be written about what it does and how it works.

I thought I'd step back and talk about what it means -- at least, what it means to me.

Thoughts on Oracle and Sun

Like everyone else, I was caught just a little bit off-guard with the announcement this morning.  But now I've had a few hours to consider different aspects of the deal, and it's an interesting mixed bag.

I'm sure we'll hear lots of commentary (and spin!) regarding this combination in the next few weeks and months.

So let the games begin!

Symmetrix V-Max: Watching The Reaction

Well, it’s the day after the big announcement.  Plenty more to discuss on technologies, architectures, pros and cons, impacts, etc.  -- and that will inevitably happen over the next few weeks and months.

But when you announce something this big, it’s always interesting to see how different audiences react. 

And, yes, I do have some gentle suggestions for some of EMC’s competitors in this regard.

Symmetrix V-Max: A New Paradigm For Storage Virtualization?

OK, today's a busy day in storage land -- EMC has some pretty big news.

But -- somewhere in all the speeds and feeds, architectural discussions and weighing in -- we in the storage world have an entirely new model to consider around storage virtualization.

Rather than take the extreme view that "this new model rocks, and all other are no longer worthy", I would say that the storage virtualization model embedded in the V-Max architecture is considerably different than those that have come before, and -- just on that basis alone -- it's worthy of discussion.