Chuck's Blog

Cloudy Discussions

I have been actively involved in discussing clouds here on my blog, as well as various customer and industry forums for a little over a year.

I've put forward some fairly definitive concepts (e.g. private cloud) as well as had plenty of time to discuss and occasionally defend my position.  It's added up to quite a few posts.

I went back to one of the foundational posts I did way back in January, and was surprised as to how well the thinking has held up over time.

Today, I'd like to pick up the discussion where my esteemed Cisco colleagues Chris Hoff and James Urquhart have taken the discussion, as they give me a convenient jumping-off point for some deeper topics I've been itching to get into.

A Quick Note On Primary Data Dedupe and I/O Density

My, that's a geeky title for a post, isn't it?

Wanted to dash off a quick observation that might impact your thoughts around this topic.  At the very least, it's something to be aware of.

Fasten your seatbelts ...

"Control Planes" For The Private Cloud

I do tend to fall into a verbal shorthand that might be impenetrable to others.

As I sketch out end-to-end private cloud architectural diagrams to larger enterprises and service providers, I walk through the various abstraction and service layers.

I tend to end with a discussion of "control planes" that orchestrate and secure everything from the user experience all the way to the physical IT infrastructure -- regardless of where that physical infrastructure might be.

One the announcements this week from EMC -- Ionix Data Center Insight (or DCI), reflects a piece of this story, and deserves some discussion. 

Love The FCoE Discussion

You know a topic is getting hot when the FUD gets hot and heavy ...

I think it started when a certain vendor offered their views on FCoE.  In the process, they got a few things wrong, and that's when the good stuff started.

First, Nigel Poulsen posted a a great theory of operation, and then followed up with physical infrastructure considerations.  Great reading and a nice piece of work.

Storagezilla then followed up with a nice referral to EMC's FCoE Techbook.  As you might appreciate, FCoE is a big deal for EMC.  And not in a "golly gee whiz" slick marketing kind of way -- we think this technology has merit, and we're doing everything we can to make it usable in the enterprise.

And this just in: Blogstu offers up all the work he's been doing in this space.

I guess the only piece of FUD left to address is the representation by a certain vendor that you can direct attach an FCoE host *directly* to an FCoE storage array *without* an intervening switch. 

I'm not naming names here, but you can guess who that might be.

Won't work anytime soon.  There's nothing to provide the FC "name server" function.  Probably won't change until late next year. 

Bottom line: enough of FCoE is up and running that we're seeing strong interest for some of the newer builds going on for fully virtualized environments.

Time to put it on your planning horizon :-)

Overcoming Distance

Over the last few centuries, much of mankind's ingenuity has been focused on eliminating the inconvenience of distance. 

From sailing ships to modern air transportation; from hand-carried letters to global telepresence -- we spend a lot of time and money to overcome distance in the physical world.

And, in the next few years, there's going to be an intense focus in IT in doing exacly the same thing.

The Continuing Saga of Oracle On VMware

I knew trouble was afoot a while back, first when Oracle acquired Virtual Iron, and later when they announced their intent to acquire Sun.

I told people at the time "Larry Ellison and Oracle are going to do everything in their power to lock out VMware".  People didn't really believe me.  Now it's pretty clear to all what the picture looks like.

Which brings up the inevitable questions of "why?" and "what happens next?"

So let me attempt a few answers ...

Chargeback Vs. Pricing

As we start to move to more pooled and cloud-like models for enterprise IT infrastructure, the age-old "chargeback" discussion is once again popular, but in an entirely new context.

Most people assume the chargeback discussion is all about how you pay for the cost of IT.  That's somewhat true.

Some people think that taxes are only to pay for the cost of government.  Other people see it as a way of encouraging good social policy.  Both are right to a certain degree.

Within IT, I believe it's becoming more attractive to think in terms of the latter, rather than the former.

Another Year, Another Blogoversary

It's that time of year when I feel obligated to reflect on my blogging experiences.

It's been about three years, 500+ posts, around 600K+ page views, and over two thousand comments.  Whew!

What have I learned?

Managing Your IT Career In Turbulent Times

A while back, I asked for a few suggestions on potential topics that I could explore in this blog.  Some people left comments, but most contacted me directly.

One of the better suggestions came from Bill Bonin, a fellow EMCer.

He observed that I probably spent more time with senior IT executives than most people he knew.

As a result, maybe I could offer up a few observations as to what most IT executives see as the most valuable skills that they're looking for in their organizations going forward?

I thought that was a great idea.

Stacking Storage Technologies To Tame The Information Beast

Good economy or bad, information continues to grow at about 60% every year.  Storage media costs are dropping at approximately 30% per year.  If you stayed awake in math class, you'll realize that -- unless you take some serious steps -- you'll end up spending more on storage each and every year.

A lot of people naively assume that vendors such as EMC want customers to buy more storage.  Actually, the opposite is true -- for the last 5-7 years, we've been working on technologies and strategies to help customers use *less* storage.

Individually, they're compelling.  Collectively, they show the promise of being able to largely flatten the storage expense curve. 

And that's a good thing.