Chuck's Blog

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.

Towards A Private Cloud Architecture

I think we're getting ready to take the next step in the discussion around private clouds -- from an initial set of generic concepts, to a more precise articulation of an underlying architecture.

At a surface level, private clouds are basically fully virtualized environments that allow IT organizations to use a dynamic combination of internal and external resources.

From a concept barely discussed just a few months ago, it seems to have risen as a dominant theme in our currently cloud-crazy industry discussion.  I've lost count of the vendors and analysts trying to either co-opt (or distance themselves!) from the term.

The high-level definition above is enough to get the conversation moving in the right direction, but there's a far deeper level of architectural abstraction that eventually needs to be discussed.

And, despite my limited abilities, I'm going to bravely venture out into this next phase of the industry discussion.

Let me know how I do?

Go Ahead, Give It A Try!

Today's news on EMC acquiring FastScale as part of our Ionix portfolio drew a slew of predictable skepticism from many who questioned the viability of this approach.

I was emailing Lynn LeBlanc, CEO of FastScale, and was wondering if there was any easy way that people could try it for themselves.  She immediately came back with the news that there was a limited *free* download people could try to see it working for themselves.

So, here you go.  Have fun ... and let me know what you think!

The Cool Magic of AIM

Yes, I'm going to throw a new term at you -- it's Application Image Management, or AIM. 

Before you scream “buzzword alert!”, take a moment and hear me out, please.

For quite a while, we've understood the potential to transform how application images are defined, managed and delivered in a radically optimized fashion.

And today, EMC is announcing the acquisition of exceptionally intriguing technology that cuts across multiple disciplines and delivers some eye-popping benefits.

How does the potential of running 3x-6x more virtual machines on the exact same hardware grab you?

The New Face Of IT Security Infrastructure?

I was pleasantly surprised to see this article where some hands-on reviewers were favorably impressed with RSA's extended DLP (data loss prevention) capabilities.

Yes, it's a pretty cool set of capabilities.  And we could do a feature-by-feature comparison of our stuff vs. their stuff and probably come out ahead.

But it becomes an unfair comparison where we take these capabilities, and put them in the broader context of EMC's emergent stack.

Of Objects And Files

I was pleasantly surprised by the vigorous debate kicked off by one of my recent posts "The Future Doesn't Have A File System". 

Although most of the vigorous rhetoric came from an individual with a clear vested interest (Alex McDonald who is the competitive blogger over at NetApp), he did bring forth some themes that I'm sure are more widely shared.  And, just as vigorously, Paul Carpentier of FilePool (Centera) fame argued the other side of the equation.

I'd like to use this post to step back a bit and lay a bit of groundwork as to why this is such an interesting topic to so many of us looking at architecture.

I Love A Good Disruption

If you're like me, you love to see the continual cycles of disruption that percolate through our industry.

You might wonder why a "disrupto-phile" like me would work for a large, successful behemoth of an IT company like EMC, it's easy. 

It's pretty easy, actually. First, you don't get large and successful without paying attention to disruptive trends.  And, second, it's far more fun when you are the disruptor rather than the disruptee.

Case in point: a rather innocuous announcement from our Iomega subsidiary, found here.

You can say what you want around the pros and the cons of the actual product, but the thinking it represents is interesting. 

Think of it as yet another example of EMC's unique approach to creative disruption.

A Starter Private Cloud For IT

So, it's happening more frequently now.

We go into a large enterprise customer, or perhaps one of our partners, and do our private cloud presentation.

We talk about fully virtualized environments, new operational models, and how VMware, Cisco and EMC are working together to accelerate this world.

And then something very interesting happens with increasing frequency.

The Future Doesn't Have A File System

... at least, not that tree-oriented, heirarchical model we've all gotten so accustomed to.

Sure, there'll be mechanisms for managing information objects, but calling them "file systems" can really hold back our thinking in some subtle yet powerful ways.

Reconsidering Storage As A Service

Yes, many people have tread this ground over the years, but I'd argue it's time for a re-definition of the term.

Properly framed, it can provoke a mindset that transcends historical thinking, and might help pave the way for storage architects out there who are looking for new ways to frame the discussion with their teams to move the ball forward.

You be the judge.