Chuck's Blog

Simplification Is In The Eye Of The Beholder: The New ESI

Just about every IT vendor on the planet is investing heavily to tackle the "simplification" problem.

IT environments are getting too complex.  More time can be spent coordinating between different IT roles than actually getting useful work done.

But there's never a silver bullet: simplification is usually in the eyes of the beholder.  

I think EMC did a good job of recognizing this early, and rather than hand-waving at the problem, digging in deeper to understand specific roles and focused use cases where investing in simplification could be of great value.

Such is the case with the new version of the EMC Storage Integrator (ESI) for Windows environments -- how do you make IT infrastructure easier for someone who lives in a Microsoft-centric world?

Unlearning Storage

In a recent interview with Dave Vellante of Wikibon fame, I offered up the view that -- given the rapid rate of change in storage technology -- I've had to revisit just about each and every fundamental assumption I've ever had about storage.

An excellent example of this "unlearning storage" was buried in an Atmos announcement from EMC World.  In particular, Atmos storage now runs nicely in a VM.  Not just for eval, for production.

And there are some interesting implications as a result.

VPLEX: The Birth Of A New Storage Platform

One of the bigger news stories to come out of EMC World today is the announcement of VPLEX.

Like anything relatively new, it will take a while for people to fully understand the rationale and the strategy behind the product.  It took me a good while before I got a full grasp on the implications of this new technology. 

But I can be slow to understand new concepts ... maybe you'll do better!

There's More To This Than Dense Storage, Folks

Was chatting with a customer about the impact of a recent EMC announcement where the CLARiiON now has a 4:1 advantage in capacity density: twice as much physical capacity (due to 2TB drives) as well as also doing so in half the space (due to double density packaging).

Rather than incessantly brag about the achievement (sooner or later, other vendors will eventually figure out how to do this), I thought it was indicative of how our thinking around storage is starting to change -- and fast.

Better Tools ... Or Better Models?

I read with empathy recent posts on Wikibon regarding the general perception that storage management tools could be a whole lot better.

One excellent post spoke of managing storage performance.  Another speaks to large warehousing workloads meandering through the fabric, and the havoc that caused.  Good reading.

It'd be easy enough to say, "yes, darn it, we need better tools!".  And plenty of storage admins would agree with me wholeheartedly.

My argument, however, is that tools in isolation can only get you so far.  At some point, the model needs to change.  And that's a more difficult proposition.

Building The Information Utility -- Closing Thoughts

If you've made it this far, we've on an interesting journey together -- exploring concepts around an internal "information utility" for our organizations.

Yes, some pre-reading is required: an initial discussion here, concepts of efficiency here, building control models here, and -- of course -- how we might think about choice.

In this post, we come full circle, and talk about how organizations might get from here to there.

Building Choice Into Our Information Utility -- Part 4

You're deep into a series of posts where I attempt to lay the foundations of an idealized "information utility" for most enterprises.

The idea is simple: the vast majority of enterprise information isn't particularly mission critical, and we should start thinking in terms of an internal "information utility" that's modeled after phones, power, etc.

Before you dive into this one, I'd recommend that you spend a moment reading this post, this post and this post.

Ready?

Control and The Information Utility -- Part 3

You're midway through a series of posts exploring the concept of an idealized "information utility" for enterprises -- something that can do a better job of handling the 97% of all corporate data that isn't mission critical.

By way of prerequisite, I'd encourage you to read this introduction, and the subsequent post on efficiency.

Ready to dig into "control" concepts?

Here we go.

Making The Information Utility Efficient -- Part 2

You're midway through a sequence of posts describing the concept of building an "information utility" for the non-mission-critical information that's drowning every enterprise.

I did my best to lay out an initial conceptual framework here.  Much of what I say here will make far more sense if you have the chance to read this first.

In this post, I want to drill down on the enabling technologies and automated operational models that have the potential of dramatically transforming the efficiency of how we store, protect, manage and leverage our enterprise information.

In the next two posts, I want to explore related concepts: "control", and "choice".

Building The Information Utility -- Part 1

The headline? 

Storage -- as a technology and a discipline -- is ripe for a complete re-thinking in 2010.  Many of the necessary ingredients are already in the market, more are coming.  

For those of us who've been way too close to this storage stuff for way too long, it's nothing more than a complete re-learning of everything we've ever known.

As we start 2010, I'm doing my best to lay out what I believe will be the "big ideas" in storage going forward.   Since I work for a vendor, you know the rules -- I can't pre-announce new products or technologies.

But what I *can* do is lay out the thinking behind the roadmap -- and that's what I'm doing here.