Chuck's Blog

Great RecoverPoint/SRM Customer Testimonial

Sorry to be such a shameless promoter of EMC marketing material, but I really like this one.

It's a short video of one of our customer/partners -- Hosted Solutions -- talking about how they like RecoverPoint, and -- as a bonus -- a short discussion of how they're using VMware's SRM (Site Recovery Manager) to do complete automated failovers.  I was told they were one of our beta customers and did extended testing.

A longer technical discussion (10 min video chalk talk) can be found here.  Or, if you're really interested, see the full boat here.

A Bit More On Avamar ...

... but not from me today.

As a result of a certain vendor (Data Domain) making certain -- well -- interesting claims, a few of our EMC brethren felt the need to explain a bit more about how the technology works.  If nothing else, it's pretty interesting if you like to understand more than just what the marketing literature says.

Bottom line -- if you're doing dedupe for backup, you're going to have to decide whether you want to reduce data before you hit the network, or afterwards. 

I'm not saying which is best -- as I can imagine scenarios where one or the other would be ideal, but understanding the difference is helpful as you wade through the various backup dedupe claims.

Props to Mark at StorageZilla and Scott at The Backup Blog for shining a bit more light on the topic.

Being Influential: Mixed Emotions

BarryB (a.k.a. The Storage Anarchist) flipped this link to me today, describing how Aberdeen has compiled a list of "Top 100 Most Influential IT Vendors For 2008".

On one hand, it was nice that EMC was #9 on the list, and we were ahead of quite a few other names. 

On the other hand, it made me think: we're not getting our story out well as we could, are we? 

I know what EMC is up to.  I also pretty much know what vendors #1-8 are doing as well.

When I start connecting the dots on all of EMC's current -- and near-term -- capabilities -- I could make a reasonably compelling case that maybe we should be just a few notches higher on the list.

Maybe we should set a goal for ourselves to do better on this survey next year?

VMware's SRM Changes The Game For Remote Recovery

OK, it's no secret, I'm a *huge* VMware fan.  They've been able to take their underlying strength in hypervisors, and move into all sorts of useful adjacent areas: desktop, software development, systems management and so on.

For quite a while, I've been tracking SRM -- Site Recovery Manager -- as another one of these VMware-based "game changers". 

And, today, it's been announced.

So why do I think this is such a big deal?

Common Criteria Isn't So Common

This post was triggered by yet another innocuous EMC press release, this one announcing that many of our platform products have been certified under the Common Criteria Information Technology Security Evaluation.

Don't know about the Common Criteria?  Wikipedia has a decent write-up on the basics, but only goes so far.

No, this is not just a federal government thing -- it's got wider applicability than you might think.

And, once again, the real story is what goes on behind the scenes ...

Data Loss Prevention -- New Thinking

I've had another "aha" moment -- actually, a whole series of them -- recently.

The first hint that something big was going on came as part of a flurry of announcements at RSA World, including this hidden gem around DLP.

It turns out that I only had a half-baked notion of what all the fuss might be about, until late last week.  I was privileged to spend some quality time with the RSA team who went through the concepts and demo'd the product.

When they were done, my head was spinning.  Not so much around the product capabilities (which were very cool, to be sure), mostly it was the new way they were approaching the problem that got me so excited.

I probably won't be able to fit in all into a reasonable-sized post, so consider this the first installment exploring a topic that I'm sure we'll all be interested in -- sooner or later.

One Emergent View Of IT

Came across an online interview that's probably worth reading, "GM's Ralph Szygenda Drives IT Innovation" in eWeek.

In it, I saw how they'd created a very different picture for themselves about what IT is all about, or -- more importantly -- might be in the future.

If you work in an IT organization, and ever wonder "what's it all about?" -- it's worth a few minutes of your time.

Storage Encryption -- New Capabilities

Somewhere in the blizzard of EMC-related news this week, the pieces of an interesting story started to come together, e.g. some new thinking and capabilities around storage encryption. 

The story came out kind of piecemeal (see here and here), and I thought it'd be useful to re-assemble some of the pieces. 

Many of you are doing some form of storage or tape encryption today, or are thinking about doing it.

I think there's now a better way to do this sort of thing than there was before.

Tiers, Tiers Everywhere

I've been noticing increased activity from vendors large and small to offer newer tiers of storage in our crowded, noisy marketplace.

That's a good thing -- the more choices we all have, the better.

But, at the same time, I think it's also important to have a bigger context about what's going on here, and what it might mean for consumers of these technologies.

Physical Security and Information Management

There's an important new class of information that's being captured more frequently -- and that's physical security information.

All those CCTV devices and other sensors you see everywhere are silently gathering more and more information about us and our movements. 

And, despite the obvious benefit of providing more security for all of us, it's raising interesting questions at several levels.

This post was triggered by an interesting press release today, announcing further progress on EMC's physical security solutions.

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know I like to dig down behind these announcements, and share the story behind the story; hopefully to expose an interesting thought or two.

And this one is no exception.

Which NGDC Do You Want?

The acronym stands for "next generation data center", and -- once again -- this discussion is very much in vogue across the industry. 

So many pieces are coming together, that there's a new hunger for a conversation around "what does it all look like in a few years".

I think there's actually two distinct NGDC models emerging, and -- the real question is what kind of business do you see yourself in?

Information Governance -- An Update

Like many of you, I tend to be on the lookout for interesting trends in this industry.

No surprise, but trends come and go.  Some start out strong, but may lose steam or morph into another discussion entirely.

Others continue to gather steam until the concept becomes part of our overall fabric of thoughts and ideas.

And I think I owe you an update on "information governance". 

Data DeDupe -- Product or Feature?

Ah, you've got to love this bloggy world we're living in.

Today's post was driven by industry speculation that EMC and Quantum might be doing something.

Which, of course, lead to a broader discussion on data deduplication.

And, inevitably, I felt I might weigh in and try and attempt a tiny bit of clarification here.

VDI -- The Red Hot Discussion

I've never seen anything like this in the industry.  VMware is going from strength to strength in a way that's hard for many of us to fully comprehend.

Just when you thought the server-oriented ESX party was raging, over the last 6-12 months the VDI discussion has become extremely interesting, especially to larger organizations who are seeing the potential to save money, deliver better user experiences, improve security and so on.

As a result, a number of vendors are being drawn into extremely interesting conversations around VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure), including EMC.

I thought I'd offer up a few thoughts on this, based on what I'm hearing from people.

My Favorite Charity

Now, lest you think that EMC is entirely about technology, profits, markets, beating competitors, et. al. we do have a distinct charitable side to our corporate ethos.

EMC invests considerably in a wide range of "make the world a better place" initiatives, both on a local and global scale.

And, a few years ago, we started working in an area that I find fascinating.

The Future of IT (Professionals)

So, I'm occasionally having an interesting experience these days.

Very often, I'm asked to share EMC's views on what's broadly called "the future of IT".

And, in the act of doing so, we usually end up in a discussion around "the future of IT professionals".

I think this is a discussion we'll be having more often in the future.

Building The NextGen Management Brain

I fear I may have been neglectful in my blogging duties. 

I've fallen behind in a couple of areas, specifically regading a few recent developments in EMC's resource management strategy. 

Go ahead and blame me, but there's a lot to cover around EMC, and I still have my day job(s) to get done ...

So, with apologies out of the way, let's dig into a fascinating portion of EMC's portfolio -- resource management.

Bang!

In last month's Scientific American, there was an interesting article that basically stated that the scientists were wrong; that the universe we all live in is expanding far faster than we previously imagined. 

And they detailed some interesting consequences to this, but -- thankfully -- we wouldn't start to notice for billions of years.

Today, IDC updated last year's landmark study on "The Expanding Digital Universe" with a new one ("The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe"), basically saying they were wrong, the digital universe is expanding far faster than they orignally estimated.

But, rather than billions of years, the effects are likely to be far more immediate to all of us.

Storage Protocols, VMware and Religion

Funny, isn't it?  How most technology questions break into religious camps?

I've noticed that there's a fair amount of religion around which storage protocol is "better" for VMware: FC, NAS, iSCSI?

And, like most things, a fair amount of agnosticism might be appropriate.

Green IT -- Are We Missing The Point?

Over time, we're getting more passionate bloggers here at EMC.  And we enjoy debating different topics back and forth among ourselves.  I think we were all argumentative as children -- must be in the DNA.

Dick Sullivan and I were having an interesting discussion that many of us (vendors, IT and business people alike) perhaps missing a really big point around the whole "green IT" thing.

It's simple -- yes, it's important to have "green IT", but what we're really after is efficiency.

And -- more often than not -- the efficiency gains we're after with green IT lead to even bigger efficiency discussions that many times have nothing to do with energy or carbon footprint.

Have You Tamed Your Storage Beast?

One of the most frequent questions I get from EMC customers in our briefing center is "how are we doing?".

They're curious to know how well they're measuring up in managing their growing storage and information management environment as compared to other IT shops.

Now, any sort of rigorous, scientific answer is beyond my scope.  But what I can do is share with you some of the broad averages as I see it from my perspective.

And, yes, many of them think they've made real progress on taming their storage beasts.

Please, Not The "S" Word!

Ours is an industry that tends to overuse and abuse words more than most.

We use them too frequently, and too imprecisely to the point where they lose their ability to convey significant meaning.

And, on the list of maligned IT words, I hold a special place for the word "solution".

In our industry, it's applied to so many things, it has come to mean almost nothing.

I've come to call it the "S" word -- to let people know I consider it impolite and inappropriate to use in public unless you're willing to take the time to convey what you might mean by it.

RecoverPoint Redux

As you might know, I like to dig into parts of EMC's portfolio that I think are especially cool, and share with you what I really like about the different pieces.

Somewhere in all the activity last week, there was a major announcement around RecoverPoint, our next-gen replication platform.

Not only is RecoverPoint cool technology, but it's a cool story as well.

FCoE Gathers Steam

When I first started discussing this emerging storage networking standard, it brought out vigorous debate, not only from others in the industry, but also within EMC.

I've been quietly tracking FCoE, and -- not surprisingly -- it appears to be on its way to achieving critical mass.

And, it's not just me who's noticed the same thing.

EMC To Acquire Pi Corporation

In a world of corporate acquisitions in information technology, there are those that eventually matter, and those that are just part of the landscape.

Everyone is free to come to their own conclusions regarding this particular acquisition by EMC, but I for one see this as signaling yet another shift in the technology landscape – one whose impact probably won’t be blatantly obvious for some time.

Let me share with you why I think this isn’t your everyday acquisition …

Is Your Storage Vendor Serious About Storage?

Today's news was sad for parts of the community, but somewhat inevitable.

Apple decided that they were essentially getting out of the enterprise storage business.

I'm not one to criticize Apple's move -- in some regards, it's not surprising -- but I think the announcement will cause many to reflect on who they're buying this technology from, and their commitment to the business.

BTW, like most of you, I have enormous respect for what Apple has done over the past decade.  I fully appreciate who they are, and what they're trying to do.  On one level, they've redefined what it means to be "cool" in the technology biz.

But, with all due respect, they had no business being in the storage business.  As a reseller or OEM, perhaps.  But as a manufacturer of the core technology, it was a really bad idea from Day One, IMHO.

Skiing And Storage

OK, this is going to be an off-beat post.  I'm on vacation this week (sort of), skiing in New Hampshire. 

So, what can possibly be the connection between skiing and storage?

It'll be a little strained, but I'll get there ... just be patient.

How The EMC Disk Library Came To Be

EMC offered up a press release today reflecting on the market success we've enjoyed with the EMC Disk Library (EDL).

I felt a special bit of satisfaction when I saw this.  The EDL was one of my special projects way back when.

Some people think that new product development is largely an autonomous, faceless process.

It's not.  Sure, there's plenty of process and data.  But, in most cases, there are a few people who really believe in a new product, and are willing to go to great lengths to see it happen.

And I was one of those people for the EDL.

Can You Trust Your Cloud?

The industry is all abuzz with conversations about things cloud-like these days.

Sure, EMC has added our views to the discussion in terms of technology, architecture, requirements, use cases, etc.

But there's a certain element that's going to be required for this stuff to really take off.

And that's trust.

SAP and EMC?

Saw this little gem come across the wire today, speculating on a tie-up between SAP and EMC on "web hosting services".

And, while it's very true that EMC brings a lot of value to an SAP environment, I'm not going to comment on the specifics of this article -- sorry, folks, that's beyond my pay grade ;-)

But the author did a great job tying together a number of concepts and trends into an interesting story, and I thought it'd be worthwhile to spend a bit of time and share some of the behind-the-scenes thinking here.

Information Infrastructure for DW and BI

Well, it turns out we're finding ourselves in more and more conversations with customers about what they're doing with data warehousing and business intelligence.

From wherever it started, they're now coming to the realization that this is now an important part of their landscape. 

Whether there are a few warehouses that became business critical, or the darn things are proliferating everywhere, we're now getting asked to help out on a more frequent basis.

So I thought I'd use this post to share what we're seeing, and what we're doing to help.

Building A Really, Really Fast NAS Platform

One of the things I enjoy doing on this blog is taking some not-widely-known part of EMC's portfolio, and explaining a bit on how it came to be, but more importantly, to highlight how we combine and integrate our portfolio to come up with some interesting approaches to customer problems.

EMC does so much that sometimes very compelling offerings simply get lost in the noise.

Today's behind-the-scenes journey is about MPFS.  The acronym stands for Multi Path File System. 

Probably named by an engineer ;-)

Think of it as really, really fast NAS.  Now, I'm not going to argue that it's the fastest, or the best, or that the other guys aren't so good, etc. because that's not the point here. 

But many of us think MPFS is a pretty cool story, and a pretty cool product.

Information Infrastructure for SOA

I'm called on frequently to speak about a variety of topics, and -- recently -- there's been a renewed interest in infrastructure associated with SOA.

You probably know about SOA -- service-oriented architectures.  It's a (relatively) new way of thinking about how applications are designed, developed and deployed.  .

But, like anything else, anything big and hairy (like SOA) has serious infrastructure implications. 

And SOA -- at scale -- is no exception.

Come See Us All At EMC World

I'd like to invite you to come join all of us at the upcoming EMC World in Las Vegas May 19-22.

I know what you might be thinking -- you're probably not crazy about most trade shows.  And, generally speaking, I'm in the same camp.

But you might want to consider this one.

EMC Does SaaS -- Reading Between The Lines

A relatively big announcement from EMC today, not so much on what we're doing specifically, but how we see the IT marketplace is evolving in very important ways.

The press release looks innocuous enough, doesn't it?  EMC announcing an enterprise version of Mozy-based backup.  Sure, that makes sense, sort of.

But I think there's a much more interesting story here ...

Enterprise Flash Drives and DMX -- The Aftermath

Every now and then, I get a ringside seat on a textbook example of human behavior in this industry.

And, I have to share with you, the reaction to EMC's recent announcement of enterprise flash drives for the DMX was very interesting, less about the factual content of what was said, but the different positions everyone took, and why.

And, going back over past experiences, I'm realizing that the last few days is a template of how a fiercely competitive, vibrant industry (e.g. storage) reacts to something truly new.

Live From Las Vegas!

This week, many of us are out in Las Vegas for our big annual internal meeting.

If you're not particularly interested in EMC culture, this would be a good post to skip.

Otherwise, you might be interested in this "state of the union" post ...

Enterprise Storage Strikes Back!

In the industry press, there's a certain group of people who disdain the enterprise approach to storage, thinking the world's important information will be entirely stored on commodity boxes running open source software.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. 

High-end storage arrays such as the DMX reflect the very latest in storage technology.  And there are a lot of very serious IT people out there who won't run their business on anything else.

Today, EMC announced some fascinating upgrades to the DMX -- including one that I'm sure will absolutely intrigue most storage techies like myself -- enterprise flash drives.

But, as with most things that EMC announces, there's two stories here: not only what we did, but how we did it.

It's Not About Web 2.0 Storage

If you're surfing our little corner of the blogosphere, you might have noticed that a spontaneous debate has broken out about the idea of "web 2.0 storage": what it is, what it isn't, and so on.

One catalyst seems to be the availability of all sorts of free (or low cost) over-the-network storage schemes from Google, Amazon and others.  Another catalyst was IBM trying to position their recent acquisition of XiV to revive their storage business.

I'm sure there's more that's been written around this, but here's the point: I think this "web 2.0 storage" discussion, as currently framed, is a big head-fake. 

And, while I have no problem with competitors running off on a wild goose chase, I think there's an important cadre of IT thinkers that will want to focus on what's going to be important here.

Managed Availability Services

I thought I'd take a moment to circle back to an announcement from Dec 20th that EMC made around this topic, because I thought the story-behind-the-story would be interesting.

The press release is innocuous enough (as are most press releases).  Simply put: EMC is offering a complete set of business continuity services: in addition to the usual assessment / design / implementation stuff, we now can help you operationally run your business continuity environment.

So why do I think this is interesting? Like any glacier or volcano, the interesting stuff is underneath ...

EMC Launches AX4

Usually, I don't recap EMC product launches here unless there's an interesting aspect or two that goes beyond the datasheet sort of stuff.  After all, EMC announces new things pretty frequently, and I don't want to be one of those blogs that simply regurgitates press releases.

But I thought this one was interesting in two regards: first, the thinking that went into the product, and -- secondly -- a valiant attempt to correct some misperceptions out there.

OK, it's just another small storage array, how interesting could this be?

It depends ...

The New EMC.COM

Today, we launched an entirely new version of the company's portal, EMC.COM

Now, you might think that not worthy of a blog post.  I mean, how interesting can this be?

Well, it gets a bit more interesting when you consider some of the thinking that went into the new site, because that's a reflection of how EMC is evolving.

After all -- your web page *is* your company these days, isn't it?

IBM Acquires XiV

Thought I'd be able to ease back into the new year slowly, but - no - right off the bat IBM made a bold move that's got everyone talking.

You can see the press releases here and here.  Basically, IBM paid somewhere between $300m and $350m for a storage startup.

I'm sure lots of people will weigh in here, but I'd like to offer a few thoughts on this one.

Looking Ahead: The 2008 Predictions

I had the unprecedented luxury of almost completely shutting down over the holiday season.  OK, I peeked at my CrackBerry a few times, but -- mentally -- it was a total shutdown.  That's a good thing to do every so often, I think.

One of things I did think a lot about was this post -- what's going to happen in 2008?

Hopefully, I can keep my accuracy at something close to last year's levels ...

Looks Like A Jackalope To Me

Don't know if you've ever taken a car trip through the Rocky Mountains (Colorado, Wyoming, et. al.) but if you stop in a friendly diner, you're likely to see a picture of a "jackalope" -- a monstrous cross between a jackrabbit and an antelope.

The locals will tell you with a straight face how the nearby ranchers prefer them to horses since they run much faster and eat less.  Of course, no such thing exists, but it's good fun.

For some reason, there are those in the industry trying to make a connection between an extremely hot topic (server/desktop virtualization) and less-popular topics (storage virtualization, dedupe, thin provisioning, etc.).

Just like the infamous jackalope, the possibility is plausible to tourists, but somewhat of an inside joke to the locals.

Storage Virtualization and Invista 2.0

You might have seen EMC's announcement of Invista 2.0.  I thought this topic deserved a bit of context.

Storage virtualization has turned out to be one of those long-simmering topics in this industry.  And it's still going to simmer for a while, I'd predict.  This game isn't anywhere near from being over yet.

Best as I can recollect, although the industry was talking about at the end of the 1990s, the discussion got very hot at EMC in the 2002-2003 timeframe.

We knew that this was going to be an important storage technology, but we had some hard choices to make.

If anything, one of the things I like about working for EMC is that we study the problem, and are willing to make the hard choices -- and stick with them -- to get to where we want to be with our customers.

And with the recent announcement of Invista 2.0, I think it's a good time to reflect on the journey, where EMC and the industry has ended up, and maybe a bit of what happens from here.

The Changing Face(s) of IT

If anything, I write about a lot of different topics.  Maybe not particularly well, but people tell me there's no shortage of breadth ;-)

Someone suggested that maybe I bump it up a level, and try to summarize and integrate some of the key trends that are making us all think really hard these days.  You know, tie together the big threads and create a short, comprehensive picture.

So, I'm going to give it a try -- let me know how I do?