Chuck's Blog

Storage And Cloud

One of the more popular questions that gets directed at me by journalists and others these days is around the above topic.

I guess since EMC does storage -- and is very active in things cloud-like -- they expect us to have some nice sound bites.

Well, I have my pre-packaged answer that's suitable for the press, but -- if you have the time and the interest -- the deeper answer is much more engaging.

Getting Comfortable With Oversubscription

It's a key concept in getting any sort of shared resource efficiency.  We see it everywhere we look in our daily lives.

But as we talk about IT strategies, private cloud and fully virtualized environments, one of the biggest stumbling blocks I'm encountering is the idea of intentionally pushing oversubscription of IT infrastructure resources -- servers and storage.

And that's going to have to change, I think.

Monetizing The Private Cloud -- Part 1

If you've been following this blog -- or other similar conversations -- you'll know that my current focus is on private clouds.

A private cloud is a fully virtualized IT environment that can optimize the use of IT resources -- whether they be internal, external or a combination of both.

Up to now, I've been covering what they are, how they're built, why we need them, etc.

It's now time to take on a big, hairy issue -- how will they be paid for?

Because -- at the end of the day -- it all boils down to money and economics, doesn't it?

Business Continuity -- Virtualization Changes Everything

I haven't looped back to this thought in quite a while, but felt motivated to do so by this recent press release announcing EMC's business continuity professional services for virtualized environments.

Once again, it's another example of virtualization changing everything, including how we think about protecting against the unthinkable.

Private Clouds and Portable User Experiences

When talking about private clouds, there's just so many interesting angles to dig into -- it ties so many different themes in IT into a consistent story that I keep getting drawn in like a moth to a flame.

Fortunately, I'm not the only one -- all of the customers I talk to are starting to get the buzz as well.  At some future point, I'll share my reasons why I think this is the case, but -- for now -- I'd like to discuss the user experience part of this discussion.

This post was triggered by a VMware news item describing how health care professionals can use VMware View to create a "follow me" user experience across thin clients, laptops, desktops, tablets -- just about any reasonable user device.

IT gets to package up a user experience, push it to multiple devices, and manage it all centrally.

Talk about your win-win scenario!

The Future Is Here

Those of us who speak on IT topics often find ourselves waxing poetic about the future of technology, or the future of the data center, or something similar.

We wave our hands, and talk about what could be.

What happens when the future is here?

Do we immediately acknowledge that entirely new things are possible and set off in new directions, or do we as human beings take a considerable period to adapt to our new circumstances?

For the last few months, I've been focused almost entirely on private cloud concepts, and the alliance of VMware, Cisco and EMC that has formed to accelerate the adoption of these fully virtualized IT environments that form the basis of private clouds.

I don't think anyone is really arguing that much with what I'm saying.  But changing our thinking and our actions is going to take a while, it seems ...

EMC Makes Surprise Play for Data Domain

Never a dull moment …

EMC just announced our offer for Data Domain.  You can read the full press release here.

I’m sure – like any other acquisition move – there will be a healthy amount of speculation around the motives.

While it’s always fun to read what different people think, I thought I’d offer up my personal perspective as to the rationale for this move.

And it might not be what you think.

The Limitations Of (Storage) Models

Memes come and go in this industry. 

One popular one that's making the rounds is the Doeswijk Data Model, as described by my esteemed colleague and competitor Hu Yoshida over at HDS.

Now, I don't have problems with simple models to illustrate a concept or two, but every model (and analogy!) has its limitations.

In this case, I've now started to see a few people use this model as a basis for creating their overall storage strategy, and the results -- well -- haven't been pretty.

I do want to thank Hu for sharing the model.  And while I want to praise its strengths, I also want to highlight a few key intellectual flaws that can lead you astray if you're not careful.

EMC Takes Atmos Storage OnLine

Perhaps the first big announcement to come out of EMC World is the twin combination of the new Atmos OnLine service, as well as AT&T's new Synaptic Storage as a Service based on Atmos.

While the new services and capabilities are interesting in their own right, I think they're emblematic of certain trends we'll inevitably see more of in the future.

And that's worth discussing ...

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 ...