June 2014 Server and StorageIO Update newsletter

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June 30, 2014 01:48 PM EDT	Reads:	1,977

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CIO, CTO & Developer Resources

By Greg Schulz

Server and StorageIO Update newsletter - June 2014

Welcome to the June 2014 edition of the StorageIO Update (newsletter) containing trends perspectives on cloud, virtualization and data infrastructure topics. June has been busy on many fronts with lots of activities, not to mention spring and summer are finally here in the Stillwater MN area.

Speaking of busy, the spring rains came a month or two late, or the summer storms early as we will end up with one of the, if not rainiest Junes in history here in Stillwater MN area.

Greg Schulz @StorageIO

Industry and Technology Updates

There has also been plenty of activity in the Information Technology (IT) and in particular the data infrastructure sector (databases, file systems, operating systems, servers, storage, I/O networking, cloud, virtualization, SSD, data protection and DCIM among others). SANdisk announced their intention to buy SSD vendor Fusion IO for a $1.1 Billion dollars as part of a continued flash consolidation trend For example Cisco buys Whiptail, WD buys Virident, Seagate buys Avago/LSI Flash division among others (read more about flash SSD here). Even with flash SSD vendor and technology consolidation, this is in no way an indication of the health of the market. Quite the opposite in that flash SSD has a very bright future and we are still in the relative early phase or waves and flash will be in your future. The question remains how much, when, where, with what and from whom. Needless to say there is plenty of SSD related hardware and software activity occurring in the StorageIO labs as well as StorageIO.com/SSD;).

StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspectives

NetApp Updates

In early June I was invited by NetApp to attend their annual analyst summit along with many others from around the world for a series of briefings, NDA updates and other meetings. Disclosure NetApp has been a client in the past and covered travel and lodging expenses to attend their event.

While the material under NDA naturally can not be discussed, there was discussion around NetApp previously announced earnings, their continued relationship with IBM (for the E Series) along with the June product updates. Shortly after the NetApp event they announced enhancements to there ONTAP FAS based systems that followup to those released earlier this year. These recent enhancements NetApp claims as being their fastest FAS based systems ever.

Given the success NetApp has had with their ONTAP FAS based systems including with FlexPod, it should not be a surprise that they continue to focus on those as their flagship offerings. What was clear from listening to CEO Tom Georgens is that NetApp as a company needs to offer, promote and sell the entire portfolio including E Series (disk, hybrid and all flash EF), StorageGrid (bycast), FlexPod and FAS among other tools (software defined storage management) and services (for legacy, virtual and cloud). Watch for some interesting updates and enhancements for the above and other things from NetApp in the future.

Staying busy is a good thing

What have I been doing during June 2014 to stay busy besides getting ready for summer fun (as well as preparing for fall industry events) including in and around the water?

Presented several BrightTalk Webinars (see events below) with more coming up
Release of new ITP white paper and StorageIO lab proof points with more in the works
More videos and pod casts, technology reviews including servers among other things
Moderated a software defined panel discussion at MSP area VMUG
Providing industry commentary in different venues (see below)
Not to mention various client consulting projects

What's in the works?

Several projects and things are in the works that will show themselves in the coming weeks or months if not sooner. Some of which are more proof points coming out of the StorageIO labs involving software defined, converged, cloud, virtual, SSD, data protection and more.

Speaking of Software Defined, join me for a free Spiceworks Webinar on July 2, Do More with Less Hardware Using Software Defined Storage Management (sponsored by Starwind Software). The webinar looks at the many faces and facets of virtualization and software defined storage and software defined storage management for Hyper-V environments. Learn more about the Hyper-V event here or here.

In addition to the upcoming July 2 Hyper-V software defined storage webinar ( a recording for replay will be posted to the StorageIO.com/events page after the event), I also did a webinar on BrightTalk a few weeks covering software defined storage management. View the BrightTalk webinar replays by clicking the following links The Changing Face and Landscape of Enterprise Storage (June 11), The Many Facets of Virtual Storage and Software Defined Storage Virtualization (June 12), Evolving from Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity (BC) to Business Resiliency (BR) recorded Jun 19.

Watch for more StorageIO posts, commentary, perspectives, presentations, webinars, tips and events on information and data infrastructure topics, themes and trends. Data Infrastructure topics include among others cloud, virtual, legacy server, storage I/O networking, data protection, hardware and software.

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO Update newsletter and look forward to catching up with you live or online while out and about this spring.

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers gs

June 2014 Industry trend and perspectives

Tips, commentary, articles and blog posts

The following is a synopsis of some StorageIOblog posts, articles and comments in different venues on various industry trends, perspectives and related themes about clouds, virtualization, data and storage infrastructure topics among related themes.

StorageIO comments and perspectives in the news

StorageIO in the news

Toms Hardware: Comments on Selecting the Right Type, Amount and Location of Flash SSD to use
TechPageOne: Comments on best practices for virtual data protection
SearchAWS: Comments on Google vs. AWS SSD which is better
InfoStor: Comments on Cloud Appliance Buying Guide

StorageIO video and audio pod casts

StorageIOblog post
StorageIO audio podcasts are also available via and at StorageIO.tv

StorageIOblog posts and perspectives

Is there an information or data recession, are you using less storage (with polls)

April and May 2014 Server and StorageIO Update newsletter

StorageIO White Papers, Solution Briefs and StorageIO Lab reports

New White Paper: StarWind Virtual SAN:
Hardware Agnostic Hyper-Convergence for Microsoft Hyper-V
Using less hardware with software defined storage management There is no such thing as an information recession with more data being generated, processed, moved, stored and retained longer. In addition, people and data are living longer as well as getting larger.

Key to support various types of business environments and their information technology (IT) / ITC applications are cost effective, flexible and resilient data infrastructures that support virtual machine (VM) centric solutions. This StorageIO Industry Trends Perspective thought leadership white paper looks at addressing the needs of Microsoft Hyper-V environments to address economic, service, growth, flexibility and technology challenges.

The focus is on how software defined storage management solutions unlock the full value of server-based storage for Hyper-V environments. Benefits include removing complexity to cut cost while enhancing flexibility, service and business systems resiliency along with disaster recovery without compromise. Primary audiences include Small Medium Business (SMB), Remote Office Branch Office (ROBO) of larger organizations along with managed service providers (Cloud, Internet and Web) that are using Hyper-V as part of their solutions. Read more in this StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) white paper compliments of StarWind Software Virtual SAN (VSAN) for Microsoft Hyper-V.

Remember to check out our objectstoragecenter.com page where you will find a growing collection of information and links on cloud and object storage themes, technologies and trends from various sources.

If you are interested in data protection including Backup/Restore, BC, DR, BR and Archiving along with associated technologies, tools, techniques and trends visit our dataprotectiondiaries.com page.

StorageIO events and activities

Server and StorageIO seminars, conferences, web cats, events, activities

The StorageIO calendar continues to evolve, here are some recent and upcoming activities including live in-person seminars, conferences, keynote and speaking activities as well as on-line webinars, twitter chats, Google+ hangouts among others.

October 10, 2014		Seminar: Server, Storage and IO Data Center Virtualization Jumpstart	Nijkerk Holland Netherlands
October 9, 2014		Seminar: Data Infrastructure Industry Trends and Perspectives - Whats The Buzz	Nijkerk Holland Netherlands
October 8, 2014		Private Seminar - Contact Brouwer Storage Consultancy	Nijkerk Holland Netherlands
October 7, 2014		Seminar: Data Movement and Migration	Nijkerk Holland Netherlands
October 6, 2014		Seminar: From Backup and Disaster Recovery to Business Resiliency and Continuance	Nijkerk Holland Netherlands
August 25-28, 2014	VMworld	TBA	San Francisco
August 7, 2014	TBA	TBA	TBA
July 2, 2014	Starwind Software	Live webinar: Live Webinar: Do More with Less Hardware Using Software Defined Storage Management	Webinar 1PM CT
June 26, 2014	MSP VMUG	Moderate Live Panel Software Defined Discussion	Panel 12:45PM CT
June 17, 2014	Dell BackupU	Exploring the Data Protection Toolbox - Data Footprint Reduction	Dell BackupU Online Webinar
May 14, 2014		Seminar: Vendor Neutral Archiving for Healthcare	Nijkerk Holland Netherlands
May 5-7, 2014		EMC World	Las Vegas
April 23, 2014	SNIA DSI Event	Keynote: Enabling Data Infrastructure Return On Innovation â The Other ROI	Santa Clara CA
April 22, 2014	SNIA DSI Event	The Cloud Hybrid âHomerunâ â Life Beyond The Hype	Santa Clara CA
April 16, 2014		Open Source and Cloud Storage - Enabling business, or a technology enabler?	Webinar 9AM PT
April 9, 2014		Storage Decision Making for Fast, Big and Very Big Data Environments	Webinar 9AM PT

Click here to view other upcoming along with earlier event activities. Watch for more 2014 events to be added soon to the StorageIO events calendar page. Topics include data protection modernization (backup/restore, HA, BC, DR, archive), data footprint reduction (archive, compression, dedupe), storage optimization, SSD, object storage, server and storage virtualization, big data, little data, cloud and object storage, performance and management trends among others.

Vendors, VAR's and event organizers, give us a call or send an email to discuss having us involved in your upcoming pod cast, web cast, virtual seminar, conference or other events.

StorageIO Update Newsletter Archives

Click here to view earlier StorageIO Update newsletters (HTML and PDF versions) at www.storageio.com/newsletter. Subscribe to this newsletter (and pass it along) by clicking here (Via Secure Campaigner site). View archives of past StorageIO update news letters as well as download PDF versions at: www.storageio.com/newsletter

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz - Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio