Storage @ Work

I saw Steve Duplessie's post today that he isn't going to be at SNW in San Diego. Wahhhh! OK, so it won't be the same event, but I'm still going to go anyway and I know I'm not as much fun as Steve, but I'm looking for chill hanging opportunities. Yo Tony? Wassup?

Having teenagers in your household exposes you to a variety of interesting things. I hear the most interesting things when we go out driving. Check out this Muse video for their song Knights of Cydonia. (from the CD Black Holes and Revelations). At the end, the good guy takes out the bad guy by blasting him with a beam from an optical disk. Now that's the kind of storage I want!

The LoneSysAdmin had a funny post today here.

I follow his blog because he's a Midwesterner, like myself and because he's funny and because he occasionally has some very interesting things to say about systems and storage.

OK, So Hu Yoshida asked a question that seems a bit silly to a lot of us storage geeks. I guess this just means that Hu's storage interests are mostly at work and that he doesn't relish the stuff at home as much as some of the rest of us storage sickos. So whether you work at EqualLogic, EMC, ESG, Netapp, HDS, HP, SUN, iSTOR, Lefthand, Xiotech, Microsoft, IBM, Data Domain, Gear 6, Adaptec, Acopia, Ibrix, Red Hat, Compellent and all the other companies I forgot to name - here's the question for you:

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Processor Magazine recently published an article on iSCSI implementations that I was quoted in. That was OK, but the thing that really surprised me was that my old friend and comrade Jay Kramer from iSTOR was also quoted. Now Sixto (the author), you should have told me I was going to be partnered up with Jay because I would have insisted on a few perks, such as top billing and more quotes. Jay and I have circled the same aspects of this industry for many years: I was fabric and he was loop, he was SATA and I was SAS, but mostly he was Laurel and I was Hardy. Our best stint was probably tag-team-teaching storage networking technology to the theme of family feud. I'm not sure that Jay and I ever agree completely on anything, but I always enjoy getting together and arguing. Truth be told, I was pleasantly surprised to find him sharing this article with me and we certainly agree on the future of iSCSI.

I thought I'd reinforce a couple thoughts about best practices for iSCSI SANs that were in the article:

• Segregate SAN traffic from data traffic as best you can. Use an air-gap network, VLANs or subnets in that order. Its easier to manage changes if I/O paths can be isolated.
• Use CHAP authentication for further connection isolation. It removes a lot of the oops-darn-it risks that Fibre Channel administrators worry about.
• Minimize the number of hops between servers and storage that work together. Edge-core topologies are not necessarily the best policy. Think short for storage.

A couple weeks ago the RupturedMonkey blog site asked blog readers about the television show Heroes. While Ruptured Monkey expressed the belief that this is off the storage topic, I'm not so sure. It seems from reading the comments to that post that lots of storage geeks have a hankering science fiction shows. I think it has something to do with our livelihoods being based on the strange phenomenon of data, its abstract relationship to our world, as well as it's storage and "livelihood". Let me know what's up - what sci fi shows can you never get enough of. Anybody besides me like Threshold?

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I just peaked over at the Lone Sys Admin's site today and saw his blog posting about System Administrators Appreciation Day.

So, all of our customers have system administrators that I want to send out a happy greeting to and I want to say that I hope we are making your hellish workloads easier to manage!

But I also want to send a BIG THANK YOU to our own system admins here at EqualLogic - most of whom I probably don't even know (egad!) Randy and Ian and the rest of you - thanks for putting in all the horrendous work you do supporting us.

Earlier today Chuck Hollis from EMC wrote on his blog about the advantage of using service providers for things like storage. While I agree with him about a number of things such as taxes, I tend to think that outsourcing your own job is a bit of a career limiter.

In the video below, I ask IT professionals why they would abdicate storage management when it is relatively easy to get the satisfaction and accolades of having done it themselves. Like any type of work, the tools employed for storage management make a huge difference. iSCSI SAN storage tools from EqualLogic are true storage power tools.

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OK, I've been a bit behind on a few things - well more than a few things. I finally got around to cleaning out my google blog reader (the things like a virtual garage of opinions) and came across this travelogue rant from Steve Duplessie at ESG. OMG - its more of a short story than a blog post, but it is really funny stuff and as it often is with Steve - straight from the heart.

Here's a choice excerpt: As if that's not bad enough - in mid sentence he whips out a napkin and proceeds to blow his nose - making a 15 second sound that can only be described as the same noise a very heavy table (one with a marble top) being dragged across an unfinished tile floor by a grunting Steffie Graff would make.

For a good time, click: "Lessons Learned in Italy"

I'm pretty stoked about VMworld this week in San Francisco. Going to see lots of interesting stuff and meet with customers and friends from around the industry. I thought VMworld was one of the big highlights of 2006 and expect it will be even bigger this year.

EqualLogic fans might be interested in a few things of note we are doing at the show. The main thing that a lot of people will be interested in is that we are giving away a Harley. Not a stuffed doll of a Harley or a Spinal Tap version of a Harley, but an actual Harley Davidson motorcycle. Next year, you can be in Sturgis in August too!

I am actually a bit torn about this kind of give away. I mean, lot's of our customers tell us that they think our iSCSI SAN products are pretty terrific and I think we should just try to have an event for them (which we are doing - a Birds of Feather and a customer appreciation cocktail party on Wednesday). But I guess if you are going to go beyond the basic feelgood stuff at a major trade show, giving away a Harley isn't so bad. OK, the real problem - truth be told - is that I'm not eligible. Farley on a Harley? The Farley Harley? Farley's gnarly Harley? Videos from the Hogmeister? All these sound pretty good to me, but its not going to come to pass unless I shell out my own money for them. Maybe I'll turn in expense reports for the last year and go get one.

There are a couple Webinars going on this week. I'm doing one tomorrow (Tuesday) AM at 9:00 PDT with VMware and a customer using both technologies. We'll be talking about the synergy of VMware and EqualLogic iSCSI SANs in SMB accounts. Its very powerful stuff with important cost and uptime benefits. Then on Wednesday (also at 9:00 PDT), Eric Schott, our Director of Product management is doing another live webcast with VMware discussing some of the newest technology for Disaster Recovery in VMware environments. This is incredibly important technology that is going to change the IT landscape for many customers so you will want to check it out if you get a chance.

There are a number of breakout sessions with EqualLogic employees or customers participating: There is a listing of them here:

Come see what all the excitement is about at the EqualLogic booth this year, here is where we are in Moscone Center. On this map look for the blue rectangle (#1021) to the right of VMware's booth, which is the big one in the middle.

WMworld has been an awesome event. Yesterday we had our Birds of Feather / customer appreciation party. EqualLogic's Eric Schott and VMware's Kiran Ranabhor led an interactive discussion of VMWare's announced Site Recovery Manager. There is a lot of interest in this functionality and many who attended wanted to know how they were going to be able to use it.

Afterwards was a lot of fun hanging, snacking and sipping. Cool venue - Terra club at First and Harrison in San Francisco. Many thanks to those who planned this and all customers who came to spend time with the EqualLogic team. Also, a huge thanks to our customers who have made presentations and participated in panels at VMworld: David Siles, Lee Merrick, Jeff Stallworth, Carmine Iannace, Chris Sims, Matt Conley and Ken Kaban who made the trip over from the UK in order to attend and present. Our customers are the greatest!

I finally got around to mixing up some of the video from our customer appreciation party at VMworld. Like I always say, we have the greatest customers - it's nice to be able to kick back with them.

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We had special guests from VMware for this event too. Preceding the party was a birds of a feather session where we explored VMware's newly announced Site Recovery Manager (SRM). Very cool.

The big news this morning is that Dell has struck an agreement to acquire EqualLogic. This is certainly a surprise as we have been hunkering down in preparation for an initial public offering, so it gives the future a much different look than it had over the weekend. The deal will probably complete in three to four months. Let’s get on with it, I say – full speed ahead.

Acquisitions raise lots of questions – most of them I don’t have answers to, such as how will this impact EqualLogic’s business and its customers. People that know me, know that I tend to be skeptical because there are many more ways for things to go wrong than right, but I am fairly bullish on this acquisition. Michael Dell has been making bold moves at Dell since his return to the helm last January and seems to have changed his primary focus from streamlining internal operations to improving the customer experience with Dell products. His vision to Simplify IT is right on course, but difficult to accomplish. The decision to spend $1.4 Billion on EqualLogic shows a very real commitment to executing on that vision. As far as I can tell, Dell has entered this agreement with a vision of building upon EqualLogic’s early successes and plans to grow EqualLogic both as a storage provider and as a channel business entity. If so, that will be a very good thing for EqualLogic’s business, its customers and its channel partners. In doing so, Dell will be making a large number of customers’ IT experiences much simpler.

I’ve received a couple emails already from customers and friends. Most were congratulatory, but one was from one of my favorite customers who suggested that Dell will “now ruin an otherwise good product.” I really don’t think so. I think Dell understands the talent and creativity we have and believes that supporting EqualLogic will be better than extracting the technology and dumping the talent, as sometimes happens with storage acquisitions. Among other things that were discussed in a conference call this morning, Dell representatives told us that nobody will be asked to move to Texas. That's probably a bit premature, but it's also a very good sign of their intentions to increase EqualLogic's capabilities.

If there is one thing I really like, its satire. So, I have to point you to this posting:

Actually, I'm not too worried about THAT happening. For starters I expect that Dell values the capabilities of our top notch support organization and their role in building our customer loyalty. More importantly, Dell's business divisions are being recognized as having excellent support as Keycruncher points out.

Adding to the list of comments is Andrew Reichman from Forrester who concludes his posting by saying: "There will be concerns around product roadmap continuity and focus, as well questions about placement of EqualLogic products within the current Dell storage lineup, but these are likely to be minimal in comparison to the strong technology benefits and complementary fit between the two companies". His entire posting can be read here.

First, this one from a competitor. Yikes! Somebody needs help here, but I don't think it's our customers.

Then in a strangely-related blog post, Jon Toigo, the irrepressible contrarian of storage, gave last week's news of Dell's acquisition of EqualLogic a yawn. Thank goodness he didn't say anything positive because then I would be worried. He goes on to say that SMB customers are primarily interested in cost. That's on the right track but I'd say value (what you get for your money) is actually much more important to them. Then he writes on how SMB admins prefer Harley tattoos to those from giant technology companies. Ummm, yes, I suppose that is true - definitely! But what about those tattooed, Harley-riding data center folks? Do you think they actually have three letter tattoos hidden somewhere that don't spell MOM?

As it turns out the leading tattoo computer company is probably Apple.

And for you science lovers out there, here is a bit of strangelet news. Do you think they are getting younger or older?

OK Sci Fi freaks, what did you think of Tin Man, the Wizard of Oz re-spin on the Sci-Fi channel?

The first movie-horror experience in my life was the flying monkey stuff in the original Wizard of Oz. Still creeps me out a bit after all these years. Tin Man so far seems to be doing a good job with the monkey thing - especially where they fly out of - the creep + sexy combo works for me.

I usually can't stand Richard Dreyfus, but he's not too bad so far in this. For the most part I saw the character and not the actor acting, which is my main gripe with him. Also, turning the cowardly lion into a clairvoyant was a nice touch - especially since there is one working for both sides. Guns are weak - why would you need guns in Oz when you can get nasty monkeys?

DG (Dorothy character) seems like a good transition, although there is something not quite right with the debutante good witch thing. She seems to take this stuff a bit too much in stride. The scene where the doting parents throw DG off the roof into the howling tornado was pretty good. Who cares if it wasn't exactly realistic to be standing on a sloped roof with a bada$# twister 5 feet away - the thought of casting your child into the vortex probably resonates with some parents.

3 years ago I wrote a Scroogey Christmas editorial for Processor.com. Tis the season.

Dell's acquisition of EqualLogic has completed. This is a real big deal for a lot of obvious reasons: Dell is a powerful company and they (we) now own one of the most dynamic storage technologies to come along in years. I joined EqualLogic back in October 2006 because I couldn't stand to be on the sidelines watching this new iSCSI storage company that I know was going to make a big play in the industry. I suppose I could jack myself up and say I had the talent to see it coming, but the fact is, the talent was and still is inside EqualLogic - and now Dell too. The thing I didn't know before joining the company was how talented it was. Yeah, so I think Dell got themselves a real jewel.

And what of the price paid? $1.4 Billion is a lot and I think it was an excellent mutual decision. I had my greedy IPO-bound doubts for a while, but it was definitely the right thing to do - just look at the tight rope wire new companies have to walk ( how can VMware's stock price get hammered so badly yesterday for posting great growth - just not enough to meet investment expectations?)

The dynamics of the storage industry are going to start changing much faster over the next year as Dell figures out how to make the most of their EqualLogic purchase. This is as clear to me as EqualLogic's success was to me two years ago. The biggest splashes are yet to come.

A big thanks to everybody who made this happen - especially the EqualLogic SAN customers who helped us every step of the way, by taking risks on purchasing mission critical infrastructure equipment from a startup. As of yesterday, Dell is selling superb EqualLogic iSCSI SAN products without the new company risks. That is very cool for our new customers. We look forward to working together with all of our customers.

Intensity isn't always pleasant, but it can be real effective. Just ask the New England Patriots who found their heartache Sunday at the hands of the incredibly intense NY Giants.

There something amazingly powerful about having something to prove and putting the bit between your teeth. That's what's still going on with the EqualLogic people who are now working for Dell. I don't know why, but I didn't expect the Dell team to have the same level of intensity, but they do. How else could they have put together a product roll out of new Dell EqualLogic products mere a week after the acquisition closed?

To net it out, all of EqualLogic's existing SATA products are being superceded by the new Dell EqualLogic PS5000 series products, which have a new form factor and expanded capacity. All old and new products can be used together in an interoperable iSCSI SAN. The same world beating ease of installation and scalability. The same no-charge, fully-featured software model. The same super-competent support organization. The same underdog intensity with something to prove to the world. Just a lot more people with the affliction sharing a common goal.

Storage blogger Stephen at the Ruptured Monkey site wrote this on his last posting:

Its amazing how much time you can waste with troubleshooting in the SAN if you don't have any tools. Especially when you decide to offer some of your knowledge to staff who just joined your team and have some basic idea of what a LUN but don't have a clue what a WWpN or a flogi might be.

And that's exactly why I wrote in yesterday's chat session that I believe iSCSI is going to relegate FC to a sustaining role in the infrastructure. You don't need to learn all that strange, arcane stuff to run an iSCSI SAN. Of course, I have a strong bias towards the Dell Equallogic flavor of iSCSI.

Marc Farley is working on some new things and some old things in a new environment. He shares a little of his experience with blog viewers here.

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Storage guy always likes to talk about the things that are filling up corporate disk space. MP3s, 2000 copies of a media-filled powerpoint, porn disguised as spreadsheets, etc.

Then there is data clutter, like post it notes stuck to every conceivable storage surface. Today I did a search through my email for the word "lunch". Hoo boy, what a jackpot! They weren't taking up much space, but there were lots of 'em. Unfortunately, I didn't count before blowing them away. Stupid me, metrics matter.

How many lunch emails do you have in your inbox? If you could search corporate email, how big would your lunchbox be?

One of my upper level managers at Dell is Mark Jarvis, Chief Marketing Officer. He blogs some of the time sends emails about cutting expenses some of the time and probably wishes I would write about something else most of the time.

Then there's his day job, which recently included some guerrilla channel partner recruitment activities.

Here's what VAR GUY thought of the whole thing Hey VAR GUY, did anybody tell you you look like Chris Mullin?

Things change. Change brings growth, for Dell it means that we are growing our business by creating a real VAR channel and programs to support them.

Like Acumen I T from Greenville, South Carolina. Here's a link to their web site. I hope to get to Greenville to meet you sometime David and thanks for coming on board to sell Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SAN arrays.

There are competitors that sell on their strengths and merits.

There are competitors that exploit their products advantages over disadvantages in competitive products.

Then there are competitors that make up any story as long as they think they can get away with it.

Here are some of the stories that have been circulated about Dell EqualLogic recently.

1. New Dell storage products have lower performance - that's why the price is reduced


2. The firmware was overhauled, resulting in unproven reliability


3. Recent price drop was due to a drop in functionality on the new models


4. Software is no longer all-inclusive


5. EqualLogic screwed their customers dropping the price of the product after customers loaded up on "original" products before the acquisition

1. Nope - the new products have the same great performance that outperforms their stuff


2. Nope, the new products use the same old software, with minor modifications for new array configurations


3. Nope, the new products have the same old deal - all software embedded with no loss in functionality


4. Nope, same all inclusive priceless software


5. We periodically reduce the costs of our products so we can continue to deliver the best value in the storage business. We don't have the customer loyalty we have by being unfair to our customers.

By now, Netapp's new identity isn't exactly "new" news but it's about as good as it gets in the storage blogosphere. So I was trying to figure out today what I didn't like about Netapp's new logo and it finally occurred to me that it reminded me in some incomplete way of the EqualLogic logo. What's with that? Anyway here is a video I shot last night about it and a few links to other people's comments.

Stephen Foskett - Pack Rat
Dave's Blog (inside out Dilbertization - a techie talking marketing)
The Register and it's hilarious reaction
Zerowait High Availability
The Occasional blog
Inspired by Foskett (see his link above)
Mojo-man

A new roadrant where I bust a knuckle, avoid another bad driver and recall a childhood fear, thanks to the beating heart graphic that Netapp is using.

In case you didn't see it, Dave Hitz posted again on their logo story. He doesn't sound too defensive, in fact, I think he shows some pride - maybe he designed it himself?

Will Urban, one of the Dell EqualLogic team members has an amazing pitch around Dell EqualLogic disaster recovery for VMware environments. A video of Will from VMworld was posted on the Direct2Dell site this morning. If you are interested in how site recovery manager (SRM) will work, this is a great video to watch.

Wow, Will, that was some fast talking, but not as fast as this guy. I guess you picked a bad day to give up coffee!

With SSDs coming on fairly fast and products like Dell's RD 1000 now available for removable disk drive backup, the question is what or why are you using tape. I really want to know.

Inside IT is a new blog at Dell for discussing everything about corporate computing. I'm the lead blogger over there, but there are lots of other folks who will be contributing and commenting.

I'll continue to talk about storage, but will be expanding my scope to other things such as power and cooling, the subject of my first post on Inside IT. I hope to hear from you soon over there.

Computerworld just published an article on the recovery operations at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Biloxi after Hurricane Katrina flattened most everything. I always like articles like this because they clue me into logistics problems that I hadn't anticipated.  One of the items mentioned in this article was the loss of cellular towers, which made it difficult for team members to communicate. 

A couple weeks ago I asked the question on my Storage @ Work blog on the EqualLogic web site "Is tape dead?"   It certainly is not dead at the Hard Rock because the article talks about how they use an offsite service to transport tapes every day.

Since recovering, their IT team moved quickly to implement disk to disk (D2D) backup with Commvault software and Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SAN arrays in order to get their backup window down to a few hours.  I assume they are making good use of our snapshot software.

BSG (BattleStar Galactica) starts up again tonight. Oh Frak!

R we all Cylons?
Does everybody die and get downloaded and re-made in a bathtub full of Vicks?
If my wife finds out I'm watching old episodes on my computer, how much grief will I take?
Do you get the support you need at home to be a true devotee?

The Server Room has to be one of the best forums I've seen. So if Dell EqualLogic people go there, lets make sure we don't trash it. Put the Name Dell in your sign on to avoid being poachers and don't pimp our stuff. It's fine to talk about experiences and what we know and all that, but its a tech forum not a drop box for hype - perbole.

And the rest of you too. Do your thing and back up your blood type. Somebody might need it for the ultimate restore.

Finding my stuff - real, physical stuff, not data stuff - seems to get more difficult all the time - especially the real stuff. Oh yeah and I can't find my things either. When Google House is invented, I'm buying.

DevCentral has an great post about the development of HA over the years. And he's a rocker too, which led me to a completely unrelated site that I liked.

Something like this comes along. Jason, this is a crack up! I mean, I can't get away with THAT, how do you do it?