The Storage Economist

A few weeks ago, I spent the afternoon car shopping for fun (no plans to buy right now), and I had several interesting discussions on hybrid cars. Dealers who had them vs. dealers who did not. The argument against hybrids was the cost differential of the price of the car vs. the projected operating cost [...]

Have you ever had those kind of dreams where you are told that you did not finish a sophomore math class in high school, and unless you re-take the class, all your subsequent high school and college degrees will be null-and-void? I used to have a lot of these dreams after finishing my MBA. Well [...]

So in with all the passionate exuberance before game 6 of the NBA finals, my boss extended a bet that Miami would win in Dallas. I am not a betting man, so I had to decline. But the wager was not money, but to swap 1st class and coach seats next time we are both [...]

I came across this great paper from APC on cost of ownership of the data center environment. I love the chart on page 6 that breaks down environmental costs of a server or network data center. There is always ‘the devil in the details’, and some great TCO insights here are real devils:

People ask me all the time, “what one thing can I do to reduce storage costs?” My answer is in 3 parts:

I came across an interesting paper on Data Compression and the Return on Investment with this technology. Many of these concepts may not apply to data center storage, but an interesting point of view with local files and how micro or macro compression techniques reduces disk space and network bandwidth.

I am a big Mavs fan, living in Dallas since 1982. All we tend to hear on sport news is NFL, Cowboys and some Dallas Stars Hockey. Now its the Mav’s turn. Mavericks Mark Cuban is somewhat of an urban-legend-local-love-him-or-hate-him kind of sports owner. I will limit my comments and opinions to Cuban relating to [...]

Airplane time certainly impacts blogging time. I have been following Hu Yoshida’s travel plans recently, as he was just in Moscow last week. I echo his observations of the old soviet state, and how things are quickly changing in the new Russian Federation. As this is my first visit to Russia, I cannot claim any [...]