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We have all collectively just made it through the toughest economic year and good riddance! To quote the comedian Lily Tomlin - “No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up”. We certainly have enough cynicism in the IT world but at the beginning of every new year I think most of us feel a moment of optimism. So I am going to go with that for right now. Here are some things to think about for Storage and IT going forward in 2010:
When I started this blog over a year ago I was called out for talking about external storage virtualization by others storage bloggers. They said that I should write about new. I disagreed with this criticism because if there is something that is valuable and compelling then you should never stop talking about it. And you should raise the volume especially when there is still confusion in the ecosystem.
In November I moderated a discussion with some major HDS customers and among the interesting topics was intelligent tiered storage. I define intelligent tiered storage as the ability to move manually or automatically - based on policy - data from high cost storage to lower cost storage to increase utilization and optimization of storage assets. This needs to be a transparent process with no downtime or impact to users or applications. The goal of intelligent tiered storage is to significantly drive down overall total cost of ownership. I set the stage in the discussion by pointing out the following:
I just finished moderating an HDS customer event in NYC. There was a mix of financial and media companies in the room. We spent a lot of time discussing storage cost control. This was top of mind and the group was willing and able to share some great information. For example, one company was able to save over $100 million by shifting from RAID 1 to RAID 5.
At the heart of of Hitachi Data Systems cloud storage strategy is the HCP - formerly known as HCAP - an object-based storage system that offers transparent scalability, n-way clustering, integrated search for metadata and content, scales up to 40 PB of capacity, object-level replication, single instancing and its easy to manage of its life-cycle. It is already being used - as a private cloud within customer data centers. Evolving the HCP into a public storage cloud platform is a logical and natural step.
In addition to talking with Hitachi Data System’s customers we’ve also been reaching out to their partners. This latest discussion was with Mark Teter, CTO of the Advanced Systems Group:
You have no idea how many titles I have in my head concerning “Cloud” but opted instead for something boring and unpoetic (see below for the quick list). I have not commented heavily on cloud computing or cloud storage because it is something that could and should be focused on as a segment - as broad and diverse as applications.
Over the years I’ve written a number of briefs, articles and reports on n-way clustering for storage. The most important thing is to discuss the value this capability brings to customers. There are two core reasons for n-way storage clustering and these include scalability and reliability.
HDS has just announced its new midrange NAS solutions - the Hitachi NAS 3080 and 3090. Here is why this matters:
I had a recent discussion with consulting manager for Dataflex, Andreas Deakin. Dataflex is an HDS channel partner that provides expert advice on storage - in particular on HDS and they do a lot of virtualization solution with Citrix and VMware. Most of their clients are in the federal government space, the state government space and not for profit organizations. They provide services Australia-wide but are specifically focusing on the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) and New South Wales. Dataflex started this business in 1987. They became an HDS channel partner in 2003. Here is an excerpt of my discussion with Andreas:
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