Commentary

Information Management
InformationWeek's Information Management Weblog

  • The Passive Primary Storage Tier

    April 04, 2011 02:37 PM | George Crump

    Primary storage, especially the storage that supports file based data, is challenging to deal with. In most environments file based data, data created by office productivity and rich media applications can number in the double digit TB's, can bring backup applications to a crawl and cause countless retention issues. The challenge is that 80% or more of this data had an active life span of a month but can't be deleted "just in case". What is needed is to create a passive tier of primary storage.

  • Data Storage Vs. Information Management

    April 01, 2011 04:44 PM | Kurt Marko

    A recent reader response to my State of Storage 2011 report got me thinking about the difference between data and information, or, more generally between technology itself and the ways we creatively use it to solve problems. State of Storage, as these annual reviews are wont to do, focused on trends in storage technology. My correspondent, however, called me for not discussing information management-one way we apply tech to improve how we do business. "I was underwhelmed with the article in that it only focused on the technology platform components of storage and was silent on how we should organize the data we store," he wrote. "In an old-world analogy, it would be like the Library of Congress worrying about the number of shelves they build and the type of wood to build the shelves."

  • Collecting The SSD Garbage

    March 28, 2011 03:11 PM | George Crump

    Solid state storage (SSS) is the performance alternative to mechanical hard disk drives (HDD). Flash memory, thanks to its reduced cost compared to DRAM, has become the primary way the (SSS) is delivered. Suppliers of flash systems, especially in the enterprise, have to overcome two flash deficiencies that, as we discussed in our last entry, will cause unpredictable performance and reduce reliability. In this entry we'll focus on how vendors are providing predictable performance.

  • Understanding SSD Vendor Talk

    March 25, 2011 10:01 AM | George Crump

    If you are either evaluating or getting ready to evaluate investing in solid state storage for your data center you are going to be faced with learning a new language, confronted with a new set of specs and a new set of debate around what features are most important. This will be the first entry in a series that will give you the decoder ring to understanding what Solid State Disk (SSD) vendors are talking about and what statistics are most important.

  • Establishing Tiered Recovery Points

    March 09, 2011 02:55 PM | George Crump

    Our last entry introduced the concept of tiered recovery points. In this entry we will go into more detail about tiered recovery points. There are typically three types of recovery points you want; instant or close to it, also know as high availability. Within a few hours via some sort of disk or tape backup and finally recovering something old, an archive. Each of these tiers need to be established and understood when they should be used.

  • Dealing With Recovery Transfer Time

    March 07, 2011 11:40 AM | George Crump

    In our last entry we discussed lessons to be learned from the Gmail crash. In an upcoming entry we'll cover establishing the tiered recovery points. These three tiers of recovery; high availability (HA), backup and archive provide a similar goal; application availability. What separates them is the time it takes to put the data back in place so the application can return to service. Dealing with recovery transfer time is an important factor in the overall recovery process.

  • What We Can Learn From The Gmail Crash

    March 02, 2011 09:30 PM | George Crump

    Google's Gmail had a glitch introduced that caused 30,000 users or so to loose email, chat and contacts from their Gmail accounts. The cause appears to be a bug in a software update. The current piling on by some storage vendors is humorous. As my mother used to say "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones". Instead of doing that, lets learn from this experience so we can keep this from happening in your data center.

  • Automatic Storage Optimization

    March 01, 2011 08:43 AM | George Crump

    It will come as no shock to any storage manager that the capacity of the data that you need to store is growing. The problem is that your budget is not, or at least not as fast as your need for storage. The speed of growth also means that traditional techniques may no longer be effective. You need the storage system to just handle it, in other words storage optimization needs to be automatic.

  • The Downsides Of OpenFCoE

    February 25, 2011 11:03 AM | George Crump

    A few weeks ago I wrote an entry about software based Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) called Open FCoE being offered by Intel. The immediate responses were questions asking if this is a sign of the end for the hardware based HBA providers? Open FCoE has a lot of promise but the downsides of OpenFCoE prove that it may not be for everyone.

  • Solving Scale Out Storage's Dark Side

    February 22, 2011 12:25 PM | George Crump

    In a recent entry we discussed a concern with scale out storage, making sure the utilization of processing, power and resources remains efficient. The last thing you want is a storage system that, while it can scale to limitless capacity, also requires limitless power and data center floor space? The good news is that some vendors are aware of these concerns and have some solutions for you to consider.

  • Building Storage Proof Applications

    February 17, 2011 08:46 AM | George Crump

    A storage system failure where more drives have failed then the RAID protection scheme will cover you from or where the storage software itself has crashed is a disaster. The amount of work required to return the system to service can be daunting and applications are likely to experience downtime, in some cases that time can be significant. We have to start working on building storage proof applications.
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