B. Stephen Brunner's IT Storage Blog

Cisco and Vmware Join MSFT's Server Virtualization Validation Program.

Congratulations Cisco, VMware & others on MSFT’s support of your virtualization platform!  See the Server Virtualization Validation Program.

I remember a lot of conversations on this topic in the past.  I am so proud of my colleagues in the industry for helping create the eco-system of this market.  There are so many thought leaders around the globe who see open systems virtualization as the next big innovation for computing.  On scale with similar impact that the Internet has had for us all.  From many angles including (but not limited to) green initiatives, business influence, and even skills and trade.

Virtualization and Storage Economics

I’ve been in countless conversations on this topic over the years.  Several years ago, it was such a new concept for the datacenter (at least the open systems and network infrastructure divisions) to have complex economics.  Today, I know that this is an evolving approach to the datacenter and can become very complicated.  However, to the CIO and IT Director who exhibit thought leadership in their organization –this topic can define you and your influence in the business. 

I am limiting the conversation to virtualization in general and storage systems for the information which our business lives.  It can and should be discussed in great detail across many practices in the datacenter.  None of these thoughts are my own, and have evolved from my interactions over time with many other highly trained individuals.

To realize economics and ROI on virtualizing the data center, and the storage where it resides, leadership must recognize and record costs and savings from the former generation of computing to the new.  Manufacturing industries have been using components like shared and dedicated components for a long time… additionally fixed and variable costs have entered the stage.  Take a look at Activity Based Costing for example.  Harvard Business School (among many others) are known to teach this to their bright students.

If we can allocate and recover the costs of the infrastructure and management of it, then we can see the ROI and properly justify the investment to the business.  It’s my hope that more businesses adopt approaches like this, in order to align Business and IT… so investments are realized and costs are recovered easily on paper.

By using the Activity Based Costing model, let’s carve our environment into these four segments.

Lessons from the CFO to the CIO

Isn’t it interesting that our organizations always say, that “information is our most important asset” …yet we do not treat it that way? 

I was thinking we should model our technology approach in a few ways on the finance division.  For example, the CFO's office has been managing one of the company's most important assets for generations... the money.  He is commissioned by his organization to be in charge of four primary functions.

1. Storing all the money of the company.  He has at his disposal many facilities, systems, and processes to ensure this.
2. Protecting that money.  Again… more facilities, systems, and processes.
3. Optimizing the money.  Essentially ensuring that it is used and utilized to it’s full potential, so that none is at waste at any given point in time.
4. Leveraging the money.  This is important, so that the money brings new value to the business. 

Why don't we treat the 1's and 0's as dollar bills?  If we did we could turn IT into a revenue stream instead of a cost center!  This is what I often refer to as being Information Centric.  It involves Information Lifecycle Management.  Plus many other creative ways to begin marketing your 1's and 0's within and outside of your organization.  I have many more thoughts around this topic, and often engage my customers and business partners on this subject.  Ask me about it, the next time we see each other.  What do you think?

Information Before Technology

Where would we be today without the technology we use to manage our data / information & business processes?  When was the last time you have traced that thought back to the generations of leaders before us?  For example, my picture here -denotes from one man to another when and where to hunt.      Over time humanity has possessed verbal and written languages AND methods to record or distribute the thoughts, ideas, and business of the times.  These have been hallmark to our existence as we know it today.   In the data center we have come a long way. The philosophy of the data center has shifted within the last 50 years… to return back to the business.  Here are a couple of thoughts as to why I see things this way.

For example, this week I was noting a comment from a high ranking VP within my organization.  In our meeting he had noted an observation of how data centers have evolved from system centric to information centric.  Isn't it interesting how we seem to often return to where communication first began?  Back to my cave drawing noted above.  For the people who used that communication then, it was not about the cave –or the drawing.  It was about the information.  I can personally identify with this observation -as I see this happen locally in the Midwest.  I have seen this evolution within organizations I have spent my career.  For example, many finance institutions used to "buy" systems, based off the type of business they hoped to have.  This was a 'monkey see -monkey do' mentality.  OLTP, web B2B, email, etc... were acquired just for the sake of having them. 

However, now today -it is back to the information. Because applications and the underlying infrastructure are flexible enough (finally… many thanks to virtualization concepts being birthed into open systems & networking (thank you to our mainframe brethren))...  business can truly dictate the systems -ultimately back to the information.  I am so excited to actually talk to people about how to create and evolve information centric datacenters.  At the end of the day, it's all about having the right information, at the right place, at the right time, at the right price.  You just do not go out and buy an OLTP -for the sake of having one.

What do you think?

Leading the Way with Local VMware Users & Customer Networking

Interview with Shane Weinbrecht.  Network Manager, Adidas Group

Tell us a little about yourself.  Who are you and what do you do professionally and also for fun;

First and foremost I am a father and husband, happily married for nearly 6 years. I have a 4 year old and a 2 year old, both boys and both monsters.  I work for the Adidas-Group Sports Licensed Division managing the LAN/WAN, the overall direction of the service desk/technicians, and the virtual and physical server environments for the division. 

What got you started in Virtualization?

I was told to consolidate our data center soon after I started, so there was not much of a choice.

What got you started with VMware?  (Why do you/your company use it?)

VMware is the corporate standard for virtualization.  Not to mention the vendor support out weighs the competitors.

Tell us about how you promote leadership in the VMware community (ie, the Indy VMUG)?

To me, being a leader is all about listening to what the people want and acting accordingly.

How did your idea of the recent Indy VMUG event begin? 

It began as a general idea of wanting to showcase products being used rather than watching a slideshow.

How many registered users attended?

There were 325 registered attendees.

How many actually attended the day of?

We had 400 attendees including vendors, so I would say there were roughly 360 user attendees.

Picture from one of the breakout session demonstrating VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure).  Standing room only...

Assuming some of the VMUG members in surrounding cities want to do an event similar “Demo Days”, could they contact you?  What is the best way?

I would love to help out another user group.  Preferred method of contact would be email: shane.weinbrecht@adidas-group.com

Any other advice would you have for IT managers, who want to get involved in virtualization?

Support local groups, go to the meetings, offer time/space, be involved, and make things happen. 

Cloud Computing. How can that affect the SMB? The Enterprise?

Here’s an example. You are a traveling executive for your company.  Or perhaps you are a Customer Support Professional for your company’s call center. What happens when your laptop or PC crashes? What about if it’s stolen, smashed at the airport… you get the point.

Enters a nice solution to extend the reliability of your datacenter. Mozy. Mozy is a secure industry compliant remote backup solution for roaming users.  Originally the brainchild of Berkeley Data Systems, is a great solution to fast, consistent, secure backups.  One of my customers, had an executive lose a lot of files from a virus.  His laptop was useless, and all of his priceless power points and spreadsheets that had not been uploaded to his company server. Needless to say, the next time we talked –his IT decision makers had heard about Mozy, and now 20 of the most influential traveling employees use Mozy to protect them on the road. It’s a very low cost (typically less than an anti-virus single process license …and works off a subscription plan).

It’s great because a restore can happen anywhere in the world, that you have an Internet connection. It’s very simple to use. It protects servers too. Perfect for those remote offices, where limited or no IT presence keeps you worried at night.  Read more about cloud computing here. Email me, if you have any questions about other ways people are using Mozy or similar products.  There is a consumer version (can be free) -and an enterprise / commercial version with many more features.

Interesting EMC Customer Facts

Interesting facts about EMC...

Did you know?

    * 100% of Securities firms on the 2006 Fortune Global 500 list are EMC customers
    * 24 of 25 Banks listed on the Fortune 500 use EMC
    * 45 of 50 Insurers listed on the Fortune 500 are EMC customers
    * 100% of Telecos on the 2006 Fortune Global 500 list rely on EMC
    * 49 of the top 50 Oil Companies listed on the Forbes 2000 are EMC customers
    * All 50 US State Governments have purchased EMC products since 2003
    * 100% of Aerospace & Defense firms on the 2006 Fortune Global 500 use EMC
    * 7 of 10 of the top General Merchandisers on the 2006 Fortune Global 500 use EMC

Deduplication -What is it? The value, and the three methods...

What is de-duplication? It is a given that the current rate of data growth & state of the storage of today's data, every data center suffers the same challenge of redundant data existing across multiple platforms and locations within the organization.  For example, think about the Q2 spreadsheet sent out by "Bob" from Accounting.  It was approximately 5 MB in size.  That same spreadsheet was received by over 100 employees.  Each employee potentially saved it to their personal network drive for future reference.  This set of data now exists in over 100 places -consuming 500 MB of space (1/2 a Gig).  Then, the network drives are backed up.  Not just once, but multiple times.  At a minimum of 4 times a week (2 Gig of consumed storage space across disk and tape usually), assuming no one made any changes, if there was a change to any of the files, these updates would require the file to be backed up even more.  Therefore, in one month from the day "Bob" sent this very helpful spreadsheet out to his employees, the organization's IT department now is managing an extra 2 Gig a month.  This is just one file. 

The Value? It's easy to see why this is an important topic to many leaders in IT today.  It is addressed by an industry term commonly referred to as de-duplication.  Covered in two sub categories- 1) Next Generation Backup and- 2) one instance storage (object based storage). 

When it comes to de-duplication of data, IT  leaders must consider two critical things.

#1> Does the manufacturer I am working with offer all types of deduplication methods?  Or will they force me to use their particular feature, instead of the correct method that is appropriate for my datacenter? 

#2> Can my manufacturer offer all three industry stand methods of de-duplication?  Almost every manufacturer offers only one type of de-duplication.  Always ask this question!

I am sure you have seen across the industry that Data De-Duplication is one of the hottest topics in IT today.  As one of your strategic IT partners, I am happy to inform you that EMC has the widest product portfolio in the de-duplication market.  This technology is something we have been leading the charge with for many years.  As the need for better and more cost effective backup/recovery solutions is growing, so is the EMC product portfolio of solutions to address these challenges.  If you are an Illinois or Indiana based company, my job as your dedicated EMC Account Executive is to let you know exactly what best of breed solutions are available to you.  At EMC we are addressing the need for Data De-Duplication in the following THREE ways:

Three Data De-Duplication Methods

Source Based -   ( EMC AVAMAR)

• Vmware environments
• Remote Office Backup
• Large file systems

 

Source-Based Data Sheet

Target Based-     (EMC EDL 3D)

• Database environments
• Unique data
• Leverage existing backup software and processes

Target-Based Data Sheet

Object Based-     (EMC CENTERA)

• Stale and static content
• Purpose built archive
• Compliance and regulatory needs

Object-Based Data Sheet

Please call me with any questions or information requests.  I will follow up ASAP to discuss in more detail -or provide more information.  Thank you.

Regards,

Steve

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