Storage and Virtualization

Q&A and Webcast Replay: Smarter Enterprises Need Smarter Storage

Stacey Tabor — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 16:45:42 GMT

This week I listened to the webcast led by Allen Marin, Marketing Manager, Enterprise Disk Storage, IBM . The topic was IBM's Smarter Storage and the new updates to IBM's storage solutions including new high end disk and virtual tape solutions.

For a summary of the Questions and Answers during the webcast read Mary Hall's blog post here and you can also listen to the webcast replay: Smarter Enterprises Need Smarter Storage here.

If you have other questions or comments please post them here on this thread or post a comment on Mary Hall's blog.

Thanks!

Upcoming Webcast: Forrester Total Economic Impact Study of Virtualized Storage

Stacey Tabor — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 17:17:35 GMT

There is a lot of interest for the upcoming webcast titled Forrester Total Economic Impact Study of Virtualized Storage. Jon Erickson, Forrester Research, will review the deployment of IBM SAN VolumeControl (SVC) and the potential financial impact organizations could realize. The webcast is next Tuesday August 21. You can Click here to register and let us know here in this discussion area if you are attending.

Virtualization and the Cloud Persists: Applied Research Survey

IBM Enterprise Strategy Group — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 19:42:13 GMT

Virtualization and the Cloud Persists
By David Lee Cummings on June 13, 2011 8:30 AM |

The results of Applied Research's 2011 Virtualization and Evolution to the Cloud Survey are in and they reveal that enterprises are approaching both of these technologies (virtualization and cloud) with a great deal of caution. The feedback from 3,700 enterprises of various sizes in 35 different countries suggests that many organizations still struggle with the capabilities, challenges, and benefits of virtual and hybrid cloud computing even as the boardroom holds the line on budgets and staffing levels.

This study which was commissioned by Symantec queried C-level executives and IT managers in these organizations about their experiences with virtualization and cloud computing. The survey asked them about their awareness, adoption, goals, challenges, and attitudes regarding the following technologies:

•Server virtualization
•Storage virtualization
•Desktop/endpoint virtualization
•Private Storage-as-a-Service
•Private or hybrid cloud computing
Their responses reveal that enterprises implement these technologies in a progression that reflects the maturity of each technology in its respective market. For example, 45% of the organizations surveyed are implementing or have implemented server virtualization--the most mature of the technologies--with storage virtualization at 43% and desktop/endpoint virtualization at 41%.

Conversely, private storage-as-a-service and private hybrid cloud computing drop to 35% and 36%, respectively. Symantec's John Magee, vice president of virtualization and cloud solutions, Symantec, notes, "This points to the idea that server virtualization is kind of the leading wedge on these projects."

Enterprises are also finding it a daunting experience to deploy these technologies with in-house expertise. Therefore many are relying on third-party service providers for help with implementing them which coincides with what DCIG is hearing anecdotally from end-users. This represents a major shift within IT from a traditional IT delivery to a service-provider model.

The natural progression of implementation also reflects the discrepancies between expectations and realities of the technologies. Although expected benefits for each technology varied, some of the aggregate goals enterprises hoped to realize through their use included:

•Better performance
•Improved scalability
•Increased disaster recovery (DR) preparedness
•Reduced expenses
Enterprises generally achieved their goals with server virtualization with only an average 4% gap between anticipated and realized goals. However, expectations and outcomes for the other technologies were notably out of synch, including an average gap of 33% with storage virtualization. Magee suggested new infrastructures, operating procedures, and complexity of the virtual storage environment could be reasons behind this gap.

Other technologies displayed similar wide gaps between anticipated and realized benefits including desktop/endpoint virtualization at 26%, private storage-as-a-service at 37%, and hybrid/private cloud computing at 32%. As the survey report aptly points out, "Expectations are unlikely to be matched by reality until IT organizations gain sufficient experience with these technologies to understand their potential."

However enterprises should NOT be deterred from implementing these technologies. They simply need to set more sensible goals based on a pragmatic and thorough assessment of the technologies' capabilities and limitations.

Organizations said they are more likely to utilize virtualization and cloud technology with test and development environments initially. As they gain experience and comfort with the technologies, however, they demonstrate a greater willingness to place business-critical applications--such as HR, accounting, and ERP--in them.

The survey also revealed a disconnect between executives and IT with regard to placing applications in virtual and cloud environments. 60% of CEOs, 50% of CFOs, and 62% of CISOs were characterized as "somewhat/extremely open" to move business and mission-critical applications from physical to virtual servers because of concerns over reliability, security, and performance in spite of potential advantages such as reduced expenses.

In contrast, 74% of server groups, 70% of CIOs, and 64% of application owners were willing to adopt these technologies for business-critical applications. Successful utilization of these technologies, therefore, is contingent on all key players in the organization being more closely united in their attitudes toward them.

Read more in the Symantec Press Release.

Four Datacenter Megatrends for the Decade

richardsink — Tue, 31 May 2011 17:44:48 GMT

By Jerome M. Wendt - http://bit.ly/mN2yZG

The start of every decade new trends emerge that do more than influence opinions and behavior for a few months or years. Instead they are megatrends that fundamentally shape and mold an industry for the entire decade and influence innovation that will come in the decades to follow. Right now four such megatrends are emerging that are reshaping datacenters as a whole and are changing how hardware and software are being delivered to them.

Megatrend Trend #1 - Centralized Infrastructure Administration.Distributed computer and system management has gone through an evolution over the last 20 - 30 years that can be typified as follows.

First the equation was essentially one computer managed by one administrator who took care everything - application management, operating system upgrades, backups and restores, help desk support - you name it, this person did it.

But as more applications with their own servers found their way into organizations, individuals or teams that specialized in specific functions followed. Now instead of one team doing it all, there were individuals or teams dedicated to backup, database, network, server and storage administration as the complexity needed to manage this growing environment exceeded the capabilities of this one person.

But virtualization and "the Cloud" are changing all of that. As applications, network, servers and storage are consolidated and virtualized, a new equation for managing this infrastructure is emerging:

"One Datacenter Infrastructure =
One Infrastructure Administration Team."

Making this unique is that the specialized roles of backup, DBA, network, system or storage administrator heavily overlap in these new virtualized environments so the specialized teams are consolidated down into one. As this occurs, individuals are transitioning to becoming infrastructure administrators responsible for managing all of these respective components of the datacenter.

Trend #2 - Datacenter Automation. You cannot effectively manage what you cannot control, you cannot cost-effectively control what you cannot automate, and you cannot automate what you cannot virtualize.

It is this new reality that is driving automation, solution selling and simplicity of deployment for all new hardware and software coming into data centers. It is also for this reason that concepts and terms such as "appliances," "autonomic," "dynamic," "self-healing," "solutions," "virtualization" and "visualization" are regularly used to describe new hardware and software and the features they offer.

The premise behind this shift is that the next generation of computer hardware and software will only need generalists to manage them as opposed to specialists as the deployment, management and ongoing support of these bundled hardware/software packages can be automated.

Trend #3 - Instant Gratification. The consumer desire for "instant gratification" has officially spilled over into the enterprise computing space. Business owners want to hear about computer hardware and software that solve today's business problems, are implemented now, and are managed with the push of a button or the flick of a switch.

While business owners have arguably always wanted this ideal, vendors are delivering and packaging their hardware and software as "Backup Appliances," "Deduplication Appliances," "Datacenters-in-a-Box" and "Exchange Solutions" as a way to communicate that they are better positioned to meet this age old demand for instant gratification.

Trend #4 - A Cloudy Future. There is a general opinion that in the near term private and public clouds are emerging but longer term they will converge toward a single hybrid cloud. While this is interesting and may certainly occur, I see much cloudier future emerging with all three cloud types forming and sticking around for some time to come.

Each of these cloud types are necessary as they address different organizational needs. In the simplest terms, a private cloud is a highly scalable solution (compute or storage or both) that sits behind a firewall, a public cloud sits outside of the firewall and a hybrid cloud transcends the public and private cloud so data can seamless move between each.

So while a convergence toward a single cloud may occur some day, the differing price points, performance and security features in private and public clouds make it unlikely that a single hybrid cloud will form yet this decade and may preclude such a cloud from ever fully taking shape.