Entries categorized under “SRM”

This is one of my favorite blogs of the year to write. Even though this is only the second time since DCIG launched its blogging site two years ago that I have had the opportunity to write a blog in this format, I have been looking forward to looking back all year. In case you have not yet figured it out, today I take a look back at the top 10 most read blogs in 2009 on the DCIG site. However this year I am doing a two part series with today's blog examining the 10 most read blogs in 2009 that were written in 2009. (read more)

The big news in the industry this past week was around the private cloud announcement made by and between EMC Corp., Cisco Systems Inc and VMware. In brief, these three companies are aligning to provide integrated virtualization product bundles for midsize, large and enterprise organizations that are referred to as Vblocks. Conceptually and practically, this is a smart move on the part of these three companies to deliver this type of service. Though some reports cited fear of user lock-in if this configuration is deployed, one would think concerns about deploying a private cloud that does not work as expected would be far greater. (read more)

Talking to a fellow end-user a few weeks ago reminded me of a frustration that I frequently experienced when I worked as a storage engineer. What was driving him crazy (and what often drove me crazy) was the lack of communication that was occurring between his organization's internal storage, server and database teams. Specifically, he wanted to better manage and optimize his organization's backup and storage infrastructure but no one was willing to share any information as to how much storage capacity they were utilizing, how they were using it or how much they might need going forward. (read more)

Right now everyone is looking to build the virtual data center and for good reason - ideally it is easier to manage, costs less, and can be more easily adapted to changing application and IT requirements. But as organizations look to build out their virtual data centers, they also need to make sure that the complexities and costs associated with managing them do not overrun their benefits. (read more)

Gone are the days when the sole purpose of storage resource management (SRM) software was to report on file ages and sizes, storage utilization and server-to-storage LUN assignments. Those functions are still important but not nearly enough to meet the demands of today's progressive enterprise data centers. These organizations are demanding faster, easier deployments of SRM software that grant them more insight into their increasingly virtualized environments as well as better reporting and management of their replication processes that are becoming so critical in today's data centers. It is this void that APTARE StorageConsole 7.0 seeks to fill. (read more)

Applied Research recently surveyed 400 companies with 1000 or more employees and uncovered that 12% of them found that there is no way that their business could survive another 24 months without buying more storage. Conversely, 15% said they could go "cold turkey" without buying any more storage capacity for that same period of time. But the majority of companies (over 70%) are unsure if they need more storage capacity and, if they do, what tier of storage capacity they need. This uncertainty around what to do next probably explains the recent increases in storage utilization that companies have experienced in the last six (6) months as well as the renewed interest that companies are expressing in better managing their existing storage capacity. (read more)

STOP BUYING STORAGE!!! If there is any one dictate that organizations are following right now in this current economic crisis then "Stop buying storage" would have to be it. Aside from anecdotal evidence that organizations were buying too much storage capacity last year, the first solid evidence that organizations were overbuying came out last fall in Symantec's annual "State of the Data Center" survey uncovered that storage utilization had actually dropped from ~60% utilization in 2008 to closer to 50% in 2007 even though storage purchases had increased. Since then, new survey results show that organizations still plan to buy more storage but it also appears that they are doing a better job of utilizing the storage capacity they have. (read more)

Right now the economy may be sick but if the recent results of Symantec's annual State of the Data Center survey are any indication, enterprise IT budgets look surprisingly healthy for 2009. 84% of enterprise companies with 5,000 or more employees responded that they plan to keep their current IT budgets intact and a full 50% plan to increase them to 2009. Adding to the validity of the report, Symantec's research was performed by a third party firm (Applied Research) that spoke to1600 enterprise companies (5000 employees or more) in 21 countries. (read more)

As I travel around talking to companies of all sizes, one of the biggest concerns that they have and ask me about is how to drive costs out of their storage environment. Most of them dedicate a certain percentage of their overall IT budgets to counter the exploding growth in their storage environment but, due to the current economic crisis, that budget is now shrinking. My answer to them is always very straightforward, "You need to get a solid handle on what storage is allocated and what is used. (read more)

Managing today's data center infrastructures is not for the faint of heart. Administrators have to verify new gear works with existing gear, existing gear works with other existing gear in new configurations and current configurations will not fail under peak loads. While vendors provide hardware and software compatibility lists in efforts to help administrators address this task, there is still usually more work than hours in the day to verify all of this gear is optimally configured and in an optimal state. It is this void that the new Veritas Operations Services seeks to fill. (read more)

The general economic malaise of the past few months is not going unnoticed by anyone as it seems every day more companies are cutting back and tightening their belts in anticipation of a lean 2009. Just in the last months, numerous companies including 3M, Dow Chemical, and Hewlett-Packard, just to name a few, have announced cutbacks in staffing. But for those individuals that remain, the task does not get any easier. Most if not all end-users that I talk to are getting a hard push by their IT executives to cut costs as the days of simply purchasing more infrastructure is an unacceptable solution. (read more)

Backup is about more than just deduplication ratios and faster backups. While these are important, companies also want assurance that the solution that they deploy in-house is continually developing, will help them manage their existing backup infrastructure and will scale as they grow. Today's announcements from Quantum indicate that it is committed to making these ongoing, continual and incremental changes to its product lines (hardware and software) in order to meet current and future customer demands. (read more)

The point is that to succeed in the SRM space as an independent software vendor that does not tie the software purchase to the hardware, you need to deliver three things: (1) a great product; (2) great value, and (3) a genuine commitment to develop and evolve the product to meet customer's needs. One would think those points would be obvious but I believe a major reason that many SRM products failed on their first go-round was it seemed vendors were more interested in selling half-baked software and getting bought out by larger vendors than they were in providing products that worked, provided value out of the box and then delivered value to customers on a long term basis. (read more)

The challenge that APTARE faces, however, is the same challenge that every other SRM vendor faces. Keep SRM software relevant in the face of declining storage capacity prices. This factor alone often makes it far too easy for companies to throw more storage capacity at the problem as opposed to trying to monitor and proactively manage it. Regardless of whether or not APTARE has the right architecture, they need to help break users of their storage consumption habit (read more)

Can APTARE's StorageConsole remain relevant in 2008 and beyond? That was a question that weighed on my mind as I met with Rick Clark, APTARE's President and CEO, a couple of weeks ago. The purpose of the briefing: receive an update on what steps APTARE is taking to keep its StorageConsole 6.5 product alive and growing as the data protection space evolves. Of course, the particular challenge that StorageConsole needs to address now and in the coming years is managing the growing use of disk in data protection and start to wean itself off of managing tape-based backup. (read more)