GrumpyStorage

Amazon - Can we gift it?

2011-11-12T10:07:00.001Z

So to the sounds of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD0vHZxAmso&feature=related

I have to ask the question to @KindleUK , @AmazonKindle & @Amazon "Can we ~~fix~~ gift it?"

Of course, what I'm referring to is the ability for customers to purchase gift eBooks for other Kindle users...

Now as per previous blog entries I'm a big fan of the Amazon Kindle - and last week was my father's birthday, so my mother purchased him a "Kindle Keyboard 3G". Naturally my brother & I both then planned to gift him a number of good books to read - perfect as he had a couple of long haul flights in the week after.

So on I trundled to the mighty www.amazon.co.uk and went to the Kindle store section - only to find that the only to manage this process in the UK is to buy a gift credit voucher, send that to your intended recipient, have them go shopping for the ebook and use the voucher... Not exactly simple, rather painful and most certainly a DIY present :(

Now of course if I'm a ~~gun-toting, burger eating, economy trashing,~~ ~~redneck~~ American this function has existed on the Amazon.com site here for a long time - but for some reason the mighty largest e-commerce site hasn't be able to enable this trivial feature for their international customers...

Honestly, does it really need to be this hard?

Android - improvement needed?

2011-11-01T12:17:00.000Z

OK so I'm a massive fan of Google's Android platform, but naturally there are a good few areas that improvement is needed in :-

• Memory - yes my 16GB microSD is great but the 0.5GB internal RAM in my phone (Google Nexus One) is driving me insane, I'm certainly looking forward to the full OS support of app2SD for all applications AND 2GB+ of RAM in devices.

• System Apps (1) - the applications Google bundle. Frankly most of these I don't want and need to be able to uninstall them to free up RAM.

• System Apps (2) - the fact that its possible to optionally download an application but then not be able to uninstall it

• System Apps (3) - that I can't 'force app2sd' these bloated applications drives me mad

• The fact that MMS picture messages save the MMS images in internal RAM that consumes large chunks of RAM per image drives me mad. Its daft to have to manually save each image to SD and then delete the MMS attachment (& no Chomp can't work around this)

• Quality control - 2.3.6 broke a number of new things rather than fixed them :-
• Browser cache now seems to behave oddly after 2.3.6 with it consuming RAM regardless of settings or cache cleaning apps running
• Pinch to zoom for pictures no longer works
• 'Preparing the SD card' after a reboot now seems to take much much long (ie 20+ minutes for 16GB card)

Yes I know I can select a different firmware, but these really should be in the standard build...

Now that Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) has been finally unveiled there are a couple of other points :-

• Google need to look at making it easier to move between phone devices - transferring settings, desktops, data etc

• I really hope the latest version of gMail application allows native label & folder managment

Right, off to grab a Samsung Galaxy Nexus for a play...

The G-Spots

2011-10-22T15:01:00.003+01:00

So time for some more positive commentary - a new page on this site here now highlights the 'Grumpy Spotlight' awards for great quality or service.

Naturally this is an entirely personal and subjective list, based on my experiences - but I hope it goes to highlight some places / things that really deserve all the recognition they can get.

I'd welcome any of your recommendations or comments on the items I list.

That time of year....

2011-10-04T22:15:00.000+01:00

Well it's that time of year again.

When tens of thousands of fanboys (& fangirls) flock to the west coast of the USA to watch, listen to and worship a benevolent dictator, regarded by the fanboys as almost a messiah, impart the golden missives that will fuel their blinkered direction for the next twelve months...

Now of course, this is either the latest #EvilFruitSeller product release or #CrazyIvan's SnoracleWorld marketing branwashing fiction fest...

So which should you go to? well would it surprise you if I said - "neither, spend your time with your friends & family". Frankly speaking both are about as little value to the average enterprise customer...

Whilst of course both operate an artificially dominante position in certain segments, and certainly market above their stations, they do clearly set certain parts of the IT agenda - BUT frankly as far as I can see there's little point in attending as whatever happens will happen just the same regardless.

Some assorted personal thoughts about both companies :-

neither is worth trying to engage with dialogue in as neither empowers their staff to have any meaningful dialogue
neither entity listens & changes their ideas or directions easily
both companies are most certainly driven strongly with clear internal direction
both entities are driven by a singular personality - undoubtedly clever & focused, but one that makes decisions in a seemingly random & emotional fashion
both companies will have to undergo major changes in the public view & internal structure of their senior management teams
both companies will this week announce new instances of their proprietary lock-in technologies
both companies trade on emotions & subjective reasoning in the customer base, with little challenge by the fanboys to their cost models or purported benefits
both companies are aggressive & arrogant in their manipulation of perceived position in terms of creating lock-in, eroding open standards and attempting to eliminate competition
both companies specialise in competing with their partners
both companies have made significant direction changes with their strategies and technology offerings
both companies have the attention of senior management in their customer bases, and will most certainly drive a number of key areas in the near future

There's plenty more, but let's see how the announcements play out first :)

NDA Briefings - the content lap-dance?

2011-10-01T09:00:00.000+01:00

So those who follow my twitter profile, or know me in person, will understand that one of my major annoyances in life is the topic of NDAs.

Now I fully understand what an NDA entails (I've spent enough time with lawyers in my life to know this area very well), and understand why anything more than 2 way NDAs are a genuinely terrifying concept. I also personally know what it means for all involved to 'tear-down' and NDA in 'an aggressive fashion'.

Naturally in my line of work, probably 70% of the external discussions I have are of a confidential content nature, with a high % being purportedly related to NDAs.

So why do they annoy me?

http://twitter.com/ianhf/status/9569522994
Why the hell don't vendors trust customers when under NDA with a copy of the slides? either respect an NDA or don't bother at all..#Annoyed

Well as far as I can see they are increasingly used as a way to restrict the content, or method of delivery of the content, provided to customers. With phrases such as "can't give you to document or presentation as it's NDA" being uttered on a weekly basis - the concepts of trust and respect being lost forever.

A common use of the NDA is to cover future roadmap discussions - naturally enough as for any supplier this is a very sensitive are. But my position is that roadmaps should change, and that's fine. The key is to ensure that there is regular communication & dialogue about the changes. The customer of course needs to have some reference artefacts for a point in time to use for their own decisions, after-all we have to create our own 6/12/18/36mth internal strategies.

Clearly if we can't have a secure & trusted copy of information from a point in time, then we can't reference the information - as my memory is such that I could very easily get information very wrong. In short - if a copy of the information isn't provided that we have little choice but to 'strike it from the record' and ignore it - making the whole 'NDA' exercise worthless all round... As far as I'm concerned this just shows that many vendors simply don't trust or respect their staff or their customers - these are not the vendors I'm interested in working with.

How often are NDA pitches one-way presentations? Sadly all too often :( There are still some good people out there that do genuinely have the sessions as NDA discussions and will influence their roadmaps and/or decisions based on dialogue & requirements - but these are most certainly in the minority.

Whilst I accept some customers may leak NDA information, either consciously or unconsciously, my thoughts are that people should have the courage to penalise those that breach NDA clauses, make an example of them don't penalise those who understand & respect them. But, surely we also need to address the information moving between competitors in the increasingly incestuous IT sales & engineering industry job shuffle (or are lobotomies standard practice in changing jobs between IT suppliers? well now I mention it that would explain many things...,)

A major irony of this is that at least 3 suppliers (eg EeeMSee, SumNotech & SnOracle) all sell commercial IRM/DRM products, but yet they refuse to use these with their own customers for protection of NDA content. Now if this doesn't fit a perfect target use case for IMR/DRM tools then I don't know what would! If partners won't use these products to protect their own content then I sure as heck won't be buying their tools to protect mine! You'd think their own sales teams would be pushing use of the IRM/DRM tools to 'spread the word' so to speak... Either way they should use & trust their DRM tools or kill them...

All of this sadly leaves me to the conclusion that 'NDA briefings' are often now little more than than marketing meetings wrapped in a 'special legal secret sauce' to puff, fluff & massage the ego of the invitees - the "I've been somewhere special" & "I know something you don't" playground taunt factor...

There are words for those who are paid to say & do nice things purely to boost a customers ego - and candidly, I think we'd all rather be with partners than whores!

The Bar

2011-07-21T14:50:00.000+01:00

So I thought I'd do a quick summary of the drinks in the home cellar / bar - wine list will be added when I find time :) http://www.grumpystorage.com/p/bar.html

vCrack(d)

2011-07-14T22:08:00.000+01:00

So VMwere have come out and publicly revealed vSpore v5, including disclosing their new ~~extortion~~ licensing ~~racket~~ model for vSpore v5 here.

Now the positive messages re new features, functions, performance and capability improvements of vSpore 5 have been outweighed in the press & user base by noise around the new license model, and specifically the now licensing of RAM usage.

I don't know about your environments, but I know when we look at our farms they are already RAM constrained and not CPU/core constrained - and this is at RAM/CPU ratios considerably higher than the new licences would enable without additional licence purchases. For us we're also seeing the RAM/CPU ratio increasing from our application providers - everything is increasingly demanding larger quantities of RAM.

This reminds me of a similar approach used by the "independent mobile high-street pharmaceutical suppliers" :-

Release an exciting product to establish lust & demand
Make chunks of it free (eg ESXi) to widen the customer base & hearts/minds
Encourage large deployment & consolidation based on over-subscription and utilisation
Then change the payment rules for the next version and drive the requirement for additional licences (hence revenue) for exactly the same solution & architecture between existing & future versions

To me it's clear that when a company measures itself on revenue & profit growth, and especially if they are in a rapidly commoditising market, that there has to be new ways of obtaining the growth (let alone standing still against increased competition). So it would appear the current model is to extract revenue from the core value the product offers. In itself making the overall virtualisation offering less beneficial from an ROI/TCO perspective - but I guess the assumption is that people are so ~~addicted~~ committed to the product & solution that they wont bother questioning the value of the solution again.

I also think VMwere are trying to deflect their changes by talking about 'Align the vSpore licensing model with IT as a service', somehow avoiding the point that most organisations already happily translate capex+opex investment -> to internal recharge. In fact many don't want their private hypervisor farms to have a cost profile more aligned to public IaaS (ie variable opex).

Page 11 of the vSpore licensing FAQ pdf also makes a claim re "today’s average consolidation ratios of 5:1" - this seems to be considerably different (ie lower) than the claims & statements VMwere make in all their sales & marketing materials of consolidation rations of 10-20:1 being common. Love to hear more about 'average VMwere is only 5:1'....

So what sort of impact will this have?

for some people & use case it'll make no difference
for others it will drive material impacts on capex for additional licences, and of course opex as it relates to support/maint of the licences
generally I feel this will make life more complex for virtualisation designers & architects that now need to design & estate manage around RAM specifically

My feeling is that this will trigger a number of things :-

Draw attention to the review of actual benefits/cost Vs forecast benefits/costs of ongoing virtualisation programmes
Inhibit some new virtualisation projects due to cost increases
Allow VMwere's competitors to be able to promote & market their technology based upon costs/value, in turn generating noise in the IT ecosystem and thus consuming the customer's time in FUD / hype fighting
Cause many customers to expedite their reviews of the rapidly maturing viable alternate hypervisor / IaaS tooling market, with a view to move wholesale to an alternative or to dual source hypervisors
I'm also wondering if this is a step towards VMwere licensing their technology by active virtual machines (and dimensions of machines) rather than the underpinning physical infrastructure

I fully understand, agree with and respect the need for companies to make revenue and profit, but I always find it strange when successful companies decide to shoot a foot off or commit slow suicide through strangling their customers...

Rounding the wagons?

2011-06-15T14:00:00.002+01:00

So the tin providers can see the differentiation end coming, they can see the need to drop their high margins are vast & costly sales structures and move into other areas.

A few of these talk a story, but very very few of them appear to be able to do something meaningful or lasting.

Consolidation in the infrastructure stack market - lots of blogs talking about this, lots of disruption and issues, lots of risk & downside for the customer.

Oracle made the first move with an application provider acquiring Sun in order to control their own destiny re infrastructure and have better control of their own margins, but despite this they have a dead h/ware business that they are desperate to force onto customers (although I think few Oracle people understand the word customer, most seem to interpret it as fund payer for their Porsche & holiday homes). Increasingly we now see that Snoracle's applications are 'only provided' or 'only supported' if bolted to the tin albatrosses bodged together by themselves.

EMC and their pet VMWare are nibbling around the edges purchasing software development tool companies, acquirin some serious individual tallent and now into the DW/BI and eventually database area.

If I look at HP, they have lots - but several areas they are lacking in (excusing the clear lack of sales, marketing & product proposition talent) are :-

Database
Middleware
x86 Server Operating Systems

If I look at IBM, they have everything except direction, sales, marketing, focus and conviction...

SAP buying Sybase was interesting for a number of reasons :-

Removes the last major (meaning deployments in existing data-centres) RDBMS from the table for those infrastructure companies desperate to have a plat in the database world (eg EMC, HP etc)
Will further muddy the water with SAP's database usage relationship with Oracle
Might knock some sense into Sybase's management team
Doesn't seem to add much obvious additional value, synergies or savings for SAP
Will likely start a bidding war for other 'platform tool' players in the mobility market - although all of these will be competing with the networks & the device providers themselves...

But when do we see the first IT infrastructure company buy a business application software provider? Would you put money on EMC or HP acquiring Teradata, SAP, SAS, Amdocs, Comverse, Sage, Tibco

Is anybody interested in acquiring Citrix? BMC? Symantec? RedHat? Novell?

Of course all of the infrastructure companies are courting Microsoft for partnership scraps off the table in the SMB application areas.

So whilst the masters of FUD fight their whispering battles against each other, the account teams become increasingly desperate and high-maintenance and the manufacturers fight each other (eg Snoralce Vs Intel/HP) as far as I can see it's only the customer that loses - quality, clarity, options, stability all reducing...

Metric, SI & ISO matters

2011-06-12T09:38:00.001+01:00

So watching @rootwyrm & @bradhedlund argue about DC design and facilities so time back reminded me of one of my main pet hates. That of people that still use imperial measurements!

Heck even the country that defined them has (mainly) moved on to SI & ISO units. So you can imagine quite how irritating / depressing / demoralising it is to hear technology people talk about lbs, feet, BTU etc

Metric is very simple, more precise and used in the majority of countries. KPIs and measurements matter seriously, and in this global culture it is vital that everybody uses & thoroughly understands exactly the same dimensions and measures.

But yet even in this age of iPads & Android phones, IT vendors still use archaic measurements in their specifications & benchmarks.

Woe betide the first provider I hear offering me 14lbs of cloud servers. or 5/16th of a TB/s bandwidth...

Alarm Bells

2011-04-20T06:38:00.001+01:00

So in my experience everybody has their own individual hot buttons, the topics that trigger those alarm bells in your head. The statements that make you stop what you were doing, and sit up to actually pay attention to the meeting / conference call / video conference you were supposed to be enduring / participating in.

Now for me these alarm bells can be areas I have particular specialist expertise in (started small and reducing daily), topics I have a passion in (growing), FUD, or just things that leave me initially dumfounded.

Naturally in the last few years I've had plenty of these, a couple of recent ones that come to mind are :-

1) "Writing data to a CD at a person's desk and keeping it in a drawer is more secure than storing it on an array in a corporate information management platform within a data centre"

2) "We need physical segregation between virtual servers" (Now depending on the context this can be valid in order to enable fault tolerant services, however 90% of the time its used by non-trusting tin huggers.)

So once I'd closed the PowerPoint deck that I was inevitably editing at the time, asked for a replay of the conversation & recovered my composure - I thought for a while (quite a while in fact, in order to self censor the expletives).

My first conclusion was a simple one - "Are the TeleTubbies now working in IT?". My second conclusion was probably of more use - "IT is moving too fast and leaving many people, processes, definitions, roles & techniques without time to adjust - let alone time for diverse disciplines to align.". My third conclusion was "people still look at partial, incomplete & inaccurate cost models - and have little actual or mental methods for valuing risk or consequence"

Not a radical, new or difficult set of conclusions at all really - but ones we don't seem to be making any real progress on. But something that are vital for us to resolve urgently in order to prevent the IT technology hermits detailing the future.

Oh and (with the exception of @Beaker) I continue to believe IT Security dudes live in an entirely parallel independent universe with no concept of reality, consequence or costs!

Kindle - IT companies take note

2011-03-31T08:33:00.001+01:00

So as per my previous blog entries show, I'm a major personal fan of Amazon's Kindle eBook reader. It's really improved my reading experience and consumption.

So why do I think Kindle is important to IT companies? Well to put it simply it's a great cross-platform framework for information delivery and consumption! I can seamlessly access & synchronise the same eBook content on an iPhone, Android phone, PC, iPad & Kindle ereader.

Yes Kindle can read & display existing Adobe PDF files, but they are nowhere near as usable & visually readable as eBook format documents.

There are also some other interesting advantages :-

* built in secure channels for charged, or less public, content

* ability to automatically push & receive updated document versions

* the annotations & highlighting capabilities allow peers to share 'user feedback & content' associated with the document & topic

So Gartner, when will you deliver your reports & papers via Kindle's secure subscription channels?

So EMC, HP, HDS, IBM, Cisco, Netapp, Oracle et al - when are you going to deliver your whitepapers, product manuals and documentation in eBook format?

From a marketing aspect, just bundle a kindle (or iPad running kindle) with your enterprise data-centre products - stock it full if your documentation and watch your happy customers...

Still here

2011-03-29T13:01:00.000+01:00

Yes I'm still here, yes I'm daftly busy right now on all the wrong kinds of work - overall my mood could probably be best described by :-

Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll be able to finish and publish the 90+ partially written blog posts and move back to more IT infrastructure related topics...

@Twitter Vs @Twitdroyd

2011-02-22T06:22:00.001Z

So this weekend was an interesting one in the twittersphere. On Friday twitter decided to suspend UberMedia client products for some rather unclear reasons.

Now for years there has been tension between platform owners and platform access gateways. With the company behind @twidroyd rumoured to 'gate' up to 20% of twitter usage there are clearly bigger games at play.

So what did I personally learn from & get reminded about from this :-

1) my main usage of twitter is now via my Android Nexus One phone

2) Twidroyd is by far the best android twitter application - I tried twitter www mobile, twitter native app, tweetdeck & tweetcaster. Whilst tweetcast was the best it was still frustratingly poor compared to @twidroyd

3) I now use twitter as my first point of call to gauge the pulse on both the IT industry & world events

4) That I spend money, and am now 'dependent' on, cloud services that I have no SLA or control over

A minor blip for sure, but I'm expecting quite a few more of these in the future as providers go through the wrangling re who "owns" the customer & the data they create...

End of availability

2011-02-17T07:13:00.001Z

Just a quick post this morning, no it's not about my seemingly new role as "GrumpyHermit" but rather about vendor product churn.

You see in the last two weeks I've had two supposedly global 'top 5' IT infrastructure vendors casually inform us that four of the products we standardise on worldwide will no longer be purchasable in ten days time!

Now naturally we have agreements in place re minimum 18 months availability, and 6 months advanced notice of any EOA date - but nowadays these get treated with the corporate equivalent of "meh" by suppliers...

Naturally this has all sorts of impacts to WIP projects, our design & build teams and our competency centres re build images & operational readiness acceptance etc.

This is further compounded by the vendors increasingly operating "build to order" policies with little or no stock held in channels, thus causing inevitable delays around each sku change. Of course it doesn't help that this increased rate of change appears to be hand in hand with a reduction in core quality & testing by suppliers.

So please vendors I implore you to remember that diversity is the enemy of efficiency and drives real world customer costs through the roof... Please give some serious thought as to how to abstract the customer from the now constant hardware & firmware changes masked in so called 'benefits' (it's 5% faster, 7% greener, 3% cheaper etc) that need new configs, new drivers, new testing, different interop skus etc.

From my perspective, if its not a "direct field replacement unit compatible" then it generates real cost and pain - not dissimilar to that of changing suppliers...

Oh and whilst I'm on the topic, why isn't there a standard (ISO, DTMF, ANSI etc) on product lifecycle definitions & lifecycle events?? And don't even get me started on the concept of major & minor product version numbering standards and conventions between products & vendors...

The current situation on all these areas is chaotic, unacceptable and untenable. The IT industry is slowly killing itself through unwanted & unwarranted 'change for changes sake' that is driving a real but often unreported cost time bomb...

A quick thought - and a possible explanation?

2011-01-15T19:26:00.000Z

Well below is something I've seen written up before on various web sites & forums - so no credit to me - but it could certainly be a good explanation for a fair number of business projects, proposals, technologies and products I've been pitched over time :-

In The Beginning Was The Plan
And The Plan had Assumptions
And The Assumptions Were Without Form
And The Plan Was Without Substance
And The Darkness was upon the face of the workers

and they spoke amongst themselves, saying
"It is a crock of st, and it stinketh"

and the workers went unto their Supervisors and sayeth "It is a pail of dung and none may abide the odour thereof"

and the Supervisors went unto their Managers and sayeth unto them, "It is a container of excrement and it is very strong, such that none may abide by it"

and the Managers went unto their Directors and sayeth "It is a vessel of fertilizer and it has great strength"

and the Directors went unto the Vice Presidents and sayeth unto them, "It promotes growth and is very powerful"

and the Vice Presidents went unto the President and sayeth unto him, "This new Plan will actively promote the growth and efficiency of The Company"

and the President looked upon the Plan and saw that it was good and The Plan became Policy.

Certainly worth remembering that sometimes there is nothing better than clear and direct communication to the people at the very top, and never assume the people at the top understand what's really going on, or being done, or sold...

Some thoughts on little green men

2011-01-02T14:00:00.003Z

No not the aliens that your typical tinfoil hat wearing nutter will recount in detail whilst drooling slightly - but as some of you will know I've been a user of Google Android for a couple of years now, on a number of different phones, versions and builds. Currently I'm using the native Android v2.2.1 on the Google reference Nexus One platform - and I have to say it's really rather good...

Naturally there are however some annoyances that I'd like to see tweaked :-

Memory Related

More memory - the standard 512 MB ROM & 512 MB RAM (and in my unit an additional 32GB of SD card) might sound big compared to some devices, but the phone really would benefit from at least 1GB (but better 2GB) of RAM. With 160+ applications installed I find I'm now at the point of 'remove one to install one' re the dreaded 'low memory' warning...
Cache management - with a number of common applications (eg Browser, Tweetdeck etc) I've started to notice that they consume RAM memory as cache but don't release it automatically, leading to applications having 10-15MB of RAM memory as cache (often triggering the 'low memory' warning) until you manually clear the cache using the application manager.
Not an Android core issue but some applications should handle memory better - for instance ChompSMS stores MMS images in RAM and not on SD storage, and refuses to receive text messages if the 'low memory' indicator is showing despite having GBs of SD card space free.

SD Card Storage Related

There should be the ability to force any application to be moved or installed onto SD card storage - works fine on 'rooted' ROMs so should be a possible setting for standard ROMs
Google to enable their applications to install on SD card storage, rather than the majority currently refusing to support it (for example gMail, Earth, Maps, Voice Search, YouTube, Listen, )
To be able to 'partition' the SD card (or have a better USB driver) so that when the phone is connected to a PC via USB the applications & widgets on the SD card continue to operate.
Fix the update bug that occasionally occurs (ie twice in 4 months for me) for applications installed onto SD card storage detailed here and fixed here

Application MarketPlace
MarketPlace improvements, for it to have :-

Verified developers - ability for developers to get some for of 'tested & verified safe' certificate from a trusted authority, to ensure that the developer name shown in the MarketPlace really is from the perceived developer / company
Verified applications - ability for applications to get some for of 'tested & verified safe' certificate from a trusted authority (eg to protect against malware & trojans etc)
The application profile should be updated to show if the application supports move/install to SD card storage, and how much RAM the application uses after install (not just how much storage it needs)
Ability to manage my phone's applications from a desktop PC browser - to be able to uninstall existing applications, browse & search the marketplace to install applications and upload my own APK applications for install. All of these changes to then be synchronised over-the-air to the device.
To be able to do 'bulk backup/restore/installs' of applications onto devices - eg when I change device to be able to 'backup' all my existing installed apps and then 'restore/install' them onto new device in a single action
To better align the various MarketPlace versions around the world - it's getting more than a bit irritating seeing applications that only exist in the USA version of the MarketPlace and not the international ones
Sort out billing and payments to international developers - it's frustrating to only be able to get the 'lite' or 'free' version of an application via the MarketPlace, but then have to go to some other website to purchase a license key for the full featured version.
It would be good to add-in age rating 'certificates' (eg as per films & PC games etc) for applications in the MarketPlace
To be able to search and/or filter the display of applications in the MarketPlace by attributes (eg age suitability, support SD or not, size, release / update dates etc)

Miscellaneous

Support for folders on the home screens (and more home screens - think a 5x5 grid of screens rather than current 1x5) - to allow applications to be grouped together into nested folders on any of the home screens
Add back the WMA / WMV codecs that were previously in Android 1.x - yes MP3/MP4 are fine but support for WMx should also be standard as it was originally
WiFi connectivity - now it might just by the CostlyCo utter junk that I'm currently suffering as a wireless router, but there does appear to be some fragility with working with wireless N based wifi networks
Of course the topic of proxy servers and authenticated proxy servers via the wifi connection needs to be resolved in order to be able to use to enterprise networks properly
Enable Live Wallpapers to work automatically upon reboot if they've been installed onto SD
Full native OS / device backup/restore into the cloud - not just contacts and application purchases but all content on the phone. Yes you can purchase applications to do this but it really should be standard.
To be able to completely uninstall some of the standard OS bundled applications I never use or want (eg Facebook & Twitter native clients etc)
To be able to do remote phone location discovery/tracking and also secure erase management from a PC browser (ie should I leave my phone somewhere I can remotely discover where it is and issue a 'remote destroy' command etc)
It would also be rather useful if they could 'fix' the Google 'Finance' application, as it spend more time failing to work or synchronise than it does working

For some of my previous posts re Android see here - as I said I'm a major fan of Android and what it's done to overturn a lacklustre & incumbent marketplace (anybody remember Symbian?). So for 2011 I'm looking forward to Android v2.3 & v3.0 to see just what of above gets done, and how far this real OS flies onwards past the competition...

Happy New Year

2010-12-31T18:04:00.000Z

So I guess it's time for the obligatory 'Happy New Year' blog post...

Out with the old year - as frankly speaking it's pretty worn out now, and it's been a fairly mixed year with it's fair share of ups & downs both professionally and personally. Change is always good, but some losses are never good - John & JP you'll both be missed RIP.

But now we look forward and the bright star studded sky ushers in the new pristine year, which I guessing could be a pretty intense one given that it goes up to eleven :)

I could make lots of predictions, promises & resoltuions, but the only certainty among them would that they'd be wrong and broken! However given that I'll have finished my IT infrastructure tenders early in Jan 2011, I will try and update this blog much more often, and most definitely on IT Infrastructure related topics. Oh and of course I'll aim to be at each months #StorageBeers, and the other 'peer only' validation forums we'll be working on...

Right, I'm off to relax, have a take-away and a drink with family & friends to welcome in 2011, so I'll leave you with Nollaig chridheil agus bliadhna mhath ùr and spare you my rendition of a classic song...

Amazon - Masters of marketing or perfecting the art of customer dissatisfaction?

2010-12-27T18:22:00.000Z

Now this blog is not about AWS (which I'm a big fan of) or cloud (which is being over-inflated by traditional IT vendor hot air), but rather it's about the Amazon online web retail shops and experiences.

To be clear I'm a big fan of Amazon retail, especially how they've defined, improved and driven online retail so well. Indeed in just the last 5 years I've place over 300 orders on Amazon.co.uk alone - frankly I dread to think how much I've spent but my average order value appears to be well over £50 each time....

But like all good things, over time you come to notice a few items that start to irritate and then eventually if not treated they annoy. So it has come for me with Amazon, thus below is a list of current irritants & annoyances from Amazon...

Deliveries
Clearly the recent farce with Amazon.co.uk Christmas deliveries hasn't done much to help things, no they couldn't help the snow that descended upon major parts of the UK & Europe - but they certainly could have handled it as least as well as other online retailers. I find it strange that despite 'the weather' orders placed with other retailers and also Amazon MarketPlace sellers can arrive next day, but expedited (at extra delivery cost) orders placed with Amazon still haven't arrived 10 days later...

Customer Services

Nor it has to be said has their handling of customer support over this time excelled - sorry but posting web messages saying "due to volume, we're having delays responding to your customer service phone & email enquiries" just isn't good enough, hire some staff (heck why not use https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome ?). This is especially compounded when the return date deadline remains fixed despite the inability for customer services to respond - do the decent thing and extend the deadline if you can't handle the workload.

One could also be forgiven for thinking that Amazon also do their best to hide their customer support contact details - yes it's easy enough to contact & give feedback to MarketPlace providers, but for orders direct from Amazon no such easy actions exist. You certainly have to dig for a bit to find the Amazon customer services phone number of 0800 496 1081 compared to the ease of contacting their MarketPlace sellers.

Have you to tried to 'leave feedback' about an Amazon order as opposed to a MarketPlace order? Have you tried to chase up on a late delivery of an Amazon shipped order? perhaps they could patent & then impliment 'one click customer service'? ;)...

Loyalty

It disappoints me that they still lack of any form of customer loyalty scheme - I've been using Amazon.com & Amazon.co.uk for over 12 years, and yet I get no different an experience or pricing to a brand new customer. Yes their recommendations are better tuned to the types of things I want & like, but some form of recognition (ie early releases, limited editions or exclusives, discounts, gift vouchers etc) of my past business would be good.

SmartPhone
It is very odd that there is still no Google Android application for Amazon one-click shopping in the UK - despite there being one in the USA, despite there being an Amazon MP3 download app in UK & USA and both of them for iPhone in UK & USA.

Information Management

Perhaps one of my biggest annoyances is that they still do effectively nothing with allowing customers to utilise the information about their orders & account history :-

They really do need to embrace products like iMediaMan or Gurulib that allow customers to do their own catalogue and inventory mngt - in the age of increasingly digitalised assets (eg MP3, Kindle etc) it's essential for the customer to be able to manage & report on their assets.
Ability for me to download an XML / CSV file re my order history and the products I've ordered? (useful for export into catalogue / library management tools, but also for keeping re household insurance records etc)
An ability for me to 'tag' wish-list items and orders (& line items) against my own defined metadata categories (eg 'for work', 'for home', 'kids', 'gift' etc) would be useful for improving recommendations further
Implement a simple warning if an order contains something you've previously purchased from them before, this is partially done in some areas of the site but certainly not complete or as a check prior to final order completion.

Yes their Personalisation, Preferencing & Profiling system is one of the best on the market, and having looked at this for VoD systems in the past I know just how complex and difficult this vital subject area is - and just how much IT infrastructure & data is needed to do this properly.

Some Enhancement Requests

Ability to have sub accounts that I can give an allocated spend allowance to - bit like gift carding an account but for sub-accounts that I can give an age rating and spend ceiling limit to, and to which I manage, review & approve orders on, with payment being fixed to being made by my one-click payment method. Thus allowing me give my children Amazon accounts whilst still being safe.
Capability to be able to place bids for products that vendors could then chose to accept, ignore or counter - a reverse auction if you like. This works on other sites, and Amazon use it well in their AWS business.
Of course the ability to give feedback, and contact support just as easily with an Amazon direct order as I can currently with a MarketPlace seller order

But despite these irritants and annoyances, Amazon is still the first place I go to buy anything, even before the real high-street let alone other internet retailers - so they must be managing my customer dissatisfaction fairly well I guess?

So whilst I'm looking at what Amazon recommends for me today I wish you, Happy Shopping...

2010 - Some more travel observations

2010-10-22T15:25:00.003+01:00

I'm not travelling as much as I used to - but still too often - and I thought it was time for an update on my thoughts as a business traveller :-

1) It's certainly clear that economy class on flights is gradually getting worse - with less seating space, less catering and lower standards of staff

2) The frequent flyer schemes are getting tighter and with less benefits -hey @British_Airways just how many economy class (delayed / often late) flights in Europe do I have to make in a year to get anything above 'blue' frequent flyer status???

3) The standards of business lounges - even within the same airline - vary so much it's ridiculous. Take for example @British_Airways business lounges at LHR T5, Chavwick & Tampa.

Heathrow T5 - full drinks selection, hot & cold meals, bacon butties, internet access, plenty of space
Tampa - there are drinks and sandwiches, and somewhere quiet to sit with power for laptops
Chavwick - there were cold snacks, cold drinks, an internet cafe and a dozen different alcoholic spirits (clearly a place where sadly alcohol is in more demand than bacon butties)

4) It's disappointing that a lot of long-haul Airlines have been so slow to add USB power points to seats - @Lufthansa_DE clearly have the lead here... Obviously it would also be good for the airline lounges to have similar power & USB charging points

5) Heathrow T5 has slowly improved with a lot of it's initial wrinkles now ironed out. But whilst the process & systems are getting a bit better there are still some material issues :-

IRIS reliability - appears to be broken more often than working, perhaps a 3rd machine would help?
Staff quality, engagement and care is still greatly missing
The other Heathrow terminals don't seem to have improved at all (other than counting destroying parts of them as a well needed improvement)
It continues to amaze me that BA staff buses operate at about 3 times the frequency of the buses for the business parking area

6) There are still some airlines that use a proprietary headphone connector - why? why? why? Oh and why put any type of headphone connector exactly where a person's leg goes - it's going to hurt their leg, break the connector or both...

7) Just how much easier flying was when only one bag was allowed on-board the plane, with no roll-on cases etc - really should make the rule one small item of hand-luggage and be done with it...

8) How very few hotels understand the need to provide :-

Mains power points near the bedside table - to charge phones that are also used as alarm clocks
Mains power points near to desk / table in the room - to charge laptops whilst they're used
A clock in the bathroom
A clock built into the TV (yes I'm always running late)
A free bottle of water - water should not be a profit source!
WiFi connectivity that's either free or reasonably priced (ie $2 a day)
If we're on a wish list, a few USB charge points would be good as well!

9) With regards to in-flight entertainment systems :-

It is rather surprising to see such small & poor selections of music given how little storage & bandwidth it consumes
Given such a controlled environment and simple IT setup & requirements, I'm staggered as to how often the system fails and/or needs to be rebooted

So what do I regard as travel essentials nowadays :-

Chanel Allure Homme a male aftershave with packaging designed for business travellers
Dual USB worldwide travel adapter great for charging phones & devices without using laptop
SlimPlug goes some way to reduce the bulk of the UK mains plug
Battery powered phone & USB charger to charge the things you need when you're away from mains power
Shure SE210 earphones for blocking out the rest of the world
LiveScribe pen for taking all the notes and thoughts that spring to mind when you can't use a laptop or blackberry
Micro umbrella

But I can safely say that the most off-putting thing that can happen to a traveller is to have a member of an airline's staff greet you happily by name as you wander mooching around a foreign airport's shops waiting for check-in to open - this happened to me not so long ago one Friday evening 2hrs before check-in opened, and a) totally freaked me out, and b) made me realise I clearly travel too often...

Churnalism - yet another evil in the field of benefits reporting

2010-10-17T15:42:00.000+01:00

So @stevie_chambers decided to wind me up with this tweet yesterday morning :-

Cisco Unified Computing System selected by Slumberland http://bit.ly/d1FDqd < saved $368k @ianhf :)

Now Steve is somebody that I regard as a friend and that I have immense respect for - despite us having differing views on the technology widget Steve's company sells I have more respect for Steve than the majority of his employers organisation put together.

So with that out of the way - I was simply staggered that he should choose to highlight such a terrible article & classic example of Churnalism to me - I can only put it down to 'new baby head', or perhaps a desire to see me off with ever increasing blood pressure? So let's just review the 'article' :) (note I'm not saying anything about the technology here at all - merely what & how 'benefits' are purported)

This is the kind of lazy, half arsed, factless, press release driven tripe that masquerading as 'reporting' that drives me (and I hope you) insane! So time for the usual list :-

How long did this take to achieve?
How exactly was it achieved, which how much effort & disruption?
Re "saved" - where did they start from re SLAs, technology, organisation & processes?
Compared to what & whom?
Where is the before & after comparison of TCO and TTM?
What was the investment required to achieve this?
What was the ROI & IRR?
What is the timeframe over which the benefit is calculated & reported?
How much more would be possible with other ways, priorities & measures?
What is the scale of the environment?
What is the scope of the environment?

I'm not arguing that Slumberland haven't benefited, and that they haven't improved things for themselves - but as with all case-studies, customer references or benefits reports it is absolutely imperative to have full & total contextual disclosure of the before & after situations, the objectives, the success metrics and priorities.

As I previously blogged about here it really is time for the IT industry to grow up and get some simple quality & disclosure standards about reporting and marketing... This current level of information just doesn't help anybody...

Quick Thought/Rant - Storage Commodities

2010-10-10T22:08:00.000+01:00

So just a rapid fire quick thought below :-

Now @chuckhollis make some good comments here about storage being a commodity - something of which I have some views on :)

Interestingly through the discussion Chuck still talks about the 'problem statement' from a storage technician perspective (with an introduction of diversity & complexity in the technology mix, which glosses over two major TCO cost elements - complexity & diversity of solution spaces) - until the closing section, which is where I agree with him.

You see, as far as I'm (and my CIO is) concerned storage is a commodity - however it's the physical storage that's currently a total commodity, the logical layer (software) still has a bit of a way to go to become a commodity. I think a lot of the sensible people have made the leap past caring about many of the internal storage service widgets & sprockets - and frankly, no longer care - 80% of storage products in data-centres are capable of supporting 80% of the requirements.

But I 100% agree that people around storage have to change - the processes, the eco-system, the value, the religion, the entrenched conservatism, the lack of transparency, the products, the "can't tell you in advance without a full PoC", the tools, the 'buy our magic beans' culture, the org structure, the "we're special, honest", the cost & value, the people, the sales model, the support model... All of this has to change in order to accept the fact that storage is now a commodity hygiene factor and no longer the king of the castle in the infrastructure space...

I just wish that more of the people involved would realise this!

(Oh and we'll leave the 'shiny new baubles' of mngt tool nirvana for an expensive (for anything re mngt tools is always 10x more expensive than you believe and always 0.3x the value you're told) rant another day...)

That's all for me for now - I'm still around building up a major backlog of rants, but current work (both volume and subject matter) prohibits me from posting much of it right now. Normal service should resume towards the end of the year.

Amazon Kindle v3 - Really Rather Good :)

2010-08-29T17:40:00.000+01:00

So when I arrived home yesterday from my most recent week travelling abroad with work, as well as a happy wife and bouncing excited children, there were 2 new parcels from Amazon for me to open. (Well actually there were 4 parcels but that's about a normal week for me, and 2 new pairs of headphones for work aren't that interesting)

One contained a shiny new Kindle v3 WiFi+3G
The other contained it's Orange Leather Cover

Things I really like :-

Packaging - there's a feel of value / quality about the simple cardboard boxes (not the usual Amazon wrap-around boxes), the internal packaging is clean purposeful, elegant, appears recycled (in a good way) and contains no clutter. Somebody has clearly though a lot about the feel, appearance & impact of the packaging as well as the environmental impact (no unneeded cable twists, or plastic bags, of marketeering pamphlets etc)
The fact that it's pre-configured and setup with your own personal account before you power it on. This really was a surprise and a great customer touch, when I switched it on it already said "Hello Ian", was named "Ian's Kindle" and had the four books I'd ordered from the web site already available on it. Its a small thing, but shows a company totally focused on user experience - imagine if your next new phone already had all your contacts, settings, ringtones and applications on it the first time you powered it on without you having to do anything at all?
The multi-platform seamless integration. With reader applications all running on my Kindle, NexusOne Android & PC - all showing the same content, reading locations and annotations etc. Shows how a proper 'cloud service' should work - mix of devices and always there synchronised content.
Purposeful use model - in the same way I like and respect my Blackberry 8707 for clear and focused usability and design, the Kindle has that same brilliant focused feel, no clutter no tat no spamware just useful. In short it has engineered in simplicity & usability that many other products should rightly be envious of.
Naturally you'd expect a world-leading retail merchant like Amazon to focus on the ease of content purchase & management, and they certainly have here. It's a 'one click' process to purchase content and it arrives effortlessly on the Kindle.
Rapid nature of purchase & delivery - it's an almost real-time purchase from the web site (or device) to delivery of the content on the Kindle.
The E-Ink screen itself - I genuinely thought the text show when it opened the box was printed on a transparent film, the clarity & contrast really are that good! It really is very easy on the eyes and as clean to read as a paperback book.
The combined WiFi & 3G option means it's networking is always on & accessible, and downloads / purchases made have arrived perfectly - in the same way TonTom Live uses networking in a transparent and seamless fashion, Kindle makes the technology transparent.
The power adapter - it's very very small, uses the normal USB cable to plug-in and connect to a tiny power plug. Just aesthetically nice :)
The power off screen is a great touch - showing different images of relevant people / things each time it's powered down, I spent 10 minutes just power cycling it to see different images!

So what are the only down-sides so far?

a) The nice lady guide shown in the advert didn't actually get shipped by Amazon, disappointing for me but I guess my wife is rather happier about this :)

b) There still seems to be a minor 'gotcha' when loading many (ie 100s) books / files onto the device at the same time - in that the inbuilt search system then goes into index update/rebuild mode. This is totally a background process and doesn't impact any functionality or usage - except the general web consensus is that it drains the battery a lot quicker, and that some parts of the software platform are a little 'fragile' whilst this is going on.

c) The black-white-black millisecond screen flash when changing pages could be better if it were reduced or removed, but it isn't anywhere near as irritating or distracting as I thought it might be.

d) There is a minor mental / emotional frustration that I'd like to be able to see all the physical books I've purchased from Amazon available on the Kindle free and immediately, but I understand the content rights owner issues behind this.

Now I'm going to be interested to see :-

How quickly Amazon's recommendation platform moves me over to recommending eBooks rather than physical books
That Amazon list all of the physical books I've purchased over the years from them, and make it easy for me to obtain the Kindle eBook variant of each book (preferably at some discount price given I already own the physical medium)
If Amazon will buy MediaMan and really start to exploit the 'making metadata available to customers' as a differentiation and business opportunity (eg the obvious case of inventory listing for insurance purposes etc)
If Amazon will ever release a loyalty based reward scheme...

So the end of day 1 rating :-

Would I buy the same one again? Yes
Do I like using & reading off it? Yes
Have I downloaded content? Yes
Have I purchased new books? Yes
Has my wife looked at it and said "that's ok"? Yes

Recommended.

Some interesting web sites I've found relating to Kindle v3 topics :-

http://www.kindleminds.net/

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=140

NotApp - Random thoughts

2010-08-04T06:53:00.000+01:00

So as usual @chrismevans latest blog post here raises some good points that need discussing. In a previous post a while ago I highlighted some of these but I think Chris brings a number clearly to the fore.

FlexVols are inherently a good thing (although some of the sales use cases are rather flawed - eg copy prod to dev/test, which of course ignores all the information security issues), similarly so is the concept of Aggregates - but the issue for me is that these features haven't moved with the times. Some points below...

Aggregates limited to 16TB - this is an increasing issue for several reasons. Firstly the simple point that as disks increase in capacity we have fewer drives that can participate within an aggregate, impacting performance and risk. Secondly the first impact also impacts costs - as NetApp themselves are having to recommend smaller disk sizes with aggregates, which of course prevents any cost/gb benefits of larger disk sizes. Thirdly of course there are times when the actual capacity of an aggregate is just needed to be bigger than this limit.

Full support - so as Dimitris points out, in 8.0 a FlexVol can now be the same size as an aggregate (a good thing) but there is a new restriction, this cannot be a dedupe/ASIS volume (they are still limited in size). So a case of 'feature marketing' - in that most customers will now be using dedupe on their storage, meaning this new limit increase is pure theoretical at this point.

Mixed disks - The fact that today aggregates can only include a single disk type (ignoring PAM) is frankly painful, heck even EMC have understood this message and delivered upon it (still more work need Boston based dues!). But not to see this in OnTap after all this time is depressing to say the least.

Non-disruptive - for me this comes in two main areas that still appear to be missing :-

Non-disruptive move of volumes between disk types and/or aggregates within the same array
Non-disruptive in-place upgrade from 32bit to 64bit aggregates

NameSpace abstraction in the NAS area is still a major issue - primary for technology refresh & migrations, yes vFilers help for some of it but really just snowplough the problem around rather than actually remove the problem. I think NetApp certainly do need to spend more time looking at the migration & tech refresh areas, and spend time looking at environments where customers run a variety of ages of platform - to see what can be done to improve these parts. Otherwise they'll find that customers invest in the heterogeneous namespace virtualisation areas (eg F5 ARX, EMC RainFininty etc) rather than the persistence layer.

Reducing the size of an aggregate - hasn't been an issue in the past but will most certainly be an issue with larger aggregate sizes for companies with decent sized estates that need to move their storage hardware and/or capacities around within their estate.

Legacy Management - in talking of versions of OnTap we naturally get into the topic of estate management - by this I mean two key areas. Firstly the interop with & between various versions of OnTap - for many customers this will be a key factor, how to move over time to newer releases and how functionality works/is constrained by backwards & forwards compatibility. Secondly but related, is the equipment that the latest versions of OnTap are actually supported on, as much as vendors would like a new OS release to drive hardware refresh this just isn't possible or realistic in any well managed storage estate. So a key factor is that a current release is provided and supported on previous generations of hardware and that it is clear & flexible how the deployments of software interact with each other from a functionality perspective.

Multi-Protocol - yes this is interesting and can be of use, but reality is that is reasonable sized data-centres instance deployments of arrays still then to be protocol aligned (eg a 3160 for NAS, a different 3160 for FC etc). For me the bigger benefit is that the same interface and firmware/software is used over the different platforms as opposed to the myriad of platform software from other vendors.

But for me the greatest issue is that we're still discussing the same points re OnTap that we were 4 years ago, and little real progress has been made. I'm certainly not going to hold my breath for the v8.1 release that people allude to including lots of stuff that was needed 3 years ago. The talk of future releases is always bothersome, and is a standard sales tactic 'ignore the construction debris, look at possible the shiny future' - look at the disclaimers on any presentation on futures and then ask "why should I believe any of this is actually going to happen when & how stated?". I'm increasingly of the view that the OnTap code-chest is getting too old, too complex and too over-stuffed from an architectural clarity perspective for NetApp to be able to make sensible progression, and I'm wondering a) when it needs a tear down & rebuild with full architectural clarity? (as I don't believe 8 release is that) and b) what the next set of innovations are coming from?

Are they still better than the competitors? In a number of areas clearly & most definitely yes (eg MetroCluster, Failover between arrays, MultiStore etc), have they innovated ahead of others? yes (eg ASIS), but increasingly far too rarely & slowly and the market is rapidly catching up and will pass them very soon.

It's positive to see NetApp people commenting positively on Chris's blog, but NetApp if you want to improve things for the future? Run some a customer council sessions, listen to your customers discussing between them in a forum, take the information and act rapidly upon it - heck EMC did and they made big strides forward...

Overall - my view is that NetApp product management, particularly the WAFL & OnTap strategy teams have been asleep at the wheel for a few years and they, but more importantly their customers, are now paying a heavy price for this failure.

Still here!

2010-07-30T18:58:00.000+01:00

Just a very short message to say that I'm still here, I've still got over 90+ blog posts in draft waiting to be completed and published, and still fighting the cause for transparency & honesty with IT vendors.

But that at the moment with my new role I'm very very busy right now working on some key programmes, and a number of critical infrastructure standards & strategy tenders (no if you don't already know about them you can't be added etc).

Hopefully I'll get some proper content published in the next week of so, in the meantime you can catch my ad-hoc, odd time rants on twitter @ianhf

LiveScribe - Review and RFE

2010-06-24T13:00:00.001+01:00

It's not often you'll see me do a product specific review or comment, but @JoeBaguley introduced me to a technology that has been really very useful and has no become part of my day working live in a positive way.

Both Joe & I were at a conference and started the first sessions taking notes, me on my tablet PC and Joe on his LiveScribe pen (http://www.livescribe.com/) - needless to say 4 hours later my tablet battery was flat but Joe's solution kept on going without faltering for the entire day (and the next one for that matter). During a lull in the second day (and whilst my tablet still had it's new battery life that day) I went online and ordered my own LiveScribe setup.

I'm now starting to see people use these in many meetings (@mikiSandorfi being the latest) - everybody I show it to 'gets it immediately' and wants to know costs and where to buy it from, so here's the list of LiveScribe equipment I purchased :-

Mini Leather book
     http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00264GKXE
Pen
     http://www.amazon.co.uk/Livescribe-4GB-Titanium-Pulse-Smartpen/dp/B002DJTMSW
A4 Ringbound Notepads
     http://www.amazon.co.uk/Livescribe-A4-Notebooks-4-Pack/dp/B0035XOD5W
Pen Refills
     http://www.amazon.co.uk/Livescribe-ARA-000008-Medium-Black-Cartridge/dp/B001AAOZV4

Review

Great product, it just works
Simple to use - naturally being male I've never even opened the manual, let alone read it...
Love the variety of notepads - current I make the most use of the A4 sized ring-binder pads, feeling very natural in size, format and usage. But I also carry the mini leather notepad with me permanently in my jacket pocket
Makes maintaining an electronic version of your notes & records trivial
Battery charge lasts for ages and so it would appear does the 4GB memory
Its great to be able to sync & recall the audio directly against the areas you've written

So time for some Request For Enhancements (RFEs) :-

Gel nibs - it would be really good to get some replacement gel nibs rather than ballpoint
Coloured writing - it would be great to be able to 'set colour' of writing in electronic copy (ie select different pen colours when handwriting regardless of the nib's actual ink colour) - and have the electronic version show these colours
Re the desktop application :-

Need to have settings for the directory locations for data storage (at least I've not been able to find how to manage this)
Option to backup/recover data files used by the desktop application
Whilst the OCR search is great, it really does need a built in, and decent, OCR conversion to MS office formats
It would be useful to have integration with MS OneNote
The desktop desktop application really needs to be working via corporate firewalls and proxy servers

Overall? Sometimes even something so simple and basic as a pen & paper can be improved to a dramatic level that makes something so much more suitable to revised work requirements. Would I buy it again? Absolutely without thinking!

Respect the Tip-O-Meter

2010-06-22T13:00:00.014+01:00

A fair while ago I spent a lot of time working & travelling with a founding partner of a serious change and programme management consultancy firm, now unlike most CONsultants I actually liked, trusted & fully respected Brad & Max and their team of ninja change consultants. This was mainly due to 4 factors :-

Without fail they delivered on everyone of their claims and promises, and never gave excuses - rare then, unheard of nowadays
They were truly knowledgeable, experienced, international in culture & utterly unflappable - these guys really were industry veterans having seen it all. Including people with pasts such as 'submarine commander' there really was little that could throw them of course or surprise them...
They were to first people to introduce me to the value & importance of a graphic artist as part of any major project team - now as @mpyeager stated the other day, you don't hear me say "I was wrong" too often (although I'm more than happy do so when it occurs). However I really was wrong with this, at first I just laughed at why anybody in technology would want an artist - 2 weeks later I agreed I was 100% wrong, ate my words and agreed that one of the key roles in any project is the visualisation artist.
They were really genuine, nice, honest, trustworthy people

Now with all the above taken into account, naturally this team spent a lot of time travelling, in hotels and dining out - and one of the techniques used when dining out was the 'Tip-O-meter'.

In essence this worked much like a chess clock, with a starting time (in this case a figure of cash that the waiter would eventually get as a gratuity reward at the end of the meal) - then at every point people were left waiting for for staff the 'Top-O-Meter' would be set running, each delay or issue slowly debiting the reward. If the servers or place was particularly liked they would be told re the process & value in advance, but not always. Funnily enough when operating on this clear feedback & measurement system service was generally better, particularly in the places not normally expected.

So here's my thinking, it's time to bring out the 'Hype-O-Meter' - this should work on very similar principles except the value on the clock is debited by :-

Unsubstantiated claims (functional & non-functional - eg uptime/reliability, performance, TCO etc)
Generation and/or promotion of hype
Non-delivery of promises and commitments, non-delivery of 'pre-announcements'
Whispering privately of FUD (including lobbying of unqualified customer mngt)
Vendor activities directed at sniping or negativity re a competitor, rather than engaging & serving the customer

And whilst the 'reward' on the clock remains there is continued ongoing business, obviously when the clock runs out of time, so does the supplier...

So if you think this makes sense I'm happy to setup and run the 'Hype-O-Meter clocks of doom' on this site - let me know?

[Oh and Max L if you're reading - your wife's painting still hangs on our lounge wall...]

Android recommends...

2010-06-19T17:03:00.000+01:00

OK so I've been running Android since the day HTC released the Magic, and am now running both a Magic and a Nexus One. Having used lots of phones & mobile devices, with lots of operating systems and user interfaces I'm firmly in the 'Android is great' camp...

So I thought it might be a good idea to list a number of the applications I find useful, first a few web sites I'd recommend for people :-

   AndroidGuys.com
   AndroidCentral.com
   TalkAndroid.com
   PlanetAndroid.com
   XDA-developers.com

   PistonHeads.com Essential Android Software
   PistonHeads.com HTC Desire Software

Naturally my Android twitter list also has some good people within it :)

Android applications that have lasted the test of time and are still installed on my daily Nexus One are as follows :-

Applications

Google Search by Voice, Google Translate, Google Sky Map, Listen, Finance, Bump, Floating Image, RealCalc Scientific, Unit Converter, Shopsavvy, Layar, SSI gTasks, chompSMS, Twidroid Pro, F1 Live Racing, London Tube Status, Stopwatch, UK Expense Checker, LED Scroller, Call Location, Phonalyzer, BeebPlayer, TED mobile, Exchange Rates, EboBirthday, Scoreboard, Ocado on the Go, Google Goggles, Gesture Search, Google Earth

Utilities

GPS Status, Adobe Reader, Android System Info, Taskiller Full, Astro File Manager, Wifi Analyzer, MyBackup Pro, Antennas, RF Signal Tracker, Dindy, Power Manager Full, Autostarts, RoboTop, SMB File Sharing, Bubble, Turbo Mandlebrot, Save MMS, aTrackDog, No Signal Alert, Network Explorer, MagicMarker, Send2Printer, Upload 2 Nas,

Widgets

Ringer Toggle, WiFi OnOff, BlueTooth OnOff

Games

Radiant, Robo Defense, Tower Raiders, Laser Reflections, iDemolished, Trap, Toss It Pro, Jewels, Replica Island, Age of conquest, Totem, Friction Mobile, Asphalt, Madagascar Puzzle

I also used to use :-

Locale - great for location aware automatic execution & scheduling of tasks useful but too expensive now
Lock 2.0 - but not sure need not re Android 2.1

So please let me know what Android applications or utilities you've found worthwhile :)

Claims Justification

2010-06-04T14:28:00.000+01:00

So often we hear press releases, blogs, whitepapers, tweets, marketing powerpoints or spoken (or whispered) claims concerning IT technology or (increasingly) architectures, about subjective & relative statements (faster, cheaper, more available, better, sexier etc) BUT

How often is any justification, edvidence or proof given for this?

I'd go so far as to state that claims without justification aren't just unhelpful to anyone, they are downright dangerous :-

Sets false expectations, that can never realistically be achieved - thus positioning everybody for a dismal future of perceived failure
Wastes customers time having to evaluate the claims and justify what that actual possibility is and the context required in order to achieve such claim (if at all possible)
Detracts from the real positives that genuinely are out there in vendor land (honest there are some but you need to look very hard)
Ruins the credibility of the parties making the claims
Destroys the trust the customer has in the party making the claim, which means all future claims will have to be validated

One of the better things of the evolution of humans is that in early times quacks made random & often fraudulent claims, however through scientific method we've moved into an era where claims made in that area are now fully validated before being accepted. Why does this appear to be so hard for IT technology providers?

So to be clear, if you make a claim on performance, availability, functionality, commercial benefits etc be sure to be able to justify the claim objectively with facts & evidence showing how the claim was formulated and any assumptions or prerequisites. Next you must be prepeared to share this information with exactly the same forum and audience you made the original claim to.

If you don't justify your claims expect me to a) shout loudly that you make fiction based claims, b) ignore your claims totally, c) regard your company & technology with considerable disdain...

There are words for people who make frequent claims without justification - and do you really want to have the life-span and popularity rating of a politician? If you can't, or won't, justify your claims then I'd very much prefer you don't make any...

Quickly catching up on recent announcements

2010-05-15T06:51:00.001+01:00

So as those of you who follow my @ianhf twitter feed may have noticed I've been a little busy recently so sadly haven't had much chance yet to review & comment on the various (non)announcements from conferences etc

However just digging through my inbox I found one video release that really caught my attention, it appears to be an early NDA draft of some EMC, VMWare or HP R&D labs skunkworks project to move from IT hardware into more interesting engineering... The specific details are sketchy but it has all the trademarks of an IT presentation, and the hallmarks of a conference keynote speech...

A rapid searching of the interwebs & wikipedia lead me to this clarification...

Hey EMC? Rhubarb! I say Rhubarb!

2010-05-03T14:00:00.003+01:00

Now contrary to popular belief I don't actually like calling out specific things or people, but I'm afraid I feel compelled to call out something. I shall do this using a recent CloudCamp by-law convention established by @swardley on Feb 8th 2010...

For the publication of the "Savings from their IT Investments" press release I hear-by shout a claim of "Rhubarb!" firmly in the face of EMC and their PR team.

Now to be clear my call of "Rhubarb!" refers mainly to the specific 3rd paragraph, namely :-

Optimizing performance and cost reduction for Oracle Database 11g deployments with EMC Symmetrix® V-Max™ or EMC CLARiiON® CX-4 networked storage systems and EMC FAST to automatically adjust storage tiering as Oracle workloads change. This results in up to 30 percent lower acquisition cost and up to 45 percent lower operating cost in hardware, power, cooling and management over a three year period.

Additionally @sakacc also makes reference to this in the 5th paragraph of his blog post here re :-

Oh – we also showed how using Fully Automated Storage Tiering, Solid State storage, and deduplication using Data Domain we could lower the acquisition cost by 30%, and the operating costs of Oracle 11g by 45% – while delivering equal or better performance.

I'd like to believe these papers were created by engineers with good intent and sound principles, and I can certainly vouch for Chad having those qualities, and it is positive to see such materials being published, however...

I do notice that the two percentage claims above have subtle but key differences in their content - the first stating storage technology acquisition and (mainly) environmental costs, the second referencing 'operating costs of Oracle 11g'.

I've read the PDF linked at the start of the above paragraphs, and re-read it, and I'm afraid I can't find any reference to a number of things :-

The actual cost savings percentage values called out in the press release text
The baseline that has been used for the comparison savings statements above
Costs of components, technologies & software used - clearly showing the standard FoC and additional cost elements for each option (eg cost of FAST, cost of SSD etc)
Any form of ROI and TCO models used to underpin the two statements in the document making reference to 'improving TCO'
The list of assumptions and/or pre-requisites used in the models re savings (re facilities costs, FTE costs, frequency & duration of administration or change tasks, support & deployment operating model RACI etc)
Savings for other alternatives (eg using thin-provisioning & wide-striping on the vmax rather than FAST, using a CX instead of a VMax, using both a CX & VMax etc)
Impacts of other technologies (eg Oracle on NFS, Database compression, Flash Cache etc)
Impacts of the use of two independent arrays and ASM "NORMAL REDUNDANCY" for the replication of data between the arrays (ie rather than the cost of SRDF), and then how the independent operation of FAST on each array may impact performance predictability under disk failure situations. (with different read & write IO profiles potentially driving the independent policy engines into different decisions)
Some context definitions as to what capacity the paper regards as 'large' Oracle databases (eg 10TB? 50TB? 150TB? etc) (page 5 of pdf)
How this is impacted by the capacity of the databases being handled by the storage structure?
Impacts of the rate of database capacity growth on the proposed model (eg a rapidly expanding DB, when the DBs exceed the capacities of each tier etc)
The RPO & RTO requirements & assumptions for these databases, and impacts / sensitivity of changing them
The support operational SLA context for the database services (eg permissible time for response, resolution and return to normal operation, performance & risk after an incident)
Any specific performance related numbers (eg actual response ms times required for SLA, throughput/sec, IOPs etc), and how they change (given we don't know much about the transaction being measured)
No details to the NFR (performance, resiliency, capacity etc) impacts during the FAST migrations, or indeed how long the migrations took to complete each time
A slight puzzle for me is the use of Raid 5 3+1 in the vMax, given all the previous statements from EMC re default preference for Raid 6
The on page 30 of the doc the SSD raid type is stated as R5 7+1, versus R5 3+1 of other disk types (impacts on performance, risk & perf deg during rebuild?) but at the bottom of figure 25 & middle of figure 26 the screen-shots appear to show the SSD as being R5 3+1?
I'd be interested in seeing how including the pool allowed to use the SSD would change the performance - given a lot of Oracle DB perf issues come from redo log bottlenecks
The more likely use-case for me would be migration of storage within a single database's data structure (eg some of the database data-files active some inactive etc hence some on SSD, some on FC and some on SATA for the same DB)
As a minor side point it doesn't mention the version of ASM being used
Sadly as usual with EMC there are no actual details of the reference benchmarks being used for the workload simulation - really would be good if they published their suite of benchmark tools
The paper makes reference to "we used an internal EMC performance analysis tool that shows a 'heat map' of the drive utilisation of the array back end" - why isn't this confidence validation view & tool available to all customers as part of all array type standard software? (after all at worse it would be a sales tool to help justify the purchase of the additional FAST software licences???)

Now I'm not saying the reports are wrong, but what I'm rather saying is that I think they are incomplete, and appear to have little or no direct linkage to the claims being made in their name by the PR teams and certainly don't give a full context picture. This additional context & information is needed for enterprises to get sufficient comfort in the technologies to perform their own benefit opportunity & impact assessments.

So marks out of 10? So far 6/10 with a caution for "unjustified PR marketing abuse" - but very willing to review the score upon someone pointing out what I may have missed, a revised draft, justification of claims & clarification...

Communication maths or the little voices in my head?

2010-05-02T11:31:00.001+01:00

Given the I see vendor claims and business proposals everyday I'm fairly used to seeing wonky maths that most certainly doesn't add up no matter how you look at it.

So naturally I was intrigued (and jolted from my commuter's daze) last week whilst listening to Chris Evans breakfast show on BBC Radio 2, during my morning 90minute drive to the office, when Father Brian D'Arcy mentioned he could prove how 1+1 = 6.

Now this kind of maths has always existed within a sales weebles commission spreadsheet, but this was Brian's simple explanation for how it may well exist in real truthful life :-

His statement was that whenever there are 2 people directly communicating, there were actually normally 6 people involved :-
The person I think I am
The person you think I am
The person I actually am
The person you think you are
The person I think you are
The person you really are

This struck a chord with me, having watched people (myself included) struggle with communication due to pre-conceived ideas, assumptions, not listening correctly or by trying to present an image. So it really does help me understand and explain why honest, aligned, clear, concise & open communication is so tricky (even in all groups) but also so totally vital.

Must say that I'd certainly like to believe that with spouses/partners/families we do manage to get the number to be considerably less than 6. However I think in business - both for communication between groups of individuals & groups of companies - this number is sadly regularly much greater than 6.

That all said, I don't believe in over-thinking/analysing communications, but I do think the simple memory prompt will be of help to remember when communications aren't going well...

And we all want some happy talking don't we? :)

Feature stacks and the abuse of language

2010-04-25T13:00:00.030+01:00

So the new financial year heralds the season of vendor conferences, and - as night follows day - over the horizon, like the four riders of the apocalypse, approaches the associated marketeering storm that always comes with such conferences.

Sadly one trend I'm seeing more of from the (increasingly desperate?) IT infrastructure industry is aspirational future feature stacking. Where endless features are announced haphazardly into the mix in an attempt to justify new revenue streams; naturally the delivery of these features is in a different year/decade to when they are announced, let alone when any actual benefit might be realised.

Of course the first challenge to this is trying to convince customers re the vital importance of features they haven't heard of before, often for problems they never knew they had. So some use fictional stories in order to try and paint a picture of utopia as a result of paying for their magic liquor, some just plaster the industry with noise, others use new abuses of marketing terms, some use all.

A common area glossed over is the 'initial ingress disruption' required to achieve such utopia features - especially given the likely useful life of 'nirvana function'© versus the duration of benefits case and lifetime of said feature.

The benefit's case is an interesting point in it's own right - remember these are the vendors that often still haven't a clue about the TCO or ROI for their products several years after they were announced. Naturally there is little or no mention of the financial costs involved, ingress & egress disruption, organisation & technology process changes, operating model changes, and increasingly, the business process changes needed to use this fictional future widget function.

Now you wouldn't expect otherwise, but of course there is little mention of either the existing abilities to solve this problem other ways, or that the effort & resources might be better invested elsewhere (ie higher up) in the technology solution stack? Or that the symptom cold be avoided entirely if the cause were addressed with better application design. My view has always firmly been that infrastructure can provide at best single digit % improvements, where as changes in the application layer can provide double digit % improvements.

Always just snow-ploughing the data problem symptom around rather than addressing the cause - of course you can't fault the bottom feeding tin vendors from offering this solution, there is always some legacy application that can benefit from any improvement; but frankly the infrastructure companies don't have many other options and there is always somebody that'll buy anything.

So there's plenty of noise, lots of definition and understanding confusion & plenty of widget functions, indeed it's nothing new for companies to start abusing words and terms in a desperate hope to generate excitement and differentiation - yet normally this just further confuses the market (remember when a word typically had one clear, obvious and innocent meaning???).

Some recent history of definition & language abuse could be :-

'Cloud' NIST has worked to a certain extent but IT companies have abused the hell out of it.
'Virtualisation' has some common understanding in the server world, but as usual the storage world is chaos.
Now along wanders 'Federation' as the latest word to be put through the hype & definition mangler.

I'd really encourage the use of the relevant standards body to help create common industry definitions for the terms used, always provide clear & transparent context and always detail the assumptions & pre-requisites with any form of benefits discussion. Rather than using hypothetical stories and definition abuse, I'd really much rather prefer it if companies explicitly list the: -

The specific customer requirements & problems this addresses & justify how
The use cases this feature / function applies to, and those that it doesn't
Why & how this feature is different to that own vendor's previous method for solving this problem
Provide clarity over the non-functional impacts of the feature before, during & after it's use - ie impact on resilience, impact on performance, concurrency of usage etc (including provide up-front details of constraints)
Provide the before & after context of the benefit position, clearly explain the price of the benefit change and any assumptions or prerequisites needed to use the feature
Provide some form of baseline & target change objective for entire process steps impacted
Confirm the technology costs and cost metric model for this feature
Naturally you'll also expect me to require TCO & ROI of the feature, and any changes to the models as a result of this feature

To take an example, one key element being touted by 'federation' is 'non-disruptive migration' - something I'm very much in favour of. However a) for many this can already be done through the use of the de-facto volume manager & file-systems, but b) the real issue associated with migration are 'remediation' and CABs. With most CABs nowadays been based on risk, and commonly used as process validation gates - it's hard to understand how 'federation' helps change approval boards (especially when you consider that lots of CABs still require engagement for moving hypervisor guest images). For the 'remediation tech refresh' use case of federation there will need to be a lot of changes in the vendor support & interop processes, culture, responsibilities and agreements for this to be of use. If the host still requires any material remediation (eg HBA change, firmware changes, OS patches, server model change, VM/FS changes etc) then moving the bytes stored on the rust, whilst good, does little to address the majority of the problem. Let's not forget all the other associated OSS processes that have to be engaged - eg ICMS/CMDB updates, asset & license management registers, alert & monitoring tools, networking planning & bandwidth management etc. Yes in the world of the automated dynamic data-centre these related issues will be improved, but that's a future state after a lot more of investment & disruption.

If this sounds overtly negative that isn't the intent. The issue for me is that any 'nirvana function'© is normally only of use if it makes a net positive change to the cost of BAU service or change. In order to prove that we need to understand how it impacts the steps, effort & duration for each item in the transition from 'desire to delivery' (eg when somebody thinks they may need some capacity to when they are able to actually use this). From my experience this sequence involves a mix of commercial, technical, political, emotional & financial steps - similarly very few companies seem to be able to show the steps in this sequence and how their function changes them.

Now I'm very much one for focusing on capabilities and architectures rather than point widget features, but the current trend of announcing aspirations as architectures and then products is a very dangerous and steep curve downhill. Like an iced wedding cake made from cards built on a sandy beach - this obsession with feature stacking promises everything but benefit delivery regularly lasts for only a few minutes before collapsing in an ugly mess.

Are suppliers hoping that by increasingly frequently hyping the shiny shiny baubles of the progressively distant future they will distract us from the factual reality of today? Remember today was the future of yesterday, and how many of the past's 'nirvana functions'© promised by these same ~~charlatans~~ vendors actually came half way true?

If only these vendors spent time & resources making the existing features usable, simplifying the stack, resolving the interop issue, given clear context and being able to actually justify their claims, rather than building their own independent leaning towers of Pisa from which they can throw mud at each other...

NotApp takes a byte of objects?

2010-04-15T14:00:00.001+01:00

So NetApp have finally shown their cards with regards to their previous press noises on cloud & object storage, with their acquisition of Bycast Inc here

Now eager followers (it's legit to use plural as there are at least 2 of you!) will recall that I commented about NetApp and cloud storage last year here (NotApp or NetApp) and here (NetApp cloud or fog) - so of course I'm rather interested to follow-up and hear how @valb00 carries through with his statement on my blog comments from Aug 2009 of :-

"- Finally we come to the highly anticipated Object Storage question. Without pre-announcing anything, I will divulge that our solution will prove the value of Spinnaker’s scale-out excellence, particularly beyond NAS or even SAN/iSCSI configurations. Priorities of REST, XAM, SOAP and others are really interesting to us at the early (pre-standards) market phase"

I must admit to being a little disappointed by the announcement - much like @StorageBod, I had been allowed to gather the impression that they were much further along with their own internal object work. One assumption would be that what was being alluded to was a whole bag of empty :( Of course the another possibility is that the internal work is going fine and this is an stand-alone additional product line?

Either way, the timing of NotApp & ByCost gives me a wry smile given length of time between 'object strategy' PR statements to actually starting doing something.... (let alone the GA/GD date of the final solution)

Fundamentally I still have the same questions plus naturally some addition new ones :)

Clearly there are some of the obvious questions :-

How quickly they make this a native capability of Ontap and not just a standalone product or a bolt-on gateway? (frankly I'm not taking bets on anything earlier than the GD release of v8.3??)
What pricing model & cost they sell the tech at - the object model will not stand NetApp's traditional COGs, let alone combined COGs of NotApp plus Bycost
How NetApp intends to handle Bycast as a company? As let's face it, NotApp's acquisition history isn't exactly great, and their software dev trains are rather muddled and overly complex right now
How will NetApp manage to hold on to the people & desire fuelling the drive and innovation at Bycast? Especially when they faced with the monolithic wall of spaghetti code that OnTap must be by now...
How much did NetApp pay for Bycast? and thus how much additional value do they need to return to their shareholders over what period of time?

But there are some other questions that come to mind as well :-

Would I have purchased from Bycast before? no. Would I now via NetApp? don't know - far too early to understand
What's the product costs and the combined/revised TCO model?
How will NetApp position this pure software only model, that allows for felxibility with hardware (eg server reuse, DAS pricing models, capex risk mitigation with repurposing etc), against their normal hardware + software model?
When will they include compatibility for the AWS S3 object APIs standard? As this is most definitely the de-factor standard that people are interested in right now..
What will Netapp do for globally local deployment skills & support?
"Is this too little too late?" @RandyBias asks here - interesting question! All depends on things like the API model, product cost, time to deliver real integration, where it fits in sales proposition, roadmap integration etc...
How will NetApp build upon Bycast and what is their 18mth roadmap for the Bycast technology?
What difference will being part of NetApp make to Bycast? and how will this improve their products and services?
How will NotApp adapt the waffle maker to be able to efficiently cope with the metadata needed in an object platform?
How does it relate to OnTap 8 distributed file-system mngt? is this helping in-fill minds, technology, issues in that space?
Does NetApp have the suitable culture to be able to connect and deliver in this space? interesting... in the enterprise market for internal object stores - maybe... for the web 2.0 uber scale developer lead object stores then no... They certainly are not the driving culture innovator they once were, just look how hard EMC have fround this area with Atmush and the squillions of $s & good minds that they've poured into CIB & Atmush so far... (and that's a not too bad a product - some material API standards issues but mainly internal culture, sales & cost issues...). Now given that NetApp are nowadays more like EMC in the 90s than any other company I've ever met (ie complacent, out of touch, expensive, slow to react, storage only player, rhubarb for ears etc - but interestingly still better NAS than the rest) - how on earth wil NotApp's sales-force get their heads around selling something at much lower costs, higher value and address the margin cannibalisation directly?
Will NetApp want to get into the IaaS/SaaS market directly by offering an object store service directly to compete with AWS & EMC etc? and if so how will they handle the 'competing with their own customer' bit?
How will the competition react?
Who will look to snap-up the other software only storage cloud players out there?
Will NetApp now finally calling 'any shared bit of tin' a cloud and use the term with a bit more respect?

Now - quick breather - time to comment on Bycast and their products :-

Prior to this I was aware of them, but they weren't somebody I was actively engaged in discussions with
I think it's good that they are working with the SNIA CDMI standards (I'm guessing this is where the acquisition discussions may have started from)
David Slik's blog here seems to have plenty of good content in it
Bycast certainly seem to have a bunch of happy customers so far
The fact that it already supports multiple types & staus of target media is very positive, as is the support of running under VMWare (and hence being hardware agnostic)
The data on the website is rather light on specific numbers (volume, qty scale, performance etc) and details on policy mngt & metadata
One thing that annoys me, is that to find any information out (documentation, technical, support etc) it would appear I have to register (and wait for an email of the document and for the inevitable sales droid to try and contact me) - big hint, you want me to look at your company & product? Make it easy! (especially when I tried it the system crashed with Siebel OnDemand errors all over the place)
Clearly the devil is in the details, I'll wait to find out more over time

So the big question is - "when & what are you going to do with your new baby now NetApp?", I'm grabbing a beer and going to sit, watch & wait... :)

Large slices of pie do choke you!

2010-04-14T14:00:00.006+01:00

So a new blogger called "Storage Gorilla" makes a few interesting and well reasoned points here about IBM's XIV (my views re XIV will be in a different blog post) - but a couple that jump out to me are the 'entry size' & 'upgrade size' points about half-way down the text.

Now anybody who's spent time working with me on my companies' global storage BOMs will understand that this is a major issue for me, and not something that is getting any easier. The issue is a complex one :-

The €/Per GB ratio becomes more attractive the larger the capacity within an array (as the chassis, interfaces, controllers & software overheads get amortised over a larger capacity) - however of course the actual capex & opex costs continue to be very sizeable and tricky to explain (ie "why are we buying 32TB of disk for this 2TB database??")
As the GB/drive ratio increases, the IOPS per individual drive stays relatively consistent - thus the IOPS/GB ratio is on a slow decline, and thus performance management is an ever more complex & visible topic
IT mngt have been (incorrectly) conditioned by various consultants & manufacturers that 'capacity utilisation' is the key KPI (as opposed the the correct measure of "TCO per GB utilised")
DC efficiency & floor-space density are driving greater spindles per disk shelf = more GB per shelf
Arrays are designed to be changed physically in certain unit sizes, often 2 or 4 shelves at a time
As spindle sizes wend their merry way up in capacity the minimum quantity of spindles doesn't get any less, thus the capacity steps gets bigger
Software licences are often either managed / controlled by the physical capacity installed in the array, or in some random unit of capacity licences key combination - these do not change re spindle sizes
Naturally this additional capacity isn't 'equally usable' within the array - thus a classic approach has been to either 'short stroke' the spindles or to use the surplus for low IO activity. However in order to achieve this you either have to have good archiving and ILM, or need to invest in other( relatively sub-optimal to application ILM) technology licences such as FAST v2.
Of course these sizes & capacities differ by vendor so trying to normalise BOM sizes between vendors becomes an art rather than science

So what does this all mean?

Inevitably it means that the entry level capacity of arrays is going up, and that the sensible upgrade steps are similarly going up in capacity.
We are going to have to spend more time re-educating management that "TCO per GB utilised" is the correct measure
Vendors are going to have to get much better at the technical size of software & functionality licensing that much more closely matches the unit of granularity required by the customer
All elements of array deployment, configuration, management, performance and usage must be moved from physical (ie spindle size related) to logical constructs (ie independent of disk size)
Of course SNIA could also do something actually useful for the customer (for a change), and set a standard for measuring and discussing storage capacities - not as hard as it might appear as most enterprises will already have some form of waterfall chart or layer model to navigate between 'marketing GB' through at least 5 layers to 'application data GB'
Naturally the strong drive to shared infrastructure and enterprise procurement models (as opposed to 'per project based accounting') combined with internal service opex recharging within the enterprise estate will also help to make the costs appear linear to the business internal customer (but not the company as a whole)
The real part though will be a vendor that combines a technical s/ware & h/ware architecture with a commercial licence & cost model that actually scales from small to large - and no I don't mean leasing or other financial jiggery pokery

So I wonder which vendor will be the first one to actually sit their licensing, commercial & technical teams all together at the start of a product's development, then talk with & listen to customers, and actually deliver a solution that works in the real enterprise to enable scaling from small to large in sensible units? I'm waiting...

Vendor Partner Programmes - use or useless?

2010-04-09T14:00:00.001+01:00

Most of you will know that many topics can make me a tad irritated, however a reoccurring one that never fails to wind me up is the topic of "parter accreditation" programmes.

You know, the ones where ISV XYZ says they are a 'gold partner' of technology supplier ABC and all the world is going to be hunky dory. Of course this applies equally to SIs, ISVs & OEMs.

This irritates me for a number of reasons :-

1) Mainly because it's never 'hunky dory' and given the devil is in the details, all these partner schemes do is set certain expectation levels in top management's minds that can never be achieved. Indeed if it was all so 'hunky dory' why the heck do so many SI managers drive around in expensive cars paid for through 'change control additions'???

2) Often the one 'partner' insists on the use of another partner, either in the form of a direct statement, or simply through the use of limited partners on the support & interop list. Of course it most certainly would be interesting to better understand any financial relationships or transactions between these partners ('finders fees' anyone?)

3) However the main issue I have with these schemes is that 90% of the time they are little more than joint marketing and sales programmes, which whilst sounding nice in reality they do nothing to actually help the customer. Once in, their accreditation schemes are often so light & flexible its daft, and this leads to lazy practices - which may in fact be negative for the customer.

But the real point of this note was to call out one specific area that vendors really could use these programmes for some positive value, namely tacking the issue of "supported versions". What I mean by this is that far too often, companies that have these schemes ignore a key issue - which is that they allow 'accredited partners' to either require the use of older technology versions or that they allow partners to support subsets of the products.

A couple of examples of this are :-

a) Cisco SAN switch interop programme for SAN-OS/NX-OS - where Cisco allow their partners to certify & support against a specific minor version of the code that is effectively unique to the partner. Thus making it more than tricky to get a solution between server, HBA, OS, disc array, tape library etc that actually matches all of the partner's specific certification requirements.

b) Oracle partners & out date/support software - where Oracle allow their certified partners to 'only support' aged versions of the database products. In the last month alone I've had one major billing partner & one major ISV both say that they currently only support Oracle DB 10.2.x and it will be mid-next year before they have anything that supports 11.x! Remember that 10.2 ends premier support July 2010, and 11.1 was released in Aug 2007!!! (see here for details on Oracle support versions & dates)

So what do I want done about this? Frankly a simple starting point would be for these three items to added into the conditions of a partner scheme :-

1) If you offer a partner accreditation programme then mandate that members of the programme support the current version of technology within 90 days if it's GA release (after all they will have had plenty of notice & beta access as part of the programme) - this must also include providing upgrade routes

2) Partners are only permitted to do new deployment installs using non-current versions for up to 1yr of GA of the current version (and even then only n-1 release version)- thus allowing 'in-flight' projects to complete but preventing partners from proliferating aged technology deployments

3) If you allow partners to initially certeify against specific minor release sub-set versions, then require them to support the full major release version within 6 months of initial release (eg a 'terminal release' variant) - thus ensuring that the eco-system will converge on a common supported version within a period of time

Naturally companies that are not part of these partner programmes could carry on causing issues, but what this would mean is that those genuinely in such partner schemes would actually be helping their customer and have real differentiating benefits to offer.

Of course this would actually require companies to actively manage their partner programmes, and of course to remove those partners that don't adhere to the rules - something I doubt will ever actually happen. But you've gotta have a dream haven't you? :)

The Modern Meeting?

2010-03-29T14:00:00.002+01:00

So being as nowadays my job description may as well read "professional meeting attendee victim" I though I'd pen some thoughts as to these timewarp marvels of the modern age...

If you're lucky the invite will arrive in your email inbox the day before the meeting, often however it will appear the same day - the concepts of planning and diary management being long lost in the digital age. As naturally, despite the widespread use of digital online diaries, nobody actually consults them when scheduling meetings - of course this is coupled with the statement "attend, send a deputy or it is understood you agree in advance to any of the possible outcomes"...

Regularly the invite will have been forwarded to other employees by an original invited attendee - this can be rather puzzling for the organiser who, having requested a 3 person meeting, suddenly finds 10 people attending (some of which they will have no idea who they are).

Equally rarely will an agenda have been published as part of the invite, let alone any objectives for the time & cost of the meeting. Now if by some amazing event there actually is a set of material for the meeting it will be circulated as an attachment to the meeting invite 10 minutes after the meeting was due to start - negating any possibility of pre-reading and making the time spent more useful & productive.

Sadly I often see the above used deliberately, as part of the "JTL ambush meeting" strategy.

The meeting itself will last between 45 - 90 minutes and involve at least 3 physical locations, most likely in at least 2 different time-zones, and at least 2 different natural languages. There will be a mix of people participation methods, some in person, some using video conferencing from a room, some using video conferencing from a PC, some via a phone call and others via a webex/livemeeting.

With regards to the attendees :-

At least one of the video conferencing participants will also be on another phone call, with the meeting on mute.
Another one may well be using webcam chroma key software to 'simulate' the location that they really should be in (pay attention to hearing drinks orders, jukeboxes or cash tills in the background).
At least one of the 'by phone' attendees will be at an airport, buying coffees or possibly both - and won't know how to mute their phone
Half of the attendees will also be reading their email, a number will be 'handling' IMs, and probably at least one 'working' on a social network update
At any only time only 3 people will be paying any form of meaningful attention, including the presenter
There will be at least 2 people join the meeting 10+ minutes late, and a different 2 will leave 10+ mins early
Normally there is at least one other 'back-channel' meeting going on between a number of the participants using IM/chat tools during the meeting

You should also expect regular audio & video 'drop outs', delays and connection issues during the call... Oh and of course, unless you're working from home, you should also expect your other deck/cube peers to be also on calls - so you won't be able to hear your own call due to the various background noise.

The presenter will still be drafting & editing the inevitable powerpoint slides during the start of the presentation, but despite all the technology, the presenter won't be able to get their laptop connected & showing their presentation until 15mins after the meeting starts.

The slide-set will likely be one of :-

Corporate template style - far too many words and content compromised to shoehorn it into the 'house style', or worse the 'exec dumbed down' 5 slide version where the context is lost to such a point that the content has no meaning at all.
'web 2.0' style - a few slides, all of which are full screen photographs (located on flickr.com) with one or two words written in a 'cool' font
An internal corporate 'message' presentation (eg HR, brand marketing, strategy etc) - which will look like is says a lot, but on closer inspection is just a collection of colours, letters and transitions that say very little.

Either way if it's a vendor meeting you'll not be allowed a copy of the slides due to their lack of trust for you, if it's internal and you do get a copy the ppt with be 5MB+ in size as a result of meaningless embedded pictures.

Nobody will take a formal set of minutes, let alone any records of decisions, actions or questions. The only time minutes are ever published is when the publisher wants to 'adjust' the outcome of the session.

Of course you'll have such meetings back-to-back all day, and that will be your work pattern from 8am to 6pm at least 5 days a week - outside of these hours is when you can work on the actions collected or doing something useful. At least 'pre video conference' you got a chance to catch a breath and think uninterrupted when you had to use a plane/train for travel...

Some some thoughts re anybody intending to inflict their meeting on me :-

I will reject your meeting if it doesn't fit with my diary or time-frame
Now that it's so easy to 'communicate' the value drops as more noise enters the system, no longer are meetings valued, prepared for or respected. Please, ask yourself whether throwing a meeting is really necessary, if what is being said can be detailed in a short e-mail then please just use email.
Ask yourself if you are properly prepared for running the meeting, meetings disrupt others, interrupt their chain or work & thinking and their deliverables - is your meeting worth more than their work?
I prefer communication that has structure, and that I can easily add into my own knowledge-base and records (as my memory can be poor), email & documents allow me to do that (increasingly so does my LiveScribe with it's audio recording matched to searchable handwritten pages).
I prefer meetings run on content & quality rather than duration, if something needs 4hrs due to it's criticality then we won't 'squeeze it in somewhere', similarly if it only needs 10minutes don't expect me to help you fill your empty day
If you move your meeting invite around often, or at short notice then expect me to decline
If you're going to have a mix of attendee methods, remember to introduce the speakers & the slide changes etc to those participating in non-visual ways.
I require a copy of any & all materials discussed, and a copy of session minutes issued by the meeting organiser within 48hrs
I will mentally calculate the cost of the meeting & attendees and compare this to anything achieved during the meeting, I will charge this to your whuffie 'credibility account'.

Oh and if :-

You schedule your meeting over my lunchtime, and don't provide lunch - or a break for me to locate some - then expect me to be fairly brief with my engagement
You title your diary invite as a 'workshop' expect me to be decidedly miffed and grumpy if there is now light industrial machinery, hammers, welding equipment and sharp knives - you may indeed be part of me finding a new 'direct interactive feedback' use from my steel toe-cap boots!

Meetings can be the ultimate time thief & value loser (think 'looking busy' time), especially if people have to travel. Spending an hour+ in travel for a meeting is not a good use of anybody's time, but similarly neither is still on a conference call, video conference or virtual meeting. It's time to get some basic meeting ethics back into the work culture, and respect other people's time.

People often wonder why I sometimes look exhausted and can be a little grumpy - technology & business culture eh? Nobody in their right mind ever said "I wish I spent more of my life in meetings".... Thank goodness http://www.brewdog.com/ has a few solutions :)

Leaving... or just a wider circle of work colleagues?

2010-03-19T07:30:00.001Z

Ok so this isn’t a blog entry I wanted to write, nor is it one that feels good but…

My long term manager @nicsut is leaving our company today in order to work both in a different company and country. The thing is that this location and new role is fantastic for Nick & his family, both personally and professionally - so you have to be happy for him no matter how sad you might feel.

Now over the years Nick hasn’t just been a colleague, then manager, but he’s been a mentor to me on both a personal & professional level. Certainly, and by no means least, Nick’s been a good friend, confidant, very very tolerant of my regular rants - I've certainly learnt something from him every day.

If you are lucky enough to meet or work with Nick, spend some time with him, listen, learn and enjoy – it most certainly will be worth your time!

So Nick, just remember, Paris is only a quick phone call or train journey away for me to ask for your advice, as your shoes really are very big ones to fill…

Bon Voyage, le vin est pour moi la prochaine fois!

ps Do you think below might be an acceptable excuse for me? :)

Cloud "Everything As A Service" - the latest "abused by all, confuse all" phrase!

2010-02-21T13:45:00.002Z

OK so there are many people abusing the word 'cloud' like crazy - sadly no new news there.

Personally I'm more aligned to the NIST definitions re cloud (http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/)- now these aren't perfect, but rather a common reference point. Sadly even those are being 'interpreted' conveniently by many now...

Couple of things I'm fairly clear about in my mind :-

Virtualisation /= Dynamic Data Centre /= Cloud

Virtualisation is often used currently for 'tin stacking' with existing provision & operations processes, nothing wrong with that but a short term capex and facilities opex benefit only.
Dynamic Data Centre is taking virtualisation to the next step, embracing automation and dynamic integration with other infrastructure support and management toolsets, this could be related to 'private cloud' if combined with a service model & opex accounting/recharging to the business customer
Cloud includes a wider set of topics relating to ownership, finance, roles/responsibilities, managed services, commodity and scale that are typically not address by the above points

Shared Infrastructure /= Cloud

'pool' would be better term for shared infrstructure, and yes these are a good idea in enterprises (should be the default option for everything in the infrastructure stack)
But having an array with 15 different applications using it isn't a cloud, it's an array with multiple consumers, yes this forces a service mentality but that's hardly anything new...

I'm also of the view that a cloud service can be built without need for virtualisation, DDC or cloud optimised technologies, however in order to scale or be as cost optimised as possible clearly DDC & cloud optimised technologies are needed - so are open source, very different licensing models and very different processes but they are different topics.

Some of the questions I use as a litmus test for people telling me they are offering 'cloud services/technologies' is :-

Are the actual purchase prices (not RRP etc, but actual buy prices) made available publicly for anybody to access?
Are the prices the same for everybody (other than consumption based tiers)?
Are the SLAs published publicly for anybody to access?
Does the supplier publish a full TCO/ROI model for the customer to examine / adapt etc?
What type of standards does this operate with / under?
What's different to the past? (eg 'outsourcing', 'managed service', 'HP UDC', 'Egenera BladeFrame & PAM' etc)
What is different between this and classic enterprise IT usage?
Is the minimum duration of engagement hours, days, weeks, months or years?
What is the 'startup latency' of the engagement?
What are the metric elements for cost?
What is the level of granularity of cost (consumption & change)?
Do I need to meet/talk with a human in order to setup, purchase & use the technology or service?
Is the technology or service fully controllable by a published API?

Clearly there are different questions / relevance between consuming cloud services, and utilising technologies in order to provide cloud services - but I find above an interesting starting point for both. Similarly there is no defined right or wrong answer to above, but the combined answers help frame my understanding (I have a very long list of other questions but that's for another day & blog entry).

Naturally consumption of cloud services tends to have a very different financial model & aspects that need to be accounted for when comparing (but that's a subject for a much bigger blog entry). Whilst internal company recharging can alter the appearance of financials for some it doesn't for the company as a whole (other than help to drive behaviours).

What I am getting really cheesed off with is people marketeering classic data-centre technologies as 'cloud' simply because they can be used as a component within a 'cloud service' - if I were to follow that analogy would I be able to buy 'cloud screws' from http://www.screwfix.com/?

Honestly, look its really simple, as usual quiet action & genuine cost reduction talks not hype, marketing or bluster - if you want to ride the 'cloud bubble' be clear how your technology genuinely relates to 'cloud' and in what context, or please I beg of you STHU and focus on what you're good at?

Dell - Red card for green and environment!

2010-02-18T12:07:00.001Z

So those who know me will realise I'm certainly no left wing, flower in hair, sandal wearing hippy - but I just had to write a complaint about a delivery one of our team had today from Dell.

So my colleague ordered a 14.1" privacy screen from Dell for his laptop on our internal purchasing system, guess how it was packaged for delivery :-

Utterly astounding! An A4 sized envelop that is featherweight somehow required a box slightly greater than 1 foot cubed in size, stuffed full of packing paper - just how many trees, polar bears & penguins were felled for this???

The final irony, despite the order being for a 14.1" Dell actually shipped a 12." filter - so the filter has to be returned in it's original packaging, now who wants to take a bet as to just how big a box Dell ship a real 14.1" filter in???

** Edit ** It would appear that The Register has a running theme on this here http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/29/aboxalypse_now/

Management tools - command & control risk?

2010-02-14T13:05:00.000Z

So those who know me, understand just how much I loathe FUD but here's a question I've been posed for some time, and have been asking each IT vendor I meet.

The more common silo'd IT infrastructure is (thankfully) rapidly consolidating and moving to a 'shared infrastructure' approach, with individual assets providing service to more and more concurrent application. Naturally there is a push to improve the management tools for such things (well lets face it they couldn't get much worse), to enable fewer people to manager wider logical estates, combined with a much more dynamic & agile configuration time-frame.

We hear lots about these management tools being based upon a role based access & security model (in effect domaining/sharding the size of the risk an individual can create), but :-

"How many of these tools allow for a 'peer approval required' model ('4 eyes better than 2') against certain actions?"

The request here is to be able to restrict certain destructive and/or disruptive management configuration actions to require two (or more) administrators to 'sign' the change before the system accepting & enacting the action. Thus allowing a small quantity of administrators in a company to continue to have a very wide view of the estate, but to hopefully mitigate against the risk of a lone admin actions (malicious, accidental or otherwise). The role based approach appears to either drive up the overall quantity of FTEs needed or a significant compromise of the role segregation model.

Think here about just how many SAN/LAN switch ports, LUN configurations, virtual servers or backup/recovery jobs can be impacted in 10 minutes with these centralised tools, by a lone sysadmin with legitimate password & authorisation?

Time for the technology to match the human issues and processes?

TCO - Why is it so hard for some?

2010-02-08T13:00:00.004Z

Now per as my previous blog entries show-me-money-information & tco-time-for-opensource-framework discuss, I have to make architecture & standards changes & decisions based upon tco & roi calculations. Accordingly we require vendors to be able to demonstrate to me that they understand the TCO/ROI of their products & architectures (I have my views but need to understand theirs and validate / align forecasts), and of course provide me with copies of their models & values.

Okay, so 4 months ago I renewed my simple request to EMC for a TCO model comparing DMX+CX with VMax (in essence to compare 'between box' vs 'within box' tiers). A simple enough request I thought - and one I made initially several years ago (at that time comparing DMX to DMX+CX), but never got anywhere. This time a specific project planning to purchase PB+ of capacity drove me to renew this request.

Now four months on and, despite me chasing, I still haven't received anything from EMC, nor have I even been given an estimate as to when / if I might see something. So I'm forced to conclude that Uncle Joe and the Elusive Mathematical Calculators are either: -

Ignoring the request
Don't understand (or care) about TCO & ROI, preferring to focus on leasing or 'regular technology refresh purchase justification business cases'
Aren't able to explain the customer value of their different products and architectures
Are hiding something
Prefer slick & vocal marketing to facts
Trying to hire somebody to work on the topic

To me nowadays EMC are a company of conflicts, some of the things they do (& have) are the best bar none, other things sadly are the worse. As @storagebod pointed out here social-climbing that EMC are indeed changing for the positive but I suspect not as fast or thoroughly as they/we would like. Which means unltimately, despite changes, they are still a monthly/quarterly financial engineering orientated engine with a sales & target structure that 'reverts to past form' when deals are being discussed.

Now EMC aren't alone in this, to compare this with how some other companies have reacted to similar requests :-

Netapp are sadly still trying to understand the question for a couple of years ago.
Cisco are still searching for unicorns to breed, and admitted at NetWorker2010 that it will be a couple more months before anything surfaces. I've been requesting the ROI & TCO of the California/UCS platform for over a year (yes well before it went public), so I'm mystified that nothing yet exists as a model.
However on the positive front, HDS immediately answered, providing David Merrill and his team, how arrived with a variety of information, models and reviews. Lots of dialogue and transparency, and a variety of TCO & ROI models provided. So the request is possible and some do understand.

What some companies (or parts of companies) still appear to fail to grasp is that the 1990s tactics of poorly marketing, shouting loudly, 'special for you today only' sales negotiations, 'influencing' ISVs or mngt simply won't work any more. Customers need more data & benefit forecast models nowadays in order to justify usage or purchase decisions, and I fail to believe that these models aren't used when a dev team is seeking approval to create the product in the first place! I'd like to be less cynical or disappointed, but without the information to support the claims from some vendors its hard not to be...

My most commonly used (polite) phrases

2010-01-27T15:00:00.012Z

So during my many daily meetings, conference calls & VCs (I'm sorry but I utterly refuse to call a video conference a 'Telepresence session') it would appear that there are sets of increasingly common phrases I find myself uttering.

Now before I have them made up into placards or flashcards I thought I'd draft a quick list of the current (printable & less offensive) ones in no particular order :-

By far the most common one is "What are your requirements? Please show me the requirements?", naturally this is rapidly followed by :-

Anything written down at all? (And not using imaginary paper, or written with crayons, and no a napkin/beermat/fag-packet isn't suitable delivery material)
Any chance of the requirements staying consistent for longer than the flap of a hummingbird's wings?
Any chance of some requirements that don't require the combined skills of Gandalf, Einstein, Bernie Madoff & David Copperfield to deliver?
Any requirements that aren't simply a list of vendor part numbers in a quote?
Can you explain & justify any of those requirements at all?
Can you explain & justify why you'd like something different from our standards?

If we're lucky the topic then moves on to things like :-

Where is the High Level Design document / schematic?
What about Backup & Recovery in your design?
Its recovery not backup that matters!
What about any form of RPO & RTO requirements?
How does component backup & recovery relate to the service backup/recovery?
HA isn't DR!
If you want DR, can you complete the BIA (Business Impact Analyser) to see what that recommends?
You do realise that an RPO/RTO of 0 is very difficult/expensive/not-possible at the infrastructure layer over that distance?
What's the SLA/OLA offered or required?
What are performance requirements? (and no saying 'the fastest' simply isn't good enough, and yes we do want to understand both storage & network IO in the performance requirements)

Typically with partners/suppliers there will also be :-

Where are the performance benchmarks and claim proof for your technology or product? (and no '2x faster than previous' isn't of any use if we don't have a benchmark for previous etc)
What's the processes for, and how do you manage, RFQ, RFE, support etc?
Show and provide me with the TCO & ROI models for your product, technology & architectures
Show me the differentiation, unique selling point & justify your product vs other companies & products?
Can yo explain why you're better for me than the exiting/other technology?

Naturally there are also the resource related topics such as :-

What priority is this versus other work?
Other than yesterday or today, what's the due date for this?
Do you have any budget funds for this work?

And of course my all time favorite (thanks Larry T - I can't print the one from your Mother, but this one is still used a heck of a lot ) "don't be offended but, your inability to plan or think doesn't constitute an emergency on my behalf "

I'm off to mutter some more in a darkened corner... :)

Cisco - Networkers 2010 Barcelona

2010-01-25T11:34:00.000Z

So just some quick & brief thoughts on Cisco's Networkers Live 2010 session in Barcelona so far :-

• Where is the session content on vBlock, UCS, MDS, FCoE specifically? Yes there's some, but reading the conference agenda there appears to be more on video conferencing than core data-centre technologies!
• Where are the Cisco Press books on MDS, UCS, vBlock, Nexus, FCoE? (heck I'd have thought that they would be selling http://www.lulu.com/content/6579826 onsite at least... - I already have a copy but)

• Where is the update on the EnergyWise programme for Nexus & MDS product lines?

• Observations re conference registration :-

Why isn't the onsite Cisco store open today (rather than opening Tues afternoon - it's all setup and ready)?
The drinks bottles that were given away FoC last year to all attendees, are instead for sale in the shop this year
The 'limited qty' of Flip UltraHD cameras are priced at €179 which appears rather high compared to the prices on Amazon.co.uk
Yes all delegates get given a free bag, but wouldn't it be nice if this offered some protection for carrying a laptop within? and having one of the key items insight to be a leaflet for 'visit Cisco brand fraud protection stand' gives odd impression...
The overall price of the conference at €1795 (Conf Tues->Thurs) + €525 (Mon tech sessions) is expensive to say the least (disclaimer - my ticket to attend was funded by one of our supplier partners)
The online session scheduler is good, but could benefit from being able to include the general sessions within the scheduler (keynotes etc) - and needs to be made easier to work with re resolving scheduling conflicts

Some more general Cisco related points :-

• There was clearly little point in brining my Unicorn or Dragon slaying equipment, as there is nothing in the conf at all re discussion ROI or TCO for the various technologies or products. Something even on building and justifying business cases for architecture or investments would be good - after all the technology area Cisco are covering in this space requires significant financial approvals...

• What's happened to Cisco re file-namespace (or FAN) since the NeoPath acquisition?

• Why Cisco has not got into the storage object market, especially given it's reliance on networking and networking technologies?

I'll update this as the week goes on...

EMC Customer Council - Prague 2009

2010-01-13T16:53:00.000Z

Right, so I spent 3 days the other week (well last year now - but I've been busy ok?) in Prague working with circa 70 other people at EMC's annual EMEA Customer Council. So naturally this is a tricky blog to draft, as being under many levels of NDA I certainly can't & won't talk about the content of the sessions and/or the information provided. But I just want to put down some thoughts out of the time spent and work done/started.

1) Firstly yes despite what people may think it definitely is work - sessions start around 0830 and run until around 17:30, and (as the paraphrased F1 saying goes) in these sessions your either giving or receiving information, there is never a relaxing moment. Yes there are 15min breaks dotted around the schedule - but for most of us the breaks get filled up with discussions with peers & EMC staff. And during this you still have to find time to fit in the usual 'day job' conf calls, emails and reports.

2) You meet some great people at these sessions - with a good diversity of views even though a lot of the requirements aren't too dissimilar. Indeed it's the candid & fluid interaction between attendees (employees & customers) that makes the event work and gives the value

3) This really is one of the best organised & structured council/feedback/user-group sessions I've ever seen with any supplier throughout my career - at lot of that must go down to a very professional & high quality team that plan, organise and manage this. I'm lucky enough to have been invited to attend for many years and it's always been more than worthwhile.

4) Despite EMC's somewhat historic arrogant image they really are actively listening, engaging in dialogue, taking feedback and changing approaches & technologies - very positive and rewarding for the time invested with them. In short customer feedback really does make things happen.

5) As is evidenced by their strong (perhaps sometimes slightly too calculated / manipulated at times) use of social media the company culture is also changing to a more open and communicative approach.

6) It's also clear from the past results, the level and qty of mngt attending, level of investment and detail of follow-up actions it's obvious EMC take this very seriously - I'm glad they do.

7) During the sessions there were many points that got my mind racing and raising the odd question or 6, and at least one occasion I was so shocked with the dialogue I was stunned into being speechless (at least momentarily).

Of course Prague is a very nice city - but this year workload & events meant I only really got to see it from a taxi to/from the airport. Unlike MS PDC (http://tinyurl.com/ygajlds) we didn't get any free netbooks - but did get a jacket, plastic pens and notepads (does that qualify as an FTC suitable disclosure?).

I don't believe it's breaking any confidences to mention that it was also great to catch-up with past attendees & friends (eg @stuiesav @chapmancentral @storageanarchy @docderrico - and many others not yet on twitter, or (wisely?) not prepared to share their IDs with me), but also to meet a great new crowd of first-timers who contributed highly to the event. (naturally @storagebod was very much missed, and would be good as a 'guest analyst speaker' at the next session)

A few other suppliers run similar titled events (although it surprises me just how few seem to run them, or treat them as seriously) but seem to pitch the level either too snr mngt (CIO/CTO level vision fests), or too open (300+ people attending user group briefings) or only for their resellers (shows priority focus of training people to sell rather than listening to the customer). They would do well to follow EMC's format and model here - I know I'd find it very valuable.

If you get an invite to such a session accept & attend - but also, please be prepared to contribute, discuss and challenge in the conversations & sessions, the supplier can only listen if we talk (or shout in some cases) and it is the customer responsibility & duty to help the supplier move forward.

All in these 3 days tend to be the most valuable conference / workshop days I spend during the year, I hope they continue, and I hope more suppliers adopt the approach!

"StorageBeers On Tour" Motorsport Event?

2010-01-10T16:55:00.001Z

Ok so there are a few motorsport fans follow this blog - so my thought is that we could have an informal "StorageBeers on Tour" camping, beer & cars meet at one of the following events :-

Le Mans - 12-13th June 2010
Goodwood FOS - 2-4th July 2010
Spa F1 GP - 27-29 August 2010

For Le Mans we normally plan to arrive on the Wed or Thurs before the race, and return on the Monday morning - driving there & back and staying in Maison Blanche.

For Goodwood FOS we normally arrive Thurs night or Fri morning and lave on Sun evening - staying at a local campsite a couple of miles away (with electricity).

These are not a football/stag-do events, but rather relaxed weekends, camping, cooking dead animal, hunting decent coffee, watching cars, sharing beer & whisk(e)y into the night.

So if anybody is up for something please let me know and I'll work out the costs etc :)

Update to add some cost estimates (very estimate - and assuming 2 people per car) :-

SPA
Camping & Ferry etc £169
Race tickets (Bronze 3 day) £160

Goodwood
Camping (3 nights - 2 people per pitch) £35
Passes (3 day roving) £100

Le Mans
Camping (MRI in Maison Blanche) & Ferry etc £165
Race tickets (not grandstand) £70

Add petrol, beer & food, speeding fines etc :)

Which is the preferred car event?

OT - UK Winter Wonderland

2010-01-06T09:30:00.000Z

Well as no doubt anybody seeing the news will have heard that the UK has suffered a couple of snow-flakes in the last few days, and as a result there is mass reporter hysterial, panic buying & shops, road gridlock, trains running hours late (if at all), schools shut and little work attendance.

So whilst walking to drop my son of to nursery this morning I took a few pictures of where we live :-

The intrepid explorer himself

And it was this pic above where my foot went through the frozen lake ice - gave me a little shock but no harm done.

Might go to the ski challet later to find Gluwine :)

Think I'll be staying indoors as much as possible with a nice warm cup of coffee :)

A Christmas message

2009-12-23T14:09:00.001Z

So it's been a pretty crazy year all round - with more work than I can cope with, lots of travel, 2 months unable to drive for various reasons, lots of new learning, many new products & technologies, plenty of new challenges, good friends and great times with the family. And of course a whole new grumpy blog :)

I'd like to do a roll-call of friends & colleagues, and of the key events - but sadly in my old age I know I'd miss something or somebody out, so rather than that I'll simply like to paraphrase Helen Steiner Rice and say :-

At Christmastime our hearts reach out

To friends we think of dearly

And checking through our friendship lists,

As all of us do yearly,

We stop awhile to reminise

And to pleasantly review

Happy little happenings

And things we used to do,

And though we've been too busy

To keep in touch all year,

We send a Festive greeting

At this season of good cheer.

So Christmas is a lovely link

Between old years and new

That keeps the bond of friendship

Forever unbroken and true

So I'll raise a glass of fine Tactical Nuclear Penguin and say :-

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Dilbert - spot on as usual

2009-12-21T16:45:00.001Z

As usual Dilbert so perfectly sums up a lot of customer / supplier relationships :-

:)

Show Me The Money! (information)

2009-12-13T22:12:00.000Z

Just a short entry today re a some points to take into account if you're ever (un)lucky enough to be trying to sell anything to me, yes that includes technology, products, services, change or ideas :-

1) I expect you to have done your homework on my company - understand my current suppliers, current products, scale, locations, press releases re plans, priorities & focus. If you don't do this, arrive unprepared, arrive late, arrive at the wrong location or spell the company name wrong then don't expect me to pay full attention.

2) Product positioning, definition, differentiator to other products and overall reason for existence - if you can't explain these points to me in 6 slides and 15 minutes expect to go no further. In effect I expect to be presented with at least the internal pitch made to justify the product's creation. Assuming you manage to do this, I also need to get a clear understanding of when / where this product should & shouldn't be used, and compared to other products from the same supplier. Lastly I expect a clear comparison to other vendors products with a strengths & weaknesses competitive assessment.

3) TCO / ROI / CBA - Total Cost Ownership, Return On Investment, Cost Benefit Analysis are the bywords for technology evaluations and procurement. You are expected to provide customer editable models for your products and suggested architectures, including the assumptions and process/org context these models have been built for. Where you don't know input values relevant to my business then use & identify industry averages for me to edit & refine.

4) I'm not interested in free-of-charge trials, loan equipment or evaluations as sales devices - if you can't sell & prove the value case without this then please hold your breath for an hour and we'll carry on after then... Should you manage to prove value, then I may, at some point in the future, wish to want to validate certain things with either customer reference visits or witness tests in your labs - at your cost.

5) Please understand that any form of change costs money - this will always be factored in to any decision made.

6) A feature does not make a product or a company - look around the IT graveyard and you'll find lots of companies that tried to break this rule. I am VERY unlikely to change product or supplier as a result of a single feature - useful & valuable features will become free-of-charge hygiene factors common across the industry soon enough.

7) I try and measure value & cost over 7 years (to include ingress, usage & egress), not this month's discounted deal - accepting this will be longer than your likely sales role with supplier, please understand you will be impacted by your predecessors sins of the past.

8) I'm more interested in partnership and quality people & relationships than transient discounted deals - trust and credibility is earned through honesty, actions, delivery, quality & consistency.

9) Understand that your sales forecasts, quotas, commission, priorities, timelines, financial period ends etc are of absolutley no interest at all to me

10) Understand that I'll contact you when / if I'm interested or able to - I'm often very busy and if you continually chase, harass me or phone me out of work hours then you'll drop down the list faster than a lead balloon.

11) I make our standards process very clear. If you attempt to avoid or subvert the standards process in any way (including with mngt manipulation, FoC offers,avoiding the truth or clandestine work) then expect your company to be removed from my engagement lists in totality and permanently.

12) If you use FUD or hype expect me to publicly challenge you - also expect me to validate anything you say using me own methods & sources. If you continue expect our relationship to get difficult.

13) I need electronic copies of any & all materials discussed or presented - no exceptions, without this I can't use it as reference material in my internal strategy planning. If you hide behind "it's beyond NDA", or "NDA prohibits" then I'll interpret that as "you don't trust me personally or respect me professionally" and the relationship will be difficult from then on.

14) If I give you questions & actions (and I will, likely lots of lists of questions) then please ensure you deliver upon them or things won't progress well

15) My company is global, I need you to be and to able to map to our account structure requirements globally - service, support, products need to be globally available directly and we need empowered global SPOCs with partners

16) Good enough is good enough - the world is about fit for purpose rather than best of breed or ultimate performance nowadays, let us make the decisions re performance or resiliency by providing all the information

17) I expect industry open performance benchmarks for each product / technology - even if you don't like or believe in them allow me to interpret their use, value, accuracy or relevance.

But most importantly, if you do take the above into account, we will have a good relationship, I will be a loyal customer and together we can do lots of business... And I'll even buy the beer :)

UK iSMF - The hidden jewel

2009-12-06T11:03:00.001Z

To the music of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyz_2DEah4o...

In the late 1990s a crack storage admin unit was sent to a data-centre
by senior mngt for a issues they didn't create. These men promptly
escaped from a maximum security site to the UK underground.
Today, still wanted by the vendors, they survive as admins of fortune.

If you have a storage problem - if no one else can help - and if you
can find them - maybe you can contact : The (storage)A-Team.

The best way to contact this shadowy group is via the "UK Independent Storage Management Forum" - with an online presence at http://www.linkedin.com/groupInvitation?groupID=166408

If you're in the UK, a storage customer, and want to meet like minded storage admin peeps then sign the NDA, request to join and get ready to contribute on a 2-3 times per year basis...

If you're a vendor or reseller then you certainly can't do sales / marketing pitches - but, if you're lucky, maybe you can engage with the team to review your product, give feedback and sort your RFE & roadmaps...

[Disclaimer - the forum used to have facilities & logistics funding (repairs to the team van, all the cigars & gold chains costs you know!) and assistance from EMC (I'm currently unsure) - but certainly no sales pitch or content control]

[Double disclaimer - my terrible time & diary mngt has meant I've been a very underground figure for too long in this forum]

Storage - LUN Sizing & Standards

2009-11-23T08:30:00.000Z

Just some quick questions to storage people on a topic that's been rumbling around here for some time :-

Do you have standard sizes for LUNs in your storage estate? If so :-

What was the rational behind having the standard?
What is the actual sizing & layout standard?
What was the rational behind the actual size & layout chose?
Does it vary by storage type / location / product?
Does it vary by application / dataset use?

If you don't have standard LUN sizes :-

Have you noticed any optional / support impacts or complexities?
What benefits have you seen?

How does your device layout & LUN sizing impact, or is impacted by :-

Data replication strategies? (eg application, host agent, VM/FS, pathing, SAN, array etc)
Procurement & purchasing models? (eg large pre-provisioned boxes, small boxes with chunk growth, ad-hoc project based etc)

Do you envisage this situation changing in light of technologies such as :-

Thin provisioning
Wide striping
Automated lun/sub-lun tiering (eg FAST, TSM etc)
Space reclomation (eg ZPR etc)
VM/FS improvements
Some form of improved & useful SRM tools (yes I realise this is a big wish)

I'm interested to know, as we have historically tried to adopt standard RAID layouts, device sizing and LUN sizing - with the view that this eases, simplifies & speeds up storage operational and diagnostics tasks. But increasingly I'm thinking that this matters far less with the storage technologies now available.

Would welcome thoughts and comments?

SNW-Europe 2009 (Frankfurt)

2009-11-15T18:00:00.001Z

Ok so some people will have seen my various twitter posts whilst attending SNW-E in Frankfurt a couple of weeks ago, so this is a bit more of a set of feedback / thoughts.

Firstly some housekeeping - I posted on twitter on Tuesday that I questioned the conference attendance statistics (http://twitter.com/ianhf/status/5227700819)- now to my very pleasant surprise a few senior people have taken note to this. My comment was not intended to be questioning the validity of the statistics, but rather 'how it felt being an attendee'. I'd discussed this with a few other people and the common feeling was that it appeared to be less busy than previous years, my suspicion is that this feeling was generated by the revised format (more on that later) and thus not getting visibility of all the people at once.

Right so now to some thoughts :-

1) This is this 4th or 5th year I've attended - so I like and value the conference greatly

2) I've always preferred this conference over UK & USA based shows - the 'session & education first' format works well for what I want (not interested in vendor sales pitches)

3) It would be a conference I'd feel ok paying some form of registration fee (and that's very rare for me)

4) Some rough general feedback thoughts are :-

I felt I really missed the 'keynote' opening and kick-off sessions, whilst this gave a more relaxed and informal feel to the event, it also gave an impression of being a smaller slightly less organised event
The Tuesday morning schedule felt 'light' of interesting topics and yet the afternoon schedule had many overlaps of conflicting topics
The hands-on lab sessions weren't obvious to me, it was only on the Wed that I realised there were any at all this year
I really wish conferences would declare if there are going to give out a rucksack or bag in the booking materials - too often I either have no bag or many bags
Free WiFi in the building and conference session rooms was yet again lacking, and the WiFi that was in some places appeared to be astronomical in cost (€49 was the cost I saw) - needless to say my 3G got a hammering
I fully realise this is a European conference, but it does always surprise me re the number of international technology companies that only bring German product literature - surely it's not that hard to bring a qty of Intl English materials? (given that English works as the common language for other European nationals)
Thankfully the conference has resisted the current conference fad of de-focusing and becoming general IT infrastructure events with width but little depth - it's good to have events that still think about depth but equally don't ignore the width (eg this year's cloud infrastructure theme worked well)
It's always good to see @stevedupe @stephenodonnell in action, the ESG style always works well for me, and certainly resonates well with my experiences
The lunch on Wed seemed to vanish very quickly - meaning I missed out :)

In future I think it would be useful to provide :-

A memory stick or DVD with copies of all the slides and all the exhibitors marketing materials on - a single information bundle - so much easier to annotate slides on the fly
Of course a blogger's lounge would naturally be appreciated :)

The positive is that as usual the sessions were good, with the SNIA sessions providing good time the think over topics - even if a lot of them weren't stretching knowledge, it's always good to spend time refreshing and concentrating on topics without the phone ringing :)

The biggest problem I had was not having enough time within the tighter 2 day schedule (as opposed to previous 2.5/3 day) to meet with the various peers and industry experts & speakers - I need to find a better way for next year.

Overall whilst I think the new format improves a number of areas, something in it didn't click for me, but all being well I'll be there again next year :)

RFEs - My informal tracking list

2009-10-30T11:40:00.003Z

Ok so further to my previous blog entry http://grumpystorage.blogspot.com/2009/10/rfe-for-rfes.html , and in the spirit of sharing, here's my draft list of 'non-NDA' RFEs :-

EMC/NetApp/HDS/Cisco

· Ability to terminate multiple VSANs onto a single array FE port directly without needing to use IVR and/or dedicated array FE ports per VSAN

· XML interface for customer retrieval EOL/EOSL information, eg XML to complement :-

NetApp http://now.netapp.com/NOW/products/eoa/

EMC

"PowerLink -> Home > Support > Interoperability and Product Lifecycle Information > Release and End of Life Dates"

"PowerLink -> Home > Support > Interoperability and Product Lifecycle Information > Documentum and Former Legato Product Information"

· XML interface & client for 3rd party interop matrix status and updates, eg to complement :-

NetApp http://now.netapp.com/matrix/ http://now.netapp.com/NOW/products/interoperability/

EMC

"PowerLink -> Home > Support > Interoperability and Product Lifecycle Information > Interoperability Matrices"

HDS http://www.hds.com/corporate/resources.html

· API / XML driven interface for licenses :-

a) To be able to remotely programmatically determine each & every licensed featured installed / not installed within the device

b) The be able to remotely programmatically determine the license metric and it’s usage for each & every licensed featured installed / not installed within the device

· API / XML driven interface for environmental impact

a) To be able to remotely programmatically determine the real time energy consumption by the asset (power etc)

b) The be able to remotely programmatically determine the high, low & average energy consumption by the asset (power etc) over a given period

IBM

· Would be very interesting to use the SVC to perform Raid5/6 over multiple arrays - to remove the array enclosure as an SPOF in a data-centre

Microsoft

· SQL Server formally & fully supporting NAS for it's database storage

· Formally & fully supporting 3rd party backup/recovery tools for it's database products

Zimbra

· Support of object storage (Castor, S3, Atmos etc)

· zBackup to operate multi-threaded and support for backup / restore of 10TB database messagestores

Caringo

· Full support for running Castor as a VMWare guest image

· Castor AWS S3 compatible API option

· Castor support for Zimbra, Sharepoint & Exchange+Enterprise Vault

· TCG SSC Oasis support

EMC

· Centera usability & readability of config reports

· SRDF & Mirrorview replication inbuilt cross compatibility

· Ability for SRDF sync replication with delayed updated at remote site

· Atmos support for Zimbra, Sharepoint & Exchange+Enterprise Vault

· Atmos support for an AWS S3 compatible API option

· Networker full support of Atmos as target

· TCG SSC Oasis support

· Greater qty of Ethernet ports on NAS devices

· EMC Powerlink to present at least the same deployment statistics and uptime information as NetApp NOW site

a) Enhancing the current information presented at :-

"PowerLink -> Home > Support > Interoperability and Product Lifecycle Information > Storage Target Revisions and Adoption Rates"

b) To include by product, by firmware release :-

Release Date

Number of customer systems currently running this release

Number of customer sites currently running this release

Average run-time days per system

Qty of issues, by severity

c) To make the following additional information also available via an XML interface :-

Product major & minor (eg DMX & 4), Code Name, Code Rev, Release Date, # or % product running this release, # or % sites running this release, Average up-time, Target / Recommended Release

HDS

· To have an equivalent of EMC PowerLink or NetApp Now for self-support and information access

· API reporting of hot-spare qtys correctly on USP range

· API alert reporting for service processor utilisation on AMS range

· Ability for sync replication with delayed updated at remote site

· TCG SSC Oasis support

· Support for Thin-Provisioing in USP-1100

NetApp

· TCG SSC Oasis support

· Release the software only variant of OnTap as a commercial product (capacity limited if needs be)

· Greater qty of Ethernet ports on NAS devices

· Much larger aggregate & flexvol capacity sizes without having to upgrade to v8

· Support for OnTap v7.3 & v8 on older generation equipment and also for newer products (eg 2020 & 2050)

· Support for native OnTap 'in box' tiering of a file-system over multiple disk types (eg to support FAN)

Cisco

· 'terminal release' concept for SANos (check current name) - where support partners must converge upon a certainly release variant within X months (to aid interop)

Twidroid

· To have a "eMail tweet" (inc URL to tweet) that integrates with your google mail account

· To have a "Reply All" option against each tweet

· TwidroidPro posts to be 'sent from' TwidroidPro rather than just 'Twidroid'

· To correctly support Androids 'select & hold' ability to correct default spell-check suggestions

TweetDeck

· eMail tweet to include URL to tweet

· Option to save state of currently 'in memory' tweets upon shutdown, and reload upon restart (I'd pay for this feature alone)

· UK spellchecker

· Ability to set frequency of refresh of searches (in similar fashion to DMs, Mentions etc)

Snarfer

· An update to code?

· Better support for database store to prevent / fix corruption

An RFE for RFEs

2009-10-05T22:35:00.001+01:00

In this brief blog I'd like to discuss the topic of product RFEs (Requests For Enhancements) - now as far as I'm concerned this is very much one of the most ignored and abused topic areas of the customer / supplier relationship.

Some tiny examples :-

One supplier I know took 4 years to process an RFE that they admitted was both useful and easy to do, but somehow it never quite made the development release train - and nobody could explain why.
Another recently updated their internal RFE system, and in the process simple deleted the details of all previous RFE requests
With one supplier I have at least 3 different ways that I'm required to register RFEs - as the method is different for each product (but feels like it's totally random)
Heck, at the time of writing, even the mighty WikiPedia doesn't have an definition for RFE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_enhancement !!

Frankly the status of RFE management staggers me. In @SteveTodd's recent book Innovate with Influence he quite rightly points out that a lot of innovation comes from customer demand - and yet for many vendors the method for accessing and capturing the customer requests is opaque, fragmented and often best described as broken.

Suppliers rarely seem to demonstrate they include consideration for a product's existing customer RFE lists when designing next generation products - this may occur but the communication & dialogue with the customer is sporadic and often after the next product has been 'feature locked'.

The process seems to be normally 'handled' by the local technical representative on the account, resulting in a lot of human processes & resource consumption, interpretations, delays (always dropping down the priority list), difficulties for global orgs (customers & vendors) to align on RFE priorities etc. Thus sorting this out will not only help get (some of) the right features progressed in the right timeframes, but should also save both parties money due to less people effort associated with the 'process'.

Some simple things here could make a big difference, for instance :-

Operating the RFE handling under a clear process and SLA
Publishing a document explaining the process and SLA
Using a standard electronic template for information capture
Having a common format for agreeing & valuing the benefit and priority to both customer and supplier
Understanding that it's key to have regular communication and update on the status of the RFE
Committing to a finite time-line for a decision (ie yes now, yes future, possible, private funding, never etc)

Of course, exactly the same comments and disappointments exist for most vendor's Interop & RFQ (Request For Qualification) handling as well - some key additional points that would help here are :-

Up-front published & consistent clarity over the information required when raising an RFQ
Clarity over the terms & definitions of an acceptance or rejection
Maintaining a customer accessible database of their existing RFQs so that they can be tracked over time and checked for ongoing validity, updates, being superseded, and included within support contracts
Putting RFQs into the standard interop documents ASAP after qualification
Providing a customer accessible and downloadable version of the interop matrix/documents - including maintaining customer access to historical versions (as a large number of RFQs are with older tech)
Providing a greater level of detail within the interop documents for those products that don't have a 100% fully supported status (ie tested but failed, not tested, worked but no longer commercial support etc)

It also continues to surprise me that at vendor's customer council sessions they rarely, if ever, discuss the topic of RFEs - both process and/or content. I'd have thought these would be an ideal forum for suggestions, discussion, refinement, prioritising & voting on RFEs - I know one user forum where this happened and in effect the 30 customer companies jointly agreed on a 'prioritised top 10' RFE list for that vendor and issued it as a single entity. Surprisingly enough that list got focused work on and all the entries were completed within 6 months - a win-win for all!

The topic of more public and peer reviewable RFE lists certainly intrigues me - again most vendors have online web portals of some description for their support forums, yet rarely do they allow customers to view, comment & contribute on RFEs. The exception appears to be some of the newer/smaller companies, who make use of web technologies to perform this. One such technology is http://uservoice.com/ which allows customers to submit, comment/refine, and vote for RFEs - a perfect example being the RFE list for tweetdeck at http://tweetdeck.uservoice.com/pages/1192-general Once again my question is why major vendors don't make use of such simple and positive customer engagement methods?

Yes there is a danger of 'shiny bauble' syndrome, or indeed 'vendor bashing' with RFEs - but if managed and facilitated well, with the right people, then this really is an area that massive strides can be made in short periods of time.

Yes of course there are some interesting areas re IPR ownership, but they tend to be handle by the inter-company framework agreements, or for smaller relationships the terms & conditions etc.

Naturally this is also regularly overlooked in the TCO/ROI cost and benefit calculations - and anybody that's had RFEs eaten by the 'chaos demons' or RPQs impacted by the 'time-delay elves' would certainly agree that there are costs & benefits to be measured here!

Now show me a supplier that openly promotes and communicates a single RFE (& RPQ) process, with user self-serve & transparent status checking and that operates under an SLA - and I'll be a very happy man waving purchase orders!

Oracle 11gR2 - Flash Cache

2009-09-28T14:00:00.001+01:00

Ok so those who followed Oracle's Exadata v2 pitch will have seen something mentioned in the specs re FlashCache and it's use of SSD storage. There's little major stuff around but some brief info can be found at :-

http://www.dba-oracle.com/t_flash_cache.htm

http://technology.amis.nl/blog/6092/11gr2-flash-cache

Now the part that is of particular interest to me is, if or when, this feature is made available as part of the normal Oracle 11gR2 release train.

This slide from http://www.flickr.com/photos/fenng/3883028359/in/photostream/ appears to show that the FlashCache is interfaced through a file location, thus one assumes it could be stored on any device that is file-interface accessible (eg an array based SSD or a host based SSD).

Now this is where it gets interesting for me, in that in a similar way to OpenZFS L2Arc , a local server SSD could be used as a high speed L2 SGA extension without putting any data at risk.

Server SSDs are supposedly not in the same league as array EFDs, but ignoring that (be it real or not), the price point of SSD in servers (compared to that of those in arrays) combined with this very easy use case model (both setup and ongoing mngt very simple) and lack of risk of data loss (re these use cases), certainly makes it a very intriguing proposition and something on my 'benchmark' and TCO evaluation list very shortly.

My test case would be to take an x86 server running OpenSolaris and place 2x256GB SSDs into it and then run Oracle Swingbench & Orion with :- no SSD usage, 1 for L2Arc, 2 for L2Arc, 1 for FlashCache, 2 for FlashCache, 1 for L2Arc & 1 for FlashCache. Also interested to test 2xFlashCache with ASM Vs 2xL2Arc without ASM. Intrigued to see what the performance impacts will be :)

Naturally I'm also keen to understand & compare these costs & benefits against those of Oracle InMemoryDatabase (eg TimesTen) and array based SSD.

My personal suspicion is that using the SSDs for L2Arc & FlashCache (if / when available) will deliver good benefits cases, and then once the storage array firmware has achieved it's required SSD mngt & usability maturity we'll be able to use array based SSDs in addition to server based for even further combined benefits.

I'd be interested to hear about other people's experiences, thoughts & plans in this area...

SSD - possibly a use?

2009-09-27T11:00:00.003+01:00

Well those who know me may well be staggered by the comments that follow, so get a cuppa, sit down, brace yourself and let's begin :-

I might actually have started to think there is a value case for SSD drives!

Now, this is not in storage arrays - certainly not until array software comes along that can transparently and automatically use these, and when so called 'EFDs' become financially viable (rather than 20x cost of equivalent FC capacity). I'm expecting this to be mid 2010...

But, the value case I've now had first had usage & benefit of is in personal laptop computers.

So earlier this week I had the pleasure of my office IT support dept using HP Radia to roll-out office2003 patches on-top of my office2007 install. Thus rapidly borking my HP tablet PC to a level where it is still being reformatted and rebuilt as I type (3 days later).

Now the interesting bit is that they gave me a loan laptop - a Dell (yes I swore a lot), that despite having less RAM and slower CPU, this laptop appeared to operate in the real-world much faster.

A quick peek and I discovered the Dell was actually using a 64GB Samsung SSD, which if nothing else has gone to show what a poorly written app MS-Outlook2007 is - with the end-user client application being almost entirely IO bound.

The same dataset (mix of OST & PST of about 30GB all offline local) takes about 15mins to load on normal drive, about 1min on SSD. Naturally this is a rather specific use case being a single spindle, mix of multiple IO etc, large % of disk capacity utilised etc.

Even so this has changed my laptop usage feeling so much I'm off to buy my own SSDs (out of my own pocket) to put into my work laptop ad my home gaming rig.

So who has any recommendations for 128GB SSDs for HP 2710p Tablet (work) and normal SATA interface (home)? I've been noodling at these :-

http://www.yoyotech.co.uk/hard-drives-hard-drive-c-36_218.html

http://www.ebuyer.com/cat/Hard-Drives/subcat/Solid-State-Hard-Drives

TCO - Time for an opensource framework?

2009-09-21T21:00:00.001+01:00

So in my job I regularly see what each vendor claims to be a 'TCO model' - now funnily enough these normally show that the vendor's widget is much better than the competitor's other widget. Naturally each model has some elements in it that the others don't or places a certain weighting / emphasis on particular attributes that others don't.

Now this is a topic that is very close to my heart, as all standards and strategy changes I make in my company are supposed to be TCO based - with us not making any changes unless they improve own actual TCO. Naturally this breaks when vendors EOL products or TCO isn't the driver - but the principle is valid (although sadly a surprise to many people).

Now on @om_nick's blog here http://www.matrixstore.net/2009/09/17/defining-an-up-to-date-tco-model/ he reminded me that I had a draft blog on this, and that 'crowd-sourcing' such models can work quite well. There's plenty of good attributes listed so far on Nick's blog and I'm sure we'll all add many more as time goes on (I know I must have a good dozen or so TCO Excel models knocking around somewhere).

Of course I know that TCO isn't always the right measure, and that ROI or IRR can often be just as valid, but for lots of elements of infrastructure the first point of call is a TCO or CBA - and making those consistent would be a great starting point!

One thing I'm very sure about is that for each technology category there is more than one 'level' to measure a TCO at for different purposes, for example :-

Industry average TCO - ie what does a GB of data cost to store for x hours on average in the industry? (the analyst KPI - and product / vendor agnostic)

Estate average TCO - ie what does a GB of data cost to store for x hours in my company on average? (the CTO level KPI - and product / vendor agnostic)

Architecture average TCO - ie for this type of reference design (inc Function & NonFunctional Requirements) what does a GB of data cost to store for x hours in my company on average? (the architect level KPI) This is product / vendor agnostic and used for ROM costing and selection of an infrastructure architecture.

Category average TCO - ie for this class of product (eg modular storage, enterprise storage, small x86, medium unix etc) what does a GB of data cost to store for x hours in my company on average? (the catalogue level KPI) This is now technology 'class' specific, but still product / vendor agnostic, and is used for building up the ROM & architecture costs above.

Product TCO - ie for this specific vendor product & version what does a GB of data cost to store for x hours in my company on average? (the product level KPI) This is now product and vendor specific, and is used for selecting product within a category (ie direct product bake-offs).

There are many tricky parts in a TCO model, including :-

What to measure? (both what is desired, and what is actually possible over time)
How to measure?
Where to measure?
How frequently to measure?
What relative weighting to give?
What TCO output KPIs to give? (eg € per GB, GB per kW, € per IOP etc)
How to communicate such KPIs without creating dangerous context-less sound-bites for people to abuse (ie my absolute hatred of the phrase 'utilisation' - it's utterly meaningless without context!)
How to ensure transparency & clarity over assumptions and driving inputs?
How to value / compare functionality when no direct equivalents?
How to handle 'currently familiar' or 'keep same' (ie low cost of introduction) Vs 'new vendor & widget' (ie disruption & short term duplication of costs / disruption etc)?
How to handle 'usefulness'? (eg performance is a NFR than has value - does 'IOPS per GB per €' work?)
How to build a feedback loop and refinement model to periodically measure and validate TCO predictions Vs actuals, and take action accordingly?
How to protect confidential or sensitive values?

Getting a common list of assumptions, factors and attributes, relative weightings and of course values for all of these is the absolute key and a very valuable exercise for all - customer and vendor alike.

Lastly - one company with a very interesting approach to TCO mngt is www.Apptio.com who provide a SaaS model for building & maintaining an automated TCO measurement and reporting platform - it's certainly sparked interest in my mind, would love to hear more about people's thoughts about or experiences with them.

Now I for one am more than up for spending time on creating an 'open source' TCO model that has many people's input and thoughts into it, that we can refine and revise over time and use to evaluate many vendor technologies - so what do other people think?

Cloud Backup & Android

2009-09-01T15:00:00.004+01:00

Firstly a tip for Android users (and I'm a major fan of this platform for mobile devices) :-

If you change your Google account password, also make sure you change the password cached on your Android phone quickly afterwards - otherwise it appears that Google automatically decides that the failed login attempts from your phone (when it is auto syncing contacts, calender & email etc data) are a hacking attack and temporarily disabling your Google account... Clearly not good and needs some more thought from Google I think :(

Which leads me onto a related topic - cloud backup (which of course should really be cloud restore rather than cloud backup). In this context I'm really talking about the SaaS & PaaS definitions of cloud.

Firstly I should say that I'm greatly in favour of having multiple controlled & secured instances of data in several locations, my feeling is that for a lot of smaller organisations or individuals this simply doesn't occur. As such the technologies loosely referred to as 'cloud backup' could be invaluable to many people in easily & cost effectively enabling data persistence and recovery.

Now, before we dig into the real topic, there are lots of side-points to consider re security & availability in the cloud backup/recovery area, including :-

Obviously the data needs to be protected, normally with encryption. My view is that this should have private keys supplied & owned by the user, and not by the backup/recovery provider. With the private keys similarly backed-up to a separate key escrow / backup & recovery provider.
What SLAs does the provider have? (availability, accessibility, performance, integrity etc) and how, from where and how often are they measured & reported?
How can you contact your provider should you have an issue? (a web form simply doesn't cut it)
What guarantees do they offer to keep your data at their site available - are they a '2nd copy hoster' or do they treat your data with the same care as a master copy (eg do they do their own backups/replicas, can you treat their service as an archive rather than B&R etc?)
What are the guarantees worth? what kind of financial penalties / compensation are available, how are they calculated & triggered and how do they compare re the value of the data?
Is the provider somebody you'd trust with your banking details? As it's likely you'll either be giving them these, or all of the information behind them, in one form or another
Cloud economics often rely on some form of content dedupe at the provider's end, you need to satisfy yourself that supplier's dedupe won't impact your security or encryption

But with the above in-mind, back to the real topic - the three real points I was wondering about here are a little bit different :-

Should you backup your SaaS & PaaS cloud service data to your own local media (ie backing-up your part of the cloud)?

What happens to your data (your assets & value) when a service goes down, your account is deleted, the service is hacked, the company vanishes or... Can you backup your Google/Yahoo email to your local home NAS, can you backup your blog sites & social media pages to your local storage?

Irrespective of how it is done I'm increasingly of a belief that there is going to be a need for this. The first time it happens is often for some 'novelty' data which is irritating but little more, however as people rapidly move to cloud services that handle their data the risk & loss becomes higher...

Not saying stop using the SaaS services (different view re PaaS but that's another blog) as the prime system, but if the data is worth something (emotional, financial etc) then my view is that it should always be in two independent places, with one of those in the data owner's direct control.

So I'm wondering when the current generation of home NAS devices will start to include the ability to receive data from remote sites, or to have the ability to obtain that data automatically themselves?

Can your cloud backup/recovery partner also backup your social media and SaaS services?

Moving on from the previous point, what I'm thinking about here is that rather than need to use local media, could your cloud backup partner (assuming they are different to your other PaaS/SaaS providers) also provide 'content aware' backups for your other internet data services such as blog sites, Facebook & MySpace sites, Twitter tweets/favourites/friends/followers, webmail and other PaaS / SaaS services etc?

Could your cloud backup partner also move into providing a basic 'cloud DR' service?

It's a fairly simple step for a cloud partner to wrapper & automate the creation of an AWS EC2 image, load their backup/restore software onto that image and then allow the customer to restore their data 'as needed' to the EC2 image. Where in turn they can run the usual suite of common apps easily enough... Not earth changing but a simple enough value add that would provide transitory help for some situations...

Now I'm aware that some of the points above could be twisted into FUD, they certainly aren't intended as that (and I'll be more than grumpy if they do get used as FUD) - they are the questions I ask myself about my personal information storage (especially when an account gets disabled!).

In this topic (like many others) I certainly agree with some of the points that @StorageBod makes in his blog entry at http://storagebod.typepad.com/storagebods_blog/2009/08/information-haze.html re personal information being both of value and dispersed, with little current understanding from the public at large re the potential consequences...

NetApp - Cloud of Fog?

2009-08-31T18:00:00.000+01:00

Right, so firstly despite what it may look like this isn't a NetApp bashing blog site or month (in fact I'm grumpy with all vendors - and NetApp are a strategic supplier to me), but I'm afraid I'm a bit lost re NetApp's marketing and 'cloud' and really need to ask a public question :-

"Can anybody give me any detail and substance to NetApp's cloud strategy, technology and deployments?"

I ask this genuinely, as despite asking the company directly for over 2yrs, and despite regularly looking myself through their blogs and whitepapers, I'm finding it really hard to locate any information re NetApp and IaaS, PaaS or SaaS usage or technologies (direct of indirect).

Oh of course I've heard the stories re large company X using ### many filers for search or webmail, and other such things - but frankly these strike me as very much a standard use of a technology coupled with significant discounts linked to volume & name etc. Not specifically addressing the changed requirements in a cloud (thinking IaaS) environment (ie individual assets may have less availability req, object protocols often needed, much greater connectivity reqs etc).

What I'm looking for info on is :-

1) A technology & commercial model that is more aligned at a web 2.0/3.0 business, with vast data scale, objects & files, geographical distribution, policy based mngt, compression & dedupe of data, adequate performance, adequate availability of a physical asset but v high availability of the information, and at a 7yr TCO price point substantially less than today's post discount per TB price

2) Any info re an object store capability (although Val Bercovici has already said he's not prepared to pre-announce anything right now)

3) Any info re a direct to market SaaS offering?

4) Any details, info or case studies re genuine cloud companies or web 2.0/3.0 companies that are using or planning to use NetApp in decent sized (ie multi-PB) cloud deployments

I'm wanting to like their 'cloud' technology but frankly speaking at the moment trying to find out about it is like trying to knit fog (sorry couldn't resist)

If any NetApp'er or anybody wants to point me towards some substance and fact then I'd be more than grateful :)

Steve's IT Rants - Supplier Eraser

2009-08-27T14:00:00.001+01:00

Steve Duplessie has a well honed nack of hitting the nail on the head in a style and language that both informs, entertains & 'sticks' (if you've seen him present in person you'll know what I mean).

Again I find myself reading his blog at http://esgblogs.typepad.com/steves_it_rants/2009/08/it-shops-are-starting-to-trim-number-of-vendors-in-earnest.html

I started to write a comment reply to his post, but felt it was more than a reply so would draft something here.

Some key points from Steve's blog :-

34% of customers looking to reduce supplier qty
Isn't the vendor list being reduced organically through acquisition?
Is it good for the market as a whole? I'm not sure it is.
It seems it will stifle innovation in exchange for more consistent vendor relationships (consistent does not imply "good," necessarily).

Frankly I'm staggered that it's only 34% and not a much higher number - a lot of people (incorrectly IMHO) associate supplier reduction with cost savings.

Yes in the short-term there can be a reduction in the cost of purchase orders by reducing supplier qtys - with the biggest short term gain to be to move to single supplier for a given area. Clearly 'value', 'quality' and 'sustainability' are often overlooked in such situations, similarly 'flexibility' is often missed and a 'cheap deal' suddenly becomes much more expensive when the full picture of lifetime costs & changes are considered. Again over time we have traditionally seen these 'savings' eroded as both supplier & customer get 'lazy & comfortable' together, with less emphasis on value.

As far as I can see such deals often also ignore the cost of migrating to the new terms, technologies or processes - often the 'adoption' costs can be considerable. Again people often think of deal durations as being a long time, but consider a 3yr deal - 6+ months taken to 'adopt' the deal after signing, and the renewal position will need to be considered at least 12 months before expiry to allow for the annual budget process to permit flexibility in the renewal outcome. So at best I'd say you get 12-18 months of stability (ie potential for 'cost savings') during a 36mth agreement.

So what do I think are some of the driving factors re supplier reduction :-

Reduction in resources & overheads in supply chain functions - thus forcing them to only wish to deal with fewer companies of a larger deal value.
The current 'in vogue' supply chain quality processes have a similar 'better fit' with companies of larger scale and with a larger / more regular financial exchange between customer & supplier
As a result of above, supply chain are often being rewarded or KPI'd with regards to supplier qty reduction - and personal rewards or KPIs always drive behaviours
Customer IT/IS depts are under hard pressure to do more, better, quicker with less - which equals less time & resource to accommodate diversity (product or suppliers)
Naturally there is also a major drive from the larger suppliers, with them offering big discounts on deals in order to generate any form of revenue and also elbow out competitors. These 'deals' are increasingly not just technology acquisition price, but are moving to multi-year deals covering tech, services, support & maint etc. It would appear such deals are often 'sold internally' as vendor displacement and are defensive in nature, with the vendor expecting later to cross sell into other areas (sometimes even just to act as a reseller to be able to book revenue), to recoup funds through services or simply to be able to remove a competitor.

Yes the supplier list is being reduced through acquisition, but I've yet to see this reduce the costs to the customer, nor does it always appear to be beneficial when the technology is killed off or vanishes for years.

Similarly I'm yet to be convinced that a reduction in competition is good for the customer of the industry - the customer looses due to less commercial pressures and less reason for suppliers to work with open standards, the industry looses through lack of innovation and enforced marriage acquisition issues.

My conclusion is that I think there is a lot of short term thinking (and savings benefit claiming) going on both in vendors (revenue now at cost of profit now & revenue in future), and customers (in terms of standards, commercials, leverage & choice) - with a considerable risk to all concerned for the mid-term.

NotApp or NetApp?

2009-08-26T19:30:00.001+01:00

So after years of us asking and waiting it looks like NetApp have finally made a couple of pre-announcements :-

OnTap v8 http://www.netapp.com/us/products/platform-os/data-ontap-8/
Object storage http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/24/netapp_object_interfaces/

Now I've been a big fan of what NetApp did for storage re:-

Storage configuration ease & simplification
Single OS/firmware over all products
Consistent and compatible capabilities on each product (eg think replication)
Their work with Oracle on NFS
Use and publication of open storage & system benchmarks

However I also regularly raise concerns re NetApp over :-

They are just not a truly global player and struggle with dealing with global companies
Roadmap & futures disclosure - as much as I have issues with EMC (and I have many) they do technical contact, futures and strategy briefing much much better
OnTap GX - has been in the wings for years, and appears to have been a major drain on their dev resources
OnTap constraints not matching the increasing scale of the requirements and/or platforms - eg re aggregate max 16TB etc
Poor estate mngt tools - prior to Onaro acquisition these were woeful, and there still a long way to go for NetApp native tech
Too frequent product changes, revisions & models - making interop a pain, and appearing to drive too many codebase versions
Poor interface and processes for RFEs (though I've yet to find a storage company that has any worth mentioning)
Poor acquisition history re choices & integration execution
Lastly, and most importantly, sadly over the last couple of years IMHO they have listened to their own hype too much, and as a consequence have lost touch with the real market prices and are unable to prove the value of their benefits. (Acting very similarly to EMC in the 90s and early 00s)

That all said I still like & recommend their technology! So, knowing above, what are my thoughts re their recent announcements :-

1) Ontap v8

DataMotion - looks very interesting, but the devil in the the capability, requirements & constraints details, can anybody provide these yet?
Pam-II cards are interesting, and a good way to get overall performance improvements without requiring lots of specific configurations, but value will depend on their € cost, and how to mitigate against the use of the onboard slots (thus reducing either disk loops or network interfaces)
NDDC - have read this 4 times and still think it's purely a Prof Srvs play wrapped in words, can anybody correct me with details?
I can't find a public document that compares v7.3 with v8.0 7-mode, so very tricky to talk about differences, anybody see a public doc?
The last time I saw public docs on Ontap v8.x the major features, benefits and improvements came in v8.1 rather than v8.0 - so I'm also rather keen to see what's being disclosed publicly re comparisons between v7.3, 8.0 & 8.1
The PDF published on the Netapp website (http://media.netapp.com/documents/ds-2950.pdf) re 8.0 7-mode makes lots of claims re 'lower TCO', 'increase productivity' etc but I can find nothing about a) what they are comparing to, b) what level of improvement and c) what proves the justification for these statements

2) Object storage

Fundamentally this is good news
mid/end 2010 will be too late, if it's not Q4 '09 then the momentum will be elsewhere
In the object space, the model cares & relies much less on the 'tin' thus the 'OnTap Object' techology will need to exist in a software 'virtual appliance' that can run on commodity hardware (look at the great things done by Caringo is this area)
Price point - similarly object storage is expected to have a materially lower price point than SAN or NAS (think DAS price point), very unclear how NetApp will be able to achieve this given their current pricing models
There is a lot more to object storage than simply being able to use a REST or SOAP API to R/W objects - look at how long it's taking EMC to get Atmos into shape (and there are some mightly minds on that project)
API - if it's not both XAM and EC2 compatible, then frankly don't bother. So when will the API details be published?

So for me these announcements are nice but nothing more than that, until the details are made public and the code goes GD (rather than GA). Of course what I really want to see is a TCO model comparing the before and after pictures :)

[Disclaimer] I am a NetApp customer and have over a PB of their disk platforms and have access to NDA information (that I will not disclose)

Objects & Metadata

2009-08-22T14:00:00.001+01:00

As usual Dave Graham brings up some interesting and worthwhile topics in his blog post here http://flickerdown.com/2009/08/micro-burst-metadata/#comments

Now being an ex database programmer ('ex' of anything being of course the very worse and most dangerous type), and of course a storage curmudgeon, I have a passion for the topic of metadata and data. And being somebody having to deal with PBs of object data I naturally have some concerns and views here...

Now normally I agree with Dave on a lot of things - but I have to say I much prefer my scallops to be seared and served on black pudding nice and simply, letting the quality of the flavours shine.

That said I have to agree re his view of being able to segment metadata & object storage models into two areas - but do think there is a place (almost essential IMHO) for both models in the future storage.

We've seen this area tackled by a number of existing technologies re CAS and object stores (Caringo CFS gateway onto Castor object layer is good example) - but are only just starting to see the key new elements test these, namely vast scale (think EBs), geo-dispersal/distribution/replication, low cost.

I do also think it's worth exploring some of the possible types / layers of metadata, for me this breaks into :-

System / Infrastructure metadata - the metadata mandated by the storage service subsystem for every application using the service and every object held within the storage service. System metadata is under the exclusive control of storage service subsystem, although can be referenced by applications & users. Examples such as object ID, creation data, security, hash/checksum, Storage service SLA attributes (resilience, performance etc) etc.
Application metadata - This is the metadata associated with each object that is controlled and required by the application service(s) utilising the object. There may be multiple sets of application metadata for a single object, each only accessible by the approved application.
Object metadata - context & descriptive attributes, object history, related objects, optional user extensible metadata

I would expect all 3 examples of these metadata to be linked with every object, with at least the 'system metadata' always held locally with the object. The 'application metadata' & 'object metadata' may reside in the storage system, the storage service, the application or any combination. (In this context I refer to the storage system as an object store, and the storage server as being object store + metadata store)

Some of the metadata relates to the application and infrastructure architecture (eg geo-location information re object distribution & replication) whilst some of the metadata are attribute fields used within the application itself.

Given the above, it should be clear that I certainly agree with an entry Dave made in his blog comments re :-

"interesting note on ownership to which I'd say that there has to be dual ownership, one from the system level (with immutable meta such as creation date, etc.) as well as mutable data (e.g. user generated meta). The meta db then needs to maintain and track 2 different levels. Policy can affect either, fwiw."

So some thoughts about where to locate metadata as it relates to the object :-

As referenced above, I believe 'System metadata' must always reside with the object as it is used by the storage service for mngt, manipulation and control of the object itself, and ensure it's resilience & availability.
As has been an issue with file-systems for some time, there is always an issue with fragmentation of the underlying persistency layer with vast size differences between objects and metadata when they are tightly coupled
As a result of needing to traverse the persistency layer to establish the metadata, there are performance issues associated with metadata embedded within the object layer - move the metadata to a record based system and performance & accessibility can increase dramatically
For certain classes of use (eg web 2 etc) it's often the metadata that is accessed, utilised & manipulated several orders of magitude more often than the objects themselves, thus the above improvements in performance and accessibility of metadata (thin SQL query etc) make major differences
Clearly if the metadata and objects are held separately the metadata can be delivered to applications without needing to send the objects, similarly the metadata can be distributed separately / in-advance of the object. Thus having major advantages for application scaling and geo-distribution.
With the split of persistecy location / methods this also allows for security layers to be handled differently for the metadata and the object.

This also brings into line a question area I've been working with for over 2 years with object stores - in that what features & functions should live in the application layer and what features and functions should live within the infrastructure (storage service) layer. What areas of metadata are actually data information in their own right, or embedded in the application logic, there appears to be no clear rules or guidelines.

If you like, this could be seen as an argument between IaaS & Paas - and for sure the only sensible answer for a company right now is IaaS, PaaS exposes far too much of the logic, taxonomy, behaviours, trends and metadata layers to the PaaS provider than is healthy.

There is also an additional interest point re metadata - as we move from the System metadata into the Application & Object metadata, should we consider privacy and encryption of the metadata itself? (assuming that the objects will always be protected appropriately) I could see how this will be a requirement in some multi-tenancy environments an for some metadata elements...

Lastly some more questions :-

How do you cover the topics of backup/recovery of the various metadata elements?
How do you cope with bulk import / export of the various levels of metadata and their logical / context relationships?
What standards will emerge for metadata schema definitions and attributes?
What standards will emerge for policy script language & descriptors that manipulate within the storage systems? (think how to describe an SLA in a programmatic language)
Can security authorisation & permission tokens exist and be enforced in a separate context and control domain to the identities?

Naturally in this we're not covering any of the 'internal' metadata used by the storage system to locate objects, to handle the multiple instances of the same object within a 'object storage service' (resilience, replication etc), to enable sharding / RSE encoding of objects etc that the storage system has to cope with.

Now I'm off for some lunch, I'm hungry and fancy some seafood for some reason ;)

Cheers

Ian

Storage Security

2009-08-16T21:00:00.001+01:00

In this post I'm going to discuss a small area of storage security, specifically the privacy side of the security coin, more specifically array data erase. Right, so in my view security is a very dangerous area for people to wade into, especially storage people.

However when we do dare to wade into this area my feeling is that the storage people often either :-

Totally ignore the topic and hope (the religious Ostrich strategy)
Simply don't understand the topic, and have no idea how to assimilate the vast myriad of actual or hype 'requirements' that impact storage from a security aspect, or frankly don't know who to trust in this area (other than @beaker obviously)
People often select and place security technologies in the wrong areas in the mis-belief that this will help them

Security is always an expensive topic in terms of investment, process and discipline - and generally I'd argue that often a bad security design, or technology, is actually worse (& more expensive) than no security.

However one interesting security technology that I do think has a use in the storage array area is the TCG SSC Opal standards work, which should offer another option in the 'data erase' sector.

With it already often taking "well over a week" to securely erase a current 100TB array, just how long do you think it will take to secure erase a 2PB disk array using current methods, and at what cost? For those companies disposing of, or refreshing, 10s->100s of arrays every year, this is a major & expensive pain.

My understanding of one element of TCG SSC Opal is that each individual disk interface uses standards-based encryption techniques and methodologies (AES-128 or AES-256) to encrypt all data stored on that disk. Further this supports multiple storage ranges with each having its own authentication and encryption key. The range start, range length, read/write locks as well as the user read/write access control for each range are configurable by the administrator. Thus to 'erase' the data only the keys need to be revoked and destroyed within the drive.

Problems addressed

Failed / failing disks - Allowing data on failing disks to be 'erased' rapidly as part of the disk swap process.
Technology refresh & Array disposal - clearly before an array and it's disks can be exited from a company the data on disks must be rendered inaccessible, incurring considerable cost and time. Sometimes this results in physical destruction of the array and disks, preventing any possible credit / resale value.
Array relocation - increasingly it's a requirement to secure erase an array prior to moving it to an alternate location within the same company. Again incurring additional cost and time delays for the relocation.
Lack of standards - sure there's the U.S. Department of Defence 5220-22.M specification document, but this isn't an international standard, and is open to interpretation.

Benefits

Standards - this will provide an industry standard based method, against which vendors & technologies can be measured and operational practices audited against. Should also help reduce the FUD from technology sales in this area.
Scalability - unlike other 'in band' encryption technologies this solution scales linearly and independently with each disk in system, no bottlenecks or SPOFs introduced.
Time to erase - now this is a major pain as array capacities grow, particularly in migrations where the data on the array must be securely erased prior to array decommissioning. Hence extending the duration that power/cooling is needed etc. Anything that improves this timeline on-site is a significant benefit.
Reliability - strange one I know, but a fair % of enterprises do not allow their failing disks to be returned to the manufacturer under support or warranty, preferring instead to physically destroy such disks and pay for new ones. Thus denying the manufacture the RCA analysis process and not contributing to the continual improvement process. If the data on the disk is useless (according to an agreed standard, and at no cost/time impact to customer) then these disks may now go back into the RMA processes to the benefit of all.
Security - by providing an easy to utilise technology the technology should see increased utilisation and hence an overall improvement in the security of data in this area.
Cost reduction - clearly anything that saves time reduces some elements of cost. But this should also make a fair dent in additional technology sales and professional services costs. Similarly, should also reduce the need to physically destroy (disks & arrays) during refresh projects, and thus expand a resale market / opportunity.

The questions I want to know answers to though are :-

Why haven't I been hearing about this from array manufacturers in their 'long range' roadmaps?
When will we see the first array manufacturer supporting this? (the disk manufacturers are already doing so and shipping products)
What will be the cost uplift for this technology in disk & array?
When will the first customers mandate this in their storage RFx requirements?

Clearly this is only going to help for 'data at rest', on newer disk drive models & arrays, and not for portable media etc - but it's a step in the right direction.

Yes there is a need for more 'intelligence' in the disk drive firmware to ensure that latency & throughput levels are maintained. Yes there is work on the array needed for mngt control interfaces and KMS relationships etc. But I want to know more and get answers to my questions above :)

Some links for further reading on TCG SSC Opal :-

http://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org
http://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/developers/storage
http://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/developers/storage/specifications
http://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/developers/storage/faq
http://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/files/static_page_files/B1105605-1D09-3519-AD6FD7F6056B2309/Opal_SSC_FAQ_final_Jan_27_4_.pdf

Now I'm no hippy but...

2009-08-16T14:41:00.021+01:00

Whilst wandering through TED videos the other day on my 'Mother TED' application on my Android HTC Magic I found this video from 2005 that I'd not seen before, with Bono making his requests for the 3 wishes that TED granted him :-

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/bono_s_call_to_action_for_africa.html

Yes it's 27mins long- but spare the time, it's worth it and at least we're able to watch it...

The thing that startled, depressed and really bothered me is that how relevant all of the points Bono makes are, and that they are all still (sadly) valid :(

I understand from here that there was some good reasoning made in '05/'06 as to the technical challenges, and why the 3rd wish hasn't yet been granted. However 4 years is a very long time in technlogy, so I'm intrigued as to what is possible today and tomorrow.

So hopefully ignoring all the 'feel good' bull associated with corporate social responsibility, I've decided to build in a couple of my own questions into the meetings, presentations and pitches that get made to me by large vendors re technology that they want me to approve or purchase. Namely the following :-

1) I want the first content slide presented to me to be a statement from your company re it's position, status, plan & contribution to the three wishes stated in Bono's video

2) I want the second content slide presented to me to detail your companies contribution to charities, help and aid, specific projects as % of revenue and profit.

I used to work in a company where all our purchase request costs were reported internally in terms of the qty of products we needed to sell in order to generate the funds to pay for the request - I wonder how many IT people are able to do this today? I wonder how many would be brave enough to think of them in terms of lives in less fortunate countries?

As I'm prohibited from declaring the IT 'street' prices I'm aware of and then comparing then to aid impacts - I'll just leave it with the questions "is that storage price really good value?" and "why is data on an array invested in more than a life in Africa?"

Hello Dave - don't get misty eyed

2009-08-08T08:30:00.001+01:00

Just a brief post to say hello and welcome to the cloud area to somebody that I have a great amount of time & respect for, so :-

"hello Dave Graham it's great to hear you're taking a key role in the cloud infrastructure arena, please keep to your great ways so far and don't get misty eyed or foggy over matters :)"

To hear from the man himself see here :-
http://flickerdown.com/2009/08/transition-to-the-cloud/

Infrastructure Conferences

2009-08-08T08:00:00.001+01:00

Boring I know, but here's the list of infrastructure & storage events that (all being well) I should be attending in the coming months :-

CloudCamp London - next one London Sept 24, 2009 6pm to 10 pm
IP Expo - London Earls Court Oct 7-8 2009 (thanks StorageZilla)
StorageExpo - London Olympia, 14/15 Oct 2009 (one day only)
SNW Europe - Frankfurt, Oct 26/27/28 2009
EMC Intl Customer Council (invite only) - Prague Nov 2009
CloudExpo London
Cisco Networkers - Barcelona Jan 25-28 2010
Cebit 2010 - Hannover March 2-6 2010 (one day only)
VMWorld Europe 2010 - in Oct 2010 in Cannes (if it occurs)

Like most people I find the peer disucssion the most useful, but add to that the ability to speak directly and candidly with the relevant empowered decision makers, and the events are a lot more than the 'jolly' some people think of them. Trust me you know my views on business travel by now, and I wouldn't be attending if I didn't think it valuable...

If you're attending any of the above then let me know, hell I might even ask you to buy me a beer! :) If you know of any other good events re data-centre infrastructure or cloud topics then let me know and I might attend and buy you a beer! :)