Latest News from Dave Graham

Frosting the FCoE Cake…

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:34:01 EST

Image via Wikipedia I was advised the other day that a certain manufacturer was adopting a rather interesting model for Fibre Channel over Ethernet CNA licensing. Rather than simply purchasing a FCoE CNA with all the features (10GbE, iSCSI, and FCoE) turned on, they were going to adopt some sort of staggered licensing model that put [...]

Life with Qlogic’s 5802V

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:03:00 EDT

If you follow me on Twitter at all, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of Qlogic. I appreciate the functional simplicity of what Qlogic designs encompass as well as the “get business done” attitude that they bring to their switches, HBAs, NICs, and CNAs. Imagine my happiness, then, when I got ahold of one of their latest “edge” fibre channel switches, the SANbox 5802V. The SANbox 5802V follows the typical edge-switch formula: 20 SFP ports for either 4Gb/s SFPs or 8Gb/s SFP+, 4 stacking ports that default at 10Gb/s Fibre Channel connection and can be upgraded to 20Gb/s FC when additional bandwidth is needed, a serial and IP-based management port setup, and dual redundant power supplies (the 5802V ships with 2 PSUs; the 5800V model ships with only 1).

Why Policy Is the Future of Storage, Part 2

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:30:00 EDT

In my first post on policy, I tried to show what policy's influence would be like from a top-level standpoint. We see that policy can start from a localized array standpoint and "fix" performance or hotspot issues based on key LUN migration technologies (like EMC's FAST promises to do; Compellent already does [...]

Why Policy is the Future of Storage

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 04:30:00 EDT

As many of you may know, I work for EMC’s Cloud Infrastructure Group as part of the Atmos solution team. In this role, I’ve been blessed with getting a closer look at where the future of cloud storage is going as well as some of the drivers that will get it there. In [...]

Cisco Tech Minute Appearance #3

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 08:54:30 EDT

This was filmed Wednesday, September 2nd. Enjoy!

Cisco Tech Minute Appearance #2

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 10:47:13 EDT

Yup, I’m at it again. This tech minute recording was taken yesterday (September 1) and features the wonderful talents of Chad Sakac and Chris Hoff! Enjoy!

Cisco Tech Minute Appearance #1

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 03:11:25 EDT

Just a video from the Cisco Tech Minute filmed on Monday, August 31. Enjoy!

Micro-burst: Metadata

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 11:50:55 EDT

One of the principle points of contention within the cloud storage space is what to do with metadata (literally: “data about data”). There are several schools of thought regarding how metadata should be presented, protected and optimized but for the sake of this post, I’ll just tackle 2 of them. These two thought processes are: [...]

Micro-burst: Retrofit or Net-New?

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:37:50 EDT

I’ve been ruminating on a conversation that I was part of at the recent Cloud Camp – Boston “un-conference.” In this particular case, a customer (a VAR; NOT a manufacturer) was talking about leveraging cloud storage for a particular customer of theirs who had the following “essential criteria” that needed design help: multiple petabytes of [...]

Micro-burst: Master Node Topology

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:53:46 EDT

Going along with the Cloud theme that I’m fortunate enough to be a part of, I’ve decided to use the “micro-burst” moniker to section off quick n’ dirty posts on a variety of cloud subjects that I don’t have time to dive into fully. With that in mind, let’s get on with the show. Master Node [...]

Transition to the Cloud

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:15:00 EDT

Well folks, it’s been fun being your “EMC Technical Consultant on the Interweb.” (there are more of us, trust me. ) It is with great happiness, however, that I get to report that I’m moving over to what has to be the most exciting innovation within EMC in the short time I’ve been [...]

FUSE Challenge

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:02:12 EDT

So, after a few days of beating around this problem, I’ve come to the conclusion that either I’m a complete Linux tool (likely) or there is something fundamentally wrong with FUSE 2.7.4 and CentOS 5.3 (x86-64 edition). (FUSE = Filesytem in User Space) To that end, I’ve got the following challenge: show me a [...]

FCoE: “Soft” FCoE Integration

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:30:14 EDT

There appears to be quite the interesting discussion going on over at Scott Lowe’s blog regarding FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) as its relationship to the data center, VMware, and, pretty much everything else. I love watching people put their thoughts to eletronic ink (via the comments section) but recently, I’ve had some pretty interesting [...]

Emulex E3S: Fitment

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:40:52 EDT

In my first article on the Emulex E3S Gateway, I simply relayed a high-level look at the device as well as a sample diagram of how integration would look within a very simplistic block-based environment. Overall, it appears that the concept of a hardware “gateway” to the cloud is very well accepted as a mechanism [...]

Moving from Block to Cloud: Emulex E3S

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:30:08 EDT

It’s not often that I get excited about technology within the storage space. There are notables, of course, mostly that take my love for high bandwidth interconnects (e.g. Infiniband, Rapid I/O) and mash them up with high-speed storage (EFDs, Fusion-IO). That being said, when it comes to the cloud, I’m absolutely estatic when off-the-shelf [...]

Dell and VMware: A Match Made in Heaven

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:00:00 EDT

Cool new toy just landed in my lab for a production VMware vSphere implementation. This one is going to one of our internal groups that has a moderate load Microsoft SQL implementation.

Where Community Begins

Thu, 21 May 2009 12:50:00 EDT

Nothing tends to solidify a community more than a cause that hits each of us at our base element: our physical being. In this case, we've seen a massive explosion of support within the storage community with folks from NetApp, HDS, HP, IBM, and EMC (amongst many) coming to the aid of Nick Glasgow who [...]

Iomega eGo: Fashionable Mobility

Tue, 19 May 2009 07:34:22 EDT

As you’re probably aware by now, Iomega just launched their new line of eGo portable drives with increased capacity and protection capabilities. While this may seems to be a superficial change for those used to other portable harddrives (from other manufacturers that shall not be named), it’s worth a look into the technology to see [...]

How EMC Is Approaching the Social Media Scene

Mon, 18 May 2009 23:00:00 EDT

It’s interesting to people watch at a conference. You get to appreciate the reach and depth of EMC’s product portfolio which is represented best by the customers and employees that both use and create this technology. Sometimes, it’s hard to segment the two. But, at the end of the day, it’s incredible to be able to put faces with names, voices with the inevitable typing foibles and prose that we’ve all come to know and love.

Deploying FCoE: What you need to know

Mon, 11 May 2009 15:45:07 EDT

So, my good friend Stu Miniman (@stu on Twitter) put out a video a few months back extolling the virtues of FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) for the next generation data center. This video, while fascinating, didn’t answer the underlying hardware questions that we all had: What the heck does all this stuff look like? [...]

V-Max: What’s in a name?

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 12:09:44 EDT

Symmetrix V-Max™ Yamaha Star Vmax™ Hornady V-Max™ Storage Capacity Scales to 2 Petabytes You + Significant other Storage?!?! Speeds n’ Feeds 4Gb/s Front-End/Back-End; EFDs for Tier 0 storage Miles per hour Feet per Second Death Quotient Not unless you drop the rack on yourself (or like the tickle of 208v) Wear a helmet. The rest is skill It’s a bullet. What do YOU think? Varmints beware! Efficiency The most efficient [...]

More Symmetrix V-Max Coverage

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 09:48:07 EDT

Here are some additional links to Symmetrix V-Max coverage. I’m trying to go for a healthy blend of EMC insiders, customers, external bloggers. If you see something that should be here, let me know. Techmute.com (customer) A Response to Tony’s V-Max Questions Brian Henderson – Power Windows (EMC) EMC Symmetrix V-Max in Use at Microsoft adCenter EMC Symmetrix V-Max and Mixed [...]

Symmetrix V-Max Coverage

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:27:28 EDT

This list is mirrored from The Storage Anarchist but I figured you’d want to stay on top of things. He’ll be posting updates as well. I’m trying to collect some other bits and pieces. FriendFeed listing for EMC Corporation: Real-time feed from EMC Corp Barry Burke - the storage anarchist (highly recommended reading!): 1.055: symmetrix v-max – a revolutionary evolution 1.056: inside [...]

Happy V-Max day!

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 09:08:37 EDT

Short of calling this a holiday, i figure that we should probably commemorate this somehow. feel free to use this as a desktop background.

Welcome to the next generation: Symmetrix V-Max is here…

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:00:39 EDT

So, it’s 1201am and…well, now you know what we’re talking about, hinting about, laughing about, and honestly…what we’ve been waiting for. The Symmetrix V-Max is here and it’s ready to drop the hammer on what you know about storage. What’s in the box? Simply put, the Symmetrix V-Max ™ is designed from the ground up for scalable [...]

PowerPath, AIX 5.3, and LTG: Solutions

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:05:34 EDT

Over at StorageMonkeys, Rclark posted the following question: We’re trying to increase the LTG and max_transfer sizes on PowerPath on AIX 5.3. We’ve gone through the steps that worked in the past, but the LTG will not increase. I’ve looked through PowerLink, but haven’t found anything topical. Any links or pointers would be appreciated. In talking with [...]

CloudCall #1: Schedule of Events

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 13:26:18 EDT

I’m anxiously looking forward to tomorrow’s CloudCall event. I’ve previously published the bridge line information here and all that’s really left is a “schedule” for the call. So, here you go! Topic: Cisco Unified Computing/Communication Server Call Schedule: Introduction and Topic Exposition - 5 minutes Open discussion on the applicability of Cisco’s UCS for public/private clouds (virtualization) - 50 minutes Some [...]

IDC Directions – Boston 2009: The Future is Cloud(y) – Part 1

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:17:36 EDT

I think it’s safe to say that we’re living in a very difficult and challenging economic time. All around us, there are stories of companies closing their doors due to depreciated revenues, mergers and acquisitions taking place to absorb the incredible amount of talent that’s being driven into the streets, etc. In this type of [...]

CloudCall #1: Cisco UCS & the Private/Public Cloud - Implications

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:44:18 EDT

CloudCall #1 is on March 23rd, 2009 at the times listed below. It is NOT today. Since the Cisco UCS announcement on 3/16/09, there has been a flurry of commentary within the social media scene (blogs, twitter, etc.) as well as within the industry analyst space about what the implications are for Cisco joining the [...]

A Vision of Failure

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

I’m probably the last person in the world you’d ever expect to write a post titled “A Vision of Failure” but, perhaps that’s more due to my inability these days to provide anyone with a sense of hopefulness regarding where cloud computing and the like are headed. Visions, much like prophecies, exist to denote the [...]

A Vision of Failure

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

A Vision of Failure

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

A Vision of Failure

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

A Vision of Failure

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

A Vision of Failure

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

A Vision of Failure

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

A Vision of Failure

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

A Vision of Failure

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

A Vision of Failure

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

A Vision of Failure

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 EST

Hybridizing DR for the Cloud: Concerns

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 12:42:50 EST

Over at Information Playground, Steve Todd has started down the path of no return: private clouds. (Incidentally, I find it quite ironic that private clouds are no more private than public clouds in that they’re essentially run on the same infrastructure and face the exact same challenges for security, data mobility, and perminence that the [...]

Refreshing Celerra: New Models + New Features

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 11:02:52 EST

As you probably have heard by now, EMC has refreshed the Celerra line a bit. With today’s announcement, we’ve added the following hardware models to the fold: NS-480 with 2 or 4 datamovers NS-960 with support for up to 960 drives NS-G8 with support for up to 8 datamovers and connectivity to Symmetrix & CLARiiON systems Now that that’s [...]

Cloud Personality Types…

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:21:53 EST

In the mental health world, a lot of talk is made about various pathologies, their presentations, as well as tying them to certain personality types that pre-dispose them to affliction. That’s a mouthful to process through, but the same type of examination can be applied to those who engage in “cloud oriented behaviour.” Here is [...]

VMware ESX alignment document for EMC Clariion & Symmetrix

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:33:44 EST

For folks that were on today’s VMware Communities Roundtable live podcast, mention was made of partition alignment under VMFS & the storage array being used. To that end, here is EMC’s document on VMware ESX connectivity to EMC Symmetrix and CLARiiON storage which covers partition alignment. Document is here & Powerlink Location.

Cloud Talk Debrief: Impromptu Session

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:02:44 EST

Yesterday, I held a rather impromptu “Cloud Talk” session with some of the Twitter community that has expressed an interested in cloud computing, cloud storage, etc. I’m happy to report that given the rather abrupt beginning of the session, I still was able to sit down and talk with seven individuals (sorry, Stu ) [...]

Cloud Talk: March 16th, 2009

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:29:28 EST

Join me on March 16th, 2009 for another exciting “Cloud Talk” session. We’ll be kicking this off in two slices: One for those in other countries (EMEA and APJ/AUS) and one for those in the Continental US. The international call will be at 630AM Eastern Standard Time and the Continental US call will be at [...]

Private Clouds & Storage: Considerations

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:59:30 EST

One of the current “hot” topics within the IT industry these days is the concept of cloud computing. While there is a level of ambiguity around what cloud computing actually is, there is a definite trend towards looking at what these cloud services and storage can do for the commercial and enterprise. Private Cloud Challenges In a [...]

Cloud Optimized Storage Solutions: Part 3b - Service Level Agreements

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:00:21 EST

In Part 3a of the Cloud Optimized Storage Solution series, I covered the concept of data tiering within the COSS solution. In this particular post, I’m going to start the conversation on how SLAs may tie into the overall concept of data tiering as well as infrastructure access SLAs. This particular post is more of [...]

Shared Filesystems in the Cloud

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 11:59:49 EST

Earlier this morning, Scott Lowe posed the following question: What if hypervisors shared a file system? The concept here is that most hypervisors (notably VMware and [soon] Hyper-V) have a clustered file system that is used to extend the capabilities of a group of hypervisors into such things as dynamic resource sharing, failover/failback, HA, etc. [...]

Competing for my attention…

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 10:51:45 EST

It’s been an interesting year and a half in the blog-o-sphere for me. To celebrate this new spin on life, I’m going to hold a “re-branding” competition. The rules are simple: provide re-design comps for the template (based on the Thesis theme by Chris Pearson) along with a new logo! (oh, if you can implement [...]