Chris Poelker's Most Recent Posts

Instead of bulk capital expenditures for large servers and storage arrays, you can purchase computer time based on actual usage of CPU cycles and storage by the number of gigabytes or terabytes used. But here are ten things to consider before you jump into the cloud. Insider (registration required)

It's that time of year again. So, let's breakout the old crystal ball and look into the future to find out what data storage and intelligent storage networking developments will be most prevalent in the year to come.

In a down market, many organizations look to reduce costs. One tried and true method in cost reduction is to review existing IT operational procedures in order to determine where adding efficiencies may reduce operational budget requirements.

The term "rolling your own" used to refer to using rolling paper to create your own cigarettes (or other more relaxing brand of smoking instruments). Much the same phenomenon is playing out among those who purchase reference architecture. I use the analogy here to highlight how the data center has come full circle in the way it builds out infrastructure.

The cloud is changing the storage game. Once, storage pricing was based on market conditions, and actual prices were held in confidence by vendors until deals were done. The move to private, public and hybrid clouds has affected every aspect of storage capacity consumption.

Few enterprises relish planning or testing for business continuity. No one wants to think about all the terrible (or stupid) things that can happen which might cause an outage; but every business has to do so, and it is the specific responsibility of IT to assure systems can be brought back online efficiently and correctly if something does happen.

Backing up data has always driven data center administrators crazy. It's expensive, complicated and prone to serious errors. The reason is the amount of data always has and always will grow enormously, and it has gotten to the point where many organizations can no longer accomplish their backup and disaster recovery tasks in the available time.

The recent outage over at Amazon was actually a good thing for cloud computing. It was a call to action that brought to light the need for solid standards for cloud infrastructure and iron-clad contractual obligations between cloud providers and subscribers.

The first step of moving from a traditional data center model into the cloud is typically determined by the state of your IT infrastructure. If you have recent investments in servers or storage and your infrastructure is fairly new, you can begin by introducing virtualization into your existing data center to create your own private infrastructure cloud. If your equipment is old and your expensive maintenance contracts are coming up for renewal, you can move to the cloud by purchasing infrastructure resources as a service from a cloud provider that will run your applications externally in its data center.

Cloud computing is made up of a variety of layered elements, starting at the most basic physical layer of storage and server infrastructure and working up through the application and network layers. The cloud can be further divided into different implementation models based on whether it's created internally, outsourced or a combination of the two.

In the past two decades, the cloud and the IT service provider model struggled to gain traction primarily due to cost. Some key technologies, which could have offset that problem, did not yet exist. Today, these elements are readily available and include: virtualization, data deduplication, continuous data protection and advanced encryption.

The concept of a cloud as the paradigm for abstracting the complexity within traditional data center operations and computing began with network administrators. They used a cloud metaphor to document the details of large local and wide area networks. When they depicted something as a cloud, they would reference it as "all the users" of an application or resource, or "the public network" or privately owned wide area network (WAN) resources within an organization.

As this new year begins, take a moment to look back and marvel at all you have accomplished. I’m sure 2010 was no picnic for most of you, and all those projects were hard, but those difficult projects were well worth the effort.

Server virtualization has become the number one project in most IT organizations around the world. CIO's around the planet are looking to improve their IT cost structures, and it just makes sense to consolidate existing server footprints onto more powerful platforms that are much easier to manage and protect, while enabling organizations to reduce server footprints tenfold or more. The savings in floor space, power and cooling alone can sometimes pay for the migration to the new infrastructure. Abstracting application servers from the physical vendor hardware has the added benefit of commoditizing servers, which also lowers capital expense.

Unless you have been stranded on a deserted island the last few years, you know that the storage industry is rapidly consolidating. This is due in part to the recent contraction of the overall economy, but only in part. This primary cause of the contraction is that the storage industry is maturing.