The chatter at StorageWorld Conference

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: MIKE KARP ON STORAGE IN THE ENTERPRISE
06/16/05
Today's focus: The chatter at StorageWorld Conference

Dear networking.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* StorageTek attracts crowds at its StorageWorld Conference
  booth
* Links related to Storage in the Enterprise
* Featured reader resource
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Today's focus: The chatter at StorageWorld Conference

By Mike Karp

Last week's StorageWorld Conference in Long Beach, Calif., was
interesting on a number of levels. Unlike many such gatherings,
this was no vendor love fest with vendors outnumbering corporate
IT types. A lot of this is probably due to efforts of the
Association of Storage Networking Professionals, which is
heavily involved in many aspects of the conference. Whatever the
reason, there were many real-world aspects to this conference
that often seem missing at other such get-togethers.

Two booths were clear winners, competing successfully with both
the other vendors' offerings and with the guy running the
espresso machine.

The StorageTek booth had good crowds throughout. In addition to
demos, the company made several product and strategy
announcements. The most significant of these concerns its new
IntelliStore data archiving solution, a disk and tape product
offering tiered storage and compliance solutions for companies
lacking the budget to invest in enterprise-sized devices.

StorageTek also delivered one of the keynotes. Unfortunately,
much of this was lost in the brouhaha surrounding the company's
impending acquisition by Sun (see last week's column). I
estimate about half the chatter in the booth was on that
subject, which must have been distracting. Still, StorageTek
seemed to have more booth traffic than anyone else, so on
balance it looks like it came out way ahead. See what publicity
having someone buy you for $4.1 billion can bring! Try it.

British tech firm Njini was right next to the StorageTek booth,
but obviously didn't need its neighbor to generate interest.
Njini has come up with what appears to be a revolutionary method
of attaching metadata tags to unstructured data ("unstructured
data" in essence is any data - text, bitmaps, rich media, it
makes no difference - that does not reside in a database or some
other structured format). The metadata associated with each file
is then held for use in subsequent searches. What is
particularly interesting is that the metadata is not just
stored, but is interpreted so that intelligent judgments can be
made about it. It is thus far more than a simple string search
as it should allow decision-making to be based not merely on the
content of a text string but on the meaning of the string as
well.

As unstructured data represents about half the data currently
being stored, any success in making that corpus more manageable
can have profound effects on a system's ability to understand,
retrieve and use stored information. The Njini approach looks at
the raw data to understand file type, key worlds and end-user
associations; groups like objects; and then provides automated
policies to manage the movement of data objects across the
various storage tiers. It also enforces policies that eliminate
data duplication and that ensure compliance, however that is
defined within the corporation.

All of this sounds like a front end to an information lifecycle
management implementation, but because it enables intelligent
searching of files based on their contents in fact it extends
well beyond today's standard ILM definitions. It is the not the
ability to extract metadata content that does this; rather, it
is Njini's apparent ability to interpret the data more
intelligently and then to create more intelligent metadata and
make the metadata available for more sophisticated operations
when data must be accessed.

And finally, one large vendor did something that clearly showed
it hadn't given much thought to training the people they sent
out to this show. The Fujitsu booth had technology demos of
Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS), a topic of interest to me and one
that you've seen covered in this column on many occasions. The
slide presentation accompanying the demo contrasted "SAS and
SCSI," when clearly the distinction it intended to make was
between parallel and serial SCSI. I pointed this out to the
person manning the booth, suggesting that as SAS is still brand
new and just being rolled out into the marketplace this might
cause some confusion among IT buyers. Fujitsu guy stared at me
for a moment and then shared the following philosophical insight
with me: "If they don't understand the distinction, they
shouldn't be in the industry."

I am guessing there may be some among you who, while you may not
yet be up to speed on this new technology, nonetheless still
plan on staying in the industry. If that is the case, and if you
are looking for information on SAS before investing in your next
round of arrays, I am sure that other vendors such as Maxtor and
Seagate will be delighted to provide you with information on the
topic. Alternatively, the SCSI Trade Association's Web site (
<http://www.scsita.org/> ) is an excellent repository for such
knowledge, and includes a dandy paper on the topic that you can
download for free (
<http://www.scsita.org/aboutscsi/sas/STS_SAS_WP.pdf> ). Modesty
forbids that I mention the author's name.

RELATED EDITORIAL LINKS

Association of Storage Networking Professionals
http://www.asnp.org/

WilTel storage services focus on disaster recovery
Network World, 06/13/05
http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage2647
_______________________________________________________________
To contact: Mike Karp

Mike Karp is senior analyst with Enterprise Management
Associates, focusing on storage, storage management and the
methodology that brings these issues into the marketplace. He
has spent more than 20 years in storage, systems management and
telecommunications. Mike can be reached via e-mail
<mailto:mkarp@enterprisemanagement.com>.
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Hewlett Packard
Choosing the Best Architecture

Learn how controller-based architecture for tape libraries best
meets reliability and interoperability requirements in
enterprise storage area networks. Details include how the
introduction of the HP StorageWorks Extended Tape Library
Architecture defines the next generation of tape libraries in
enterprise SAN environments. Download the white paper now!
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=106725
_______________________________________________________________
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