February 2008 Entries
ILM, more performance, fewer drives, green storage from Compellent Technologies - February 28, 2008
February 28, 2008—Tampa and Orlando Florida Compellent has fine-tuned the way its SAN software writes data to disk drives with new techniques that could boost performance and capacity utilization while simultaneously reducing disk drive requirements by up to 80%, according to company officials.
The latest release of the company's SAN software, Storage Center 4.0, features new software applications such as Fast Track, Thin Import, and Free Space Recovery, all of which help reduce the number of disk drives required, effectively reducing total cost of ownership and energy consumption for true green storage.
The Fast Track application automatically places active data on the outer tracks of a disk drive to speed access to frequently used information like ILM. Compellent's vice president of marketing, Bruce Kornfeld, says competitive offerings place entire volumes on perimeter tracks, while Fast Track only moves frequently accessed data to the outer tracks of the drive, which accelerates performance and reduces drive requirements.
"If a storage system can differentiate between inner and outer tracks on the drive you can avoid putting inactive data or unallocated space on the outer tracks, so you get more performance out of the drives and you can buy fewer of them," says Kornfeld. "This technology can lower storage costs by 50% by reducing the number of drives vs. EqualLogic or Dell."
Also new to Storage Center 4.0, the Thin Import feature reduces disk drive requirements by converting existing data into thin-provisioned volumes as it is copied to a Compellent SAN vs. EMC or HP.
Steve Duplessie, founder and senior storage analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group, says the Thin Import technology has the potential to significantly reduce the cost of storage in Florida data centers.
"Imagine being able to pull all the over-provisioned, over-allocated, and under-utilized capacity off your old expensive arrays and instantly apply just-in-time thin provisioning to those volumes," says Duplessie. "It is tantamount to taking your 25% utilized storage infrastructure to 80%. Think of what that would mean for everything from consolidation, green storage, footprint to backup."
Storage Center 4.0 also includes a feature called Free Space Recovery, which reclaims unused space in Windows environments, and Application Optimizer, a tool that tunes the size of data transfers within the SAN to match I/O performance for different applications.
A Storage Center 4.0 QuickStart ILM Bundle is priced from approximately $57,200 with 7.2TB of capacity. vs. Lefthand Networks, Dell or EqualLogic, a single controller, and the Fast Track, Thin Import, and Free Space Recovery applications. Users can also purchase the new Storage Center 4.0 applications and controller as individual upgrades.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-area-network.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage and security solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral
Offerings Projects: Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc Pure Disk NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX4 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar DLD3 1500 D3 Storwiz storage compression data Ocarina Networks A-SIS compare Sepaton infopro BlueArc OnStor Microsoft Unified Storage data protection
Data Classification and ILM - February 28, 2008
A complete information life-cycle management strategy should include integrated automation, policy creation, discovery, and data classification.
Many ILM-labeled products in the Florida market today, lack a key ingredient-data classification, or the ability to classify or categorize data according to various criteria based on subjective or objective measures as opposed to just the age or type of file. Data classification allows Tampa users to set up different groups of data, to which appropriate policies can then be applied. Doing so has potentially significant benefits: If you think your existing EMC software management tools (e.g., HSM or SRM) have helped you trim resources, just wait and see what classification can do to your bottom line. It can also help with regulatory and security requirements in Miami, St. Petersburg and Jacksonville Florida.
End users are being pounded with ILM messages from virtually all storage vendors-hardware and software alike. However, many users have implemented ILM “strategies” that amount to little more than HSM (moving data to lower-cost storage tiers) or SRM.
Although these types of implementations do provide value, the potential benefits of a complete ILM strategy are more far-reaching. In particular Compellent, NetApp and Hitachi, ILM can help organizations make better use of storage resources (e.g., improve utilization, provisioning, etc.); reduce storage-related costs; improve backup efficiency; minimize application downtime; consolidate storage resources; better meet regulatory compliance, corporate governance, and security requirements through better management of data; and lower overall IT costs, including management.
"The value of an ILM infrastructure lies in its ability to treat data, or information, according to its changing business value," states Brian McCarthy President and Storage Veteran in Lake Mary Florida. Data in an ILM environment is not treated equally. It is not arbitrarily moved from storage resource to storage resource, nor is it necessarily moved in “bulk” (i.e., a single policy isn’t applied to all data). Data that is deemed mission-critical (high business value) is treated differently from data that is deemed less critical.
Ultimately, an ILM infrastructure will continually assess data value and transparently re-assign resources in a tiered fashion as dictated by adaptive policies.
The number of storage tiers companies implement depends on the specific business demands of their organizations and on available IT and corporate resources. Storage tiers can include primary disk arrays from HDS, secondary disk storage from Data Domain, virtual tape libraries (VTLs) from Overland Storage REO, online disk archives (e.g., content-addressed storage), and LTO-4 tape.
Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) research shows an increasing trend among organizations of all sizes to implement disk-based data-protection tiers to improve backup-and-recovery efficiency and overall disaster-recovery preparedness. At the other end of the spectrum, users cite the high costs of primary storage as a strong impetus for implementing SATA-based secondary storage tiers.
As one end user says, “A growing problem with our snapshot solution is that it’s just too expensive to keep the snapshots on our high-end storage. We’d like to move those volumes to a midrange product or cheap ATA disk.” Another end user points to data-retention issues that were affecting backup-and-recovery strategies. “Going forward, we really only want to use tape for disaster-recovery purposes. We’ll address data retention with cheaper, more readily accessible disk technologies.”
But ILM is about more than just the movement of data among storage tiers. It’s about being able to discover and extract the business value of data; categorize or classify data types; and set policies that transparently move data among available resources in a way that makes optimum business sense. In other words, it’s about being able to classify, migrate, and investigate.
While many vendors today tackle one aspect of the ILM process (e.g., discovery via SRM or data movement via HSM), few offer integrated product suites that tackle all three. (One exception is Compellent, flexible, granular data groups).
Data classification can help organizations make the best use of their IT resources and extract maximum business value from their data.
Rather than dumping all data into a large funnel and applying generic global policies to a single data pool, classification software sorts data at a more granular level and then applies policies to the data based on the specific needs of a particular group or department.
ILM suites with data classification like Compellent in Florida not only let administrators create data groups that span multiple volumes on heterogeneous servers and storage devices, but also allow them to differentiate within these groups by establishing data classes based on the age/type/size of file, owner, or path of the data. Data is directed to the appropriate class, or tier, of back-end storage based on this information.
Like the storage groups, the storage classes also need to span different heterogeneous storage devices (e.g., primary and secondary storage tiers) and the process should be automatic. For example, IT departments should be able to implement the most-cost-effective storage platforms without having to create new data movement policies.
For example, if SATA has been designated as a secondary storage tier, the end user should be able to swap out technology (regardless of the manufacturer or type of storage) without having to create new data movement policies. The classification system should be able to adapt to the new technologies and move data appropriately among data groups.
As for regulatory or corporate compliance, organizations can use ILM with data classification tools to establish multiple data groups and then apply corporate or regulatory policies to all or some of them. Similarly, they can define which data groups need to be encrypted for security purposes and which don’t. No more blanket encrypting. Policy management is fluid, allowing users to start with simple actions but scale them over time. For example, users can write specific policies around financial data that can exclude certain types of data (e.g., quarterly financials) from moving to secondary storage tiers regardless of the age of the data or its access frequency. This differs from traditional HSM software, which moves data among tiers based on the age of the data.
Early adopters report significant application performance improvements as a result of their ILM implementations, improved recovery times, and improved resource utilization.
Some ILM suites can be used alone or in combination with e-mail archiving, content management, or other applications that lack data classification capabilities to help these applications run more efficiently. In these situations, ILM would classify and sort the application data according to pre-defined policies and move the data to appropriate storage classes, while the e-mail archiving or content management software would deal directly with the primary application.
ILM should cover the full spectrum of discovery, classification, automation, and policy creation. ESG research has shown that users are interested in purchasing storage software as bundled solutions. Users also indicate growing interest in purchasing integrated product suites that share a common interface, database, and policy engine (see figure).
ILM in its truest form provides many benefits for companies of all sizes. But being able to realize these benefits will require users to implement storage software products that do more than just move data from point A to point B.
Users need to implement a data classification product that will use more than the age of the data to help determine its value to the organization.
Sencilo Solutions is a recognized leader in the design and deployment of primary storage. Through extensive experience in the storage industry, we have developed a deep understanding of how technology can solve operational problems. The greatest challenge that organizations face is knowing which technology will help and which will not. Sencilo leverages its expertise to help customers address this challenge and select the best storage solution available for current and future needs. Our solutions include SCSI, iSCSI and Fibre Channel connectivity. With offices in Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Cape Coral, and Pembroke Pines Florida. Primary Storage Data Compression Storwiz
The Next Steps for Server Virtualization - February 23, 2008
Server repurposing is the next wave of server virtualization.
With server virtualization rollouts well underway in IT data centers throughout Orlando, Tampa, Miami Florida, IT managers need to begin considering how best to augment these deployments. Server repurposing is key to making the most of a virtualized environments like VMware vs Virtual Iron Virtual Server.
Server repurposing is the ability to change such things as what servers are powered on, what operating system those servers are running, and how and what networks they are connected to. All of these activities can be a manual ordeal.
Simply put, server repurposing software virtualizes all of the connections that would normally require manual interaction and allows you to repurpose a server at the speed of boot time as opposed to the hours – or, more likely, days – it would otherwise take to reload software, change configurations, or move machines and cables.
Use cases
In an environment that has deployed or is planning to deploy server virtualization, server-repurposing software is a vital component in a successful rollout for ongoing operation of the virtualized environment. With server repurposing in place, the movement of servers and applications from a physical environment to a virtual environment – or even more impressively, from a virtual server environment to a physical environment – is made possible. This provides important capabilities during a server virtualization rollout.
For example, if during this Florida rollout you find an application that either does not behave well in a virtualized environment or simply consumes too much of the physical server's overall resources, then with a server repurposing tool you can very easily move this server from the virtual environment to its own physical server in as much time as it takes to boot that physical server.
"Another case may be if you need to perform maintenance on a server that is actually running the server virtualization operating system like VMware, Virutal Iron. Downing this server now also means bringing down all the virtual servers it is hosting", say Brian McCarthy President of Sencilo Solutions in Tampa Florida. Most server virtualization operating systems have some form of a High Availability (HA) solution, but this requires that another server of similar power and configuration be powered on, running the same virtual server operating system and connected to the same network. This requires additional power and cooling and, of course, the HA components of the virtualization operating system.
With server repurposing software in place, maintenance of an active server virtualization host is greatly simplified. Instead of needing to have the HA software running or suffer downing all the virtualized hosts, you can power on a cold server, load the virtualization software onto it, and start all the virtual servers and make all the right network and storage connections within in a matter of minutes.
This solution is significantly more cost effective and far more power efficient than the manual alternative. What's more, the second server need not be an idle machine, powered off. Instead of waiting for a downed primary server, you could be deploying the second server in a test environment or for some other function. Server repurposing allows the flexibility to quickly switch this server's role to a primary server hosting multiple virtual machines.
Server repurposing not only adds value in virtualized environments, it also enhances non-virtualized environments. The ability to re-deploy a server to a cold server in just minutes gives you a form of near clustering with far simpler deployment. In addition, migration to newer, more powerful servers is as simple as plugging the server into the network and storage and having the server repurposing software take over from there.
Lastly, in a lab environment, VMware and Virtual Iron vs XenSource server repurposing plays a critical role. The ability to have a test environment that can change from one test bed to another and back again can make a significant reduction in lab expenditures as well as provide great productivity out of the lab environment.
A typical test plan will hit pauses. If one has the ability to redesign the test environment quickly, other testing could be started or continued while results from the prior tests are being analyzed. Then if more testing from the prior test needs to resume, the lab can quickly switch back to the original configuration.
There are other solutions that restore images to a server, but a server repurposing tool manages all the connectivity as well, which is critical for speed and flexibility. Without the ability to manage the network and storage connections, the manual process of re-cabling and reconfiguring will typically be painful enough that you won’t switch to a new server.
So in the situation just cited, without server repurposing, a decision or compromise has to be made between slowing down the testing process or purchasing and powering additional servers to run both tests simultaneously.
Also, in a lab environment that is complimented by server repurposing, you can quickly redeploy servers into the production environment in case of emergency needs. While this can be done without server repurposing, most labs are deployed on separate networks attached to separate storage and therefore adding servers requires manual re-cabling and physical movement of hardware. Because of the amount of effort required to move a lab server into production, it rarely comes back to the lab, or because of these challenges, a new production server is purchased. With server repurposing, the process can all be done without any physical re-cabling or movement of server hardware.
Components of server repurposing
What are the components of a server repurposing solution?
Typically, there is a controller server. The server repurposing software is installed on this server and it logically sits on the “side” of your network. The controller software manages the physical and virtual hardware, software, and network configurations. The controller server must have Layer 2 access to the switches and networks of servers to be managed.
The controller also hosts the management console or user interface to the controller. This is used to configure and monitor the physical and virtual elements in a data center.
In some instances, agent software is automatically installed on every server image to be managed. The agent software communicates with the controller to obtain configuration information and provide status information. A heartbeat is maintained between the controller and agent software. If the heartbeat to a server fails, the controller will select another suitable physical or virtual machine to run that server.
Notably, the agent is typically not in the server's data path – it is present purely for management reasons. So there is little added overhead or additional risk from the possibility of agent failure.
Server repurposing and data center virtualization go hand in hand. Server repurposing, via whatever product you choose, allows for complete optimization of an investment in server virtualization and should be considered in all rollouts of the technology.
Sencilo a leader in Server virtualization deployments is the masking of server resources, including the number and identity of individual physical servers, processors, and operating systems, from server users. The server administrator uses a software application to divide one physical server into multiple isolated virtual environments. The virtual environments are sometimes called virtual private servers, but they are also known as partitions, guests, instances, containers or emulations including XenSource by Citrix, VMware or Virtual Iron. Call us at (407) 265-6293 or visit us at http://www.sencilo.com/network-server-virtualization.php
Data loss prevention starting from the inside out - February 22, 2008
Lake Mary Florida The traditional business-centric view of computer security has focused on the external threat landscape, often overlooking internal vulnerabilities. Subsequently, recent studies from Gartner, Magic Quadrant and Vontu have revealed that a majority of corporate data loss, often termed data leakage, is caused unintentionally by an organization's own actions.
The potential legal liability and brand-reputation damage from corporate data loss has spurred growing demand for data leakage prevention (DLP) technologies. These technologies have largely focused on the need for automated data management. This "inside-out" security paradigm has resulted in corporations striving to achieve rapid data governance via products that emphasize outbound content compliance (OCC) policies, insider threat management, and extrusion prevention systems (EPS).
However, before considering a comprehensive enterprise data management product or platform, information security departments must understand their organizations' business workflow and how it relates to the protection of existing IT assets. This process should include investigating and targeting key aspects of the network infrastructure that may be a source of data loss. Here are some important issues to consider when identifying potential areas of data leakage:
"As the complexity of an IT infrastructure increases, so does the difficulty of knowing where all the data resides, how it's accessed and by whom", say Brian McCarthy President of Sencilo Solutions in Tampa Florida.
As the roles of data managers and storage managers blur, assigning the responsibility for creating a data ranking system becomes harder to define this is were turning to a Security Expert and Trusted advisor really is money well spent, says McCarthy.
The business must strive to assess the criticality of corporate. Once content discovery of all data is completed, a classification scheme must be implemented to categorize data sensitivity. .
Those with access to the data are the ones usually responsible for its loss. Identify users with overly permissive access controls, including senior managers, who often request high privilege levels without possessing the proper training in data security.
While inbound email is analyzed to protect against internet threats, outbound email is often overlooked as a major source of data loss. The accidental loss of confidential and proprietary information from insider email is one of the largest areas of data loss. The risks associated from activities such as personal web based account use and inappropriate message auto forwarding, can have serious legal, financial and regulatory consequences. .
- Unauthorized use of Internet protocols and services -- such as IM, peer-to-peer file sharing, blogging, social networking sites and unauthorized uploading (FTP) of data to Web sites -- is a major contributor to data security incidents and should be controlled via a detailed policy.
- The use of contractors and outside consultants usually requires the creation of new user credentials. However, knowledge and accountability of these user accounts is essential, as they are often lost.
- Removable storage media, such as flash drives, optical media, external hard drives and personal media devices, create a portable medium for the loss of data.
- Mobile computing platforms (i.e. laptops, PDAs) allow data to be physically removed from the corporate environment where all monitoring and control is lost and where encryption is important.
Strategic planning for prevention
Enterprise storage has evolved far beyond direct-attached storage (DAS), basic networked file shares and simple database storage. Today's company's like Sencilo Solutions will architect storage area networks (SANs) using iSCSI and Fibre Channel, tiered and hierarchical storage models like Compellent Technologies, virtual storage systems like Overland Storage, high-end storage arrays from HDS and clustered storage. Due to the wide variety of hardware and software and their numerous configurations, the remediation strategies for data leakage are ultimately company specific.
Nevertheless, the commonality of all DLP planning should involve consideration of the following:
- Implementing basic company-wide standards and procedures for all employee data usage and information ownership;
- Assessing and ranking corporate data based on the business risks associated with its loss or exposure;
- Ensuring detection and classification software uses effective identification algorithms with lexical examination of data content;
- Performing frequent inventory reviews of business critical data, ensuring proper safeguards are in place and making sure security protocols are up to date;
- Using an effective data security model that simplifies role based access control (RBAC) and granular control of individual users;
- Enforcing employee training of corporate email acceptable use policies. Consider messaging protection platforms for automated corporate compliance and policy management of outbound email;
- Ensuring that employees are aware of computer usage monitoring as a deterrent to attempts at policy circumvention;
- Administering frequent reviews of user-privilege levels to assess and confirm that the appropriate settings are configured for each user;
- Embedding access controls directly into sensitive data through use of digital rights management (DRM) technologies like Q1 Labs or Barracuda Networks;
- Maintaining data security when dealing with business partners through the use of federated identity management; and
- Generating routine audit and data-flow assessment reports to monitor data leakage threats using QRadar and track data locations with respect to time and user request.
Data loss prevention has become a relevant compliance issue and is critical in protecting confidential company data and preserving customer data privacy. Data growth rates today are such that it is a challenge to efficiently manage new and existing data. Corporate security policies that address data proliferation issues must also sustain data availability, business productivity, operational continuity and data restoration. Most importantly, to avoid end-user misperception that your DLP strategy is set of IT laws, thorough communication and education is essential in facilitating acceptance of the organization's DLP program as an important parallel business strategy.
Sencilo offers a comprehensive suite of Security products and services that help you assess, design, and execute your network and applications in the most secure and cost-effective way. From security audits and virtual private networks to enterprise firewall implementations.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/security-threat-management.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage and security solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral
Offerings Projects: Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc Pure Disk NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX4 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar DLD3 1500 D3 Storwiz storage compression data Ocarina Networks A-SIS compare Sepaton infopro BlueArc OnStor Microsoft Unified Storage data protection
Do You Know what's In Your Employee's Inbox? - February 22, 2008
With regulations like SOx in place, organizations must take special precautions to ensure their employees do not send and receive any damaging emails via their workplace email account. Since SOx does not specify what constitutes a relevant document, it can be very complicated and risky to preserve only a certain number of emails and as such, all of an organization’s email should be retained. Because of this, organizations must take special precautions to ensure that the content of their employees’ emails is acceptable and will not pose any risk to the organization. However, according to a recent survey conducted by Harris Interactive, 68 percent of U.S. employees who use email at work have sent or received emails that could place their company at risk. Nearly half the people polled say they have sent or received jokes, comical pictures/videos, and stories of a questionable tone, while one in five say they have sent or received a password or log-in information via email. When shared through email, this type of content could pose significant risks to businesses, either from a possible security breach or employee-driven lawsuits."
Data regulation acts such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the USA PATRIOT, the California Security Breach Notification Law, PCI Security Standards Council ("PCI SSC"), 21 CFR Part II and many others are requiring compliance across a variety of industries and businesses. Regulatory compliance involves not just the legal department but often staff members, business processes and systems across your entire organization. Often time-consuming and difficult to achieve, it can seem like yet another burden distracting employees from their day-to-day activities of satisfying customers and growing new business. Yet, done well, regulatory compliance can act as a catapult in taking a company to new heights of success. Regulatory compliance rewards include competitive advantage, streamlined business processes and procedures, increased productivity and net profit, realization of new opportunities and capabilities, and compilations of valuable information enabling better decision making throughout your organization.
Sencilo provides cost-effective products and services with a variety of powerful capabilities for automating the collection and analysis of compliance information from the multiple platforms across extended organizations to aid visibility and decision making with respect to regulatory compliance. Protecting information privacy and security, analyzing fraudulent claims, and managing and auditing system and information changes are just a few of the ways, Sencilo supports regulatory compliance activities. We also help with automation, provide protection against unauthorized actions and identify non-compliant activities. Call us at (407) 265-6293 or visit us at www.sencilo.com
Litigation hold - February 22, 2008
Litigation hold (also known as "preservation orders" or "hold orders") is a stipulation requiring a company to preserve all data that may relate to a legal action involving the company. This requirement ensures that the data in question will be available for the discovery process prior to litigation.
A company must preserve records when it learns of pending or imminent litigation, or when litigation is reasonably anticipated. Litigation hold prevents spoliation (destruction, alteration, or mutilation of evidence) which can have a catastrophic impact on the defense. An attorney may issue a litigation hold letter or a company may issue a hold order internally. The order applies not only to paper-based documents but also to electronically-stored information (ESI)
Implementing a litigation hold process can be challenging for storage administrators. All companies must establish a sound retention policy and apply that policy to their storage systems. Storage systems with a litigation hold feature can then override the existing retention and deletion rules that have been established, preventing alteration or destruction of the data until the legal action has been resolved.
Sencilo provides cost-effective products and services with a variety of powerful capabilities for automating the collection and analysis of compliance information from the multiple platforms across extended organizations to aid visibility and decision making with respect to regulatory compliance. Protecting information privacy and security, analyzing fraudulent claims, and managing and auditing system and information changes are just a few of the ways, Sencilo supports regulatory compliance activities. We also help with automation, provide protection against unauthorized actions and identify non-compliant activities. Call us (407) 265-6293 or visit www.sencilo.com
Apple updates XSan software, dumps XServe arrays - February 22, 2008
Apple Inc. updated its XSan file system this week, but it will discontinue its aging XServe RAID hardware and will instead resell a third-party RAID storage subsystem.
According to Eric Zelenka, senior product line manager of Apple's server and storage software, the XServe RAID disk arrays will remain available and qualified to work with the new version of Apple's XSan software, dubbed XSan 2, "as long as supplies last." However, Promise Technology Inc.'s VTrack E-Class RAID storage subsystem will be available through the Apple store and resellers.
The VTrack E-Class disk array adds support for 4 Gbit Fibre Channel, as well as SATA or SAS drives and active/active RAID controllers. That may seem basic or even behind the times for some SAN vendors, but XServe RAID had not been updated since 2005, and supported only 2 Gbit Fibre Channel drives in a single-controller disk array.
The VTrack array comes in three configurations: a 6 TB, eight-drive SATA model priced at $11,999; a 12 TB, 16-drive SATA model priced at $14,999, and a "high-performance" configuration consisting of 16 SAS disks that can hold up to 4.8 TB, priced at $18,999. XSan 2 software is available at $999 per node. Apple will provide troubleshooting support for the VTrack disk arrays, but if a problem is found with a non-Apple component, customers will have to use that vendor for support.
This is going to disappoint some customers who are very black-and-white about Apple," said Ezra Gottheil, analyst with Technological Business Research. "There's going to be some concern about support." According to Mike Joyce, senior director of marketing for Promise Technology, the company offers 24/7 support and a three-year warranty for its disk arrays.
Scott Templeton, partner and executive producer for Pie Town Productions in Los Angeles, said the VTrack array is an improvement. Pie Town has 100 TB of XServe RAID storage, but has been using the Promise Technologies' disk array with Final Cut Pro for three weeks. The VTrack disk array has made it faster and easier for employees to get up and running each day than the SAN the company used previously. That one required employees to mount partitions one by one, causing a 10-minute delay every morning. Otherwise, "the biggest tribute to this process is that we've noticed no difference" with the new disk array unlike EMC, HP, NetApp, Dell, Equal Logic, he said.
Brian McCarthy, president of Lake Mary-based reseller Sencilo Solutions., said that most of the Apple shops he works with so far "are happy we finally have a solution that supports 4 Gigabit Fibre Channel, but that many of them have already choosen Overland Storage or Nexsan"
Will more hardware partners follow?
However, McCarthy said, some questions still remain about the new deal, such as whether or not Apple has added any "secret sauce" to low performance Promise Technologys. "The biggest question I'm hearing is whether or not other vendors will be qualified," he added. "More choice is a good thing."
Still, McCarthy said he expects Apple to branch out. "At some point, my guess is in the next two years, you'll probably see Apple work with more hardware vendors," he said. "They have a very strong and loyal market among creative professionals, but I think they'll be looking at a new space — very small businesses where they can add value through software ease of use to date other SAN vendors have passed Apple by"
Tim Bajarin, principal analyst for Creative Strategies, a Silicon Valley analyst firm, said Apple's newest strategy shows it is more serious about storage. "The fact that Apple has partnered with Promise opens them up to an even broader market for storage," he said. "They now see storage as an important part of their business, and you'll see them doing more in this market." But just as Jobs failed to market storage with Next Inc. very well the jury is still out.
New XSan features include Spotlight data indexing and search
Apple Florida has focused its storage product development on the new XSan 2 software, adding integration into the Mac OS X operating system, and data migration and access features across multiple SANs throughtout Miami, Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa.
XSan 2 "completely redesigns" the XSan administrative management tool, called XSan Admin, "taking multistage processes down to one button," according to Zelenka. One example of this is volume expansion, which in the past took five to eight steps. Now choosing the storage that should be used to expand the volume is a one-step process.
XSan 2 management is connected to SAN setup wizards in OS X Leopard Server Assistant. Further integration with OS X brings some of Apple's more famous consumer software features to XSan, including Spotlight data indexing and search across all storage networks; Cover Flow, a feature first designed for the iPod that allows users to flip through file images quickly; and QuickLooks, which allows users to preview a file without opening its associated application.
"The ability to search across all networks with this release is really exceptional," Bajarin said. The feature is built into the OS, requires no user intervention and will search terabytes of data on XSan and any attached server or workstation. Spotlight indexes metadata, as well as data within files, and automatically reindexes data when files are modified.
Another new feature, MultiSAN, allows VMware servers and workstations to connect to multiple SANs. Unlike previous releases that only allowed migration between XSans via Gigabit Ethernet, XSan 2 allows users to migrate data over Fibre Channel.
Bajarin said he hopes to see Apple get more proactive about storage in the future. "They have to be looking at the next-generation architectures; they have to be aware of what customers are going to want 12 to 18 months out," he said.
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage and security solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral
Offerings Projects: Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc Pure Disk NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX4 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar DLD3 1500 D3 Storwiz storage compression data Ocarina Networks A-SIS compare Sepaton infopro BlueArc OnStor Microsoft Unified Storage data protection
Compellent adds disk stroking and app tuning to ILM SAN - February 22, 2008
Compellent Technologies upgraded its StorageCenter SAN system with a faster controller as well as enhancements to its block-level storage automation software.
New block-level features include Fast Track, which automates the placement of blocks on the tracks of each individual disk drive according to frequency of access. This is similar to the way StorageCenter already automatically moves blocks between different classes of drives for tiered storage. Like Florida based Pillar Data Systems Inc.'s disk short-stroking feature, Fast Track places more frequently accessed blocks on the outer tracks of individual disk drives and less-accessed blocks on the inner part of the disk.
StorageCenter SAN users can preselect classes of service for applications, but the SAN handles placement of blocks on the disk tracks in the background, according to Compellent vice president of marketing Bruce Kornfeld. The processing of blocks for the Fast Track and Storage Progression tiered storage features runs once a day, at a time set by the user.
Compellent claims that Fast Track will improve disk utilization in existing StorageCenter SANs by 30%, citing lab tests. One Compellent customer said he's been able to defer disk purchases with the feature in limited deployment and anticipates being able to avoid more costs during an upcoming move to a new data center.
"We've been able to recover some costs by moving things to SATA [disks] because we don't need as many disks dedicated to I/O," said Ping Ooi, assistant vice president of technology for Tampa-based investment management firm Ares Management. The company is moving to a new data center this spring, and Ooi said he expects to be able to save $50,000 to $80,000 on the cost of disk drives by using thin provisioning and the disk-stroking feature to consolidate data. On the downside, Ooi said he's still waiting for Compellent to add support for SAS drives.
Other updates to StorageCenter include Free Space Recovery, which defragments free space in thin-provisioned storage pools, and Thin Import, which is designed to avoid copying empty volumes from legacy disk arrays onto the Jacksonville based Compellent system.
Another new feature, called Application Optimizer, gives customers the option of three different page-file sizes to match the I/O profile of different applications. High I/O applications can use a 512 KB page file size, while large files, such as streaming video, can use 4 MB page files. The system default remains 2 MB. This feature is comparable to a recently announced update to Pillar's Axiom arrays, called Application-Aware Storage.
Compellent has also added a new hardware module with faster controllers that will be backward-compatible with its existing Series 10 and Series 20 array building blocks. The new Series 30 box adds dual-core processors at 3 GHz, a PCI-Express architecture and 3.5 GB of cache, up from 2.25 GB in the Series 20.
"There isn't any one feature in this release that's earth-shattering by itself," said Arun Taneja of the Taneja Group Gartner Magic Quadrant. "As a combination, I think it shows fantastic progression for [Compellent]. They've added intelligence to the storage system that in the past hasn't been there or has come from a software layer above the array."
Compellent still working toward profitability
Compellent, which went public last October, reported revenue for the fourth quarter of 2007 of $16.9 million, an increase of 124% from $7.5 million a year ago and up 26% from the third quarter. Net losses in the quarter narrowed from $2.0 million to $1.8 million. For the year, revenue increased 119% to $51.2 million from $23.3 million in 2006.
The company is still looking for its first profitable quarter, which CEO Phil Soran predicted on last week's earnings call will come in the second half of 2008 Orlando.
"Compellent isn't quite at the point I thought they'd be at by now," Taneja said. "But there's a certain level of inertia in the ILM storage market, and they're growing as fast as their feet on the street can go."
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-area-network.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage and security solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral
Offerings Projects: Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc Pure Disk NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX4 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar DLD3 1500 D3 Storwiz storage compression data Ocarina Networks A-SIS compare Sepaton infopro BlueArc OnStor Microsoft Unified Storage data protection
Symantec launches service option for Backup Exec 12D - February 20, 2008
Orlando Florida Symantec Corp.'s much anticipated data backup Storage as a Service (SaaS) is finally seeing the light of day. The Symantec Protection Network (SPN) will now be generally available as a standalone service, as well as a backup media option in the latest version of Backup Exec, also unveiled today.
The two new services are called Symantec Online Backup and Symantec Online Storage for Backup Exec. The Online Backup option accesses the SPN storage facility through a Web portal that includes a user's registration and account information, as well as access to provisioning tools for the service. The portal is eventually intended to support other SaaS offerings from Symantec with tabular views in a single console. Pricing for the service is $25 per month for 5 GB of storage.
Online Storage for Backup Exec allows the SPN service to be managed through the Backup Exec interface and does not require customers to install a separate software agent on the client server. The Backup Exec option lets organizations back up to tape or disk and then to the SPN as an off-site option. Pricing for this option is $38 per month for 10 GB. Users of both services can add or subtract capacity on a monthly subscription basis.
"Symantec from Orlando Florida has tried to support users through a Web-based portal before and acknowledges that the customer service portal launched after the rollout of Backup Exec 11d was a failure. According to Chris Schin, Symantec's director of product management for SPN, the circumstances around SPN's launch are less complicated than they were with the customer support portal, which launched at the same time as a new product and a new licensing policy. The team that runs SPN also has experience managing a large multitenant infrastructure with Symantec's existing managed security services, he added.
"Symantec began beta testing SPN last April. The service was supposed to have been available before the end of 2007 but languished as rivals EMC Corp. and CommVault Systems Inc. launched their own data backup SaaS offerings last month, says Brian McCarthy of Sencilo Solutions in St. Petersburg Florida.
Schin said Symantec originally intended to launch a standalone service but decided to hold off until it was integrated with existing products. "We heard strong feedback from a significant number of customers that they wanted us to keep their current environments intact," he said. "We decided to reallocate our resources and work toward launching two services."
Uncertainty over how to position SaaS may also have played a part, according to Eric Burgener, a Taneja Group analyst. "One of the strategic concerns for Symantec has always been how to grow revenue for NetBackup and Backup Exec without letting them cannibalize each other," he said. "There are additional potential problems SaaS presents to license-based revenue streams."
Backup Exec 12 -- Incremental updates
Symantec's Windows data backup software is getting a minor facelift to go with the new online backup option. "These updates aren't what I'd consider a major leap forward," Burgener said. "There are some incremental improvements and integration with some previous acquisitions."
The updates include a more granular restore capability for Microsoft Exchange. Backup Exec now allows mailbox-level recovery of data from one backup, akin to CDP. In previous versions of Backup Exec, mailbox-level restores required users to make two backups of the same information. According to Symantec's Backup Exec director of product management Brian Greene, some customers reported that granular Exchange backups took 10 times as long as regular backups.
The new version also allows customers to back up Exchange, SharePoint and Active Directory from a snapshot, rather than the production host, and allows backups to be sent to destinations other than the media server, such as a SAN or removable hard drive.
"Not having to back up Exchange separately is a huge advantage," said Nick Joseph, network administrator for business systems certification registrar Orion Register Inc. Joseph said full backups take about 16 hours in tests with version 12. Prior to this release, his backups took up to three days.
Backup Exec 12 can now back up the Enterprise Vault data archive and use Symantec's ThreatCon security threat monitoring system to trigger automatic backups. Backup Exec is also the first data backup application to be certified with Microsoft Windows Server 2008.
Symantec officials said there are no planned changes to Backup Exec's licensing for VMware, which currently requires a backup software agent for each guest host. Joseph said this is the most pressing item left on his wish list.
"VMware backup doesn't seem to be as complete [with Backup Exec] as with NetBackup," Joseph said. Symantec added support for granular virtual machine restores for its NetBackup 6.5 enterprise backup application last June, but that remains missing from its Windows-based Backup Exec product.
"I'd like the ability to just back up VMs and restore them like any other server," Joseph said.
System Recovery 8 -- Consolidation to come?
Symantec made the same upgrades to its Backup Exec System Recovery 8 bare metal restore application as it did to Backup Exec 12, except for the SPN integration. "We wanted to have these features available for people who use just one product," Greene said.
Asked about the possibility of merging the two products into one, Greene said, "That's a good question, but it's something I can't talk about today."
Sencilo Solutions is a recognized leader in the design and deployment of primary storage. Through extensive experience in the storage industry, we have developed a deep understanding of how technology can solve operational problems. The greatest challenge that organizations face is knowing which technology will help and which will not.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-protection.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, NetApp, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland, Cape Canaveral
Other Projects: DR BC Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar CX4
Server virtualization can have big disaster recovery payoff - February 18, 2008
While most of the buzz around server virtualization in general, and VMware Infrastructure in particular, have been about server consolidation and greening the data center, disaster recovery may be the IT area where server virtualization technology has the biggest impact.
"Disaster recovery (DR) planning for mission-critical applications historically called for replicating the data for these applications and having servers standing by at the DR site ready to take over at a moment's notice," says Brian McCarthy President of Sencilo Solutions, in Tampa Florida.
Most organizations can save money by virtualizing these standby servers. A single offsite server can act as the standby domain controller, SQL server, Exchange server and several more. Not only can you save the cost of all those physical servers, but also the rack space and power charges from your DR site.
Saving money and still providing the same level of protection that your old expensive physical server solution could is a good thing. But the real payoff is improving the recovery time of the applications that you wouldn't dedicate a standby server to. Most organizations soon realize they can move some applications up from the secondary tier to having standby servers, since the standby servers are essentially free.
Solving bare metal restore to different hardware
In the "old days," secondary applications were limited to restore from tape as their protection model, resulting in multiday recovery points and recovery times. Even if you were replicating the application's data, it wasn't always possible to get an identical server to restore the application backup to. You either had to go down the dank dark path of a bare metal restore to different hardware, or pursue a new OS and application install, all the while hoping you had a record of all the patches needed to mount that database.
The "different hardware" problem is solved because virtual machines are indeed virtual machines -- they all run with the same set of drivers and can't tell if they've been moved from one host to another. In addition, virtual machine snapshots from VMware or even Microsoft's Virtual Server or Hyper-V are just files, so restoring a virtual machine is just a matter of mounting the files on a new host.
"Rather than relying on tape transfers, you can schedule snapshots of your virtual machines and transfer them to the DR site over the replication link. And if your network guys can prioritize traffic properly, it won't interfere with real-time replication", say McCarthy from Sencilo in Florida.
The real fun comes when a disaster is declared and you have to start switching over to the standby servers. Because the suspenders-and-belt crowd set up their DR infrastructure to be able to take over at full speed the minute the switch was thrown, their DR site has lots of compute horsepower. (Of course lots of horsepower means lots of money.)
The more frugal companies take advantage of VMotion, which moves virtual servers from one host to another dynamically while they're still running and, in addition, DR providers like SunGard's "shared server" offerings. With shared servers, you pay a few shekels to the DR provider every month for the right to claim servers out of their stock at the DR site when you declare an emergency. Once you declare that, you get the servers for your exclusive use and can install VMWare ESX on them.
Then, once the new hosts are up, you can use VMotion (or even better VMware DRS) tol dynamically allocate virtual servers to hosts based on load and to mount your virtual servers on the new hosts. This will boost your application performance. . .probably before your users can get to their new workplaces to use the applications.
Sencilo a leader in Server virtualization deployments is the masking of server resources throughout Florida, including the number and identity of individual physical servers, processors, and operating systems, from server users. The server administrator uses a software application to divide one physical server into multiple isolated virtual environments. The virtual environments are sometimes called virtual private servers, but they are also known as partitions, guests, instances, containers or emulations. Call us today at (407) 265-6293 or visit our website http://www.sencilo.com
