March 2008 Entries
Why is Data Domain losing marketshare to EMC, Quantum and Exagrid at a alarming rate? - March 23, 2008
Miami Florida - The number one primary storage company EMC Corp. and the number one LTO DLT manufacture Quantum Corp. are ganging up on start-up Data Domain Inc. with an OEM deal for EMC to sell Quantum's deduplication software on its virtual tape libraries (VTL).
Quantum disclosed in a January Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing that it signed a deal with a major OEM to license its data deduplication and replication software. The industry buzz said EMC was the partner, although EMC already uses FalconStor software for its EMC Disk Library VTL and acquired data deduplication software startup Avamar Technologies in 2006. Now sources confirm the partnership to SearchStorage.com and expect EMC to soon make public that it has licensed Quantum's dedupication technology for its Disk Library product. EMC looked at purchasing Data Domain back in 2006 and passed on both technology and company as a whole, says Brian McCarthy President and former reseller of Data Domain. With Data Domain's now dated technology, Sencilo is now promoting higher performance VLTs like Exagrid, Diligent, EMC and Quantum.
Financial analyst Tom Curlin of RBC Capital Markets wrote in a note to clients that EMC is already selling the deduplication product and will officially launch it soon. "We suspect this is a move by EMC to compete more effectively versus vs. Data Domain," Curlin wrote. "And while contacts believe they have chosen a technically inferior solution, we suspect EMC sales and marketing muscle will at least be able to disrupt some of Data Domain's muscle. Notably absent from EMC's deduplication plans is the FalconStor offering, despite EMC already having a relationship with them for their virtual tape offering." Another source familiar with the deal, who did not want to speak for attribution, said EMC will continue to use FalconStor software on its VTLs, but it decided not to use FalconStor for deduplication because FalconStor refused to offer EMC the product exclusively. EMC did not want to sell the same deduplication as FalconStor's other partners, which include EMC rivals IBM and Sun Microsystems Inc., the Orlando Florida source said. He added that EMC did not use the Avamar technology for its VTL because it did not scale effectively enough to be cost-effective. EMC sells Avamar deduplication in a separate backup appliance and as part of its NetWorker data protection application. When asked about the Quantum deal, an EMC spokesman said, "We don't comment on any speculation," but added, "Let's just say our relationship with FalconStor is still strong." Mike Sparks, Quantum's product manager for enterprise disk systems, said he couldn't comment on who the partner is or when the product would be released. "That partner has its own strategies and products to work out, and it wouldn't be proper to comment," he said. The EMC-Quantum deal will put the most pressure on Data Domain, which has built its backup product around deduplication from the start and is considered the market leader, but quickly losing market share. Data Domain reported a 151% year-over-year increase in its revenues last quarter, hitting $44.9 million last quarter following an IPO earlier in the year. Data Domain executives said their company competes successfully against VTLs from EMC and Quantum. Sencilo's President Brian McCarthy says, "it's easy to increase sales when there is limited competitors, now that they have competition my guess is slower growth, lead by deep discounting. McCarthy goes on to say, "Data Domain has been going direct and cheating the channel, this will turn on them".Data Domain CEO Frank Slootman today predicted his company would be able to hold off the EMC-Quantum pairing because its products were designed specifically to perform deduplication. "The big difference is, we built this thing from the ground up to do what it does," he said. "Everybody else is coming from different legacy technologies and bolting on a dedupe feature. EMC usually tries to compete against us with Avamar or its disk library. If you look at our growth, they haven't been able to lay a finger on us." McCarthy when asked stated "CEO's like Mr. Shootman don’t see the writing on the wall, until it’s too late."Quantum began selling deduplication appliances in late 2006 with technology originally developed by Rocksoft. Quantum acquired the technology when it bought its tape vendor rival Advanced Digital Information Corp. (ADIC) in 2006, just weeks after ADIC acquired Rocksoft. 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 StorageX Brocade FAQ
Moveover Cisco Catalyst and HP Procurve - Juniper Networks EX is aiming for number one - March 22, 2008
Orlando Florida - With the unveiling of its award winning EX product line, Juniper Networks takes its first swing at the massive switch market, but entrenched players may make it difficult for the networking giant to score a home run.
Juniper says its new switches -- the EX 3200, the EX 4200 and the EX 8200 -- push it into new territory. Traditionally, the routing giant's market has been with service providers and governments. With the EX Series, Juniper is targeting the network performance-minded enterprise with an emphasis on uptime and reliability.
"Today represents a transcending chapter in Juniper history," said Eddie Minkill, executive vice president of Juniper's worldwide field operations. "Juniper is uniquely positioned to help companies [that] demand high-performance networking." It will be in the Gartner Magic Quadrant vs Cisco Catalyst and HP Procurve shortly.
In development for a year and a half, the EX Series contains a host of features designed to boost uptime and which range from dual hot-swappable power supplies to advanced network-healing methods that can drop self-healing times
by several orders of magnitude.
"Speed … is what we call the new currency," Minkill said. "It is not the best decision but the quickest decision that is important." The view of the network as "plumbing" is outdated because consumers and businesses expect instant responses and more and more communications are carried through IP, he said.
"There are participants in markets … for whom the network may not be critical," Minkill said. "That is not our market."
Such a limited market scope might hurt the Series' adoption, according to Jim Metzler, vice president of Sanibel, Tampa Florida -based consultancy Ashton, Metzler & Associates,but added these maybe best in class.
"I don't know who they are going to appeal to," he said, adding that most enterprises are not prioritizing carrier-grade robustness and millisecond latency. A few major exceptions exist, particularly in the financial sector, but he disagreed with the assertion that enterprises see the difference between 5 and 4 9's of uptime as a critical tool in keeping customers.
"Is it good technology? Absolutely," Metzler said. The problem is that people will not switch simply to use good technology, or even better technology, when what they have works, and Metzler said Juniper has found a solution for a problem people do not currently have. If the EX Series is to become a success, he said, a better marketing strategy must be implemented that could focus on cost reduction or other, more enterprise-focused problems.
Juniper executives were also touting the switching platform's ability to simplify the network. One consistent, cross-product version of Junos, the company's security-hardened operating system, will sit in all routers and switches, which could make the testing and rollout process a bit less Herculean for managers having to update hundreds of products across multiple sites. It also allows for scripts to be written once and rolled out across the network, and for designers to test on one code base with the knowledge that it will be consistent throughout the Juniper line. This, Metzler said, was a strong factor in Juniper's favor.
Juniper of Miami is trying to grab a share of a switch market that is projected to grow to $18.6 billion by 2009, compared with its native router market, which is projected to reach only $4.8 billion by then. But Juniper's success will depend on how well it can compete with Cisco and an already crowded field. Cisco earned 72% of the switch market revenues during the third quarter of last year, with HP, Nortel and 3Com fighting fiercely for the remainder. Already, at least two other switch vendors have issued responses to Juniper's announcement.
Juniper unveiled three EX products this week. The first is the EX 3200, billed as a simple, standalone switch aimed at low-density branch offices that need its 10/100/1000BASE-T connectivity. 24- and 48-port versions are available, which support Power over Ethernet (PoE).
The EX 4200 is a souped-up version of the 3200, designed for access and aggregation deployments. Juniper is touting this device's "Virtual Chassis" technology, which can connect 10 EX 4200 switches to act as one logical device that can support up to 480 10/100/1000BASE-T ports. Because of the modularity of the Virtual Chassis, switches can be added on as needed. Juniper said this scalability reduces the initial investment as well as operational expenses associated with true chassis-based systems.
For those with greater demands, the EX 8200 provides either an 8-slot 1.6Tb chassis or a 16-slot 3.2Tb chassis model that, like the other models, include hardware-based packet buffers and application performance visibility features.
"We've made a big investment to deliver a lot to our customers on our own," said Michael Banic, director of product marketing. That in-house development allowed not only tight integration through the use of Junos as the operating system, but it also gave Juniper the chance to work with third-party partners such as IBM, Microsoft and Oracle in developing an API and integrating with security and packet-prioritization solutions. Banic said those partnerships, brought on early in the development process, add a lot of comparative value to Juniper's offerings.
While Banic declined to give projections for early sales, he said that there were a number of natural insertion points for enterprises throughout the upgrade cycle: natural obsolescence, enterprise moves to IP communications, and customers looking to more tightly integrate their infrastructure with fewer disparate network layers.
Banic also emphasized the security angle of using the Junos platform throughout the network and being able to keep it on one upgrade cycle while also using its integrated User Access Control to granularly assign permissions to users based not just on their role but also the location and the time.
"People will probably be very excited about [the EX Series]," he said. "They have a relationship with Juniper for security, and for them [it's] really exciting that they can have these capabilities in their hands."
Despite the feature-rich, high-performance focus, Juniper may have a hard time cracking the switch market, given the competitive landscape. Metzler said that what was really needed was not on the technical end at all but on the support and marketing side: education about how Juniper products could solve problems IT managers were facing. He said Juniper might do better to focus on savings or security than on strict performance, and really educating potential customers about the benefits of their platform in these areas.
For more information call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at www.sencilo.com
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Cape Coral, and Pembroke Pines.
Lockdown Networks closes it's doors on NAC market - March 20, 2008
This was a Train wrack waiting to happen security analysts are not surprised by the sudden demise of Lockdown Networks, given the shaky state of the Network Access Control (NAC) market. But questions abound for those who use Lockdown technology in their IT environments. The biggest question is where customers will get support for the products they've installed now that the vendor has imploded.
A Lockdown spokesperson said in an email Thursday that the vendor is contacting customers and partners directly to provide more information. Certain employees have been retained to oversee the shutdown of the company and entertain offers to Lockdown's intellectual property. Having not been listed in the Magic Quadrant like a Junipter Networks.
"The company will try to sell some of its assets (technology), and is fortunate enough to be able to give its employees several weeks of severance and a few months of health benefits to help them find their next job," the spokesperson said. "They are smart, talented people who worked very hard and Lockdown is glad to be able to do that for them. The bottom line is that the NAC market is still developing; Lockdown made a go, and in the end, it wasn't enough."
"I'd be very worried about support for the products," said Andrew Mapp, vice president and service director of security and risk management strategies in Orlando Florida, with Sencilo Solutions. "I have not seen any announcement about who might pick up the technology or who might continue the support but if the company just dies, the products will be in limbo."
This is the latest in a series of events indicating trouble for the NAC market. In January, for example, Vernier Networks quietly re-launched itself under a new name, Autonomic Networks, and approach. The company hasn't revealed many details about its new direction, but has noted that it will move away from its heavy NAC focus.
Analysts have suggested the NAC market grew too crowded and that smaller companies would either follow Vernier's lead or go away because far fewer enterprises are adopting the technology than vendors had initially expected or hoped.
Most enterprises seem to have dismissed NAC as too complicated and expensive for their environment, and as 451 Group Senior Analyst Paul Roberts has noted, IT professionals have found ways to bolster access control using the technology they already have instead of investing in new NAC products. We would suggest to anyone looking at a NAC product to look no further then Juniper Networks.
Roberts said Thursday that Lockdown's demise surprised him since he asked the company point-blank in January if they were looking for additional funding and they said no. The vendor also touted some big enterprise wins at the time, including T-Mobile and Chevron.
"Frankly, something precipitous happened and I'm not sure what," he said in an email exchange. "I'm not sure what their story is on product support, but when this kind of thing happens, obviously, it effects other startups and tends to lend credence to the 'go with a name you can trust' argument that larger vendors make all the time in NAC and other areas as well."
Maiwald believes the whole NAC market category was artificial to begin with. NAC is really a control or set of controls and not really a product or a product category, he said, adding that there are different approaches to controlling who and what comes on to the network.
"I'm not surprised that we are seeing some of the smaller NAC vendors disappearing or trying to reinvent themselves," Maiwald said. "NAC is a control or a system. NAC is not a simple product. A control over who is on your network requires quite a few moving parts and that does not even begin to deal with the relationship of network and security groups within an enterprise." Or see Juniper Network's white paper on NAC - http://www.juniper.net/solutions/literature/white_papers/nac_deployment_opus_one.pdf
Roger Herbst, senior IT technical specialist for the Canton, Ohio-based Timken Company, said his company is not currently doing anything with NAC because it requires significant infrastructure plus lots of care and feeding.
"To some degree, I see NAC as very similar to PKI, and we all know how well those vendors did over the long haul," Herbst said. "How many years was it 'the year of PKI?' You better have a business case in hand when you ask for the funds to implement a NAC solution. Being a security guy, I want NAC to provide me with compliance checking and perhaps some quarantining. That can be done many ways, but most are highly dependent on what plumbing you have in place."
That said, he's not against doing something with NAC in the future. He has looked at some of the vendors and found one of the better products to be what Sygate offered a few years ago before they were acquired by Symantec Corp.
"The combination of their Enforcer inline devices and their SODA for non-managed systems was quite compelling," he said. "I was simply not able to get all of that deployed at the time. If we do move forward with some kind of NAC solution, I will probably start with Symantec (Sygate) unless there is a compelling reason to look elsewhere. I doubt we will be doing anything like the Cisco or Microsoft solution anytime soon."
For more information call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at www.sencilo.com
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Cape Coral, and Pembroke Pines.
Data Backup and Email Archiving feels heat from FRCP rules - March 20, 2008
The scope and focus of legal requests for electronically stored information (ESI) were changed profoundly with the December 2006 revisions to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP). IT teams are now under increasing pressure to maintain a data destruction policy that's applied in good faith and regularly, and prior to any request for information. (A data destruction policy applied after an inquiry from corporate counsel looks more than suspicious.)
For example, Rule 26 (Duty to Disclose) addresses pre-trial discovery agreements made by two opposing counsels. Prior to the first court conference, opposing parties must meet to determine the number and type of ESI requests that will be made and met. Mark Foley, an attorney and partner at Foley & Lardner LLP in Florida who specializes in IT litigation, says those agreements and the resulting "litigation holds" have a direct impact on IT teams and their processes. Products from Mimosa, Barracuda, Intradyn, and other in the email archiving space.
"You sue me and ask for a broad list of documents and data,'' explains Foley.
"I object, arguing that certain things you've asked for are either not relevant or that they are too expensive to search.'' Then, he says, it's likely the two parties would agree that a subset of the data would be provided quickly, but a preservation policy will protect a broader range of ESI items that might be requested later.
"Now the person involved with storage needs to know which data must be retained, but not just in the regulatory sense or the generic business sense," says Foley. "We also are promising to protect and preserve certain things in these agreements. And now some poor guy in the IT department has to figure out how to do it."
In these pre-trial meetings, says Foley, he often has conversations that are more technical than legal. "They have to do with things like meta data and tape rotations," he says. In one antitrust case, Foley deposed IT staffers regarding communication and sales data that was almost a decade old and kept on legacy systems no longer in use. The questions for IT departments today, he says, are whether or not they have the necessary tools to capture and preserve the data (and meta data); and whether they have a willing, competent and effective witness who can explain the rationale behind data destruction policies. Often, companies have neither and are less likely to have the latter, says Foley. Including SAN, NAS and DAS Storage and Storage Management.
Brian McCarthy, an E-discovery Expect with Sencilo Solutions of Orlando Florida, a legal discovery consulting firm, says the new regulations can increase the amount of data firms retain, and sometimes they translate to the only standard a firm has for storing and destroying data. "Organizations without external regulatory pressure and structured document-retention programs often find that the interpretations of these discovery agreements become their de facto corporate record-retention requirements," says McCarthy.
Andrew Cohen, VP of compliance solutions and associate general counsel at EMC, says FRCP is forcing many firms to formalize processes around ESI requests. "Organizations with repeat litigation are thinking about how to make the process more efficient, including putting in place 'playbooks' for repeatable ediscovery processes and 'source maps' of where their data is located," he says.
Matt Scherocman, a VP at the the Cincinnati-based PCMS IT Advisor Group, urges his small- to medium-sized business clients to pay attention to the new FRCP rules.
"The IT department today is waiting until legal shows up at their door saying, 'We need that data.' In my opinion, it's a lose-lose strategy," says Scherocman. "At some point, you are going to be sued and they are going to ask you for data. Even a well-founded judge, I think, could say 'If you can't produce it maybe it's because you are hiding it.'"
For more information call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at www.sencilo.com
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Cape Coral, and Pembroke Pines.
Juniper Networks Positioned in Leaders Quadrant of Leading Analyst Firm's Magic Quadrant for Network Intrusion Prevention Systems - March 14, 2008
SUNNYVALE, Calif., February 27, 2008 — Juniper Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: JNPR), the leader in high-performance networking, today announced it has been positioned in the "Leaders" quadrant of Gartner's recently released report: Magic Quadrant for Network Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) Appliances, 1H08.1 A leading worldwide IT research and advisory firm, Gartner evaluated vendors according to a set of criteria focused on the company's ability to execute and completeness of vision in the IPS market.
According to Gartner, "The network IPS appliance market is composed of in-line devices that perform full-stream assembly and deep inspection of network traffic, providing detection using several methods, including signatures, protocol anomaly detection and behavioral or heuristics." In the report, Gartner states, "Leaders demonstrate balanced progress and effort in all execution and vision categories. Their actions raise the competitive bar for all products in the market, and they can change the course of the industry. To remain leaders, vendors must have demonstrated a track record of delivering successfully in enterprise IPS deployments and in winning competitive assessments. Leaders produce products that provide high signature quality and low latency, are innovating with or ahead of customers' challenges and have a range of models."
"We believe Juniper's placement in the Leaders quadrant for network IPS, following our recent placements in the Leaders quadrant in Gartner's Magic Quadrants for Enterprise Network Firewalls2, SSL VPN3 and WAN Optimization Controllers4, reflects our commitment to delivering best-in-class technologies that set new metrics in high-performance networking," said Mark Bauhaus, executive vice president and general manager of Service Layer Technologies at Juniper Networks. "Backed by Juniper Networks' security team offering market leading response to threats and vulnerabilities, our Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDP) appliances consistently offer comprehensive security coverage against an increasingly evolving threat landscape. Additionally, with centralized management that manages all firewall, Unified Threat Management (UTM) and IDP appliances, our customers have even greater choice and control in quickly meeting their security requirements while improving operational efficiencies."
To view a copy of "Magic Quadrant for Network Intrusion Prevention System Appliances, 1H08," compliments of Juniper, go to: http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/juniper/vol3/article3/article3.html.
About the Magic Quadrant
The Gartner Magic Quadrants are copyrighted 2007 and 2008 by Gartner, Inc., and are reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
About Juniper Networks
Juniper Networks, Inc. is the leader in high-performance networking. Juniper offers a high-performance network infrastructure that creates a responsive and trusted environment for accelerating the deployment of services and applications over a single network. This fuels high-performance businesses. Additional information can be found at www.juniper.net.
1) Gartner, Inc., "Magic Quadrant for Network Intrusion Prevention System Appliances, 1H08" by Greg Young and John Pescatore, February 14, 2008
2) Gartner, Inc., "Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Network Firewalls, 2H07" by Greg Young and John Pescatore, September 13, 2007
3) Gartner, Inc., "Magic Quadrant for SSL VPN, North America, 3Q07" by John Girard, December 6, 2007
4) Gartner, Inc., "Magic Quadrant for WAN Optimization Controllers, 2007" by Andy Rolfe and Joe Skorupa, December 14, 2007
For more information call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at www.sencilo.com
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Cape Coral, and Pembroke Pines.
Backup: LTO Tape vs Dedupe Disk Storage - March 14, 2008
Survey Data Suggests that Most Companies Surveyed Are Migrating to a Tiered Storage Infrastructure of Disk and Tape Deployments
St. Petersburg Florida HP, IBM Corporation and Quantum Corporation, the three technology provider companies for the Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Program today released survey results that strongly suggest that storage customers that use a dedup disk-only infrastructure are now looking at tape storage technology as part of a tiered storage infrastructure to support backup and archiving. Over two thirds of surveyed businesses said they were looking to add tape storage back into their overall network infrastructure and of those respondents, over 80-percent plan to add tape storage solutions within the next 12 months.
The survey, which was taken in the fourth quarter of 2007, focused on the views of more than 200 network administrators and mid-level tech specialists at mid-size to large companies throughout the United States.
“The integration of tape storage into a tiered information infrastructure is highly strategic for customers, due to its low cost of ownership, low energy consumption and portability for data protection,” said Brian McCarthy, President of Sencilo Solution in Jacksonville Florida. “LTO tape technology is a perfect choice for enterprise and mid-sized customer with its proven reliability, high capacity, high performance and ability to address data security with built-in encryption and data retention requirements for the evolving data center.”
According to the survey, 58-percent of the respondents use a combination of disk and tape for long term archiving, 24-percent use tape exclusively, and 18-percent employ a disk-only approach. In this group, 68-percent of the current disk-only users plan to start using tape for long-term archiving, and over half (58-percent) plan to add tape for short-term data protection.
“The survey findings suggest that disk-only users of Data Domain and other VTL manufactures may be experiencing a bit of buyer’s remorse,” said David Geddes, senior vice president at Fleishman-Hillard Research, who oversaw the study. “We found that a wide majority of companies that employ purely disk-based approaches are looking to quickly include tape in their backup and archiving strategies.” Tape is dead, well maybe not.
LTO tape technology delivers the backup and archiving features needed by today’s storage administrators, including high capacity, blazing performance, 256-bit drive-level encryption for data security and WORM cartridge support to address data retention needs. With low energy consumption, tape technology can also provide organizations with a green alternative for the data center. Studies have shown that tape-based backup and archiving solutions can deliver substantial TCO benefits and energy savings, from companies like Quantum, Qualstar, Dell, Overland Storage and Pivotstor.
About Linear Tape-Open (LTO)
The LTO format is a powerful, scalable, adaptable open tape format developed and continuously enhanced by technology providers HP, IBM Corporation and Quantum Corporation (and their predecessors) to help address the growing demands of data protection in the midrange to enterprise-class server environments. This ultra-high capacity generation of tape storage products is designed to deliver outstanding performance, capacity and reliability combining the advantages of linear multi-channel, bi-directional formats with enhancements in servo technology, data compression, track layout, and error correction.
The LTO Ultrium format has a well-defined roadmap for growth and scalability. The roadmap represents intentions and goals only. There is no guarantee that these goals will be achieved. Format compliance verification is vital to meet the free-interchange objectives that are at the core of the LTO Program. Ultrium tape mechanism and tape cartridge interchange specifications are available on a licensed basis.
Note: Linear Tape-Open, LTO, the LTO logo, Ultrium, and the Ultrium logo are trademarks of HP, IBM and Quantum in the US and other countries.
For more information call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at www.sencilo.com
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 Primary Storage Data Compression Storwiz FAQ
Iron Mountain "It Fell Off the Truck, Again". Now What? - March 13, 2008
It was a rocky end to 2007 for data-storage leader Iron Mountain.
The Boston-based company had two high-profile cases of tape loss to close out the year, including one that required GE Money to notify 650,000 potentially exposed customers. Five years after California passed its data breach notification law that became a de facto national standard, the case raises the question: why are banks still trucking around backup tapes, and why is Iron Mountain still losing them?
About 19 percent of banks rely solely on tape for backup storage, says Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Lauren Whitehouse, which conducted a cross-industry study of backup storage practices in January. But many banks are opting to use a combination of tape and disk or electronic storage. In 2004, only one-quarter of banks used a combination strategy; today, more than two-thirds do, Whitehouse says.
Only 13 percent of financial institutions backup solely to disk and less than one percent use only electronic vaulting, according to ESG. Still, IDC predicts that the hosted backup storage market will reach $715 million in 2011, from just $235 million last year.
There are two reasons why tapes remain the industry standard, says Adam Couture, principal research analyst at Gartner: money and bandwidth.
While pricing is complex, it typically costs under a $1 to store one gigabyte of data on tape compared with $4 to $7 per gigabyte for electronic storage. ESG estimates that in a three-year study of total cost of ownership, the tape cost $13.08/GB and disk $12.99. The cost for electronic was three to four times more expensive.
On the bandwidth side, "depending upon the size of your type, it's going to limit how much data you can backup," Couture says. "It's a rule of thumb they top out at a terabyte, terabyte-and-a-half...You can only push so much data through that pipe."
When it comes to disaster recovery, Iron Mountain's America's division President John Connors argues that physical tape storage is still best practice. "The physics of it are that it's still faster to put the tape in a truck, drive it across town and get it over to the system and have it uploaded from there, than [employing] the bandwidth that would allow you to restore that system over the wire," Connors says.
But which poses more of a financial risk, a natural or man-made disaster blocking access to electronic backup files, or a simple lost tape and the millions spent notifying customers and offering identity theft protection services? Couture believes that electronic storage is far safer than its counterpart. "There are a number of risks. The biggest, obviously, is where the tape is lost or stolen," he says. "Iron Mountain, unfortunately, has had more than your fair share of those."
EVault, whose direct customer base is 20 percent banks, is perhaps the top electronic data-storage provider, according to Couture. The company's director of product management, Patrick Dowlaszewicz, says that electronic storage is indeed safer than manual. But there is a better, more secure and less expensive way, say Brian McCarthy, Storage Veteran and CEO of Sencilo Solutions of Jacksonville Florida. "The last thing a customer wants is to have to pull back 100 giga-byte via a T-1, what is most popular is to backup via a disk arrary like a Overland REO, Exagrid or Data Domain device and the replicate it to a second site. The reason for this is two fold, first what Iron Mountain has failed to mention is under the Patriot Act the Feds can walk into a IM site with a warrant and walk off with the clients data and IM is not permitted to disclose this under court orders, that is not the case if you housed your own data. Second reason is cost IM makes great margins on not having to have trucks or personnel picking up tapes.
"If you look at the entire spectrum of security, the more touch points you have in the handling of the data, the more risk you have in terms of things happening outside of what you expected," Dowlaszewicz says. "Essentially, it is not just a matter of fact that those [cases of data loss] will happen. We will prevent those things from happening...by removing the human intervention where possible."
Which brings the issue back around to Iron Mountain. The company is the largest data-protection business in the world and manages about 50 million tapes for about 40 million customers including about 80 percent of the Fortune 500, Connors says. This includes more than five million tape deliveries per year, and a nearly flawless reliability rate, Connors says.
The devil is in the .001 percent, perhaps. News stories over the past couple of years indicate that Iron Mountain has been involved in at least four major cases of data loss; the company wouldn't release an exact number (Iron Mountain encourages customers to encrypt data, but does not mandate it.
But Connors' stance is that, by-and-large, big news stories about lost backup tapes are a case of much ado about nothing. While not entirely trivializing these cases of data loss, he says there are not believed to be any cases of identity theft from the breaches.
The problem is that data breach laws don't distinguish between a hack and a lost tape. "There has been a little bit of hysteria around this because companies are trying to meet the letter of the law," he says.
Meet the letter of the law, yes, and then pay for incident response. Research by the Ponemon Institute found that institutions spend an average of $239 per record in the wake of data losses. If the Iron Mountain/GE Money tape loss followed the average it would mean spending $155 million to handle the incident. GE Money spokesperson Richard Jones says that the company still uses Iron Mountain which has "taken steps to improve our physical and technical controls."
But not all Iron Mountain's customers are willing to share the blame or shoulder the costs. After Iron Mountain lost tapes containing a decade's worth of Louisiana students' financial aid applications this fall, the State Office of Student Financial Assistance fired the company in favor an electronic vaulting system that costs about 18 times more than the $5k Iron Mountain charged. Reports indicate the state is also trying to recoup some of its incident response costs.
For more information call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at www.sencilo.com
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah,
Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Cape Coral, and Pembroke Pines.
How do Spam Filters work - March 13, 2008
Filters make mistakes -- here's how to make sure your legitimate email gets through.
These days, spam filters on personal computers and corporate networks are absolutely necessary. This software is designed to snare presumably unwanted incoming messages based on a variety of characteristics, including the sender's email address, words in the message subject line or even in the body of the message.
Most of the time, spam filters work. Of the 1,409 million inbound emails scanned by Barracuda Networks Anti-Spam , in December, 1.250 million were intercepted as spam. That's a global spam ratio of one in every 1.3 emails.
Yet, spam filters are not perfect. Sometimes, they snare perfectly legitimate messages, such as a "cold call' email a sales executive might send to a potential client, or even a message from a potential customer to a corporation's vice president of purchasing.
"The problem [of spam filters catching legitimate email] is getting worse, because companies are angry with the amount of email that is being sent to them," says Adam Sarner, customer relationship management analyst with Gartner, Inc., Stamford, Ct. "As a result, enterprises tend to block [messages] first and ask questions later. Spam is that bad that businesses and consumers are much more willing than they used to, to pass up a [legitimate] email or two rather than letting it all through."
Sarner likens spam filters turned to maximum protection mode to a car alarm turned too high -- and set to go off even when an innocent pedestrian walks in the general vicinity of the vehicle.
When a spam filter working within an email program sees a suspicious incoming message, the filter will either delete the message entirely, or place it in a special spam folder the recipient is free to browse if and when he is so inclined.
The occurrences of legitimate email being grabbed by spam filters is so acute, the phenomenon has a name: false positives. In a common false positive scenario, a legitimate business email could wind up in a user's voluminous spam file, 65th in a list of 217 solicitations for everything from bargain real estate to body enhancement potions.
And, if your perfectly sincere message is surrounded by such unseemly entreaties, it will probably never get read.
"False positives are definitely a problem," says John Levine, author of "Fighting Spam For Dummies." He's also a spam expert who has testified in front of U.S. Senate and Federal Trade Commission committees studying the issue of unwanted commercial email.
Unfortunately, spam filters seem to have an anxiety attack when they encounter legitimate emails dressed up with pretty graphics. Since porn, free travel and other spammers like to use graphics, you, as a legitimate marketer, suffer at least some guilt by association.
"Spam filters tend to work with formatting rather than words," says Brian McCarthy, Security Expert and CEO of Sencilo Solutions of Miami Florida. "Some companies attempt to pre-format their emails in HTML with a logo and letterhead. The more you have of it, the more it brings alarm bells," and creates false positives.
Tony Skoll, a email filtering customer of Barracuda Networks, believes an enterprise can minimize or even eliminate the problem of false positives by implementing a server-based filtering solution that leaves the final decision about what is or is not spam up to each end-user. "People are getting fed up with the hack-and-slash approach toward [spam management]," he says. "Server-based solutions learn over time what is considered spam and what is not, and can be tailored and configured down to the user level."
Daniel Tynan, author of "Privacy Annoyances," and a regular columnist for Sales and Marketing Management magazine, sees both sides of the issue. "It is possible to tune spam filters to get false positives down, but the typical overworked network administrator too often says that 'we are getting so much pornography,'" that the spam filter remains turned on to maximum strength, Tynan says.
So what can a legitimate emailer to do to avoid being caught in the spam trap? Experts offer several suggestions:
If you are sending a message to someone you don't know, consider sending the email as plain text, rather than as HTML, which makes the message look like a Web page. Tynan recommends plain text because spammers often use HTML computer code to hide "beacons." These are small graphics that when a user opens up a spam, sends a type of "message opened" acknowledgement back to the sender.
Don't send attachments if the recipient does not know you. Levine, who is also a board member of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, says that because many spammers and virus writers use attachments to spread pornography and malicious computer code, spam filters and anti-virus software sometimes view attachments with suspicion.
In your message subject line, be as specific as possible. This point is especially relevant because spammers have gotten smart enough to write messages with perfectly plausible scenarios, such as "Conference call tomorrow at 10 a.m." "That being the case, don't send a generically titled message, but give as many straightforward details as you can in the subject line," says Levine, who suggests naming specific conference call participants or departments. In other words, instead of typing "Conference call tomorrow at 10 a.m." in your message subject line, Levine suggests trying something such as "Conference call with audit committee tomorrow at 10 a.m." Given the specifics of that subject line, spam filters would recognize the message is not generic, and would probably let it through to the recipient's inbox.
Even if your message is legit, stay away from message subject words that spam filters look for. Although these words vary with each anti-spam software product, a typical list of such terms is available from free anti-spam utility SpamAssassin. A few suspect terms to avoid include: "for only" and "hello," subject lines that start with dollar signs, and words like "free" or "guaranteed" spelled with all capital letters. See the sidebar for a more comprehensive list of these terms.
Obtain permission first. "Email works best when there is full agreement between the sender and receiver," says Gartner analyst Sarner. In some cases, permission would entail contacting the recipient, advising her that you will be sending her an email, and then asking that she adjust her spam filter to ensure that the utility she uses lets your message in. Of course, seeking permission to email a company changes the nature of the email from a cold call to something that is expected. That is fine with Sarner, who views the false positive risks as so acute that sending unexpected email without notifying the recipient first can be a waste of time. Otherwise, "these [unsolicited messages] are going to be reported as spam, blocked and then ignored," says Sarner. "You will want to rise above that noise level, and the best way to do it is to start out with a telephone call or even a face-to-face meeting."
Because the cost-benefit balance between too much spam and that occasional missed potential customer is elusive, the wisest policy is, unfortunately, sometimes a case of the lesser of two evils.
"Fundamentally, it stinks to have to make Draconian tradeoffs, but if you are a business, you have to put up with it," says Levine.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/products-security.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, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Cape Coral, and Pembroke Pines.
Key words: Barracuda Networks Security RSA Encryption Cisco Decru Neoscale EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant SSL SonicWall Secure Computing Firewall VPN Endpoint
VMware ESX networking: Best Practices - Tips and Tricks - March 11, 2008
Networking with VMware ESX virtual servers has a number of special considerations. This runbook will walk you through physical server-based configuration options, VLAN tagging and MAC addresses and system administrator considerations.
Basic networking for rack and blade servers
VMware ESX Server provides flexibility for optimizing configurations and virtual networking architectures to meet many different requirements. But configuration flexibility can be a double-edged sword because basic network architectures with VMware can become bewildering in the face of so many options. Thus network administrators should become familiar with basic networking options for VMware on blade and rack servers to optimize their ESX networks.
Tower and rackmount servers require a minimum of five network adapters. Because blade servers and chassis have a limited number of uplink ports from the chassis to the distribution/core switches, network administrators should configure trunking of the uplink ports from the chassis switches and implement 802.1q VLAN tagging with a minimum of 1 GB per second for the network.
System administrators can configure ESX to use multiple Ethernet ports. Both an active and standby configurations should be implemented in case of primary port failure. Also, network administrators should team port configurations with multiple load balancing configurations based on the source port IT, a hash of the source MAC address, and IP-based hash of the source and destination.
To watch for network failures, monitor the link state of the adapter, and use beaconing to look upstream within the network. On the same note, ports can be configured to notify switches in the network that a port has been reconfigured, so the ARP tables are updated; this will minimize other errors.
For a more detailed explanation of virtual switches, physical and virtual NICs and MAC addresses, download chapter five of Virtualization with VMware ESX Server, made available to TechTarget readers by Syngress publishing. This chapter, which covers virtual networking, provides enough detail that "both the beginner and possibly the advanced ESX administrator" will find it useful, vs. Virtual Iron vs. Virtual Servers.
Configure and implement VLANs on VMware VI3
Virtual LANs (VLAN) are not new and most network architects and administrators know the ins and outs of configuring them for traditional infrastructures. But configuring VLANs for using VMware VI3 is a different story. Procedures that worked without virtualization, don't work with virtualization. Thus, before seting up VLANs, network administrators need to know a few things:
How many physical NICs are required?
Which VLAN a new virtual server will call home, and
How VLANs work.
When most networking pros talk about building VLANs with VMware VI3, they are usually referring to VLAN trunks. However, there are three other types of VLAN configurations VI3 uses: virtual switch tagging (VST), external switch tagging (EST) and virtual guest tagging (VGT). VLAN tagging allows for connecting a VLAN directly to a guest virtual machine. Administrators should become familiar with what VST, EST and VGT are and how to use them.
Virtual switch tagging, or VST is usually the best option for a guest VM, but it depends on the individual business's needs. With VST, VLAN trunks are used. The physical switch treats the ESX server's switch like a physical switch, tagging traffic appropriately as it passes across the trunk to the server's NICs. The ESX server then uses the tags to direct the traffic to its port.
EST or VGT can be more appropriate options if your organization's servers plug into distribution layer switches, which connect to a core switch. Here, using VST tagging would be impossible. You would need to use EST tagging.
Additionally, if a particular virtual machine needs to be on several VLANs simultaneously, then VGT makes more sense. You'll need guest OS support for VLAN drivers, and this situation is common in UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems, such as Solaris, OpenBSD and certain Linux distros.
Network redundancy
Virtualization expert Brian McCarthy of Sencilo Solutions of Tampa Florida discusses why provisioning for networking redundancy for the ESX service console port is important. He suggests having a minimum of two interfaces assigned to the ESX service console port. VirtualCenter 2.5 will warn you if you only have one interface assigned, earlier version of VirtualCenter do not.
The error message, in VirtualCenter2.5, will cause the cluster indicator error symbol to be present indefinitely from the missing interface with ESX 3.01 and 3.02 hosts, and most likely 3.5 hosts as well. This is important because If your virtual servers encounter a new or additional error, you probably wouldn't notice right away. Use a teamed vSwitch for a virtual machine network that does not need redundancy (such as a test network) and reconfigure it on the network and within VirtualCenter to be on the same network as the service console port to resolve this problem.
Disconnected network adapters
If you're making physical-to-virtual migrations with ESX, then it's handy to know that you can configure the virtual server to have its network adapter disconnected at power-on. You'll see be able to see the virtual hardware inventory from the guest operating system, but it will show as if the network was unplugged. With an offline VM, you can configure your IP addressing and DNS information, although you won't be able to test the IP addresses.
This option is useful because in certain cases having a candidate virtual machine on the network and performing its intended tasks too soon can cause a variety of errors, such as duplicate IP addresses, virtual machine applications picking up data simultaneously with another live system, formatting issues from a newer version of the business system feeding results to another system, and so on.
Networking in ESX offers great flexibility, but with flexibility comes room for error. With this tip and the important links scattered throughout you should have a good roadmap on how and why to configure networking for your virtual servers for optimal redundancy, speed, and availability, tailored to your computing environment's specific needs.
We are 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, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP.
Our technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Our 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. With office throughtout Florida including Orlando, St. Petersburg, Miami, Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Lake Mary, Lakeland, Gainesville. Call us at (407) 265-6293 or visit us www.sencilo.com
Mimosa Systems Partners With Sencilo Solutions to Deliver Next-Generation Content Archiving to City of Safety Harbor - March 11, 2008
SANTA CLARA, Calif. - (Business Wire) Mimosa Systems, a leader in Live Content Archiving solutions, today announced that it has partnered with Sencilo Solutions, a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions, to deploy the next-generation Mimosa™ NearPoint™ for Microsoft® Exchange Server for the City of Safety Harbor, Fla. The city standardized on NearPoint™ in 2006 to assure the retention, discovery and recovery of its mission critical email environment in a single solution.
Safety Harbor is a small city of almost 18,000 near Tampa. Like many small cities, Safety Harbor has been forced to deal with a big problem — constantly growing email volume — with limited IT resources and budget. To add to the complexity of the problem, the city must comply with the Florida’s Public Records and Sunshine Laws that mandate all municipalities and government agencies retain and provide access to public records including email. That means that even a small city like Safety Harbor must be able to ensure retention and rapid discovery of all its email content. In addition, the city sits in the center of the hurricane zone and the city wanted a solution that would allow them to recover quickly if a natural disaster were to strike.
“Email was increasing at alarming rates and we couldn’t delete old emails because of the requirements of the Sunshine Law,” said James Burke, Information Systems Manager for the City of Safety Harbor. “We were hitting long-term capacity issues and public records requests were taking an inordinate amount of time before we discovered Mimosa. NearPoint has allowed us to address our capacity requirements while streamlining our records retention and public records requests taking a huge burden off of IT resources.”
To address these issues the City of Safety Harbor turned to Sencilio Solutions, a leading Mimosa integration partner to deliver the archiving solution. Sencilo is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. The company’s mission is to provide leading-edge, turnkey solutions for leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses.
“The Mimosa NearPoint archiving solution is a perfect complement to our arsenal of advanced storage and security offerings,” said Brian McCarthy, CEO, Sencilo Solutions. “Local governments are faced with shrinking budgets and the City of Safety Harbor is no exception. Our commitment is to deliver cutting-edge products that deliver rapid value out of the box without having to throw an army of resources and professional services at the problem. Mimosa’s content archiving software was easy to install and we had the entire solution up and running in a single day without impacting end-user productivity.”
Key Mimosa NearPoint features that were particularly important to the City of Safety Harbor include:
- Continuous Capture and Archiving of Exchange Data: including all metadata, emails, folders, deletions, calendars, contacts, notes, tasks to quickly identify relevant content as part of a discovery or disclosure request.
- Automated Exchange Storage Management: Mimosa NearPoint has reduced the city’s storage requirements by moving attachments, based on policies of age and size, to the NearPoint server. The NearPoint Mailbox Extension feature allows Safety Harbor’s IT staff to define policies that stub attachments in Exchange while still giving users seamless access to the email.
- Simple “One-Click” Recovery: Mimosa NearPoint gives the City of Safety Harbor continuous protection of all its Exchange information. NearPoint preserves all Exchange information disk and allows users to restore individual messages themselves via Outlook and allows administrators to restore complete mailboxes and databases with simple “one-click” operations.
“So many municipalities are looking for an easy-to-deploy compliance solution that gives them iron-clad assurance of discovery, information access, retention and business continuity,” said Christophe Culine, senior vice president of sales, Mimosa Systems. “Without a solution like Mimosa, cities can waste valuable resources trying to comply with legislation like the Sunshine Law and Freedom of Information Act. The City of Safety Harbor is proactive in their content management strategy and we are pleased to include them to our growing roster of government customers.”
About Sencilo Solutions
Sencilo Solutions is a Orlando 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, 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.
About Mimosa NearPoint
Mimosa NearPoint for Microsoft Exchange Server addresses critical customer requirements around email information archiving, eDiscovery, regulatory compliance, business continuity, and storage optimization. Mimosa NearPoint provides legal search workflow, immediate mailbox and message recovery, disaster recovery, email archiving, and self-service search and access in one solution. By leveraging cost-effective storage, NearPoint also optimizes email storage and reduces overall infrastructure costs.
About Mimosa
Mimosa Systems, Inc. delivers next-generation information management solutions for information immediacy, discovery, and continuity. Mimosa NearPoint for Microsoft Exchange Server is the industry’s most comprehensive information management software solution for Microsoft Exchange, unifying email archiving, recovery, and storage management. With options for eDiscovery and disaster recovery, NearPoint ensures litigation readiness and email continuity while leveraging cost-effective disk technologies to optimize email storage growth.
