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EMC now offering Data De-Dupe, Primary Storage Compression and Flash Drives - how will NetApp survive? - February 25, 2009

Orlando Florida -- EMC Corp.'s Celerra is refreshing its multiprotocol arrays today as expected, with a new series of larger systems featuring file-level data reduction, integration with VMware Inc.'s disaster recovery (DR) application and support for Flash drives.

Integrated primary deduplication for files

The Celerra NS-120, NS-480 and NS-960 will replace the previous NS series models, and the new systems include built-in single instancing through code port from EMC Avamar and RecoverPoint. Brad Bunce, EMC's director of IP storage marketing, said a hashing operation was pulled in from Avamar, while a file-system crawler that identifies inactive files was ported from Kashya to provide automatic, file-level single instancing and policy-based compression on inactive files.

"It's not a bolt-on appliance or running in a separate memory space," Bunce said. "It's integrated in the Celerra base code."

Given the code port, it's not clear why Avamar's sub-file-level deduplication algorithms couldn't be pulled across as well. Bunce said there are plans on the roadmap for block-level dedupe in Celerra (EMC CEO Joe Tucci has pledged to add dedupe to all of the company's storage systems). EMC's principal rival in multiprotocol storage, NetApp, offers sub-file-level deduplication on primary storage volumes, but "there's more efficiency in file-level single instancing for general-purpose systems," Bunce said.

One analyst pointed out that there's a tradeoff to be made between data-reduction ratios and system performance. "In the future, both options could be beneficial for customers," said Steven Scully, research manager, disk storage systems at IDC.

Ready for Site Recovery Manager

The new NS series arrays are ready for integration with a new feature coming soon for VMware's Site Recovery Manager (SRM). The new SRM will offer automated failback, as well as failover for disaster recovery and business continuity purposes, which is a feature SRM users have been waiting for. Bunce said Celerra's replication has been certified to work with the automated failback process by letting VMware's vCenter Server execute replication operations through the array.

VMware isn't launching the new feature for SRM at VMworld Europe 2009 this week as EMC executives expected, but it is on the way. With the new Celerras, EMC is joining competitors, including IBM Corp. and 3PAR Inc., in offering native single instancing of VMware View (formerly VMware Desktop Infrastructure [VDI]) virtual workstation images through integration with Celerra's space-efficient snapshots.

EMC is also adding software features for compliance and system management to Celerra. Customers can set policies at the file-system level that will govern how long individual files are to be retained on the system, while a new non-spoofable clock will prevent deletion or modification of files until their retention period ends. A provisioning wizard will now automatically configure capacity added to the system after initial setup. Previously, Celerra offered automatic provisioning only during initial installation.

Bigger drives, more cache, Flash support

Hardware-wise, the new systems are based on the bigger, beefier Clariion CX4 models announced last year. The NS-120 scales to 120 drives and supports up to two NAS interface blades. The NS-480 scales up to 480 drives and four blades, while the NS-960 scales to 960 drives and up to eight blades. The system will be available as a diskless gateway (the NS-8), which supports up to eight blades and can be used to front Symmetrix and Clariion arrays.

Like the Clariion CX4 and DMX before it, the new NS series will support 73 GB and 146 GB Flash drives. Flash drives will begin shipping for the new NS arrays when they become available this week, according to Bunce.

Entry-level list pricing for an NS-120 with six 300 GB 15,000 rpm Fibre Channel drives, snapshot software, CIFS licenses and a single blade is $37,725. Sencilo Solutions a Florida based partner of EMC states there is demand for this type of product features, state Brian McCarthy CEO and co-founder for Sencilo Solutions. In fact Sencilo has been offering these features for over a year with partnership for Flash technology for Texas Memory, and primary storage compression technology from Ocarina Networks, says McCarthy. We feel company's don't have to purchase all new NS systems to get these features, but if it's time to retirer old NS, CX or NetApp filers the these new NS products are the world's finest.

Overlap among EMC storage systems

As with the CX4, overlap among EMC's storage hardware products with this release has become more pronounced. Like the CX4, the new NS capacity points overlap with the low end of the Symmetrix line, and the underlying Clariion hardware has also been given high-end features in recent years such as active-active controllers, quality-of-service controls and persistent write cache.

EMC launched its Atmos clustered system for file data last year, and that system could be seen as competitive with NAS. In addition, Celerra's compliance features move it onto the home turf of EMC's Centera CAS box. However, Bunce said the Celerra compliance features are meant for a low-end, files-only environment, while Centera offers more advanced application integration and support for block data.

EMC's Tucci said on an earnings call last year that he expects multiprotocol or unified storage systems to dominate the market, especially given the global economy.

EMC has already previewed a planned converged backup, replication and archiving box as a platform for its various data protection software titles. Could something similar be happening to primary storage?

David Hill, founder and principal analyst at Mesabi Group, said there will probably always be a need for specialization, at least in some markets.

"Multiprotocol storage is doing very well, especially for midsized environments," Hill said. "But large organizations that have been Fibre Channel-based aren't going to change, at least for the next few years."

Stay tuned, added Bunce. "You can see more evidence of convergence here, which brings great efficiency to our operations and the offering." That's not coincidence, he said, though going forward, "you'll still see finely differentiated products from EMC."

For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/products-storage.php

About Us

Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in Cost Cutting storage, security and managed services solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, Data Domain, EMC, Hitachi, Symantec, HDS, IBM, Commvault, Xiotech 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, storage virtualization installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.

Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral Green Simpana Offerings Projects: BC DR planning 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 SSD Solid state disk SANmelody FalconStor tier zero Xiotech ISE nx4 ax4 greenBytes ZFS Sun Top 10 ROBOBak managed services hosting cloud grid Datacore Compellent compellant equallogic lefthand networks don't buy storage stop buying storage itguardian cherub networks Arkeia Network Backup appliance Data Recovery Backup Health IT Healthcare IT Digital Hospital Allscripts

Data Protection in a Hurricane Region - February 8, 2009

Tampa Florida -- The corporate headquarters building for OSI Restaurant Partners is a mere 800 feet from the end of a runway at Tampa International Airport. But according to OSI Chief Information Officer Dusty Williams, that's the least of their concerns.

OSI, the company that owns popular restaurant-chain brands such as Outback Steakhouse, Roy's and Carraba's Italian Grill, is smack dab in the eye of the storm zone, in hurricane country. Their 750-person operation in Tampa includes all back office functions, including the financial, legal and real estate divisions. If a hurricane strikes and the building is impacted, the amount of sensitive data that is at stake is immeasurable. "We're in an A zone as far as flooding is concerned. You don't really want your data center here."

The 2008 Atlantic hurricane season produced a record number of consecutive storms, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The season saw a total of 16 named storms. With water temperatures rising due to climate change, many meteorological experts predict even tougher seasons to come. For companies in a hurricane zone, business continuity and disaster recovery preps need to be in place now, and not when the storm clouds begin churning.
It is that kind of thinking that inspired Williams to find a new home for the data center. In 2003, the main data center in headquarters had no back up power and a business continuity/disaster recovery plan was a vague notion. Williams got initial approval to move OSI's data center to an off-site facility hosted by backup and storage service provider Qwest.

"Typically when we talk BC/DR, it's always around hurricanes. The plan was to move the data center locally to a Qwest facility," said Williams. "The building itself is a category 3 or 4 that is built to sustain hurricane damage and has back up and battery power that we don't have in the headquarters facility."
Within months, the plan was put to the test. Florida experienced a severe hurricane season in 2004. Williams said Hurricane Charley illuminated the fact that they had made the right decision to move data off-site.

"On a Thursday night at 5 o'clock, officials told us they would be shutting power down to the grid we are on. So, if we had not outsourced the data center, we would have been dead in the water. " Williams said the entire summer of '04 was spent preparing for hurricanes. At least four blew through the area of varying intensity. While no major damage was sustained, when the season was over, it became clear that the BC/DR plan needed to include more than just one off-site data facility. OSI now has a second cyber center in Chicago that includes all critical systems. The company has more than 1200 restaurants around the country. The Chicago center would allow OSI and its restaurants to have operations back up and running within a few hours if the Florida off-site facility went down, according to Williams' estimate.
OSI's BC/DR plan is tested regularly to ensure connectivity to restaurants is maintained. Williams says he tests by bringing the main data center down and bringing the Chicago facility online.

Outsourcing the data center is crucial to any business with a natural disaster risk, according to Iain Hardcastle, senior consultant with professional services firm Deloitte & Touche at their operations in Bermuda. On the small island where his company operates, there is only one power supply. The local office, which stores all data on a SAN, also replicates the information at a local data hosting center. "The accounting side of our business is managing trust funds and looking after accounts for many name-plate companies. They can be absolutely multimillion-dollar, global clients. They don't care if we have a bit of a weather problem down here."
"Buns on seats" preparations. The data is only one part of the picture when it comes to business continuity in a natural disaster-prone area. If a facility goes down because of power failure or flooding, many organizations need a physical location to place their staff so operations can continue. Deloitte has what Hardcastle refers to as a "buns on seats" office off-island. So, too, does OSI. OSI maintains a comprehensive facility in Atlanta, which they have had to use at least twice in the last 4 years.
"Once we declare a disaster, we have 50 cubes available there," said Williams. "But we have to go up and make sure everything is up and running and ready. So we have people, from an IT perspective, head up 72 hours out ahead of any storm in private aircrafts to make sure everything is ready to go."
Sometimes it isn't just humans that need to be relocated. One year, according to Williams, OSI tried to send a check printer up in a plane so vendor checks could continue to be cut. Unfortunately, the machine didn't fit through the door of the aircraft. The check printer was delivered to Atlanta by van instead.
The process of relocating people, and sometimes equipment is time consuming, labor intensive and costly. The company even has contracting companies on standby for employees that may need assistance with boarding up houses before they depart. As complicated as it all sounds, Williams says, thankfully, most of it can be planned.
"With hurricanes, you have a distinct advantage over an earthquake or a tornado. You really don't know when they will strike."

Can you ever be completely prepared?
Even the most comprehensive BC/DR plan isn't without some risk, according to Hardcastle, who calls the Deloitte BC/DR plan a "continuously evolving process."
Williams admits he is still troubled at the prospect of keeping track of personnel in a worst case scenario. "I don't worry as much abut the technical side of it as a do the operations/people side of it. How do you find people?" he said. OSI says disaster plans are also considered regionally for all of its 1200-plus restaurants and each have special numbers set up so people can dial-in and alert the company as to where they are. "But you worry about how long that will take if cell service, phone service, is down" said Williams. And despite the plans put in place at the headquarters building, there will still inevitably be some loss if the facility itself is damaged in high winds or flood waters, said Williams. "Sometimes people have paper on their desk that they haven't put into a system yet. In those cases you need to ensure you have connections with vendors to ask them "How can we get your invoice back in here and get you paid?"

For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/continuity-disaster.php

About Us

Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in Cost Cutting storage, security and managed services solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, Data Domain, EMC, Hitachi, Symantec, HDS, IBM, Commvault, Xiotech 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, storage virtualization installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.

Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral Green Simpana Offerings Projects: BC DR planning 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 SSD Solid state disk SANmelody FalconStor tier zero Xiotech ISE nx4 ax4 greenBytes ZFS Sun Top 10 ROBOBak managed services hosting cloud grid Datacore Compellent compellant equallogic lefthand networks don't buy storage stop buying storage itguardian cherub networks Arkeia Network Backup appliance Data Recovery Backup Health IT Healthcare IT Digital Hospital Allscripts

Tips for Going Green and other IT Cost Cutting Ideas - February 3, 2009

Orlando Florida - So, I thought I would supply everyone with a little Ecotech news. Here are "50 Clean-Tech Tips and Going Green Facts" to help greenify the geek in you. Selling refurbished PCs is now a $6 billion-a-year business.

The "phantom load" (electricity consumed by "switched-off" appliances like TVs, radios, microwaves, etc) can add $200 a year to your bill.

Switched-off devices account for 40% of the energy consumed by electronics in an average home.

The U.S. government could save $330 million over a 4 year period if its data centers complied with Energy Star Version 4.0

Extra heat generated by computers means more heat in the office, which translates to more use of air conditioning.

Companies that sign for the WWF's Climate Savers Computing Initiative could reduce CO2 pollution by 10 million tons annually by 2010.

At the 2008 CES, Fujitsu showed a laptop PC whose outside plastic shell is 50% vegetable-based polymer alloy.

Creation of a desktop PC usually requires ten times the PC's weight in fossil fuels and chemicals, most of them toxic.

15 billion batteries are made and sold across the globe every year.

If you're not sure where to donate out-of-use electronics, Recycles.org can match you up with nonprofit agencies that use old equipment.

By 2011, more than 400 million PCs will have been purchased as replacements for current home and office computers.

Typical U.S. cell phone users replace their phones every year and a half.

130 million cell phones each year go into retirement.

Recycling 100 million phones would recover 3.4 metric tons of gold - gold that would not have to be mined.

PCs contain gold too: 1.2 tons of PC scrap electronics has more than can be extracted from 17 tons of gold ore.

Only 15% of Americans are aware that local recyclers will take old electronics and computers.

Each year, the world generates 20 million to 50 million metric tons of e-waste.

E-waste makes up 2% of solid waste in the U.S. and is the fastest-growing segment of U.S. garbage.

Flaws in Windows XP's sleep mode and Microsoft's choice of "High Performance" as the default performance option may have added $5 billion to power bills annually worldwide.

NASA, the Department of Defense, and the General Services Administration are all now committed to buying only EPEAT-certified computers.

Manufacturing 1 desktop and 1 monitor requires 530lbs of fossil fuel, 58lbs of chemicals, and 1.5 tons of water.

12% (25 million) of Americans would pay extra for greener electronics. On the other hand, 41% (90 million) are not willing to pay extra.

Wii is the power-saving leader of game consoles, consuming only 18.4 watts. Compare the hogs: Xbox (186W), PS3 (199W), and a PC (209W at peak usage).

While old CRT monitors use more energy to show white than black, LCDs spend slightly more energy to show black than white.

Don't recycle, Freecycle. There are 4,226 Freecycle.org online groups helping more than 4 million users give away "junk" to others who can use it.

The average office drone uses up 10,000 sheets of paper - about a whole tree's worth of wood pulp per year.

2.05 million tons of electronics were put out as garbage in the U.S. in 2005. Only about 18% of that was recycled.

The U.S scraps about 400 million pieces of consumer electronics equipment, e-waste per year. It's the fastest-growing waste stream.

If you buy a new system, Apple and Dell will recycle your old computer, regardless of manufacturer.

Search EPEAT.net's Product Registry to find computers and monitors that are certified green.

There's 4 to 8lbs of toxic lead in all CRT TVs and monitors. Flat-panels have less lead, but more mercury.

It's estimated that as much as 80% of U.S. e-waste is shipped overseas or to Mexico to be dismantled in unsafe working conditions.

As much as 50% of the power most desktop computers use is wasted as heat jettisoned by fans on the power supply.

A survey by Staples in November 2007 indicated that only 23% of U.S. residents recycle electronics.

Between 2000 and 2007, as many as 500 million computers became obsolete.

To create just 1 kilogram of consumer goods, manufacturers on average create 5 kilograms of waste.

Shopping for a new HDTV? Plasma TVs consume far more energy than LCDs and they waste it as heat energy.

Shopping for a surge protector? Buy one of reasonable capacity. The bigger it is the more energy it consumes.

Bamboo is the most sustainable of all materials. Look for laptops encased in it, such as the ASUS Ecobook.

By 2001, e-waste already accounted for 70% of the heavy metals and 40% of the lead in U.S. landfills.

Some LCDs are built using plastic rather than glass, which is far easier to recycle.

If all commuters worked from home just 1 day a week, we could save 5.85 billion gallons of oil each year.

If you listen to your CD player 2 hours a day, you can save $200 a year by switching to rechargeable batteries.

The energy saved by recycling 1 plastic bottle will power a computer for 25 minutes.

Take an HP, Lexmark, or Dell printer cartridge to Staples for recycling and you will get a $3 coupon for ink or toner.

Energy Star 4.0 is quite stringent, demanding highly efficient power supplies and very-low-power idle modes.

Unplug! Each year in the U.S., electronic devices that are turned off but not unplugged use electricity worth $3 billion.

Blog, it eliminates the need for paper, thus saving a tree.

Or better yet, turn off your laptop or PC and go outside. If we are going to having global warming, you might as well enjoy the warm weather it brings.

Last but not least, paint your laptop and/or PC green. It will trick the components inside into running at a more energy efficient level. Ok, fine, this last one is a lie. But using a green colored computer will make you look hip to all those that have jumped aboard the "going green" bandwagon.

Now go hug a tree. It's Earth Day!

Selling refurbished PCs is now a $6 billion-a-year business.

The "phantom load" (electricity consumed by "switched-off" appliances like TVs, radios, microwaves, etc) can add $200 a year to your bill.

Switched-off devices account for 40% of the energy consumed by electronics in an average home.

The U.S. government could save $330 million over a 4 year period if its data centers complied with Energy Star Version 4.0

Extra heat generated by computers means more heat in the office, which translates to more use of air conditioning.

Companies that sign for the WWF's Climate Savers Computing Initiative could reduce CO2 pollution by 10 million tons annually by 2010.

At the 2008 CES, Fujitsu showed a laptop PC whose outside plastic shell is 50% vegetable-based polymer alloy.

Creation of a desktop PC usually requires ten times the PC's weight in fossil fuels and chemicals, most of them toxic.

15 billion batteries are made and sold across the globe every year.

If you're not sure where to donate out-of-use electronics, Recycles.org can match you up with nonprofit agencies that use old equipment.

By 2011, more than 400 million PCs will have been purchased as replacements for current home and office computers.

Typical U.S. cell phone users replace their phones every year and a half.

130 million cell phones each year go into retirement.

Recycling 100 million phones would recover 3.4 metric tons of gold - gold that would not have to be mined.

PCs contain gold too: 1.2 tons of PC scrap electronics has more than can be extracted from 17 tons of gold ore.

Only 15% of Americans are aware that local recyclers will take old electronics and computers.

Each year, the world generates 20 million to 50 million metric tons of e-waste.

E-waste makes up 2% of solid waste in the U.S. and is the fastest-growing segment of U.S. garbage.

Flaws in Windows XP's sleep mode and Microsoft's choice of "High Performance" as the default performance option may have added $5 billion to power bills annually worldwide.

NASA, the Department of Defense, and the General Services Administration are all now committed to buying only EPEAT-certified computers.

Manufacturing 1 desktop and 1 monitor requires 530lbs of fossil fuel, 58lbs of chemicals, and 1.5 tons of water.

12% (25 million) of Americans would pay extra for greener electronics. On the other hand, 41% (90 million) are not willing to pay extra.

Wii is the power-saving leader of game consoles, consuming only 18.4 watts. Compare the hogs: Xbox (186W), PS3 (199W), and a PC (209W at peak usage).

While old CRT monitors use more energy to show white than black, LCDs spend slightly more energy to show black than white.

Don't recycle, Freecycle. There are 4,226 Freecycle.org online groups helping more than 4 million users give away "junk" to others who can use it.

The average office drone uses up 10,000 sheets of paper - about a whole tree's worth of wood pulp per year.

2.05 million tons of electronics were put out as garbage in the U.S. in 2005. Only about 18% of that was recycled.

The U.S scraps about 400 million pieces of consumer electronics equipment, e-waste per year. It's the fastest-growing waste stream.

If you buy a new system, Apple and Dell will recycle your old computer, regardless of manufacturer.

Search EPEAT.net's Product Registry to find computers and monitors that are certified green.

There's 4 to 8lbs of toxic lead in all CRT TVs and monitors. Flat-panels have less lead, but more mercury.

It's estimated that as much as 80% of U.S. e-waste is shipped overseas or to Mexico to be dismantled in unsafe working conditions.

As much as 50% of the power most desktop computers use is wasted as heat jettisoned by fans on the power supply.

A survey by Staples in November 2007 indicated that only 23% of U.S. residents recycle electronics.

Between 2000 and 2007, as many as 500 million computers became obsolete.

To create just 1 kilogram of consumer goods, manufacturers on average create 5 kilograms of waste.

Shopping for a new HDTV? Plasma TVs consume far more energy than LCDs and they waste it as heat energy.

Shopping for a surge protector? Buy one of reasonable capacity. The bigger it is the more energy it consumes.

Bamboo is the most sustainable of all materials. Look for laptops encased in it, such as the ASUS Ecobook.

By 2001, e-waste already accounted for 70% of the heavy metals and 40% of the lead in U.S. landfills.

Some LCDs are built using plastic rather than glass, which is far easier to recycle.

If all commuters worked from home just 1 day a week, we could save 5.85 billion gallons of oil each year.

If you listen to your CD player 2 hours a day, you can save $200 a year by switching to rechargeable batteries.

The energy saved by recycling 1 plastic bottle will power a computer for 25 minutes.

Take an HP, Lexmark, or Dell printer cartridge to Staples for recycling and you will get a $3 coupon for ink or toner.

Energy Star 4.0 is quite stringent, demanding highly efficient power supplies and very-low-power idle modes.

Unplug! Each year in the U.S., electronic devices that are turned off but not unplugged use electricity worth $3 billion.

Blog, it eliminates the need for paper, thus saving a tree.

Or better yet, turn off your laptop or PC and go outside. If we are going to having global warming, you might as well enjoy the warm weather it brings.

Last but not least, paint your laptop and/or PC green. It will trick the components inside into running at a more energy efficient level. Ok, fine, this last one is a lie. But using a green colored computer will make you look hip to all those that have jumped aboard the "going green" bandwagon.

For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-assessment.php

About Us

Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in Cost Cutting storage, security and managed services solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, Data Domain, EMC, Hitachi, Symantec, HDS, IBM, Commvault, Xiotech 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, storage virtualization installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.

Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral Green Simpana Offerings Projects: BC DR planning 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 SSD Solid state disk SANmelody FalconStor tier zero Xiotech ISE nx4 ax4 greenBytes ZFS Sun Top 10 ROBOBak managed services hosting cloud grid Datacore Compellent compellant equallogic lefthand networks don't buy storage stop buying storage itguardian cherub networks Arkeia Network Backup appliance Data Recovery Backup Health IT Healthcare IT Digital Hospital Allscripts

Why MultiCare Hospital replaced Data Domain De-Dupe with SEPATON - February 1, 2009

Orlando Florida -- The S2100-ES2, first installed a little more than a year ago, fit the bill. The Fibre Channel (FC) appliance has a VTL interface, making it faster than the NAS/iSCSI-based products many smaller businesses have come to favor for disk-based backup. The clustered device can scale nondisruptively from one to 32 hardware nodes, which helps MultiCare keep up with data growth.

Zuspan says MultiCare also evaluated a comparable product from Diligent Technologies Corp. before it was bought by IBM Corp., but wanted a pre-assembled appliance rather than having to provide hardware to go with Diligent's software. In addition to potentially complicating support, Zuspan says the Diligent software made it difficult at that time to provision underlying storage hardware using MultiCare's IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) storage virtualization appliance.

Meanwhile, the Windows team at MultiCare had deployed Data Domain's DD460 and DD560 deduplicating disk arrays for disk-based backup. Data Domain is the most widely deployed data deduplication product with approximately 2,500 installations. Like most Data Domain customers, MultiCare's Windows division was using Data Domain's inline data deduplication with a NAS interface and Ethernet connectivity.

Data Domain doesn't yet offer data deduplication across multiple nodes, although company officials say it's on the roadmap in 2010. In the meantime, MultiCare's Windows team ran up against the capacity limits of first one and then a second Data Domain box last year, and started writing to the Sepaton VTL instead. Given the slower Ethernet interfaces and inline approach to dedupe on the Data Domain box, Zuspan says "performance was pretty limited" for the Windows team as well. A typical Windows backup that had taken four and a half hours with Data Domain took an hour and 20 minutes with Sepaton. Zuspan says his company's Windows team still uses Data Domain, but may phase out its arrays over time.

The Windows team actually used Sepaton's DeltaStor data deduplication before Zuspan's Unix team. That's because Sepaton's "application-aware" deduplication must be certified separately with each backup vendor it wants to work with, while Data Domain and other vendors offer the same deduplication regardless of backup software. The Windows team was using Symantec Corp.'s Veritas NetBackup, the first backup application certified with DeltaStor. The Unix team used Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co.'s Data Protector backup software; however, Sepaton didn't support Data Protector until late last year. This is exactly the reason Data Domain has lost 47% of it's marketshare in the last few years.

But Zuspan says Sepaton's deduplication was worth the wait. "[Because] it's application-aware, it can see by the signature of data that it's, say, Exchange email, and then runs an algorithm based on that," he says. This leads to "huge" deduplication ratios for applications like Exchange, where Zuspan says the S2100-ES2 is currently storing 619 logical GB in 6.18 GB of physical space—a 100:1 data-reduction ratio. The overall 200 TB backup, which includes files such as radiology images that can't be deduped, is stored on 75 physical TBs.

Sepaton's deduplication is also post-process, which some observers say makes it difficult to meet backup windows to offsite media through replication or copies to tape. But Zuspan points out another unique Sepaton dedupe feature called "forward differencing," which stores the most recent backup while deleting redundant data from older backup sets. This makes short-term restores and copies to tape easier, he notes, because the most recent full backup is stored quickly and intact.

For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-data-deduplication.php

About Us

Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in Cost Cutting storage, security and managed services solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, Data Domain, EMC, Hitachi, Symantec, HDS, IBM, Commvault, Xiotech 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, storage virtualization installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.

Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral Green Simpana Offerings Projects: BC DR planning 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 SSD Solid state disk SANmelody FalconStor tier zero Xiotech ISE nx4 ax4 greenBytes ZFS Sun Top 10 ROBOBak managed services hosting cloud grid Datacore Compellent compellant equallogic lefthand networks don't buy storage stop buying storage itguardian cherub networks Arkeia Network Backup appliance Data Recovery Backup Health IT Healthcare IT Digital Hospital Allscripts

Storage Capacity - what do these numbers mean? - January 31, 2009

Here are some real-world examples of the approximate storage capacities of 'commonly' encountered objects.

Bit - The fundamental binary data unit: 1 or 0

Bytes (8 bits)
1 byte: A single character

10 bytes: A single word
100 bytes: A telegram OR a punched card

Kilobyte, KB: (1,000 bytes)
1 Kilobyte: A very short story
2 Kilobytes: A typewritten page
10 Kilobytes: An encyclopaedic page OR a deck of punched cards
50 Kilobytes: A compressed document image page
100 Kilobytes: A low-resolution photograph
200 Kilobytes: A box of punched cards
500 Kilobytes: A very heavy box of punched cards

Megabyte, MB (1,000,000 bytes)
1-2 Megabytes: A small novel OR a 3.5 inch floppy disk
2 Megabytes: High resolution photograph
5 Megabytes: The complete works of Shakespeare OR 30 seconds of TV- quality video
10 Megabytes: A minute of high-fidelity sound OR A digital chest X-ray
20 Megabytes: A box of floppy disks
50 Megabytes: A digital mammogram
100 Megabytes: 1 meter of shelved books OR a two-volume encyclopaedic book
200 Megabytes: A reel of 9-track tape OR an IBM 3480 cartridge tape
500-600 Megabytes: A CD-ROM

Gigabyte, GB (1,000,000,000 bytes)
1 Gigabyte: A pickup truck filled with paper OR a symphony in high-fidelity sound OR a movie at TV quality
2 Gigabytes: 20 meters of shelved books OR a stack of 9-track tapes
5 Gigabytes: An 8mm digital tape OR a DVD-ROM
10 Gigabytes: Typical PC hard disk drive
20 Gigabytes: A good collection of the works of Beethoven OR 5 digital tapes (8 mm) OR a VHS tape used for digital data
50 Gigabytes: A floor of books
100 Gigabytes: A floor of academic journals
200 Gigabytes: 50 digital tapes, 8 mm

Terabyte, TB (1,000,000,000,000 bytes)
1 Terabyte: An automated tape robot OR all the X-ray films in a large technological hospital OR 50,000 trees made into paper and printed OR 50,000 trees' worth of printed pages
2 Terabytes: An academic research library OR A cabinet full of Exabyte tapes
10 Terabytes: The printed collection of the US Library of Congress
50 Terabytes: The contents of a large Mass Storage System
10-100 Terabytes: Estimated capacity of human brain

Petabyte, PB (1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes)
1 Petabyte: 3 years of EOS data (2001)
2 Petabytes: All US academic research libraries
20 Petabytes: Production of hard-disk drives in 1995
200 Petabytes: All printed material OR production of digital magnetic tape in 1995

Exabyte, EB (1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes)
5 Exabytes: All words ever spoken by human beings.

Zettabyte, ZB (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes)

Yottabyte, YB (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes)

What is next?

About Us

Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in Cost Cutting storage, security and managed services solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, Data Domain, EMC, Hitachi, Symantec, HDS, IBM, Commvault, Xiotech 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, storage virtualization installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.

Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral Green Simpana Offerings Projects: BC DR planning 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 SSD Solid state disk SANmelody FalconStor tier zero Xiotech ISE nx4 ax4 greenBytes ZFS Sun Top 10 ROBOBak managed services hosting cloud grid Datacore Compellent compellant equallogic lefthand networks don't buy storage stop buying storage itguardian cherub networks Arkeia Network Backup appliance Data Recovery Backup Health IT Healthcare IT Digital Hospital Allscripts

Will Commvault's Simpana be the Final Nail in Exagrid and Data Domain's Coffin? - January 30, 2009

Tampa Florida -- Faced with shrinking or static budgets and increasing recovery demands, enterprises of all sizes are wisely evaluating and implementing data deduplication to tackle the challenges of rapid data growth. The challenge of managing primary storage which is growing at 50-100% per year is further exacerbated by the growth of secondary data copies, which can be growing at 12 times these rates! Eliminating redundant data is simply a smart approach.

Many organizations have turned to specialized hardware appliances to implement data deduplication. However, adding a point-level fix to the enterprise might not be the answer. Why?

Dedupe Appliances are costly to procure, manage and scale.
Appliances cannot deduplicate across multiple appliances.
The process of deduplication within an appliance is optimized for ingestion speeds at the cost of vital restore performance
The benefits of dedupe when writing a tape copy is erased. Creating offsite retention copies to tape continues to be a routine process. An appliance rehydrates back all the data when creating a tape copy.
The quick pain-relief achieved by these point-level fixes, quickly dissipates as your production growth rate drives more unique data into your recovery strategy.

CommVault® Solution

With the industry’s first end-to-end, block-based software deduplication, Simpana 8 offers a holistic approach to deduplication that extends across all tiers of secondary storage including disk and tape; encompassing global reduction of stored data across backups, archives, clients and platforms in both remote and centralized configurations. The result? Unprecedented operational efficiencies and cost savings. An end-to-end approach unlocks IT benefits which include faster network data transfers, shorter backup windows, faster recoveries, and more efficient utilization of your secondary storage infrastructure, thereby reducing the amount of disk/tape used for backup and archive copies by up to 90 percent.

CommVault Simpana software brings a global approach to deduplication by integrating and embedding deduplication throughout your data infrastructure: from clients to disk to tape, across all data types, sources and platforms, and across all your backup and archive data sets and storage tiers, including VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V virtualized environments. CommVault’s unique and flexible data management architecture ensures that your deduplication capabilities scale with your data, avoiding the need to splinter deduplication into isolated devices. CommVault Simpana software scales to meet your precise storage requirements for both today and tomorrow.

Simpana software enables you to extend those savings by seamlessly persisting the data reduction to long-term, low-cost archive storage such as tape. Simpana software’s unique deduplication across multiple media agents breaks the constraints of the “box” to shift copies of deduplicated data transparently to tape without “rehydration”. That archive copy set includes self-described properties so it can be used to service offsite vaulting or DR restore requirements. This feature combines to offer customers an option which can extend the 90 percent savings directly to the tape copies – significantly reducing the operational costs of long-term data retention in terms of media, drives and vaulting/handling costs.

Employing content-aware deduplication ensures that the Simpana software is able to more accurately find and reduce common patterns in the data stream across disparate applications, file systems and data types – including the ability to encrypt (and deduplication) secure data sets.

Utilizing precise cataloging over an open disk architecture, allows the Simpana software’s data movers to eradicate the reassembly latency or restore tax– resulting in faster recoveries and lower “taxes”.

Embedding deduplication directly into the core of how you manage and move your data in an end-end or holistic fashion embraces and preserves global data reduction with fast ROI and long-term operational savings.

CommVault Simpana software integrates and embeds deduplication to address a variety of data management challenges across the enterprise:

Data deduplication enables cost-effective protection, retention and recovery of critical data for single item to full site Disaster Recovery needs
Simpana software’s global and scalable deduplication dramatically reduces the end-to-end solution cost of meeting your critical data SLAs– mitigating the risks of downtime or loss across a wider variety of applications
Seamless support for all protection and archiving policies including VMWare and Microsoft Hyper-V virtualized environments
Preserving the reduced cost benefits as legal and corporate compliance drive data retention requirement from days to years
Targeted solutions to address the special needs of remote offices environments with limited local resources and bandwidth challenges. Automated protection polices can drive dual, deduplicated copies in the same job to provide local, rapid recovery and centralized, longer-term cost-effective retention

For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-data-deduplication.php

About Us

Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in Cost Cutting storage, security and managed services solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, Data Domain, EMC, Hitachi, Symantec, HDS, IBM, Commvault, Xiotech 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, storage virtualization installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.

Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral Green Simpana Offerings Projects: BC DR planning 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 SSD Solid state disk SANmelody FalconStor tier zero Xiotech ISE nx4 ax4 greenBytes ZFS Sun Top 10 ROBOBak managed services hosting cloud grid Datacore Compellent compellant equallogic lefthand networks don't buy storage stop buying storage itguardian cherub networks Arkeia Network Backup appliance Data Recovery Backup Health IT Healthcare IT Digital Hospital Allscripts

Why Exagrid and Data Domain is Losing Marketshare and Customers to Quantum? - January 29, 2009

Miami Florida -- The most common value proposition that I have seen virtual tape library (VTL) vendors present has been seamless integration with existing data backup/restore infrastructure and processes. However, over the years, I've discovered that the theory has not effectively translated into reality: VTLs have not been as seamless an integration exercise as VTL vendors would have you believe.

Right now, the most compelling advantage of VTLs over LAN-based backup-to-disk solutions is their high-performance capabilities.

Backup software changes are often required to effectively utilize VTLs, as well as offsite policy changes, especially when having to implement virtual-to-physical tape copies. Examples range from having to make configuration changes to allow backup software to be aware of various offline processes that the VTL might be undertaking on the virtual media, to job scheduling adjustments to capitalize on the advantages that a VTL has over a physical tape library. So plug-and-play technology, this is not: Some effort is required even in the most ideal scenarios.

In spite of this, VTL adoption was on the uptick over the last few years, largely because data backup/restore software at the time did not have robust native backup-to-disk capabilities; therefore, the effort to implement a VTL was tolerated for its backup-to-disk benefits.

However, backup software products today -- such as those from CommVault, EMC Corp., with its NetWorker, IBM Corp. Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) and Symantec Corp. Veritas NetBackup -- can perform backup to disk in a more sophisticated and seamless way. In addition, with data deduplication becoming the new paradigm for backup to disk -- because of its compelling cost per gigabyte that is comparable to tape -- VTLs that don't incorporate data deduplication are becoming even less popular

Right now, the most compelling advantage of VTLs over LAN-based backup-to-disk solutions is their high-performance capabilities. Virtual tape emulation is the main backup-to-disk software interface within backup storage appliances that use high-performance Fibre Channel as the connectivity. However, this performance capability comes at a significantly high cost per gigabyte. Thus, in order to compete, VTL vendors are introducing hybrid products with VTL front-end and dedupe back-end storage. These are good solutions that provide the best of both worlds; but it's important to note that, in my findings, storage professionals who select these products are not typically making their selection based on the merits of the product's VTL interface, but on whether the solution addresses their performance and data deduplication requirements.

So what's the future? There's speculation that in a few years, when target-based network-attached storage (NAS) data deduplication products begin to perform as well as Fibre Channel VTLs, VTLs will be phased out in favor of NAS-based 10Gb Ethernet deduplication backup-to-disk solutions because of their significant ease of use, cost effectiveness and integration with native enhanced backup software features. In the future, storage professionals might end up asking themselves: "Why should I bother acquiring a backup-to-disk product that has a VTL software layer that I have to manage, when a straight backup-to-disk alternative exists that is just as fast?"

However, data deduplication as the conqueror is just one possibility out of many, even if it is a likely outcome. After all, this is the IT industry, where the uncertainty principle reigns supreme and just when you think you've got your finger on it, everything changes (solid-state drives anyone?). So, my advice today for storage professionals is to focus your efforts on aligning your requirements and recovery objectives with the overall capabilities offered by the backup-to-disk solutions you're considering. Don't get hung up on sales pitches focusing too much on specific product features presented in absolute terms (e.g., be skeptical of statements like "VTL is the best backup-to-disk approach" or "there is no point doing backup to disk without dedupe").

Having said that, what I have found is that most storage professionals that have successfully implemented a backup-to-disk solution (VTL appliance or dedupe appliance), had put the presence of a virtual tape interface as a secondary criteria to the solution's overall performance and capacity optimization capabilities.

For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-data-deduplication.php

About Us

Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in Cost Cutting storage, security and managed services solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, Data Domain, EMC, Hitachi, Symantec, HDS, IBM, Commvault, Xiotech 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, storage virtualization installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.

Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral Green Simpana Offerings Projects: BC DR planning 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 SSD Solid state disk SANmelody FalconStor tier zero Xiotech ISE nx4 ax4 greenBytes ZFS Sun Top 10 ROBOBak managed services hosting cloud grid Datacore Compellent compellant equallogic lefthand networks don't buy storage stop buying storage itguardian cherub networks Arkeia Network Backup appliance Data Recovery Backup Health IT Healthcare IT Digital Hospital Allscripts

Too Many Privacy and Security Issues over Cloud Storage - January 29, 2009

Miami Florida -- Cloud computing will soon become an area of hot debate in Washington, D.C., with policy makers debating issues such as the privacy and security of data in the cloud, a panel of tech experts said Friday.

There are "huge challenges" facing policy makers in the next year or two as cloud computing becomes increasingly popular, said Mike Nelson, visiting professor for the Center for Communication, Culture and Technology at Georgetown University and a former tech policy advisor for U.S. President Bill Clinton and Bush.

Among the major policy issues to be worked out: Who owns the data that consumers store on the network? Should law enforcement agencies have easier access to personal information in the cloud than data on a personal computer? Do government procurement regulations need to change to allow agencies to embrace cloud computing?

Cloud computing is "as important as the Web was 15 years ago," said Nelson, speaking at a Google forum on the policy implications of hosted applications and services. "We don't have any idea of how important it is, and we don't really have any clue as to how it's going to be used."

Data Leakage by your provider
Despite the growing number of people using cloud services such as hosted e-mail and online photo storage, many consumers don't understand the privacy and security implications, said Ari Schwartz, vice president and chief operating officer of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an advocacy group focused on online privacy and civil rights. So far, U.S. courts have generally ruled that private data stored in the cloud doesn't enjoy the same level of protection from law enforcement searches that data stored on a personal computer does, he said.

"Consumers expect their information will be treated the same on the cloud as it is if it were stored at home on their own computers," Schwartz said. I have even heard of mid-size businesses using management backup services as a way to reduce cost, that is until their first monthly statement arrives. Iron Mountain On-line Backup keeps no more the 50% of it's customers after the first year of service, that a large turn over.

Forty-nine percent of U.S. businesses who use cloud computing services would be very concerned if the cloud vendors shared their files with law enforcement agencies, according to a survey released Friday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Another 15 percent of respondents said they'd be somewhat concerned, according to the survey, released in conjunction with the Google policy event.

Sixty-nine percent of U.S. businesses who are online use at least one of six popular cloud services, the survey said. Fifty-six percent of survey CIOs use Web mail services, 34 percent store remote branch offices backups online and 29 percent use online applications such as Google Documents or Adobe Photoshop Express, according to the survey.

Among the concerns about cloud computing: 80 percent of small to mid-sized businesses said they'd be very concerned if a vendor used their data or backup for test markets. Another 68 percent said they'd be very concerned if the vendor used their business information stored in the cloud to deliver or research data, and 63 percent said they'd be very concerned if the vendor kept their data after they tried to delete it.

Asked why they use cloud computing services, 51 percent said convenience was the major reason. Another 41 percent said the major factor was being able to access their information from multiple computers and devices, and 8% saw some cost benefits.

One audience member suggested businesses growing use of cloud services doesn't match with their concerns about the privacy of their data. Schwartz said consumers would embrace privacy protections if they were made easy to use.

"companies are obviously making tradeoffs in privacy when they use these services," added John Horrigan, Pew's associate director for research.

Policies and Government
Asked what policy recommendations they'd make to the U.S. government, Nelson and Schwartz suggested a change in government procurement regulations are needed for federal agencies to embrace cloud computing. But questions about data privacy and ownership are also important to address, Schwartz added.

The U.S. government should encourage the free flow of information around the globe, added Dan Burton, senior vice president for global public policy at cloud computing vendor Iron Mountain. The benefits of cloud computing could be hampered by laws that prevent the sharing of data across national borders, he said.

The government should avoid formulating specific policies governing cloud computing, according to Nelson. Government's role should be to ensure competition and allow vendors to work out details, he said.

"I do think government has an almost infinite ability to screw up things when they can't see the future," Nelson said. "We have to have leadership that believes in empowering users and empowering citizens."

For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/consolidation-assess.php

About Us

Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in Cost Cutting storage, security and managed services solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, Data Domain, EMC, Hitachi, Symantec, HDS, IBM, Commvault, Xiotech 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, storage virtualization installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.

Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral Green Simpana Offerings Projects: BC DR planning 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 SSD Solid state disk SANmelody FalconStor tier zero Xiotech ISE nx4 ax4 greenBytes ZFS Sun Top 10 ROBOBak managed services hosting cloud grid Datacore Compellent compellant equallogic lefthand networks don't buy storage stop buying storage itguardian cherub networks Arkeia Network Backup appliance Data Recovery Backup Health IT Healthcare IT Digital Hospital Allscripts

Top 10 Storage Technologies for a Greener Network - January 25, 2009

Here are 10 technologies to improve storage efficiency and reduce power consumption.

An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report to Congress [1] compared the energy consumption of four primary data-center components: high-end servers, midrange servers, networking equipment, and storage devices (see Table). In this study, data storage devices had the highest power consumption growth rate (191%) and the highest overall power consumption (3.2 billion kWh.)

According to the report, power consumption of data storage devices maintained a steady growth rate during the period (see figure, below). Left unchecked, this growth rate will soon encumber the power requirements of other data-center components.

Adding to the problem of rising power requirements in the data center is the fact that every watt of power consumed by IT equipment requires at least another watt for infrastructure, which includes cooling, UPS, lighting, and losses through power distribution. In other words, each watt saved in the data center is two watts earned!

In light of this, data storage vendors have been optimizing power efficiency through various design aspects of their products. The benefits of this are the following:

Reduced storage power requirement “balances” the overall power consumption of IT equipment in the data center (i.e., provides more available power to the servers); and

Reduced storage power requirements decrease the overall data-center power requirements, reducing operational costs.

“Green storage” is a simple way to describe data storage (or storage networking) products that can be configured for optimal energy efficiency and power savings. However, the components that constitute green storage, and the techniques for making storage “greener,” are still largely unknown or misunderstood.

This article summarizes several approaches to reducing storage power consumption, including high-efficiency power supplies, high-capacity disk drives, and often-overlooked space-saving software options.

High-efficiency power supplies

A large amount of data-center power is lost due to poorly designed power supplies with low efficiency ratings. According to recent studies, inefficient power supplies in data-center equipment contribute a power loss of 50% or more during periods of low power consumption.

Designing products with an efficient power profile involves two steps. First, power supply-rated output specifications should be closely matched to the components that are being provided this power. Second, power supplies should deliver an optimal amount of power efficiency across the entire product load range. Poorly designed IT products using overrated power supplies that continually operate within their lowest efficiency load range needlessly drain power from the data center.

Today, high-efficiency power supplies are available in disk and tape systems, fabric switches and directors, and other storage network appliances. Deploying products designed for energy efficiency incrementally reduces the overall data-center power bill.

High-capacity disk drives

The latest storage systems use disk drives with the highest capacities in history. Using these high-capacity drives allows users to drive down watts/terabyte in the data center. For example, migrating data stored on legacy 36/73/146GB Fibre Channel drives to newer, higher-capacity Fibre Channel or Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) drives can significantly improve power/cooling profiles. Similarly, migrating infrequently accessed application data to high-capacity SATA tiers will substantially improve storage energy efficiency.

In high-performance applications, one drawback of high-capacity drives is reduced I/O throughput. “Wide striping” overcomes this by allowing high-performance applications to be spread across many (tens or even hundreds) more disks. Because wide striping allows many volumes to share a given drive, utilization is much higher. Therefore, application data can sustain a high number of IOPS with high-capacity drives, avoiding the necessity of low-capacity, high-rpm, energy-intensive drives.

Advanced RAID techniques

When high-capacity disk drives are used for storage devices, larger amounts of data are stored per drive. Therefore, care must be taken to ensure data reliability is not compromised. In the past, this protection was commonly addressed through RAID-1 mirroring. Today, space-efficient RAID implementations have become more commonplace, including single-parity RAID 5 and recent RAID-6 innovations such as dual parity and P+Q algorithms. When compared to data mirroring, these technologies offer up to 70% greater storage utilization, resulting in fewer power-consuming drives needed to provide protection against drive failures.

Thin provisioning

A key problem faced by storage administrators is storage quota allocation. How much physical storage space should be assigned for each application? Knowing that an overflowing data volume has many unpleasant side effects, administrators commonly overprovision their disk quotas. If they think an application will require a single terabyte, he might decide to allocate 2TB, “just in case,” to accommodate for growth, or to adjust for a miscalculation of the storage space actually consumed by the application.

But what if the application does not grow as expected, or if the miscalculation was on the short side? The result is wasted space–space that cannot be used by any other application. By some estimates, 60% or more of disk storage remains unused simply because of this type of over provisioning. Unused disk capacity, however, continues to draw power and contributes to the overall data-center electricity bill.

The problem of over provisioning can be solved through thin provisioning, where administrators can create “flexible” volumes that appear to the application to be a certain size but in reality are much smaller physically. Thin-provisioning technology provides substantial improvements in storage sizing. Data volumes can be resized quickly and dynamically as application requirements change.

The bottom-line impact of thin provisioning is a reduction in physically allocated storage, and direct savings in data-center power, heat, and cooling requirements.

Data de-duplication

The average disk volume contains thousands or even millions of duplicate data objects. As data objects are created, modified, distributed, backed up, and archived, duplicate data quickly begins to proliferate throughout the organization. The result is inefficient use of storage resources. Data de-duplication helps to prevent this inefficiency.

Typically, data de-duplication divides stored data objects into smaller blocks. Each block of data has a digital “signature,” which is compared to all other signatures in the data volume. If an exact block match exists, then the duplicate block is discarded and its disk space is reclaimed. De-duplication can be implemented across a wide variety of applications and file types, including primary data, backup data, and archival data. By implementing de-duplication, users can reclaim up to 95% of their storage space.

Note that combining thin provisioning and data de-duplication has an additive effect on the efficiency of storage. De-duplicated volumes are sometimes oversized when the de-duplication savings ratio proves to be greater than predicted. De-duplicated volumes are also sometimes oversized intentionally to account for some amount of growth. Thin provisioning eliminates this additional capacity overhead pre-allocated for de-duplication.

Writable snapshots

Storage administrators must often allocate substantial storage space for enterprise test operations, such as application release rollouts and bug fix testing. In addition, organizations that rely on large-scale simulations for comprehensive testing, analysis, and modeling can incur large costs associated with providing additional storage space for these tests.

In the past, to address this issue, administrators would simply make complete copies of a data set as their “test set.” By offering writable snapshots, vendors provide application “clone” functionality where application copies can be created as temporary, writable copies. Furthermore, these copies can be created instantly, with minimal storage requirements.

This is accomplished by creating a writable “snapshot” of the primary dataset and storing only the data changes between a parent volume and a clone. All unchanged data remains on primary storage and is used by both the primary application and the secondary clone copy. Multiple snapshot copies can be created from a single primary dataset, enabling users to perform multiple test and development simulations and compare the characteristics of each dataset after the testing is complete.

Data compression

Used for decades in tape drives and home computers, data compression has recently appeared in data centers in two specific areas:

External data compression appliances that compress data “on-the-fly” as data is stored on storage systems; and

Disk-to-disk (D2D) backup devices, such as virtual tape libraries (VTLs), which use data compression to reduce the amount of storage required by backup copies.

These appliances are generally based on the Lempel-Ziv compression algorithm and can offer 50% or greater storage savings.

Flash drives

Solid-state flash drives use flash memory to store and access data. Because there are no mechanical components in flash drives, they provide faster response times and consume 38% less energy on average vs. traditional mechanical disk drives, resulting in a significant power consumption reduction in a transaction-per-second comparison. When deployed in combination with hard disk drives, flash drives provide an ultra-high-performance “tier” of storage for transaction application environments requiring optimal performance, while leveraging hard drive-based tiers for less demanding applications. Solid-state flash drives offer the ability to achieve high performance without sacrificing energy costs.

Standby and spin-down modes

Just as tape media uses no energy when it is not being accessed, if one is able to spin down unused or underutilized disk drives, noticeable power savings can be seen. Technologies such as MAID (massive array of idle disks) are now available, and potential future developments in intelligent controllers will allow disk drives to enter a series of reduced power states. Although spinning down a disk drive has a positive benefit on energy consumption, there is a likewise obvious impact to data retrieval response times.

Another technology advocated by some vendors is standby mode for the entire storage system. The idea is that during off-peak hours, disk controllers that are not being accessed could go into “sleep” mode to save even more energy. This is similar to modes currently used by PCs–microprocessors in most storage systems have the identical capability. A standby mode invoked, say, between midnight and 6 AM would represent a 25% daily power savings.

Virtualization

By virtualizing servers, several “guest” servers can operate on a single physical server, reducing the overall number of servers in the data center and their associated power consumption. Virtualization technologies can also be applied to disk-based storage systems to reduce the amount of physical storage needed, and hence reduce the overall power consumption. Though in many ways thin provisioning provides virtualization, it can also extend beyond this technology.

By abstracting storage elements, the administrator is able to allocate physical resources that match the current usage needs–associating a virtual resource to high-performance storage, or more energy-efficient storage. Besides allowing for dynamic changes in virtual as well as physical volume sizes, virtualization can allow the transparent migration of application data between different classes of storage. For example, a project might initially be deployed on high-performance Fibre Channel drives, then as the project finishes its peak usage and moves more into a maintenance phase, the data can be transparently migrated to a more energy-fficient storage subsystem to take advantage of the better watts/gigabyte ratio of higher-capacity drives.

In this way, overall energy needs can be reduced, but more importantly can be appropriately assigned to the correct power/performance storage transparently to the application. This transparent placement of data can be extended with copy services mentioned above to allow administrators to custom-fit an application’s needs to the available storage resources.

Summary

Energy consumption continues to be one of the most significant portions of the cost of operating a data center. Finding ways to increase energy efficiency is of critical importance to data-center managers and has become a significant public policy issue. Using the technologies described in this article, you can take significant steps toward reducing data-storage power consumption, leading to a “greener” data center.

For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/consolidation-assess.php

About Us

Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in Cost Cutting storage, security and managed services solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, Data Domain, EMC, Hitachi, Symantec, HDS, IBM, Commvault, Xiotech 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, storage virtualization installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.

Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral Green Simpana Offerings Projects: BC DR planning 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 SSD Solid state disk SANmelody FalconStor tier zero Xiotech ISE nx4 ax4 greenBytes ZFS Sun Top 10 ROBOBak managed services hosting cloud grid Datacore Compellent compellant equallogic lefthand networks don't buy storage stop buying storage itguardian cherub networks Arkeia Network Backup appliance Data Recovery Backup Health IT Healthcare IT Digital Hospital Allscripts

Best Practices in Data Center Re-Design will add $$$ to the Company's bottom-line - January 23, 2009

Orlando Florida -- Power consumption at data centers is once again in the spotlight, after Automation and Consolidation firm Sencilo Solutions of Daytona Beach Florida came up with a list of best practices in the data center that are designed to save electricity and improve cooling.

Sencilo claims that if companies follow all of it's best practices, they could typically expect to save 1 million kilowatt-hours. It says that in a conventional data center, between 35% and 50% of the electricity consumed is for cooling compared to only 15% in best-practice or 'green' data centers.

"Virtually all data centers waste enormous amounts of electricity using inefficient cooling designs and systems along with older storage arrays," said Rob Peterson, CTO and co-founder of Sencilo, in a statement. "Even in a small data center, this wasted electricity amounts to more than 1 million kilowatt-hours annually that could be saved with the implementation of some best practices."

The main reason for the waste in conventional data center cooling is the "unconstrained mixing of cold supply air with hot exhaust air on out dated servers and storage," he said.

"This mixing increases the load on the cooling system and energy used to provide that cooling, and reduces the efficiency of the cooling system by reducing the delta-T (the difference between the hot return temperatures and the cold supply temperature). A high delta-T is a principle in cooling," McGuckin said.

The following are Sencilo's 10 top tips for reducing power consumption:

Plug holes in the raised floor. Holes in the floor allow cold air to escape and mix with hot air. This single low-tech retrofit can save as much as 10% of energy used for data center cooling, says Peterson.

Installing blanking panels. Data centers are full of racks, and unused rack space needs to be covered with a blanking panel so that air flow can be properly managed -- for example, by preventing hot air leaving equipment in one section of the rack and then entering the cold air intake for other equipment elsewhere in the rack. Sencilo says that when these panels are used effectively, supply air temperatures can be lowered by as much as 22 degrees Fahrenheit (or minus 5 degrees Celsius).

Look into new primary storage compression appliances and de-dupe devices for backup and reduce the number of disk drives 15x.

Improve under-floor airflow. This typically affects older data centers, where the space under the raised flooring is a lot more constrained than in newer builds. Many old data centers also use the underfloor spacing for running data and power cables, thereby restricting airflow. Clearing out of these spaces is advised.

Implement hot and cold aisles. This is one of the most obvious best practices. Sencilo says traditional data centers use a "classroom style" to position their racks, whereby all the intakes face in one direction. The problem with this setup is that hot air exhausted from one row mixes with cold air being drawn into the adjacent row, thereby increasing cold-air supply temperature in uneven ways. Newer rack-layout practices over the past 10 years instead organize rows into hot and cold aisles, which offer much better control of airflow.

Install sensors. Seems obvious, but how do you tell if you have a temperature problem in a certain area of your data center? Sencilo says a minimal investment in this technology could reap big insights into data center operations and can also provide a method for analyzing the results of improvements made to the cooling systems.

Implement cold or hot aisle containment. When a data center uses hot and cold aisles, dramatically improved separation of cold supply air and hot exhaust air through containment becomes a viable option. Sencilo reckons effective containment of the hot or cold aisles will provide, for most users, the single largest payback of any of these best practices.

Replace those older filer servers with a new NAS arrary, in one case we retired 72 Compaq file-servers with aging 32 GB SCSI drives, which a single NAS device sporting the newer S-ATA II disk. Between reduced floor space, electricity, cooling and noise our client paid for the new NAS in 3 months.

Exploit free cooling. It depends a lot on local climate, but in winter in Northern Florida, cold air is readily available outside the data center.

Designing new data centers using modular cooling. Traditional data centers have been cooled by the raised-floor perimeter air distribution. Mounting evidence strongly points to the use of modular cooling (in-row or in-rack) as a more energy-efficient cooling strategy.

Today Sencilo Solutions has put it's "Green Certified stamp" on over 35 companies throughout Central Florida including two Power Companies and four government agencies.

For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/consolidation-assess.php

About Us

Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in Cost Cutting storage, security and managed services solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, Data Domain, EMC, Hitachi, Symantec, HDS, IBM, Commvault, Xiotech 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, storage virtualization installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.

Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral Green Simpana Offerings Projects: BC DR planning 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 SSD Solid state disk SANmelody FalconStor tier zero Xiotech ISE nx4 ax4 greenBytes ZFS Sun Top 10 ROBOBak managed services hosting cloud grid Datacore Compellent compellant equallogic lefthand networks don't buy storage stop buying storage itguardian cherub networks Arkeia Network Backup appliance Data Recovery Backup Health IT Healthcare IT Digital Hospital Allscripts

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