Online Storage Optimization

Four out of five college students agree, this is not the way to deal with data growth. How about this instead?

This headline doesn’t refer to data in any kind of virtual sense of the word. Rather, there is an interesting factoid buried in a piece on the site Data Center Knowledge. Companies are finding it difficult to find big chunks of contiguous floor space, despite a growing demand. Citing a recent survey by Digital Realty Trust, the article reads: “… 70 percent of companies planning data center expansions say they envision large projects of at least 15,000 square feet in size or 2 megwatts or more of power.” Of all the companies surveyed, a whopping 83 percent said they plan...

I’ve noticed a few blog posts recently about speed of deduplication in the modern data center. I agree that speed is an important factor, but keep in mind that not all dedupe is created equal. That is to say, fast is good, but only if you are also effective. One of the tricky things has been that the easiest data to compress is also usually the most carefully performance tuned. A great example of this is a database. This is because databases are comprised of simple alphanumeric fields and sparse tables. All of that is easy to reduce in size. However, a company’s core transactional database...

Isilon Systems had some fun with this video. It’s definitely been making the rounds on Twitter. And so we thought, why not post it on our site and grab some of the fun? So for those who have yet to watch it, here’s a little weekend magic for your enjoyment.

This Saturday I’m participating in an event that aims to bridge the gender gap in computer science and engineering. It’s the first annual Dare2BDigital, a conference for young women in the 7th-10th grades that exposes them to the new and exciting career options that now exist in computer science and engineering. Why such a young group? Studies suggest this is the time when we begin the decision-making process about our career path. These young women are beginning to make pictures in their minds about how they’ll be spending their days when they enter the workforce. They might...

With all the talk about the data inconsistencies around climate change theory, one issue that I’d hate to see lost in the shuffle is the actual environment. That is, while I personally have been skeptical for some time about the alarmist tone many scientists took regarding global warming, it would be a shame if there was such a backlash that people forget about the much more crucial, larger issue at stake. That is, we need to look at all the ways –on macro- and micro-scales–that we can reduce the overall pollution we generate through our daily habits. One of the persistent myths...

So much talk about dedupe these days it’s hard to keep up. The industry is waking up to the reality that dedupe is one of the best ways to reduce data, thus saving on power, cooling, space and other crippling storage costs. Some of the more thought provoking posts of late: DCIG - How SSDs can be leveraged to Deliver Inline Deduplication for Primary Storage Jerome Wendt responds to a comment from someone about Hifn’s Bitwackr inline dedupe. I don’t necessarily agree with Jerome’s take on this. In general, inline solutions are extremely limited, as the original commenter pointed...

As regular readers of this blog know, we’re obsessed with out there tech. Anything that smacks of Star Trekkian futurism gets our blood pumping. This week, Deep Storage’s Howard Marks reports on something we’ve been watching for some time: holographic storage. The news is sad. The company that was developing it, InPhase, is out of business. Their web site is still up, but according to the article, the company, a Bell Labs spin-off, was shuttered in early February and the Colorado Dept. of Revenue is now seizing its assets. As he points out, for now, technologies like deduplication...

Today, Matt Hickey over at CNET reported on something that should gladden the heart of many a Dungeons and Dragons fan. A new version of the game is being designed to work on Microsoft tabletop device known as the Surface. A group of geniuses over at Carnegie Mellon have been developing it, and it looks like hella fun. Here is a video demonstration of the thing. Too bad the Microsoft Surface retails at $12,500+ and is only currently for “commercial” usage such as retail venues.

For IT decision makers it’s imperative that you keep up with the latest news and information. Yet, the overall shakeup of the media has left many confused about where to turn. Industry pubs are getting slimmer and slimmer. Some are cutting back, others are consolidating, and a few have disappeared entirely. At the same time, the blogosphere is exploding with content. How do you sort it all out? Here are some of the stops we at Online Storage Op make on a regular basis in order to stay up-date on IT infrastructure news without driving ourselves nuts in the process. We’d love to hear...