David Browning, thinkASG’s CEO, kicked off the event with introductions, review of the days agenda, and the instructions on how to use the Plain and Peanut M&M’s to cast the vote for SAN or NAS. During the morning session the participants were encouraged to drop an M&M for every time something tipped the scale of either technology. The goal was to determine which break out session would best meet the participants to storage requirements. I think I saw more M&M’s eaten than dropped in the cup. Who could blame them?

David Howard, thinkASG’s Storage Architect, presented a high level overview of both SAN and NAS solutions discussing the pros and cons.  During his presentation customers were encouraged to voice their opinions, and a few of them were not shy.

Lee Graham, from Fresh n Easy, was passionate and provided a great argument why he would not use anything but traditional FC SAN for both performance and availability.  Ed Young, from Qlogic, raved about his NAS and that he couldn’t imagine backing up all his data without one. Ed noted how easy their NAS was to use and support. The one thing that both Ed and Lee agreed upon, was how critical it is to maintain proper discipline in managing the network fabric.

We took a look at yesterday’s SAN and NAS pros and cons.

We discussed the trends and improvements in both technologies as they continue to tip the scales back and forth.

At the end of the opening sessions all participants counted their M&M’s (what was left of them) to determine which breakout session to attend.

Aaron Hoobler, thinkASG’s Solution Architect, lead the discussion on NAS solutions and demonstrated the various hardware and software offerings of the IBM N series storage. Dispelling the common stereotype that NAS solutions cannot scale.

Sudheesh Vadakkedath, IBM’s XIV Sr Solution Architect lead the discussion on IBM’s exciting XIV Grid Storage Solution. Discussed XIV’s unique value proposition “Tier 1 performance at Tier 2 price” as well as demonstrated the simplicity and ease of use of SAN based storage. Sudheesh easily dispelled the stereotype that SAN’s are too complex and expensive.  

David Howard, thinkASG’s Storage Architect, presented the value of IBM’s Storage Volume Controller (SVC) and demonstrated why SVC is the number one storage virtualization product in the market.

Lunch was served but the conversations didn’t stop then. The battle of SAN vs. NAS continued on throughout lunch and onto the golf course. Of course once the golf event began the focus became who will have the longest drive, closest to the pin, and lowest team score. Ed Young was the big hitter of the day winning the two longest drive awards. Tim Nguyen, from thinkASG and his customer team consisting of Bob Howard, Cheng Yeh and Steve You, won the lowest score.  Cheng Yeh was a big winner a 2^nd time with a closest to the pin, along with Dru Murphy, our own thinkASG Account Executive.  Congratulations for a great game of golf to all!

As we wrapped the day the ultimate question was still left to be answered.

SAN vs NAS – “Which one is right for me?”

There must have been a politician in the room when the answer came back “It depends”

Obviously, there is no single answer. Each customer has unique challenges and different business needs.

So, the correct answer is to contact “The Human Drive” at thinkASG to help you build a solution to meet your needs.

1. P7 delivers better performance and depending if you’re replacing P5 or P6 you see between 3:1 and 4:1 increase

2. P7 will allow you to do more with less processors therefore cutting your software lics cost. In some cases, the savings of software lics will pay for the hardware

3. P7 uses less energy consumption and takes up less space

4. P7 will lower your maintenance cost. In some cases the cost of maintenance on older boxes can pay for new hardware and ROI is less then 3 years.

I hope this helps.

We met at the VIP entrance to be escorted by the Kings Ice Girls and straight to the arena floor.  The, straight out to Center Ice for a perspective few but the athletes get to enjoy – where we took a picture of our winning team!  We marched back inside to find the Ducks playing a little soccer/volleyball as warm-up in the hallways of the Staples Center…it was all our crew could do not to stop for a George Parros autograph! 

Our group broke into  two groups representing those interested in IBM/Intel EX5 offerings and those interested in SAP ERP & related offerings from Bramasol. Brian Houlihan from IBM discussed IBM’s eX5 technolgoy and our ability to do more with less with highly scaleable virtualized server consolidation tactics.  Kathryn Brandt from Bramasol discussed cost efficencies via enterprise integrated best of breed application suites.  The dialogue was lively and lots of great Q&A resulted….so much so that we found ourselves rushing back to our suites for the National Anthem and puck drop.  As King’s and Duck’s hockey fans know, from there we saw a 1-0 become a 2-1 that was recalled to a 1-1 at end of regulation. The local teams went thru full overtime play and it wasn’t until the sixth shot in the shoot out that the outcome was determined – the Ducks were the victors! 

thinkASG thanks our clients and prospects for joining us at the Staples Center for a fun night of hockey!

VMware is working aggressively to encourage the world to embrace cloud computing by building critical infrastructure resources into ESX (the base technology of vSphere).   vSphere 4 enhances the infrastructure capabilities of VI3 to enable  customers to implement internal clouds with security, high availability, and fault tolerance.  Customers are building internal clouds with plans to enhance their environments with vSphere for expanding their infrastructure to incorporate utility based computing – allowing internal and external clouds to securely federate between one another.

While cloud computing has quickly become an industry buzzword, virtualization is the only way to get there.  So, it figures that customers are implementing vSphere – the industry’s most mature virtualization OS for x86 systems.  Implementing a virtualization infrastructure requires planning with a long term view of the global cloud infrastructure.   As an Enterprise level VMware partner in Orange County, thinkASG has the sales and technical skills to help you make the move to vSphere 4 and Cloud Computing.

…The newspaper headline read, “U.S. National Corporation Freely Releases Customer Information on the Internet.”  The article begins, “U.S. National Corporation [USNC] earlier today provided public access to confidential customer information including names, addresses, social security numbers, and credit card numbers.  The customer information was apparently routed internally to personnel not authorized for viewing.  In accordance with ‘full disclosure reporting,’ USNC has posted the information in a file on their website and made it available for download and viewing.”

Further down in article, the CEO is quoted as saying, “…when we discovered that our customers’ records were mishandled, the board of directors decided to release the information on the Internet so that there could be no question of our guilt.”  The article goes on to explain how a company human relations manager received an e-mail with the offending file attached.  The file, created by the company’s backup / recovery system, was supposed to be delivered to customer support personnel that handles customer complaints but was incorrectly addressed by the sender.

Although there have been several well publicized incidents of accidental “leaks” of customer information in the past several years, this is the first known intentional release of such information on the Internet.

Susan Blume, USCN’s Director of Internet Security, was vehemently opposed to the release of customer information.  In a phone interview, she expressed “extreme concern for the well-being of our customers.  …there are thousands of individuals with criminal intent that would love to get their hands on the kind of information that was posted on our web site.”  She added, “The Board of Directors believes that no one is sinister enough to use the information for evil purposes.  I know better.”

Outrageous Disclaimer
In a press release, USNC’s CEO, explained, “We have procedures in place that were not followed.  The offending employees have been disciplined.  [Still], for sake of full disclosure and transparency, acts performed by the company that may be detrimental to customers will result in a ‘full and transparent’ public report…”

According to the CEO, company policy requiring full disclosure of compromising incidents was added to the USNC’s by-laws after the United States government assumed partial company ownership in the 2009 bailout.  “Despite potential harm to our reputation and potential identity theft of our customers, we believe that we’ve achieved our goal of total transparency.  The customers freely provided their information to us.  We disavow fault if harm comes to them as a result of their information being disclosed publicly.”

No Way!
Of course the article above is pure nonsense and the event never really happened.  No right minded board of directors or CEO would intentionally allow the release of information for public access that criminals could use to cause harm.  Every company should protect its proprietary information from external access with every means possible.  A company’s reputation (and chances for survival) is at extreme risk after unintended dissemination of information.

Protect What’s Important to Avoid Criminal Acts Against Your Customers
With this in mind, why is the US Congress preparing to allow dissemination of documentation that will incite criminals to bring harm to US citizens?

Consider the actions taken earlier this month by at least one congressional committee to strip an amendment barring the release of supposed torture pictures of terrorist suspects.  US Senators proposed an amendment to block the release of photos that may inflame anti-American sentiment with people that mean to do us harm.

The photos in question are, in our President words, “…not particularly sensational…but they do represent conduct that did not conform with the Army manual.  That’s precisely why they were investigated… and where appropriate, sanctions have been applied.”  The President added, “This is not a situation in which the Pentagon has concealed, or sought to justify inappropriate action…”  Like the fictional leak of information in the story above, it should be a “no-brainer” to approve legislation to block the release of the damaging information.

Regardless, the ACLU sued for the release of the photos citing the Freedom of Information Act. 

In May, our President challenged a court decision (in favor of the ACLU) saying, “The most direct consequence of releasing [the photos], I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.”  The President said that he would seek to block the court-ordered release of the photos citing recommendations from US generals.  The generals expressed concern that the photos could be used by terrorist organizations for recruitment purposes and to incite increased anger against the US, resulting in violence towards American troops and citizens.

Still, Speaker of the House  reports that the amendment proposed by the Senators is likely to be stripped from legislation in committee. 

If the photos are released, brave US soldiers serving in the Middle East and US citizens world-wide would be likely targets of terrorist attacks from radicals intending to do harm to the United States.  It is logical to assume that terrorist activity against America will increase if the photos are made public.

As in the fictitious story about USNC above, public dissemination of damaging information is illogical.  No right minded company would ever intentionally release information that would cause harm to its customers.  Likewise, no honorable government should ever provide information that aids enemies sworn to harm to its citizens.  Companies and governments alike should invest in technology and promote laws / policies designed to prevent accidental, malicious, or intentional dissemination of proprietary / classified information.

The US Congress should do the honorable thing and block the release of the photos.  If Congress does not do their job and protect US troops and citizens, then the President should sign an executive order preventing the release of photos.  It is the job of the President and Congress to prevent harm to the people and country they are sworn to protect.

Technical footnote:  If the backup/recovery tape that was released by USNC had been created by IBM’s Tivoli Storage Manager, the data would have been encrypted.  Without security keys, the customer data in the file (even though it was posted on the Internet) would have been nearly impossible to read.

It is this – delivering everything you need as an end user (infrastructure, platform and software) as a web service.  That is  it in a nutshell.
But here’s the tricky part – how to know what you need when you need it?  There is  the wide open field that companies are racing to fill.

The “cloud” in this case, is the Internet as we know it.  The users are you and me, and we are delivered the services we need over the “cloud” on a per use fee basis, or a subscription.  We aren’t required to invest in the infrastructure (hardware and software) to deliver these services, rather we “pay as we go”,  kind of like how utilities are delivered.  By utilizing this type of delivery, the companies who are delivering can get greater utilization out of their hardware and software, and spread the costs of the services across more recipients. 

In the old days, we considered this type of delivery and labeled it “time sharing”.  Telephone companies did it early on with Virtual Private Networks.  In a recent article by Nicholas Carr, he likened this paradigm shift in the IT evolution as similar to the displacement of the electrical generators by the electric grid in the early 20th century.  But, I digress.

Not only is this type of service more effective, it can also provide side effects like the reduction of CO2 by reducing energy required to deliver the service.  If more companies utilize cloud computing as a service approach and fewer companies are at the hub of the cloud services, we potentially get greater service levels, and are happier people.

Now isn’t that what we want…to be happy?  Go figure.

Cost Reduction:
• Containing Operational Costs
• Reducing Complexity
• Unparalleled Productivity Gains via Virtualization and Optimization
Service Improvement:
• Providing High Availability across the Infrastructure
• Exceeding End User Expectations (both Internal Business Units and External Customers)
• Dynamic Access to Innovative Services

thinkASG demonstrated that these objectives can be met utilizing Green IT Solutions. Fewer more powerful IBM servers utilizing VMware’s virtualization technologies, connected through Cisco’s Unified Fabric, allow the business to reduce the cost of the data center by lowering the capital expense for the equipment, providing greater savings on power and cooling, and  realizing the return on investment more quickly.

Key Components of the Green Datacenter

IBM x3650 M2:
• 2U Chassis
• 2 Intel Xeon 5500 (Nehalem) Processors
• Up to 128 GB of high-performance DDR-3 memory (planned availability this quarter)
• New energy-efficient design 675W power supplies are up to 92% efficient
• VMware ESXi 3.5 embedded hypervisor support

Intel Xeon 5500 (Nehalem) Series Processors:
• Up to 2.93 GHz and up to 1333 MHz front-side bus
• Up to 2.25 times the performance of the 5400 Series Processors
• Integrated power gates to control the power usage based on the actual activity.
• Turbo Boost Technology to ramp up processor speed demanded by consolidated workloads.

Cisco Nexus 5000:
• High-performance 10 Gigabit Datacenter Ethernet
• Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)
• Virtual-machine-optimized networking
• Up to 40 fixed wire-speed 10 Gigabit Ethernet Ports
• Up to 2 expansion ports that support optional connectivity modules, such as 1/2/4 Gigabit Fibre Channel or additional 10 Gigabit Data Center Ethernet and FCoE.
The event was concluded at Edwards Cinemas for an advanced showing of Disney’s nature movie “Earth”.

Every disaster is a reminder that businesses rely too heavily on data and IT systems that are not adequately protected.  Disasters occurring somewhere else in the world, provides an opportunity for businesses to re-assess their vulnerability.

Similarly, disasters that occur to a business present an opportunity for natural selection to weed out the unprepared.  If you are an IT manager or CIO with an inadequate business continuity (BC) infrastructure and recovery plan, your survival is as likely as the lame gazelle at the back of the herd.  Disaster will run up from behind you and take you out.

Sound cruel?  Maybe, but since I personally experienced the lioness ripping flesh from my frame, I have a leg to stand on (hmmm, bad analogy and idiom mix) when I tell you that an IT disaster is going to happen and you best be prepared.

You won’t see it coming.  At best, you’ll see the disaster coming from your peripheral.  At worst, you’ll know that the disaster occurred when the Blackberry buzzes itself off the nightstand at 2AM in the morning.  Regardless of whether you see it coming or not, it’s too late.  You’ve been hunted down and your continued existence now depends on how well you’ve prepared.

Call a thinkASG Account Executive for the full 5 page editorial of “Every Disaster is an Opportunity”.

We created a 30TB filesystem to store large digital media using GPFS running on multiple x3850 and x3650 servers.

This allowed multiple GPFS clients to simultaneously share the filesystem.

CNFS was configured to support server the digital media over standard NFS to the multiple DCP-2000 Digital Cinema Servers

with high availability and security. Quick and easy failover. Low costs Intel Servers, RedHat, and SATA disks combined to create

a high performance and highly scalable filesystem (up to 2PB).

Let me know if anyone is looking to create large shared filesystems that can support direct SAN Block level access, NFS, or CIFS.