Have you tried rebooting?

How does cloud affect the storage infrastructure?

// November 16th, 2011 // No Comments » // Technical Know-It-All

Surely everywhere you venture these days, there is talk about Cloud. A year or two ago, it was limited to the Enterprise, but now it seems that its found its way onto the consumer space as well (eg; iCloud).

I’m not the foremost expert in cloud, but I think everyone’s got a definition for it today. You decide if what I’m saying makes sense.

Is cloud a product?
I don’t think so. Its almost like asking if Internet is something you can buy.

Is cloud a technology?
Hmm… in some ways, but not completely accurate.

My definition is really that Cloud is more of a CONCEPT (for providers) and SERVICE (for users).

Think about it for a second, all you ever hear about cloud is really about a service you can buy or provide. Example being, IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), SaaS (Software as a Service) and etc. So don’t be completely fooled when vendors trys to sell you Cloud…

I think in-terms of storage, what vendors are really selling would probably be better termed “Cloud-Enabled“.

Features such as thin provisioning, wide striping, data resiliency, storage virtualisation, dynamic tiering and charge backs tools are some of the key features that makes sense to a cloud deployment. How so? I’m not gonna deep dive into the details but hope you will get the drift…

If you ask me, Cloud is just another buzz word in recent times that describes the evolution of the IT industry… Lets take a stroll back memory lane…

1. First there were built-in hard-disks. We realised that utilisation was low, so we built SAN’s for “sharing” storage.

2. We built the PC, but we wanted to communicate with the next PC. So we hooked them up. We realised then, we needed to “share” data with more PC’s, thus we built the LAN, then later the WAN, then the Internet.

3. Servers were great functioning as physical boxes. Again, low utilisation meant that we wanted to “share” to better utilise the resources. Tada… Server virtualisation!

4. Now we have SAN’s, NAS’s and etc. We realise that every vendor talks their own language. EMC doesn’t link with HDS and vice versa. So we have pockets of storage that is not properly utilised. If you don’t already know, this is now happening, and its called Storage Virtualisation, where all storages are consolidated into a single pool regardless of vendor. So we can “share” more efficiently.

5. What’s next on the roadmap? Not too sure if you have heard, FCoE and CEE is around the corner. In a nutshell, that is again, consolidation of SAN and LAN, so the networks can “share” a single common infrastructure.

So, if you look at the 5 points above, the common word amongst them is really sharing (in the enterprise, it’s better known as “cost saving” ).

Looking at cloud again, we combine all of the above, and again look at the possibility of further reducing costs and/or sharing. And the Cloud is born. Use the existing infrastructure in its entirety and share it out at a higher level.

So when shopping for your next enterprise purchase, be it storage, software or servers, make wise decisions as to how its features can be shared. Do not just take the vendors word for it, cause some just don’t quite make sense.

Sales Organisations vs Delivery Organisations

// June 9th, 2011 // No Comments » // Blogroll, Technical Know-It-All

Have you ever had experiences where colleagues draw boundaries as to where their work responsibilities end?

Well, to a certain degree, I suppose we can’t expect everyone to do above and beyond their responsibilities and this is sometimes true in super-large MNC’s (not generalising here) where we are just another employee in an organisation of 20,000 people.

However, what if you are in a small team of say, 10, 20, or even 50? Would you do it differently?

I used to work in an organisation of 50 where we would have the usual sales division and consultancy division. The sales folks will work their butts off making the sale, and once that’s done, the buck gets dropped to the consultants to deliver it. The consultants were usually charged out by the hour. Some were extremely particular about drawing boundaries of our scope of work because additional work would potentially mean additional hours that don’t result in additional pay. Fair enough…

While there were constant bitching internally from our end about unrealistic timelines and expectations that were promised to customers and etc., we always, always fronted the customer as a team despite our differences. Whatever banter, issues or incompetency were put aside, when we faced the customer.

As my career progressed, I moved closer to the sales organisation, and I slowly began to understand the difficulties on the sales side. Sales folks don’t always get to sell the perfect solution. It’s more of the best solution for the budget. The mindset of a consultant of “why didn’t they sell this, this would have made our life’s easier”, is very different from a sales mindset of “how can I do good with his/her limited budget”. For sales, its simple, its either you win something or you lose it all. But what consultants don’t always understand is that, if sales didn’t have a solution that met the budget and end up losing a deal, consultants have nothing, zero, nada to deliver. So winning partial or half the requirement is better than a loss most of the time.

Looking back at my consulting days, I think I have always understood this (while not in depth). I guess I kinda always knew it was just as tough for the sales folks to close the deal. So did I draw boundaries when delivering services? I don’t think I ever did. In fact, whenever I had the opportunity to upsell or present additional value, I believed I fulfilled it. And because of that, I felt more like part of the team, working towards a common goal. A sales win is a win for the consultants as well, so there were no reason why I wouldn’t do it. When they won, we celebrated together!

In my short career till date, I cannot believe the amount of consultants that I have met that defied everything that I just wrote. They drew lines at every juncture, communicated gaps in a solution to the customer, jeopardised a potential sale and more. Consultants often also bitched about the after hours and weekend work they put in, and how sales folks just golf all day and enjoy themselves. Having been there and done that, you either love what you do or you don’t… I enjoyed every minute of my days as a consultant, but then, I made a choice that I didn’t wanna do crazy hours and possibly wanted to golf too.

So my advice is simple, suck it up as a team player, or just make a choice and move on.
The fundamentals are simple, we rely on each other… no 2-ways about it.

I once discussed this with a colleague as to why consultants never get it? Is it so hard to comprehend?
She gave me a simple answer.

“This is why you have graduated to be in the sales organisation and they haven’t…”

Joyriders Singapore Round Island Ride

// May 10th, 2011 // No Comments » // Blogroll, Singapore

I recently got me-self a Garmin Forerunner, and I was very keen to put it to the test. So surely, if you wanna run a test, it has to be some significant test right?

So I decided on a 120KM round island trip to see if it works… and amazingly, it also has a nice feature allowing me to plugin to me blog! How cool is that? Ok, I’m a little “kampung”…

Just a little commentary, this is the usual Saturday Joyriders Round Island route. The ride starts off at Upper Thomson Longhouse and heads out towards the East. We take a breather somewhere along Mountbatten Rd. to refuel and then soldier on all the way back to Longhouse. Easy enough…

Average speed and elapsed time might not be super accurate because it takes in to consideration, the rest and pit stops we took along the way. I didn’t actually pause the timer.

Also, as you can probably see from the map, I cheated and headed home instead towards the end. The temptation of air conditioning and a cool shower was enough to keep me away from Longhouse that morning…

SAS vs FC Disks

// November 8th, 2010 // No Comments » // Technical Know-It-All

In recent times, there has been much said about the future of SAS (serial attached scsi) vs FC (fiber channel). Don’t get me, I’m not saying that FC is dropping dead tomorrow. It is probably still relevant for another 3-5 years, but I for see the future in SAS disks.

Here’s my quick lowdown on it. In no way conclusive, but its something to ponder about.

1. Why SAS?

Why the crap not? SAS is a fraction of the price cheaper, has a strong roadmap moving forward with 6Gbps today, and moving ahead in the future to faster backends. FC has been at 4Gbps for the longest time and have not moved an inch since. It also doesn’t have a roadmap to go any further beyond 4Gbps.

SAS also comes in 2.5″ variants. Have a real estate or green issue? Here’s to a smaller, lighter and greener media.

2. But SAS is Tier 2 disks

How do we define Tier 1 from Tier 2 disks today? Reliability and performance.

In terms of reliability, SAS disks are manufactured and developed to the same specifications of a FC Disk. The only difference is the connector / interfaces at the backend. The likelyhood of a SAS drive failing is the same as a FC drive failing.

Performance, used to be a big discussion point because SAS ran at 3Gbps, but now with 6Gbps and a non-arbitrated loop architecture, it is blowing FC off it’s socks. No discussion there.

3. SAS is SATA’s expensive cousin

Very good observations there. True! The commonality here is “Serial”, and because of that, you can now intermix SAS and SATA disks in the same enclosures. No need for different enclosures for different disk types and no more for funky FATA disks. Go forth and intermix. Beyond that there is nothing similar with regards to the built of the drives.

4. Not convinced still?

Surely vendors like Hitachi Data System’s (HDS) or even IBM can’t be so far off their socks. Hitachi for example have a Hard Disk’s Division that only builds drives. Their business is far far larger than their HDS counterparts. So do you think they will just drop their FC product roadmap just to help out a smaller subsidiary of theirs? Or do you think they are considering the shifting market trend?

Ultimately, there is always the opinionated Google that speaks for itself.

CharlesChow.com

// November 8th, 2010 // No Comments » // Blogroll

Just got myself a new domain name.

I have been looking out for this for a while now, and was surprised it was finally available! I have redirected all traffic to this as well!