If I had to choose a single reason why anyone should go to SNW (Storage Networking World), it would be: because you can see stuff actually working, which is also an opportunity to take an early peek at new, upcoming products.
An exhaustive summary of the SNW (Storage Networking World) show, inclusive of speeches, live demos, and training sessions, would probably fill a large book -- maybe two, if we include sideshows such as golfing and dinners. As I write this, the show is still going on; so instead of giving you a summary, I'll outline the major trends emerging so far.
As storage and computing professionals, we know all too well that moving disk drives between different RAID controllers is a royal pain in the neck -- if we want to preserve our data, that is.
As we get closer to SNW (Storage Networking World) Spring, it's worth taking a step back and preparing ourselves mentally, so to speak, for the show.
The last time I spoke about Rainfinity was almost three years ago when the company first launched its NAS virtualisation product, RainStorage.
The discussion of where storage virtualisation intelligence should reside has been going on for a while. As you may remember, three opposing theories suggested servers, network devices, or storage devices as preferred platforms for those virtualisation services.
For some people, having "storage" and "open source" in the same sentence may sound like an oxymoron, but by the end of this column, I'm hoping their opinion will change.
Ask anybody to name the companies that made the greatest impact on storage, and it's quite possible that one of the most significant names will not come up. I am referring to Silicon Graphics (SGI), a company that (as you may already know) has an enviable track record and top-notch solutions spanning supercomputing, servers, workstations, OSes, and, yes, storage.
An alien family visiting Earth for the first time would probably be intrigued by the large number of different sects, groups, or associations we human beings come up with.
An almost timid announcement adds the new SAN file system to Xserve RAID Normally I don't cover Macworld Conference & Expo, not because it's not an interesting show but because until now Apple Computer had not much to propose about storage. Things have changed.
About a year ago, I made the all-too-easy prediction that 2004 would see a boost in the sales of disk drives. That prediction proved to be accurate -- and I mention it now not to brag about it, but to note that the favorable momentum is still pushing record sales that will probably continue strongly into 2005 and beyond.
Storage security is not a very popular topic -- in fact, looking back at last year's news, it's rarely brought up. Perhaps it's because all the attention of the security-minded people goes to the unceasing attacks on e-mail or the countless soft spots found in Internet Explorer or Windows.
Let's explore a new storage technology that's finally becoming more reality than dream: holographic storage. You've probably heard of this fascinating technology for many years, but for all the hype, vendors had little to show until now: By the end of 2006, we should start seeing some practical enterprise applications.
I was browsing quickly through a bunch of references, researching thoughts for this year-end column, when all of a sudden -- perhaps due to the accumulated effect of all that reading -- it hit me: This was a very good year, perhaps even an exceptionally good year for storage.
Sometimes I wish I had a penny for every megabyte of enterprise storage that is not used or is a redundant copy.