I spent some time last night pulling together lists of security blogs and storage blogs. You can see the results to the left. Storage is grossly under represented in the blogosphere yet it is the single most important computing feature since it holds what we all value -- our data. This is quite a shame since storage happens to be one of the deepest, darkest geek sanctuaries in technology. Ask any programmer about storage and they will simply tell you how much disk space they need. Ask a systems administrator about RAID types and they will probably ask you if you want mirrored, striped, or RAID 5. What about RAID 2, 3, 4, 0/1, and 1/0? When you get into the area of SANs (Storage Area Networks) and NAS (Network Attached Storage) is when you start loosing even the best systems administrators. The ins and outs of NFS, CIFS, zoning, storage security, and point-in-time copies will dictate how well an application performs for a user, how resilient an application is when recovering from a failure, and can even compensate for application design flaws. There is a lot that can be done with storage that most people, even programmers and systems administrator, don't know how to leverage. Storage blogs can bridge this knowledge gap.

posted: 7:25:47 AM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

StorageNetworks kaput. StorageNetworks Inc., the once-high-flying start-up that supplied storage to enterprise businesses as a storage service provider (SSP), is liquidating its operations, according to a story from Reuters.

posted: 5:35:15 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

I had a particularly bad day with EMC's Professional Services organization. They have got to be the worst vendor services organization on the face of the planet. Using the word "professional" would be far too kind and much too large of an intuitive leap. Nothing has changed in a year since I last engaged them at AT&T Wireless. They still think they are running the show. They still think that they can chastise customers with no reprisal. They still think they can operate without customer buy in. I have not met anyone at EMC who can run a professional project, an effective customer focused post-sales meeting, or fulfill a customer request without bringing the customer into their red tape. When is someone in Hopkinton going to catch a clue? It is a buyers market out here. Listen up or get out.

posted: 11:13:35 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()