In the face of its public tussle with EMC over Data Domain, NetApp forged ahead with its annual Analyst Days at its Sunnyvale, CA, headquarters. Well attended by many NetApp executives and 80+ analysts from the US and around the world, it was both informative and well run. However it was the kickoff keynote by NetApp's CEO Dave Warmenhoven that I first wanted to summarize and comment on as he did a pretty good job of encapsulating the major themes of the presentations and one-on-one meetings that were to follow. (read more)

Best practices for configuring storage systems in enterprise Microsoft Exchange environments requires that they look beyond Microsoft's basic guidelines for how to configure their storage systems. While these guidelines may be sufficient when deploying Exchange in smaller shops where direct attached storage (DAS) or traditional array-based storage systems are the norm, enterprise organizations need to know when to look beyond these guidelines and tweak them when deploying Exchange on a next generation storage system like the 3PAR InServ Storage Server. The key to making these tweaks, however, is to satisfy Microsoft's best practices without negating the inherent benefits that storage systems like 3PAR provide. (read more)

Symantec's recent announcement that it will support its Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows (SFW) 5.1 in the Microsoft Hyper-V parent tremendously increases the breadth of functionality available to the child virtual machines (VMs) of Microsoft Hyper-V environments. Immediate new benefits that child VMs will realize include the restoration of full path and storage management capabilities that often were severely handicapped once physical servers were virtualized. But other benefits that also come along with moving SFW 5.1 into the Hyper-V parent include better utilization of thinly provisioned storage volumes assigned to the Hyper-V parent along with an attractive SFW licensing option for Hyper-V servers. (read more)

"There is no truth if you cannot find relevant evidence and, unless companies get their eDiscovery act together, eDiscovery is about to destroy the American System of Justice as we know it." That statement summarizes the opening remarks that Ralph Losey, the noted eDiscovery attorney of FloridaLawFirm.com, made during a recent presentation. From there, he went on to explain why he believes most organizations - public or private, large or small - have no viable strategy for eDiscovery and why a reactive approach to eDiscovery is putting the viability of the American System of Justice as we know it at risk. (read more)

Regardless of how one approaches an eDiscovery project, having processes and tools in place to help guide you through the EDRM (electronic discovery reference model) are critical elements that influence how effective an eDiscovery project will be. Data retention policies, access to outside resources, and technology are all critical components to have in place in order to successfully complete an eDiscovery. Yet an equally important question that organizations need to answer is how reliable is the information they discovered in their eDiscovery? Or, better put, how do they move from a faith-based approach of eDiscovery where they assume they have all of the information that they need to a fact-based approach where they have confidence that all of is the information found during the eDiscovery is accurate and defensible in court? (read more)

Build your own (white box) or purchase an industry-branded solution for implementation of appliances - that is the question. Even today, this question continues to plague many customers as well as divide OEM businesses. Depending on the equipment (components or solutions) OEMs are quick to argue their case as to why white boxes are better than a branded solution or vice versa. However each solution has its place in the market. And, for the smart OEM, maybe the choice doesn't have to be one or the other. (read more)

Bounce the phrase "consolidated recovery" off of most individuals in IT and you are just as likely to get a blank stare as a good answer as to what it means or how to accomplish it. Most IT staff keeps so busy on a day to day basis just managing their assortment of backup, clustering and replication products that they never get much beyond focusing on the protection and recovery of each application. So for them to contemplate the consolidation of protection and recovery using just one methodology has more than likely not even crossed their minds. (read more)

It's time to start thinking ahead. Over the next 60 - 120 days someone is going to acquire Data Domain - be it EMC, NetApp or some other suitor that may yet emerge. That means Data Domain, today's leading mid-market deduplicating disk-based appliance player, will be changing its colors. To discuss how and if ExaGrid can take advantage of this opportunity, I recently met with ExaGrid's CEO, Bill Andrews, to discuss this development, his perspective on the deduplication market as a whole and how ExaGrid stands to benefit (or lose) from Data Domain's acquisition. (read more)

Consolidating multiple physical machines onto one physical server that hosts multiple virtual machines (VMs) requires that organizations consider much more than just if the new server has sufficient processing, network bandwidth and memory to support the applications. Specifically, path and storage management issues can result when physical servers are virtualized which can preclude organizations from virtualizing some of their mission critical servers. (read more)

Obama's administration allocated $17B of the recent (Feb 09) stimulus spending package to healthcare, for the purpose of building better healthcare infrastructure. The goal of the new infrastructure is to move patient records online and enable a ubiquitous Electronic Health Record (EHR) to be shared universally among hospital systems. Obama himself promised a total of $50B in spending for this purpose during his campaign. Some experts believe that even more is to come. But, now that some of the money is allocated, how are healthcare institutions getting access to it and what are they doing with it? (read more)