NetApp - Exposed

The Significance of Obama's Victory to the Storage Industry

Having just finished watching his inspirational yet humble victory speech, it's clear to me Nov 4th, 2008 will go down in history as a transformational date not only for the United States, but for the world as a whole.

While this seemingly endless US presidential campaign stretched the patience and passion of most Americans, I had the luxury of observing it as a neutral 3rd party from both a personal as well as professional perspective.

Sunrise, Sunset

Andy Bechtolsheim is an industry legend, so it's no wonder we're seeing a tug-o-war emerging between Sun and Arista regarding where he will be spending his time.

The Recession of 2008 - Summarized in 8 Short Minutes

Like a slow motion train wreck, I can't stop watching CNBC lately in order to witness what I hope is (only this once) in-a-lifetime worldwide stock market crash.  The implications for the storage economy are vast, but before I pontificate on the topic in more detail later this week, I encourage a quick read of Dave's and Marc's respective takes.

Candor is a NetApp hallmark and I am proud of how our executives are resisting the shallow and superficial tendency of some competitors to feign indifference to the burning of Rome around them.

Unified Storage Deserves Unified Security

Data breaches continue to plague organizations around the world.  The bewildering array of storage security options available to the marketplace is part of the problem, not the solution.  Islands of storage beget fragmented data security, due to inconsistent policies, implementations and enforcement.  NetApp recognized this dilemma many years ago, motivating our DECRU acquisition.  This week we announced the latest milestone in our Unified Storage Security strategy.

NetApp's X Factor

Data protection and information classification are often drab and serious topics.  Fortunately, NetApp's X Factor is online now and ready to bring these topics to life with a breath of freshness, intelligence, wit and insight that I haven't seen anywhere else in the storage community - and I'm willing to bet neither have you!

The Storage Decathlon

As we approach the eve of the Decathlon competition, the eventful Beijing summer Olympics of 2008 are about half over.  Watching some of the (live and recorded) coverage from my lovely vacation spot) I couldn't help observing an interesting comparison to my work life.  The context of Olympic Decathlon Champions in history turns out to be a great parallel for Networked Storage Companies and Architectures of today.  Yes I really do need to learn to "detach" more, don't I? :-)

Blog flame check mate?

It's not often an innocent debate via comments on a blog results in an argument so irrefutably brilliant that the refuted participant is forced to resign from his company in disgrace, but it happened today!

Cheap Insurance

It turns out today (and the last Friday of every July) is SysAdminDay, so this post is rather timely, despite the festive nature of today.

 

It'll Never Happen to Me

NetApp customers reading my blog and related media coverage over the past week have asked "Do I *really* need to do this?" and much more interestingly "What else will be fixed if we upgrade to the latest recommended releases of Data ONTAP (7.0.7, 7.1.3 or 7.2.5.1)?"

Good questions I thought, so I checked with our security team and here's what I found out.

There were a number of other security-related fixes included in these latest releases of Data ONTAP which have nothing to do with SnapLock, but nevertheless close recently discovered vulnerabilities also exposed as part of our increased scope of testing.  As with most fixed security vulnerabilities, the severity of these range from minor to serious, but none are critical.

Where's my red stapler?

My post last week continues to get a lot of comments from all sides, as well as some media coverage, which has kept the topic on my mind.  In fact, the past couple of weeks have been rife with current events which fully support NetApp's decision to act decisively and responsibly on behalf of our compliance customers.

The threat from within

Is there a Milton on your team?

Virtualization 2.0 and Karma

Three dramatic events over the past 11 months cemented the end of the beginning of the Virtualization phenomenon:

1. Citrix’s spectacular purchase of XenSource about year ago. Paying half a billion dollars for a small start-up with a negligible revenue stream may have seemed foolish at the time. Today it’s the foundation of their future.
2. Microsoft shipped HYPER-V early this past month. No that’s not a typo. For the first time in recent history, Microsoft shipped a major product ahead of schedule. You know they’re playing for keeps with this one.
3. Finally last week’s dramatic and sloppy announcement by EMC regarding new leadership over at VMware. Despite all their prognostications, this one felt a little rushed by EMC. Proof they too realized the game has changed.

Did anyone get left behind?

It’s clear we are now entering the next major phase of the Virtualization market. Despite what some vendors will tell you, nobody won the first phase of the Storage Virtualization market because the storage industry as a whole was never able to clearly articulate a solid value prop to the mainstream IT infrastructure customer base. Sorry, but occasional migration events do not a market make. Heard of any multi-billion dollar storage virtualization IPO’s lately?

Exposed 2.0

I'm baaaaack!

This is the obligatory apology post for not publishing in a while.   No excuses except to announce that this blog has been foremost enough in my mind that I decided to alter my career path (by joining the NetApp Office of the CTO) in order to be able to spend more time here.  Careful what you wish for!

One of my closest high-school buddies is a blog pioneer and early on in his blogging career (almost 3 years ago) posted this very thoughtful observation: The Blog is a Harsh Mistress

While I understood what he was saying at the time, I have only recently begun to actually feel Adam's pain from his early blogging days.

Industry Fodder (Someone, somewhere is getting paid by the buzzword)

Thankfully, our industry continues to supply a healthy amount of topics both controversial and innovative to comment on, so there is no shortage of material for me to catch up on.  Industry trends such as virtualization, deduplication, flash, emerging standards, web 2.0/3.0, clouds/grids/clusters among others will dominate my coverage here.  Feel free to comment on which you'd like to see first!

2008 Election Parallels

Maybe it's just me, but I've been struck by dozens of parallels between the US Democratic Party nomination battle and the two horse race in the storage industry.  Inclusive vs divisive behavior, guilt by association, smear campaigns and cowardly propaganda are elements common between the competitive storage industry and bitterly fought electoral battles.  Coincidentally, now that the nomination phase is nearing an end, I believe it's perfect timing to draw those parallels and do some "near live" blogging on the actual electoral battle to come between now and November.

N.U.L.L. & VOID

Finally, I'm going to introduce a major new category within the next week or so which will dominate my posts here until the mission is accomplished - and I don't mean "dubya style"!  I'm offering a genuine PEI DIRT SHIRT to the first person who can guess what that heading stands for before I "out it" later on next week.