Bottom Ten; Yet Another List

Over on his blog, Steve Foskett has created a list of his top ten innovative storage products. Then Marc Farley at 3Par did his top ten.

(Believe it or not,  Marc did a double hander with Steve, both of them steering wheel-cam blogging on the topic! Personally, this is one technology innovation I live without…) 

Here’s another list of annoying lists;

• The Seven Wonders of the World (actually, several lists)
• The Best of Paris: Our Top Twenty Looks
• 100 things to do before you die
• 101 Uses for a Dead Cat

Other people’s lists drive me nuts. Who decides what gets in a list, and where it goes? Why is this included, and that omitted? They’re so irrational.

But they’re so seductive too. Who can resist ordering things? Not me. Here, then, is my list. This one’s the bottom ten storage technologies (plus a few unrelated entries), personally selected to drive you nuts.

#10 ILM

What a great idea; classify your data, place it appropriately, and manage it across tiers of storage according to policy. If only it were that simple. The idea’s cool, most implementations are horrific. I’ve not yet seen a working example, to be honest.

#9 Spindown

Another idea related to ILM that seems to have positive benefits; if, and only if, the cost of management is less than the cost of the power and cooling you save by spindown. I have yet to see a positive TCO case for this; micro-managing data is expensive. There are lots of other issues too, but that’s for another time.

#8 USB Flash Drives

Great for swapping PowerPoint files at seminars, and for storing large amounts of sensitive data in a single, easy to lose format. Scores a big fat zero on the security front.

#7 Modems

Got one on my laptop, which I’ve never used. What’s it for? Some storage vendors have them on their storage systems for “call home”. Isn’t the intertubes a better mechanism? 

#6 Disk Drive Sizing

When’s a GB not a GB? When it’s a disk drive. There’s confusion over base 10 and base 2, and most drives deliver less user addressable space than it says on the tin. My 220GB base 10 laptop drive delivers a reported 190GB base 2, which NTFS reports as 187GB base 2 usable. Confused? I am.

#5 Perl

Off topic, but if it’s read-only scripting you’re after, Perl is your weapon of choice.

#:: ::-| ::-| .-. :||-:: 0-| .-| ::||-| .:|-. :||
open(Q,$0);while(<Q>){if(/^#(.*)$/){for(split('-',$1))
{$q=0;for(split){s/\| /:.:/xg;s/:/../g;$Q=$_?
length:$_;$q+=$q?$Q:$Q*20;}print chr($q);}}}print"\n";
#.: ::||-| .||-| :|||-| ::||-| ||-:: :|||-| .:|

#4 Raw vs Usable

Remember the ELF? Effective Load Factor; the measure of how much real disk supports how much data. With modern virtualised storage systems, raw disk space (see #6 Disk drive sizing above for more confusion) isn’t a meaningful metric.

#3 SAN vs NAS

Honestly, I don’t understand the difference. I’m in good company too.

#2 Cloud Anything

This one drives me nuts. What is it about the word “cloud”? Stick it in front of anything, and suddenly it’s cool. OK, I’ve invented a cloud mouse. Who can I talk to about getting it marketed? Actually, I’m too late, someone else jumped on the bandwagon before me.

And at #1; Storage Blogs

‘nuff said.

.

Comments

[Stephen Foskett]

Regarding number 1: Ouch!

[marc farley]

Ha ha ha - The Grinch strikes!

[Alex McDonald]

@steve

No reflection on your or Marc's blog. I was, of course, referring to this blog.

@marc

I didn't see myself as the Grinch. More like the BFG. Never took to Dr Zuess; I'm more a Roald Dahl fan.

Any you disagree with?

[marc farley]

Modems??? please update that one.

[Mike S.]

Some people keep things positive. Some people keep things negative. It's a matter of your perspective on the world I guess.

[Alex McDonald]

@marc; uhm... the IBM DS6000 has one?

@mike; Some people try humour. And I tried, but I seem to have failed. Ah well, next time, for you I'll stick to top tens and big smileys :-)

[Martin G]

The thing which drives me nuts about #3 is the argument which goes, NAS is cheap and SAN is expensive. The answer is, it depends!

[Pete Steege]

great list! How about Top 10 Clouds next? I vote for Cumulus.