If you don’t cluster your arrays, how do you protect against the failure of a RAID rank? Statistically unlikely but it is it more or less unlikely than a loss of data-centre? I’m not sure and the failure of a RAID rank for many people could well mean the invocation of the disaster recovery plan. Why?

This is the final post in a series on Enterprise Data Migration Strategies.  Previous posts:
Enterprise Computing: Data Migration Strategies – Part I
Enterprise Computing: Data Migration Strategies – Part II
Enterprise Computing: Data Migration Strategies Part III
Enterprise Computing: Data Migration Strategies – Part IV
Previously we’ve discussed how to plan, structure and organise migrations.  In this post, I’ll touch on some [...]

The question of whether or not to do synchronous or asynchronous replication between storage arrays does not come up often but I suspect it will as more and more people expand their business continuity infrastructure. It’s an important question because it can have a serious impact on the production environment.

It has been two days since HDS introduced High Availability Manager (“HAM” to us), disappointing some and confusing others. Now that the dust has settled some, it has become clearer just what HAM is and how it works, and we come away more impressed. HDS has taken simple, proven technologies (path management, clustering, synchronous replication) and remixed them into a super-high-availability solution for the largest enterprises. Perhaps this is not what many expected, but it’s certainly a worthwhile addition to the company’s family of products.

HDS: Hello, I am HDS man/Would you like some HDS HAM?
Bloggers: I’d like to know ’bout HDS HAM/What is it, oh HDS man?
HDS: HAM moves bits from here to there/Available anywhere!
Bloggers: My data has replication/Your brain must be on vacation!
HDS: HAM automates operation/Don’t you want that long vacation?
Bloggers: This sounds like what we had before/Amuse me now before I snore!

HDS telegraphed that a big announcement was coming today. They even made it fun, with a (literally) cryptic blog entry to make sure we were all watching. But the announcement of High Availability Manager, a software product to manage existing HDS USP-V and USP-VM arrays, underwhelmed. It isn’t HDS’ answer to the EMC Symmetrix V-Max and it’s forthcoming FAST technology.

Continuing the series blog post on Storage Resource Analysis (SRA), this post focuses on the “IT – Storage World of 2009” and the requirements / importance of it around today’s overall Storage Strategy.

Virtualization is seen as the technology that makes it possible to do more with less, but there are many pitfalls to consider when virtualizing server infrastructure. This article suggests planning decisions to be considered that, if overlooked, could ruin the total cost of ownership (TCO) and the return on on investment (ROI) expected from this virtual infrastructure.

We think of web apps as what belongs in the “cloud”. Virtualization is changing this so that both small and enterprise apps are a fit. To me there can be an internal cloud and an external cloud. As virtualization continues to evolve, we will see the lines blur between both.