What elements remain unresolved to make FCoE truly world-class? What should the vendors be prioritizing?
MPIO
Path Management Software Recommendations
Lately, I’m being asked more and more what my recommendations are around path management. In this blog entry I describe the current state of path management and outline some recommendations for the use/implementation of path management software in the data center.
HDS High Availability Manager: How It Works
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.
A Taste Of HAM (Apologies To The Doctor)
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!
Windows Storage Server-Based Systems Step Into 2008
Windows Storage Server is one of the most interesting products from Redmond, a specialized version of Windows Server with integrated storage target capabilities, including iSCSI, NFS, SMB, and single-instance storage (file-level deduplication). Although Windows Server 2008, with its many storage feature updates, was released last year, the updated version of Windows Storage Server was still under construction until last month. But Windows Storage Server 2008 is available to manufacturers today.
PowerPath To The Virtual People
Hiding in the shadow of the huge VMware vSphere 4 announcement was a very interesting introduction by EMC: PowerPath/VE. As I mentioned in my post on storage changes in vSphere 4, PowerPath/VE plugs into the new pluggable storage architecture (PSA) found in vSphere 4 versions of ESX and takes over the decision-making and heavy-lifting tasks related to communicating with storage systems.D