by Compellent Technologies, — May 07, 2009
Although SSD was big at
C-Drive 2009, the future of Compellent storage is much more than flash. As the conference came to a close, customers were a buzz about several new technologies.
by Compellent Technologies, — May 07, 2009
The executive suite is counting on IT to be nimble enough to keep up with storage growth and help companies stay sharp against the competition. Business technology leaders Brandon Jackson of Gaston County, North Carolina, Giovani Oteri of Iper Montebello, Michael Knocke of Kansas Spine Hospital and John Chaffe of Tidewater Inc discussed the real-world issue they face each day as well as the business impact of IT and storage.
9:10: 62% of attendees said the economic climate has impacted storage spending within their organizations.
9:13: Mike Knocke realized the IT department had unused server equipment and hardware, which was inefficient, and that led him to adopt a phased virtualization approach.
9:15: Gaston County had the opportunity to revamp data center zoning four years ago. After reviewing how much space the data center was using, the company had a huge opportunity to redesign the data center, with data management topping the list of priorities as the team began evaluating storage options.
9:17: Gaston County dropped energy consumption by 30% and shrunk the data center by 20% after installing Compellent.
9:19: Giovanni Oteri found that Compellent drastically changed the way they look at storage. Storage is not a core business for the company, and while important, it was very important to spend efficiently and Compellent allowed his team to justify that spending.
9:21: During hurricanes Katrina and Rita, John Chaffe had to haul the data center across the country twice. That led to developing a DR plan that could be managed anywhere, by anyone.
9:22: Brandon Jackson looked at 6 different vendors when evaluating storage and ease of administration was a top priority. Replication and boot from SAN were priorities for John Chaffe.
9:24: The audience responded that lowering CAPEX, lower people costs and reducing the environmental impact all ranked equally as far as efficiency priorities.
9:26: John Chaffe stated that efficiency is his focus. Greening the data center isn’t as much of a priority as greening the ships the company has deployed around the world.
9:28: 50% of the audience currently measures the power consumption in their data centers.
9:29: Brandon Jackson is able to measure in the data center, and expects to be able to measure all IT within the next two years. Between 2005 to current, he dropped cooling in the data center by 30%.
9:30: Giovanni Oteri prefers investing in low power consuming technology because it reduces BTUs, but also reduces the complexity of cooling.
9:32: In 20 years, Giovanni Oteri has never had the necessity to recover data more than a week old. They will be abandoning tapes within the next 3-4 years.
9:32: John Chaffe uses Compellent’s replay technology to restore files over tape back-up because it’s quicker and more efficient. He’s fully replicating between New Orleans and Dallas.
9:34: Mike Knocke has a three-SAN solution project where he replicates across the campus, as well as iSCSI replication to an off-site SAN. In the event of a total disaster, they would be able to recover data virtually. Given the healthcare industry regulations, Mike still uses tape back-up.
9:36: The investment in employee training is a case-by-case decision depending on how the environment changes. However, all panelists noted that they try to keep budgets small for training which is another reason why Compellent has been easy to justify.
9:40: How does IT view data deduplication in primary storage now and in the future? Panelists agreed that dedup should be done at the application level and not at the storage level.
9:42: How does the panel feel about SSD support? Giovanni Oteri thinks Storage Center will maximize the performance benefits of SSDs because of its dynamic block architecture. Michael Knocke is looking to invest down the road, but sees challenges within application speeds which may not benefit from SSDs.
9:45: How is cloud computing and storage-as-a-service affecting your long term strategic planning? John Chaffe will be looking for an email and archiving services. Brandon Jackson thinks it will be a slower adoption rate because of security and control reasons.
by Compellent Technologies, — May 06, 2009
As the customer portion of
C-Drive kicked off today, solid state drives (SSD) was the topic of many hallway conversations. Inside the sessions, Mike Dufek and Ed Eades of
Munder Capital unveiled the results of their recent test of SSD in their Compellent SAN. The results drew audible admiration from the packed conference room. Listen in as attendees, including Ed, discuss their take on Compellent’s SSD implementation.