I’ve spent over 17 years working in the backup space starting out as an evening ‘Tape Jockey’ contracting for Digital Equipment Corporation.  I’ve heard over that time that the profession of administrating a backup environment was “the most important job that no one wants”.  This concept...

Continued from Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) part 1 New standards are being developed, which will achieve line-rate bandwidth with zero packet loss. This is being referred to a ‘lossless’ network which supports standards like: • Priority Flow Control (IEEE 802.1Qbb) • Congestion notification...

There has been a lot of discussion about Fibre Channel over Ethernet lately, and in this post I will try to provide an overview of the technology. FCoE is becoming a standard protocol adopted by storage vendors and operating systems to allow Fibre Channel to run over Ethernet. With the adoption of 10...

As a Storage and Data Protection consultant, I often have to look at my customer’s tape library capacity and assess current state and future state sizing needs. Sometimes I find that the backup environment has been reconfigured to meet increasing capacity demands with existing equipment capacity. For...

There’s been a fair amount written recently about the end or “death” of RAID as a viable storage protection technology. However, as is often the case, ascertaining the life or death of a technology category can depend highly on assumptions and semantics. Those arguing that RAID is at the end of...

VKernel Capacity Analyzer http://www.vkernel.com/products/CapacityAnalyzer Product Data Sheet available here. Pricing is $199/socket. VKernel is a certified virtual appliance, so no Windows licensing is necessary. Evaluation licensing is a 14-day license, and will manage one vCenter or 3 hosts. In my...

Tek-Tools Virtual Profiler http://www.tek-tools.com/virtual/overview.php Product technical brief available here. (Registration required) Pricing is per host, with a required base framework as well. A starter pack with the framework and 3 host licenses retails for $4495, with additional hosts at $995....