Birth of a storage magician

Sometimes stuff happens that just makes you feel old. Recently an email went around EMC asking us what we remembered about the early days of ATF, Array Guide, and Navisphere. I brushed off the cobwebs in the old brain bucket, and listed the cast of characters and products as best as I could remember. I kicked off the return email. Shortly, I got a reply from an old friend on the list saying damn, Mich, that was close to twenty years ago. Now feeling old, and after looking for the Geritol and my walker, I began thinking back. You know a mind can be a dangerous thing when enabled. I began pondering ”how long have I really been doing this?” After getting over the shock and horror that I had actually become one of those old farts I knew and loved in the old time data centers with punch cards and green bar, I started chuckling a bit remembering all the weird and wild times I’ve had over the years. I figured I'd share some of the stories; so below is the first, which should prove to be entertaining to those who don’t know me, and to those who do have a hint of how I've become this crazy man.

I never really intended to go into the storage industry from the start. My first real computer job was writing cash register software for one of the very first front and back office system vendors. This was back in the day when cashiers actually counted change by hand. It was the late 70’s thru the early 80’s. It was a tough time for start-ups, and alas, the poor company wound up having the doors locked by the IRS. I began consulting with all the customers of the prior company, and at some point, I met Bill The Concert Promoter. Bill was the picture of cool for the time with his, short beach shirt, dress shorts, and Birkenstock’s. His lack of socks all balanced out with dark sunglasses and a California tan. This slick picture of cool managed to talk myself and two other friends, Tom and Wade into helping him start up a software company.

My first job was to create a tape backup application for the Vic 20 and C64. I didn't realize it until much later, but this was my lesson on when to look for the small unsubtle clues in life. I’ll never forget my first meeting with Bill Living in an apartment on my parents land in Santa Barbara, California with a dog named Duke, who was a cross between a golden retriever and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Bill had arrived, and we had just started talking about the project when Duke trotted into the area wagging his tail. Gaining his usual attention from me, he then walked over Bill and paused. Then, in one quick, smooth, and unusually quiet motion, he managed to deposit what looked like a couple pounds of partially digested dog food across both of Bill’s feet. I looked down in horror at his toes being held captive by the molten mound of kibble in combination with the look of bewilderment on Bill’s face. Spotting a scoop shovel nearby used by my family’s construction business, I dashed to grab it. Bill managed to extract himself from Alpo Mountain by the time I returned with the shovel. After removing one full scoop shovel full of soggy kibble, providing a towel, and some nervous joking, we managed to get back to the conversation at hand. As it turned out later Duke was a very shrewd judge of character. Despite Dukes best attempts, I managed to secure the job to do the tape backup application, and thus started my first adventure into the land of storage.

Wade’s project at that time was to create disk replication software for the Commodore 64, which was to be known as “Disk Maker.” This became an overnight success, and soon this small software company was up to its elbows in orders for this backup/pirate software. I became the expert on the back office system. We did all our own floppy duplication, shipping, order processing, and tech support. By the time I left, Bill The Concert Promoter’s company I had automated every aspect of the office, order processing, and replication systems. Like a lot of things during this era, myself, Tom, and Wade’s dreams were never realized. Duke was indeed right, Bill managed to spend, blow, or hide all the profits from the sales of our software. That aside, this was the first of many strange adventures into the land of Storage…

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Microsoft learns with Linux and Hyper-V

In today’s market place of over labeled hype and spin it’s refreshing to see when a company noted for such spin steps up and avoids bad habits. While at LinuxCon Boston last week I was looking over the show program trying to decide what talks caught my fancy. Eyeing “The Physics Behind the Microsoft Hyper-V Drivers For Linux”  by Hank Janssen, caught my eye. My fist thought was boy this should be interesting, my second I was glad I'm not the Microsoft dude. I found a seat in a pretty well attended session and was ready for the show to begin. I was so surprised when it started standing before me was not a marketing suit or program manager. A real kernel developer stood where once you would see an empty vessel. Hank truly knew his topic matter and wasn't just informing the community what they intended to do. Better yet he was actively seeking a better way of going about the process. All along the presentation he asked for better ways to  make sure that both the Linux and Microsoft issues were addressed. He took his shots well and pushed back when needed. The fact of the matter is simple here OS vendors needs the support of the new virtualization engines coming into the market place. The VM vendors are the new emerging arms vendors in the data centers today. The OS will be battling it out to see which weapon works better for the customers arms dealers of choice. Having a good strategy into the virtual market place should and needs to be a high priority for any OS vendor today.   

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Is there any newness left?

An interesting thought occurred to me during an ad-hoc debate about the last truly new idea we could remember. Having covered several examples and their impact on a given industry. I thought it would be a good idea to pass this along.

These seemed to stand out as good examples
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We all agreed that the PC was a game changing idea and product. We also agreed that both the Apple’s and Microsoft’s OS’s simply leveraged the innovative thinking of the corresponding hardware platforms.

The Segway was another interesting discussion where I couldn't agree whether it was a success or not. I didn't really see it as a transforming idea. This could be partly due to an inability to create, captivate and execute on its market space.

CDP (Continuous Data Protection) gets mixed marks as a new innovation. It managed to change drastically the way we think about data protection.

This seemed like a simple task at first, but quickly proved that King Solomon was right “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Simply put, we tend to reinvent and mix the same set of technologies and come up with different results.

I may have a jaded view of the act of invention, but what really makes an idea new? If you look at my industry for example, we tend to focus on small incremental changes with no real explosions of newness. This leads me to have to say that new invention is all about the creation of new market collections. The PC wasn't really new, but rather opened up a market space that to this day continues to deepen its access to the masses. The Segway has yet to be proven as to its impact into the new green markets. It is clear they’ve had some level of impact, but is it really the market creator here? CDP--as short-lived as it might have been, helped create new markets and changed the thinking within existing markets, but failed to produce a market of its own.

Interestingly, the discussion tends to change when you step out of your comfort zone--whatever that may be. For example, I think Biotech and Nanotech are full of newness, but I wonder if someone with equal understanding of those industries would have the same opinion. This medium of new social networks and tools has created a whole new market space waiting to be fully activated and proven. Yet, what new concepts and technologies are really present? Still, you can’t deny its impact and change to all of us however. 
Perhaps at the end of all of this Plato was correct and that it’s all a matter of perception.

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What does an Apple, iConnect and a Cell Phone have in common?

In general searching for new uses and insights for existing technologies takes a lot of effort. Once a product is formed, built, tested and sold most of the cool features are usually well defined leaving nothing new to really be done. This leaves the searcher with a lot of work to squeeze out something that makes you go ‘WOW’ about the new feature. There are those rare ‘Isaac Newton and a Apple’ moments where you tilt your head just right and see  something new. While this won’t earn me any additional patents or launch a thousands salesmen into action, I’m still rather proud of this little discovery.

To set the scene:

I was writing the Adventures in Data Movement blog article. Going thru all the steps needed in the data movement section. Content in my chaotic glory, staring at the iConnect, wires, storage and network components. My phone beeps announcing ‘FEED ME’ I need a charge. Normally I would never notice this. I have the general rule, when I get home the blasted phone goes on the charger and unless I leave the house I forget about its existence. I cant even remember why I had it upstairs at the time with me to have even noticed that it was hungry.

 

Sorry I digress back to the inspirational whack on the forehead. I have the phone beeping asking to be fed, looking at the iConnect the following thoughts run through mind.

 

1. The iConnect has a USB hub right?  - Yes
2. My cell phone can charge via a USB connection – Yes
3. I wondered if the iConnect has a powered USB hub – Not Sure

That was all I needed to go off in a creative tangent with a crazy idea forming in my head. I run down stairs to steal a USB cable off the charging station in the kitchen. At this point my wife notices me looking around the various phone chargers on the shelf. Having learned over the years to take notice when that ‘look’ appears on my face. It’s generally a indication that I’m about to try something ‘creative’. I explain that I think I can charge my cell phone on my iConnect. To which she makes sure I wont break anything the family can’t do with out and wishes me luck. Taking USB cable in hand I head back upstairs where I can carry out my newest fiendish plot.

Sitting back down I connect the USB cable, phone and iConnect and to my delight I see the phone goes to charging mode. It appear that the iConnect is indeed a powered hub and it works great as an phone charger.  I leave the phone charging until the following day. As part of my civic duty I must report that both cell phone and iConnect are still alive and well to this date.

Quoting The Talking Head’s ‘You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here’ 

The answer is all about taking a chance and following a hunch that resulted in something new and different. For the price of about 85 bucks I now have a wireless data transfer device, NAS Server,Media Server and  Cell Phone charger. That's not bad value for the buck. 

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Innovation

I thought I’d pass along this interesting experience from this week. I’m a natural at my real job and have to say I enjoy the tar out of it. I help groups within EMC think out side of the box and lead the charge in crossing new boundaries. This is helped by never really knowing I was in a box to begin with. I joke when asked how I came up with this or that over the years that 'I was too clueless to know I couldn't do that'. Recently EMC has been preparing for their next internal Innovation contests. Normally I would be a good corporate citizen and read the nice posts and ask myself ‘you know I should enter’. This year is slightly different, for better or worse myself and two others won the contest last year. Now at a minimum this was ‘COOL’ and the internal exposure is always good for someone in my line of work. Where this takes a bit of a twist is I was asked to give my thoughts on the general topic of Innovation. This forced me to actually think about what I do for a living rather then just doing it.

This is what I came up with:

Innovation is easy from the outside and hard on the inside

I hear a lot from folks when I meet them for the 1st time ‘Man your job is really cool’. In truth I think it is but its not all glamour and late night Innovation parties. Its a lot of hard work mixed in with lots of failures. There is the classic 1 in 10 rule I live by for every 1 break thru, you have 10 failures littering the floor at your feet. This combined with once you think up the new whacky thing, It dawns on you this was the easy part. Things gets really interesting when you start expressing what it is you've done. A good Innovator must be able to translate the ‘what, how and why’ into many different forms and dialects. What does his idea mean to the business, schedule, products, market as well as the industry. How does this change the product, business and industry. Why is this better then just continuing down the beaten path.

Innovation Requires the Patience of a Therapist

A position most Innovators find themselves in once they have had the ‘break thru’ is they now need to convince others that this really is a good idea. I think of this time as technical therapy sessions I often find myself in the meetings at all kinds of levels having to adjust the pitch depending on the audience. This simply boils down to change is hard for most people. In a corporate setting it also tends to fly in the face of steady predictable incremental progress for the bottom line. I have been lucky for the most part over the years that I tend to pick bleeding edge style companies that see the long term advantages of ‘disruptive thinking and ideas’. Still I do have lots conversations to calm fears, show benefits, and convert the unenlightened.

Innovators Begat Innovators

This line as misleading as it may be is one of the truest statements. My 1st experience with innovation was in a high school history class of all places. As a testament to the effect a pair of very innovative teachers had in my life to this date. I'm still a avid history buff, I've been known to hijack the TV to watch the history channel much to my families chagrin. These teachers managed to talk the school administrator’s into letting them teach a military history course by having the students play war games. Now as a bright strapping young lad looking for an easy grade this was very appealing. I went and signed up thinking, I get to play games and get a grade, what could be better. Turned out not only did we play but we had to do 2 very in-depth reports on the actual battle as well as how our results differed from the actual and why. I personally came out of the class with an in-depth understanding of all the battles, but more importantly the realizations that the old ways aren't always the best and its ok to take a chance.

I try to pass this mindset along to all those I meet. Remembering while having one of those therapy sessions that I never know who the next best innovator might be in the room. I'm never more flattered than when one on of the members of a team I'm working with begins to run away with a piece of technology I’ve introduced making it their own and taking it in direction I’ve never considered.

Innovation is a Social Process

Being alone in the dark is great for growing fungus but not a very good for the production of great ideas. All along the process of creating I force myself out, in part due to the need of human contact and air not tainted with the smell of dry erase markers. More importantly is the need to share and proof the direction of my current thinking. Close friends and associates often hear me coming and generally my line is ‘ok you need to tell me if I'm crazy or not’. To a tee folks seem to say: well that's a ‘Yes’ but what are you thinking about today. Rarely do I leave those conversations with less then I arrived with. Better yet I have confirmed, shared and in most cases gain support in one form or other for the idea.

My finial rule is Innovation is a Life Choice and you have to want it. Picture yourself as the salmon going the wrong way at spawning time. The good news is you have the knowledge that some one built a damn up ahead the other direction. Change is hard no matter what company you work for no matter how willing they are to allow it. When Innovation works the rewards have been known to spawn industries and world changing events. Human potential is a direct result of innovation. This potential has been the driving force throughout the ages, fueled by those of us swimming the wrong way in a one way stream if for nothing else but to prove it can be done.

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Battle of the Pad’s

This is a bit of a follow-up to the Impressions of Apple's new iPad posting. Looks like Google is looking at doing their own Pad so Google if your listening please don't follow in Apples footsteps producing a large scale toy only working in a narrow use case. Think out of the box give the consumer & the industry a game changing device rather then simply playing games. Give your engineers the room to innovate and knock the ball out of the park I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

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Impressions of Apple’s new iPad

Thought I’d pass this along to all interested. I managed to luck out and was able to borrow the Apple iPad for a prolonged period of time. My expectations were high for this device. If met they might actually turn me from my evil Windows and Linux ways and towards the path of Apple enlightenment. From my current experience with this device it appears my false tech gods still have their hold over me. I find this device’s cool factor up there but this is really due to the power of the iPod and not thru any mind blowing Apple Innovation. They seem to have taken the easier ‘larger then the original copy’ approach to this new product instead of trying to hit the ball out of the park. This leaves the usability as a real compute device lacking in major ways. They have missed with this device holding the hope and promise to extend the ability to integrate the compute device into the household environment.

For better or worse, a well-defined consumer based pad device is a combination of a magazine, laptop, game, and multi-media device. This device needs to free the household from the burden of carting your laptop from room to room and be cheap enough to perhaps have more than one. Ideally this device should integrate into your remote control interfaces and your internal network. This being said there is truth to the rule you need to walk before you can run. However this is not an excuse to not attempt to toddle off the carpet.

I found that the iPad was nothing more then a glorified iPod touch which was very disappointing. It’s clear from the feature set, Apple took the easy way out and chose not to lead by example here. This device has no native connectivity to your household network storage or if it does they have buried it in a way that I can’t find. It appears that you need to sync your files onto the device to use the content on your external media. I have an eight terabyte media store. My expectation is to be able to browse, edit, view and sort these files using the iPad. The tools today I have found however require you to sync them onto the device. This sets the device as a content owner and not the content tool. If a Pad is to be successful as a device it must be a tool that interacts with all the various storage and compute devices that are becoming standard fare in the homes today.

Households by nature are multi-tenant/multi-user models of operation. This requires the device to interact with all components of the home media experience, while not to be the sole provider of said content. Without this multi-tenant ability these devices tend to be non-starter from the git-go.

Final Impressions:

• Ease of use – Very good, after all its the iPod Touch on steroids.
• Innovation – Poor,
• This appears to be just a large version of the iPod: shame on you Apple you’re trying to be setting the lead on new innovation these days.
• Form Factor – Acceptable but I would like a slightly larger screen.

Overall:

• Good single user device
• Nice to play games on
• Nice to browse the web
• Poor integration with other home and computer devices.
• Good for reading books …
• If you need a large format iPod this is the device for you

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Peace, Love and Linux

I had to chuckle to myself when I read the article from Paul Ryan Uptake of native Linux ZFS port hampered by license conflict this week. One of the of my 1st projects coming back to EMC a few years ago was to analyze porting ZFS onto the Linux platform. Thru this project I gained a lot of respect for the thought that the Sun folks had put into their software architecture and construction. I learned the things needed for the port were more then achievable. We faced the same kind of dilemma that now confronts the folks in this article the License Issue. My conclusion at the time was, that this would be a non-started. From a software professional I decided I needed to put my 2 cents worth in here. I use the resources and energy the Linux community has on a daily basis,  but I always wrestle with the question of  “Where’s the Money”. I know that the company I work for expects to some form of ROI on my works as they should. I love the principal of open source and the community approach as well. This all being said I’m at a loss as to how to bring these sides together. Oracle/Sun deserves their ROI as much as my company does. boiling this down to a maturity issue in my prospective Linux has clearly done a good job at propagating itself into the industry and user community. ZFS is clearly a suite of software that deserves its chance at revenue generations for its creators whomever they may be. The long and short of it all here isn't that those whom wish ROI are evil, and for the goodness of the community should release their labor without said chance to recoup profits. Moreover we need this to mature in support both models. I can’t tell you how many times I've looked at this problem here and various start-ups, and gone damn if I give that away I’ve lost my companies leverage in the market space. Then had to come up with some overly complex creative solutions that calms the lawyers and meets our product delivery goals. This is not a suggestion to throw the baseline GPL foundation away but we need some form of provision to enable the industry at large to introduce, deploy and maintain their own set’s of components in this ecosystem. In the long term that strengthens both the open source interests as well as the business interests at large.

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Adventures in Data Movement

By nature I'm a problem solver, so when I see something that should be easier. I tend to try and solve it. With one caveat ‘it has to be interesting’, otherwise all those boring mundane tasks I flee from in the home would be done already. So let's assume that what's upcoming will not only solve a problem, be cool and keep my interest.

Storage is moving into people's lives in ways that we don't notice most of the time. Cell Phones, Camera's and Music Players store things. My teenagers are asking for flash sticks so they can transfer between school and home. You get the picture, while I love this as a storage geek this can get overwhelming for people that don't understand the magic inside the great mysterious box known as the personal computer in any of its forms today.

 
So here's the problem that caught my interest. My wife uses her camera almost every day at work. She is a preschool teacher they build a photo album for each student at the end of the year. This is filled with pictures of the child's interactions thru out the school year. You can see with 40+ students any given term that that's a lot of photos. She is always copying from the camera onto her lap top working away dragging and dropping, sorting then into the proper locations etc. This should be a lot easier, why isn't this like putting your smart phone in the cradle and the data just winds up where it should be. This might answer that question that the computer savvy among us has been struggling with for decades of 'Why didn't it go where I wanted it too?'

 
So let's describe my setup a little bit here so folks understand what we can bring into play to solve this problem

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My home supports both wired gigabit devices as well as N wireless. The general configuration is if the device is on the 2^nd floor, mainly in my office where all the heavy lifting devices are on a gig switch. Devices in the basement, 1^st floor and backyard area have access to the N router that is funneled up to the gig backbone. The primary network storage device for the household is an Iomega IX4 this is an approximately 6 terabyte NAS Appliance. All household users have access to this and the goal is that this is where all content will reside for one simple management point. Yes I'm not a simple setup but I warned you I'm a storage Geek what else would you expect.

 
So my plan is to take the data from my wife's camera and get it upstairs onto the IX4 in the right folder solving the age old riddle. If I'm lucky there will be no loss of life, limb or interruption in my game play. This has to be easy to use and behave like docking your phone no more than a button press away

 
The cast of characters:

Iomega Ix4

Iomega iConnect

 

Generic 5 in 1 flash device

 

Flash SD drive from the camera

Assumptions:

• Your Iomega NAS device is installed and running
• Your iConnect is installed and running
• Your multi SD drive works and you have data on the SD device you wish to use

Step 1: Connect to the iConnect Device

My iConnect is open security model it is used as a data pump device as well as exporting our USB DAS to the network as needed. Your mileage may vary here it may have a login screen if you have enabled user security

Step 2: Enter the Backup and Restore menu section on the device

Step 3: Choose Copy Jobs

The storage service I've decided to use for this solution is the Copy Job Service this is a great work horse for custom data movement operation in the Iomega NAS products its supports across the line at a minimum by devices that run the EMC LifeLine software. Once you have reached this menu select the Add button to begin adding a new Copy Job into the system.

Step 4: Add a new Copy Job

When adding a Copy Job there are several pieces of data that needs to be gathered. This data is only gathered once and saved within the system and reused each time the Copy Job is run.

This data contains the following information

• The Copy Job Name

• Its overwrite Setting this tells the job system if it should overwrite existing files on the target device. There are several options here. For this task I have left this setting at its default Do Not Overwrite

Now let's start describing the source device information needed. I've left the device as ic01 this is the iConnect device within my home that we will use to plug in the SD flash device reader into.

Step 5: Choose what to copy

Now let's select the what to copy section This is the location on the source device I wish to use To this we will select the what to copy pull down button.

Step 6: Choose source folders

For this project selecting all the folders on this device would create unnecessary clutter on the target device. causing my wife to have search in order to find her new pictures once they have been moved onto the target device.

Once I've changed the setting to the 'selected files and its content', a browse button will appear on the UI this allows me to pick the correct source directory to use. As you can tell I've selected the output folders that my wife's camera stores its new content into..

We can now move onto the target information. I'm choosing a location on my IX4 NAS device to do this. By doing this my wife can connect to her pictures from any device with my household.

Step 7: Choose remote device

By selecting the To Device pull down I see the following choices on my network I've chosen the device IX4-01. This is the host name of my household NAS device.
once selected it's now time to enter all the information necessary to attach to this device.

Step 8: Add target information

The information needed for this select are as follows

• Protocol: Windows File Sharing

• Username: Diana

• Password: ********

The last piece of information is the folder that you wish to use to store the content with. You may enter this information directly into the field or select the Browse button and you can browse the destination for the location

Step 9: Completed copy job

We have just one more thing to select about this copy job that is the run when quick transfer button is pressed. This feature will run this copy job when the device is inserted and the button on the front of the iConnect is pressed. The very last step is to press the apply button and our job is saved for use.

Step 10: Available copy jobs

Once you have completed we now see our copy job in a list of available jobs that can be run.

Step 11: Copy job run report

Checking the status of a copy job is a simple act in the UI as you can see from this run there are no problems, thus the green check. From this screen you would see any error conditions and details if they had occurred.

Step 12: The end results

This is the view of the IX4 NAS appliance from my Windows 7 desktop as you can see the pictures are now under the New Pictures Folder on my wife's share. At this point she can edit, move and sort to her heart's content. She only needs to look here for her new pictures from now on.

In conclusion this was a lot simpler that I thought it would be. The products involved worked well together it honestly too far longer to write this up then to actually do the operations from scratch. Once set up it works well and has a very well understood and predictable end result. My wife likes having her photo at her finger tips and the ease of use that the process provides.

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Long ago memory's of hot summer nights

How many folks remember network file servers we use them in out jobs daily and a few of use more savvy technical types have has at one time or the other a file server for home use. The probably has been keeping up with storage and maintenance needs of the content and users. I fell into this early on at one point in the early 90’s I have almost 2 terabytes spread across 2 file servers to service the storage needs of my family and myself. This unruly creation of 14 IDE disk drives on 4 IDE cards in 2 servers could heat my office on a cold New England winters day. During the summer let’s just say I’d rather be swimming then working in my home office. Another little known bit of knowledge is that 14 drives produce more noise than one could imagine. This type of operation depending on the size of your data needs was pretty much standard fair thru the 90’s in the early 2000’s things began to change. We saw special purpose storage boxes start cropping up for the most part used in small businesses due to their costs at this time my 14 drive monster was still cheaper to put together then to buy a small low end NAS box. We did see however see the growth of the home network switch by this time the and with the rapid acceptance of the wireless networks in the home several interesting solutions began to pop up. I managed to pick up during this time some of the LINKSYS and NETGEAR switch that had media ports My thought was to take something like some along the lines of the My Book at the time and plug this into the switch and bam I have storage and well its USB right so just get a hub and plug more standalone USB drives into this new creation and I have a dual purpose unit. I think I was ahead of my time perhaps a little too far out this failed the software at the time in the routers just wasn’t up to par to the types and count of drives I wanted to use. I wound up doing a fall back solution of fire wire enclosures to one File Server this allowed my expansion and I got to get rid of at least one server.

Let’s march forward a few years/jobs and we get to a brave new world of consumer storage. My file servers are gone they have been replaces by a NAS device. That dream of the 90’s for the most part has been achieved or has it. If you had asked me in the mid 90’s would I need anything other then storage, connection and security for my content I would have laughed at you my biggest goal was to dull the noise of the servers I had and the heat of the drives. But today it’s a brave new world we have the footprint issues solved I currently use one of the new Iomega IX-4’s this is 8 terabytes of raw storage in approximately 1 cubic foot of shelf space. I never hear the beast and much to my wife’s chagrin I’m asking to turn the heat on in my office now during the winter time. One would say I may have arrived at my nirvana but as with all things in the technology market there really never is a finish line once one barrier is crossed it merely opens the road to a whole new way of thinking.