Sessions in detail
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So, to help your IT team succeed -- Storage Decisions now features 5 distinct session tracks. Each track is custom built to serve the information needs of each of the specific members of your storage team. Read on to find out more about each session and which track, or tracks, suit you best as you and your peers continue to face shared challenges and individual responsibilities. Track 1: Backup Technologies Track 1: Backup TechnologiesData protection continues to be Job #1 for most storage managers -- a job that only gets more complex as each year companies add up to 50% more storage capacity. The good news is that newer technologies can help in this uphill battle, but you still have to determine the right tools for the job, how they will work within the context of you storage environment and whether they provide the level of protection that your company requires. Among the topics covered in this track are data deduplication, virtual tape libraries, the newly integrated backup suites, matching data protection levels to business needs and how archiving fits into a data protection scenario. Stand and Deliver: Data Protection SLAs Storage environments are increasingly complex, with multiple tiers of storage often the norm. With a variety of storage delivery services supported by different types of hardware, a one-size-fits-all backup strategy is likely to be inadequate. A system of data protection service level agreements is an effective approach to tailor backup appropriately to the needs of the company’s business units. Some of the issues this session will address include: Making Virtual Backups Real Virtualized server environments are enormously efficient, make managing larger server installations far easier and can save big bucks on hardware and power costs. But they don’t necessarily help backup admins. This session will look at the major server virtualization products and describe the pros and cons of the various ways to back up and restore their data. While many of the commercial solutions are VMware specific, the session will also explain what to do if you are using something other than VMware. Some key topics of this session include: Dedupe + Disk Backups: What you need to know before taking the plunge Although disk systems are cheaper than ever before, the use of disk in backup systems, including VTLs, has been very limited due to its cost. However, thousands of deduplication-based disk systems have now been deployed, and customers the world over are seeing that they can indeed take the place of tape for onsite backup storage. While many companies still copy these backups to tape for offsite storage, some companies have figured out ways to either stop shipping tapes or to stop using them altogether. This session will explore all of these possiblities. This session will explore and describe: De-dupe User Panel Data deduplication has come onto the IT scene in the last two years like a wild storm. Every data protection company either has a data deduplication product in the market or is planning on shipping one. What are the early results for users? Have they seen the kinds of data deduplication ratios that vendors were touting? How many solutions did they try before picking one? Have there been any disappointments? Are there any guidelines that could be provided by these users for those that are currently in the market for data deduplication products? What are the initial reactions to variable length, block vs. file, inline vs. post processing and other fundamental differences between products? Should IT consider data deduplication to be a strategic or a tactical decision? Are there any “gotchas” to watch out for? These and other topics will be discussed by a panel of users that have had six months (or more) of experience using one or more data deduplication products on the market. Testing… One, Two, Three… It would be nice if backup was a “set it and forget it” operation, but the reality is that it’s a complex operation with dependencies and enough possible points of failure to keep a storage manager up at night. This session will delve into a range of issues related to backup testing, highlight some of the most common testing oversights, and provide a template for testing that attendees can adapt or tweak for use in their own shops. Some of the issue this session will cover include: Strategies for Restoring and Retrieving SharePoint Data Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) is rapidly becoming a popular enterprise application and productivity tool as organizations seek to enhance collaboration and enable information accessibility. Outfitted with new features for enterprise content management and tight integration with Microsoft Office productivity tools, MOSS now ranks, in many organizations, as a mission-supporting application not unlike Exchange. Minimizing downtime, protecting SharePoint data and meeting compliance requirements now go hand-in-hand with its new-found status. However, due to its distributed server farm architecture, complex platform configuration and document repository consisting of one or more SQL databases, MOSS presents unique storage, backup/recovery and archiving challenges for IT organizations—validated in a newly published ESG Research report on SharePoint and its impact on IT infrastructure and information management. In this session, some of these findings and dialog with SharePoint user/experts will highlight the ways in which attendees can prepare for or improve upon MOSS deployments and, importantly, reduce the risk of data loss, downtime, or failing to comply with litigation or compliance requirements. Track 2: Disaster RecoveryDisaster recovery isn’t just about being able to resume business as quickly as possible after a catastrophic incident. It’s also about avoiding the situations that could jeopardize your company’s reputation and good standing -- like the loss of customer data. But DR isn’t a one-size-fits-all affair, with different company assets requiring varying levels of protection and recoverability. We’ll look at some of the new tools for testing DR readiness, DR issues related to specific types of data and how virtualization can affect a DR plan, among other topics.
Tiered Disaster Recovery: DR SLAs That Work Not all enterprise applications are of equal importance to the ongoing operations of the corporation. Still, many DR plans tend to treat all applications in the same manner. But applying the same safeguards to all apps equally in a DR plan is likely to result in over protecting the less critical apps while not providing enough assurance for the ones that are critical to the business' continuity. By treating all applications equally, the recovery process is burdened by having to restore all applications simultaneously—an unlikely event even in smaller organizations. A tiered DR plan helps to address this problem by creating different levels of protection that can be applied to different applications and systems, with associated recovery requirements designed to stagger restoration efforts. This session will cover: DR Testing Programs—How Useful Are They? Over the past couple of years, a new DR product category has emerged—disaster recovery testing tools. These applications can scan your storage environment and alert you to any potential gaps in your recovery plan. Sound too good to be true? This session will take a close look at the handful of products in this category and reveal: Disaster Recovery Planning for VMware Virtualized Environments VMware server virtualization is being touted as a near panacea for DR by making it easier than ever to recover servers to a secondary site. But, just as virtual servers complicate backup procedures, server virtualization has an impact on storage infrastructures and may require tweaking disaster recovery plans for storage systems. This session will address these and other issues: Track 3: Data Retention and RetrievalCall it regulatory compliance, legal vigilance, good disk management or just plain common sense -- regardless of your company’s motivation, a sound system for retaining and disposing of data is one of the modern requirements of storage management. Developing a consistent, repeatable and practical set of data retention policies is the first step in the process. Tools such as data classification applications can help automate the process of sorting through the reams of structured and unstructured data to determine its appropriate disposition. While storage managers may consider this a business unit function, as keepers of company’s data they are very much in the mix. And, as such, they need to know about the legal implications, the types of systems best suited for retained data and how encryption can help ensure that data is kept intact in its original form. Deep Dive into Email Archiving Products Email archiving is almost a no-brainer for most storage shops. It can significantly trim email data stores and improve the performance of the email application, and it is also likely to play a key role in any compliance effort. While many shops have already implemented email archiving, many others are still on the sidelines, parsing their way through the features of various email archiving offerings and considering the impact that an archiving app will have on the management of their storage systems. In this session, we will take an in-depth look of some of the most popular email archiving products available today, including: Leveraging Capacity Optimization Technologies Against Primary Storage
Data reduction technologies like data de-duplication and single instancing are really starting to take hold in the industry, with recent analyst surveys indicating strong purchase intent over the next 12 months. To date, these technologies have only addressed secondary or off-line storage (primarily backups) because they typically have not offered the performance necessary to be used against primary, on-line applications. Over the last twelve months, newer technologies have emerged that offer high performance, in-line data reduction sufficient for use with primary storage and on-line applications. The data reduction market is now splitting into “primary storage optimization” and “secondary storage optimization.” The break out session will discuss the emerging primary storage optimization technologies and the value propositions it offers to end users, indentifying the criteria necessary for primary storage optimization offerings, introduce the vendors playing in this space, and discuss the pros and cons of the different architectures and approaches to primary storage optimization. Track 4: Storage/Capacity ManagementWith spiraling capacities the norm, managing storage systems has become a challenging task. Traditional SRM tools are often adept on keeping tabs on the state of your storage infrastructure, but more focused applications are becoming increasingly available. Storage virtualization also promises to ease storage management and improve disk usage, but there are inherent issues that need to be fully understood before embarking on a virtualization project. Traditional methods of operational data protection, such as RAID, tend to be complex and difficult to configure and manage, but some storage vendors are offering compelling alternatives. In this track, we’ll also examine power conservation for storage systems, a new requisite for most storage shops struggling to balance increased capacity and soaring energy costs. Optimizing Storage in VDI Environments Virtual desktop infrastructures (VDIs) bring end users many potential benefits, including increased user mobility and flexibility, higher levels of security, and reduced administrative and maintenance costs. While the foundational computing and networking technologies are now in place to support virtual desktop infrastructures, the performance and provisioning of storage remains a major challenge to deploying an effective VDI. Traditional approaches to storage in a virtualized environment – whether networked or direct attached – tend to suffer from a number of problems, including low capacity utilization, poor performance and slow and complex provisioning. Such issues can reduce service levels for desktop applications and prevent VDI installations from scaling beyond a small number of users. This session will outline major storage challenges in VDI environments and discuss approaches to overcome them, including a set of requirements for VDI-optimized storage. We will also look at several examples of vendor solutions that can help end users to meet these requirements. Green Storage: Practical Ways to Reduce Power Consumption Green is in—and every storage vendor out there has a green story to tell. The need to reduce power consumption in the data center is compelling and storage—accounting for an estimated 40% of data center electrical consumption—is a major target for energy conservation. Despite the vendor hyperbole about the environmental benefits of their products, there are still no standard metrics by which to measure and compare power consumption claims. This session will take a practical approach to power reduction, and include these topics: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Virtualization—In One Hour While virtualization is still a burgeoning technology for storage, the merits are many. With an understanding the benefits and drawbacks of virtualization, you can bring many new capabilities to your storage environment. This session will provide the answers to many of the virtualization questions swirling in storage today. During this session you will hear how virtualization has progressed from vaporware to actual products storage managers are using to centralize data, add flexibility, and change the economics of storage. Storage virtualization techniques to be covered include: The Hidden Storage Gotchas of Storage Virtualization Server virtualization implementations are booming. The coming together of multicore x86 processors and server virtualization has made consolidation of workloads running on underutilized servers, increasingly attractive. And while server consolidation promises to reduce floor space and power/cooling requirements, it also creates unexpected new storage challenges. Storage and SAN implementations that work well with physical servers often break down and do not work well at all when those servers are virtualized. Some of the issues that will be discussed include: Clustered Storage--From SMB, to Scientific, to Social Networking and Web 2.0 The growth of structured and unstructured data continues at an explosive rate in most environments resulting in a constantly expanding data footprint that requires data and storage management resources. Similarly, the relative ease of use of NFS and Windows CIFS file sharing based storage, also known as Network Attached Storage (NAS), has led to a proliferation of NAS and Windows file servers which are not all that different from how the ease of use of personal computers (PCs) resulted in desktop and server sprawl. With the focus of many IT organizations today to do more with less, or, do more with what you have, clustered storage and clustered file serving have become a popular option to support modular, scalable and flexible growth. Clustered storage including clustered file serving, grid and web 2.0 based storage solutions are no longer confined to the specific high performance scientific applications they are commonly associated with. Instead, clustered storage serving is now commonly being deployed to support a wide diversity of applications including commercial, entertainment or media, Web 2.0 and social networking along with grid, cloud and traditional scientific needs. Among other topics, this session takes a look at: Track 5: Systems and NetworkingThe core of any networked storage infrastructure is it's basic hardware components: storage arrays and the fabric that links them to client servers and other services. Over the past few years, the trend has been to build networks around director-class switches -- but how those directors are used is the key to whether they’re just consolidation points to replace core-edge architectures or if they actually put more intelligence into the network. Storage systems, too, have undergone considerable change. iSCSI storage arrays have steadily increased their presence in data centers and remote locations, and as iSCSI technology and implementations mature, their impact is certain to become more profound. And on the leading edge of storage are systems that eschew or greatly reduce the role of spinning disks, replacing them with solid state devices that run cool, use far less power and take up less space. In this track, we’ll look at the implications of these recent developments. Focus on Solid State Storage In this session you will get an overview of solid-state disk technologies. The speaker will discuss what Solid State Disk is, what all the buzz is about and how to know if your really can justify it in your environment. In the final section the speaker will review which suppliers are entering this new market, which suppliers are already in the market, what the differences are between this solutions and how to decide which one is right for your environment. Storage and the WAN—What Are the Options? Reining in remote or branch offices can help solve a number of storage problems, such as data protection, storage administration and management, and the proliferation of heterogeneous systems. There’s no shortage of solutions available, but each comes with its own risks and benefits. In this session, we take a close look at the options and suggest the best fit for certain environments. Some of the issues that will be discussed include: IP and Fibre Channel in SANs iSCSI SANs are attractive because of their flexible low/high cost – low/high performance options and the familiar IP architecture. High end arrays enable both FC and iSCSI interfaces to storage. Enterprise customers have heavy investments in FC infrastructure. With asset utilization being the key SAN benefit, we must leverage both IP and Fibre Channel technologies as we make the strategic decisions for the IT environment for the future. Some of the topics that will be covered include: The Right Way to Test Storage System Performance The discussion will introduce the concepts needed to interpret storage system performance claims and the tools and processes required for hands-on performance analysis. In this information-packed session, you will be introduced to the elements of storage systems that affect their performance, including storage controllers, caching, bandwidth, protocols, disk drives, backend interconnects and storage services. You'll also learn about different types of storage performance tools, and where they fit in the storage benchmark spectrum. Tools to be examined include IOMETER, SPC, SpecSFS, JetStress, LoadSimm and iozone. And finally, you will learn how to interpret storage system performance results with a focus on the metrics that matter the most to your business. Storage Networking: The Path to Performance
When one looks at the main benefits of a SAN people often cite performance. But performance means many things to many people in the IT world. This session identifies just what aspects of performance are or are not critical to the successful deployment of these storage network technologies. We will show what is and is not important as a focus item and look at the systems and storage involved in levying information flow requirements versus the storage infrastructure itself. We'll examine where is the best place to invest for performance and dispel some preface myths at the same time. Finally or focuswill zero in on the network itself as opposed to the server and storage portions of the information flow path. Identifying Performance Bottlenecks – Tips and Tools to Help You Say It's Not Your Fault In this session, RiskMetrics Group’s Storage Administrator Ed Delgado will examine the commonly reported user complaint about application and database performance -- that the storage is a bottleneck. While many storage systems contain some form of performance tracker, it is usually not enough to help identify the issue. Focusing on operating system tools and Open Source applications, Ed will discuss methods to collect and archive performance information with the goal of saving you time and needless pain in the future. Some of the tools we will cover include Bonnie, UCD-SNMP for Disk I/O, SNMP Informant, OpenNMS, iozone, iometer, and iostat . Numerous examples will be provided from the presenter¹s own experience. Track 6: Management/ExecutiveSometimes technology alone won’t solve storage-related issues. You also need to be adept about the business of acquiring storage systems. As a storage manager, you will be called on to develop storage solutions to satisfy evolving business needs -- always with an eye on the key financial acid tests for any storage purchase: ROI and TCO. This track addresses the essential parts of the storage system procurement process, including how to craft an RFP, negotiating from a position of strength, evaluating systems and getting the support of your company’s management. Business Buy-In Whether you’re developing storage vendor selection criteria, arguing for DR dollars or trying to slash costs in your data center, you need to know how to talk to the C-level suits so they get it. Getting buy-in from business units and company executives isn’t about touting speeds and feeds. You’ll need to justify your projects and planned purchases in business terms that often go beyond simple TCO or ROI formulas. This session will guide you through the process: Managing the Four Cs – Cost Containment, Compliance, Continuity and Carbon Footprint Nearly every company today has an set of front burner issues that come down to 4 “C’s”: Cost Containment, Compliance, Continuity and Carbon Reduction. At root, every one of these issues requires a strategy for improved data management. In this presentation, Toigo will address the following topics based on his new book, Making IT Matter (currently being developed as a BLOOK by Toigo, and co-author Randy Chalfant, at MakingITMatter.com). This will include: 7 Simple Steps to Overcoming Storage Compliance Challenges An “innocent” IT professional does a routine purge of a data store that a court deems to be destruction of evidence, causing huge liability and impacting careers forever. Whether you want to admit it or not, Information Management has never been more important than it is now and it impacts IT professionals directly. Yet how do you prepare to deal with the onslaught on new governance, regulatory and compliance impacting your organization. This dynamic keynote address will give you a working blueprint to get it right. Based on the Best Selling book, Information Nation, this keynote will inspire and guide any information storage professional to take responsibility as never before. The 3rd Era of Commercial Computing: What Storage Infrastructures will Look Like Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. It may be a bad cliché, but it does apply to IT. We have moved through various computing eras and are about to embark on one that is being influenced by Google, Flickr and other Web 2.0 companies. Distributed file data is going to grow at a much faster rate than information stored within databases. New applications in this era mean changes in the entire storage infrastructure. The answer to the proverbial question, “What Impact Will It Really Have?” may lie on what happened in the earlier computing eras. The audience should expect a brief history lesson and how storage infrastructures will morph in the future. Buying Storage -- What the Vendors Don’t Want You to Know In this session, you learn the questions you should be asking of ALL of your storage vendors, and other important tips and techniques for writing an air-tight RFI or RFP (they are different!). Bill Peldzus uses real case studies and actual customer purchasing engagements as examples. Attend this session if you: What Storage Managers Are Buying-and Why Storage managers have many challenges to deal with—not the least of which is the unrelenting need to add more disk capacity. As installed capacity continues to spiral upward, beleaguered storage pros are looking for new ways to manage and administer high-capacity storage environments. In this session, we analyze and present the results of Storage magazine’s biannual Purchasing Intentions survey. The results of this exclusive show key trends and the types of solutions storage managers are seeking, while revealing some of the strategic and tactical decisions they’ll be making this year. We’ll look at:
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Storage Decisions New York Home
Track 1: Backup Technologies
Track 2: Disaster Recovery
Track 3: Data Retention and Retrieval
Track 4: Storage/
Capacity Management
Track 5: Systems and Networking
Track 6: Management/
Executive
Storage Decisions Seminars
Backup School Hits the Road with W. Curtis Preston
Data Deduplication
with W. Curtis Preston
Disaster Recovery Planning with Jon William Toigo
E-Mail and File Archiving with Mark Diamond
Optimizing
Networked Storage
with Marc Staimer
Storage Virtualization with Stephen Foskett
Vendor Events
DR/Business Continuity
Planning with Jon Toigo
sponsored by CDW
Data Classification with Greg Schulz sponsored by Incentra and HP
