Uri Unplugged

When I was growing up (some time ago), we had one TV channel, a few radio stations, and just a couple of encyclopedias and a few other resources to use for finding information. Our challenge back then was in the actual process of gathering information. With scarce and limited resources available to us, the task was tedious and slow.

In contrast, today my oldest child researches information for homework assignments by ”Googling”. Every one of his queries returns countless resources (surprisingly enough, Google does count them) providing him with a wealth of information in a fraction of a second. This is great, yet it presents a different kind of challenge - How can one sort, comprehend and assimilate these vast amounts of information?

In today’s business landscape, this condition is no different. We are all overwhelmed with information and face the enormous challenge of sorting it all in a meaningful way.

Our role at RADirect as a trusted partner has changed too. We are no longer the authoritative resource; we no longer have a span of time to communicate with you and we are certainly no longer the ones that know it all. We are just another resource on your journey to discover information.

Posted by Uri Zilberman at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At RADirect, we often encounter instances where our solutions are in direct competition with ones from the ‘big players’. You know, the huge corporations frequently known by 2-3 letter acronyms with big branding, marketing and sales muscle.....

This often presents a challenge, as many customers are risk averse; I think this is a natural course of human nature. We are uncomfortable detaching ourselves from our respective comfort zones and feel more secure when we follow the herd…and are willing to pay a major premium for that.

Nevertheless, innovation and progress rarely come from followers; rather, they come from individuals who have vision, passion, and the courage to go outside their comfort zone and follow their instincts and beliefs. Those are the people that will show you how you can accomplish an objective rather than tell you why a certain objective can not be reached. Those are the individuals that grab the ‘opportunities’ rather than focus on ‘limitations’… those are the individuals that drive progress and change.

Last Thursday, I visited one of our clients who happens to be just this kind of individual. Mike Parks is the CTO of DataPipe, one of the fastest growing providers of managed hosted services with a global reach.

Our relationship with DataPipe began about a year ago, and it was slow going initially. The company’s storage infrastructure was predominantly NetApp and HP, and getting the opportunity to present Nexsan’s SATA storage systems was not an easy task, even though Nexsan’s price advantage was significant. We knew we had a shot, but needed to wait for the time to be right.

This right opportunity arrived last September, when through the insight of Mike Parks, DataPipe re-engaged us with a backup/DR application for one of their clients.

The main driver for this renewed engagement was our ability to provide a cost effective, enterprise class SATA storage system with RAID 6 capabilities - at roughly half the price of a comparable RAID system offered by another manufacturer (who shall remain nameless).

Another important attribute was the simplicity of our solution. Our solution is seen by the OS (any OS for that matter!) as just a huge disk (yes, RAID 5 or RAID 6 enabled, dual power, dual FC controllers, hot swappable, and everything you would expect from an enterprise class SATA storage system).

So Mike gave our technology a shot – we sold DataPipe their first Nexsan SATABeast system late in 2006, and since then, our business with DataPipe has thrived.

In our last meeting, Mike told me that he is still astonished that since deploying the SATABeast, he has not experienced a single drive failure or any downtime whatsoever. And the performance is excellent (in Mike’s own words)!

Beyond the obvious impact this has on our own business, I take personal pride whenever we see such success stories.

If you, like Mike, are that person with a clear vision and a good understanding of what you want to accomplish, and appreciate the possibilities technology has to offer you, I’d like to use this opportunity and express my personal ‘kudos to you!’. Innovation and progress could not occur without you.

Posted by Uri Zilberman at 09:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Everyday at RADirect, we speak with storage and IT administrators about their struggles to plan, deploy and protect their data. Almost everyone is still thinking about data: data archiving, data redundancy, and of course, data restoration.

The good news is, if you are using a disk to disk backup architecture, you now have more options. Today there are two basic topologies that define disk-based digital archiving.

The first (and most familiar) option is to deploy a RAID storage system at your primary facility and a second RAID storage system in a DR facility and duplicate/replicate the data between the two. This can be a software or hardware-based solution (we often recommend a V-Switch/GDR scenario). Here, it’s important that you take snapshots, allowing you some restoration points. You should also have a solid plan for how to restore data from your DR facility in case of an expected or unexpected event.

While the above scenario is well accepted and will fit many applications, there is now a more comprehensive and intuitive way to achieve the same result - using an information lifecycle management (ILM) appliance.

ILM appliances, typically based on CAS (content addressable storage), are changing the storage paradigm, introducing a completely different way of thinking about data backup. The focus really is shifting to information lifecycle management.

Because we are now managing information, not just bits and bytes, all of the following are critical:

• Restoration – Your information should be accessible every time, all the time, in an online archive. And available for reacquisition in full file format.
• Retention/Disposition – You need to be able to set retention policies to handle the information, and adjust them as the value of your information changes over time.
• Authenticity and Integrity – All of your information should be accurate, self-audited and secured.
• Regulatory Compliance – The solution should enable compliance with all major regulatory requirements (HIPAA, SOX, etc.).
• WORM – Support for “Write Once Read Many”, so that storage waste is minimized.
• Searchability – You can search for information when you need it, and instantly restore if you need to.

Nexsan’s Assureon ILM appliance can handle all of these requirements and then some. So thinking about information and its inherent value (and lifecycle) is no longer a technology or feasibility question - It’s a question of user adaptation. Are you ready to manage information, not data? I’d love to hear your feedback.

P.S. If you are using tape libraries or DVDs for your backup, recovery and archiving applications, you are two steps behind. I’ll talk about this more in one of my next postings.

Posted by Uri Zilberman at 02:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)