Sessions in detail

In 2001 when Storage Decisions debuted, most conference attendees faced the same challenge: to figure out how to get their SANs up and running. Six years later, conference delegates represent a much more diverse group -- with varying levels of experience and responsibilities. But, most organizations face challenges that are similar to one another.

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 2: Disaster Recovery
Track 3: Data Retention and Retrieval
Track 4: Storage/Capacity Management
Track 5: Systems and Networking
Track 6: Management/Executive

Track 1: Backup Technologies

Data 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.

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 can also be a nightmare for backup admins. This session will look at the major server virtualization products and describe the problems related to each relevant to backup processes.

Some key topics of this session include:
* The specific challenges of backup with virtualized servers
* The various options for virtual server backup
* The key differences among the major backup apps in how they address virtual server backup
* Using CDP with virtual servers
* Hidden VMware backup gotchas

Dedupe + VTLs: What you need to know before taking the plunge

Virtual tape libraries were popular alternatives for physical tape when disk was first introduced into the backup process, but many shops found it easier to use disk as a cache or staging platform before spinning backup data off to tape. But now as more and more VTL vendors add the benefit of data deduplication to their products, VTL is quickly coming back into favor as a disk-based backup alternative.

This session will explore and describe:
* Is deduplication a required feature for VTLs?
* The different deduplication approaches used by various vendors and how the methods might work best in certain environments
* The myths and realities of deduplication—just how much disk space can you really save?
* How to implement a deduplicating VTL to get the best performance
* The effects of deduplication on restores
* What you should include in an RFP for a deduping VTL system

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 ways through the features of the 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:
* Planning for archiver Implementation, including hardware and other required resources
* Daily operations and management of email archiving applications
* How email archiving will affect your end users
* Restoring from an email archive’s repository—how granular can you get, and how easy is it to find the information you need
* How email archivers work with applications

Track 2: Disaster Recovery

Disaster 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.

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:
* What they can tell you, what they can't
* How accurate are the results these programs provide
* How easy or difficult is it to implement and use these tools
* How will these tools impact your storage environment
* If these tools are comprehensive enough to use in place of testing, or can reduce the need for testing
* How you can justify the cost of acquiring one of these products

Virtual DR: Disaster Recovery Planning for Virtualized Environments

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:
* With virtualization you may end up with more servers to recover, and the possibility of orphaned or unused servers
* What is VMware Site Recovery Manager—and do you need it for an effective DR plan?
* Are there any gotchas related to VMware Site Recovery Manager—like does it need a certain type of storage?
* What is VMotion, and how can it be used to aid in storage recovery?
* Do other virtualization products have similar tools?
* When is bare metal restore a good recovery option?
* Replication with virtualized servers
* Will virtualizing the storage side of the data center make DR easier with virtual servers?

Track 3: Data Retention and Retrieval

Call 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.

Everything You Need to Know About Data Classification

Data classification—attaching meta data to files that goes beyond the rudimentary file descriptors file systems provide—is at the core of many modern storage management practices. Storage tiering, archiving, regulatory compliance—among other technologies and processes—will all be more effectively if the data to be moved or discarded is appropriately identified.

An effective data classification can ultimately reap sizable savings as data is more appropriately placed on lower cost disk or tape systems, the concepts of data classification are generally well understood, but the actual process and its impact on overall management often isn’t. In this session, we’ll take a close look at data classification by comparing some of the major classification products:
* Who are the key players (Abrevity, Kazeon, Index Engines, StoredIQ, etc.)?
* How do each of their tools work—what’s the impact on storage systems?
* What manual processes are still required—will end users have to do anything?
* How do these tools integrate with other applications, such as retention or migration apps?

Track 4: Storage/Capacity Management

With 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.

Ease Data Migrations with Storage Virtualization

Moving data around in a storage environment for tiering efforts or to accommodate newly deployed storage systems can be a painstaking process. Although block storage virtualization offers many other benefits, many storage managers implement virtualization solely for the purpose of migrating data.

We will take a close look at block storage virtualization, with a focus on its use a data migration tool. The topics we’ll cover include:
* Specific block virtualization product comparisons
* The best fit for your environment
* Alternatives to virtualization for data movement

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:
* Just how truthful are vendor claims—what’s a marketing talk and what’s real
* Available products that can rightfully be called “green”
* What’s the best way to measure power consumption
* Facts and Fiction: do larger disks really save power, is solid state the ultimate solution, etc.
* How you can save energy now—without a forklift upgrade

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Virtualization—In One Hour

While virtualization is still a burgeoning technology for storage, the merits are many. Understanding the benefits and drawbacks of virtualization can help streamline 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 an actual concept storage managers are using to minimize the amount of machines needed to manage, centralize data and change the economics of storage.

Also covered will be the ways in which storage virtualization:
* Makes heterogeneous storage compatible
* Eases data migration
* Enables consolidation

Track 5: Systems and Networking

The core of any networked storage infrastructure is the 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 networks built 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 steady 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.

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:
* WAN optimization and WAFS—what’s the difference?
* Global namespace, consolidation, application acceleration—what do they mean and what do you need?
* How to determine which type of wide-area product will best address your needs
* Key vendors and products in this field—and how do they compare
* Implementation issues—just how tough is it to deploy and maintain these tools

Integrating iSCSI and FC SANs

iSCSI SANs are attractive because of their relatively low cost and familiar IP architecture, but adding an iSCSI array to an FC shop’s storage infrastructure could spawn islands of arrays. Thus, to reap the real benefits of iSCSI storage, it’s often necessary to integrate those systems in to the FC fabric.

This session will focus on the products and practices necessary to integrate iSCSI into existing FC SAN deployments.

Some of the topics that will be covered include:
* Key roadblocks to integration in enterprise environments
* Integration protocols: FCIP, iFCP and FCoE – how does these protocols accommodate integration, how do they work and why should you choose on over the other
* The latest developments of the Ethernet protocol, and what’s on the roadmap

Track 6: Management/Executive

Sometimes 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.