Sessions in detail

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.

Deep Dive into Solid State Storage -- the Technologies and Architectures

Presented by Dennis Martin, Founder and President, Demartek

This is an in-depth look at the architectures and technologies of solid state storage devices. The presentation will describe solid state in detail, and compare solid state with traditional magnetic media. In addition, Dennis will include some of the results from his solid state storage performance testing of Microsoft applications in the Demartek lab. Among the topics discussed are:

* DRAM vs. NAND Flash
* How NAND Flash Works
* SLC vs. MLC
* Bad Block Management, Wear-leveling & other error management techniques
* Read & Write Performance
* Currently Available Capacities and Form Factors
* Comparisons to Magnetic Media
* Demartek Lab Performance Comparisons

The Truth about Virtualizing Storage

Presented by Marc Staimer, Founder and CDS, Dragon Slayer Consulting

This session is a “roll up your sleeves” look at the technical details of implementing storage virtualization. The practical benefits of storage virtualization will be discussed, including how to assess your environment to determine the cost-effectiveness of virtualization. Topics include:

* How to determine where virtualization should occur
* The product choices for each storage virtualization scenario
* Specific implementation issues -- and gotchas
* How to set up a pilot virtualization program -- and then roll it out into production

What You Need to Know about New Storage Technologies

Presented by Arun Taneja, Founder and Consulting Analyst, Taneja Group

Just as FC has become stable, solidly reliable and manageable we now have FCoE on the horizon. In this session we will cover what FCoE is, especially within the context of 10Gb CEE (Converged Enhanced Ethernet), 10Gb iSCSI, CNA (Converged Network Adapter) and other associated technologies that are vying for the next generation data center. We will not only look at these technologies and their roles in tomorrow's data center but we will also look at the timing of these technologies and discuss how and when you should evaluate them and what you should watch out for.