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. Making Virtual Backups Real Presented by W. Curtis Preston, VP Data Protection Services, GlassHouse Technologies 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: * The current reality and future of virtualized server backup Dedupe + Disk Backups: What you need to know before taking the plunge Presented by W. Curtis Preston, VP Data Protection Services, GlassHouse Technologies Although disk systems are cheaper than every 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 possibilities. This session will explore and describe: Testing...One, Two, Three... Presented by Jeff Harbert, Storage Consultant, GlassHouse Technologies 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: 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 Presented by Bill Peldzus, VP Data Center Services, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery, GlassHouse Technol 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 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? Presented by Jon Toigo, CEO, Toigo Partners International 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: Track 3: 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. The Hidden Storage Gotchas of Storage Virtualization and How to Avoid Them Presented by Marc Staimer, President and CDS, Dragon Slayer Consulting 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 as well. 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: Green Storage: Practical Ways to Reduce Power Consumption Presented by Greg Schulz, Founder and Senior Analyst, StorageIO 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: Leveraging Capacity Optimization Technologies Against Primary Storage Presented by Eric Burgener, Senior Analyst, Taneja Group 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: Systems and NetworkingThe 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. Integrating iSCSI and FC SANs Presented by Howie Goldstein, President, Howard Goldstein Associates 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: Storage and the WAN—What Are the Options? Presented by Marc Staimer, President and CDS, Dragon Slayer Consulting 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: Storage Networking: The Path to Performance Presented by Howie Goldstein, President, Howard Goldstein Associates 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. The Right Way to Test Storage System Performance Presented by Brian Garrett, Technical Director of ESG Lab, Enterprise Strategy Group 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. Track 5: 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. Managing the Four Cs – Cost Containment, Compliance, Continuity and Carbon Footprint Presented by Jon Toigo, CEO, Toigo Partners International 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: The 3rd Era of Commercial Computing: What Storage Infrastructures will Look Like Presented by Mark Peters, Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group 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 every. |
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Storage Decisions
Toronto Home
Event-At-A-Glance
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
Registration
Storage Decisions Seminars
Backup School Hits the Road with W. Curtis Preston
Disaster Recovery Planning with Jon William Toigo
E-Mail and File Archiving with Mark Diamond
Advanced SAN School
with W. Curtis Preston
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
