Storage a 'necessary evil'?

Last few months, I have been busy with products issue. It is surprising how little I had to say through my blog during this time. In reality, I enjoy thinking about how grid storage can solve customer issues than why host A is not seeing device B! So, if you are a grid storage company, I would like to hear from you.

Two weeks ago, it was a nice change to visit Princeton to attend a weekend backyard party. Mostly, people working in IT management and CIO office of pharmaceutical, healthcare and financial services industry were present. Three years ago, when I failed to raise sufficient funding for a storage software startup, the conversations at one such party was the catalyst for launch of storage services.

This year, my conversations revolved around how IT management perceives storage. Three points were quite apparent in all conversations.

• Storage is a cost center whose spigot need to be tighten.
  
• Storage is a 'necessary evil,' something you need but can suck all your resources.
  
• Storage needs new strategies to demonstrate its value to bottom line of business.

The reasons behind these points were quite clear. In last few years, storage industry has been promoting fear and insecurity about data loss and need to spend on data protection. And customers are spending increasing portion of their storage budget on data protection and regulatory compliance.

This is leading to a change in executive level perception that storage is a cost center, an expense that doesn't add to the bottom line of their business. This is a significant change in perception from few years ago when the justifications for storage project was how they have direct impact on the company revenues/bottom line though improvement in data accessibility and uptime.

Storage Exam Questions 1: Disk Drive

It has been over four months since I wrote anything about storage certification. Previously, I mentioned websites of industry associations, standards organizations and companies that contain material helpful for exam preparation. Here are eight disk drive questions to help you prepare for certification exam:

1. What factors impact performance of disk drive?

A. Seek Time
B. Latency
C. Transfer Time
D. Array Cache

2. Which parameter is not part of internal addressing of disk drive?

A. Cylinder
B. Block
C. Head
D. Sector

3. Which function in a disk drive tries to anticipate the next data block being accessed by the user?

A. Sector
B. Buffer
C. Track
D. Head

4. What is Seek Time?

A. The time disk takes to move head to a particular track on the disk.
B. The time for disk to rotate to place the correct location under the head.
C. The time disk takes to fill the disk buffer memory.
D. The time taken by disk interface in carrying the data from disk.

5. What is true for a Head?

A. Information accessed without undertaking a seek operation.
B. Subdivision of a disk surface.
C. Used to define a single disk surface.
D. Controller overhead.

6. What is not true for a Buffer?

A. Memory
B. Holding space for data until written to surface
C. Located between disk interface and disk electronics.
D. Same size as a sector.

7. Which one in not part of formatting a disk?

A. Divide track into sectors.
B. Repair unusable sectors.
C. Find damaged sectors.
D. Flag bad sectors.

8. What parameter is part of external addressing of disk drive?

A. Block
B. Head
C. Cylinder
D. Buffer Credit

Previous certification related blog entries:

Storage Certification Material

Training Feedback

Backup Tutorial

Storage Training, Certification & Large Archive

And you most probably guessed it by now, I am quite busy with work that pays my bills. So, I haven't got around to reading or writing anything interesting but bear with me. In this business, busy times are followed by down time and vice-versa.

Calling iSCSI target software vendors

Since I wrote blog entries Who will be next? and WinTarget Alternatives, I am receiving steady flow of inquiries about iSCSI target software products available in the market.

I am compiling information on iSCSI target software products to write on this topic in future entries. If you have a software product in this space, get in touch with product information.

You may get some free publicity through this blog.