Technically Speaking

One of the coolest things going on in business is mobility of data; from the user perspective at least.  As an administrator, this stuff makes me cringe.  Allowing users to access their data from anywhere is a key requirement, but letting the data travel on a flash drive or portable device is somewhat sketchy because the media can be lost, broken, stolen, etc.  This would allow in many cases, the data to get into the wrong hands.

The IEEE standards board is working on IEEE1667 which is an encryption/authentication method for USB devices to allow them to support enhanced storage capabilities.  Microsoft supports this standard in all SKUs of Windows 7.  Hopefully soon, the devices that make use of the standard will hit the shelves.

The idea is that the device supports a certificate (and many types of certificates) to allow authentication by the host system and the device to protect data.

An example of how this might be helpful

Suppose that Joe User is working in a company and carries his most used data on a 1667 supported flash drive.  This way he has it everywhere just in case he needs it.

The device has a certificate to ensure that it works with computers within the organization, but not on computers outside the organization because the certificate authentication cannot happen.

It works great for moving between the company computers.  Allowing Joe to be in the Washington office where he works every day, using the flash drive and data, but also to travel to the New York office and plug right in and continue working.

When Joe goes home and plugs into his desktop PC, the drive will not work because there is no certificate there for authentication with the device.

New, not perfect

This provides a bit of peace of mind to business for the majority of their users travelling with and possibly losing flash drives, however it is likely far from perfect at this point.  Going forward other applications and “smart” enhancements for USB drives will make this technology a great standard, keeping employees happy because they can use portable media without stepping on the toes of the IT department and risking data loss.

Windows 7 does recognize these devices and can make use of them when they arrive, which is definitely something I am looking forward to.  I hope the idea takes off simply to encourage companies to properly handle the portability of Information by employees.

There are other uses for this technology I am sure, but the data portability portion is something I have been working to correct for quite some time, maybe this is just the technology needed to do that job.

All people who use a computer have some contact with storage.  From the disk inside your PC to the flash drive that stores all of the photos of your kids, we all get to interact with storage.  Over the past two years I have been a Microsoft MVP in the File System Storage area and it has provided a great opportunity to see that there is more to storage than the disk(s) that hold the data.

Working with enterprise class storage, using SANs or direct attached storage in file servers, is an interesting role.  My organization uses a network attached storage box running Windows Storage Server 2003 with a very small amount of disk space.  Certainly not the piles of disks used by large companies, but still a good amount of storage to manage.

Finding out more

Last week I was in Redmond learning about storage and the ways it works within Windows Server (and client) as well as storage (or file system) related features in Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2.  The opportunity to interact with other MVPs and the product groups based around storage was amazing and I am hoping to really begin digging into storage more.  My first goal is to rebuild my Windows Server 2008 R2 box to look more at iSCSI and Storage Server.

My goal isn’t to build Peta-bytes of storage, but to look at smaller storage possibilities for mid-sized businesses.  Companies similar in size to my employer who might not have the resources for huge amounts of storage, but might want to create a very efficient storage platform perhaps using Windows based iSCSI and a reasonable amount of physical disks.

Storage is all about disk isn’t it?

For a good portion of my career I thought that disk was the only component of storage, after all to store the data, there has to be some where to put it.  However, another factor is the method by which the data gets to the disk and its availability.  Other things that influence storage (or certainly could in the future) are items like Virtualization.  Being able to captialize on the mobility of virtualized servers and the reduced hardware overhead they provide seems to bring a better storage utilization.

Many opportunities but just getting going

With the MVP Summit 2010 behind me, I am very interested in what I learned and the relationships I have formed.  Getting the opportunity to work with those at Microsoft, like Suzanne Morgan, who works with the storage initiatives in and around Windows Server is amazing. In the next few months I am sure I will have a few questions, both of Microsoft and of other Storage MVPs as my learning about enterprise storage is just getting started.

So this week the G Drive became available from Google, allowing users of Google Docs to store up to 1Gb worth of data in the Google cloud.  The files can be any variety of files and are not limited to the Google Docs suite of applications.  This is a good thing because it allows users or even organizations to store files in the cloud realatively easily.

Microsoft allows up to 25Gb of storage in its Sky Drive cloud application which to me seems the better deal.  Sure there are reasons to use both, depending on how the service is used and what applications it will be used with.  If you are a Docs user, the Google solution makes sense as long as you can keep within the 1Gb limit.

So where does this stack up for organizations?

I have accounts with both Google and Microsoft and have looked at both services briefly, each one coming in quite handy on days when for whatever reason, I forget my flash drive(s) at home.  But I am a bit curious as to the concept of organizational cloud storage and how this might start to change the game for companies.

Sure many companies still use on premise storage, either on a SAN or NAS with disk or tape backup to keep things recoverable, but would it make sense for an organization to push backups and even file storage into the cloud?  In coming years I think the answer will be a very loud yes.  Google and Microsoft can get server and disk space very cheaply per Gigabyte because they buy so much disk space all at once.  My organization can get the disk space to meet its needs in an on premise solution fairly cheap because we aren’t talking tons of storage, but for a larger organization, the need for storage space is likely to become much greater than today.  Allowing someone else to purchase, maintain, and handle the disks in your storage solutions might make the most sense.  This requires companies to have less IT staff and less server room overhead.

Pushing the stores to the cloud could cut into the overall energy utilization of a company quite quickly given the reduction in back office servers and tape drives that must be run to ensure business continuance.

What about today?

I am not sure the cloud is ready to take over entirely for on premise storage and backup but it is growing a bit more everyday.  In the future I have a feeling that storage other than an external hard disk for ITunes or other entertainment and a few files will be done in the cloud.  Maybe the disks in workstations will be large enough to foot the bill and a synchronization of the data to the organizations slice of the cloud will ensure backup all the way to the desktop.  Sure the bandwidth to the Internet would need to increase, but with fiber coming along and broadband being a mainstay already, this seems like the natural progression of things to me.

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Lately the goofed up tape backups happening at my office have been quite the challenge.  Working with drive support and testing various theories about the order of the backup jobs and the likelihood that once the library puts the tape away there is some crazy leprechaun messing with my setup… which by the way turned out to be false. 

It turns out to simply be a matter of hardware support.  The card I got to operate the library and drive was not on the list recommended, tested, certified, blessed, etc. by the manufacturer.  Rather than try to get it working and hoping for the best, I replaced the card and rebooted the server.

The next attempt at backups (and two since) have gone off without a hitch, even with multiple mounts of the tape. 

Following the recommendations of the manufacturer is a good idea.  While I knew this, I had a perfectly good card here and thought it surely should work.  Should and will… definitely not the same.

Thanks to the folks at Quantum support and to a few readers of my blog who emailed me with suggestions.  The effort put forth by others to lend a hand has been outstanding.

Here’s to many successful and undisturbed backups to come.