Have you ever had to talk yourself off the proverbial ledge, put the razor blades away and stow the bottle of pills you, just minutes earlier, so longed to swallow to end your pain, anguish and agony? Ever been on the brink of yelling “DOESN’T ANYONE CARE ANYMORE!!!!”? Ever need to remember lines from “Anger Management” or “Lion King”,”Goosefraba” or “Hakunamatata” (sorry if I mis-spelled either), and just go into a deep meditative state to prevent from going insane, all because of someone else’s actions or inactions when “helping” you?

So, this whole things started out as “Professionalism in an Unprofessional World”, but, I realized when I typed so much that there was a different tone and most did not want to read pages of my recent experience with Comcast. This all started with a simple call yesterday, a call that harkens a comment once said to me, a comment that I have to say is the most significant compliment ever paid to me, and I don’t know if the issuer ever realized how great a compliment it was, simply said “You make me feel like a professional when working with you..” or something to that affect, stated after leaving a particularly hairy call on a customer in Illinois. I truly do enjoy being seen as a professional and try to be that every day, although at times it is a bit difficult, when faced with some of the most blatant unprofessionalism. Sort of makes you feel a little compassion for the term “going postal”.

To sum up my experience with Comcast yesterday, I wasted 90 minutes of my life on the phone with people constantly following a script, or flowchart as it were. That experience made me think of any sales or customer service experience I have gone through lately and really makes me hurl, or at a minimum, want to retire in wine country…I only wish. Scripts are a great thing, we use them as baselines to most jobs, to help bring a better and more consistent outcome, great idea! Scripts help us organize our thoughts into a process which in turn helps us educate or win over other people that much easier. Unfortunately, I am seeing this go astray way to much lately, how can we be so wrong, can anyone say “Idiocracy” (great movie, BTW)? The net-net, why do we have process, for the sake of process or for a better and more consistent outcome?

A key example, McDonalds has grown because of process giving a consistent customer experience and an equal quality product (whether you like that fast food or not, you have to admit it’s consistent).  I mention “Idiocracy” above, because it shows the downward spiral of quality (and intelligence) and you see so many cases in American that mimic that movie, I simply point out the fact that process without some level of attachment brings a bad end result. Whether we refer to the Cosco greeter in “Idiocracy”, “Welcome to Cosco, I love you”. Good process? Acceptable script? No, the delivery agent  didn’t care and the script wasn’t, well, appropriate for the venue.

My simple point, learn your scripts as reference points, not as a script….scripts don’t sell and customers are happy when they think you actually care…

I almost missed David Black’s “KISS Principle” posting:

http://www.blackliszt.com/2011/09/storage.html

David expounds on a view of storage architecture and management that balks in the face of present day storage, er, software, wait, no, storage companies architecture, a more “frameless” context of storage. Net-net, historically storage was just that, a place to store your bits, then came RAID (I remember an IT Manager who came to me in, 1989 I think, and said he needed to get that “RAID” thing, because his boss asked why he didn’t have it), after which vendors started building out arrays, aka, the “SAN” area begins. Now, all those “storage” vendors, are stating that they are no longer storage vendors, they are software vendors.

This frameless architecture removes those overloaded, bottlenecking, legacy controllers, streamlines the datapath, making storage integration easier and giving the applications control of the storage resources and returning storage to it’s rightful role, storing data (and, mind you, letting those storage vendors actually focus on doing that right, once again).

Storagewonk expounds greatly on this in his article over a year ago “Store, Move, Protect – The Fundamentals of Storage”:

http://www.storagewonk.com/2010/02/store-move-protect-fundamentals-of.html

The reality is that is an era when storage vendors are no longer storage vendors, and just using the same CRAP that every other “software” vendor is using, their differentiator is in software capabilities, capabilities that have, quite ironically, found their way into the hypervisors, OS’s and applications of the world.

Whether you want thin provisioning, replication, CDP; some of the many “features” that these software vendors have focused on and grown strong, those are finding their way into the core software of the world and in most cases with more consistency and data protection that the overblown “software” companies products provide.

The real question is where do you want the feature applied and how many times do you want to pay for them. The XIO answer, put the feature closest to the application, where it can do the most good and give the most bang for the buck, and let the storage vendors focus on doing what they “should” be doing, finding ways to deliver your bits the fastest they can and protecting that data the best it can.

With the demos of features and futures, products and predictions, skeptics and optimists…the sharing of knowledge and bridging of gaps continues.

Above all, I was looking forward to seeing David Black, father of the “blackliszt” and technical partner at Oak Investments. For those who don’t know, David evaluates and advises Oak portfolio companies (and so much more) and took us all by surprise last year with his “baseball:symphany” (David is quiet and reserved, but, is demonstrative and flamboyant in this instance). David spoke many times this week, but, today’s session was similar, but much more pronounced than last year in that he expounded more on the historical context of physics, mathematics and music and how they draw back to the same DNA, historically.

The importance of musical “variation” is very readily compared to engineering and what we do in our day to day lives, from David running around frantically to a high paced classical tune, acting out our jobs and addressing customer concerns, work problems, etc., to him standing on his head in front of everyone in a yoga pose, “…more blood to the brain results in more clearly seeing reality”.

The general theme, of the moment, is the common understanding of team direction and goals. In this case, the team of Xiotech engineering, “Seeing the whole, while playing your part”.

I think it has been since Storage Texan was last posting, I sure feel like I have been busy, or maybe just lazy.

Sitting in the Steve Sicola Nerdfest 2011, in Colorado Springs, CO. Nerdfest is an annual gathering of the techno-nerds from within Xiotech, the intent of being an engineering gathering and sharing of technologies and roles within the organization, with the main goal of being a better product and hence better company.

I did a similar blog post during the 2010 Nerdfest and just wanted to blast out there some of the key points of what we are hearing.

Tony Asaro, Xiotech’s new Senior Marketing Executive, is spending a LONG afternoon with the brilliant engineering folks discussing his visions and directions, both with the present market and the directions as he views them for Xiotech.

Some of the key points to note, and we will hear LOTS more about?

Performance optimization – Focus on the optimization of storage into an applications ecosystem. A focus on maximizing what storage can do for APPLICATIONS, which truly need that performance. Applications like Databases, Business Intelligence, HPC, VDI and other virtualization initiatives. Net-net, enabling the applications to do what they should do best…deliver their data… Without hesitation, no matter how the workload changes over time !

Performance roadmap – Roadmap for performance and the growth and scale of that performance needs and capabilities

Key point here, whatever Xiotech does WILL improve the delivery of data for applications and integrate that functionality with applications. Awesome meeting thus far….aka, Autonomic Performance, make things simply PERFORM how they should and have not to this point.

More posts to come, but, great time with some brilliant people…

 Virtual desktops have been a point of conversation for years, it has been touted that it has been the “year of VDI” for 4 years running now, and still, virtual desktops have not taken off in the skyrocketing form that everyone has been expecting.

I was blessed to be allowed to speak at a conference (Storage for Virtual Desktops) last week focused on virtualization and hosted by Brian Madden, a voice that is well known and echoed/blogged constantly in the virtualization space. This conference, a kick off for a series of events that will be held for the rest of the year, focuses on virtualization and what the end user really should know as they enter that world of virtualization.

Brian has hosted countless events in the past and, I am sure, will host many more in the future, with a common sense approach to adopting virtualization addressing the concerns that the end user really should know about.

These latest events are including an afternoon focus on storage, hence the inclusion of a storage vendor, and the major issues around sizing and provisioning storage “appropriately” for the virtualization efforts you are approaching. The most important thing to note, is the true cost of ownership for you, not perceived cost, projected cost or otherwise “made up” numbers. Xiotech has proven the lowest and most predictable cost per desktop so you can more easily roll out VDI in your environment, such as Patient’s First has done. Brian Reagan, CMO for Xiotech, talk with Wikibon about a number of things, to include Xiotech’s most recent announcements around Hybrid ISE and it’s impact on VDI costs.

Brian Madden tweeted a comment that I made about the impact a user can have and I wanted to clarify that the point here is that users don’t have an impact on IT and IT decisions, until they themselves are seriously impacted (such as the rollout of a VDI infrastructure that starts out good, but performance dwindles as it scales out and the user experience can only be qouted as “sucks”), and that is what typically stalls VDI rollouts that are not planned well.

I have to requote Brian on his post regarding storage in a VDI environment as I took a little artistic liberty in my presentation, when I quoted him. The point he is making is very valid and the follow on blogs regarding it are very intuitive. The most important and repeated point, make your infrastructure plans prior to rolling out VDI and choosing how you roll out storage in that infrasture is more key than ever when VDI is involved.

  All the memories of the changes at Xiotech and friends along the way and decisions (gulp) made by some that sometimes stagger the mind, we are (as stated by the sometimes infamous and always famous Steve Duplessie) back. I remember when I first met Steve, I was walking him through our Magnitude (Was that really 2002) and I remember Steve saying “I don’t want to touch it, just show me what you got..” (referring to the keyboard, as we always let others drive demos, afterall, it was always easy on a Mag..). Xiotech got lost along the way, from Magnitude 750 to CEMS (memories anyone?), Steve asserted that Xiotech got off track and as he so eloquently put it, it looks like we are back on track, thanks to the likes of Alan Atkinson, Jim McDonald, Steve Sicola, Brian Reagan, Richie Lary, and the long standing power houses from Xiotech, Roger Kelley, Rob Peglar, Tom Solomon, as well as the pit bull drive of Mark Glagow and I have to add the sales leadership of Dave Ornstein (Had to add Dave in as he drives me on daily).

What is the big change and hence the title of the blog? The latest result from the brain trust in Colorado Springs and all those so dedicated to making something cool, work better than anyone else is capable of doing (Thanks!, Steve, Richie, Gus, Butch, Jeff, Bill and all those I forgot to add here..) Finally, our chance to shine, once again, the follow-on to the “Storage Brick”, or ISE (Intelligent Storage Element), as marketing dubbed it (sorry Brian), is just around the corner and the first release will be ISE 14.4H (ok, Hybrid ISE). This is the best of all worlds, density, high performance, scalability (linear), resiliency and intelligence….

Take a gander at what others say, it is awesome:

IDC report - IDC explains it well, end to end

Network World - Great synopsis by Networkworld as well

The ride just got better, faster and more to come!

Thanks for the memories, Tommy!

With all the advances in systems, applications, connectivity, you see a plethora of posts out there about how storage has not kept pace. In defense, storage has kept pace, but in a different fashion than applications, systems, or the connectivity. Storage has focused on getting more into a smaller space, while that is good at first blush, it does not address the fact that you need more and more performance out of what you just made more and more dense. After talking with many VMware & Citrix advocates, consultants and customers as of late, it is obvious that “Virtual Desktop” is one of those applications demanding more than most storage can deliver. I focus on that, simply out of personal motivation as VDI has been so in front of me for the past 6 months and it seems like the perfect storm for evolutionary, or revolutionary thinking. It was so refreshing to see what the legacy Storage Works group was working on and it’s awesome to be able to call them co-workers. Now, word is leaking out about the next addition to the ISE architecture (from the core team in Colorado Springs) that is in the works. I used to think the Suzuki Katana, a radical transformation of how you could imagine a motorcycle, was an awesome machine, but WAY before it’s time. Now we have the Katana from Xiotech, which is revolutionary and by no means “before” it’s time, but, just in time for the world that so desperately needs it. (ok, that is the engineering name and the marketing name in Hybrid ISE)

 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/30/xiotech_katana/

It’s great to be amongst these stars!!

There was a huge showing at VMworld this year (17,000+ based on numbers we were given) and the Xiotech booth was swarmed, Storage Texan standing on a bench waving iPads helped that allot as well. Amazing crowd and even a nice showing for the fun run on Sunday…lots of headwind on the way to Ft. Point.

The non VMware sessions I went to were all sales and that was the comments I heard from everyone, hopefully all the vendors can heed that information and make sessions more “informative” and less sales. The non sales sessions I went to were very informational and a general tone of sessions were the core pitfalls of implementing (whether that be virtual servers or desktops) and one that really stands out is the one that VMware has least control over, storage (it’s hard to speed up something that is not fast enough unless you fix it at the source). This has been a general tone in all partner meetings and VMUG’s I have attended as of late, to include Briforum in Chicago (Brian Madden’s geek rich meeting, held this spring).

The normal trend of storage vendors is to just throw cache, solid state, spindle count, short stroking or other “tricks of the trade”, that end up costing you money, more money, more money and power consumption as well as unused footprint of storage (empty disks you cannot use).

There are a number of bloggers discussing options, but, some of the best I have read are by the likes of @StorageWonk with his posting “Removing the Performance Strangelhold” and @StorageTexan  with his posting “VDI – Why Performance Matters”.

Point being, without pontificating, know what your performance needs are (aka, can we say “View Planner”) and ensure your vendors are behind you in your efforts (specifically here, that your storage vendor can perform, AND SCALE).

Do you like wine, but, just find it to expensive? Or, do you just not try it because it seems the more expensive choice as opposed to beer, or even a shot of Jack?

Wine, as with any other alcohol, is an acquired taste..and “good” wine, is simply wine that YOU find good to your tastes (be that dry, sweet, tanic, acidic…whatever your specific likings, and those change).

That being said, wine does tend to be more costly than, say, a Black Label (if you like cheap beer) or even a good pitcher of Yuengling, as the process and the core product, costs more money. That being said, there are many options that you must look at (being a rather frugal person myself and someone who hates “wasting” money), and me being motivated to ensure the wineries I love, stay afloat, I want to make sure you are aware of them..

1. You can try the cheaper wines (hey, some people love a good bottle of Boones Farm or MD 2020, after all, Mogan David did spur the California wine industry)

2. You can shop the sales at local Binny’s, Sam’s, MGM, etc; they have incredible sales, especially with the down economy and wineries fighting to stay alive

3. Wineries are offering awesome deals now, especially with the, yes, economy the way it is..even the expensive wineries are now giving deals and, forbid the word, discounts (gulp)

4. The best and most efficient way I have found to save money, wine clubs and buying consortiums. Wine clubs abound, be they in local wine merchants, associations that host “wine parties”, or the larger and more efficient, those like WTSO (Wines Till Sold Out). WTSO buys bulks of very good wines, and distributes them at discounts in the range of 30-55% off of normal prices (not MSRP, or list..but off retail price). They do no marketing, have VERY few middle men and the process is simple, you subscribe to the site (no fee) and they let you know via email, what they are shipping. You then decide to buy or not, and they ship for free, with very low minimum purchases. You buy what you either know you like, or something you wanted to try, for LOW prices and enjoy awesome wines, at incredible prices. What is the catch? The only catch is…if you love it, you may not see it at that price ever again, a very minimal catch, isn’t it?

So, enjoy your favorite wines…save money, and keep the wineries I love in business!!!

BTW, there are a few other sites like WTSO.com that have similar business models, I had just found them years ago and found their selection to be perfect for me and they never gave me a reason to go elsewhere….

I was in Sonoma last weekend with a friend, simply to go to some wineries I love and discover some new ones. We stayed in Santa Rosa, a first for me as I prefer the square in Sonoma, but, this really changed my mind.

First off, we discovered (much to my lack of research), that there was a barrel tasting event going on in the Russian River Valley and most of the wineries I was either a club member of or that we wanted to go to, were all part of it….meaning it’s cheaper to pay the $30 dollars for the stupid blue wristband that makes it look like there are hoards of people who just got out of the hospital (mental ward, of course). I am not a “tour” guy, and I usually don’t follow the crowds (and yes, there were crowds), but, this was an awesome event. Met some great people and found some real treasures in vino.

Wineries that stick out?:

Artiste – You have to love Bion Rice and his AWESOME bordeaux blends, we have turned so many people onto him and once they try, they join the cult following…and the art work, incredible (thanks for signing the bottles, Carlos!)

Meeker- Ed has spoken about them quite a bit, HUGE petit syrah getting bottled in 24 months, can’t wait to try it more mature, and the price for the really nice wines, um, great…a $64 a case cab that tasted like a $30 a bottle cab should.

Bell – (ok, not in Sonoma, but, have to mention it) Awesome wines and the $45/bottle cab was an incredible wine

Elyse- (another not sonoma, but, we spent a couple hours on 29 on Friday) I have always liked their wines, but, the $80/bottle cab for $35, had to buy…

Larkmead- oh yes, they closed before 3:30 on a Friday; I like them, but, not going back anytime soon (have to say that the woman who came out to meet was was very nice about it though)

Limerick Lane – Always like them, great zins

Christopher Creek – Always good wines and GREAT people (the sausage was awesome)

Wooden Head – I am a club member and it was awesome, we spend the rest of the afternoon there and I love the 2007 Guido Zin, their Pinot Noir’s are great as well

Brogan – Met the owner/winemaker at Wooden Head and after a great conversation, she allowed us to intrude on her the next morning for a tasting of a number of er wines (and yes, that smokey pinot from her fathers rach is great). The 17 point merlot was a find, very unique and a must try!

Night life? The Chrome Lotus was a great bar with a really good music venue, cover was low and the crowd really filled in. I would go there again in a heartbeat!

Have to mention Checkers, next to Wasabi Tex, The owner is an awesome woman and the staff is all like family, wish I was more hungry, but, the pasta is great!