When 0.02% Is A Big Number…

By Guy Bunker | March 2, 2011 | Leave a Comment 

Guy Bunker

The latest Google outage has now been resolved, but it has raised a number of interesting points.

Firstly… while ‘only’ 0.02% of users were affected, that still amounts to 35,000 people – which is a lot, especially if you are one of them. It’s not so good to just be a statistic – especially if the statistic looks like a rounding error. A more personable approach without the stats would have been better. After it has all been resolved, the stats can be used to good effect.

Secondly… the cause was not clear, which doesn’t give confidence in the potential solution. Was it user error (which is the case of so many corporate IT outages) or was it an upgrade introducing a bug (another major cause of outages) or was it something else. It’s good to understand what happened – so that it can be clearly communicated to all those affected. (Which was also initially not clear… it was originally 0.08% of users… however, it is probably better err on the pessimistic side first – and then rounding down rather than having to round up!)

Thirdly, after the event, the service was up and running as quickly as possible so the users could do something (rather than nothing). It has taken a while to recover the data – but in the mean time, users were still able to work. We often call this a ‘degraded service’ – but this is so much better than none at all and one other service vendors should look at providing.

If you are a service provider, you should have a well understood plan which traces through the steps in the event of an outage. It should identify all the groups involved from the marketing and communications people to those working towards a resolution. Customers need to be kept informed – as should employees. The route to complete resolution needs to include the option of degraded service – and after it’s all over, remember to communicate how you will prevent it from happening again. In this case, perhaps it is more testing of a new version, or an improved deployment process (with the ability to back out rapidly in the event of a problem.)

Guy Bunker

2002 The Start Of the Digital Age…

By Guy Bunker | February 17, 2011 | 1 Comment 

Guy Bunker

OK, so we were digital long before 2002, but it was then that the amount of data stored digitally overtook that which was stored in an analog manner. A recent analysis of ‘all’ storage also showed that we now have enough capacity for 295 exabytes of information… which is about 404 billion CDs.

Of course how much if it is actually used is not presented – and neither is how much of it is repeated, i.e. the amount of unique data is probably just a fraction of that. Finding things you know exist becomes harder each day, and a good friend Adrian Seccombe has written a short post on just this problem… losing things in your digital pocket. For enterprises this particular problem is worse, with thousands of hours of productivity lost each year due to people looking for data they know exist but can’t find – and then trying to reproduce it.

Archiving with full-text indexing is one option – but that is often catching less and less information as more ‘digital pockets’ are used. Furthermore, the loss of an unsecured ‘pocket’ could now result in a £500K fine from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Data growth is inevitable, but as the legislation evolves to encompass new working practices (the cloud, consumerization of IT, social networking sites, …) so too will the risks. As ever, it is time to revisit policies around security and data management and check that they have moved with the times… and if not, make the change before they become a liability.

Guy Bunker

The King Is Dead… Long Live The King…

By Guy Bunker | February 4, 2011 | Leave a Comment 

Guy Bunker

So, the final blocks of IPv4 Internet addresses have been handed out. And, when they’re gone, they’re gone… fortunately we have all been prepared for this for a while with IPv6 – which was originally published in 1998, it is still behind in its uptake. But as with most things, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” – and so it has been with IPv4. Now there is no longer an option – the next sets of addresses to be allocated will be IPv6 (only 1% of devices currently use IPv6, even though most are enabled with it).

As for the difference in size, an IPv4 address was 32 bits, whereas IPv6 is 128 – plenty to be going on with. With the rapid increase in devices connecting to the Internet (at home now I have more ‘other’ devices that connect than computers!) they will be exhausted at some point in the future… time to place your guesstimates as to when!

In the mean time, we can all look forward to World IPv6 Day on June 8th later this year. So long IPv4, you have led a revolution… long live your successor.

Guy Bunker

Who Has Your Data? In The Cloud, It’s Not You…

By Guy Bunker | July 5, 2010 | 1 Comment 

Guy Bunker

The news last week was that EMC was closing its Atmos cloud storage service with immediate effect – you can keep using it for developmental purposes but that’s about all.

Why did it close? Industry analysts said that it never took off, and recent surveys show that it is still a way off becoming mainstream.

So… what if you have data in a cloud service provider and it decides to shut down the service? EMC isn’t the first to do this, and it won’t be the last – you do need a contingency plan. In this case, there is a grace period where you can get your data out – but, as a simple task, workout how much data you have and how much bandwidth and figure out how long it would take to get the information out. This is a simplistic view as everyone else will also be trying to get their data, so bandwidth is going to be under severe strain (the equivalent of a run on the banks…) Do you have enough local storage to hold it all and if you have data being processed by an application, then will you be able to get your hands on the application as well?

Let’s assume you did manage to get your data out, then how long will it take to get it reloaded onto another service provider’s cloud and get the application back up and running?

Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery needs to take into account outsourced (out-tasked) IT services and have contingency plans for service outages and shutdowns – planning should start now… after all there’s no time like the present.

Guy Bunker

Old models for new?

By admin | March 29, 2010 | Leave a Comment 

admin

I was thinking over the weekend… It’s interesting that all of the major IT vendors are returning to the old model of selling pre-integrated technology stacks to sell their wares.. It seems that the days of having “one great product” that can drive revenue (of the size that the large vendors need) are numbered and, as a result, the big guns are going back to positioning themselves as “one stop shops” for technology.

IBM (who never really moved away from the old model !) are now positioning themselves as “chip to command-line” suppliers, leaning heavily on Linux and virtualization enablers

Oracle have obviously acquired Sun to provide an integrated stack

Cisco/EMC/Vmware have partnered (with themselves !?) to create VCE to aggressively go after “Cloud”

Microsoft and HP are partnering to enable future Hyper V, .NET installations and the Azure cloud platform.

Let’s hope that, this time around, customers will actually benefit from this dynamic change. Also, it is clear the Symantec needs to show it has a very strong proposition in order to stay at the table in large data centre transformations.

Darren Thomson

Why All The Scare Stories?

By Guy Bunker | January 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment 

Guy Bunker

I spoke at the EuroCloud event earlier this week in London and one of the questions the moderator asked was ‘why all the scare stories?’ The flippant reply was, that without them there wouldn’t be much to say! But the follow on response was that we need to learn. Every story, whether it’s security, data leaks or availability, that hits the news of something less-than-good happening is an opportunity to check internal processes and procedures.

  • What would we do if this happened to us?
  • What do we do to ensure that this won’t happen to us?
  • How do we prevent this happening in the short term?
  • What about our suppliers and partners?

So the next time you hear of something in the press, don’t just sit back and think ‘it won’t happen to me’, make sure that it won’t (and be able to prove it) and ensure that your partners and suppliers are equally well prepared.

Guy Bunker

10 Years On From Y2K…

By Guy Bunker | January 12, 2010 | Leave a Comment 

Guy Bunker

… And do you know anymore about your IT estate than back then? The chances are you know less. Ten years ago there had been a mass ‘panic’ to find all the systems and ensure that they wouldn’t fall over when the millennium changed a slow decline in understanding what was where has subsequently ensued. Of course back then we weren’t worried about the data, it was the systems… and for most organizations, the bulk of the IT was within IT boundaries. There were laptops, but very few people had email on their phones. How times have changed (or not as the case may be).

From a compliance perspective, you should know where all the systems are and their various levels of OS and application patches. There should be anti-virus, anti-malware on the various endpoints and kept up to date. Data, especially customer data (and other company confidential data) should be monitored and controlled in all places – which means that the smartphone should be treated like the laptop and suitably protected.

2010 will be the year that ‘cloud’ computing becomes even more important to business. A recent survey on datacentres by Symantec has found that it is the medium size business (less than 10,000 employees) that are looking to new technologies to provide cost savings as well as business advantage. But… before rushing down that route, companies need to look at what they have today and get their house in order. So, now the snow is starting to clear and people are thinking about the upcoming year:

  1. Find out what your IT environment really looks like today. Where are the systems/devices that hold your information (don’t forget the smartphones, memory sticks etc.)
  2. Work out what data is important to you and where it can be found.
  3. Create a list of potential applications that could be put in the cloud (out-tasked).
  4. Arrange a meeting between the senior IT folk and line of business leaders to talk through each other’s plans and help set priorities.
  5. Take a read of some of the multitude of articles on what is important to IT, security, storage in 2010 and see which are relevant to you.
  6. Create a plan of action for the next 90 days which brings IT closer to the business – and vice versa.

2010 looks like the year when there will be a lot of talk about the recession ending, but in reality it won’t make a huge difference for the next 6-9 months, so there is time to get things in order. Once the market really does pick up, and budgets become a little more relaxed there won’t be time to plan – as it will be all hands to the pumps to make money!

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 – 1969)

Guy Bunker

PS It’s not a bad thing to look at your home IT as well… do you need to revisit your backups (what, you still aren’t doing backups?!?!?!), or renew subscriptions to AV applications, or if you have a new computer for Christmas, look at deleting the data off the old one before getting rid of it.

Next-generation security and storage solutions through the Amazon

By admin | December 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment 

admin

Symantec today announced it is offering its next-generation security and enterprise-class storage management solutions through the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). Symantec Endpoint Protection and Veritas Storage Foundation Basic are now available on Amazon EC2. Businesses can leverage the Symantec solutions to add additional protection to their Windows servers in the cloud with comprehensive threat prevention and manage their cloud storage online with a single toolset that delivers reliability, scalability and high performance.

“As many businesses increasingly leverage the cloud for applications and services, they want to protect and manage those environments with the security and storage management solutions they are used to from Symantec,” said Greg Hughes, group president, Enterprise Product Group, Symantec. “By taking the same proven security and storage management solutions that organizations have come to rely on in their data center and extending them to Amazon EC2, Symantec is delivering on its commitment to provide value in the cloud.”

“As a web service that provides resizable compute capability on demand, Amazon EC2 makes web-scale computing easier for customers of all sizes,” said Steve Rabuchin, General Manager of Developer Relations and Business Development for Amazon Web Services (AWS). “We’re pleased that our mutual customers can now extend familiar Symantec security and online storage management solutions to the AWS cloud.”

Amazon EC2 users now have access to key protection technologies provided by Symantec Endpoint Protection. Symantec Endpoint Protection combines Symantec AntiVirus with advanced threat prevention to deliver defense against malicious attacks such as viruses, worms, spyware, Trojans, zero-day threats, and rootkits. Symantec Endpoint Protection helps ensure information remains safe and business assets are protected wherever that information resides.

Amazon EC2 users also now have access to advanced online storage management capabilities provided by Veritas Storage Foundation Basic from Symantec, allowing them to manage multiple hosts from a central interface and optimize storage performance and availability online. Storage Foundation enables non-disruptive storage operations through GUI-based management and online configuration with dynamic disks.

“We have been running Symantec Endpoint Protection locally to secure the endpoints and servers in our computing environment and have been very pleased with the level of protection it has provided,” said David Jordan, CISO of Arlington County. “As our infrastructure becomes more of a mix between on-premise and off-premise offerings, we look forward to leveraging these new delivery models for security and storage solutions.”

Today’s announcement marks another significant step in Symantec’s cloud strategy to deliver customers unmatched choice in the adoption of cloud solutions based on the company’s enterprise class products. For more information, please visit http://www.symantec.com/cloud.

Licensing and Availability

Symantec Endpoint Protection and Veritas Storage Foundation Basic are available now in the form of custom Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) that allow customers to run Symantec provided instances on Amazon EC2 on a pay-as-you-go, hourly basis.

Customers can subscribe to these custom AMIs and find additional information about Symantec and Amazon Web Services at http://www.symantec.com/amazon.

Darren Thomson

Symantec Technical Strategy 100

By admin | December 3, 2009 | Leave a Comment 

admin

Over the past few weeks I have been hosting “Symantec Technical Strategy 100” workshops in the UK. The workshops are designed to bring 100 senior technical design authorities from our customer-base together to discuss all things “VERITAS”.

Fifteen companies have been involved so far and, I must say, that it has been engaging and rewarding to see the users and designers of our storage and availability management product coming together and speaking so openly and candidly about this area of their technology stack. There has been a real sense of “community” in the sessions and we now hope to run further workshops, create a secure portal for community discussion and start a series of webcasts to ensure that our most important customers fully understand our storage and availability strategy.

If you think that you would like to represent your company within the community and you are already users of the VERITAS portfolio, please get in touch with me at darren_thomson@symantec.com. Now… off to the continent to gather more community members..!

Darren Thomson

Storage Expo – new trend is Stop Buying Storage!

By darren_thomson | October 14, 2009 | Leave a Comment 

darren_thomson

I’m at the Storage Expo show at Olympia, London.. There is good attendance this year (and it’s not just vendors and analysts!). A couple of observations so far:

First the hardware vendors are getting a pretty tough time of it. The messaging from most people here is around the fact that storage infrastructure desperately needs to be optimised and consolidated.. There seems to be a general theme of “the hardware vendors have been over-selling for years” and that the right thing to do at this point is to step back and re-assess the need to buy more expensive disk.

Secondly, business is getting done here.. Last year was an opportunity for the storage community to look for new job opportunties. This year sees customers researching solutions to their IT infrastructure problems.

I hear that this year is the last for this particular show.. Shame, it’s finally doing what it’s supposed to.

Darren Thomson

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