Storage Networking World

October 13-16th, 2008
The Gaylord Texan
Dallas, Texas

 
    Monday, October 13, 2008   Tuesday, October 14, 2008   Wednesday, October 15, 2008   Thursday, October 16, 2008   Speaker Bios

Agenda - Session Details
October 24-27, 2005 – JW Marriott Grande Lakes Resort, Orlando, Florida

Monday, October 24th
8:00am - 8:30pm Registration Open
8:00am - 6:30pm SNIA Storage Network Certification Testing Center

Take one exam here at SNW and get a second one for half-price!
(Offer only good at SNW, so take advantage of the on-site testing center)
9:00am - 9:30am Breakfast
9:30am - 10:15am SNIA Tutorials
Get Up to Speed on Storage  -  for Networking Professionals
Elaine Silber, Technical Trainer, Firefly Communications
  • This session will appeal to Networking Professionals wanting a crash course in Storage Principles.  These individuals will be brought “up to speed” in storage technologies, storage performance , storage techniques and terminology associated with storage networking.
  • This session provides a foundation for industry professionals who need to extend their networking knowledge into the storage arena. 
  • The session includes the “Top Ten Storage Questions asked by new Storage Networking Administrators.”
9:30am - 10:15am Industry Primer Track
Storage Network Industry Primer
Greg Schulz and Dennis Martin, Senior Analysts, The Evaluator Group

Storage Networking is the term used for connecting and managing storage to servers over networks. There is a confusing wealth of new terminology in storage networking: iSCSI, FC, FCIP, iFCP, DAFS, SAN, NAS, CAS, CDP, DAS, Grid, SAS, SATA/ATA, SRM, Virtualization, ILM, Thin provisioning, InfiniBand. This seminar and material is intended for those who plan to utilize storage networks or who are seeking a greater understanding of the technology and concepts associated with storage networking. Information provided will aid in selection, planning, implementation, and understanding tradeoffs for storage networks various storage networking technologies and techniques. This session will provide the essential primer material to arm attendees for other sessions at the Storage Networking World Conference.

9:30am - 10:15am Career Development Primer Track

The Top 10 Things Heard on the Way to Becoming a Manager
Pam Wiedenbeck, MS, EMBA, President, Plans Made Perfect

This session provides key insights into the challenges and dilemmas faced by technical specialists as they move into management roles. Taught by Pam Wiedenbeck, a practicing IT professional, who learned how to make the transition from a practicing IT expert to the much less defined role of manager by learning On-The-Job, this presentation is essential to the technical professional who has now been anointed with the title of “Manager”.

This session will provide an entertaining look at the management challenges that often puzzle the technical expert moving into leadership and management roles. By the end of the session, the IT professional will be able to:

· Identify the 10 basic management challenges faced by professionals at all levels

· Construct a “checklist” of 10 questions to use to examine most situations of management and leadership challenge

· Integrate key business and personal traits that lead to a successful career

9:30am - 10:15am Analyst Perspectives Primer Track
Keeping Up with the Changing Landscape of Storage: What IT Departments Need to Know About Today’s and Tomorrow’s Data Storage Market
Murray Berkowitz, Technology Partner, Kodiak Venture Partners

Today’s businesses rely on data and information to support critical business functions. To meet the needs of this information explosion, there are a variety of storage technologies available to IT departments. What’s more, the storage market is continually evolving, throwing new products into ring for review and complicating the already onerous task of choosing the right storage offering. How can IT departments be sure that they are choosing the storage solution that best fits their current and future needs? With so many players and technologies in the marketplace, how can IT departments know that the technology and provider they select will be around over the long-term?

Investing in a soon-to-be-defunct technology is a scary prospect for IT departments. Add to that the threat of over or under estimating the data storage needs, and selecting the right storage solution can feel even more difficult. As a result of participating in this primer, participants will be able to:

  • Align data storage needs with technologies currently available in the marketplace
  • Select a data storage technology that will be around for the long-term
  • Analyze the current state of the data storage market and make predictions on its future direction
10:20am - 11:05am SNIA Tutorials
NAS and iSCSI Technology Overview
Wolfgang Singer, Member of IBM Technical Experts Council, Vienna, Austria

Requirements for additional storage are booming. It is estimated that by 2005 69% of all storage will be 'networked.’ This presentation shows the different approaches to 'Storage Networking.' Topics discussed will include: what are the differences between SAN, NAS, NAS Gateways and iSCSI, what are the advantages and disadvantages of these technologies, which problems does NAS solve, why is NAS better than a standard file.

10:20am - 11:05am Industry Primer Track
Protecting the Privacy of Your Customers
W. Curtis Preston, Vice President, Data Protection Services, GlassHouse Technologies

Backup tapes seem to be disappearing every day, and storage networks are being hacked! Thanks to the California privacy law, these previously private incidents are now front-page news. As a result, CEOs are passing edicts that say everything from "encrypt anything that goes offsite," to "encrypt everything -- even on-site data." The good news is that there are actually ways to meet both challenges with relative ease -- provided the edict came with a budget. Then, of course, there's the rest of the world -- the companies that feel they don't have to encrypt everything. They would like to encrypt backup tapes containing sensitive data, though, so they don't end up on the cover of any newspapers.

This primer will start with an overview of the security problems that companies are trying to address with encryption and authentication systems, followed by an overview of the three basic ways to encrypt sensitive data: encryption at the source, encryption with a backup application, and hardware encryption. W. Curtis Preston will explain the advantages and disadvantages of each option, with special attention to the cost of implementation and management of such systems. In addition, he will cover how enhanced authentication systems will make encryption useful because without proper authentication, encryption is useless.

The author of The Storage Security Handbook & Unix Backup & Recovery, Mr. Preston will answer the questions below in plain English that you won't need to be a security expert to understand:

  • Will encryption slow down my backups and other storage processes?
  • What about key management?
  • How do I ensure my keys don't get lost or given to the wrong person?
  • How do I ensure that only authorized people decrypt the data?
  • I've got a really small amount of data, what kind of system should I use that won't break me?
  • I've got to encrypt hundreds of TBs every day! What should I do?
  • What other things could I be doing to enhance the security of my storage?
10:20am - 11:05am Career Development Primer Track

Presentation Development and Delivery Techniques – Tips for Creating and Delivering Technical Topics More Effectively
Howard A. Goldstein, Founder, Howard Goldstein Associates, Inc.

This session provides an entertaining and practical approach for anyone who wants to understand how to create and present technical topics more effectively. Taught by Howard Goldstein, a storage networking practicing professional who has made every mistake in the book yet has maintained a successful education business, this session appeals to the IS/IT technical staff and manager, integrator, system engineer or technical marketing person integrating commonly used tools.

This session will provide real world, personal examples of “what to do” and “what not to do” and will cover these key topics:

- What makes an “atrocious” presentation?

- Key tips and tricks for successful presentations

- Avoiding presentation delivery traps

- Answers vs. Questions in Learning

- Creation and Delivery

- The power and danger of technical metaphors

- The Brain

- Useful Presenter Tool bag items


10:20am - 11:05am Analyst Perspectives Primer Track
The Emergence of 10Gb Storage Networks: How, Why, What, Where and When 10Gb Storage Fabrics Will Emerge As the Primary Storage Network Infrastructure
Marc Staimer, President and CDS, Dragon Slayer Consulting

Copper and 10Gb is about to completely and dramatically rewrite the economics of the storage area network (SAN).  It’s all about aggregation.

The value proposition behind SANs has principally come from sharing storage assets among multiple application servers.  Shared storage creates higher storage utilization and a lot less storage management.  The primary measure of shared storage (or consolidated storage) is the number of application servers that can be supported by the target storage.  The greater the number of application servers supported per storage array reduces the number of arrays required.  Fewer arrays means less budget spent on equipment and management.

This session will detail how a SAN is cost justified today.  It will then explore how storage target copper 10Gb radically changes the game making that value proposition incredibly compelling.  It does it by dramatically increasing the number of servers supported per shared target storage.

World-renowned storage industry consultant and author of numerous industry trade magazine articles, storage blogs, and white papers, Mr. Staimer will provide answers to the questions below.

  • How does 10Gb copper solve backwards compatibility issues?
  • What are the differences between 10Gb Ethernet/iSCSI, Fibre Channel, and InfiniBand?
  • What are the 10Gb copper interfaces and when will they be available?
  • What are the distance limitations of 10Gb copper?
  • When will and how will the 10Gb copper storage market appear?
  • When will 10Gb copper storage market be mainstream?
  • None of my applications can run at 10Gb so why do I need it on my target storage?
  • What are the gotchas?
11:10am - 11:55am SNIA Tutorials

SNIA Shared Storage Model
David L. Black, Senior Technologist, EMC Corporation

The SNIA Shared Storage Model provides a common graphical framework for describing shared storage architectures. These graphical depictions show what services are provided by each architecture and their functional division among components, providing a common vocabulary and vendor-neutral basis for comparing architectural alternatives. This can help vendors to better explain their differentiation and customers to better structure their choices.

The shared storage model is not a specification, architecture, design, product, or recommendation; rather it is a framework that captures the functional layers and properties of storage systems and networks. This tutorial provides an overview of the Shared Storage Model and examples of how it can be applied to describe common storage architectures.

11:10am - 11:55am Industry Primer Track

“Inescapable Data” and What it Means to the Storage Industry
John Webster, Principal, Data Mobility Group

The presentation will be loosely based on the overall material of the book, Inescapable Data, but focused on the back-end data storage requirements. Inescapable Data says that we're just at the beginning stages of grand new efficiencies spawned by massive data collection and real-time data use. More data than ever thought would be useful is now flying and combining with myriads of other data sources and inventive technology leading to these new benefits. Ultimately, it all has to be stored, secured, and managed. Do we (collectively) appreciate what is forthcoming and do we have any plans to deal with it?

Attendees will learn about:

  • Changes taking place right now in many different industries that are creating huge streams of data (and huge values)
  • Root causes of these new data sources
  • Techniques used to blend the data into new values
  • Impact to storage and requirements for these new data-centric companies
11:10am - 11:55am Career Development Primer Track

Presentation Development and Delivery Techniques – Tips for Creating and Delivering Technical Topics More Effectively (continued)
Howard A. Goldstein, Founder, Howard Goldstein Associates, Inc.


This session provides an entertaining and practical approach for anyone who wants to understand how to create and present technical topics more effectively. Taught by Howard Goldstein, a storage networking practicing professional who has made every mistake in the book yet has maintained a successful education business, this session appeals to the IS/IT technical staff and manager, integrator, system engineer or technical marketing person integrating commonly used tools.

This session will provide real world, personal examples of “what to do” and “what not to do” and will cover these key topics:

- What makes an “atrocious” presentation?

- Key tips and tricks for successful presentations

- Avoiding presentation delivery traps

- Answers vs. Questions in Learning

- Creation and Delivery

- The power and danger of technical metaphors

- The Brain

- Useful Presenter Tool bag items

11:10am - 11:55am Analyst Perspective Primer Track
The Process Behind ILM
Steve Kenniston, Technology Partner, Ridge LLC

The session will be about how ILM is more than just a set of technology solutions, but the process behind these solutions that help IT professonals better manage their information. IT professionals will learn that the process behind ILM will help them to reduce costs and make them compliant or have good corporate governance.
11:00am - Noon Golf Exhibition with Dan Boever
11:30am - 1:00pm Lunch
noon - 5:00pm

Golf Outing at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge, Faldo Course

1:00pm - 1:45pm End User Case Studies Track

A True Data Center on Demand Built on a Shared IP SAN
Kyle Ohme, Director of Information Technology, Freeze.com

Freeze.com is a leading vendor of screen enhancement products and receives more than four million page views per day. The company has built a responsive and reliable infrastructure that allows customer service levels to be maintained during demand spikes, while quickly shifting resources to internal functions at other times.

The data center uses a high availability IP SAN to maintain all data as well as server images. A large number of diskless blade servers boot off images from central provisioning servers, which stream the operating system image to the blade. Each blade can be re-purposed in the time it takes to reboot by streaming a different server image to that blade. Multiple provisioning servers are able to access the same server images on an IP SAN though the use of a clustered file system, which gives the system high availability. All servers are running Windows.

Data is accessed through a cluster of NAS gateways that share a common file system on the IP SAN. Additional Windows Server 2003 NAS heads can be quickly added at times of peak I/O requirements.

The resulting data center architecture is highly reliable and high flexible, as it allowsserver resources to be shifted from one application to another in minutes. The use of a clustered file system allows shared access to data and images on the IP SAN from any storage or provisioning servers, allowing the system to benefit from the inherent redundancy in SAN architecture. And since the solution enables the OS and applications to be maintained centrally on a high availability SAN, they are easily protected with standard snapshot and backup tools.

Participants will learn from the experience of a fast growing internet site that has integrated IP storage, a clustered file system, and an OS streaming solution to build a highly available, yet highly flexible data center solution using standard blade servers running Windows Server 2003.

1:00pm - 1:45pm SNIA Tutorials Track

SCSI: The Protocol for All Storage Architectures
David Deming, Founder/President, CTO Solution Technology

This session will appeal to System Administrators, Storage Administrators, Storage Architects, and those that are seeking a fundamental understanding of SCSI Protocol and how it benefits your IT storage applications. The session will delve into the SCSI model, its protocol, and how storage applications benefit from having a single high level protocol. The audience will receive the fundamental understanding of why SCSI is used as the storage industry’s main storage protocol language.

1:00pm - 1:45pm SNIA Tutorials Track

ILM: Tiered Storage and the Need for Data Classification
Nik Simpson, Director of Marketing, Scentric Inc.

Tiered storage is high on the priority list for many organizations as they struggle to deal with data growth and compliance. The key to a successful tiered storage implementation is data classification; if you don't want what you have, or realize how valuable it is, it’s very hard to decide what data should be placed on a particular tier. In this tutorial we will look at:

  • The fundamentals of data classification
  • Understanding the use of metadata in classification
  • How to apply data classification principles to tiered storage
  • Technical Session
  • General or Business Session

Sponsoring Initiative: Information Lifecycle Management

1:00pm - 1:45pm SNIA Tutorials Track
Networking for Storage Professionals
Howard A. Goldstein, Founder, Howard Goldstein Associates, Inc.

This tutorial explains the fundamental concepts and protocols of networking for the storage professional. It compares the issues facing networks vs. storage. It identifies the differences between DAS, NAS and SAN and the benefits each bring to storage. It introduces networks concepts showing examples of how these concepts apply in storage network technologies. It compares and contrasts the similarities and differences of Open Systems Interconnection (OSI), The Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) and Fibre Channel technologies. It discusses network concepts such as naming vs. addressing, flow control, circuit vs. packet switching, “routering” vs. switching, hardware offload performance factors and others. Finally, we identify the presenter’s ilk as the ultimate “semantic ANALyst”, the role of indiscriminate misuse of terminology in storage networking and the confusion it can bring to the market.
1:00pm - 1:45pm Grid/Utility Track
Active ‘Real -Time’ Information Lifecycle Management
Cheng Wu, Founder and Chairman, Acopia Networks Inc.

Despite the recent vendor hype surrounding innovations in cross-enterprise ILM, most of the technical advancements to date have been in the areas of centralized management of data, metadata and policy. This ‘centralized’ approach lacks the ability to correlate ‘real-time’ management information that prevents resources from being allocated on demand – a fundamental premise of next generation data center computing and storage.

In this presentation, industry visionary Cheng Wu will guide the audience through his definition and vision for ‘active real-time information lifecycle management’ and the business value to today’s enterprise storage environment.

Mr. Wu will walk the audience through why real time ILM requires a more comprehensive architecture capable of delivering real-time response to changing infrastructure and application conditions. Further, he will discuss why this new architecture must be based on in-band policy enforcement intelligence that can be embedded across information access points throughout the enterprise to work in concert with central management systems in the data center. Mr. Wu will argue that these policy enforcement points should be embedded in various storage or server devices and embedded directly into the network to intercept and interpret information access as it occurs. This new storage element acts a resource proxy and provides the real-time management intelligence to enable active, enterprise-wide ILM deployments.

Mr Wu will conclude with his vision for the ‘next generation data center’ and how various virtualization technologies for service oriented applications (SOA) applications, servers and virtual machines, and storage will soon collaborate to deliver real time, active ILM across enterprise. As a result of participating in this session, participants will be able to:

  • Identify the basic elements of the emerging active, real-time ILM solutions
  • Determine how active ILM policy will be integrated into next generation data centers
  • Judge the value of new ILM solutions by asking vendors the top 5 “tough” questions
1:00pm - 1:45pm IDC Briefing

Introduction
John McArthur, Group Vice President and General Manager, Information Infrastructure and Enabling Technologies

Stages of Storage Buying Behaviors
Robert Gray, Research Vice President, Worldwide Storage Systems Research

Storage systems and software suppliers are frequently puzzled and disappointed when new products fail to take-off as anticipated. In this opening presentation, Robert Gray, Research Vice President, presents recent IDC Dynamic IT primary research that finds enterprises evolving infrastructure in development stages. Typically the current stage is the foundation for developing the problems needing solving or opportunities made visible that create the next development stage. The rate of moving through stages is highly variable and some take forever. However many are in constant flux, and almost without exception, organizations progress linearly and sequentially from stage-to-stage.

Pain points, needs and outcomes are distinct from stage-to-stage. This explains why it is critical for suppliers marketing storage infrastructure to identify a client's development stage and the signals leading to the next stage. As a result of participating in this session, participants will be able to:

  • Identify five stages of storage infrastructure development
  • Identify the needs and user focus of each development stage
  • Characterize currently where in the overall adoption curve each stage is

1:45pm - 1:55pm Break
1:55pm - 2:40pm End User Case Studies Track

Leveraging Blade Servers and Virtualization
Doug Chamlee, Network Services Manager, Ysleta Independent School District

Doug Chamlee, Network Services Manager at the Ysleta Independent School District (ISD) in El Paso, Texas, will address the challenges school districts and other small-to-medium size organizations face in selecting and deploying a storage infrastructure. Mr. Chamlee will discuss his own experience in deploying and managing a new system, and how other organizations, particularly SMBs or organizations with limited resources can also take advantage of virtualization and blade technology to consolidate and increase efficiencies.

Mr. Chamlee will describe Ysleta’s pre-existing IT infrastructure, including servers with direct-attached storage which were distributed among the district’s 62 schools, each of which provided its own support.

The new infrastructure was going to be the cornerstone for district-wide server consolidation. In addition to a new student information system, it would be supporting critical applications like district email and a variety of future applications. Ysleta needed a lot of scalability on both the server side and the storage side, to prepare the ISD for expected future growth. In addition, Yselta did not have a lot of specialized knowledge, so the system had to be simple.

After evaluating their options, Ysleta decided to deploy a virtualized storage area network with 84 diskless blade servers running two different operating systems, a NAS gateway, tape library and a multilayer director. With this new system Ysleta has been able to consolidate and cut costs related to maintaining multiple systems in multiple locations as well as the need to buy disk drives for each server. Since the servers boot from the SAN, replacing a failed server is far faster and easier than replacing a server with dedicated disk drives. They decided it was important to choose a SAN that does not require any host-side software. This simplifies server management and eliminates time-consuming updates, patches, and software maintenance on individual servers.

In this session, attendees will learn how to leverage virtualization and blade server technology to meet storage needs with limited resources.

1:55pm - 2:40pm SNIA Tutorials Track

IP Storage Technologies and Solutions
David Dale, Industry Evangelist, Network Appliance & Chair of the SNIA IP Storage Forum

This session will appeal to IT managers, administrators and storage architects interested in a broad overview of IP Storage technologies (iSCSI, FCIP and iFCP) and solutions.

The presentation describes IP Storage with particular emphasis on iSCSI; comparing and contrasting it to other storage technologies and topologies; highlighting implementation details and best practices around security, performance, and availability; explaining how IP Storage fits in the infrastructure of both large Enterprises, and small/medium Enterprises today; and looking at current and future developments.

1:55pm - 2:40pm SNIA Tutorials Track

The Many Faces of Data Classification
Edgar St.Pierre, Senior Staff Software Engineer, EMC 2

If you think that "data classification" is the greatest thing since sliced bread, then come meet the other slices in the loaf. Data classification is an often-referenced practice that is known to reduce costs and improve service levels in a data center. But before embarking on the effort to "classify your data", you may want to look at the many-faceted aspects of this practice. This presentation will explore the different types of classification that can be undertaken by organizations, and the many benefits to be derived from them. The discussion will range from information classification, to the many different flavors of data classification, to the practice of resource classification, and will help you decide where your organization needs to get started.

1:55pm - 2:40pm SNIA Tutorials Track

Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Transforming the Storage Market
Ahmad Zamer, Senior Product Marketing Engineer, Intel Corporation
Marty Czekalski, Interface Architecture Initiatives, Maxtor
Harry Mason, Director, Industry Marketing, LSI Logic Corporation, Storage Standard Products Division

This tutorial provides an introduction to two important hard disk serial interface technologies. Serial attached SCSI (SAS) and Serial ATA (SATA) protocols are explained and their benefits outlined. The session also explains the compatibilities between the two protocols and their benefits to consumers. The interoperability of a SAS infrastructure with both SATA and SAS disk drives will provide IT managers with storage subsystems that have unprecedented levels of choice in flexibility and price performance points. Also discussed will be the dynamics behind the shift from parallel storage interconnects to serial technologies. More emphasis is placed on SAS due to its role in the enterprise.

1:55pm - 2:40pm Grid/Utility Track

Building an Information On Demand Environment
Laura Sanders, Vice President, IBM TotalStorage Products and Solutions, IBM

The concept of "Information on Demand" was discussed by IBM previously at SNW. This presentation will discuss strategies and technologies that businesses may deploy to implement a dynamic virtualized storage infrastructure supporting a larger Information on Demand environment. Using the approaches discussed, businesses will be better able to manage the growth in information while containing costs, simplifying management, enhancing availability, and addressing regulatory compliance requirements. Furthermore, Information on Demand aims to enable businesses to become more competitive and responsive through better analysis and use of the information they already possess.

1:55pm - 2:40pm IDC Briefing

Networking Infrastructure - Virtualization: What Is It Good For?
Richard Villars, Vice President, Storage Systems

Networked storage is now the norm in most large and mid-sized organizations; however, companies are only now beginning to leverage the full capabilities of storage networks with the introduction of storage virtualization. In this session, Mr Villars will present IDc's latest forecasts for SAN infrastructure products and discuss how these products will evolve in the coming years. In addition, he will provide an update on the early implementation of storage virtualization solutions, including a discussion of the primary drivers behind virtualization adoption and a assessment of shortcomings.

2:40pm - 2:50pm Break
2:50pm - 3:35pm End User Case Studies Track

Seismic IT: How El Camino Hospital Meets Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Requirements
Bud James, Director of Technology, El Camino Hospital

El Camino Hospital, located in the Silicon Valley community of Mountain View, is recognized as the world’s first hospital to implement a computerized physician order-entry system. Having set an agenda of becoming a fully automated “smart” hospital, El Camino made data and systems availability a top priority – the goal of 99.999 uptime. This objective also helps El Camino meet California state requirements that hospitals be able to achieve rapid disaster recovery and business continuity in the event of an earthquake. In this session, El Camino Technical Services Director Bud James will describe how the hospital has implemented server consolidation and clustering technology to meet it uptime goal, as well as comply with long-term data protection and disaster recovery requirements. He will explain how multiple live applications are mirrored and run on partitions on various servers, enabling dynamic fail-over to a single cluster or partition. The implementation has produced huge savings from server consolidation, and meets the hospital’s high-availability standards.

Mr. James will explain how the system also will enable El Camino to build a new data center with no disruption to ongoing operations in conformance with California disaster readiness law. This transition is critical to long-term data protection and provides the hospital with a rapid disaster recovery and business continuity plan for the data center move and beyond. The presentation offers a practical methodology for businesses to ensure IT high-availability that conforms to disaster recovery and business continuity requirements. As a result of participating in this session, participants will be able to:

  • Determine how El Camino consolidated servers to maximize systems performance and available
  • Describe how cluster and partition technology enables dynamic fail-over
  • Examine how El Camino performs IT maintenance with no disruptions to ongoing operations
  • Design architecture for business continuity with offsite fail-over support in event of data center disaster
2:50pm - 3:35pm SNIA Tutorials Track

Virtualization I – What, Why, Where and How?
Rob Peglar, Vice President, Technical Solutions/Chief Technologist, Xiotech Corporation

Storage Virtualization is one of the buzzwords in the industry, especially with the increased acceptance of Storage Networks. But besides all hype, there is a lot of confusion, too. Companies are using the term virtualization and its characteristics in various and different forms. This tutorial describes the reasons and benefits of virtualization in a technical and neutral way. The audience will understand the various terms and will receive a clear picture of the different virtualization approaches. Links to the SNIA Shared Storage Model and the usage of the new SNIA Storage Virtualization Taxonomy will help to achieve this goal.

This tutorial is intended for IT Managers , Storage and System Administrators who have responsibilities for IT infrastructures and storage management tasks.

2:50pm - 3:35pm SNIA Tutorials Track

Identifying and Eliminating Backup System Bottlenecks
Jacob Farmer, Chief Technology Officer, Cambridge Computer

This tutorial reveals the obvious and not-so-obvious bottlenecks in enterprise backup systems and offers examples of how one would apply the technologies described in the Data Protection tutorials to achieve one's performance objectives. We start with the assumption that the ultimate goal is to get data on tape for off-site removal. We then explain how to identify backup system bottlenecks and review a few case studies that illustrate how to eliminate them. Technologies covered include: SAN backup paradigms, tape library sharing with ordinary SCSI, tape drive performance, disk staging with ordinary disk and virtual tape, snapshots and replication. You cannot simply buy your way out of backup system headaches, you must design your way out.

2:50pm - 3:35pm SNIA Tutorials Track
Fibre Channel Technologies
M. K. Jibbe, Manager of Test Architect and Technology Team, Interoperability Architect, Engenio Information Technologies, Inc

This tutorial will educate the user by providing foundational knowledge of the Fibre Channel protocol, an overview of the functionality of the numerous components that comprise a FC SAN, and material relative to the connectivity characteristics, architectural designs, and applications of Fibre Channel SANs.
2:50pm - 3:35pm Grid/Utility Track
Top 10 Pain Points of Today’s Storage--Is Utility Computing the Answer?
David Scott, President and CEO, 3PARdata, Inc.

Join us to find out how utility architectures and virtualization will help solve the problems associated with today’s storage environments, and make storage environments less complex and costly. What problems you might ask? Well here’s a list of the top-ten storage issues provided by the End User Council (EUC) of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), 2004:
  1. Cost
  2. Growth
  3. Lack of ability to manage storage assets
  4. Lack of integration/interoperability
  5. Advanced features and functions are lacking
  6. Increasing storage infrastructure complexity
  7. Poor service and support
  8. Ill informed and educated marketing channels
  9. Lack of robust automation
  10. Undelivered promises

At this session, attendees will learn about real-world implementations of utility environments and virtualized storage infrastructures that have resolved most of the problems listed above.

2:50pm - 3:35pm IDC Briefing

Storage Hardware: The Backbone of the Future
Dave Reinsel, Program Director, Storage Research

The future growth of storage in terms of revenue and terabytes is expected to increase steadily over the next several years. Although advanced technologies such as virtualization can improve storage utilization among corporate users, increasing requirements stemming from compliance regulations, specialized applications (e.g., medical imaging), and growth in data protection activities among SMBs and consumers promise to keep demand high. Join Mr. Reinsel as he portends the future role and expectations of storage, discusses various highlights of IDC's latest forecast, and reveals some of the emerging opportunities for storage.

3:35pm - 3:45pm Break
3:45pm - 4:30pm End User Case Studies Track

Improving Disaster Recovery Architecture Using iSCSI Storage, Virtual Servers and a Clustered File System
Steve Meckling, Network Services Administrator, Shiloh Industries

Shiloh Industries is a leading automotive supplier with multiple locations in the Midwest. The company recently implemented improved disaster recovery architecture for their Mansfield, OH data center, with two secondary data centers located 60 and 150 miles away. The main data center is running a range of Windows applications and NetWare file/network services on Virtual Servers. A clustered file system provides active-active access to a common file system on shared iSCSI storage, facilitating fail-over among the virtual and physical servers. Replication across the data centers is done using utilities on the iSCSI storage system. The architecture provides a highly available yet cost effective and easy to manage solution for local and remote fail-over capability while serving the goal of consolidating services on fewer servers.

Attendees will learn how a clustered file system can be used to improve the flexibility and fail-over options for virtual servers, and how modular iSCSI storage arrays simplify the architecture for building remote fail-over facilities. Shiloh’s implementation is an initial reference architecture for a lower cost and easy to manage server consolidation and multi-site disaster recovery solution.

3:45pm - 4:30pm SNIA Tutorials Track

Virtualization II – Effective Use of Virtualization
Rob Peglar, Vice President, Technical Solutions/Chief Technologist, Xiotech Corporation

The second part of this tutorial builds on the first one, so the audience should have visited part I ‘What, Why, Where and How?’ or already should have a basic understanding of this subject.

Storage Virtualization part II covers practical issues of block virtualization in order to make most effective use of it. Among other topics it describes the implementation step by step and aspects of availability, performance and capacity improvements. The material discusses the role of storage virtualization within policy-based management and describes its integration in the SNIA Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S).

3:45pm - 4:30pm SNIA Tutorials Track

Technologies to Address Contemporary Data Protection
Michael Fishman, Strategic Technologist, EMC; Education Committee Chair, SNIA Data Management Forum

This tutorial introduces and discusses the basic concepts of Data Protection in today's data centers using storage networking technologies. Attendees will gain an understanding of how to achieve appropriate levels of data protection and recovery time objectives that can be justified by business value considerations. This session is intended for Systems Administrators, Consultants, Architects, Technologists, and those who manage data recovery teams.

This session provides a solid introduction and review of modern Backup and Recovery concepts, methodologies, and technologies. The trade-offs inherent in Backup/Recovery are highlighted. The session provides a strong overview of traditional and advanced data protection techniques, including introductions of LAN-free and Server-free backup, virtual tape libraries (VTL), snapshots, continuous data protection (CDP), and replication.

  • Technical Session
  • General or Business Session

Sponsoring Initiative: Data Protection

3:45pm - 4:30pm SNIA Tutorials Track
IP Storage Protocols - iSCSI
Ahmad Zamer, Senior Product Marketing Engineer, Intel Corporation
John Hufferd, Sr. Executive Director of Technology at Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.  

This tutorial will explain the fundamentals of iSCSI and explain deployments in various environments. The protocol is explained, its relationship to SCSI is explained, the use of Software and Hardware iSCSI initiators and targets will be discussed as will the companion protocols for discovery, and security.
3:45pm - 4:30pm Grid/Utility Track
Scalable, High Performance File Systems and Successful Scale-out Computing Strategies in the Commercial Enterprise
Shaji John, President & Chief Executive Officer, IBRIX, Inc.

Today’s storage headlines talk of every big player in the market turning their attention to grid computing, cluster computing, etc. Commercial enterprises are taking inventory of their boxes and bandwidth and developing strategies to implement this next generation of computing into their organizations. Will the recent advances in file system technology be sufficient to support these strategies, and can they enable breakthroughs of the I/O bottleneck that have plagued the effective utilization of clusters of commodity computers?

With the shift away from monolithic, SMP-based computing architectures to commodity-based, cluster computing architectures, the need for more scalable and higher performing file system solutions is evolving and becoming a must for companies implementing grid computing strategies. As clusters are deployed in commercial computing environments, the applications they are serving are becoming increasingly varied in terms of access patterns, I/O sizes, operations, and file sizes. Emerging commercial scale-out cluster applications such as animation rendering for movie production and data mining for electronic discovery require file system solutions that scale across the management, performance and storage domains. This is just the beginning of the domino effect that will touch commercial enterprises in every market.

In this session, attendees will learn about the end user benefits of moving to commodity-based computing; and how parallel file system solutions have evolved to tackle complex commercial problems that exist in many different vertical markets.
3:45pm - 4:30pm IDC Briefing

Storage Software: Managing Complex Environments
Laura DuBois, Research Director, Storage Software

Storage resource management software has been viewed as the key to allowing customers to get control of their rapidly growing storage infrastructures. Yet the "magic bullet" in the form of software that simplifies administration, improves utilization and eases management of events across mixed primary, secondary and archive storage environments isn't here yet. In this presentation, Ms. DuBois will offer highlights of IDC's latest forecast for this market, and discuss key issues including the role of industry standards; the "merger" of system and storage management tools; and the impact of data protection on storage management.

4:30pm - 4:40pm Break
4:40pm - 5:25pm End User Case Studies Track

Aaand CUT! – How Data Virtualization and Replication Halved our Video Production Time
Kevin Pazera, Systems Integrator, Maine Public Broadcasting Network

Through its radio, television, educational and web services, the Maine Public Broadcasting Network (MPBN) provides ideas, information and lifelong learning to hundreds of thousands of people each day. Of all the services offered by MPBN, its television shows are the most time and resource-intensive, typically requiring more than 25 hours of footage and an editing process that stretches to six months for each one hour program.

Kevin Pazera, Systems Integrator for MPBN, recognized that while MBPN does fully digital video editing, tape was continuously used and dramatically slowed the process. Mr. Pazera noticed several common bottlenecks: since the workstations couldn’t hold an entire of video on their hard drives, editors frequently imported and exported to tape; since the full file couldn’t be loaded into the system, tapes had to by physically transported between the Bangor and Lewiston editing and proofing locations; though tapes were archived it was usually quicker to re-shoot a needed shot than to try and locate the right tape and re-import it into the system. He began investigating enterprise storage tools that could alleviate these pains within the budget constraints of a non-profit organization that, as Pazera jests “begs for money on TV.”

Over the course of four months, Mr. Pazera worked with numerous vendors to evaluate their SAN offerings. Knowing that MPBN’s demand for storage would grow rapidly over time, he wanted to utilize industry-standard hardware and avoid the “rip and replace” common with some enterprise storage products.

By working with a regional storage consultant, a SAN that met his specifications was selected and implemented. Now with 10 TB of storage in its Lewiston office and more than four TB in its Bangor location, MPBN has minimized the use of tape and is using the SAN’s asynchronous replication capabilities to share data – and thus the video editing workload – between facilities.

As a result of implementing the SAN, MPBN has cut production time for new programming down from six months to three months. The time and money that have been saved now help MPBN provide more quality broadcasting services to the people of Maine. Key elements of this session include:

  • Considerations when selecting and deploying a SAN to support video editing
  • Considerations when implementing asynchronous replication between SANs
  • How a small organization can cost-justify and reap benefits from a SAN
  • How a small organization can best work with a storage consultant/business partner
  • Hidden costs of proprietary hardware and “rip and replace” upgrades
4:40pm - 5:25pm SNIA Tutorials Track

SNIA End User Town Hall Meeting
Hosted by the SNIA End User Council and StorageNetworking.org’s Orlando, Tampa Bay and Jacksonville SNUGs

Sponsored by the SNIA End User Council and the Orlando, Tampa Bay and Jacksonville Storage Networking User Groups (SNUGs). This pre-conference warm up is bound to be one of the hottest rooms in Orlando. Join our panel and many others of our peers as we swap war stories, horror stories, successes and lessons learned. What are other people thinking about the latest technology and industry buzz? What's real, what's smoke and mirrors? The Town Hall Meting was one of the highlights of the Spring SNW 2005 events. No press or vendors please!

4:40pm - 5:25pm SNIA Tutorials Track

Disk Based Data Protection Technologies
Michael T. Rowan, Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Revivio

This tutorial provides technical details on the use of specific storage networking technologies available to achieve advanced levels of data protection and recovery. The presentation is intended for technical IT professionals, including end-users, resellers, vendors, analysts and journalists. The delivery is at the level of articles or books written for these audiences.

Specifically, several different technology approaches to data protection are illustrated. Focus is on technologies that use disk as the primary medium for protection, some alternatively using other medias as a secondary tier or for archival purposes. These areas of focus include Virtual Tape Libraries (VTL), snapshots (including split mirror and a variety of differential snapshot approaches), and continuous data protection (CDP).

  • Technical Session
  • General or Business Session

Sponsoring Initiative: Data Protection

4:40pm - 5:25pm SNIA Tutorials Track

Metropolitan and Wide Area Storage Networks
Greg Schulz, Senior Analyst, Evaluator Group
Stephen Barr, Director of Carrier Partner Business Development, Ciena Corporation

Distance is essential to support business continuity, compliance, and consolidation. This session explains the components and provides examples on how to utilize various technologies to remove storage networking distance boundaries. This tutorial looks at different technologies and techniques including ATM, DWDM, FCIP, Fibre Channel, FICON, iFCP, IP, ISCSI, Metro Ethernet, SONET/SDH, storage to storage, server to storage, and multi-site SAN/NAS environments. Various examples will be utilized to help clarify and show alternative approaches to distance based storage networking to support resilient enterprise infrastructures.

Some things you will learn in this tutorial include:

  • Demystify metropolitan and wide storage communications
  • Knowledge to aid in selection of communications services
  • How to use appropriate technology for different requirements
4:40pm - 5:25pm Grid/Utility Track
 
4:40pm - 5:25pm IDC Briefing

Panel Discussion
Moderated by Doug Chandler

IDC research indicates that the single biggest application driving additional purchase of disk storage infrastructure is data protection. User interest is at unprecedented levels, driven by terrorism, new compliance and 7x24 access requirements, and increasing dependence on computer-based data, among other factors. In response, suppliers have released a variety of technologies to supplement and replace traditional tape backup, including backup appliances, virtual tape, disk-to-disk snapshot software, cluster/grid architectures, and journaled storage with continuous data protection. In this session, a panel of IDC analysts will discuss these various data protection technologies and approaches, and give their opinions regarding where data protection is heading, with the view that some technologies will likely gain adoption and thrive into the next decade, while others will be abandoned as not sufficiently meeting customers' needs.

Panelists:
Brad Nisbet - Disk
Robert Amatruda - Tape
Wolfgang Schlicting – Optical Storage
Rhoda Phillips – Software Replication
Michelle Zou - Backup & Archive Software

4:40pm - 6:30pm End User Town Hall Meeting
sponsored by the SNIA End User Council and the Orlando/Tampa Bay Florida StorageNetworking.org User Group (SNUG)
5:00PM - 7:00PM Speed Dating wtih IDC: A Channel Partner Networking Event at SNW
This session is designed to provide both content as well as individual time with the IDC storage team.
6:00pm - 8:00pm Welcome Reception
Tuesday, October 25th
7:00am - 8:00pm Registration Open
7:00am - 8:00am Breakfast
8:00am - 6:30pm SNIA Storage Network Certification Testing Center

Take one exam here at SNW and get a second one for half-price!
(Offer only good at SNW, so take advantage of the on-site testing center)
8:00am - 8:15am Opening Remarks
8:15am - 9:00am Opening Visionary Presentation
9:00am - 9:30am

21st Century Infrastructure for Our Information-Intensive World
Joe Tucci, President and CEO, EMC Corporation

While information is at the core of every business, it's the rare business that has a really deep understanding of its value. What's needed are not
smarter people but a smarter information infrastructure -- one that can understand the business value of information at any given point in time and
optimize the infrastructure over its lifecycle.

EMC President and CEO Joe Tucci will talk about how to build a 21st century information infrastructure that will enable people to use information more
intelligently. This infrastructure will help organizations protect, secure, move, and manage more of their information, while automating the management
and optimization of the IT environment. With this new infrastructure, information will be able to manage and protect itself as it moves through the enterprise.  That's the most effective way to coordinate information, applications, infrastructure, and the business, and help organizations get the maximum value from their information.

10:00am - 10:15am Break
10:15am - 10:45am

Enabling Net-Centric Operations: Technology Supporting America’s 21 st Century Warfighters
Lieutenant Colonel Karlton Johnson, USAF & U.S. Army War College Class AY06

To fully achieve the goal of providing the right information to the right forces at the right time, military and industry service providers continue their partnership to develop capabilities that leverage IT and empower America’s warfighters. In this presentation, Lt Col Johnson will discuss how the military employs information and storage networking technologies today, and he will offer his perspectives on some of the challenges associated with creating a net-centric environment for the 21st century warrior on the battlefield.

10:45am - 11:15am

Five for Five: Top Five Predictions for Networked Storage Over the Next Five Years
Jayshree Ullal, Senior Vice President, Data Center, Switching and Security Technology Group, Cisco Systems, Inc.

As Senior Vice President of Cisco's multi-billion dollar Security and Data Center businesses, which also include the storage, server and data networking businesses, Jayshree Ullal is uniquely positioned to understand the technologies and end user challenges that will shape the direction and future of the data center. How will consolidation occur within the data center? How will the goal of Utility Computing be realized? What are the top five items on storage customer's wish lists? What skills will be needed by the data center administrators of the future? Based on her conversations with customers, analysts, and industry experts as well as her singular perspective within the marketplace, Ullal makes predictions for the next five years and explains how she arrived at her top five. Her talk will cover the state of storage today, predictions for its evolution, and how we get from 2005 to 2010.

11:15am - 11:45am

SAN Implementation Case Study
Al Todd, Senior Vice President, IT Services Division, Pacific Capital Bancorp

This presentation will be an overview of the SAN implementation experiences and lessons learned at Pacific Capital Bancorp (PCB), a $6.2 Billion bank holding company headquartered in Santa Barbara, California. The presentation will provide insight into the business strategies, regulatory requirements, and the strategic value of data that led PCB to re-evaluate data storage strategies and information life cycles. Key learning objectives are:

* The business and regulatory factors that affect storage strategies
* The process used to justify a SAN storage strategy
* SAN implementation project management methodology
* Key lessons learned during SAN implementation

11:45am - 12:30pm "Disaster Recovery Perspectives" End User Panel Discussion
Moderated by Jon William Toigo, Founder & Senior Analyst, Toigo Partners International LLC
12:45pm - 2:00pm Lunch Presentation by Steve Duplessie, Founder and Senior Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group
2:10pm - 2:55pm Executive Perspectives Track
This session will focus on the real impacts of Sarbanes-Oxley legislation on enterprise IT organizations trying to prove compliance. Expectations of senior management for organizations including IT to reduce the cost of quarterly audits necessary for SOX reporting requirements applies a lot of pressure on IT. Information technology infrastructure is inextricably connected to the financial controls for financial reporting. The presentation will also discuss case studies of how large and medium sized companies are successfully leveraging technology to gain operational efficiency and effectiveness while proving compliance.

Key topics to be covered include:
1. Discuss the importance and value of continuous auditing
2. Role of Information Security teams in compliance
3. Case studies of successful use of technology to gain efficiencies and ease audit reporting requirements
4. Criteria for a successful automation project
5. Importance of integrating people and process with any technology solution
2:10pm - 2:55pm End User Case Studies Track

Justify the ROI – What IT Administrators MUST Consider Before Making ANY Purchasing Decision
Ben Page, Information Technology Services, Deloitte Services LLP

Strategic, well-planned storage purchasing decisions are critical to the long-term success of your storage network. And, as more CEOs realize the business advantages their companies can gain with effective use of storage technologies – they’re expecting even more from their IT administrators. Shared storage environments, once regarded as the solution to many data center problems, are now subject to increased scrutiny, from ROI to justification for expansion. Methods for expanding SAN capacity are no longer as simple as adding more drives. Today’s requirements call for much more detailed and multifaceted answers that address SRM, ILM strategies and more.

In order to make informed, business-oriented decisions, IT administrators must consider three important storage networking issues: Interoperability, decision quality and vendor partner-ability. First, while interoperability has improved, it is still far from perfect. Understanding the pros/cons of proprietary versus Open modes is key to preventing future rip and replace. Second, decision quality is crucial. The storage networking landscape is littered with folks who have deployed SANs designed with fundamental flaws that can lead to almost complete replacements at a very high cost. Finally, vendors and technology selection is still an art, not a science. It is important to choose a vendor who is willing to be there for the long haul.

By drawing upon his real-world experiences and relating to today’s “mega trends” and industry trends, Ben Page, Senior IT Manager at Deloitte, will discuss these challenges and best practices to address them in this session.

  • Interoperability issues-- proprietary versus Open and scenarios to help end users determine which to choose for their environments
  • SNIA, ARMA and other standards-- what standards mean to administrators as well as the part they play in shaping the industry’s future use of technology
  • How to use RFPs and RFIs to your company’s advantage and to turn your company’s selected vendor into a business partner
2:10pm - 2:55pm SNIA Voice of the User Track

Panel Discussion:The EUC 2005 Survey: Storage Management, Where are we now?
Norman Owens, Vice Chair, the SNIA End User Council
Wendy Betts, Manager, Distributed Systems Storage Management, Hewitt Associates
Laurence Whittaker, Hudson’s Bay Company

Last year the EUC presented the 2004 Survey of Top Ten Pain Points.  This year we have crafted a follow-on survey to clarify, detail and further three storage challenges from the 2004 survey:

  • Inability to manage storage assets and infrastructure
  • Lack of integrated or interoperable solutions
  • Barriers to adoption.

In addition a new focus has been added

  • Compliance and information lifecycle issues.
2:10pm - 2:55pm SNIA Tutorials Track

Storage Resource Management (SRM)
John Kelly, Director Product Marketing ApplQ

Online business activities and the unabated proliferation of emails are driving unprecedented growth in data, while the average amount of data manageable by an administrator is about one terabyte (TB) for direct-attached storage and about ten TB in a networked environment. In addition to protecting and ensuring the availability of increasing amounts of data, most organizations are looking for ways to centralize the management of storage required to support data growth and achieve higher Return on Investment (ROI) from storage spending. The need to reduce IT budgets has compelled organizations to reconsider the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of their IT investments.

This tutorial will illustrate the benefits of leveraging an SRM solution for effective, efficient and centralized management to achieve higher storage ROI and to enable organizations to implement storage management best practices. Topics to be discussed include:

  • Centralized management of heterogeneous storage environments
  • Capacity planning
  • Space utilization and chargeback management
  • Service-level improvement
  • Event management, including monitoring and alerting
  • Policy management, including threshold and event-based automation
  • Storage asset record-keeping and management
  • Business continuity reporting
  • Management of storage-intensive applications, including backup/recovery, database and messaging
2:10pm - 2:55pm SNIA Tutorials Track

Security I - Introduction To Storage Security
Eric A. Hibbard, CISSP, Senior Director, Data Networking Technology, Hitachi Data Systems

Many enterprises face the task of implementing data protection and data security measures to meet a wide range of requirements, not limited to regulatory compliance. Security and audit professionals have faced this in the computing environment before. Learning from them and the SNIA Security Technical Workgroup, we can apply security best practices to the storage infrastructure to know and manage our risks.

This session focuses on the storage layer and how it can participate in a successful defense-in-depth strategy. Major threats for each of the key storage element are explored. The session provides information on how to determine the security posture of these elements in a particular installation. However, be aware that the session leverages material contained in the SNIA-SSIF whitepaper: An Introduction to Storage Security. This enables the session to expand further on these concepts.

After completing this tutorial, you should be able to:

  • Understand the key business drivers for data security
  • Storage security measures and the threats they counter
  • Emerging security for the storage layer
  • Best practices for data protection and security

Please note that this session builds on the SNIA-SSIF whitepaper: An Introduction to Storage Security

2:10pm - 2:55pm Data Protection Track

Economically Change the Game of Backup & Recovery: Protect More, Store Less and Get Your Backup Environment Under Control Operationally and Financially
Neville Yates, CTO, Diligent Technologies Corporation

With the continued growth of data, and the importance of keeping tapes from being lost or stolen, enterprise data centers are beginning to leverage disk as a primary backup and restore medium in order to gain better performance, faster backups and superior recoverability of their mission critical data. But even with disk coming onto the scene, there have not been any changes to basic backup practices and procedures. That means that what you have backed up today is relatively very similar data to what you will backup all over again next week, and the next week after that and so on. This leads to a lot of repetition in those data sets and makes for a potentially large and costly backup environment. Up until this time, disk as a backup target has been thought to be too expensive for some IT budgets because the more you want to store on disk, the more disk you will need to buy. Right? Well, not any more. Next generation data factoring technologies (or some refer to it as data redundancy elimination) can enable effective compression rates that exceed 25:1, while enabling enterprise-class performance, reliability, and scalability. With these technologies, storage administrators can effectively increase the useable capacity of a given amount of storage and do away with the redundant data in their backup data sets. IT managers now have the capability to protect more of their data while storing less, they will be able to meet their recovery point and recovery time objectives and implement this new strategy with a very compelling TCO. By attending this session, participants will be able to:

  • Describe the role of tape in a backup and recovery architecture—today and in the future
  • Evaluate next generation disk-based backup and recovery options
  • Examine data factoring as applied to backup/recovery, archiving and HSM
  • Determine how data factoring technology changes the economics of disk-based backup and recovery to provide a compelling TCO
2:10pm - 2:55pm Wide-Area/Distributed Management Track

Patterns of Change – Creating Centralized IT Design Patterns in a Decentralized IT Universe
Charles Foley, President, Tacit Networks

Historically, IT design patterns have followed organizational design patterns. If an organization has been set up around functional boundaries - i.e. engineering, sales, or marketing - the IT infrastructure within that environment would mirror that design. Today, however, organizational design patterns must take into account a workforce that is increasingly decentralized, with branch office and remote workers more the norm than those workers who reside in a central location. The problem that IT designers face is that, although organizations are becoming more complex and decentralized, there is increasing pressure to create centralized IT design patterns that enable simpler environments, lower costs, data protection, and regulatory compliance.

Beginning with a brief exploration of IT networking and storage design patterns over the past 25 years, Tacit Networks’ President, Charley Foley, will explain how IT is at a crossroads where organizational complexity and global access requirements are straining the old models of IT design. Mr. Foley will then delve into new, location-independent technologies such as WAFS, Branch Office IT Infrastructure Services, and WAN Optimization that can enable centralized IT design patterns that maintain simplicity even as organizations become more decentralized. This presentation will also discuss how the best-in-class solutions among these technologies:

  • Eliminate the effects of distance and enable logical, rather than physical, provisioning of resources
  • Deploy seamlessly into existing IT infrastructures
  • Provide a host of centrally-managed, low-cost IT services to remote workers via the WAN
2:55pm - 3:05pm Break
3:05pm - 3:50pm Executive Perspectives Track
Managing Technology Change in the Data Center
Michael Feinberg, Vice President and CTO, HP/StorageWorks Division

CIOs and IT Directors have learned to work in a world of ever-changing technologies and architectures. The changes being experienced today, though, are significantly farther reaching and offer opportunities to impact IT efficiency and business relevance far more than ever before.

Today, new models for data access and resource sharing exist and are evolving; in order to provide the types of dynamic flexibility needed to respond to fluctuating and evolving business environments, scale-out and adaptive storage infrastructures — and the technologies to support them — are rapidly maturing. Our focus used to be on larger, faster, more reliable devices and enabling technologies, and the fundamental capabilities to monitor and manage them. Today the industry is focusing on technologies that automate SLA delivery, enhance data usability, and architectures that can flexibly and dynamically adapt to changing workloads.

The rapid pace with which these changes are being introduced can be daunting to people who have to plan for and deploy IT infrastructures—while maintaining data availability and preserving existing investments.

This session will describe some of the key directions the storage industry is moving toward. Using this future for perspective, the session will focus on the impacts of change on the data center and how to create a strategy for incorporating new technologies to maximum business advantage, while minimizing both financial and business risk.

Specifically this session will cover:

  • Strategies that companies have used to plan for incorporating change while minimizing risk and preserving existing investments
  • Key industry trends that will impact the data center over the next several years
  • Technologies to watch—those that will drive the trends
  • Expected impact of the trends on the data center
3:05pm - 3:50pm End User Case Studies Track

Challenges Facing SMBs and Other Nontraditional Environments: Keeping Data Backup Simple
Chris Irvine, Information Technology Manager Consultant, Dark Horse Comics

Nontraditional environments that leverage emerging technologies and solutions like Mac OS X or Linux, combined with the falling cost of disk based storage, pose an entirely new paradigm for backup. Typically, highly innovative small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) that rely on non-traditional computing platforms also have unique storage considerations that require careful evaluation in order to reduce unnecessary complexity and costs.

This session will showcase how an up-and-coming independent publisher, Dark Horse Comics, with a Macintosh-centric environment was able to assess the major business factors reinforcing its need for reliable, cost-effective data protection while embracing best practices for protecting data, streamlining access to intellectual property and increasing management efficiencies.

To meet its goals, Dark Horse leveraged Mac OS X Server operating platform and Apple’s Xserve RAID to satisfy escalating demands for protecting some eight terabytes of mission-critical data. Faced with an ever-shrinking backup window, the IS team knew they needed enterprise-class tools to make things work reliably and quickly within the budget parameters of an SMB.

In reviewing options, Dark Horse assessed the risk of downtime and potential corporate impact. In addition, the team weighed the support needs of its heterogeneous environment, its archiving experiences with various tape, optical, and disk-based systems, as well as labor efficiencies.

After careful evaluation, Dark Horse implemented an affordable yet powerful archival, backup and recovery solution leveraging D2D concepts and complete integration with its Mac OS X, Solaris, Windows and OpenBSD environment. Additionally, the company now leverages less expensive ATA RAID storage instead of having to rely on more high-end and much more expensive SCSI technology.

As a result of participating in this session, attendees will be able to:

  • Examine best practices for deploying backup and recovery in non-traditional environments
  • Create guidelines for assessing potential business risks commonly faced by SMBs while reducing the costs and complexity of enterprise-class implementations
  • Evaluate the lessons Dark Horse learned reinforced by real-world examples and anecdotal information
3:05pm - 3:50pm SNIA Voice of the User Track

Strategies for Storage Management
Laurence Whittaker, Hudson’s Bay Company

Enterprise storage infrastructures are set to explode due to increasing emphasis on the value of information stored, new compliance regulations and continuous data growth from new applications and emerging markets.

Successful Enterprise Storage Management starts with a vision and a clearly articulated plan to advocate for infrastructure investment and organizational change.

This presentation, part of a series presented by the SNIA End User Council, will help provide end users with resources to develop their long term plans and strategies. Illustrative architectural and organizational models will be used to discuss, planning and building a storage utility and the intersection of Information Lifecycle Management and other IT and business strategies. The presentation will touch on many components including storage, backup and recovery, SRM, San Management, HSM, storage automation, virtualization, SMI-S and their role in a utility model as well as the role of TCO and ROI.

3:05pm - 3:50pm SNIA Tutorials Track

Automating the Management of Information Lifecycles
Mark Carlson, Senior Architect, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Chair, SNIA SMI Technical Steering Group

SMI-S has received widespread adoption now among vendors of storage networks and storage devices. The next areas to address with a common, interoperable management interface are those of Data Lifecycle Management and Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) This talk focuses on the automated management of Information and Data Lifecycles and what this will mean in an IT environment. The resulting reduction in cost and complexity of managing data and information should parallel that seen in the storage space. In addition, the talk will show how business needs can be met by automating the maintenance of service levels through policy-based management.

Intended audience: This talk is intended for IT Managers and Administrators. Familiarity with SMI-S is not required.

3:05pm - 3:50pm SNIA Tutorials Track

Security II. Connecting Requirements To Storage Security Capabilities
LeRoy Budnik, Managing Partner, knowledgetransfer

Storage security practices need to meet Information Assurance and IT Governance requirements. Storage security is essential to maintaining availability, resiliency and chain of custody. We need a systematic approach to match business requirements with storage security capabilities to create compliance.

This session matches storage security capabilities to security requirements, resulting in information assurance. We seek to know the requirements, then secure the data and infrastructure using these capabilities and in process audit the actions of users, administrators and security personnel. This tutorial also provides supporting content for the SNW Regulatory, Compliance and Storage Security focus area of the Interoperability and Solutions Demo (ISD.)

After completing this tutorial, you should be able to:

  • Describe the SNIA Normalized Security Capabilities
  • Develop security related Service Level Requirements and match them to storage security capabilities in a context of governance and regulatory requirements
  • Apply security capabilities to meet content archiving and backup requirements
  • Secure SAN and NAS infrastructures

Please note that this session builds on preceding security tutorials and on the SNIA-SSIF Security Basics whitepaper.

3:05pm - 3:50pm Data Protection Track

Information Lifecycle Management: Why an Open Standards Based Archive Makes Sense
Andres Rodriguez, CTO and Founder, Archivas, Inc.

There is no existing storage platform today that can be trusted to store the last existing copy of a critical electronic record. The problem of preserving digital records for long-term access seems straight forward, but requires careful consideration about process and technology. Preserving digital information is more difficult than preserving records on materials such as paper or film. The sheer volume and the volatility introduced by digital demands a new architecture capable of scaling and preventing accidental changes to the records. Procedures need to be put in place to identify, classify, move, evolve, access and occasionally dispose of digital records. Business requirements demand that archived content be stored in such a way that files will be accessible today and many years into the future, while the surrounding environment is constantly evolving.

As a result of participating in this session, participants will be able to:

  • Identify the practical considerations necessary to create a digital archive:
    • Combine traditional concepts in library science with a new architectural approach, that leverages open interfaces, open file formats, and standard hardware to enable a modern archive
    • Guarantee the long-term preservation and access to digital records that meet internal standards mandates
    • Comply with external government regulations such as Sarbanes Oxley and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
3:05pm - 3:50pm Wide-Area/Distributed Management Track

The New Realm of Storage Applications: Delivering the Most Demanding High Capacity Storage-Over-Distance Networks
Paul Savill, Vice President, Data Services, WilTel Communications

Enterprise networks are becoming increasingly complex as companies look to integrate solutions to support data recovery / management and distribution of high-capacity content for a new realm of storage applications:

  • High Definition video production, grid computing research networks and medical image management for healthcare networks
  • Increasingly complex business continuity/disaster recovery solutions extended over greater distances to protect against corporate data loss

A storage-over-distance network is a complex undertaking often requiring the products, services and coordination of numerous vendors. A typical solution requires a duplicate infrastructure of servers, storage arrays and networking equipment at the primary and secondary site, data mirroring, or replication software, and network transport between sites. While previously overlooked, network transport plays a crucial part in the successful deployment of a storage-over-distance network and in some cases can represent more than 50% of the cost. The type of network transport selected (Wavelength, SONET, Ethernet, IP) is key to the performance impact to business applications, the distance between sites, and the overall cost.

Software/hardware providers, equipment vendors and WAN specialists like WilTel are now working together to tailor service offerings that specifically address the requirements of storage-over-distance networks to support these new realm of applications.

This session addresses the vital components of an effective storage solution and high-capacity applications, from grid computing to business continuity/disaster recovery, that are driving the need for complex storage over distance solutions.

3:50pm - 4:00pm Break
4:00pm - 4:45pm Executive Perspectives Track

The 100 Year Archive Panel
Moderated by Jered Floyd, VP Development at Permabit and LTACSI Co-Chair

The challenges of maintaining digital archives over long periods of time are as much economic, social and institutional as they are technological. The concept of maintaining a long-term archive is not new, but electronic records introduce many new challenges. Digital records bring the benefit of flawless copies, but their storage and use show wildly different time scales of physical and logical readability. To help address the challenges of electronic long-term archive, the SNIA has formed a multidisciplinary task force to produce a definitive set of best practices and guidelines. The SNIA is working together with ARMA, AIIM, and other similar organizations to fulfill this goal. The 100 Year Archive panel brings together several archival storage end users from the task force members to discuss their archive needs, current practices, and recommendations for digital archiving.

Panelists:

Andres Rodriguez, CTO, Archivas and Former CTO, New York Times

4:00pm - 4:45pm End User Case Studies Track

Architecting Storage for National Defense
Les Martin, Tactical Systems Engineer, United States Navy

Les Martin, a tactical systems engineer for the Navy Surface Combat Systems Center (SCSC), and a winner of the Meritorious Service Award for his deployment of storage technology at the Navy SCSC, will address the challenges of architecting, deploying and managing a storage system that can meet the rigorous demands of the Navy, while being efficient enough to be managed by sailors and servicemen with no in-depth expertise in storage management. Mr. Martin will discuss his own experiences, and how the lessons he learned apply to enterprises and organizations of every environment and size.

4:00pm - 4:45pm SNIA Voice of the User Track

Panel Discussion: “A Best Practices Approach For Measuring The Value Of Storage Network Management Investments”
Moderated by Robert Gray, Research Vice President, Worldwide Storage Systems Research

This presentation will focus on the dilemma facing IT managers and administrators today in evaluating the costs associated with storage management implementations. The presentation is based on a white paper developed by IDC in conjunction with the SNIA Storage Management Forum released and distributed at Fall SNW in Orlando 2005.

This presentation will provide a perspective on current trends, strategies, and pain points in today’s marketplace while analyzing cost components associated with storage managemnt. This will presentation will leverage a series of recently completed interviews with IT management professionals, some of who will participate in a panel for this presentation.

Data points will include trends in cost reduction (e.g., lower downtime, less support), key drivers of cost (e.g., staffing, manageability, etc.), and a business value analysis of storage networking management based on these interviews. Additionally, IDC expects to segment the data set to associate value/costs with SAN and NAS technologies.

Attendees will learn tips in how to create a vender neutral analysis of ROI data to help them evaluate the changes occurring in the storage marketplace and address decisions in storage management purchasing criteria.

The primary area of emphasis will be the interviews around the economic issues associated with operations and losses due to downtime and the cost savings and increases in availability generated by the implementation of storage networking management products.

Panelists:
Robert Stevenson, Managing Director, The Info Pro
Wendy Betts, Manager, Distributed Systems Storage Management, Hewitt Associates

4:00pm - 4:45pm SNIA Tutorials Track

How To Create a Storage Strategy
Marty LeFebvre, VP of Technology Strategy, Nielsen Media Research

Explosive data growth and regulations on data security are presenting today's IT departments with a huge challenge. This tutorial (part of a series presented by the SNIA End User Council) will discuss the steps necessary to define and implement a storage strategy. The focus will be on the purpose, scope, and components of a storage strategy, along with a discussion of the implementation roadmap.

4:00pm - 4:45pm SNIA Tutorials Track

Security III.
Fibre Channel Security, Authentication and Accountability using CHAP and RADIUS

Larry Hofer, PE, Office of the CTO, Security Architect, McDATA Corporation

Many people are unaware that use of Fibre Channel Authentication can reduce TCO and improve availability. This double benefit is the result of simplified management and mitigated threats, both accidental and malicious.

In this focused technical session, we develop an in depth understanding of authentication and accountability for FC. Discussion includes applicable protocols defined in the nearly complete Fibre Channel Security Protocols standard (FCSP) plus an overview of its content. This assists management and agencies to understand interoperability and compliance requirements. The Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP) and Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS) are major components used to defend against serious threats encountered in storage networks. Understanding these components is an important step in your effort to reduce risk. In addition, RADIUS has capabilities that can both simplify and enhance secure SAN management.

After completing this tutorial, you should be able to:

  • Apply relevant CHAP and RADIUS in SAN design to reduce TCO and to mitigate accidental or malicious threats
  • Define the role and function of authentication
  • Describe how CHAP and RADIUS work
  • Identify applicable standards and have an overview understanding of FC SP content

Please note that this session builds on preceding security tutorials and on the SNIA-SSIF Security Basics whitepaper.

4:00pm - 4:45pm Data Protection Track

Full Disk Encryption – Data Protection Assurance for Even the Most Vulnerable Applications
Dave Anderson, Director, Strategic Planning, Seagate Technology

Full Disk Encryption (FDE), a technology that was recently announced for notebook drives, has raised interest in the IT community. Wireless technology and the growth of laptop sales illustrate how mobility has become essential to the everyday working of business and government. Accompanying this dependence on mobility is the danger and increasing instance of sensitive data being exposed through the loss or theft of laptop computers.

A federal regulation, part of the Federal Trade Commission's Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003, went into effect June 1, 2005, requiring businesses to destroy, before discarding, sensitive customer and employee data. Destroying means shredding, burning, or in the case of data on disk drives, permanently erasing in a way that ensures that no one else may access the data, no matter how experienced they are in accessing drive data that has been erased.

When IT replaces drives, disposal of the old drives has long been an issue. Practices for destroying are costly. As hard drives get larger in capacity, it is ever more time-consuming to overwrite the drive many times to ensure the original data is completely obliterated. A more effective method is needed. FDE shows it is possible to securely erase a drive in less than a second. As a result of participating in this session, participants will be able to:

  • Compare and contrast existing software encryption and full disk encryption - how it works, and what it can and cannot prevent
  • Identify the limitations of existing software encryption in meeting the requirements for destroying data
  • Examine the potential benefits of FDE in protecting data and addressing compliance with the latest security regulations
4:00pm - 4:45pm Wide-Area/Distributed Management Track
Disk-To-Disk to the Next Level: Comprehensive Data Protection for SMBs and Branch Offices
Jacob Farmer, Chief Technology Officer, Cambridge Computer Services

In the evolution of most storage networking technologies, it has been the large enterprise data center that is first to adopt. Then, as the high end of the marketplace gets saturated and as prices begin to fall, products emerge for the branch office and the small to medium enterprise, who are excited to deploy the same kinds of solutions as the big guys. In the case of the next generation of data protection technologies, things are working in reverse. It is the SMB and branch offices that are blazing new trails while the large enterprises watch from the sidelines wondering when it will be their turn to jump on the bandwagon.

When it comes to data protection, large enterprises are saddled with a myriad of constraints – some real and some artificial - that are not found in smaller environments. These constraints make it nearly impossible for large enterprise to take advantage of the new technologies that actually alleviate backup pain. The great example is disk-based backup. In the large enterprise, disk-to-disk backup means using disk the same way you used tape. Yes, you escape some of the reliability and performance shortcomings of tape, but you are not really taking advantage of the random access properties of disk media. For instance, you still have to move data i