This is my advice for customers who want to get started with storage efficiency: • Consider SATA drives instead of Fiber Channel • Enable Dedupe • (Use Flash Cache as insurance against bad performance) NetApp has other efficiency features too (thin provisioning, cloning, compression, and so on), but I’ve found that customers often start with SATA and dedupe. SATA because it saves so much money, and dedupe because it’s so easy to turn on and comes free with ONTAP. When I talk with customers who are using SATA and dedupe, they are usually happy with NetApp, and pleased with their storage costs. When customers are haggling over price but haven’t at least considered these features, I wonder what they are thinking. SATA with Flash Cache doesn’t always match the performance of Fiber Channel, but when it does, it can cut your costs in half. It’s definitely worth considering! We have many happy customers using it for production data. Home directories are a good place to start. Email, especially with the most recent versions of Exchange. Some customers use it for database, depending on the workload.

Come one come all come see the greatest spectacle in the known universe… NetBackup 7.5 Beta. It removes excess body hair, cures mad cow disease, protects against the occasional snake bite, and Justin Beiber. Okay, so maybe these features are not in the NetBackup 7.5. However you can find these: - Primary Replication Management: Unified Policy-based Management of Backups, Snapshots and Replication. - Deduplication of storage in multiple deployment environments. - Single dynamic data protection solution across physical and virtual data centers including mission critical applications. - Enable the use of cloud-based offsite storage - Search metadata associated with backup images Want to learn more? Symantec’s NetBackup Guy can help! One size does not fit all when it comes to protecting applications- check out more information here:

Data protection is an essential part of every IT strategy. A good data protection plan minimizes the risk of downtime and data loss as well as the risk of a compliance incident. Most enterprise level data protection implementations are complex, costly and require thoughtful planning to ensure that the risk of data loss is reduced to an acceptable level. As with any technology there is no shortage of catch phrases to distract the overburdened administrator as well as the budget conscious executive. Phrases like “Integrated Data Protection”, “Industry Leading”, “End to End” and yes, even “cloud”. Let’s face it. The only reason you spend a dime on this stuff is to reduce risk because risk adds cost to your operation. The cost of data re-entry, the cost of down time or the cost of compliance fines. How simple or complex the system that you create to deal with risk is not the issue. The issue is whether the cost of the system is less than the risk of doing nothing.

Did you know that NetApp has a news program that talks about the latest happenings at the company? If you didn’t, that’s ok. A good starting place would be their 2010 review. Take a look at the video below:

In a previous blog, my colleague Aaron Payne was discussing getting back to security basics. In his blog, Aaron mentioned thin provisioning. I came across a great video from NetApp that talks about this very topic. Check it out below:

I really enjoy these “Play by Play” segments with NetApp’s Mike Riley. In his latest, he talks about NetApp Unified Storage. This is a good lead in to the webcast we are having in a few weeks on the very same topic. Check out the video below and learn more about the webcast here.

Check out the video below. It is a nice overview of NetApp Data Motion and shows how it enhances shared storage infrastructure.

So we have identified and admitted to the problem. Now, let’s approach addressing it. One of the first tasks we need to do when taking on a “Cyber Hoarding” issue is to identify the extent of the problem.