Data Tiering: Been There, Done That, What’s Next? Part 1: Been There!

by Asif Khan

Data tiering is not new. It was first introduced by IBM in the 1960s not long after magnetic disks allowed real-time access to stored data. Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) and its successor, Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), enacted fixed rules to move data from one storage array to another (ie “after 90 days, move all inactive data to a cheaper storage platform”).

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Van Halen Hates Brown M&Ms??

by Asif Khan

I first saw Van Halen in concert when I was about 15. We’re talking about the real Van Halen! Not Van Hagar and definitely not the lame Van Halen with that singer from Extreme. We’re talking about David Lee Roth! Spandex! Kung fu kicks! Pyrotechnics! 20 minute guitar solos! The sweet smell of chronic all around me–but not from me because that would be illegal 😉 THAT Van Halen!

Working at Accenture: “Making Partner”

by Asif Khan

When Accenture first approached me about working here, I was not really interested. One of the main reasons was that I remembered several years ago a friend told me about the “Big Four” consulting firms’ dreaded “up or out” policy where you are stack-ranked each year against your peers: the top-ranked get promoted and the bottom-ranked get fired.

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What Will the Data Center of 2020 Look Like? Pg3

by Asif Khan

What About Converged Infrastructure?

Last year, converged infrastructure (ie EMC’s Vblock, NetApp’s FlexPod, IBM’s CloudBurst, HP’s CloudSystem) made a big splash. The premise is to deliver a self-contained rack with a single SKU and single phone number to call for support whether it be a compute, storage, network or hypervisor issue. Though the concept is powerful for smaller IT shops or for specific applications (like VDI or ERP) within large IT shops, this concept is not likely to catch on in the near future with large enterprises for two BIG reasons: process and people.

What Will the Data Center of 2020 Look Like? Pg2

by Asif Khan

The Coming Decade

Diane Greene, co-founder and former CEO of VMware, once said “VMware is the most non-disruptive disruptive technology.” In other words, in the past decade, many customers were virtualizing their physical servers and continuing to run things pretty much the same way they ran it before virtualizing (aka “paving cow paths”). Now, the emerging popularity of IT-as-a-Service (OK, cloud computing) will force IT departments to rethink business-as-usual and start automating manual tasks if they don’t want to lose their customers (and by extension, their jobs) to more nimble providers of these services. The center of gravity has definitely shifted to the end user and that trend will continue to accelerate this coming decade.

What Will The Datacenter of 2020 Look Like? pg1

by Asif Khan

The Interview

I was recently asked by one of my clients to interview potential candidates for the position of Executive Director of IT Infrastructure Engineering. The ED would be responsible for managing four large engineering teams that span physical infrastructure, virtual infrastructure, data analytics and emerging technologies.

Five Reasons NOT to Implement VDI: Reason #5

by Asif Khan

Reason #5: VDI Licensing is a Pain in the @$$!

So you’ve done your due diligence. You read Reason #1 and made the case that desktop consolidation is different than server consolidation. You obtained executive sponsorship and presented a compelling case to move forward.

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Working at Accenture: “A Day in the Life”

by Asif Khan

I really liked my previous job as a Virtualization and Cloud Specialist at EMC. So when recruiters used to call me, I always politely declined stating I was very happy with my current job.

The call from Accenture was a little different: “we are not looking to recruit. We want to network with ‘high potential’ individuals for future opportunities…blah blah blah” What hooked me was when they said that they are looking for people with deep technology backgrounds who are ready to take their career to the next level and apply that knowledge to solving hard business problems.

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Five Reasons NOT to Implement VDI (Reason #4)

by Asif Khan

Reason #4: Scaling VDI is Hard

It starts out innocently enough. A customer is interested in trying out VDI and wants to do a pilot implementation on non-production hardware to see how it works before they “run it up the flagpole” to get budget, executive sponsorship, etc.

In a week or two, they have a working VDI platform and they start adding users. At first, the VDI admins get virtual desktops for themselves and then look for target users, usually task workers that we VDI geeks lovingly refer to as “low hanging fruit.”

Before they know it, they’ve got a couple hundred users on their pilot install and guess what? It works flawlessly! Note: my experience is with VMware View…your mileage may vary.

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All You Need Is Love…and an iPad

A Love Letter to Steve Jobs and John Lennon

by Asif Khan

Today, Sunday October 9, 2011, is an auspicious day for us Beatle fanatics. It is John Lennon’s 71st birthday: millions of us every year celebrate the life of the man on this day by swimming in his music. Interestingly, today is also the day that Sir Paul McCartney is marrying for the third time. I hope he got a prenup this time and I wish him better luck than he had with #2…that last one was a doozy!