Put NetApp in because you want to use NetApp but don’t put it in to virtualise your existing environment unless you are prepared for a whole lot of work. If you simply want to virtualise and build a consolidated pool of disk, you might well be better looking at SVC or USP-V.

What are the challenges that SRM tools face? Is the problem one of scale and complexity? If you look at what we expect the SRM tool to do, we expect currently expect it to understand our storage environment end-to-end. So look at what an SRM tool needs to do.

Stephen has a post here about pricing, about getting close to your vendor and developing a relationship with just a few trusted partners. Nice idea but in any relationship there needs to be some tension to keep it fresh and alive; otherwise you find yourselves doing something because you have always done so, it becomes comfortable.

At the moment, Enterprise Flash disks are all being used as faster spindles; as faster replacements to spinning rust. In the same way that I could remove my laptop/pc drive and replace it with a SSD; I can do it in an array at some extortionate price.I know there’s been a fair amount of tweaking to get them into the various arrays but it doesn’t appear to be the proverbial rocket science! So can we have some rocket science now?

Capital budgets are pretty tight this year and IT teams all over the globe are being to do more with the same or less. This is good in many ways and hopefully we will overcome some of the profligacy of the past but the responsibility is in our (the end-users) hands, we can’t simply expect the vendors who have encouraged of profligacy in the past to come riding to our rescue.

The announcements are starting to pile up; nothing dramatic yet tho’ but we are probably at the start of the year when most Storage vendors refresh their main product lines and it’s going to be interesting to see the variety…