Kyle Ohme — In the life of a dot com

http://datacenterjournal.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1502&Itemid=40

Blade.org press release. 

Blade.org continues to grow and prove to be a leader in the space!

“Blade.org provides an invaluable interchange between users of blade servers and the vendor community,” said Kyle Ohme, Chairman of the Blade.org Customer Advisory Council and Director of Information Technology at W3i, a global, interactive media company. “Now that so many companies have deployed blade servers, many blade users have expressed the desire to join in a forum – like those in many other product categories that enjoy strong adoption – in which they can interact with their peers as well as the vendor community. Blade.org is becoming a diverse community where vendors can transform end-users’ needs for workarounds and custom development into off-the-shelf blade server products and specialized data center solutions.”

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Top tips from your peers

* Be the person that no one likes if that’s what it takes.  Someone has to play that storage role - this is key to keeping costs down and know the date it IT teams must protect.   Knowing what’s structured and non-structured data helps IT understand what is critical storage.   IT cant always know what is critical storage - this should be reviewed often.

* Charge back models work!  This can be used to help put a value on data.  Pull in a key person from each department to allow for the charge back and continue to classify the data.  This puts ownership not only in cost but also defining backup SLAs along with strategic goals and expectations.  Get your users involved.  IT can only useful if its aligned with the business.

* Rsync may be used more then some of us may think in data replication.  Sometimes a no thrills approach is all you need.  Don’t overlook the free / cheap tools that can do a very good job at a single task.

Tools

* If you can build reporting in house - you may know your data better.  A mix of tools can often be your best friend.  For example Yahoo used a mix of home grown and also NetApp DFM to assist in the overall goals utilizing  MySQL + Perl + PHP pulling SNMP and other queries.

* Creating a problem and walking through the problem with your vendors may test their critical thinking skills in a time of need.  Tossing in screwballs to really see how well vendors deal with the same issues Admins are faced with helps to understand how fast they can respond.  This if used the right way may assist in determining your vendor selection.

Overall

* Storage toolset’s seem to be a missing piece to the overall storage world.  Bits and pieces here and there seems to be available however the overall picture is something that’s lacking.  (I realize this is not an easy task - however - here lies true value in software for storage)  Its nice to see that we are not in the same boat!

Today is Day one of Storage Decisions 2007 San Francisco. 

This I think is my 4th or 5th time at a storage Decisions but first time with Storage Decisions in San Fran.   I have done New York and Chicago in the past few year.

I always enjoy this show, I think that its a great way to keep up to date in the storage industry and also check out all of the new hardware in one place.  Just think about how much time it would take to meet all of the vendors outside of a show like this and how many days of conversations and conference calls.

Stay tuned …

Here is a snip from the TechTarget Site.

Storage Decisions 2007 - happening December 4-6 in San Francisco - will address these issues head-on with in-depth, educational sessions on how to:

• Architect a classification strategy
• Improve utilization of existing assets
• Expand SANs
• Tier storage
• Solidify your data protection and recovery strategy
• And many more sessions addressing today’s challenges

If you love technology and hacking everything you own, check out this little quick project.  Here you will find the scripts and tools it takes to mod / hack your wii-mote so you can use it on your mediacenter (no hacking required).

Thanks to this project and the information located on http://www.wisave.com/news/ you can use your wii-mote to control your Vista Mediacenter.

The Script can be found here

You will also need (http://www.wiili.org)
* GlovePIE version 2.4
* A Wiimote
* A Bluetooth enabled PC running Windows 2000 or XP.
* DirectX 8.0

You can also check out a video of it here.

Can I become a happier person with better time management?

Wow - Recently I have really felt the pinch of time.  I have lists and lists multiple pages and tablets deep that acquire new tasks faster than I can remove them.

I am a list person - I have lists for things I need to do today, this week, month and year.  I have lists breaking my day down by how long I expect the task to take so I can fit it into a time slot when I have a free moment.  I have systems to determine long term goals and dependent tasks. I have lists created for things I must pick up next time I go to the store grouped by how close the stores are and what time I have available. I have sliced and diced things so many ways in search for the perfect solution more times than I can count. Excessive – possibly .. but our success is so often tied to time. Success of a relationship, carrier, friendship and overall wellbeing.

I have been working on a better overall time management involving breaking down my time into “goals” first. Picking three goals from my overall yearly goals (work related) … Breaking the goals down into objectives .. breaking the objectives into milestones and breaking the milestones back into tasks. In the mean time I am also using the Drucker time management assessment process for the next three weeks to better align my time with my tasks. You can find more info about Drucker here http://www.friendly-ware.com/dtm/whyShldCr.htm

Time management is not a new concept to me or will this be my last attempt to find a better model.

Peter Drucker “The output limits of any process are set by the scarcest resource. In the process we call “accomplishment”, this is time … Of the other major resources, money is actually quite plentiful … People … one can hire. But one cannot rent, hire, buy or otherwise obtain more time.”

More to come …