Dell has already announced its Dell Scalable Filesystem for PowerVault

Dell's spreading of Ocarina dedupe goodness across its storage platforms has to overcome several obstacles, none of which are show-stoppers.

Ocarina deduplicates files – or more accurately, optimises and compresses files – and is content-aware so that it can work its specific magic on JPEGs and cast different spells on PACS images. It does not dedupe blocks and therein lies the rub.

Dell wants to layer its Ocarina dedupe across its storage estate at both file and block level, and not exclude the Windows server-based DL disk-to-disk backup systems that run either CommVault or Symantec software. Darren Thomas, Dell storage VP and general manager, is confident this is all possible.

File dedupe

The file need is easiest, being Ocarina's home ground so to speak. Dell has already announced its Dell Scalable Filesystem (DSFS) for PowerVault with the NX3500, and for EqualLogic with the FS7500, in the form of NAS heads. One is coming for Compellent and another for the DX6000, the object storage box. Dell will add the Ocarina dedupe technology to that box and it immediately becomes available for all the storage platforms under the DSFS head; the timing is the same.

Thomas said: "Think of it like a RAID feature. It's a dedupe feature for a file system."

That does not include the DL arrays though. Dell understands that it is desirable that data, file data, that is being backed up from DSFS-headed arrays does not have to be rehydrated before being backed to the CommVault or Symantec DL products, but neither supplier's software supports Ocarina.

We understand that CommVault is thinking about how to import Ocarina-ised information and avoid the re-hydration. Symantec, according to our research, understands the desirability of avoiding the rehydration but is not so far advanced as CommVault in talking to Dell about the issue.

Darren Thomas said Dell represents 20 to 25 per cent of CommVault's revenues and we can imagine that this gives Dell people significant mindshare in, and fast-access to, senior people in CommVault. Such access is not so attainable with the much larger Symantec.

Darren Thomas said there is also a need for these two DL software suppliers to be able to export (restore) the backed-up data to other third-party systems, which are enabled to read the Ocarina-ised data. These systems would need to have Ocarina Reader software, which is a relatively small piece of code, as well as being well within Dell's power to distribute.

Block dedupe

Blocks are different. Blocks are difficult. The size of groups of blocks, chunks or pages, varies between the Dell storage platforms. On EqualLogic systems a block is 15MB whereas on Compellent's it varies and the 64-bit StorageCenter O/S will track at the block level. A block is not a complete file, although the storage O/S can in principle be queried about which blocks makeup which files. Having files striped across drives increases the fragmentation a block-level deduper of primary storage has to deal with.

The larger the page or chunk size the higher the probability of finding duplicated data within it.

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HP and Dell are seen as important vehicles to improve storage utilisation

After going on the acquisition path over the last three years Dell has carved a greater niche for itself in the data management arena, and it was keen to show off its industry position at this week's Dell Storage Forum in Orlando, attended by over 1,000 partners and customers.

At the same time, HP was holding its user conference in Las Vegas, where it  announced a new range of data storage products.

Last year HP acquired networking firm 3Com for $2.7 billion and cloud storage management company 3Par for $2.35 billion, a company which Dell was rumoured to be interested in. Over the last three years Dell has acquired EqualLogic, Perot Systems, Exanet, Ocarina Networks, and Scalent, with Compellent being added to the bunch for $940 million earlier this year.

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All the companies aquired by HP and Dell are seen as important vehicles to improve storage utilisation, balance data workloads and automate storage tiering at companies, allowing them to improve productivity and more efficiently operate their storage networks.

Darren Thomas, vice president and general manager of Dell Storage, said: "It's not about the machines anymore, it's about the data, and the challenge for the industry is data lifecycle management."

Thomas told delegates he expected that by 2020, every man, woman and child who had ever lived on the planet would have been responsible for generating the equivalent of 2 terabytes of data each, a challenge for companies as "they are responsible for managing 80 percent of what is generated".

He said that before any IT upgrades were ever completed at firms, the amount of data would always double, which is why Dell was now focusing on its "Fluid Data" strategy.

Thomas said Fluid Data would mean bringing out storage products that made data "dynamic" - that it went where it needed to go automatically for optimum performance without having to deploy new hardware.

That said, Thomas used his keynote to launch a range of new hardware storage systems that helped demonstrate how Dell was integrating the technologies it has aquired over the last three years.

The new Dell EqualLogic FS7500 box uses Dell blade technology and EqualLogic technology to serve network attached storage (NAS) and unified storage markets. Dell claims it provides "up to 10 times more file share scalability than legacy unified storage offerings".

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What about Toshiba Thrives in the Tablet Market

Toshiba Thrive may seem like an also-ran alongside many of the other Tegra 2-based tablets on the market, but Toshiba has some very special sauce they’ve liberally applied to this release. The Thrive is a 10.1” tablet sporting what appears to be an IPS panel (it passes the viewing angle tests) and Android 3.1, and while it’s a little on the chunky side, there are some very good reasons for that. Toshiba’s reps stressed that they were gunning more for a better bridge from their notebook business and wanted a tablet that was as user-friendly as possible.

For starters, they’re keeping Android largely stock with three notable inclusions. The first is Toshiba’s own file manager, which I found to be very easy to use and understand. If you’re at all used to Windows 7’s file manager, Toshiba’s will be an easy transition. Another inclusion is a single application for handling media playback: photos, videos, and music are all available here, making it easy to get to your media. Finally, coupled with their playback software is their “Resolution Plus” software which dynamically upscales video to high definition, tweaking color balance and contrast. Purists may or may not like it, but I found it did improve the viewing experience.

The rest of the Thrive is marked by a desire to make it as easy to use and personalize as possible. The back panel has a comfortable, slightly-rubberized texture to it, but it’s also removable and swappable with differently-colored aftermarket panels. What’s under it is a user-removable and replaceable battery. Along the sides of the tablet are volume and power controls along with a lock switch that prevents the display from rotating. There’s a combination microphone/headphone jack, but Toshiba made it a point to go full-sized wherever possible with ports to ease the transition to tablet computing, and as a result they include a full-sized SD card reader, USB 2.0 port, and HDMI port. There’s also a mini-USB port. Finally, the face of the Thrive features a 2-megapixel camera while the back has a 5-megapixel camera.

Toshiba expects retail availability in the next few weeks. MSRP is $429 for the 8GB version, $479 for the 16GB model, and $579 for the 32GB. That's a lot less than the Motorola Xoom and similar to the Acer Iconia A500; while all offer the same level of performance (thanks to Tegra 2 hardware), differences in the industrial design and pricing will play a major role. Toshiba will also be offering docking stations, including one with USB and HDMI connectivity for external keyboard, mouse, and display use.

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Microsoft too has its own cloud service called SkyDrive

Apple’s iCloud announcemen finally showed the long awaited follow-up to Mobileme. While MobileMe was considered a failure on most accounts for Apple, iCloud looks to be a replacement worthy of the Apple branding.

But not to be outdone, Microsoft too has its own cloud service called SkyDrive. Microsoft states that since 2007, Skydrive has been the one place to access your documents, photos and more from anywhere for free. Going a step further they state that Skydrive has over 100M users, 2.2Petabytes of data stored which includes 250M documents.

But more than just SkyDrive, the Windows live team has been investing in the cloud for over a decade. Microsoft is currently servicing over 500 million customers with Xbox Live, Skydrive, Hotmail and Messenger.  Microsoft is touting its statistics to show that iCloud is far from an industry revolution and that Microsoft has been playing in these waters for a very long time.

While the jury is still out on if iCloud will be a successful product, it has put the spotlight back on to cloud related services. For consumers, it is an exciting time as companies compete for your information to be stored in their cloud. For corporations, they have a massive investment that needs to show returns to support the cloud business model.

Microsoft doesn't provide any practical or friendly way to use and access skydrive. At least not for windows. You have accessing via browser, thats it.

why not allow an easier way to access it? Mount it as a drive? and so on.

if there is a microsoft way of doing this (without third party hacks) then please enlighten me.

i just use use livemesh which kinda syncs it to skydrive, but not really.

There is no simplistic Microsoft way to access skydrive, yet, which is a shame. But then again, they have so many users that will take advantage of the service, they probably just weren't ready to handle the potential bandwidth. However, just everything that iCloud is doing Mango bring to Windows Phone7, some it already does. The most unique this iCloud will have is accessing your music, which you can already do with Zune Pass but that costs $15/mo while iCloud is $25/yr, but, Zune Pass is all music, not just your own. Anyway, I'm glad to see Apple doing this, because it means that everyone will be fighting aggressively, which is great for us.

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Google will enable IPv6 for its main websites including google.com

Web giants including Facebook and Google are braced for a major test tomorrow of new technology designed to allow the internet to continue growing after current systems reach their capacity.

But the internet is not ready. It’s hoped the 24-hour World IPv6 Day test will help concentrate minds at network operators, as a small percentage of users may be unable to reach their favourite websites.

The huge experiment is being run because the Internet Protocol itself – the fundamental set of rules that allows data to be transmitted the internet – is due to be updated from IPv4 to IPv6.

The change is required because IPv4 offers a limited and rapidly dwindling supply of IP addresses, the identifying numbers which are allocated to each computer or network connected to the internet. There are only 4.3 billion IPv4 addresses, compared to 340 trillion trillion trillion IPv6 addresses.

“It's as if the internet was originally designed with a limited number of telephone numbers, and we're soon going to run out,” Vint Cerf, a member of the team that built the forerunner of the internet, explained in January.

The new system should have more than enough capacity to serve existing demand in booming economies like China, and to foster future internet technologies worldwide..

The problem is that IPv4 and IPv6 communications are not compatible with each other: a home PC connected via IPv4 cannot access an IPv6 wevbsite, for example. So network operators need to make technical preparations to ensure users can access websites and other services via either. Some have not, however.
“In all likelihood, you won’t even notice the test,” Google assured users.
“The vast majority (99.95 per cent) of people will be able to access services without interruption: either they’ll connect over IPv6, or their systems will successfully fall back to IPv4."
But it warned there may be problems for a few tomorrow.
“However, as with any next-generation technology, there may be teething pains. We estimate that .05 per cent of systems may fail to fall back to IPv4, so some people may find Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Bing and other participating websites slow or unresponsive on World IPv6 Day.”
Google will enable IPv6 for its main websites including google.com and youtube.com, so that they are accessible via both IPv6 and IPv4, and has provided a page for users to test whether they are likely to experience problems.


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Top Three Things will struck you from Apple’s WWDC Announcements

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Just after Steve Jobs wrapped up his Worldwide Developer Conference Keynote, I had a chance to chat with The Wall Street Journal Digital Network’s Lauren Goode about what to take away from the big event.

This morning at Apple’s annual World Wide Developers Conference, CEO Steve Jobs and several other executives kicked off the event with a keynote that focused on iOS 5, OS X Lion and iCloud, the company’s “upcoming cloud services offering.”

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Apple's new iCloud service doesn't fully launch until the fall alongside iOS 5

While Apple's new iCloud service doesn't fully launch until the fall alongside iOS 5, the company has already rolled out a few small portions of the service to existing users. Among the additions are automatic downloads and listings of purchased content for easy redownloading. 


Automatic downloads allow users to set preferences to have newly-purchased content such as music, apps, and books automatically pushed to other devices. Users have individual control over the three different media types and can also specify whether or not content pushing should be limited to Wi-Fi connections only in order to save cellular bandwidth. Settings are available within the "Store" menu of the Settings application in iOS 4.3. 


Facilitating the re-download of previously purchased content are new "Purchased" listings found in the iTunes, App Store, and iBooks applications for iOS devices. The new listings provide users with easy access to listings of all items purchased on a given Apple ID, whether or not that content is currently on the device. Users can then easily obtain the previously-purchased content not currently installed. 
What about those who share their iTunes account with their family members? Any way to control what gets downloaded?
Apple is also in the process of releasing iTunes 10.3 for Mac OS X and Windows, an update that should bring the new iCloud capabilities to the Mac side of things. The new version is being advertised on Apple's iTunes site, but the actual download page is still showing iTunes 10.2.2 and Software Update is not yet offering the new version.


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