VMware Partner Exchange (PEX) is the premier industry event geared towards accelerating partners’ businesses in Cloud computing. There were hundreds of technical sessions, exhibitors, demos and boot camps. EMC’s partner boot camp was standing room only. Chad Sakac (@sakacc) kicked things off with a fantastic two hour keynote highlighting the latest EMC and VMware solutions ...

As many of you may know, back in 2009 EMC’s archiving solution, EmailXtender, was replaced with a next generation archiving solution, EMC SourceOne, a generalized object platform that supports archiving for email as well as Microsoft SharePoint and file system data. And, as with any newly architected solution, customers move to the new platform by ...

Calling all partners! VMware Partner Exchange (PEX) 2012 Feb 12 -16 in Las Vegas offers a fantastic conference to accelerate your business and learn how VMware and VMware Partners solutions can transform your customers’ data centers for new levels of efficiencies and cost savings. Don’t gamble by missing this conference – register today! A few ...

Every Moo Down in Moo-ville Liked tape backups a lot… But the Grinch, Who lived just north of Moo-ville, Did NOT! The Grinch hated tape backups! He considered it treason! Now, some might ask why. But there’s not just one reason. It could be that he hated working all through the night. It could be, ...

You don’t know what you don’t know… I’d like to say that in the world of backup and recovery ignorance is bliss, but it’s not. What we don’t know about our backup environments today will – just as we can’t avoid the tax man – come back to bite us down the road. The problem ...

I am sleeping much better lately, but that’s because I recently purchased a new mattress. We all know a good night’s sleep is critical for good health and a productive mind. But, as much as I would like to believe that getting a new mattress will solve all your sleeping woes, the reality is unless ...

What a fantastic week I’m having! First, I see a great IDC paper that highlights the OPEX benefits of EMC NetWorker, detailing how users are protecting 1TB of data with just a .5 (!) full time employee (FTE). Now, that’s awesome stuff! Talk about putting more money back in the IT coffers. Then, I need ...

They can send a man to the moon and millions of phone calls across a fiber optic strand the width of a human hair, so why is it so difficult to backup/recover data on desktop and laptop PCs? Increasing amounts of unstructured data, ubiquitous wireless networks and a growing mobile workforce means lots of remote ...

I thought I was done with TSM. And just when you think you are out, they pull you back in. Only in this case I am being pulled back in by some feedback from a colleague on my previous column. I didnt want to relegate his input to a comment where it wouldn’t get adequate ...

Although report cards can strike fear in the hearts of many, we got one this summer that went right on the fridge! CRN’s annual report card (ARC) came out in August and for the second year running, EMC has earned the industry’s highest marks in the backup and recovery software category. The award is just ...

I thought I would wrap up my thoughts on TSM, for now, by talking briefly about two things TSM users are typically concerned about: migrating TSM clients and getting off TSM. The first one of these is something we talked about just recently. And I think I covered off the easiest way to move to ...

VMware vSphere 5 is a major release that brings a wide range of improvements and new capabilities – ideal for virtualizing mission-critical applications. These include up to 32 virtual CPUs with 1 TB of RAM, VM high availability and better security. As you undergo your IT transformation, it’s time to evaluate current storage platforms and ...

It’s no secret that DBAs crave the rapid backup/restore capabilities of disk but often settle for tape for long-term retention requirements. But the question is, why? While Oracle RMAN has significantly improved the efficiency and ease of backup and recovery of Oracle environments, as Oracle databases continue to grow in size, the number of users ...

EMC backup and recovery has had an exciting year of announcements and we’re not done yet. In January, we delivered Data Domain systems that established new performance benchmarks that remain standing today.  In April, IDC released a study that shows the Purpose Built Backup Appliance market is growing at 16.6% CAGR and that EMC is ...

In my last post, we took a look at the results of running Data Domain Boost on an application server versus on a storage node in a 2TB Exchange 2010 mailbox environment. The results painted a very pretty backup picture, showing a significant reduction in the backup window (i.e., the time it took to complete the ...

In my last post, I walked through what VMware’s Changed Block Tracking (CBT) enables from a VM protection standpoint and how – at a high level – EMC Avamar takes advantage of the API. Now, let’s dig a little deeper and look at how backup software integrates with VMware’s vStorage API for Data Protection. Remember, ...

  There’s an interesting phenomenon going on in IT environments today. The same virtualization initiatives that have saved us significant time, money and space across our data centers are now costing us confidence and sweat on the backup side of the house. Ensuring your vital business data is protected and available requires backup processes that ...

The issue isn’t how fast your tape drives are, but how fast you can get to the data when you need it. Tape has always provided the most inexpensive, yet accessible, storage available for batch backups, disaster recovery, and long-term archives, but it has had its limitations (e.g., issues with mechanical components wearing down over ...

In a recent post, EMC product marketing manager Caitlin Moore highlighted the important benefits of Data Domain’s integration with EMC Avamar and EMC NetWorker. But if you’re like me words are great, but demos are even better! You see, I’m a numbers kind of guy. So, with this in mind, I want to share some ...

At VMworld this week, IT got a good glimpse into the future of VMware and the journey that lies before us as we continue to extend virtualization across our data centers to more servers, more applications and more desktops. And there was lots of discussion (too much to share in any one blog) about what ...