Zerowait Corporation

Over the last few months a lot of customers have told us how much they appreciate our storage support solutions. As networks and storage grew in complexity and amount of storage under management, companies often found their support and maintenance costs getting out of control. But when times were good not many people cared about the spiraling costs of support and maintenance.

Times changed, now there is a recognized need to stretch infrastructure to get the most out of capacity and performance. While manufacturers typically want you to upgrade, many companies are now finding out that they can maintain their old equipment and get enough performance and capacity to get by if they use an alternative maintenance and support company.

Zerowait has a history of successful high availability support in networks and storage. We are now in our twentieth year in business, and have a reputation for excellence. Over the next quarter we will be introducing some new services based on the requests of our customers.

If your OEM won’t support your legacy equipment don’t be afraid, there is an alternative available that can provide you the support, parts and services you need to keep your High availability storage running reliably for many years.

It was inevitable, margins are shrinking in the router and switch business and they are still quite comfortable in servers and storage. Cisco will be entering the server business and I think they will quickly get into the enterprise storage business also. Silicon Valley Capitalism is entering another phase of creative destruction.

…. companies like Cisco see an opportunity to produce a new, potentially disruptive class of hardware and software management systems that span an entire data center. With customers looking to manage their data centers as a single entity rather than separate units, the world’s largest technology companies must now fight to secure the most prominent, central position possible.

Cisco’s newfound aspirations stretch well beyond the $50 billion server market to include management software and possibly even storage.

“Our vision is, how do we virtualize the entire data center?” Ms. Warrior said. “It is not about a single product. We will have a series of products that enable us to make that transition.”

We are living in interesting times.

For the last couple of days I have been in New England visiting with customers. The economy is on every one’s mind here, as are the arctic temperatures. Several clients are interested in how we can save them money on their storage infrastructure. There is a recognition that storage does not stop growing because the economy slows. Although, if there are fewer email recipients in a company, the pace of storage growth does seem to subside.

Yesterday I read about the Cloud Engines Pogoplug in the Wall Street Journal. And as I read the article I kept thinking how this device will make it harder to secure corporate data.

Some consumers like the idea of storing files with a Web service, so they can retrieve and share them while they are on the go. But they aren’t keen on the monthly fees some storage-services charge.

So a San Francisco startup called Cloud Engines Inc. has developed a way to do much the same thing with technology users keep at home. Just plug your computer’s external disk drive into the Pogoplug, a nondescript little gadget the company has developed, using a familiar USB connector. Another plug connects using an Ethernet cable to a user’s home router, which connects to the Internet. (The set-up allows the Pogoplug to be accessible to traveling users even when their PCs are not turned on). Once the device is installed, all the music, videos or other files on your hard drive are viewable through a Web browser.

Some external disk drives say they can do this now, but they require more setup, Cloud Engines says. And with Pogoplug, there are no monthly fees.

Imagine that you have a disgruntled employee who gets laid off because of the tough economic times. Articles already are pointing out that the disgruntled former employee may take your corporate data. Now all they will have to do is put it on the external drive or memory stick and there it is available on the web. Devices like the Pogoplug may finally spur corporations to encrypt their data, will they react before data thefts occur or after?

Imagine if your company, which survived the downturn in the market in 2008, was shut down because no one backed up the data which was the bread and butter of your company. It looks like a company has experienced this nightmare and is now going out of business.

JournalSpace lost all of its customer’s data and is out of business. I was tipped off by a friend who sent me this article.

The Dangers of Casual Information Backup
JournalSpace, which has been around for almost six years now as a prominent blogger website, is done. Due to a catastrophic data loss, either due to software error or malicious intent, the website managers have lost the entire contents of the blogs stored upon it. Alexa places JournalSpace at a rank of about 100,000 among websites, and with nearly 14,000 viewers per month, JournalSpace was a relatively high-traffic website. The data loss is impossible to correct and JournalSpace is effectively destroyed.

On a technical side, what occurred is still unclear. JournalSpace maintains their server on what is known as a RAID configuration, where everything written to one hard drive is ‘mirrored’ to the other drive in a duplicate image. So if the main storage unit breaks down, all the data is stored on another duplicate and it’s an easy enough job for an individual to simply switch over to the working drive. Most any computer can be configured for RAID with a minimum of effort.

JournalSpace had taken no other effort to back up their data other than constantly mirroring the drives. The damage that occurred then was not physical, but rather based in software. Whether due to a catastrophic operating system failure (OS X) or malicious intent, the contents of both drives have been completely overwritten. Akin to reformatting your hard drive, this means that the data is completely irretrievable.

Below is the content of the website and all it says now.

**************

Tuesday:

Journalspace is no more.

DriveSavers called today to inform me that the data was unrecoverable.

Here is what happened: the server which held the journalspace data had two large drives in a RAID configuration. As data is written (such as saving an item to the database), it’s automatically copied to both drives, as a backup mechanism.

The value of such a setup is that if one drive fails, the server keeps running, using the remaining drive. Since the remaining drive has a copy of the data on the other drive, the data is intact. The administrator simply replaces the drive that’s gone bad, and the server is back to operating with two redundant drives.

But that’s not what happened here. There was no hardware failure. Both drives are operating fine; DriveSavers had no problem in making images of the drives. The data was simply gone. Overwritten.

The data server had only one purpose: maintaining the journalspace database. There were no other web sites or processes running on the server, and it would be impossible for a software bug in journalspace to overwrite the drives, sector by sector.

The list of potential causes for this disaster is a short one. It includes a catastrophic failure by the operating system (OS X Server, in case you’re interested), or a deliberate effort. A disgruntled member of the Lagomorphics team sabotaged some key servers several months ago after he was caught stealing from the company; as awful as the thought is, we can’t rule out the possibility of additional sabotage.

But, clearly, we failed to take the steps to prevent this from happening. And for that we are very sorry.

So, after nearly six years, journalspace is no more.

If you haven’t yet, visit Dorrie’s Fun Forum; it’s operated by a long-time journalspace member. If you’re continuing your blog elsewhere, you can post the URL there so people can keep up with you.

We’re considering releasing the journalspace source code to the open source community. We may also sell the journalspace domain and trademarks. Follow us on twitter at twitter.com/jsupgrades for news.

*******

Every company has to judge what the value of a backup is, and what strategy they are going to use to maintain their backup. How much insurance is too much? What is your D/R plan?

Dell which has built systems for many smaller companies for years is rapidly expanding the service and support for the appliances it bulds for companies.

Katherine Bennett, Director, Dell EMEA ISG said: “This announcement today with Vordel is another example of Dell’s innovative approach of working with companies to enable them to achieve greater supply chain efficiencies, enhanced global support and ultimately, offer significant value to their customer base.”

What is interesting is that there are companies like Tallmaple that are making it easier and easier for companies to build appliance solutions based on their platform.

Creating an internet appliance typically takes your development team the better part of a year just to design, implement, and test the software elements. Significant time is spent handling the base operating system, build system, packaging, licensing, and manufacturing the product, and as new features are added they further extend the base appliance’s functionality.

It is interesting to see the convergence of these developments, where a company can use a development package to accelerate the development process and use Dell or a similar company to create the marketable product.

It is an interesting time and I think that there will be a lot of storage companies embracing this technology and convergence to create :
Storage
NAS and SAN Storage Servers
Database and Data Warehouse Network Appliances

There are quite a few articles in the news today about the vulnerability of corporate data in light of the downturn in the economy. One of the highlights was that former employees may try to use their downloaded information to try to secure a new position.

• More than half the workers surveyed who admitted to already downloading competitive corporate data said they would use it as a negotiating tool to secure their next post because they know the information will be useful to future employers.

This does not surprise me because one of the first things mentioned when a salesman is looking for a job is that he has a “Roladex of information of names and addresses”. It is still common that when a Senator or Congressman leaves office, they quickly get jobs with defense and government contractors, because of their contacts.

I recall hearing about a former VP at a big storage vendor that got a new job recently and was using his contact list to sign up new resellers, and also hiring sales people that had a great list so that they could quickly ramp up sales.

When a company hires a new CEO, they typically look for someone who can bring with them the trust relationships that are required to move a company forward.

I don’t think this is a new story, perhaps the technology has changed, but when folks leave they take data with them.

According to a press release this morning storage budgets are expected to decrease in 2009. It will be interesting to see what happens with acquisitions and maintenance budgets in 2009.

Fortune 1000 Enterprise Organizations to See 14% Decrease in 2009 Storage Budgets — New Research From TheInfoPro
Last update: 9:01 a.m. EST Dec. 18, 2008NEW YORK, NY, Dec 18, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) — TheInfoPro (TIP), www.theinfopro.net, an independent research network and leading supplier of market intelligence for the Information Technology (IT) industry, today announced new findings on 2009 storage budgets among Fortune 1000 (F1000) enterprises. According to this new research, the average F1000 organization is facing a 14% decrease in its 2009 budget.

In addition, 68% of companies expect to spend less in 2009 — with only 21% of those interviewed planning to spend more than $10M, an almost 10% drop from 2008. Financial Services continues to be a weak sector, with 68% of respondents expecting to decrease storage spending. However, 75% of Technology organizations and 63% of Manufacturers also cite significant declines in 2009 spending levels.

Key Findings include:
— Thirty-two percent (32%) spent less in 2008 as compared with the amount that had originally been budgeted, bringing the average 2008 spend to $10.7 million.
— Only 32% of clients expect to spend the same or more in 2009 vs. 2008
— down from 81% in the 2008 vs. 2007 period.
— The average 2009 budget cut vs. actual 2008 spending represents a 14% decrease.

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on the forecast for the chip business next year, and it is pretty grim.

Many semiconductor makers were suffering from plummeting prices and excess production capacity even before the recession’s impact began to be felt in September. Conditions appear to have worsened significantly through the fall.

Gartner forecast Tuesday a 4.4% drop in world-wide semiconductor revenue for the year, based on a sudden drop in orders that it expects to trigger a 24.4% plunge in revenue for the fourth quarter. In mid-November, the firm had projected industry revenue would grow 0.2% this year.
Gartner now expects revenue to decline 16.3% in 2009, marking the first time sales have fallen in back-to-back years for chip companies.

“It’s just like falling off a cliff,” said Amy Leong, a Gartner analyst, of the shift in order rates.

A survey of 85 semiconductor executives by KPMG, scheduled for release Wednesday, reinforces the pattern. The firm, which provides accounting and advisory services to chip makers, says 52% of those surveyed in November predicted revenue to fall in 2009.

Some 70% of the executives surveyed in November expect their companies to decrease their global work force in the next 12 months, and 48% see research and development spending falling.

Quite a few chip manufacturing companies and chip design companies have been our customers over the years, because modeling chips takes a lot of storage. Therefore, Zerowait has been working with chip companies for many years to support their storage infrastructures. During the last downturn in their market we helped a few of them weather the economic storms. It seems like industry is entering another rough period now, and we are working with some of them to help them through 2009.

2009 may be a hard time to be in the electronics commodity business.

“The key for a recovery in the global chip sector is demand, not supply. Unless the amount of global chip supply is cut to more than half from the current level, it looks hard to expect a turnaround in chip prices without a recovery in demand,” said Kim Hyun-joong, an analyst at Tong Yang Securities.

NetApp to close Haifa development center

Shmulik Shelah9 Dec 08 14:39
Network storage solutions provider NetApp Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP) is set to close its Israeli development center in Haifa, which has 60 employees. The center is based on start-up Topio, which NetApp acquired in 2006 for $160 million in cash.

The following article on the purchase of Topio was published on 11/08/2006. Times certainly have changed.

NetApp Grabs TopioDrops $160 million,
following EMC’s recent data protection pickupsNetwork Appliance moved to beef up its data protection software today by acquiring replication startup Topio for $160 million. (See NetApp Pockets Topio.)

Topio is NetApp’s answer to EMC’s $153 million pickup of replication and CDP startup Kashya last May. (See EMC Coughs Up for Kashya.) EMC plunked down another $165 million on data de-duplication vendor Avamar last week. (See EMC Picks Up Avamar.)
Topio’s Data Protection Suite (TDPS) enables replication between different vendors’ hardware, a capability NetApp plans to use to let customers replicate and migrate data from EMC, Hewlett-Packard, and Hitachi Data Systems arrays to its own. ……

Apparently, NetApp’s management sees an opportunity to grow a promising product line. “We can accelerate the growth of this technology,” Rogers says. “What’s most important is the development team. They come from the IBM mainframe world, and they’re good at doing efficient wide area replication.” Rogers says NetApp can put more resources into sales and developing future releases of the product that Topio would be able to on its own.

Regarding the value of Topio, one source with knowledge of the company says it was generating “a few million dollars” in revenue each quarter, mostly through a partnership with IBM Global Services, which is likely to continue under NetApp’s management. Topio had $21.1 million in funding over three rounds, with the last round of $8 mllion coming in April of 2005. (See Topio Taps $8M.)

“NetApp paid a lot,” says the source. “But they may have been feeling the pressure after EMC got Avamar.”
NetApp expects the deal to close in December. Rogers says Topio’s 60 employees, including founder and CEO Yoram Novick, will be offered jobs. NetApp will retain Topio’s R&D site in Haifa, Israel, and the employees in Topio’s Santa Clara, Calif., office will move to NetApp’s Sunnyvale office.

I wonder what happened to the promise of the technology, as it does not look like any employees were added in the last two years to the operations in Haifa.

UPDATE — 12/11/08
NetApp discontinues replication app December 9th, 2008 by Dave Raffo
NetApp today quietly pulled the plug on its SnapMirror for Open Systems (SMOS) heterogeneous data replication software, acquired from startup Topio for $160 million in 2006.