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Information Management

How Can I Use Thin Provisioning Safely?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteandSwitch.com 10.19.2007
Thin provisioning is a great new technology that promises to increase storage utilization and lower both capital and operational costs. However, there are some dangers inherent to thin provisioning that storage and server administrators should be aware of.

How Are RAID Level Choices Made?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 10.19.2007
RAID levels not only apply the appropriate level of protection for data, they also have a tremendous effect on the performance of most applications. There are some effective practices guidelines, but each application in each organization must be analyzed to ensure adherence to business impact and performance metrics developed by the business and technical groups.

How Can I Get Backup Data Under Control?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 08.22.2007
As most storage administrators are painfully aware, business units and application owners typically dictate retention periods for their data. We are all also very much aware of the headaches and additional expense that accompany long-term retention of backup data -- the capacity and logistical costs associated with this process can be staggering.

What to Consider When Creating Storage to Support Exchange?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 08.22.2007
Microsoft Exchange (2003 especially) is a very unique application from an enterprise storage perspective. Exchange can be I/O intensive, but it is definitely a response-time sensitive application.

Should I Set Benchmarks for My Storage Environment?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 06.07.2007
Infrastructure benchmarks are an important metric to develop, understand, and maintain in an enterprise environment. Benchmarking for storage can be complex, since the data path for large enterprise applications is typically comprised of multiple systems, each with its own contributions to performance, bandwidth, and latency. Having a repeatable process to create storage environment benchmarks enables you to maintain a successful tiered-storage environment.

How Can I Best Measure Performance in My Storage Environment?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 06.07.2007
IOPS (input/output operations per second) is an industry-standard way of measuring disk performance. Every storage administrator should have a documented process in place to monitor and track IOPS metrics.

How to Develop a Practical Storage Model
Alan Grantham, Solutions Architect
InfoStor Magazine 05.01.2007
Is your storage growth out of control, and are your storage purchases unpredictable? Do your vendors just tell you to “buy more storage” to fix storage capacity issues? If the answer to any of these is yes – which is not uncommon – your storage is on the way to becoming a business beast. Alan Grantham, solutions architect, provides valuable guidance on how to control and develop a practical storage model.

How Do I Boost Response Time?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteandSwitch.com 04.17.2007
Simply adding storage capacity is rarely a successful solution for disk response time issues. Most often, response time problems are caused by volume configuration issues and lack of bandwidth. However, in some cases, adding additional disks can improve response time due to the additional spindle count.

What is the Best Way to Implement File Virtualization?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 04.17.2007
Virtualization has been quite the buzzword in the storage industry recently. There are several virtualization mechanisms available to the storage consumer today. These options span not only operational platforms but also storage platforms and storage types. Are you prepared to implement? There are several concerns that should be addressed.

Archiving: When & How?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 03.16.2007
The question facing the storage manager today is not “Should I archive data?” but “How do I archive data?” There are a range of options, but as with every strategic infrastructure decision, the true solution is a combination of policy, process, and infrastructure.

Which Data Protection is Best?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 03.16.2007
There are certainly a plethora of data protection options available, running the gamut from tape backup to intra-array cloning and snapshotting. The cost and complexity of these technologies varies widely.

Managing Your Organization’s (Information) Assets
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
Computer Technology Review 03.08.2007
Effective information storage management boils down to a company’s definitively understanding and paying attention to the four phases of its information’s metamorphosis: Creation, Access, Retention and Deletion (“CARD”). James e. Geis, director of integrated solutions development for Forsythe Technology Inc., explains how to ensure that critical information assets are treated in a way that storage is secure and recoverable.

Protecting Your Information Assets: The Crossroads of Data Storage and Data Security
Pamla Fredericks, Director, Security Advisory Services
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
Information Storage and Security Journal 02.28.2006
Ever since the introduction of Open Systems into the data center, a problem has been brewing. Too often, the storage environment isn’t seen as an area with security considerations. Until recently, corporate security policies rarely considered the data center storage environment; sometimes there was no real link between the two. Security was managed at the operating system level or within applications, and a storage location was seen as purely a physical hardware issue with little bearing on user access or security controls.

Are Certifications Valuable for Storage Administrators?
Tim Arland, Storage Architect
ByteAndSwitch.com 02.07.2007
Certifications have been a controversial subject for IT professionals. Are they badges of honor won through hard work and expert knowledge? Or are they meaningless pieces of paper used to bolster resumes in the eyes of recruiters?

What’s the Buzz I’m Hearing About RAID 6?
Tim Arland, Storage Architect
ByteAndSwitch.com 02.07.2007
Raid 6 is a relatively new data protection architecture becoming more readily available from mainstream storage vendors. Raid 6 is another implementation of the long-standing method of configuring disks in redundant “arrays”.

Is the Time Right for Virturalization?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 01.03.2007
From servers to networking to storage, development and introduction of virtual environments is spreading like wildfire. Storage virtualization can be tempting, but be sure to execute a detailed cost-benefit analysis to fully understand how much your current environment and data management policies can leverage storage virtualization.

Does De-Duplication Have Drawbacks?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 12.05.2006
Tim Arland, principal consultant for Forsythe Solutions discusses data de-duplication technology.

What’s the Key to Excellent Encryption?
Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 12.05.2006
Tim Arland, principal consultant for Forsythe Solutions provides tips for efficient encryption.

What’s the Best Way to Set Up Tiered Storage?

Tim Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions
ByteAndSwitch.com 11.10.2006
Tim Arland, principal consultant for Forsythe Solutions defines the requirements that drive storage infrastructure development.

The Convergence of VolP and Storage
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
Storage Networking World Online 05.15.2006
“You’ve got mail” can mean many things now. Is it e-mail? Is there voicemail in your e-mail box? The postman is often ringing twice as consumer demand for message accessibility has increased over the last several years. The technical requirements for convergence have led to an increased dependence on storage delivery over the IP network.

Building an Information Management Framework
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Department
Storage Management Solutions 01.01.2006
Building the information management framework is an organizational exercise that should encompass all levels of the corporation, including the boardroom, management, end users, customers, system administrators, and application developers. Instead of starting with technology and backing it into what you need to manage information, develop policy that will trickle down and dictate usage.

Electronic Message Archiving and Risk Management
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
Risk Management 09.01.2005
By proactively taking controls of electronic messaging before a problem occurs, your business can reap cost benefits as well as the benefits of more secure information, and, thus, a more secure reputation.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Building Tiered Storage
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
InfoStor 08.10.2005
Taking the right steps in the right order can make the difference between a tiered storage architecture that truly meets your business needs and a lot of unnecessary frustration. Although the precise order for some of these steps will vary from one organization to another, the following is a good working plan for most businesses. It adheres to the information management hierarchy of addressing policy decisions first, followed by management, operations, and technology.

Acronym Soup: BCP, DR, EBR… What Does It All Mean?
Michael Croy, Director, Business Continuity Solutions
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
Disaster Recovery 07.01.2005
With all the terms and abbreviations being used today regarding risk management – BCP, DR, EBR, RPO, RTO, SLA, etc. – a conversation about data protection and risk mitigation sounds like a bowl of acronym soup And this stew of confusion is peppered with an urgent sense that such matters need to be addressed PDQ. In fact, major technology decisions are currently being made in an attempt to respond to pressing issues. But, at the same time, many still ask, “What does this all really mean? Why are people trying to sell me on a business continuity plan when we already have a solid disaster recovery solution in place?”

Guidelines for Effective E-mail Archiving

James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
InfoStor 07.01.2005
No matter what is driving your organization’s need for electronic message management (e.g., compliance regulations, cost management, growth, risk management, or controlling information security) you will automatically reap the benefits of addressing all, plus a few more, by integrating e-mail archiving tools.

Recovery: The Only Reason for Backup
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
CIO.com 02.04.2005
While recovery may not be a new reason to backup information, it remains the only reason for backing up information. Unless information can be recovered with pinpoint accuracy within a certain time frame, the whole backup paradigm is useless and an organization could suffer significantly.

How to Build a Tiered Storage Infrastructure
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
InfoStor 01.01.2005
Building a tiered storage infrastructure is not an overwhelming exercise as long as you start with the end goal in mind: Keep important, transactional information on high-end storage and less-important, less frequently accessed information on lower-performing, cheaper storage for the long-term.

Inside ILM
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
Storage 01.01.2005
Information lifecycle management (ILM) has become a familiar acronym in storage, but storage professionals aren’t buying into it with much enthusiasm. Despite the hype surrounding ILM, or maybe because of it, storage managers aren’t just in a quandary about their next move – in many cases, they simply don’t know where to start.

The ILM Socialization Experiment
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
Storage Management Solutions 09.01.2004
The IT industry has yet another nebulous acronym stirring fear, uncertainty and doubt among C-level executives and IT managers across the globe: Information Lifecycle Management (ILM). There is no clear-cut way to approach ILM from an enterprise-wide standpoint. Companies need to socialize their organizations to understand the importance of their approach to ILM.

Ten Ways to Drive ILM
James E. Geis, Director, Integrated Solutions Development
Computerworld 06.22.2004
Jim Geis, Forsythe’s director of system solutions and services, outlines effective practices for companies to manage information so it’s protected, deliverable, organized, and usable to ensure compliance – even as industry and government refine the details of information lifecycle management (ILM).