Deceit, Theft, Espionage, and Murder in the Storage Industry

July 22, 2011

A few years back I wrote a series of Blog posts describing some little known facts about our always interesting Storage industry.  Since Whitey Bulger (see part 4) is back in the news I thought I would dig these out for some fun summer reading and re-post them here.

Part 1:  http://communities.netapp.com/community/netapp-blogs/drdedupe/blog/2009/07/16/deceit-theft-espionage-and-murder-in-the-storage-industry–a-4-part-blog

Part 2:  [...]

What Is Policy-Based Storage Management?

May 20, 2011

In prior blogs I’ve stressed the fact that cloud-enabled storage requires policies to make the best use of your storage resources.  In this blog I’ll dig a little deeper into what I mean by this.

First, let’s define some storage attributes that could be used to create your policies.

1) Growth - When I [...]

Too Much Information

May 5, 2011

Over the past 30 years, online storage capacity grew from about 10GB to well over 100TB for the average IT shop, 10,000X growth during that period.  Expanding this math out over the next 30 years, We can expect to see the average data center storing 1 million TB’s, or 1 exabyte by 2040.

Will we be able [...]

Infosmack Prognostications

April 27, 2011

I recently appeared as a guest on an Infosmack weekly podcast.  Greg Knieriemen hosted the cast, and joining me were fellow data storage authors Marc Farley and W. Curtis Preston.  After the usual banter, we got down to the business of making some storage industry predictions.  I (of course) took the opportunity to get on [...]

Who Cares About Metering and Chargeback?

March 22, 2011

In my last post, I talked about 5 building blocks of the cloud, taken from the book “Cloud Storage for Dummies.”  As a reminder, these were:

Elastic, quickly adapting underlying infrastructure to changing subscriber demands SLA-driven, automated and integrated to provide swift response times Policy-based, with deep levels of automation to move data as [...]

Fun Facts

01/20/2012 — Storex CEO Eugen Pavel says his 2nm lithography will someday store 100 Exabytes on one platter (25 million 4TB HDDs)
12/16/2012 — Looking for a gift for your storage brain? How about the FlashHarp? Combination 2GB flash drive and harmonica
11/04/2011 — Friday Fun Fact - Disk drive shipments are set to plummet by 48 million units in the wake of recent flooding in Thailand
10/28/2011 — Friday Fun Fact - Researchers in Singapore believe that table salt is the magic ingredient that will lead to 20TB disk drives.
10/21/2011 — Data coming in from Occupy Wall Street shows that while 29% use Twitter regularly, 74% are YouTube viewers
10/14/2011 — Friday Fun Fact - Social media analysts looking at mountains of data from Occupy Wall Street see growing chatter about a Nov 5 "action day"
10/7/2011 — Steve Jobs chose a single button mouse because "3 button mouse users kept looking at the mouse instead of the screen"
09/30/2011 — This year marks the 40th anniversary of the floppy drive. Released in 1971, the IBM 23FD stored 81.6KB of data.
09/23/2011 — The VCR turns 35 this month! JVC HR-3300 released on Sept 9, 1976 - sold for $1,400. Wonder if the tapes are still good?
09/16/2011 — The number of HDD vendors has gone from 200 to just 3: Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba
09/09/2011 — As a direct result of 9/11, IT departments now spend 39% of their budgets on back-end recovery systems.
09/02/2011 — According to fmr Seagate CTO, in 2020 a two-disk, 2.5-inch disk drive will store more than 14 TB and cost about $40
08/26/2011 — State CIO’s report that 30-50% of their IT employees will be eligible for retirement within the next 5 years
08/19/2011 — According to IDC, there are an estimated 1 trillion devices connected to the Internet.
08/12/2011 — Millenniata has designed a DVD that will survive for 1,000 years. But who will be making DVD readers in the year 3,000? We're betting on Apple......
07/29/2011 — Martin Hilbert of USC estimates that the world contained 295 exabytes of information in 2007, doubling every 3 years
07/22/2011 — Friday Fun Fact: US Government plans to shutter 800 data centers by 2015, adopt a “Cloud First” strategy, according to www.cio.gov
07/15/2011 — Data deduplication was first conceived in a 1996 patent filed by Ross Williams. Today he runs carbonplanet.com
07/08/2011 — Thomas Watson's infamous IBM quote "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers" was apparently never uttered.
07/01/2011 — Friday Fun Fact: When deployed in 2008, Yahoo’s Hadoop Webmap contained 10,000 server cores, 300TB of storage, and 1 Trillion links.
06/24/2011 — Friday Fun Fact - Dartmouth president John Kemeny escaped Hungary in 1940 then co-developed BASIC and the timesharing computer aka #Cloud
06/17/2011 — The Data Encryption Standard (DES) has 72 quadrillion keys, but was cracked in 23 hours by Deep Crack and is no longer considered secure.
06/10/2011 — About Apple’s iCloud iDataCenter, Steve Jobs says “We’re serious about this.” At $1Billion - we’d agree…
06/03/2011 — Friday Fun Fact – Seagate says HAMR should lead the way to 100 TB disk drives and possibly 200 – 300 TB by 2025
05/27/2011 — According to Forbes, Wikileaks’ servers are housed in the world’s most secure data center – a Swedish nuclear bunker.
05/20/2011 — Friday Fun Fact - HDD r/w heads fly 3 nanometers above the disk surface, will collide with any fingerprints accidentally left behind.
05/13/2011 — The IBM 2321 storage device was also called the “noodle picker” - its removable magnetic strips resembled lasagna.
05/06/2011 — Reported data breaches dropped from 144M in 2009 to only 4M in 2010, this year’s report covers 700+ data breaches, the largest caseload to date.
04/29/2011 — Friday Fun Fact – In 1996, #Seagate co-founder Alan Shugart attempted to place his own dog Ernest on the ballot for Congressman.
04/22/2011 — Friday Fun Fact – Internship from hell - 800,000 SSN’s lost when intern leaves backup tape in car overnight
04/08/2011 — 28-year-old Seagate harddrive pulled from attic and booted up. The oldest working drive?
04/01/2011 — Oracle buys NFL and NBA, will combine. NFL complains of 82 game season - CEO says "man up"
03/25/2011 — The workaround for HDD's "stiction" problem was to bang the drive against a hard surface!
03/11/2011 — CFO says within 3 to 5 years, every product that Seagate sells will have a hybrid option
03/04/2011 — In 1965, Western Union produced a detailed description of cloud computing
02/28/2011 — Thought floppies were obsolete? Listen to Phantom of the Floppera
02/18/2011 — By Day 3, the question wasn't if Watson would win but how could it have gotten 3 answers wrong?
02/11/2011 — Who needs Wikileaks - the U.S. government has 308,857 datasets in public view
02/05/2011 — IBM Watson takes on Jeopardy champions, with 15 TB of data - roughly 1 million books
01/28/2011 — The U.S. government recently discovered 1,000 data centers it didn't know it had
01/21/2011 — Infinite storage capacity for applications is just around the corner!
01/14/2011 — The term "filer" was first used by Sun Admins when they set up NFS Print and File servers
01/07/2011 — Usenet claims the largest storage network with 10K servers & 60K newsgroups creating 5TB data daily
12/24/2010 — Extensive data analysis predicts people in cold climates are more likely to have a white Christmas
12/03/2010 — "Storage virtualization" was coined by Xiotech a decade ago, back when SANs were "slow to take off"
11/26/2010 — Budtool, a clever product name, was an acronym for Back Up Daemon
11/19/2010 — Roger Wheeler, CEO of Telex, is still the only storage exec I know that was executed by the mob
11/12/2010 — CO disk drive co. has the unfortunate legacy of shipping ""bricks"" instead of disks to boost sales
11/05/2010 — TV instant replay is based on an Ampex disk recorder tested in 1965
10/29/2010 — The world's first disk drive - 4.4 MB, leased by IBM for $35,000 per year
10/22/2010 — How many bytes in the human brain?

Brain Teasers

12/16/2012 — What is the data storage capacity of NASA'a Curiosity Mars Rover?
Answer: ???
10/21/2011 — What company holds the distinction for twice being the first to ship a 1GB disk drive? Hint: the drives were shipped 11 years apart.
Answer: In 1980, IBM released the first GB drive, the 3380. At $40,000, this drive was targeted at their most elite customers. Eleven years later, in 1991, IBM shipped the 1GB Corsair drive, setting the capacity standard for small form factor HDD's. — Read more...
10/14/2011 — Storage Brain Teaser – What is the largest single-rack storage capacity available today? Hint…its really big.
Answer: At least 2 vendors (Aberdeen and Racktop) recently rolled out 1 Petabyte single-rack storage arrays. Comprised of some 300-odd 3TB drives – these arrays pack a lot of capacity. Look for more arrays in this range as 4TB and 5TB HDD hit the streets. — Read more...
10/07/2011 — What unusual storage device was used in Steve Jobs’ NeXT Computer?
Answer: The NeXT Computer featured a 256MB Magneto-Optical removable disk drive instead of a traditional hard drive, although a traditional HDD was available as an option. — Read more...
09/30/2011 — Can you name the person credited with the invention of the floppy drive?
Answer: David Noble led an IBM team that developed an 8” flexible diskette holding 81.6 KB of data. The original disk was bare, but dirt was a problem so they enclosed it in a plastic envelope lined with fabric. — Read more...
09/23/2011 — Can you name the company that once used VHS drives as backup devices?
Answer: Megatape Corporation had success in the late 70s with their “MT” line of tape backup devices, ranging from 150MB to 750MB. Exabyte’s 2.3GB tape drive, however, quickly made the VHS format obsolete. — Read more...
09/16/2011 — What is the data storage capacity of the US Postal Service? Answer correctly and we’ll mail you a prize!
Answer: The USPS has 17 petabytes of storage capacity, equivalent to 46,000 years of songs on an MP3 player. In addition, they have a total inventory of 939 applications with 478 classified as national applications. Of those, 275 are business critical — Read more...
09/09/2011 — Can you name two big storage trade shows that became casualties of the post 9/11 era?
Answer: Networld+Interop in Atlanta and Comdex in Las Vegas couldn’t survive the double blow of 9/11 and the dot-com bust. These once-vibrant events have been replaced by the smaller, more focused trade shows of today. — Read more...
09/03/2011 — What CEO once regrettably remarked “We just leapfrogged NetApp with this Zetta acquisition.”
Answer: Christopher Calisi, CEO of Overland Storage, was a little giddy after the acquisition of Zetta in 2005. But history shows that the product based on this bold prediction (the “Ultamus”) never leapfrogged anyone and Calisi was ousted within a year. — Read more...
08/26/2011 — What is the online storage capacity of Apple’s new iCloud data center?
Answer: The iCloud data center reportedly has over 12,000 Terabytes of storage capacity. Analysis of photos and general speculation sparked rumors that Teradata, NetApp, and EMC all had units parked in the iCloud. — Read more...
08/19/2011 — What company pioneered HSM infinite storage systems before being purchased by EMC in 1993?
Answer: Epoch Systems recognized that data growth was a problem and migration to optical media was the answer. However, the price of optical media never dropped much lower than hard disks, making HSM impractical. Epoch was purchased by EMC for $140M. — Read more...
07/29/2011 — Where did the term “cloud computing” originate, describing a magical place to store data?
Answer: The term Cloud Computing was apparently first documented in a 1997 paper called “Intermediaries in Cloud-Computing” by Dr. Ramnath Chellappa, a professor at Emory University. As mentioned in his bio “He suggested that this would be a new computing paradigm where the boundaries of computing will be determined by economic rationale rather than technical limits alone." Unfortunately, we’ve been unable to retrieve this document from the Cloud…if anyone has access to Dr. Chellappa’s paper, storage-brain would love to post it in our library! — Read more...
07/22/2011 — According to Scientists, what is the total digital storage capacity of all the information in the world today?
Answer: According to a study published on February 10, 2011 by USC, looking at both digital memory and analog devices, the researchers calculated that in 2007, humankind was able to store at least 295 exabytes of information. But…the study also mentioned that this capacity doubles every 3 years and 4 months – taking the total around 590 exabytes today. Here is a short video that discusses the USC study in more detail: http://www.vimeo.com/19779116 — Read more...
07/15/2011 — What data storage company executive is Whitey Bulger accused of "erasing" in 1981?
Answer: Roger Wheeler, CEO of Telex Computer Products, was the storage industry executive who was gunned down (purportedly) by a member of Whitey Bulger’s Winter Hill gang, or perhaps by Whitey himself? Wheeler had partnered with ex-IBMer Steven Jatras to produce plug-compatible disk and tape drives for IBM mainframe computers. Although this got him into a little hot water with IBM – it was nothing compared to the trouble that Bulger allegedly caused when Wheeler decided to invest in some Jai-Alai frontons in Florida and Connecticut. I wrote about this infamous storage industry event in a blog a few years back (http://communities.netapp.com/community/netapp-blogs/drdedupe/blog/2009/08/14/deceit-theft-espionage-and-murder-in-the-storage-industry--part-4) – since Whitey is captured and back in the news again this might make for some interesting summer reading. — Read more...
07/08/2011 — What tape drive rocked the industry in 1990 with a capacity 15x higher than anyone else?
Answer: Exabyte’s model Exb-8200 tape drive rocked the storage world with a 2.2GB compact tape format. At the time the dominant tape formats were large reel-to-reel rackmount models and the 150MB quarter-inch cartridge (QIC). The Exb-8200 was based on Sony’s “Data8” 8mm video tape format and set the stage for a later high density tape format battle between 8mm, DLT, and LTO cartridges.
06/24/2011 — What company first demonstrated the time sharing computer system in 1962? (the precursor to #Cloud)
Answer: The answer to this week’s brain teaser is Bolt Beranek and Newman, otherwise known as BBN Technologies. Credited with sending the first email (apparently the very first email message was “QWERTY — Read more...
06/17/2011 — Who invented the AES encryption standard, and what year did the US government approve it.
Answer: The Rijndael encryption alogrithim was developed by Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen and approved by the US Government in 2002. — Read more...
06/10/2011 — What is the origin of the word “Byte?”
Answer: This week’s teaser should have been an easy one for any of you programmers out there. The term Byte was coined by Dr. Werner Buchholz at IBM in July 1956, during the early design phase for the IBM Stretch computer. A Byte is generally acknowledged to be 8 bits in length, as opposed to the Nibble (4 bits) or Word (16 or 32 bits). Octet can be used interchangeably with Byte to remove any ambiguity, since no standard Byte length is actually defined. — Read more...
06/03/2011 — Can you name one of the two emerging technologies that threaten to replace #Flash memory?
Answer: Anyone watching trends in solid-state storage should have been able to answer last week’s teaser without breaking a sweat: 1) HP plans to ship memristor memory in 2013. Like flash, memristors are nonvolatile – they "remember" their state when power isn't applied to them. HP claims that memristors achieve speeds 10 times that of flash at one-tenth the power budget per cell. They can also be stacked, enabling exceptionally dense memory structures. 2) A little further back on the drawing board, Intel’s Phase-Change Memory (PCM) hopes to achieve write throughput speeds faster than NAND and with lower latency. Since PCM has no separate erase step, it chould deliver significant write performance improvement over NOR and NAND flash. There are a few other memory technologies in the experimental stage, such as Spin Torque Transfer RAM (STTRAM) and nanomagnets, but at least for now, memristor and PCM show the greatest promise as a replacement for Flash.. More info can be found on the Storage-Brian links below: — Read more...
05/27/2011 — Storage-Brain Teaser: What is the world’s oldest known storage device? Hint: It has nothing to do with computers.
Answer: We had quite a few responses this week, but none of them quite hit the mark. Cave wall paintings and etchings, while the earliest form of recorded history, cannot be considered storage devices (nor can the “pocket”.) Credit for the earliest storage device goes to the Kish Tablet, discovered in Iraq and thought to be the world’s oldest known written document. Dated to 3500 BC, this Sumerian limestone tablet has survived for over 5,500 years and although readable is composed of undeciphered pictographs, Later, the Sumerians used clay tablets that were scribed in Cuneiform using reeds. These clay tablets still exist today after 5,000 years and were the basis of the World’s first libraries. For more info, click the Wikipedia links below… — Read more...
05/20/2011 — What company invented Flash memory and how did it get it name? Make a guess - we’ll announce winners next week.
Answer: Flash memory was invented by Dr. Fujio Masuoka while working for Toshiba circa 1980. The name "flash" was suggested by Dr. Masuoka's colleague, Mr. Shoji Ariizumi, because the erasure process of the memory contents reminded him of a camera's flash.
05/13/2011 — Who is widely known as the father of the disk drive?
Answer: Reynold B. Johnson — Read more...
05/06/2011 — In Infosmack Podcast #96, Larry twice mentioned a fundamental trait of all human beings. What was it?
Answer: We are lazy. — Read more...
04/22/2011 — What 3 letter acronym describes the required commands that every SCSI storage device must follow?
Answer: CCS - Common Command Set — Read more...
04/04/2011 — What company did Diane Greene and Mendel Rosenblum launch in 1999, and what stealth company is she involved with now?
Answer: After building VMware into an irresistible force in the industry, Diane Greene was replaced by current CEO Paul Maritz. Diane disappeared for a few years but recently surfaced with networking startup Nicira — Read more...
03/11/2011 — In 1992, the worlds first terabyte data warehouse system was announced. Name: 1) The company that needed it? 2) The company that delivered it?
Answer: 1) Wal-Mart and 2) Teradata — Read more...
02/18/2011 — What was the name of the $500M Storage Service Provider that imploded in 2003, and who was the ex-EMC'er who founded it and became the first CEO?
Answer: Storage Networks Inc., otherwise known as SNI. This company was a darling of dot-com era investors when ex-EMC'er Peter Bell took the company public in July 2000 at a price of $90 per share. — Read more...
02/04/2011 — What is the magnitude of onboard working memory capacity growth (10X, 50X, etc) from the original NES to the current Wii consoles?
Answer: Today's Wii (512MB) has 256,000 times more onboard working memory than the NES system of 1984 (2KB). — Read more...
01/21/2011 — In 1990, IBM proposed an alternate SAN standard to FCP, but it failed to gain popularity. What competing SAN protocol did IBM invent?
Answer: Serial Storage Architecture (SSA)
01/07/2011 — What two companies dominated the ESDI and SCSI host controller market in the 80s?
Answer: ESDI and SCSI host controller market was dominated in the 80s and 90s by Emulex and Adaptec
12/23/2010 — What was the memory capacity in each of the Apollo 11's two guidance computers?
Answer: The computers each had 2048 words of erasable magnetic core memory and 36 kilowords of read-only core rope memory. The memory word length was 16 bits — Read more...
12/16/2010 — How did Flash Memory get its name?
Answer: Flash memory was invented by Dr. Fujio Masuoka circa 1980. The name "flash" was suggested by Dr. Masuoka's Toshiba colleague, Mr. Shoji Ariizumi, because the erasure process of the memory contents reminded him of the flash of a camera — Read more...
12/10/2010 — Hitachi Data Systems introduced its TagmaStore announcement in 2004.  Where did the name TagmaStore get its roots?
Answer: At time of launch in 2004, HDS execs said the "TagmaStore" name comes from the Greek word "tagma," which means to put in order
12/03/2010 — In 1993, Sun Microsystems released their first storage array controller with a whopping 31.5GB capacity. Can you name this highly successful product?
Answer: SPARCStorage Array 100 series — Read more...
11/26/2010 — Legato released its revolutionary 2nd product, Networker, in the late 1980s. Can you name their first product?
Answer: PrestoServe — Read more...
11/19/2010 — 1) What caused disk drive outgassing? 2) What did outgassing do to effect disk drive reliability?
Answer: High temperatures can cause offtrack errors due to thermal tilt of the disk stack and actuator, or even cause head crashes due to outgassing spindle and voice-coil motor lubricants. This was a big problem in the 1990s! — Read more...
11/12/2010 — The 3.5" disk drive is the most popular format used in enterprise storage today. What company invented this format?
Answer: A Scottish company called Rodime — Read more...
11/05/2010 — What was the world's first random-access storage device?
Answer: The Williams Tube CRT Memory Storage Unit - 1946

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