Day 2 of the New Zealand Computer Troubleshooters conference was full of very talented kiwis highlighting open source, retail shops/service centres, and job management systems. James Caldwell didn’t have to try very hard to remind us why we love AVG (especially when they sponsored the Friday night mini-golf/spit roast dinner/drinks/prizes & more drinks).
But the topic that really made me think was Storage Management, presented by Jeff Maslen. With credentials including HP, IBM and Ingram Micro, it’s great to see someone of that calibre at our conference. He was such an engaging speaker, that a lot of people walked out of the room saying ‘I don’t know what he was talking about, but I want one’. With Jeff warning that the days of direct attached storage (e.g. hard disks inside servers) are numbered, he advised us to get onboard with technologies such as iSCSI SANs etc, even in the SMB market. Now, I’ve always understood the reasons for SANS, Blade servers etc in the corporate world (where data volumes are huge and floor/rack/data centre space is limited AND expensive … but for SMBs? And when we talk SMB, we talk less than 30 PCs … more likely less than 10 PCs. Jeff has enough experience and knowledge for me not to dismiss his ideas completely, but instead make me interested enough to find out more and see just how SMB owners can be sold on the value of $10,000+ storage solutions. Not to mention the fact that I know his name from somewhere and it’s driving me crazy trying to figure out from where!
-SCuff