* Delving into Karp's mailbag
E-mail from readers is often interesting. Typically, what I get falls within one of three categories, which I tend to refer to as “screamers,” “askers” and “wise guys.”
“Screamers” – mostly, marketing managers from some vendor I did NOT mention in this column – spend most of their time pointing fingers at me and accusing me of only covering my clients and my friends. I point out to them that this is not the case (sure, sure), and that I often go to some length to ensure that all companies are fairly represented – vendors are always listed alphabetically (really? Yup, check it out); if I mention a client I also try to mention a non-client and give them the same amount of space (wow, he really is a good guy!), and so forth (but he still can’t date my sister).
Screamers are rarely convinced, however. The truth of the matter is that most of the companies I don’t talk about are companies that have never gotten around to briefing me. Lacking any effort on their part to provide information …
Group 2, the “askers” – usually IT folks with legitimate questions. These often spawn some terrific e-mail exchanges, and I have many pen pals from all over the world (due to translations, it turns out that I have become eloquent in languages I never even knew I spoke). I typically give over a large part of Friday mornings to this correspondence.
And then there are the “wise guys” – a group of readers who, if truth be told (as on occasion it is), really have some wisdom to share. They suggest interesting topics for me to write about, offer interesting commentary (and sometimes suggestions for my readers, which I often publish), and on many occasions catch me when I have erred. Over the past four years, my readers have really benefited from many of their contributions.
R., in California caught me making a misleading comment last week when I talked about Serial-attached SCSI and Serial ATA. He quoted my statement that with SATA and SAS, resellers will be building systems that move data on and off disks at twice the speed of the previous generation of machines that used parallel I/O. R., wrote: “My question is in regards to the speed you quoted. My understanding is that SAS drives operate at 300M byte/sec and current SCSI parallel technology is at 320M byte/sec. Am I in error? How does this result in off-disk rates for SAS at twice the rate of SCSI?”
R, unlike many Californians, was quite right, of course. The reference to doubled speed only applies to SATA right now, which goes from 1.5G-bit I/O to 3G-bit. The current 3 G-bit rate for SAS doesn’t get bumped up to 6G-bit until 2006 or 2007. I should have been clearer on that.
Correspondent Kasey, also a wise guy, liked the stories I did on the $400 storage-area network, but pointed out important issues that I completely neglected to mention. Given that many users of this equipment will be somewhat inexperienced in the ways of storage, Kasey’s issues were:
* Low-end storage usually requires host-based back-up software to complete a backup, which means that consumers will need to upgrade networks to Gigabit Ethernet to allow for a decent back-up window of under 20 hours. (I am not sure about this, but the back-up issue is not one to be taken lightly.)
* As small and midsize businesses store more data, it is important to impress on them the need for storage management – carve the storage into small sizes that fit their backup solution, apply good data policies that are enforced by management.
Two small points, but also rules to live by. And yes, Kasey, I will be writing much more on the data lifecycle.
You will note that members of the “wise guy” category are very much appreciated by this writer. Feel free to join them if the spirit moves you.
