Toronto Storage Networking 2008
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008
International Centre- Aviation Ballroom

Paid Technical Sessions

1. Total Storage Design (morning session) from 8:00am to 12:00 noon

There is an incredible opportunity to create long-term infrastructure change when you are asked to design, to add, upgrade or replace a storage infrastructure. Many of our daily tasks cause us to think short-term, worrying about the next disk or server, rather than long-term, being prepared. The design work that follows is part strategic, part technical and unfortunately, part financial. When successful, we meet the requirements at least cost. However, most people stay in their comfort zone and over-provision so that they can sleep at night. But therein lies the challenge, can you be open to new technology, can you design within it’s bounds and can you fit all of the components end-to-end knowing that capacity and performance will not be an issue for next three years. Almost any technology can be made to serve requirements. The question is: Can you do a total storage design?

In this paid seminar, we follow and interactively develop a real case study, with the object of developing three options to present to upper management. Each option must be technically viable and meet the requirements of the business over the next three years. We will follow several technical paths, use new and existing technology, develop capacity plans, measure recoverability, and implement scaling options while identifying risks. In addition, we will consider the work required to implement and manage the infrastructure in the light of today’s best practices. It will fee a lot like work. However, when you go to the show floor in the afternoon and ask the vendors very serious questions, it will be a lot of fun. You will leave with the course material and a process template for managing this in your own environment.

2. Overview of Storage and Storage Networks (afternoon session) from 1:00pm to 5:00pm

Storage Systems and Storage Networks underpin today’s IT infrastructures. There are so many product and technology choices it is hard to know them all. In this overview, after a fun history of data storage, we introduce each of the current and emerging storage technologies and map them to business needs, helping you know your options. You might be surprised to find better and more cost effective storage choices.

In this paid seminar, we will cover the gamut of storage technologies. Starting from the ‘big picture’ we review common knowledge and underpinning concepts and then discover the patterns found in current and emerging storage infrastructures. We will also consider implementation, best practices and budget issues surrounding specific technologies. You will leave with the course material and a good grasp of the current and future state of the storage arts.

Technologies include:

Architectures (DAS, NAS, SAN)
Storing Technologies (Disk, Memory, Optical, Tape)
Data Protection (RAID)
Interfaces (SCSI, SATA, SAS)
Networks (Fibre Channel, iSCSI, FCOE)
Virtualization
Storage Arrays and Virtualization
Network Attached Storage
Availability Solutions (Backup and Recovery, Disaster Recovery)
Current Topics (CAS, OSD, Grid, ILM)