Sam's SAN Diary

Sam's SAN Diary

By Sam Blumenstyk, Intro by David Strom, VARBusiness

0:52 PM EDT Mon. May. 19, 2003

This week we begin an ongoing feature at VARBusiness.com. You'll hear from Sam Blumenstyk, the technology operations manager at Schulte Roth & Zabel, a Manhattan law firm that's typical of midsize companies in general. Blumenstyk is in the midst of a major upgrade to his company's storage infrastructure, and is about to build his first storage-area network (SAN). We asked him to keep a diary of the trials and tribulations, and he has graciously agreed to share this with VARBusiness readers. Each week you'll hear from Sam about how he assembles his solution, which vendors he favors, how he decides between using VARs or direct-vendor reps at various stages of the project, and the ups and downs of implementing the storage technology.

Sam Blumenstyk

This Web-only column is a unique opportunity for VARs to learn how to break into the SAN marketplace and understand the mind of the customer, as well as to read in near real-time the forces and decisions that are faced by a typical IT manager. Sam's diary is also a great way to understand the storage marketplace as well as some of the challenges that customers have to overcome to install their first SAN. -- David Strom

Sam's SAN Diary Home Page

Week 1: The Journey Begins

Week 2: Product Selection

Week 3: Vendor Meetings

Week 4: A Change of Heart

Week 5: Figuring Out SAN Specs

Week 6: Quotes Come In

Week 7: Software Demonstrations

Week 8: IBM's Alternative; A Half-Baked Meeting With HP

Week 9: Deadline Approaches

Week 10: Virtual Wedding Bells

Week 11: Dollars And Sense

Week 12: Final Assessments

Week 13: And the Winner Is...

Week 14: Lessons I've Learned

Week 15: The Deal Is Set

Week #16: The Equipment Arrives

Week #17: Are EMC's NAS Products a Fit?

Week #18: Power Up?

Week #19: Assessing the Feasibility of Virtual Servers

Week #20: Local Backup, Front And Center

Week #21: The Project's Cast of Characters

Week #22: The Consequence Of Overlooking Microsoft Components

Week #23: Somewhere Between 'LAN-Free' And 'Server-Free'

Week #24: No SAN Is An Island

Week #25: Design Review

Week #26: Refocusing the Project Scope

Week #27: `MirrorView In Production

Week #28: Networking Challenges

Week #29: Conservative Considerations

Week #30: Recovery Challenges

Week #31: Microsoft Gets Down To Business

Week #32: Testing the New Disaster-Recovery Solution

Week #33: Functional Testing And Remaining Work

Week #34: VAR Lessons

Copyright 2006 CMP Media LLC.

If the links above fail, use one of these two procedures to find Sam's SAN Diary

1. Procedure One - Google for Sam's SAN Diary
   1. Select the result that says VARBusiness | Sam's SAN Diary
      • There will be other results for many of the 34 individual weeks of the series
2. Procedure Two - Google for "varbusiness"
   1. Select the VARBusiness home page
   2. Enter "Sam's SAN Diary" (with the quotes) in the Search box at the top left corner of the page
      • The search will return several results
      1. There are two ways to find the Sam's SAN Diary main page from these results:
         1. Look for the result that says Sam's SAN Diary only
            • Select this and start reading. There are 34 weeks of articles
         2. Select a result like: "Sam's SAN Diary, Week #3: Vendor Meetings"
            • Look under "Hot Links" on the right hand side of this page and select "Sam's SAN Diary Home Page"