Who's Your Data?

As I was presenting the idea of a SAN to the customer I had a Dennis Hopper like flashback to the mid-nineties. Nobody knew what a SAN was in 1997. We were just discovering the virtues of a NAS environment (no, I won’t tell you what that stands for either). We were playing around with NDMP (stop asking) and figuring out how to manage massive amounts of data. In 1997 a massive amount of data was about 80 Gigs. The hard drive on my laptop today is 80 Gigs. We were so innocent.

I had a boss at that time who unfortunately understood SAN technology. I say unfortunately because he insisted on telling every customer, vendor and 7-Eleven clerk about the virtues of a SAN. One time I took him to meet with the CIO and President of a regional bank. They were planning to upgrade from Solaris to NT. Once I was done explaining that we would never call moving from Solaris to NT an “upgrade” my boss took over. He went to the chalkboard (kids, whiteboards had not been invented then) and proceeded to draw out a SAN diagram. He talked about it non-stop for an hour. The Bank President was furious. The CIO was puzzled. The project was eventually awarded to a competitor, one who probably answered their freekin’ questions!

Another time, I saw a customer fall asleep in the middle of my bosses SAN presentation. I was contemplating bodily harm when the boss resigned to go into the insurance business. I think he is an actuary now. Go figure. A that time I swore that I would uphold justice, the American Way of Life (AWL) and keep people awake during my presentations.

I am happy to report that no one fell asleep during my SAN presentation last week. Of course, it was via phone and I couldn’t actually see the people. And it did get kind of quiet at the end.