Virtualization and UNLearning

One of our biggest challenges going forward is the need for all of us to “UNLearn” our lifelong habit of putting things in the right “categories” or places. We were often told while growing up, "A place for everything and everything in its place." We’ve consciously or unconsciously transferred this metaphor and model to our digital life in the form of files with well-thought-out names that are filed in well-named directories (folders) and subfolders. We have done this for everything from e-mails to documents to photos.

This works well enough for a while, but at some point, the volume exceeds the model. Do you have problems finding the e-mail, document, or photo you need? Do you have problems remembering what you called the file or directory that made SO much sense six months ago? Most of us do, and the solution is to STOP trying to solve the problem through well-named files and directories and take a metadata or “tag”-based approach instead.

With this in mind, I thought you would enjoy checking out a recent video that ZDNet (Ziff Davis Network) posted as part of its At the Whiteboard series (see my next post for more on these whiteboard sessions). This session by Jack Norris, EMC's director of virtualization marketing, explained how file virtualization allows storage administrators to do more with less. However, even if you don’t have “storage administrator” in your job description, aren’t we ALL desperately trying to manage our storage more efficiently? In the few minutes it takes to view this worthwhile video, you’ll learn more about the suggestions I outlined in the podcast on how to change your thinking about files and how to store them.

Jack actually has two sessions and I’d recommend that you watch the one on File Virtualization first  and then if you like that, learn a bit more about Global File Virtualization. Jack does a very good job of outlining why we are all facing the challenge of how to scale our solutions as we start to have stores of millions (and soon billions) of files.

Our challenge though is not so much about how to manage the information, since this will increasingly be done automatically. Rather, it is about how to UNLearn what we have spent lifetime learning about how to put everything it the “right place” and instead adopt a model of assigning all the characteristics and attributes about everything. Remember the point is NOT searching, its FINDING!! Moreover, to do that we all need to do a LOT of UNLearning and relearning.

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Comments

[Insurance Olympia]

Great advice and self-empowering!

[Pizza Seattle]

I watched this. Jack says some really good stuff!