Friday Spice: BDSM in IT, Old Servers, and Why Virtualization Won

SPOILER: 18+

May cause feelings similar to reading Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Puritans, skip this one.

Today I want to talk about new data storage technologies and virtualization in particular. Right away: no praising companies I worked for, work at, or will work for. It’s cool when someone climbs so high that challengers lose the desire to compete directly. But every security guy knows: behind every beautiful marketing slide hides the same thing — caffeine addiction, ruined personal life, work-life balance broken over the knee, peeking into the windows of the neighboring business center, pouring water from glass to glass.

And everyone who has tried BDSM (I mean Business Development Sales & Marketing, not what you might be into after sleeping at work) knows: to keep your glass full, you have to dry someone else’s a little.

So let’s talk about the outdated and long-obsolete approach of storing data on physical servers. Because it’s been bugging me.

Remember that clumsy, humming supertower in the server room? Puffing, groaning, but God forbid you bump it with your elbow or spill coffee nearby — the head admin gets a near-heart attack because the entire accounting department lives on it.

Scale doesn’t matter: in a big company you might have 200 of these.

Remember? You can’t do anything with it — old-school rule: “It works — don’t touch it.” Yes, with bugs. Yes, by mood. Once every 1–2 years you have to stay up all night restoring because a disk failed or a fan died. All with downtime and nerves.

And cybersec is not just about “nobody finds your security hole.” It’s first of all about business resilience, continuity, risk control, and making sure catastrophic events don’t put the company out of business.

Then virtualization came and brought virtual farms. Most people screamed: “Unsafe! How can you share power between 2–3 (max 7–10) beautiful modern servers with a shared resource pool?”

Turns out — you can. And it’s much safer than 50 dying repurposed PCs.

But life moves on, and we move with it. The needle of virtualization turned out stronger than morals, and your dealer decided to raise prices sharply. Where to put your Enterprise files now?

My answer: 1–2 unified storage systems with well-organized role-based access for all departments, replication of critical data, fast and convenient migration between storages, encryption, deduplication, and compression.

But that’s just my opinion. You decide and act.

Michail Domalewski