Acknowledgments

Writing a book is not a solitary endeavor. I have had the support of many people throughout the creation of this book. They provided me with their knowledge, opinions, stories, encouragement, and patience. With so many people, I am afraid that I might forget someone. If I do, I'm sorry. You know who you are, and know that I'm thankful for all the assistance you have given me.

The people who deserve my deepest thanks are my family: Maria, my wife, and John and Laura, my children. They have put up with my highs and lows, my exuberance and my panics over the course of a year. Without their support, I never would have begun the book, let alone finished it.

I would like to thank Michael T. Carey at Bingham McCutchen LLP, Paul Stonchus at MidAmerica Bank, Gerhard Fielder of PdMain, and Brent Luckman of Transend Services for sharing their stories with me. The richness of their experiences lends a dimension to the book that could never have been there otherwise. Thanks are also in order to Rick Toomey and Mark Stoller of Quantum, Wayne Adams and Patrick Cooley of EMC, Gil Rapaport of XoSoft, and Peter Dixon and Barbara Nelson of NeoScale for taking a risk and helping me contact people who had interesting stories to tell.

I want to extend special thanks to Marc Farley for his encouragement early in the project. Because of Marc, I was able to go into the project with my eyes open. He has always been a great sounding board for ideas, as well as having written one of the best general references on storage networking technology.

Thanks to Mike Alvarado and Tao Xie. They allowed me to bounce ideas off them. They also provided some much-needed advice that helped get me over some tough parts of the book. Special thanks also go out to Tom Coughlin, Mark Ferrelli, Randy Kerns, and the outside reviewers, whose comments went beyond helpful and made me focus on what was truly important.

Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank the team at Prentice Hall especially Bernard Goodwin, Michelle Housley, and Lance Leventhal for helping guide a new author through the traps and pitfalls of writing a book. Thanks for putting up with me this past year.

Tom Petrocelli