0.058: gotta getta life (line)

Despite the obvious relevance of this post's title to the recently waged still raging debate mental gymnastics over whether or not IBM's new XIV Nextra is really a DS8000 replacement Web 2.0-worthy, this post isn't about that.

By the way, Chuck Hollis has an thoughtful perspective over on his blog today where he explains that It's Not About Web 2.0 Storage anyway. See if you can figure out which "IT" he's talking about .

But being as my paychecks have a different 3 letters on them, I figure I should probably stop helping IBM figure out exactly what it is that they bought, and move along. I'm sure TonyP will appreciate that (providing that I stick to my word, that is) - I've obviously ensured I won't be on his Christmas list again in 2008.

Therefore, in keeping with the Monty Python sub-theme:

And now for something completely different... just over 6 months ago, I responded to a post by He Hu Shall Not Be Named (because he refuses to engage in blog dialogue of any sort, on any topic), anyway, I responded to HHSNBN's suggestion that there was no need for home-based storage because fat pipes to the home and (what we're now beginning to call SaaS) storage services would obviate the need. In my response, entitled a terabyte isn't enough for my home, I tallied the then 3.3-plus terabytes of storage that was then spinning in my home on a regular basis, and I explored the reasons why I would never let most of that live outside my house.

I then described the characteristics of the appliance I so desperately need to protect my family's digital assets.

I was pleasantly surprised that it was my own employer who tossed me the lifeline.

EMC Lifeline, that is. Announced earlier this week.
 

full disclosure

When I originally wrote that post, DROBO was all the rage (and still is, particularly for digital photographers). In the back of my mind, I sorta hoped that I'd be hearing from them to arrange delivery of a complimentary unit for me to test/play with. Not that DROBO meets many of my expressed needs beyond basic, self-managing storage. But I was hoping that they'd be on the verge of trying to be more than just the "iPod of mass storage," as ZDNet has since anointed them.

See, I knew I needed more than just "storage."

Before I proceed, a few points of disclosure. There will be skeptics that won't believe me, but these are facts:

• While I knew that the project that ultimately became EMC Lifeline existed prior to writing that blog post, I had no idea of its feature set other than "SOHO storage"
• I had zero input into the requirements prior to that fateful post
• In fact, to this day, I don't know what the team had already planned to include, and what they added after my post. I actually think that they had most everything already in the plan, given my knowledge of development and test cycles.

So when I wrote the post, I was not describing first-hand knowledge of what EMC has now released to OEMs as EMC Lifeline. I was truly documenting my own ideas of what a home storage appliance would have to be to fit my needs at the time.

from homestore to lifeline

Within hours of that post back on June 21, 2007, I received an email from one of the architects on what was then called "Homestore," literally thanking me for my post. He informed me that this "Homestore" thing they were building was pretty close to what I described, asked a few clarifying questions about my requirements, and invited me to be an alpha tester when the software stabilized later in the year?

Long story short: Got a loaner evaluation unit back in October, brought it home, fired it up, and was damn impressed, even though the eval unit only had 4 250GB drives in a RAID5 setup (750GB usable). After working through a few kinks, I moved my entire 160GB+ audio collection over to it, and played around with the features for a few weeks. Along the way, I submitted a few (minor) bug reports, and helped the development team deal with some Vista x64 Ultimate idiosyncrasies.

Sadly, knowing that the box eventually had to go back, I really didn't make the investment in re-tooling my backup, audio, video and photography workflows around the box, but I put it through the paces enough to know how I'd use it if (when) it was a permanent fixture in my home. Eventually I returned the unit so that others in EMC could experience the fruits of EMC's first endeavor into the SOHO market.

what's in the box

It is important to note that EMC Lifeline refers to the software running inside the box. The box itself is initially being manufactured by Intel, and it appears (I don't know) that the rest of the current vendors are OEM'ing and rebranding the the Intel SS4200-E. This packaging supports from 1 to 4 internal SATA drives, so with RAID5 you can get 3Terabytes usable - just about enough for my current digital assets. There are also one eSATA and several USP-2 ports, so theoretically you can add more drives to the base unit if you need to. I also expect that there will be other platform packaging in the future, and I've been told that the software can support as many drives as you can practically connect to it. Hopefully, then, we'll see even larger Lifeline-based systems in the not too distant future.

When you get one of these, all you need do is connect the (supplied) Ethernet cable to your network (ideally into a 1Gb/s port) and plug it in. From there, you can actually get the thing set up and running with nothing but your browser, but it's a bit more integrated if you install the supplied CD on your PC first (which includes an unrestricted copy of EMC Retrospect for backups - more on that later). The software integrates into your browser, and you get a pretty slick GUI to configure, manage and monitor everything.

I'll stop there, because I haven't yet used the GA software, and I suspect there are some changes since I last saw the software. But I can say that the whole thing is pretty much point-and-click, easy-peasy, plug-and-play.

The EMC Lifeline software is very comprehensive. As shown in the following diagram, the thing is designed to be the "hub" of virtually all of your digital media. Load your audio and video files onto it, and it instantly becomes a home media server, which (unlike Microsoft Windows Home Server) can not only stream your music to Windows PC's and XBox360's, but also acts as an Apple-compatible server for iTunes and AppleTV. And on top of that, it can also serve music to any uPnP AV/DLNA device like Sony PS3 or PSP, FrontRow, Roku, and others. During my brief testing, I was able to get my old (and still rockin') AudioTron hooked up, so I know that works, too.

The software enables the box to be a print server for USB printer, and it can even automatically off-load digital photos from your camera with native support for the Picture Transport Protocol. For a complete list of protocols and features, take a look at the EMC Lifeline data sheet.

so how does lifeline stack up to my feature list?

Well, let's quickly run though my list and see, taking into consideration that I haven't yet tested the GA version. But from my experiences back in October, here's how I think it shakes out:

• Source-agnostic: Almost...the only limitation I've found so far is that EMC Lifeline doesn't natively support being a TiVo Server - I can't have it automatically copy stuff off of my TiVo's directly. And TiVo Desktop won't let me set a network mount point as the My TiVo Recordings directory, forcing me first to download to a local hard drive, and then copy over to the Lifeline. BUMMER.
  
  (Hint to Lifeline Developers - TiVo has an HTTP interface that you could use to pull those files over. You just need my media access key...)
  
• Client-agnostic: WAY COOL! Macs, iTunes, Vista, AudioTron, XBox360, Roku - way better than I expected, even (although I don't think it supports NFS for some reason). WAY COOL!
  
• Protocol agnostic: Pretty much, and I can't my PC to it via USB or FireWire. Not a show-stopper, but not quite what I asked for.
  
• Scalable performance - I don't know yet. I've seen it demo'd running multiple video and audio streams out with nary a hiccup, but I wasn't able to test it myself yet.
  
• Integrated support for both local and remote backups. 50% - comes with Retrospect to backup all my PCs into the box, but nothing to back the box itself up to a central place. But with the Mozy acquisition and all the SaaS talk around work, I'm hopeful EMC will address this one soon.
  
• Remote replication - Nope.
  
• Secure Access Controls - Rudimentary only. Not necessarily worse than anything else, but not yet what I think I'll need. Putting "RSA Inside" would do the trick, I think.
  
• Data Encryption - Nope.
  
• De-dup and compression - Nope. (I'd *really* like this one, especially since there's a lot of idle time when I'm not using the box that it could spend condensing down things in the background.)
  
• Thin Provisioning. Yep, since it's a NAS box, every mount point is basically thin-provisioned from the outset.
  
• And all the rest - Most of what I asked for is here. No RAID 6, but you can upgrade drives on-line (increasing size as you do, if you'd like), and I can use any SATA drive I want, and it supposedly supports an external UPS (way cool!).

All-in-all, a pretty high score, and I'm sure at least some of the deficiencies will be addressed soon.

So, would I spend my money on one of these? Probably - especially if I can get some confirmation on the future roadmap. In fact, there are rumors that these things may be offered to EMC employees at some discount - if they do that, I suspect they'll sell lots of them.

Mine will have to have AT LEAST 4 1TB drives in it to start, though.

ttfn!

Well, that's all for now- off for the weekend. When I do get my "permanent" box, I'll give another update, with some specifics on performance and more practical hands-on experience with the feature sets.

Anybody seen my elephant?

 

technorati tags: EMC Lifeline,Intel SS4200-E,XIV,Nextra,RAID-X,Audiotron,Roku,Media Server,Home Storage Server,DROBO,iTunes Server,digital life,digitallife,XBox360

Comments

[Barry Whyte]

Hmmm, so what makes EMC think they can succeed where Microsoft have so valiantly failed. I can't find the link right now. But anyone who actually has that much home media / storage is likely to build their own system for A LOT less than EMC will charge. It may work in an Enterprise (oh crap our big box didn't quite meet your needs... here stick another one on and it will work) but in the home... LMAO

[the storage anarchist]

BarryW -

Great to hear from you.

You did notice that EMC Lifeline is only the software, right? Intel is selling the HW/SW package for something like $500-$2000, I think. $500 plus 4 1TB drives from Costco, and it's not all that more expensive than a homebrew.

But agreed, it's kinda weird to be offering a direct competitor to MS Home Server. On the same hardware, even.

After months of hacking around with my NSLU2, I've decided I'm getting too old for this. In the end, I'll take the one that's least expensive, just to avoid all the hacking.

Life's just too short...

[Barry Whyte]

Yeah, I guess I was feeling a little ambivalent last night - one too many Leffe maybe!

I guess for those wanting a no hastle box it may make sense, for my needs I've found that Nero home provides everything I needed from my box - but then I have a limited set of needs.