the storage anarchist

0.062: r.i.p. dear ds6000 - forgotten, but not alone

On January 11th 2008, with no fanfare, comment or replacement,  IBM's ill-fated "enterprise-class storage in a small, scalable package" slipped silently into the Big Blue Storage Graveyard, with the final removal of all extended service agreements from the pricebook.

I guess this one slipped unnoticed out of Ringmaster TonyP's circus tent (to join the missing elephant, I'm sure). At least, he seems not to be shedding any tears.

When introduced (along with the DS8000) back in 2004, the DS6000 was touted as living proof of the flexibility and agility of the software that attempted to turn an RS6000 cluster into enterprise-class storage. Just over 3 years later and half of that announcement has already been end-of-lifed.

Go figure.

"These are the most significant storage announcements we have made in more than a decade. IBM is focused on being the storage innovator and clear technology leader," said Dan Colby, General Manager, IBM Storage Systems. "Today, we are delivering new economics and choice by leveraging common components, breakthrough technologies from mainframes and supercomputers, and unmatched virtualization and management capabilities."

IBM Press Release: IBM Delivers New Storage Economics and Choice
October 12, 2004

By all accounts of the day, the DS6000 was clearly intended to be a DMX-800 killer - a lofty ambition that seems not to have been able to meet the demands of the market (meanwhile, the DMX-4 950 thrives on).

 

0.061: swinging from the sidelines

He Hu Shall Not Be Named has returned from his vacation in Aloha-land to learn that EMC has announced something of which he knows nothing about. Predictably, he has wasted no time demonstrating his total lack of knowledge about enterprise flash drives in his latest blog post.

Makes me wonder what the "CTO of Hitachi Data Systems" really does, since he obviously isn't following emerging new storage technologies all that closely.

Nor did he even take the time to do any research before posting, choosing instead to throw wildly uninformed punches at the technology in an attempt to defend Hitachi being caught flat-footed.

Not surprisingly, HHSNBN even manages to drag virtualization into the discussion. Now, is it just me, or does it seems like he can't write a post without using the V-word? I'm beginning to think he must use a customized version of the Ergonomic Keyboard for Pirates that has been making the rounds of late (pictured at right). On his version, though, the "Avast" key types "Virtualization."

<Shift>VIRTUALIZATION<Space>RRRR<shift>!!!<Enter>

Swinging from the sidelines

Clearly lacking a relevant clue about the the technology (and unable to buy a vowel), HHSNBN alleges that anything NAND can do, DRAM can do better and faster. Which is true, I guess, if you include consuming your IT budget in that comparison. Because as expensive as SLC NAND flash is today, it's already an order of magnitude or two cheaper than high-performance DDR2 SDRAM. Must be that Hitachi Math thing again.

So I'll just tack that one on the bulletin board right alongside "Intermixing, slower, less reliable SATA or FATA disks in tier 1 storage systems will impact that system’s performance and availability", which was HHSNBN's excuse for not supporting SATA in the USP. Right up until Hitachi Japan added SATA support to the USP-V at the end of last year, that is.

Some words of advice seem appropriate here:

It is far better to remain silent and be thought a fool
than to speak out and remove all doubt.

(the debate rages over who actually said this first)

the truth about enterprise flash drives

For the record, the enterprise flash drives that EMC announced last week are not the same as the consumer flash drives that is going into Airbooks, laptops and IBM blade servers. And they won't silently lose data (they'd be pretty useless if they did) - like disk drives they remap suspected bad blocks before they cause a problem. They'll probably outlive the practical life of the storage array before they wear out - the nominal operating life of SLC NAND flash typically far exceeds the rated minimal 100,000 writes per cell, and when you add in wear leveling across nearly 2x extra capacity within the drive, they will outlive all but the pathological 100% write forever use case.

Yes, enterprise flash drives use SDRAM buffers to accelerate writes, with both internal and Symmetrix-supplied backup power to protect that memory against unexpected loss of power, be it momentary or an extended outage. They are shielded from electrical and mechanical interference in a disk-drive form factor. And they do indeed provide extensive status reporting (basically the Fibre Channel & SCSI equivalent of S.M.A.R.T.), affording the array the ability to be proactive in protecting customer data.

And you don't have to take my word on that.

Thankfully, the folks over at Wikibon have taken a much more thoughtful approach at evaluating last week's Symmetrix announcements. After what was obviously a lot of actual research, they today presented a comprehensive review of enterprise-class flash drives, the customer benefits they can deliver and the practical implications that they will likely have on the entire storage industry over the coming years. I encourage you to read and comment on their review.

Oh - it's aptly titled EMC Lands a Haymaker.

0.060: blinded by the light

For those of you who were so breath-taken by EMC's unexpected "viper on steroids" lightning strike with Enterprise Flash SSDs, here's my perspective on the rest of Monday's Symmetrix announcements:

They were pretty neat, too, although clearly not as
revolutionary
as the enterprise-class flash drives will be.

And so, before I dig into the rest of the neat that was announced, you gotta admit - it is truly exhilarating to be totally surprised with the announcement of a disruptive technology that could very well supercede the performance, power (and hopefully the cost) limitations of spinning disk drives!

Of course, the competition has responded with the expected aplomb. Hitachi has gone on record with the assertion that this is all an uninteresting niche play limited to the needs of the Fortune 50 . Meanwhile, IBM's designated storage blogger is gleefully cheering from the sidelines that EMC is retreating to its roots in solid-state storage.

Methinks perhaps they've been blinded by the flash (if not outright  blind-sided).

From my perspective, the roots of the so-called EMC Specialty Shop aren't in solid-state storage at all, but rather they are entwined with a proven track record of out-innovating competitors in the storage space for nearly 3 decades. You need only look at EMC's Innovation Timeline to see the legacy of being the first to deliver solutions to very real and broad-based customer problems over that timeframe - from RAID to ICDA to SRDF to DMX and now flash drives.

Even IBM's recent XIV acquisition is an admission of that fact, coming months after Joe Tucci let the world know that EMC had set its sights on the cloud storage market with the impending Hulk & Maui products. And given that it is likely to be at least a year before the IBM Blue logo goes on the Nextra box and it gets into the bags of IBM's mainstream sales machine, I suspect that Hulk/Maui will technically beat IBM into that market as well.

That said, rest assured that neither IBM nor Hitachi are internally treating enterprise-ready flash drives as another Al Capone's vault. Inside they all (now) know that enterprise flash drives are very real, that they serve a very real and current customer problem, that they will inevitably change the way we think about storage in the future, and that they need scramble to catch up to the lead that EMC has established. They're not really stoopid - they'll be trying to get into the game as quickly as they can.

And while today's enterprise-flash drive benefits may primarily be their incredibly fast response times and energy-efficient IOPS/watt, we all know that customer demand and cost erosion will rapidly expand the market. The future of flash-based storage is inarguably ahead of us.

As to why TonyP would try (in his blog) to compare the 73GB & 146GB enterprise flash drives that EMC just announced to the new "larger" 31.5GB (and 10x slower) consumer-grade flash drives that IBM just announced this week for their blade servers (the drives that come with only a one-year, limited warranty) ?

I honestly haven't a clue.

 
OK - enough of that fun. On with the new Symmetrix stuff...as usual, there's lots to talk about! 
 

0.059: bold, fast and green

No, I'm not talking about Kermit the Frog or a souped-up Kawasaki.

Nope, I'm talking about EMC's introduction today of Flash Solid-State Drives for Symmetrix DMX-4 - the first-and-only enterprise-class application of Flash technology.

Now, if you've already read Chuck's blog post (The Enterprise Strikes Back) and Mark's early-morning coverage (Enterprise Flash for DMX-4), you should have a pretty good understanding of who needs these things and why, and on the technology itself. No need for me to rehash that ground. And even Stephen-the-Packrat has noticed that What's Old is New Again, reinforcing the significant differences from these enterprise-flash drives and the stuff that Apple slaps into its iProducts. Oh, and here's the obligatory link to the original WSJ "scoop" on today's news.

Since I have had a front-row seat to the accelerated evolution of this technology into what today is a truly enterprise-ready solid-state storage solution, I thought I'd share a little about the journey that has brought us to this point.

Sorry for the delayed posting. I've been technical reference support for the SSD part of today's launch, which kept me pretty busy all day. Judging by the nature of the questions and the early coverage, this Flash thing seems pretty hot (pardon the pun). I'll cover the rest of today's Symmetrix announcements in a separate post.

Oh, and if you haven't stopped by The New EMC.com, you definitely should - it's a whole new experience. Today's announcement landing page is an excellent example of how the new technologies behind EMC.com provide a more rich and engaging approach to the company's web presence.

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.

0.057: of blind men and an elephant

For some reason, IBM's brand marketing dude (and Fellow Blogger) Tony Pearson has taken it upon himself to single handedly justify and defend IBM's recently announced acquisition of XIV. (I don't know, maybe its his job, or something.)

In yesterday's salvo he attempts to clarify the alchemy of blob-based replication and recovery. But alas, his logic still doesn't hold up: there's nothing in Nextra that protects against data loss from the inevitable double drive failure, no matter how how hard he tries to mix in irrelevant "facts" to redirect the conversation.

But I'll have to admit he floored me with his "observation" (buried within the follow-up comments) that cosmic rays basically defeat any potential benefits of RAID6! I guess that explains why the DS8000 still doesn't support RAID6 or support drives larger than 500GB, since the DS8000's read memory isn't mirrored and there's no error detection/correction like the SNCDND logic that is utilized in all generations of Symmetrix DMX.

Go figure!

But what shocked me the most was Tony's assertion that SATA drives are cheap enough that the Web 2.0 world can in fact afford not only to mirror them, but also use that mirrored capacity at less than 50% full!

Now, I don't know about you, but in the world I'm living in, nothing could be further from the truth.

0.056: the emperor and his new clothes

Oh my. It seems I have ruffled the feathers of fellow blogger Tony Pearson.

Seems he can't understand why one little voice would dare disrupt the majestic unveiling of the emperor's new wardrobe, especially since it was crafted by none other than the master magician of storage himself, and now forms the cornerstone of IBM's newest invention - Web 2.0 Storage!

Move over, Al Gore! We need some room on that there podium!

My apologies Tony, sir, I mean not to offend, sir, but merely to point out that the emperor, well sir, the emperor...umm...you see sir, the clothes he's wearing, sir...well, umm...they aren't new, sir! Nor are they made of magical thread, sir. In fact, sir, yes indeed, sir...they look almost exactly like the clothes EMC made 6 years ago when they created the CAS market. Oddly similar, sir, as anyone who looks can plainly see!

But please, sir, I mean not to offend.

But apparently, sir, you did. The implications of the your response are repugnant and unprofessional.
 

0.055: obligatory "ibm buys xiv" post

Well, I thought I'd wait a day and let the dust settle on this before I made any comments.

Turns out I saved myself a lot of redundant typing. Chuck Hollis covered much of what I would have said (albeit a bit more elegantly). I share his notion that IBM may be using a Web 2.0 smoke-screen to hide their real intent to use Nextra as either A): a response to DELL+EqualLogic and/or 3PAR; or B): as a replacement for the woefully under-funded (and near-dead) DS8000.

I also think there's a potential C): merge Nextra with SVC to solve SVC's emerging Rube-Goldberg scalability problems and get FlashCopy/Global Mirror compatibility onto a truly scalable platform. I guess that the lack of end-to-end data integrity protection is starting to tarnish the SVC image, with wholesale replacements and exorcisms being held on both sides of the pond (or so I've been told). But that's just me being me, I guess (and perhaps in a manner that's a bit more argumentative than Chuck would have written - I'm sure I'll be hearing from BarryW soon on that one).

Steve Duplessie and Mark Peters over at ESG did an good job of explaining what the Nextra is all about, and lends some credibility that this really might be all about Web 2.0 after all, given IBM's need to find a viable replacement for the now aging and somewhat archaic DR500 (tape is dead, haven't you guys heard yet?). But I don't think you really know what Nextra can really do until you actually hear what the current customers are doing with it, and it seems that all of them have lost their tongues for some odd reason. And for the record, I also think Steve's comments that this is probably at least as much about Moshe as it is about Nextra are right on.

At the very least, on his reputation alone Moshe will probably get IBM an audience with a few of those Wall Street IT shops that have banished Big Blue storage from their data centers because of all the incompatible product churn they've incurred since the days of RAMAC, Iceberg, Sharks and now the dead-end can-you-say-downtime DS8000's.

Not to be outdone, Fellow Blogger Tony Pearson took his own shot at explaining what he thinks is the revolutionary neat new technology in Nextra. Unfortunately, he doesn't have much understanding of the Centera architecture, so he mistakenly thinks is this all new. But heck, even though back before Christmas he was joining forces with TwoEgos in a premature wake for Centera, I'll give him a pass on the fact that Centera's been doing this exact type of blob striping and protection since day one (back at the beginning of 2002).

I'm feeling oddly benevolent to start this New Year for some reason...