the storage anarchist

1.020: how much does a "free" xiv array really cost?

The silence from IBM on their stealth XIV announcement this past week has been deafening. And I can assure you that IBM PR would be embarrassed to know how many people have read my XIV post expose since I published it Tuesday afternoon. The traffic to my blog has been at an all-time high this week.

One reader picked up on the bullet about the power overhead of the XIV's one-size-fits-all 180 drive standard configuration, and he sent me the calculated annual costs for power and cooling of a single XIV frame (based on the specs posted by IBM).

This got me thinking. As many of you know, Moshe and his new-found IBM sales team have been visiting virtually the entire EMC customer base offering them "free" XIV systems for evaluation.

And I know that at least some of my readers have taken advantage of the free storage offer - it's hard to turn down "free" in today's economy.

But if you're one of them that did, you might want to sit down before I go on....

Oh, sorry - don't sit over there. That chair is for the EMC sales reps that jumped ship for XIV. Let's find you a more appropriate seat... over here in the corner looks better. 

There now - are you comfortable?

That's good.

Because what you probably didn't realize is that the "free" 180-drive XIV array that IBM is offering you to evaluate will actually cost your company more than $20,000.00  a year in electricity alone to operate and cool.

That's pretty outrageous for a measly 80TB of usable capacity, don't you think?

Thankfully, there aren't all that many of you that got sucked into this marketing ploy. And hey, it wasn't as Deceptively Delicious as Microsoft's Mojave stunt now, was it? I mean, the IBM rep informed you up front about the power costs, right?

And why the heck did TonyP bring Mojave up in his blog this week in the first place?
Wasn't there anything significant happening at IBM this week that he could blog about?
Did he too miss the XIV announcement, like the rest of IBM Marketing?

What's that?

You want me to stop rambling for a minute while you run off to unplug that XIV space heater before your boss finds out you've been wasting so much money and energy?

No worries, I'll wait. Meet you back here after the break...

 

1.019: (halfway) around the world in (a hundred and) 80 days

Well, it seems that the IBM branded version of the XIV Storage System has arrived - in EMEA, at least:

• IBM Europe Hardware Announcement ZG08-0581
  August 12, 2008
• IBM Europe Software Announcement ZP08-0415
  August 12, 2008 

IBM typically does EMEA announcements first - I'm sure these will appear in the US sites later this afternoon. In fact, TonyP is probably getting his blog post approved by IBM Legal as we speak .

Seriously, it will be interesting to see how the world responds to the pertinent facts about the XIV product, now that it is no longer being shielded from public scrutiny by the cloak of IBM Confidential.

UPDATED Aug 12, 2008 - 6:00PM EDT

Weird. Nothing from IBM other than the announcement letters posted to IBM.com world-wide. Not even a press release. No customer stories. No insightful spotlight from Tony Pearson. No claims of coming SVC world domination from BarryW.

Just crickets.

In fact the only mention of the announcement anywhere else but here and IBM.com is Chris Mellor's coverage of my scoop over on Blocks & Files.

Maybe this whole XIV thing wasn't really all that big a deal after all!

I think I know why...