the storage anarchist

2.000: storage anarchy two-dot-oh

Wow – has another year gone by already?

Time sure flies when you're having fun.

I've been all kinds of busy lately, what with all the global customer interest in Symmetrix V-Max and FAST. It is truly refreshing to take a step back from the blog wars and share perspectives and insights with customers and prospects. And because the V-Max addresses so many of the efficiency, cost and ease-of-use concerns facing IT today, while setting a unique and differentiated path for the future, I'll tell you that the conversations are truly exciting.

I won't do a retrospective of the past year, but if you want to take a walk down memory lane, start here with my one-dot-oh post. Looking back, a lot of the things I discussed a year ago are still true today, which should be sorta obvious, since V-Max is the most significant new technology in the storage industry since EMC introduced Flash Drives at the beginning of 2008.

Not much else has changed (insert token competitor-backhand slap here :-).

But anyway, here's to another year in the world of the storage blog-o-sphere, and to the growing social network of customers and competitors that will undoubtedly continue to underscore the conversations of our industry. With all the new Twitter, FaceBook, FriendFeed, BackType and LinkedIn stuff intermingled, we've created a pretty broad spectrum of interconnected people. And it's kinda fun hearing from my non-techie friends that they find my blog entertaining, even though they have nothing to do with the storage industry.

So to all my readers: thanks for your continued support-slash-debate (as the case may be).

TTFN!

 

technorati tags: the storage anarchist,EMC,Symmetrix V-Max

1.064: hitachi exits storage market

CAUTION! Satirical parody ahead!

After a week that saw its flagship product superseded by EMC’s Symmetrix V-Max, its sole product differentiation obsoleted by VMware’s vSphere, and the remains of it’s second-largest reseller literally swept out from under their feet, Hitachi Data Systems has decided to call it quits in the information storage market.

In the midst of the global economy rattled by recession, parent company Hitachi Ltd. (Japan) was apparently no longer able (or willing) to support the foolish acquisitions and free-falling margins delivered by its Santa Clara-based Hitachi Data Systems subsidiary as they struggled to challenge 18-year market leader EMC and its VMware virtualization juggernaut division.

Not surprisingly, and even though the myriad of misguided marketing campaigns over the past several years have clearly been an embarrassment to the mother ship, the latest instantiation of the HDS marketing machine is going out with one last hurrah.

Launched yesterday with fanfare not seen since Circuit City’s going out of business close-out scam, the HDS “Switch IT Off!" Liquidation Sale leverages the Earth Day platform as it aims to unload the massive inventories of unsold USP-V enterprise-class-wanna-bee storage arrays on unsuspecting consumers world-wide.

Although companies in the IT space come and go all the time, the demise of HDS is unique, if only in its timeline. Riding high just a week ago when they announced version 2.0 of their VMware SRM adapter, HDS executives had no reason to suspect that things would get so bad so fast.

But on the very day of their SRM announcement, they found themselves caught in the beginnings of what can only be called a “perfect storm”: the undeniable superiority of Symmetrix V-Max, being locked out of the vSphere virtual data center of the future by VMware, and Oracle's unexpected total eclipse of the Sun. Despite the valiant efforts of the HDS bloggers (and bloggers-for-hire) to mislead and misdirect, the aftermath of these events has apparently left HDS leadership with no choice but to cut their losses and refocus on construction equipment consumer electronics set-top cable boxes whatever's next.

Neither HDS nor Hitachi Ltd. officials were available for comment on this story.

 

I know, it isn't April Fool's Day. But I missed it this year, and I just couldn't resist! 

 

technorati tags: EMC,Symmetrix,V-Max,VMware,vSphere,Hitachi Ltd.,HDS,Hitachi Data Systems,Liquidation Sale,Switch IT On!,Switch IT Off!,virtualization,virtual data center of the future,Inspire the Next

1.063: vmware vsphere 4 to the power of v-max

Last month, Cisco UCS. Last week, EMC Symmetrix V-Max. This week VMware vSphere 4.

The virtual data center becomes real.

And if I may be so humble, more important to customers than the announcements themselves is the Day 1 integration between and across the products and companies.

Case in point: EMC has so many integration points with vSphere 4 that it takes two press releases to include everything:

• EMC Integrates with VMware vSphere 4 for Next-Generation Virtualized Data Centers
  Aligns Products, Solutions and Services with VMware vSphere 4 for Next-Gen Levels of IT Choice, Control and Flexibility
• EMC Delivers High Availability Path Management for VMware Vsphere 4 Data Centers
  New EMC PowerPath/VE Enables Customers to Improve Performance, and Simplify, Standardize and Automate Path Management Across Physical and Virtual Environments

Many of the V-Max ease-of-use features announced last week are targeted specifically for massive-scale vSphere environments, while things like the EMC Storage Viewer vCenter Plugin,   EMC's adapters for Site Recovery Manager, and now the new EMC PowerPath/VE work equally well with all of EMC's arrays, including both DMX and V-Max.

Chad Sakac, EMC's resident VMware evangelist-extraordinaire provides his take on today's announcements over on his Virtual Geek blog – I imagine he'll have more to say (he's the only storage blogger that writes longer articles than me, BTW – you were warned!).
 

1.062: symmetrix v-max virtual launch videos

This is the eighth in a series of posts covering EMC's Overtake the future launch on 14 April 2009.

For those of you who weren't able to participate in this week's Symmetrix V-Max virtual launch, here are most of the video's used in the event:

emc's vision for the virtual data center

Joe Tucci, EMC Chairman and CEO

 

1.061: the voice of the customer

Listening to the voice of the customer is good advice for us all…(be sure to read the comments):

techmute.com: Response to Tony’s V-Max Questions

 

Thanks, Matt – There's clearly room for improvement on EMC's communications to some audiences, but I think you received almost 100% of the intended message.

In answer to Matt's lingering uncertainty in questions 9 & 10 at the end of his 1st comment response to TonyA:

9. Being purpose-built for the its current (and future) functionality, rest assured that the performance of Symmetrix V-Max wide-striping and SRDF are not restricted by the Virtual Matrix Architecture…in fact, most customers will realize improvements to both relative to DMX4.
10. Best practices for Symmetrix V-Max were made available simultaneously with General Availability of the system. Although not radically different from DMX4 for existing features, best practices for new capabilities were developed and validated with the assistance of Beta Sites and in-house CSE expertise.

technorati tags: EMC,Symmetrix V-Max,Virtual Matrix Architecture,blogger-for-hire,Tony Asaro

1.060: the rest of the v-max launch

This is the seventh in a series of posts covering EMC's Overtake the future launch on 14 April 2009.

But wait – there's more!

OK, not really more than has already been announced, but there were several parts of yesterday's announcements that I didn't personally cover here on my own blog.

So I thought I should highlight a few of them so that readers and visitors get a complete picture (for a complete link page of relevant launch articles, visit my first Overtake the future post):

• Auto-Provisioning – a key new feature that streamlines and accelerates the process of storage allocation to clustered servers, as in VMware ESX clusters. Both Steve Todd (Information Playground) and Mark Twomey (Storagezilla) provide in-depth coverage (Mark even links the demo video).
• Symmetrix Management Console (SMC) Templates & Wizards – new features that automate a wide variety of common storage management functions to make them more easily repeatable and delegable. Steve included insights into these in the post linked above as well.
• VMware integration – beyond Auto Provisioning and the continued Symmetrix integration with VMware's Site Recovery Manager, there is also new EMC Storage Viewer plugin for VMware's vCenter. This plugin visually bridges the gap between VMware admins and storage admins. Chad-the-Virtual-Geek-Sakac answers perhaps the most frequently-asked question in the press yesterday: "So, just how *IS* V-Max integrated with VMware?"
• New SRDF/EDP (Extended Distance Protection) – essentially, zero-data-loss multi-hop Asynchronous long-distance replication, without the need for a full copy of the data volumes in the middle site – reducing the cost of extended distance business continuity. 'Zillaman does the honors on this new SRDF option as well…
• V-Max Quality – a common concern about any new product is how complete and stable the product is at initial release. Given the significance of switching to Intel processors and changing the underlying architecture required to deliver Symmetrix V-Max (not to mention the incredible scale of the new system), the focus on delivering Quality on Day One has never been higher. Although not a V-Max developer himself, Steve Todd went behind the scenes to explore some of the innovative strategies for quality taken by the V-Max development organization.

All in all, there is a TON of information here – I know I personally wrote over 10,000 words about the new products and architecture in support of the launch.

And note - I wrote these posts over the course of about 10 days, so don't feel bad if you can't read it all in one sitting.

 

technorati tags: EMC,Symmetrix V-Max,Virtual Matrix Architecture,Auto provisioning,SRDF,SRDF/EDP,VMware Integration,SMC,Storage Management Console,ESX Clusters,VMware,vCenter

1.059: fully automated storage tiering (fast)

This is the sixth in a series of posts on EMC's Overtake the future launch on 14 April 2009.

Today's announcement is chock-full with exciting news.

First, there is the breakthrough Virtual Matrix Architecture, combining the best of Scale Up and Scale Out to revolutionize enterprise storage.

And then, the Symmetrix V-Max itself, integrating the proven power and functionality of the Enginuity storage OS on a new industry standard platform to deliver cost-effective flexibility and a new definition for ease-of-use in enterprise storage.

Next up? Perhaps the most exciting (and unexpected) announcement of all.:

Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST)

As Chief Strategy Officer for the Symmetrix Product Group, my role in today's global Virtual Launch is to describe and answer questions about FAST in one of the half-dozen or so "break out" sessions available to all participants. Given the high level of interest in the topic, I thought I'd take a few moments and discuss FAST here as well.

So, what exactly is FAST?
 

1.058: v-max does what hi-star can't?

This is the fifth in a series of posts on EMC's Overtake the future launch on 14 April 2009.

Taking a pause here from the launch to present an observation.

Remember how Hu Yoshida spent the first half of 2008 telling everyone who would listen that customers didn't need or want flash drives (if you missed it, I wrote about it here and there)? Hu was later silenced once Hitachi Japan announced that they actually would be selling the very same EFDs that EMC had been shipping since the beginning of 2008. (FWIW: Hitachi was supposed to ship the first of those drives in Q1'09, but I haven't been able to verify anyone receiving them).

Well, with the introduction of Symmetrix V-Max and the Virtual Matrix Architecture, it seems that EMC has once again done precisely what Hitachi's technical experts have been telling the world cannot be done. This time, however, I don't think Hitachi is going to be able to play follow the leader, since they're so mired in their backplane-limited Hitachi Universal Star Network crossbar switch architecture (formerly known simply as "Hi-Star").

Moreover, given their ever-increasing dependence on custom (expensive) ASICs, FPGAs and off-load engines, I predict it will be years before Hitachi's engineers can re-tool to leverage the price/performance curve of industry-standard components.

In support of these opinions, I offer the perspectives of none other than Hu Yoshida himself and fellow Hitachi blogger Michael Hay, in two separate and otherwise unrelated stories.

1.057: symmetrix v-max - scale up, scale out, scale away!

This is the fourth in a series of posts on EMC's Overtake the future launch on 14 April 2009.

Introducing the new Symmetrix V-Max^tm – the first enterprise storage platform to integrate the performance and efficiency of Scale-Up with the cost-effective flexibility of Scale-Out.

• Simple: Redefines enterprise storage architecture, ease-of-use and automation
• Scalable: start small, grow incrementally, supporting multiple tiers in a single array
• Cost-effective: more IOPS and more usable capacity per dollar (euro)
• Efficient: more IOPS and more usable GB per kilowatt
• Autonomic: Optimized for Fully Automated Storage Tiering across Flash, Fibre and SATA
• Compatible: Common management and SRDF interoperability with Symmetrix DMX
• Ready: Purpose-built for the Virtual Data Center

When you can list all those attributes for a single storage platform, you’ve made a statement.

Several years in development, today the new Symmetrix V-Max takes its place atop the world of external storage – right above the reigning #1 enterprise storage platform (according to IDC), the Symmetrix DMX4.

With its revolutionary scale-out Virtual Matrix Architecture, the Symmetrix V-Max literally redefines not only enterprise-class storage, but the entire storage landscape – because when an enterprise array offers the simplicity, performance, TCO, scale and flexibility previously found only in midrange offerings, you know you’ll change the world.

(By the way, BOTH Symmetrix DMX4 and Symmetrix V-Max are newer than either of IBM's and Hitachi's flagship enterprise arrays. It's like they're asleep at the wheel!)

And watch-out, you enterprise wanna-bees; V-Max has just raised the bar.

So, let’s take a look at the new king of the storage hill… 
 

1.056: inside the virtual matrix architecture

This is the third in a series of posts on EMC's Overtake the future launch on 14 April 2009.

The cornerstone of today’s Overtake the future launch is of course the new EMC Virtual Matrix Architecture, the foundation upon which the virtual data center will scale and thrive henceforth.

Combining the market-proven functionality that has made Symmetrix the World’s Most Trusted storage platform with the latest in industry standard compute and I/O technologies, the Virtual Matrix Architecture liberates the power of Symmetrix from the physical barriers of backplane-based monolithic storage arrays and redefines ease-of-use for storage in today’s increasingly virtualized data centers.

But while this new architecture is inarguably revolutionary in the world of storage, the Virtual Matrix is in fact borne of a Darwin-esque evolution of the same Symmetrix architecture that launched the external storage market over 18 years ago. The result is the first storage architecture that integrates the performance and efficiency of traditional scale-up architectures with the cost-effective flexibility of scale-out, blurring the distinction between modular vs. monolithic while redefining the scope of scalable enterprise storage.

In this post I will explain the path that has led EMC to The Virtual Matrix, and along the way I’ll highlight several of the key features of this revolutionary new architecture.

1.055: symmetrix v-max - a revolutionary evolution

This is the second in a series of posts on EMC's Overtake the future launch on 14 April 2009.

but first, a bit of nostalgia

For over 18 years, Symmetrix has been the very definition of enterprise storage - even as that definition itself has changed over time.

The first Symmetrix array was built as an alternative to expensive IBM mainframe storage at a time when data centers were largely still centralized and mainframe-based. In the mid-1990's, EMC added Open Systems support to Symmetrix, allowing a single array to support multiple different servers and bringing the cost-benefits of storage consolidation to a broader market.

Read on…

1.054: overtake the future - with symmetrix v-max!

This is the first in a series of posts covering EMC's Overtake the future launch on 14 April 2009.Updated on 16 April 2009 at 9:45 PM EDT 

1.053: an inspiration to working mothers everywhere

As a healthy reminder to us all that it really isn't all about how we store our digital information, the ongoing competitive smash-ups or even dismembering farm animals, today I'd like to direct my readers' attention to an inspirational new book written by several dozen of EMC's working mothers.

It is The Working Mother Experience.

And I'm not even going to try to explain it to you, pointing you instead to the blogs of the two working mothers who inspired the book in the first place: Polly Pearson and Natalie Corridan-Gregg.

Polly is EMC's VP of Employment Brand and Strategy Engagement, and Natalie is A Principle Product Manager for EMC's Symmetrix management products, six-time EMC Women's Leadership Forum president, and now the latest EMC employee who blogs.

More importantly, both are working mothers who felt compelled to collect and share their stories in hopes of inspiring other mothers to balance the challenges and joys of raising children while also pursuing a career. 

Visit both their blogs for insights into the book, and for links to purchase and/or download a (free) copy.

Hint to my fellow working fathers – get a copy, read it, and then give it to your wife. Or better yet, read it with her – we're talking MAJOR bonus points here, something us geeks always need!