2.015: challenge accepted -- free vp

No, Joe Biden isn't being set free – he's not even in jail as far as I know. Nor is this about VP wanna-bee Sarah Palin, who indeed will be free from her gubernatorial responsibilities at the end of July.

No, this post is about a different kind of VP altogether.

In his latest blog post (Set the Wide Stripes Free) Martin Glassborow (aka StorageBod) makes yet another passionate plea for enterprise storage vendors to make thin provisioning a standard feature of their products rather than a separately licensed, chargeable option. His request is in response to HDS's recent deluge of blog posts touting the benefits of their thin provisioning offering (Dynamic Provisioning), including the inherent performance benefits of wide-striping LUNs across a large number of spindles.

In his post, Martin insists that the current pricing strategies for thin provisioning from both HDS and EMC are a disincentive to the adoption of the otherwise compelling feature that makes enterprise arrays easier and more cost-effective to manage and deploy.

These very conversations have been going on within the walls of EMC, and it has been decided that Virtual Provisioning will in fact be included at no charge and with no capacity limitations for all Symmetrix V-Max and DMX 4 orders beginning this quarter.  As a result, all Symmetrix V-Max and DMX 4 customers will be able to leverage the speed and ease of storage provisioning, improved capacity utilization and the inherent benefits of wide striping afforded by Virtual Provisioning, all at no extra charge.

We'll see if others follow suit.

 

UPDATE 13 Jul 2009: Corporate has clarified that Virtual Provisioning will be free for ALL supported Symmetrix platforms, new and existing, beginning this quarter. That’s ALL V-Max arrays plus DMX3 & DMX4 arrays running Enginuity 5773.

Another exciting post from http://thestorageanarchist.com
[UPDATED to add DMX 4 at about 3:30pm on 10 July 09]

technorati tags: EMC,Symmetrix,V-Max,Virtual Provisioning,thin provisioning,Dynamic Provisioning,HDS,Hitachi,USP-V,wide striping,chunk,extent,free,no charge

Comments

[Terri]

Good move

[Martin G]

Okay, what about for DMX3 & 4? And Clariion? Free them all!!

But that's excellent news; it leaves me with more confidence that EMC actually understand the importance of simplifying the storage landscape!

[the storage anarchist]

Theresa & Martin -

Sorry: I should have said that Virtual Provisioning will be no charge on both DMX3/4 and V-Max beginning this quarter. Post updated.

[Nigel]

I for one will not be a happy chappy if HDS remove the "first 10 TB" limitation from their current HDP incentive. The USP Vs that Im deploying at the moment are due to be configured this coming week - "sans" HDP due to budget restraints. Nailed on that HDS will remove the 10TB limitation the day that we finish cutting and configured all of our LUNs!

That aside, this is absolutely a step in the right direction. Not just to spread the love of TP/VP/DP (whatever you choose to call it) but its no doubt a good move for EMC sales and market share....

Just as EMC are in a far better position than NTAP to pay a seemingly (only time will tell) high price for DDUP, I imagine EMC are also in a very favourable position to absorb the hit of any lost revenue from not charging for TP/VP/DP.

Will be interesting to see if HDS, HP, 3PAR and the likes can afford to do this!?

[Bala Ganeshan]

This is the best strategic move that I have seen from EMC in a long time. Virtual/Thin Provisioning is no longer a "special" feature of storage arrays but a necessity-- whether the vendors want to accept it or not.

By making VP free, EMC has clearly showed that this is indeed the case, and has put serious competitive pressure on other vendors.

Time will tell how all this plays out.

Nice move, Barry.

Bala

[Alex McDonald]

@Bala, @Nigel

There's no competitive pressure on NetApp (or 3Par for that matter). We've both been doing thin provisioning for over 5 years, at no additional charge to our customers. How else could NetApp provide a virtualization space guarantee? Or thin snapshots, thin clones and all the other space saving features that our customers take for granted?

The pressure was on EMC to justify charging for something that does no more than make an (already expensive) V-Max system *look* bigger, but simply increased the cost per real TB. The pressure is still on EMC for the CLARiiON. When will it get "free" VP?

[the storage anarchist]

Actually, Alex, you need to work a little harder understanding how your competitors price their products - you're not helping your credibility when you make uninformed assertions.

FYI, 3PAR indeed charges for thin provisioning, based upon the amount of capacity assigned to the thin pools. This was confirmed on Friday by Marc Farley via Twitter. Hitachi also used similar capacity-based licensing for their Dynamic provisioning.

And FWIW, V-Max doesn't need Virtual Provisioning to "look" bigger - at up to 2PB of scale-out usable capacity, it *IS* big.

[Alex McDonald]

Good point on 3Par; I had a temporary brain fart on that one.

Still doesn't change the issue. The pressure is on you on the CLARiiON, now that veepee on the high end tin is just a feature.

[Aran]

Barry,
Is this only for new DMX-4 orders? So existing DMX-4 customers (myself included) will have to still purchase the license?

I would love to see this come to existing customers on 5773.

[the storage anarchist]

This just in - I've been informed that the "VP is Free" will apply to ALL platforms running Enginuity 5773 (DMX3 & DMX4), as well as all V-Max platforms.

You'll still have to "order" it to get the license key, and to ensure that you have the appropriate amount of cache for your configuration, but VP is indeed free on all supported Symmetrix platforms beginning this quarter!

[Andreas]

Barry, great news! But I have a question: If I continue to pay for VP, can you consider developing a space reclamation feature for VP then? I just got my V-Max(es) and would love to be able to use Symantecs space reclamation feature (vxfs_ts_reclaim), that came with MP3 for Storage Foundaton.

Btw, the blue sabre LEDs looks awesome ;)

-Andreas

[the storage anarchist]

I cannot confirm nor deny that VP will support one or more unused space reclamation approaches in the future.

I will note, however, that Symantec's current implementation apparently does not conform to the T10 draft specs for SCSI and xATA which are expected to be ratified later this year. Most others, including Microsoft, tend to be leaning to using T10 standard interfaces rather than creating their own.