the storage anarchist

2.017: perspectives on data domain

I’ve been collecting some personal perspectives about goings on in our industry over the past few weeks, and I thought I’d post a few of them in a series format.

So without further ado, here’s the first of several “perspectives”:

data domain

Other than a little tweedling (twitter needling) of a certain over-confident blogger over in NetApp-land, I have pretty much stayed out of this whole DDUP $ummer $aga.

But Steve Duplessie’s post today (EMC’s clever Data Domain integration effort) caught my attention, especially since I have enjoyed two personal interactions with the Data Domain folks in the past 6 days that I think are relevant.

The first was at EMC’s all-hands Quarterly Review last Thursday. The summer quarterly usually includes an outdoor cookout, and this year the weather was particularly nice. As I was standing chatting with some co-workers over by the ice cream trucks, out of nowhere Joe Tucci walked up to say hi and to introduce us to Frank Slootman. My first words where “Welcome to EMC, Frank,” to which he responded something like “Thanks, couldn’t be happier to be here.”

My guess is he had no reason to suspect that indeed I am an ex-smoker.
 

2.016: ds8000 finally gets thin provisioning -- for a fat price

So today IBM announces thin provisioning is finally going to be available on the DS8000 (at the end of August) more than 18 months after IBM begrudgingly admitted that thin was indeed a requirement for enterprise (wanna-bee) storage last year.

Both Beth Pariseau and I found it pretty funny back then that IBM was only just changing its tune from "nobody needs it" to "ours will be better" when they started talking about TP last year – in fact, I was ROTFLMAO if you recall.

But once again, IBM is late to the party, and as usual they've shown up without the requisite invitation.

The starting asking price for IBM's Thin Provisioning on the DS8000?

SIXTY NINE THOUSAND CLAMS!

Jeez, Louise – what are they thinking?

I thought marketing was supposed to lipstick the pig, not INFLATE it!

For that kind of money, you could just put an SVC IO group in front of your DS8000 and get VP for FREE (see BarryW, I do pay attention)!

In fact, TonyP asserts in his blog that most people wanting Virtual Provisioning have ALREADY put SVC in front of their DS8000's. So this new product is only for the late comers (and those who figured out that adding the price of SVCs to their DS8Ks isn't really "cost effective.")

With a reported 5050+ SVC installations worldwide, I hardly think that "many" DS8K users are also using SVC nor that “few” are not. But Tony has never been much of a stickler for the facts a lengthy track record of exaggerating things a bit.

News Flash: Virtual Provisioning is a standard, basic feature that customers expect on all of their storage platforms. And unlike IBM and Hitachi (and 3PAR) who seem to think that a technology that saves customers money should cost extra, EMC is now providing Virtual Provisioning to all Symmetrix DMX3, DMX4 and V-Max customers at no additional charge!

That's right – Symmetrix VP is Free!

But we can excuse IBM I guess. As David Vaughn, IBM's information infrastructure platform manager, explained to David Raffo of SearchStorage in Mr. Raffo’s coverage of the IBM announcement, the only people left buying DS8000's these days are those customers who were unfortunate enough to have standardized on the platform before they realized IBM wasn't investing in it any more. Oh, and those who run mainframes and have no other IBM-branded solution available. Because according to Mr. Vaughn, all the new open systems business is now going to XIV. [UPDATED to correct attribution]

With IDC documenting a rapid decline in XIV revenues (down from ~$80M ~$52M in Q4'08 to just over $50M $18M in Q1'09), I guess that means that the majority of the enterprise storage business isn't going to IBM at all – a fact that is surely to be accelerated with this whacko pricing strategy for Thin Inflated Provisioning on the DS8K. [UPDATED to correct XIV revenues]

Hey, IBM – we're in a recession here!!!

This is another insightful post from the storage anarchist!

technorati tags: EMC,Symmetrix,V-Max,Virtual Provisioning,Thin Provisioning,Free,DS8000,IBM,DS8K,thin provisioning,expensive,overpriced,inflation,inflated provisioning,overweight provisioning,lipstick the pig,johnny-come-lately

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

2.014: vendor/client relationships in everyday life

Another hilarious YouTube video found its way to my desk. This one presents three real-world vendor/client scenarios and how they might look if they were handled the way that some many all a lot of purchasers try to negotiate big-ticket deals.
 

Go ahead – laugh. It's ok…no matter which side of the deal you are on.

Of course, these gambits are anything but new. Heck, they've been around since even before J. Wellington Wimpy!

I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today!

technorati tags: sales,negotiations,purchasing,enterprise IT,government contracts,construction