the storage anarchist

5.005: who said it couldn't be done?

They said "it" couldn't be done. They said nobody else's array could do "it" – that only their array architecture could handle "it." They said all kinds of things about how "it" was going to bring the demise of Symmetrix, because Symmetrix would never do "it." Even if we could do “it,” they said we wouldn’t – but they said we can’t. 

But they were wrong. VERY wrong.

Today EMC announced "it" is now available on VMAX. And then EMC went one better than they ever imagined – EMC took "it" further than they have been able to, even after all the (8+) years they have been shipping "it."

And of course, they will try to undermine the fact that they now have DIRECT competition from another array vendor who has implemented "it" - highlighting the history of EMC bashing "it", as if that matters any more. As I have noted before, being "first" is only important until there is a second - then all that matters is which implementation is better. And so they will childishly act like first means best perpetually.

Have you guess what "it" is yet?

More importantly, do you know who “they” are?

Read on to see what they never expected…and should have feared...

5.004: the cloud gets big. rreeaallyy big!

Brian Gallagher, President of EMC’s Enterprise Storage Division, gave his keynote address today at EMC World 2012. (If you were unable to make it to Las Vegas, you can watch the video here.)

In his keynote, Brian spoke about how enterprises of all sizes are increasingly seeking to leverage cloud technology to meet their constantly expanding IT demands. But, he noted, the cloud demands of enterprise computing aren’t adequately addressed by most of the current public cloud service providers.

No, enterprise IT requires that their clouds to deliver the same continuous availability, predictable performance, assured data integrity, and security that they currently enjoy from their own internal data centers. And in fact, the lack of such “High QoS clouds” has slowed cloud adoption by enterprises globally.

That’s all changing – transforming, if you will – thanks in no small part to EMC’s relentless focus on cloud computing. In his keynote, Brian talked about how customers are building out their next-generation data centers around hybrid clouds, and (more importantly) how the new products announcements made by ESD on Monday are laser-focused on delivering enterprise-class service levels to the hybrid cloud.

From the incredible scalability of the new (Powerful. Trusted. Smart. and Efficient.) VMAX Family and radically improved simplicity and automation of VMAX administration, to the revolutionary high-availability active/active distributed data infrastructure uniquely delivered by VPLEX, to the glimpse into technologies that will help to dissolve distance to reduce the effect of latency on remote data centers, the biggest takeaway from Gallagher’s talk is that big enterprises no longer have any excuses. It is time to transform to the hybrid cloud.

And we just might have a few things to help accelerate your transformation…
 

5.003: what a day 1 at emc world 2012

Just a quick post to update readers with some behind-the-scenes perspectives on today’s events here at EMC World 2012.

The day here started with the release of 9 press releases covering the announcement of 42 new products. These were followed with a series of press briefings, lead off by Pat Gelsinger and followed by the division presidents each covering their announcements.

Then there was the mad dash as more than 15,000 people proceeded to the main ballroom to hear Joe Tucci and Pat Gelsinger’s keynote presentations. While these were also simulcast and available for later viewing, I can assure you that nothing can hold a candle to actually being there– imagine a screen that is actually wider than an American football field, driven by ELEVEN widescreen projectors, providing a wrap-around view. Now, project onto this ultimate widescreen a star field from the perspective of a spaceship travelling through space and time (complete with a Store Trek theme), and you get perhaps a tiny fraction of the live experience. I was sitting in the back, and I watched people actually lean in their chairs as the starship banked into turns.

Maximum wow factor, to be sure.

The keynote presentations weren’t bad, either!!!

For me, the rest of the day was filled with 1-1 briefings with analysts, customers and press…and there will be more tomorrow.

I am purposefully NOT discussing the VMAX, VPLEX and RecoverPoint announcements just yet. Brian Gallagher will be covering these tomorrow in his SuperSession keynote. If you are here at EMC World, you won’t want to miss that, as Brian has really amped it up another notch this year with customer testimonials, videos and yet another episode of “Brian. Brian Gallagher.” Once his session is done, I’ll start rolling out some posts providing some of my perspectives of the launches.

Until then…TTFN!

5.002: emc world 2012 preview

Wow - EMC World 2012 is only a few days away! Are you ready? (I’m not.) 

The slogan for this year’s EMC World- Transform: IT+Business+Yourself could not be more accurate for what can be expected at the show. Just about everything at EMC World this year is about how Cloud and Big Data are driving revolutionary change in information technology, business and the people behind the scenes who drive value out of information assets.

As you might imagine, things have been hectic around the Enterprise Storage Division (ESD) offices during the run-up to World. For the past 4 months our global team have been designing, scripting and rehearsing the more than 40-odd presentations and a dozen or so hands-on lab sessions that ESD engineering will be presenting at World.

On top of all that, the cross-functional teams of development, manufacturing, training, services and go-to market have been working feverishly to put the finishing touches on the more than 14 new VMAX, VPLEX and RecoverPoint products plus literally hundreds of enhancements that are being announced and discussed at EMC World next week. The scope of these announcements is even larger than our “megalaunch” back at the beginning of 2011, and that was the largest announcement in EMC’s history.

Among all the announcement are a few gems that are sure to cause some heartburn for the competition.

But then, that’s always a fun part of such announcements!
 

5.001: vspex, vblock and enterprise clouds

Last week’s VSPEX announcement let the world know how serious EMC is about being a channel friendly partner.  Compared to competitive announcements made by various companies last week, EMC demonstrated far more commitment to the channel community.  In essence, the VSPEX announcement was about EMC’s partners, whereas the Netapp, IBM and HP announcements were about… well, Netapp, IBM and HP.

Last week's announcements are being vigorously debated in the blogosphere, so for my part I'll try to explore some ground that may not be covered elsewhere.

First, my observations on the VSPEX announcement and why EMC's event was different than what was announced by the other folks last week.

EMC announced:

• Proven reference architectures built on a collective 9000+ staff years of experience and upon technology widely deployed throughout the world;
• Market expansion through enabling partners to capture more revenue at better margins, aided by EMC GTM incentives and programs;
• An actual VSPEX lab, leveraging EMC's $3 Billion in eLab investments and 100+ interoperability qualification engineers;
• The ability for partners to leverage EMC branding for the first time, enabling them to piggyback their own brand in the solutions they deliver to customers;
• And last (but not least),flexible customer procurement options thought EMC financing

In all, far more comprehensive than simply another reference architecture.

Now, what I'd really like to talk about was what was not discussed as much over the past week…

 

4.010: when lightning strikes

There has been lots of discussion since EMC's announcement of VFCache, much of it about the implications of said announcement on the storage industry. I've seen all sorts of assertions made by analysts, competitors, wanna bees and prognosticators from all backgrounds – some thoughtful, some diversionary and some that are just down right silly.

There are those that say EMC's entry into the server-side Flash market validates the market for the early entrants. While that may be true in some regards, I will point out that when considered within the entire scope of the announcement, VFCache actually offers significant differentiation from would-be competitors. It is yet to be seen if or how the "established" players in server-side Flash market will respond to that differentiation. (More on this after the break).

There were some who turned this argument around – because VFCache was implemented as a "cache", it couldn't compete with the "established" players in this space – this even though VFCache offers the traditional "Flash-as-DAS" for those that want it. So then they said VFCache was too small to be competitive, especially since some of the other players were talking about 10TB devices and such. I found all this humorous – not surprising, just funny. I always get a chuckle when the success of something revolutionary is measured using the yardstick of the "old" way. Like when EMC introduced the first Flash drives for an enterprise storage array back in January 2008. There were a lot of people (and even a certain competitor's CTO) who asserted Flash was too expensive to have any real utility, and that "nobody was asking for it." Today, barely 4 years later it is hard to find any commercial mid-range or enterprise arrays that don't offer SSDs in ne capacity or another (pun intended).

Then there are those that assert this movement to server-side (Flash) storage represents a full circle return from the 20+ year external storage "diversion," portending the impending doom of the disk drive and/or the external storage array altogether. I assert that for either of these to be true requires an unforeseen discontinuity of pricing: solid state has to get a LOT cheaper than any reasonable projection, or hard disk drives have to get a LOT more expensive. Short of that, there remains a niche opportunity for flash-only solutions, but the sheer economics of $/GB will ensure that the vast majority of the storage market will be dominated by spinning rust for a VERY long time – though increasingly complimented by solid-state persistent storage to deliver the performance required by the typically small subset of any dataset that is "hot" at any given time.

And finally there are those that have made claims that server-side Flash is the precursor to entirely new ways of developing applications, fueled by the heretofore unattainable I/O performance levels delivered by affordable server-side large-scale solid state storage. Some of these pundits go on to assert that server-side solid state technology will drive such a revolutionary overhaul of application development that external storage itself will cease to exist. I personally believe these are fool's forecasts, proffered by those who ignore the reality of history. In the high-tech industry, new technologies rarely supplant the old – neither overnight, nor even over-decades. The IT landscape is littered with still-functioning dinosaurs that may well never be recoded or replaced: mainframes, tape, COBOL, SCSI, Ethernet, perl, , etc. Switching and conversion costs are formidable barriers to overcome. In a world where more than 2/3 of the average IT budget is spent just keeping things running, and the other 1/3 is being invested in storing the growing flood of new information in perhaps in a token few NEW applications to leverage it all, there is little opportunity to invest in rewriting anything. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The more probable reality is that server-side Flash (like ever-cheaper DRAM) will lead to new ways of building file systems, databases and applications – BUT these will not represent an overnight revolution. Instead, this new “new” will follow the same evolutionary path as have the new technologies that have come before.

With that expression of my humble opinion, I'll spend the 2nd half of this post exploring how I see VFCache fitting into this information-centric world we live in…

4.009: leading from the front

Earlier this week, IDC published the results of its  Storage User Demand Study, 2011 — Spring Edition: Unlocking the Minds of Storage Users. Among their findings this year was a notable use of outsourced storage, emerging demand for FCoE (but with limited commitment to the technology), and a predominant preference for midrange and modular storage.

Surveyed users also forecasted that little would change in the way they utilize storage subsystems over the coming year. If true, I would think this bodes well for EMC, especially in light of the results of two key findings presented the SUDS, 2011 report.

4.008: truth or d@re

Back in December 2010, EMC’s Enterprise Storage Division (ESD) released a major new software update for VMAX, embodied as Enginuity 5875. Among the more than 50 new features was  the Data at Rest Encryption feature (which we internally abbreviate as “D@RE”). And then back in May, we updated D@RE with support for RSA’s external key manager as a complement to the embedded RSA key manager in the original release.

Admittedly, Data at Rest Encryption is a feature that is offered by very few storage platforms – it is almost exclusively found only on enterprise-class arrays, in fact. And of all the implementations, Symmetrix VMAX’s D@RE implementation is highly differentiated – a breed apart from would-be competitors (as is FAST VP, VMAX’s automated storage tiering implementation, but that’s not today’s story).

Separating VMAX D@RE from everyone else  are features such as:

• Support for any and all drive types supported by VMAX. Where some other implementations are limited to offering encryption only on special drives with built-in encryption, VMAX D@RE encrypts all the data on all the Flash EFD drives, enterprise 10K and 15K HDDs, and 7200rpm “slow-spin” HDDs;
• A unique key for each and every drive in the system. With up to 2400 unique keys in a full-blown VMAX, the life of a crypto-criminal is much more difficult, especially as compared to competitive offerings that support a max of 31 keys for the entire array (the more data protected by a single key, the easier it is to find the key);
• Complete and transparent data at rest encryption for any and all hosts, applications and storage services, including Virtual Provisioning, FAST VP, SRDF, TimeFinder, VAAI, etc.
• Automated assignment of unique keys to every replacement drive and rekeying of data as the drives are rebuilt;
• Virtually undetectable performance overhead for either encryption or decryption (see chart at right);
• The ability to remove the keys from the array altogether when physically relocating the array as added protection against the accidental or malicious loss of the array (or drives) during the move. Deliver the array and the keys to the new locale separately, and restart the array without delay after the two are reunited.

To my knowledge, no other enterprise storage array offers all of these native capabilities of VMAX D@RE.

Arguable, I could stop there. But wait…

It gets BETTER!

4.007: vmax hits the big screen...again!

Last June we shipped 8 VMAX systems to Detroit for the filming of the movie “The Double” which stars Richard Gere, Martin Sheen and a list of other top names. Like all of the product placements we do, we simply provide the producers with the systems and they choose how to use them.

The trailer for The Double has been released and VMAX plays a very prominent role in several of the scenes, which bodes well for its role in the actual film which hits theatres on Sept. 23rd.

 

Coming soon to a theatre near you: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/thedouble/

(Interesting coincidence of a post number, don’t you think?)

 

technorati tags: EMC, Symmetrix, VMAX, The Double

4.004: vmax and vmaxe cameo appearances

Since its introduction in April 2009, VMAX has appeared in numerous television shows, news digests, movies and even Mayor Bloomberg's recent press conference announcing Gotham City's new centralized data centers. It seems that producers, directors and video reporters are attracted to the signature bold and blue facade that EMC's industrial design engineers created for the world's most Powerful, most Trusted and Smartest storage array.

You may have seen the following appearances (clockwise from top left):

• 24 (Fox)
• Nikita (CW Network)
• Covert Affairs (USA Network)
• Mayor Bloomberg's Press Conference on NYC's new City Agency data center
• 60 Minutes report on Speed Traders at NYSE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But wait! There's more!

4.003: a big thing in a small package

Imagine:

• Start with the world's most Powerful, Trusted and Smart enterprise storage array, hardened by almost 23 years of protecting the world's most critical information assets.
• Scale down its Intel-based infrastructure and dial-back its innovative scale-out architecture to optimize for less-demanding enterprise environments.
• Remove the layers of complexity associated with supporting legacy hosts such as mainframes and iSeries to simplify configuration and operations.
• Eliminate physical drive and RAID configuration altogether and pre-configure the array at the factory for pool-based Virtual Provisioning to radically simplify resource allocation and management while maximizing utilization efficiency.
• Allow customers to add factory-configured Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST VP) to further drive down the acquisition AND operational costs of both capacity AND performance.
• For local and remote data protection, include the world's most widely adopted heterogeneous Continuous Data Protection and Remote Replication capability, EMC RecoverPoint.
• Simplify the product installation to no more than a 4 hours to power-up, and 4 minutes to first I/O after the keys are handed over to the customer.
• Package that all in standard 19" racks configured to optimize floor tile utilization, requiring only single-phase power as evidence of reduced power requirements and deployment simplicity.
• Oh, and don't forget the trademark blue LED bar and one of those fancy little "e" thingies that the VNX guys introduced earlier this year.

What do you get?
 

3.019: fast vp - world's smartest storage tiering (part 2)

In Part 1 of this article, I discussed how the new VMAX FAST VP is highly differentiated when it comes to implementation, architecture, algorithms and simplicity. In Part 2 I focus on differentiation in the granularity of data management and in the advanced controls for FAST VP.

Before I dive in, I also wanted to re-iterate that FAST VP is not the end-game for EMC’s investments in automated tiering. As we’ve said since we introduced the concept back in April 2009, EMC’s FAST Vision (and roadmap) is laid out in 5 stages, of which FAST VP is only the 2nd. Over the coming months and years, you will see EMC extend FAST in a progression:

1. Thick: VMAX FAST V1 provided policy-based optimization at the Full LUN level
2. Thin: VMAX FAST VP provides sub-LUN automated optimization
3. Small: Next up will be the incorporation of data reduction technologies to reduce the footprint of both idle and active data
4. Green: This phase will take efficiency to another level, moving idle data to spindle groups that will be automatically spun down until the data is actually needed
5. Gone: Finally, aged data blocks will be archived out of the VMAX itself to external archive platforms (like the one announced during the Record Breakers launch today)

So, in addition to the unique value propositions offered by The World’s Smartest Storage Tiering product, EMC’s larger vision is also highly differentiated. Although I do expect others will try to copy our vision as well…

On to Part 2!

 

3.018: fast vp - world's smartest storage tiering (part 1)

With the availability of VMAX Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP), there will undoubtedly be a raft of "we were first" and "me too" claims from competitors.

I will preemptively respond to both in this post.

As I've said many times before, being "first" in the market only really matters for as long as you are also "the only." As soon as there are more than one supplier of a feature, the discussion moves on to "which implementation is better."

I hereby assert than VMAX FAST VP is the smartest, most efficient, fastest,
easiest and most affordable sub-LUN automated tiering available in the market today
(and for the foreseeable future)

Second, I contend that no other vendors' automated tiering offering even comes close to VMAX FAST VP – and thus nobody has a basis for claiming "me too."

As I hope to explain, effective automated storage tiering requires much, much more than the basic ability to relocate data across tiers at a sub-LUN granularity. To even be considered as a contender, competitors will have to address three areas of FAST VP differentiation:

1. Effective Implementation
2. Granular Data Management
3. Advanced Controls

For each of these I will propose some questions the customers may want to consider when comparing implementations, along with the specific unique advantages offered by VMAX FAST VP.

I have split this post into two parts (it got a little longer than I planned).

Part 1 follows…

3.017: vmax 2011 edition - powerful. trusted. smartest.

In the 20 months since its launch back in April of 2009, VMAX has literally redefined the storage landscape. Back then, EMC focused the messaging around how VMAX was purpose-built for the virtual data center, leveraging multi-core Intel technology to deliver a highly efficient and scalable modular and tiered enterprise storage platform. We introduced the new Virtual Matrix architecture, the first array built upon that architecture, and the first wave of automation that has simplified the whole deployment model of Symmetrix storage.

EMC also did a bit of a Babe Ruth at that launch – pointing to the bleachers where we intended to deliver, in two phases, the innovation of Fully Automated Storage Tiering. FAST v1 for VMAX began shipping just about a year ago.

On December 15th, 2010 the second phase of FAST began shipping, along with more than 50 other significant features and new products in what we now call Enginuity 5875. Included also were some new hardware updates to VMAX – a new native 10Gb Ethernet director for SRDF and iSCSI, plus a new VMAX engine that sports an encrypting back-end to support Data at Rest Encryption.

Today (January 18th, 2010), EMC publicly announces what is inarguably the largest set of new storage products ever to be simultaneously introduced on one day. With over 40 new products and scores of new features, today's launch truly lives up to its Record Breaker theme. (If by chance you've missed all the hype, there's still time to learn about it at the #EMCBreaksRecords web site.)

So, what's all the hype about? Well, for the full effect, you'll have to go see for yourself. But within the context of VMAX, there's lots of new things in this latest release of Enginuity 5875, and I thought I'd lead off my contribution to the launch day communications with a quick run through of the major ones…

 

3.015: mmphmy hlmmphums, emphmgmy!

First, apologies for the radio silence over the past few months.

Second, thanks to all of you who have inquired as to my situation. But no, I am not ill (crazy, maybe, but not ill), I didn't win the lottery (yet), and – apologies to my competitive adversaries – the storage anarchist is not retiring.

It isn't that I don't have anything to say – far from it, I actually have LOTS that I'd like to talk about. It is just that I have not been able to actually say much of it lately due to other demands on my time. It seems that Q4's are always busy, with closing business, budgets, and closing business, Customer Councils, and closing business, planning for kick-offs and the like. But Q4'2010 is perhaps a bit more hectic than most.

All part of growing VMAX's market share faster than the high-end market growth, I guess (according to IDC Storage Tracker data).

There have also been more than a few things consuming my personal time. My wife and I found on out All Hallow's Eve (Halloween) that we're going to be grandparents for the first time! This warranted an unplanned trip to visit our daughter for Thanksgiving to celebrate. We also just closed on a new vacation property in York Beach, ME (one that will need a LOT of sweat equity to get into shape for the grandchildren). By the way, the old one is for sale, if anyone is interested!

So, there is a lot going on – and lots that I have to tell you I won't get around to actually discussing until the New Year. Hopefully you'll all still be interested in hearing what I have to say when I return. So, until then:

Happy Holidays, Everybody!

P.S. If you look around my blog site's sidebar, you might just find links to enough timely and interesting topics to hold you over until I get back to the keyboard…enjoy!

technorati tags: EMC,VMAX,market share,grandpa,happy holidays,for sale,york beach maine

3.014: so much 'ado about . . .

Wow – what a bustling couple of weeks!

So many competitive storage announcements, you'd practically think they were all scheduled to maximize their disruptive impact on Q4 storage spend.

When you're the market leader, as EMC has been for the past 2 decades-plus, you learn to expect this almost annual frenzy. It comes with the target that leaders have tattooed on their backs.

This year the wanna-bee followers seem particularly agitated, though. Hitachi invested heavily in marketing sizzle for the first time since Mr. T was their chosen spokesperson – and with good reason, I'll admit: by my observations of IDC Storage Tracker data, Hitachi's delay in refreshing the aged USP-V (coupled with the loss of Sun as a reseller) has driven 5 straight quarters of USP-V market share declines vs. VMAX and the newly retired IBM DS8700.

Hitachi obviously had to try something different, even if it meant moving to yet-another new processor base. But unable to change their architecture to fully leverage industry-standard open components, their "rush" to market was slowed by the need to create FOUR proprietary ASICs. And those ASICs further handcuffed the move to the Intel platform. With the unavoidably long lead-times of ASIC development, Hitachi was locked into implementing with the PCIe Gen1-based infrastructure and processors, even as Intel is delivering the second-generation of PCIe Gen2 CPUs and interconnect. The net result? Using the same Intel processor as the 19-month old VMAX, the new VSP can't even double the performance of the USP-V that it doesn't quite replace.

That leaves VMAX at the top of the performance heap, having more than doubled the performance of the DMX4 when it was introduced in April 2009.

As a further testament to the insignificance of the VSP, I'll also note that HP has chosen to use a totally different name for the product in their lineup. Not only has my old boss shunned the brand, he and his new head of storage outright told the world that Hitachi remained in the product lineup only to support HP's mainframe customers and to fill the void above 3PAR until such time as it grows up. That must have thrilled HP EVA and XP customers alike, both groups who now find themselves sitting on dead-end kit with no defined escape path.

But that's a story for another day…

Yep, beneath all the new-found bravado and marketing spin, the simple reality is that Hitachi & HDS are still attempting to follow EMC's lead, and they're falling further and further behind.

3.012: vplex geo preview at vmworld

Last year at VMworld, Chad Sakac previewed active/active application teleportation over synchronous distances using an at-that-time preview version of what we now know as VPLEX.

This year, Chad’s done it again – he’s sneaked an early look at how VPLEX Geo will enable active/active data access over asynchronous distances. He’s snagged an early (very early) code drop from the VPLEX development team and staged a demo that should at least start to silence the doubting Thomases among us.

Sure, it’s not live (nor is it Memorex ;-). Indeed VPLEX Geo isn’t even scheduled to ship until 1H’2011, and as Chad notes there is lots of integration work yet to be completed between the VMware and VPLEX development teams. But it is still an important demonstration of the potential VPLEX has to change the way we deploy our IT applications and infrastructure in the future.

So, without further ado, I invite you over to Chad’s Virtual Geek blog to see and learn about this preview for yourself: At VMworld? Try VPLEX. Like it? Take one home :-)

Oh, yeah – I almost forgot. VMworld attendees are being offered a special 90-Day Trial of VPLEX – just stop by the EMC Booth for more information!

 

technorati tags: VMworld, VPLEX, VPLEX Geo, active/active, asynchronous, VMotion, EMC, VMware

3.010: storage savvy: blogging with cred

Just a quick note to give a shout-out to a relatively new EMC employee blogger, Richard Anderson. His personal, not-reviewed-or-approved-by-EMC blog is at storagesavvy.com.

Richard joined EMC earlier this year, coming from Nintendo where he managed both EMC and NetApp kit. His experience provides the credibility to support a rather broad swath of topics, and he has been providing practical comparisons of EMC and NTAP products long well before joining EMC.

As interesting as those comparisons are (and surely they will be fodder for more competitive battles royale), I found his two recent posts on VPLEX (here and there) provided some very grounded perspectives. I’m hopeful that he might soon undertake a comparative review of VPLEX Metro and it’s fault-tolerant Active/Active presentation of LUNs.

If you haven’t read Richards’s material, there is a lot of content. I found it laced with grounded perspective from a hands-on technical perspective – very refreshing, if I do say so myself.

Welcome to the party, Richard – looks like you’ll fit right in…

3.007: corporate espionage and other covert affairs

Call it Karma, Destiny, or Fate, but two topics crossed my desk today with  almost uncanny congruence. And when I noticed my next post number for this year was 007, I knew I had to post this.

The first unexpected topic was a link from EMC's Daily News, a daily email distributed by our PR department highlighting news articles relevant to EMC's global businesses. The first entry of today's list was this FOX Business News television interview with Beau Dietl, the world-renowned expert on corporate espionage. In it Beau discusses the "threat from within" and how EMC's RSA Security division is helping corporations protect their most important information assets.

If you have 7 minutes of your life to spare, you might find this interesting…

The second unexpected component of this information eclipse follows the break…

3.003: to boldly go

Space... the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Her ongoing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life forms and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.

And so begins our journey

Today, EMC announces the introduction of another category-creating product: EMC VPLEX. Built upon unique market-proven technology and hardened for the rigors of enterprise IT, VPLEX brings forth a revolutionary new platform for building and deploying distributed virtual data centers. And whether we call it Distributed Federation, a component of Virtual Storage, the On Ramp to the Private Cloud, an application Teleporter, a Time Machine for Data, the foundational component that extends the Virtual Mainframe beyond the walls of a single data center, or even simply distributed storage virtualization, VPLEX clearly will change the way we build and deploy applications.

By tearing down the barriers of space and time, VPLEX will allow us to rethink when and where we run applications. Couple with virtual server technology, VPLEX can allow applications to be relocated not only to another server cluster, but one in a totally different location. And with its unique approach to distributed cache management, VPLEX can enable applications to begin running at their new destination before all of the application’s data has been relocated. In fact, the Access Anywhere caching technology can even present data at a remote site without any data storage at the site! This capability of VPLEX Metro portends the future where VPLEX will both extend the distance between VPLEX clusters and expand the number of clusters VPLEX supports. As the VPLEX partner and development communities expand the use cases and integration beyond the hypervisors into database and application integration with the VPLEX distributed cache capabilities, we will see the emergence of new computing models.

We are at the beginning of a new journey.

3.001: my 18tb ipad 3g

OK, so I'm starting to see a faint glimmer of light at the end of the Get-Ready-For-EMC-World tunnel, as the content has to be nailed down pretty much solid tonight so that the hundreds of laptops can be pre-loaded for the week of sessions we'll be doing.

Whew!

For R&R between now and then, I thought I'd do a fun little post.

Soo…riddle me this:

Question: What does THIS

 

 

have to do with THAT?

 

 

Answer: I received a brand-spanking new Apple iPad 3G (64GB model, on the left) as a gift last Friday, and it is rapidly become my mobile desktop of choice. In fact, I'm almost convinced I'll do the entire EMC World without ever taking my laptop out of its case (I'm sure I'll not be the only one on that mission next week). I've already armed it with the productivity apps and presentations I'll need for my 1-on-1s, and things are looking pretty awesome.

On the right is the brand-spanking new Iomega ix12-300r SMB/Distributed Office rackmount storage array that Iomega announced yesterday. I am fortunate to have been a beta tester of the product for some (undisclosed amount of) time, and I must say, it is almost as exciting to the storage geek inside me as is the iPad to the personal-productivity geek that I am.
 

2.047: the gestalt are coming, the gestalt are coming!

As Bas Raayman discussed last week, the Gestalt IT Tech Field Day is coming to Boston this week. Yours truly is honored to be one of the presenters to meet with this group on Thursday afternoon. EMC's very own Virtual Geek will also be presenting, and hats off to Stuart Miniman for the behind-the-scenes work he's put into making this event happen.

In preparation for the discussions we will be having, I happened across a bunch of web sites that focus on this notion of gestalt. One site I found gave a particularly insightful description of the term, albeit from an artistic perspective:

• Gestalt- Theory that makes unity and variety possible.
• Gestalt means "form" or "whole" in German.
• Gestalt deals with visual perception and the relationship between the parts and the whole composition.

Indeed, I believe that these describe not only the objective of the Gestalt IT collective of bloggers, but also that of the vendor hosts. While I can't speak for the other vendors, I am personally looking forward to insightful discussions and feedback on the variety of topics planned for the EMC segment on Thursday afternoon. We will be exploring topics that may well change perceptions and perhaps even enable the composition of new use cases – hopefully we can do a little out-of-the-box collaboration while we're together.

Oh, and I'm sure we'll also have some fun at the Thursday evening event – especially for the baseball fans in the group!

Out of respect for the Gestalt IT bloggers, I won't disclose those topics prior to the meeting. But these discussions are specifically being held without the safety net of an NDA (hence the photo selection), so I'm sure you'll be hearing from the attendees both during and after the event. To be fair, you shouldn't expect any new product announcements or selling of futures (thanks, Enron), but rest assured that the discussions will be interesting, topical and evocative nonetheless.

Safe travels, everyone – we're really looking forward to this!

 

technorati tags: Gestalt IT Tech Field Day,EMC

2.040: dmx gets some fast love!

(Title intentionally modeled after Chris Mellor's articles on The Register)

Last quarter EMC gave V-Max customers a couple of pretty special Christmas/Holiday gifts. First, there was FAST for Symmetrix V-Max, followed closely by new hardware (8Gb FC/FICON) and several new software features.

This week, in a timely show of love for DMX customers (Sunday is Valentine's day, after all), EMC delivers a software update for the DMX-3 and DMX-4 platform that includes FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering) for Symmetrix DMX.

Like FAST for Symmetrix V-Max, FAST for the DMX platform automates the movement/relocation of Open Systems LUNs and CKD Volumes across different storage types based on performance requirements. FAST can both promote data to faster storage types (like flash drives) to maximize the ROI, and it can demote data to other storage types (like SATA drives) to leverage lower-cost/high-capacity storage for less-frequently accessed data. With FAST, systems will typically require fewer total drives to meet their performance and capacity requirements, making for a smaller footprint and more energy-efficient storage solution.

 

2.038: the anarchist's universal storage guarantee*

 

I, the storage anarchist, do hereby guarantee to any and all information storage consumers, irrespective of such consumer’s chosen storage vendor or supplier, and/or said consumer’s geographic locale, and, without limits as to time or space, the following:

1. Your storage requirements for a given set of application(s) currently deployed on RAID 1 will be reduced by approximately 43% if you convert to using RAID 5 (7+1) or RAID 6 (14+2). If you choose a different source or target RAID protection ratio, your savings will vary. Your savings percentage can be calculated as 1-(NEW/OLD)%.
2. If you currently use “fat” provisioning and over-allocate capacity by 30% for a set of applications, you will reduce your storage requirements by 30% if you convert that capacity to a “thin” provisioned logical storage device(s). If your storage admins have been over-allocating more than 30%, your savings will be larger; if they have been carefully optimizing their provisioning and over allocating less than 30%, your savings will be less.
3. Your storage requirements for file-system based data can be reduced to only that capacity currently in use by objects stored in that file system if you convert the logical storage device containing that file system to a thinly provisioned device – but only if you are not already using thin provisioning.
4. “Zero space reclamation” features of thin provisioning can recover unused space and space that is specifically released by the host operating system/file system; however, on some popular host/server platforms (e.g. Windows), space for deleted files is not typically released or zeroed, reducing your total opportunity for savings.
5. Consolidating the storage from multiple applications, servers or “virtual machines” can reduce your capacity, CapEx and OpEx requirements vs. direct attached storage installed in your servers/hosts, especially if those applications have capacity and/or retention requirements that are not optimal for so-called “captive storage.”
6. If 10% of your data for a given set of applications changes between backups, you will require 90% less capacity for those applications’ point-in-time backup images if you use logical snapshots instead of full-volume clones. If more changes, your savings will be less.
7. Your on-line and/or backup storage requirements will be reduced by up to 50% through use of data compression, dependent upon data type, content, prior compression, etc.
8. If you routinely store and/or backup a large number of similar data containers (e.g., system/boot images, shared documents, development clones of production data, etc.), your physical storage / backup requirements will be reduced to 1/Nth of the total logical capacity of those containers (where “N” is the number of identical logical copies of the objects in those containers).
9. Archiving of information no longer being accessed but for which extended retention is required (e.g., by government or industry mandate) can significantly reduce both on-line and backup capacity requirements.
10. Your storage costs (CapEx and OpEx) will be reduced if you store your infrequently accessed data on larger capacity drives (e.g. large SATA drives), your frequently-accessed data on solid state storage (e.g., cache, DRAM, flash, etc.) – done right, you will be able to eliminate the most expensive storage device from your infrastructure in combined terms of $/GB and $/IOPS: the 10K/15K rpm enterprise disk drive.
11. If you use larger and/or faster drives as described, you will also reduce your total power, cooling and space requirements for storage.
12. Additional types of persistent storage may further reduce your costs, including both on-premises solid-state storage devices and the emerging availability of large-scale low-cost capacity made available by so-called “cloud” service providers.
13. You will further reduce your OpEx if your storage platform eliminates the need for time-consuming human intervention by autonomically optimizing the utilization of applied DRAM, Flash and SATA to meet your defined service level policies and objectives.
14. If combine multiple of the above conditions to a specific set of application(s), your savings will increase, although the savings may not be additive nor multiplicative.
15. Variation of actual savings will likely vary between vendors/suppliers, but any difference will generally be insignificant or temporary. The dynamics of supply and demand will continually drive vendors/suppliers to deliver similar solutions; thus market differentiation is most likely not to come from specific space-saving features themselves in the long run.
16. Oh, and yes: your information storage requirements will continue to increase year over year, ad infinitum (or as long as governance dictates, whichever comes first).
17. Your performance, availability, business continuity, disaster recovery and/or data retention requirements may limit your ability to realize one or more of the above savings potentials <thanks, Alex, for pointing that one out>

I personally guarantee it.

* excess installed capacity may be required to support future growth, and is therefore excluded from this guarantee.

 

Feel free to offer improvements, corrections and additions – I will update this Guarantee so long as the assertions are generally universal.

Change Log
2010-02-04 10:04AM EST: Added #17 in response to Alex's suggestion (below).
2010-02-04 04:00PM EST: Corrected syntax errors in #9

technorati tags: EMC, storage, guarantee

2.036: the web at 20

What do you get when you combine insights from some of the world's most "beautiful minds" about what is arguably the single most transformational technology to grace our planet?

Click on the image below to see for yourself!

The writers and editors of EMC's ON Magazine bring you a special edition with a retrospective-slash-outlook on the first 20 years of the World Wide Web, today's Web 2.0 world, and where this all may be leading us. This first-of-its kind celebration (at least as far as I am aware) is presented as perspectives from many of the actual inventors, entrepreneurs and practitioners of all things dubya-dubya-dubya-dot-com!

I can proudly claim that I was an early adopter of this technology, and I've tried to stay engaged as it has evolved. But this issue gave me both unexpected insights and inspiration – I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

 

technorati tags: EMC,ON Magazine,Internet,WWW,World Wide Web,20th Anniversary,dot com,dot.com,20th Birthday,world-changing invention,http,html,Tim Berners-Lee,Bob Metcalfe,Chris Brogan,John Seely Brown,Jim Champy,Jeff Clavier,Dave Cullinane,Steve Duplessie,Rob Enderle,Laura Fitton,Seth Godin,Paul Graham,Guy Kawasaki,Paul Kedrosky,Loic Le Meur,Dany Levy,Sanjay Mirchandani,Craig Newmark,Jeff Nick,Jakob Nielsen,Andrew Odlyzko,Tim O’Reilly,Jeremiah Owyang,Howard Rheingold,Steve Rubel,Paul Saffo,Dave Sifry,David Vellante,Jimmy Wales

2.033: v-max is much more than fast

Hot on the heels of last week's FAST introduction comes today's formal announcement of additional features and hardware for Symmetrix V-Max. Collectively, these enhancements are designed to improve the efficiency, flexibility and cost-effectiveness of V-Max in its rapidly expanding community of customers.

Even as some competitor bloggers struggle to comprehend the architecture of V-Max and/or the differentiated value of Fully Automated Storage Tiering (as opposed to Professional services-Based Management), today I will offer some insights into the other updates for V-Max that started shipping to customers at the end of November '09.

If you're a V-Max customer or prospect, there's a lot more than just FAST in this year's Symmetrix Christmas/Holiday package:

• New Hardware support
• Virtual Provisioning enhancements
• Performance enhancements
• Replication Enhancements
• Security enhancements

Let's take a peek at each of these areas, shall we?
 

2.032: emc information calendar, 2010 edition

With a fresh new design, 365 unique daily entries and the new "add notes" feature, the 2010 EMC Information Calendar is better than ever.

 

Use the new "add notes" feature to keep track of your daily tasks, scheduled events, due dates, shopping lists, and more. Your personal "notes" will appear daily. All your calendar notes are yours alone; they live locally on your machine.

Click on the GET & SHARE button to get started now!

 

technorati tags: emc,information,calendar,where information lives,2010 calendar

2.030: emc fast and the big 5

Proving the critics wrong once again, today EMC has announced the General Availability of FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering).

Perhaps unexpected is the fact that FAST is not only a Symmetrix V-Max feature, it is now available for all of EMC's block, file, and unified storage platforms. We actually told everyone that FAST would be cross-platform back in April 2009 when we announced it, but many seem to have forgotten until today.

Chuck Hollis, Mark Twomey and Gina Minks have collectively provided some pretty comprehensive insights on FAST – and more importantly, the new era of storage that it represents.

• Chuck Hollis: FAST and the Continuing Virtualization of Storage (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)
• Storagezilla: FAST to the FULLEST
• Gina: EMC FAST – how do IT folks keep up to speed?

Also contributing to the social media buzz about FAST are numerous blogs and press articles covering today's announcement, plus a near-steady stream of Twitter chatter about "EMC FAST."

As for me, I've already discussed FAST in a couple of blog posts and comments since my first coverage on April 14th. Back in September I posted a FAST (Symmetrix v1 version) demo along with some Q&A from a "Tech Talk" I had done. Then in October I reprinted a fairly comprehensive review of why Hitachi's Tiered Storage Manager is anything but FAST, written by a well-respected TBC here at EMC.

So for now, I'll not do another dive into FAST, although I am actively answering questions today on Twitter @storageanarchy. There is plenty of accurate detail already available (just be on the lookout for the inevitable Competitor FUD).

Which reminds me: one thing I find amusing about today's launch is the supporting role that the competition and critics have played in the pre-publicity of today's FAST launch. Over the past several weeks, we've seen FAST critics, FAST wanna-bees and even wanna-be new product announcements, all in an obvious attempt to discredit, overshadow or perhaps even delay today's launch.

Though surely unintentional, all this buzz has pretty much had the opposite effect – if anything, all this activity has created even MORE interest in EMC's FAST offerings, not less. The customer value of centrally automated tiering inarguably will is changing the storage market, and EMC is clearly leading the way…as evidenced by IDC and Gartner's reports on the significant share gains that EMC has earned this year.

So, in the spirit of a recent competitor's Thanksgiving blog, let me say that I'm thankful for the predictable and expected spotlight on FAST that competitors have created for us. You have truly helped to broaden the audience for today's launch, and I sincerely I don't know how to thank you enough.

I hope you have enjoyed the pictures!

technorati tags: FAST,Fully Automated Storage Tieringi,EMC,Symmetrix,V-Max,CLARiiON,Celerra,ILM,Flash Drives,EFD,SSD,SATA,Flash,Fibre Channel,Simplified,Storage Management,Automation,Ease of use,competitive advantage

2.026: what's in a name – ds8700

Back in April, Dave Graham had a little fun with V-Max and a couple of other products that share the same name. I got a good chuckle from his post at the time, so I thought I might recreate his idea in support (!) of today's DS8700 announcement by IBM.

In no particular order, here are several namesakes of IBM's latest enterprise-class storage wanna-bee:

DS-8700 High-speed lockstitch sewing machine

Dongsen's website description for the DS-8700 starts off with "A new generation model designed for a quiet and smooth performance," a statement that pretty much confirms that this isn't your typical storage product. And not surprisingly, there's also a knock-off version of the DS-8700 from DASU, marketed as the DS8700 (without the hyphen – how clever).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Same exact model number, with just enough visual differentiation to sidestep any legal concerns… 
 

2.025: r.i.p. ds8300

The pain and agony is finally over.

After nearly 3 years of denial, we now have proof-positive that the IBM DS8300 has been unceremoniously removed from life support. I've been told of numerous prospects whose IBM account teams vehemently denied the impending introduction of the DS8700 during the last quarter, even as EMC account teams asserted (with confidence) that the DS8300 was indeed on its deathbed.

True to my prediction back in February, the DS8700 intro is now inarguably imminent…see for yourself with this Google search. And the word is that many customers actually received quotes for the new DS8700 over the past several weeks.

Pity those who were suckered into buying a DS8300 this year (remember, I tried to warn you!)

This time I'll not play the role of truth-in-marketing (as I did for the XIV intro), so you'd better buckle your seat belts for another round of Meaningless Marketing coming from Big Blue as they try to convince you that the aging and decrepit Sharkitecture has been resuscitated with the magic face cream of P6 processors and the life-giving breath of flash drives.

i sincerely doubt that any of these will even come close to overcoming the inherent shortcomings of that architecture, though. Already I'm seeing outlandish claims that the DS8700 has ASTONISHING improvements for "distinct" workloads – which probably means they found some benchmark that looks good, even as the non-distinct workloads realize little or no new value.

Word is the DS8700 is part of next Tuesday's set of weekly IBM announcements, so it should be a fun couple of weeks in the blogosphere sifting through the FUD and marketing misrepresentations.

Cue TonyP!

 

technorati tags: IBM,XIV,DS8700,DS8300,Shark

2.022: free migrations

As the beginning of Fall approaches in North America, much of our wildlife prepares for their annual migratory trip south to warmer climes.

What better time to announce the No-Charge Symmetrix Migrator Package?

Effective this month, this new package provides both current and new V-Max and DMX customers with free licenses to three powerful storage migration utilities:

1. Open Migrator, for host-based migrations. Runs on most popular operating systems and server cluster software. OM can mount the new target LUN(s), copy data (on another array or from within the platform itself) in the background, and it will mirror writes to both old and new storage during the migration;
2. SRDF/DM (Data Mobility), Symmetrix-based replication frequently used to make a mirror of current Symmetrix volumes onto a new array before swapping the hosts over to the new storage. Used by customers for more than a decade to effect both Open Systems and Mainframe data migrations;
3. Open Replicator/LM (Live Migration), array-based "hot pull" migration for Open Systems hosts. Simply insert the new Symmetrix into the SAN in between the hosts and their current storage array(s). LUNs are copied off of the old storage in the background, while any host reads or writes are moved to the head of the queue for maximum efficiency. Works to migrate data into a Symmetrix from virtually any SAN-based storage platform, and it can even move a small existing LUN into a larger one in the process.

As with the recently announced FREE status for Symmetrix Virtual Provisioning, this new package comes with only one string: you have to own or purchase a Symmetrix DMX or V-Max. Other than that it is truly no-additional-charge. Customers can take advantage of these new tools immediately upon arrival of their system (or license keys), without concern for the amount of capacity they want to move (or Virtually Provision).

Yet another way that EMC is helping to reduce the TCO and expand the use cases of Symmetrix, the enterprise storage market share leader for nearly 20 years.

Enjoy!

 

technorati tags: EMC,Symmetrix,V-Max,DMX,Virtual Provisioning,Symmetrix Migrator Package,FREE,No-Charge,Open Replicator/LM,Open Migrator,SRDF/DM,data migration,tech refresh

2.021: richard egan, r.i.p.

I didn’t know the man personally, but I work every day in the shadow of his legacy.

As do most of you: Dick literally founded our industry.

I learned of Dick’s passing after having sat tearfully through several hours of poignant memorial for Senator Ted Kennedy on the television. Even though their politics surely have the two latest patrons of heaven's Irish pub seated at opposite ends of the bar, rest assured they’ve hoisted a pint in honor of each other’s contributions to the world they have left in our care.

To the both of them, a traditional Irish toast:

May your glass be ever full.
May the roof over your head be always strong.
And may you be in heaven
half an hour before the devil knows you're dead.

 

technorati tags: Richard Egan, EMC, Edward Kennedy

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

2.009: claus censors the anarchist's ham inquiries

By his own admission, Claus Mikkelsen over at HDS has censored a list of questions that I had the AUDACITY to post on his HAM blog posts.

Seems Claus (and HDS) don't want to answer any tough questions about HAM.

What are they hiding?

 

2.008: all's fair . . .

This news surely isn't going to be appreciated by our pals over at NetApp:

EMC Proposes to Acquire Data Domain for $30.00 Per Share in Cash

A cool $1.8 billion in cash, immediate tender offer.

How do you like THEM apples?

 

Here's a quick rundown of early discussions:

• Chuck Hollis has posted a thought provoking commentary on the counter offer.
• Stephen Foskett opines over at Gestalt IT.
• Steve Duplessie explores the ulterior motives on his blog.
• David Vellante draws parallels to the Steinbrenner wars over at Wikibon.

Like Chuck said – Never a Dull Moment!

 

technorati tags: EMC,Data Domain,NetApp,Joe Tucci

2.007: failure is not an option

 

Nick is not going to quit, nor are we. Everything we can imagine that could even possibly help him – we (as in the collective WE) will do. It’s in our DNA:

Failure is not an option.

And Nick undoubtedly appreciates our efforts:

Cancer survivor Steve Duplessie upped the ante today, and EMC is among the first to join in his pledge challenge. I know Steve – he has beat the odds once already, and now he’s putting his money where his mouth is to help Nick beat the odds.

I’d like to think that none of us need cash as a motivator, but if it sends even one more person to be registered as a donor, it will be money well spent.

Asian, Caucasian, Indian, African or not – please, PLEASE consider registering as a donor – time is running out – not just for Nick, but for the thousands of Leukemia patients waiting for a bone marrow donor.

Sign up now, and BE THE MATCH! The registry is woefully short on Asian/Caucasian donors – visit AADP.org if you can help improve the odds. And visit Mark Fredrickson’s blog to see how to short-circuit the system to get your samples to Nick as quickly as possible!

Thanks, everyone!

 

technorati tags: Nick Glasgow, EMC, Leukemia, bone marrow

2.006: help save nick glasgow campaign

The campaign to find a life-saving bone marrow match for Nick is accelerating, with broad support from customers and competitors alike.

In order to avoid this campaign taking on the characteristics of blog-o-spam, we EMC bloggers are collectively centralizing our communications about the progress of the campaign and the status of Nick's situation over on Mark Fredrickson's (new) blog: markfredrickson.wordpress.com.

Further, we are encouraging the use of the #helpnick tag on Twitter, and we are deploying the banner graphic above on our future posts, including those not specifically related to Nick.

All bloggers worldwide – EMC or not – are encouraged to use this banner and to link it back to Mark's blog. If you'd like to blog Nick's story, feel free, but we'd appreciate your linking to Mark's posts to ensure your/our respective readers know where to go for the latest status.

That said, I'd like to personally thank all the companies, partners, customers and competitors who have joined in the campaign. The broad support is truly appreciated by Nick and his family and friends, as you can see for yourself over at markfredrickson.wordpress.com.

Thanks!

 

technorati tags: Nick Glasgow,bone marrow,Luekemia

2.004: A life we can all save if we try. Help save Nick!

Blogger version of a ReTweet:

A life we can all save if we try. Help save Nick!

 

And the actual ReTweet request:

A life we can all save if we try. Help save Nick! - http://bit.ly/duO6W - PLEASE RETWEET!!!

 

Please help spread the word – as far and as quickly as possible!

 

technorati tags: Nick Glasgow, Lukemia, bone marrow

2.001: ibm's amazing splash dance, part deux

A couple of month's ago, I posted a review of how the various storage vendors were embracing flash drives (or weren't, as the case may be). I then followed that up with a post lamenting the lame (and factually incorrect) white paper describing IBM's approach to enterprise flash drives.

I complained then that IBM was throwing cold water on a very key new technology; the fact that the errors in that white paper STILL haven't been corrected after nearly TWO MONTHS underscores my observation that IBM is totally out of touch with reality, and no longer the "trusted advisor" they once were.

(What happened, BarryW – I know you were working on getting those errors corrected!)

But today's news takes the cake: instead of doing it themselves (today IS IBM-Announcement-Tuesday, after all), IBM let STEC be the one to announce IBM's support for flash SSDs.

In my book, when you trivialize the importance of ANY technology to the point of having your supplier announce GA and availability rather than doing it yourself, it means something. And when IBM's sales force is to this day telling prospects that flash SSDs are "unproven technology" and "not ready for the enterprise," I can only conclude that IBM is embarrassed to admit some huge limitation or inadequacy of their products when used with Flash.

So, I asked myself…
 

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