the storage anarchist

1.010: sun adds critical mass to flash

Please join me in welcoming the latest member of the "we too will be delivering flash technology someday soon" consortium - the farm club for the "we are ALREADY shipping enterprise flash technology" league (of which EMC is the only current member).

Not to be outflanked by IBM, nor pigeon-holed by Hitachi's slow uptake of the technology, Sun Microsystems this week jumped aboard the NAND flash bandwagon with guns a-blazin'. They say they're going to put flash everywhere - in the server, in the storage, as primary storage, as intermediate cache, using both SLC and MLC dependent upon use case - you name it, they're going to do it.

And what's more, according to Sun:

"By the Christmas holidays, anyone with an I/O performance intensive application is going to be trying to find a way to get [SSDs] into their systems."

(And to think, just last week, people were quoting Gartner and challenging both Joe Tucci and Dave Donatelli for being too optimistic at EMC World about the uptake of flash.)

OK. Clearly, we've entered the hype phase of enterprise flash storage. And it is inevitable that we live through this hype - necessary, even...every new technology has to navigate the curve, cross the trough of disillusionment, and leap across the chasm before it can reach mass adoption. And with flash storage in the enterprise space, we're just getting started, so you know that there will be plenty more exuberant hyperbole to come.

Rather than deride it, we should welcome the hype of the newcomers with open arms, because every new supporter reinforces the viability of the technology and accelerates us further down the adoption curve.

I just wish the newcomers would bring a little more specificity to the picture.

Don't you?
 

1.008: emc world 2008 - the follow up begins

Most of us have managed to find our way home from Sin City, and now we deal with the rapid decompression as we reenter the atmosphere of EMC World, the Work Edition.

Thankfully, those of us who are US-based had the extra 24-hours afforded by the Memorial Day holiday.

Lots was learned at EMC World, both by our customers and by the EMC developers that ran nearly 100% of the sessions. For customers, future IT strategies will be tuned to better leverage the current and future technologies; and for development, a better understanding of customer requirements and use cases will serve to refine the future products and implementations. Enabling and leveraging this symbiotic relationship between supplier and consumer is the foundation of what EMC World is all about.

If this was your first EMC World, I'm sure you were overwhelmed by both the breadth of topics and the unfettered access to the people who create these products.

And if you've never been to an EMC World (aka Wizards, aka Tech Summit), then you're probably wondering what all the hype has been about.

I'll use the words of a customer to explain...

 

1.007: the most amazing thing I saw at emc world 2008

As things wind down on the last day of EMC World 2008, I thought I'd take a break to reflect on what I thought was the highlight of the show.

For me, it wasn't any of the "scheduled" events.

Don't get me wrong, the Goo Goo Dolls were great - especially if you're a fan.

Billy Crystal? Hilarious - as long as you don't mind being called a nerd, or being told that your job of managing the world's most important information assets is "bleeping boring." (Most of us already knew that anyway.)

The technical sessions (close to 500 in total, counting those run twice) - well, judging by the packed rooms and the absolutely exhilarating buzz in the halls between sessions and in the Solutions Pavilion, I'd say that the overwhelming majority of attendees will agree that they got their money's worth - and then some.

For me, though, the most amazing thing I saw was a 3-foot high stack of pool balls, part of two-time U.S. Trick Shot Champion of Pool Chef Anton's show in the EMC Select booth. The OSG insists that nothing beats booth babes in bright-colored T-shirts - well, this guy did yoeman's duty pulling the customers into the booth every 1/2 hour for a 15-20 minute show of magic and trick pool shots wrapped around the requisite banter hawking the importance of buying partner products directly from EMC.

As you can see in the second photo, Chef Anton has stacked pool balls 14 "stories" high - including a second story sporting ball-stacked-on-ball. What he does next is nothing short of amazing, and I was able to capture it all on film...
 

1.006: enterprise flash: when speed is what you need

I wish I had come up with that title for the presentation I'm about to give here at EMC World, but I didn't. Instead my session has the awe-inspiring title of "Performance Best Practices: Symmetrix Flash Drives."

Network World gets the credit for the title of this post. It is actually the headline for the podcast interview that I did with them on the differentiation and benefits of the new Enterprise Flash Drives that EMC has been shipping for the Symmetrix DMX-4 since Q1'2008.

Gotta admit the timing of this podcast is interesting, though. Not only am I presenting a superset of this discussion at EMC World today, but this morning Hitachi did a 180 on their prior nonchalance over flash technology That's right, despite HHSNBN's repeated public denials that there is any reason for anyone to need flash drives, Hitachi today announced that they indeed did intend to announce something about adding some kind of flash drives from one or more unspecified vendors in an unknown capacity point  (or points) with undefined performance and reliability to their storage lineup sometime late in Q4 (whether calendar or fiscal Q4 was apparently not mentioned).

Gotta love the specificity!

I hope to post more on both topics later this week (both my EMC World flash presentation and Hitachi's latest attempt-to-catch-up-and-stop-the-bleeding announcement)

For now, here's the link my enterprise flash interview on  Network World Panorama.

Enjoy!

 

technorati tags: enterprise flash drives,EMC,Symmetrix DMX-4,Network World Panorama,SSDs,flash SSDs,HHSNBN

1.004: are you wasting money on your mainframe dr solution?

You are if you've invested in IBM's Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex (GDPS®).

It is widely understood that IBM derives a significant percentage of its profits off of its installed base of "Z" mainframe customers. When there are really no other options for either the hardware or the system software, it is a given that customers will be paying more than if there were real competition.

If you're an IBM mainframe customer, you are - by definition - IBM's profit stream. And there are enough of you that it adds up to some pretty darn interesting numbers.

That IBM has nearly perfected the art of vendor lock-in is inarguable - Mr. Pennybags himself (TonyP) took two whole blog posts to reiterate the ways IBM can legally take away any hope of choice so as to maximize your contributions to their bottom line (see: The Pot and the Kettle and More exploration into Vendor Lock-in - combined they are a comprehensive tutorial on the subject, from an obvious expert).

So, if you need a mainframe to run your business, today you really have no choice but to buy that mainframe (and the operating software) from IBM. For a fair -if not competitive - price, I'm sure (NOT!).

And if you need comprehensive multi-site disaster recovery? Lucky you - IBM will happily sell you a comprehensive GDPS engagement to automate your DR fail-over (and hopefully fail-back). Imagine, months, if not years, of IBM GS folks on-site, tinkering in your environment, crafting and testing proprietary DR automation scripts for you - right before your very eyes. And for no more than couple of million smackers to start (depending upon how much you need to fail over, in both MIPS and GBs), plus ongoing maintenance and consulting fees for upgrades.

Such a Deal!

And you'd better enjoy it, because you really don't have any choice in the matter.

Until now, that is...
 

0.078: lions and tigers and bears!

Driving in to work today, I heard a news report about the Hollywood Grizzly Bear that killed his trainer yesterday.

When I got to the office, I listened to Joe field questions during EMC's earnings call (19 consecutive quarters of double-digit year-over-year revenue growth). Several of the participating financial analysts inquired about the potential impact that the newly-delivered virtual provisioning for Symmetrix might have on future capacity demands. From the tone of the questions, you could easily imagine a pride of lions circling their prey.

And sure enough, by noon Beth Pariseau had her coverage posted on SearchStorage, under the headline EMC's Tucci: Thin provisioning mandatory but overrated.

Shortly after the earnings call, a colleague forwarded me the link to a Byte and Switch article by Mary Jander entitled Your Storage Arrays May Be Dangerous. In this article, Mary decries that people need to "rethink the environmental impact of storage gear," because the EPA has reported that electricity use for storage is growing faster than the energy used for the data center overall. Not surprisingly, the EPA called for "storage virtualization, data deduplication, storage tiering, and movement of archival data to storage devices that can be powered down when not in use" as strategies for avoiding environmental damage if not disaster.

Oh my!

In fulfilling my promise to get back to blogging about technology, I thought I'd invest today's post to provide a slightly less sensationalist perspective on thin provisioning, storage capacity and energy efficiency.

And all I have to say about the bear is: remember, these are wild animals, and they're driven by instinct and not logic or trust.

Any resemblance between wild animals and industry experts is purely coincidental!

 

0.076: oops!... i(bm) did it again!

I know that many of you are getting tired of me pointing out the frequent faux-pas made by competitor's executives. To you, I apologize in advance for today's post, and I'll understand completely if you skip this entry or unsubscribe from my feed in protest.

Especially those of you from IBM, on both sides of the pond. I seem to get more hits from the ibm.com domain on these articles than from anywhere else!

I am sincerely trying to stop, honest I am. But just I can't. At least not until these guys stop feeding me material.
 

Before I continue, though...a note about today's theme.

About a year ago, when I was first thinking of starting up this blog, Chuck Hollis told me one of his super-secret tricks for attracting hits to his blog. He said he would include "Britney Spears" as one of the keywords for every one of his posts, and that he'd get a sizable percentage of hits from search engines like Google and Yahoo! as a result. Not that I need the hits, but the song title fits my topic, so I figured I might try it to see what happens.

So, if you're a Britney fan who accidentally got lured here by this little ploy, my apologies to you as well. This probably isn't what you were looking for.

But if you're both a storage geek and a Britney fan - Welcome! You'll probably recognize the subtitles below...

 

0.075: iomega joins emc storage division

There should little surprise in today's after-market-close announcement that EMC has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Iomega Corporation (IOM). From the moment of the initial (SEC-mandated) disclosure of EMC's unsolicited offer last month, most people probably assumed it was only a matter of time (and price).

Still, several questioned the logic of such a deal over the past several weeks.

Even with the expanded product portfolio, spanning storage, content management, security, virtualization, SaaS and personal information management, EMC hard-good sales is still firmly rooted in addressing the information storage needs of enterprises, large and small, primarily through direct sales and value-added resellers.

And it doesn't take much of a visit to the Iomega web site to understand that they couldn't possibly be more different than EMC - they serve primarily the home and small business consumer markets, primarily through distribution and retail routes to market.

The two could not be further apart.

Which is precisely why this makes sense...
 

0.074: emc world 2008

EMC World 2008 is just about a month and a half away, and the preparation  activity around the office is really picking up. Presentation content is being reviewed and critiqued, the kinks are getting worked out of the hands-on workshops and show-floor challenges, the chatchkies and prizes are starting to come in, and everyone's travel arrangements are being buttoned up.

And now that Q1 is complete (and 5773 is shipping), the excitement will really start building, hopefully to crescendo May 19-22 in Las Vegas.

A couple of weeks ago, I recorded a "teaser" for my session on Flash Drive performance and best practices. Mostly, the teaser is just the marketing side of the story. In my session I'll actually be diving into details on the performance customers can expect to attain for different workloads, as well as discussing the various tools that can be used to identify applications (or parts of applications) that could benefit most from sub-millisecond response times that Enterprise Flash Drives deliver on Symmetrix.

(Check out the video after the page break)

0.073: 5773 > c

In case you've been wondering, the previously announced Q1'08 Symmetrix enhancements, including Enginuity 5773, the 73GB and 146GB enterprise flash drives, the 1 TB SATA-II drive and the new GigE I/O director all shipped on schedule last week. As usual, there's quite a bit to talk about, because in addition to what has been announced already, there are several additional features in this code release that revenue recognition rules prohibited EMC from disclosing until everyone was confident that they would actually make the GA release in Q1.

But discussion of perhaps the most significant new feature in 5773 was held back for another reason: to get all the patent applications filed before it was disclosed. This one new feature could well prove to be the foundation of a whole new era in remote replication - potentially changing the nature of distance replication more than flash drives will change the storage media end of the equation.

But it'll take a little explaining (hint: it has something to do with the title of this post), so before I get into the details, a little background...
 

0.069: i work with smart people

Lots of them, actually.

In fact, pretty much everyone I work with is smart. By definition. That's why they are at EMC in the first place - the company seeks out smart people, and smart people like to work with other smart people.

As a result, there are an amazing number of smart people at EMC.

But you know, with so many smart people around you, it is all too easy to overlook just how smart they really are.

Now, before I go any further, it is important to note EMC is intensely focused on inspiring, nurturing and acknowledging the contributions of its people. In fact, the most recent edition of EMC.Now (a quarterly magazine for EMC employees worldwide) included a review of several of the newer ways that EMC is cultivating inspiration across the company. I thought the article might be of interest my readers, so I requested and received permission to reprint it here:

EMC.now: Inspiration cultivation
Copyright 2008, EMC Corp. Reprinted With Permission.

After reading that article, you'll understand that inside EMC we frequently get the opportunity to celebrate the innovative contributions that our fellow employees around the globe make to the continuing success of EMC - it's part of our culture.

But when one of your peers gets external recognition, and it's the kind that puts him in the  company of the most notable software engineers in the history of computing, it really makes you sit up and take notice. I mean, to be recognized alongside the inventors of UNIX, TCP/IP, the remote procedure call, the World-Wide Web, Mosaic, java, TeX & PostScript, SMALLTALK and VisiCalc (to name a few), well...that puts you in a whole different class of "smart" in my book.

So please indulge me this post to say "Congratulations" to Amnon Naamad for his recent ACM Software Systems Award...

 

0.068: rotflmao!

And I almost couldn't get back up...

Regular readers know that I've been predicting the market exit of the DS8000 for most of my tenure in the blogsophere. As can be expected, this has attracted the ire of IBM bloggers, who routinely dismiss my observations as misinformed FUD. I've even been called "silly" by members of the IBM blogging corps.

So perhaps you'll understand why I was laughing hysterically after reading comments made by Charlie Andrews, IBM's marketing director of storage systems, in Beth Pariseau's recent SearchStorage article (see IBM: Thin provisioning on the way for DS8000).

According to Charlie, the DS8000 is indeed still being updated, although apparently only to support IBM's newest mainframe monopoly models. Some neat stuff - like larger volumes and granular fail-over (welcome to the 21st century, zSeries!).

But when I read Charlie's responses to Beth's inquiries about the increasingly long list of features missing from the DS8000, I literally fell out of my chair laughing.

Not almost - I actually hit the floor. LMAO

Read on to learn why...

[UPDATED 7AM EST February 29, 2008 - see below]
 

0.067: revenge of the mainframe

Hot on the heels of the raging debate between Chuck and TonyP over who's really leading the Open Systems Disk Library market, EMC this week announced its newest EMC Disk Library for Mainframe. Now, in my mind, the press release is improperly titled, in that it positioned the EDLm (as we affectionately call it) as a "Virtual Tape Library" - but unlike traditional VTLs, the EDLm is tapeless!

That's right - it is 100% made up of SATA disk storage, transparently managed behind zSeries-compatible FICON- or ESCON-attached tape emulation engines, with the performance and bandwidth to support backup/restore, batch "tapeless" processing, and/or nearline storage - all in a single, integrated package. Already there are several pilot/beta sites, and general availability will begin in March 2008.

Marketing used this week's SHARE Conference down in Orlando as the venue for this announcement, and they even crafted this video-mercial for the event (and no, it's not Bob & Joe this time):

 
Revenge of the Mainframe

For those interested in learning more about the EMC Disk Library for Mainframe, as well as EMC's other mainframe storage solutions, stop by the Ready2Rule landing page on emc.com.

And there's now a whole EMC channel on YouTube, where you can find a lot of "video white papers" on EMC solutions (in addition to more funny videos - check out the Celerra NS20 Installation SMACKDOWN for one of the better ones).

And for the record, if you are in the market for cost-effective SATA storage for your zSeries, whether for bulk storage, near-line, compliance retention or even on-line applications, EMC is ready, willing and able to help you fulfill those needs...today!

 

technorati tags: EMC,disk library,disk libraries,EDLm,virtual tape library,VDL,mainframe storage,SATA storage,tapeless,EMC disk library for mainframe,IBM,mainframe,mainframe sata,mainframe nearline storage

0.066: when is 3.14159265 > 14?

Today, EMC announced the acquisition of a small start-up called Pi Corporation.

Chuck Hollis has already taken the time off from his ski vacation to explain the relevance of this acquisition. I really have nothing more to add to that, except to note that the importance of protecting and automating our personal information in a "cloud storage" world cannot be underestimated. It is something that none of us can afford to neglect, and once again my employer is moving before others have even thought about the problem and my employer is moving decisively to deliver valuable end-user services in this arena.

Huzzah!

With every acquisition, especially the small ones, the most important part is not the technology, or even the vision - it's the people. And with this acquisition comes one of the most visionary and respected executives I've had the pleasure to meet - Paul Maritz.

While we're technically not friends or even acquaintances, our paths crossed several years back while he was at Microsoft, thanks to an invitation to Seattle from Jim Allchin, who was once my boss at Banyan Systems.

Paul's contributions to Microsoft and to charity speak for themselves. And getting the attention of Forbes is almost always a good thing.

And if you've been clicking on the links, you'll understand why I'm pretty sure that Pi is far more significant and important to our world of storage than XIV will ever be.

It's not just because Moshe Yanai doesn't even have his own page on Wikipedia!

Welcome to EMC, Paul!

 

technorati tags: Pi Corporation,Pi,XIV,XIV Storage,IBM,Nextra,Paul Maritz,Moshe Yanai,EMC,personal information management,Pi Corp,www.picorp.com,cloud storage,cloud infrastructure,cloud services,mozy,Fortress,SaaS

0.065: for whom the bell tolls

IBM today announced the addition of NTAP's top-of-the-line FAS6000 storage platforms to the Big Blue Product Portfolio, rebranded as the N7000 series, and positioned specifically in enterprise storage market segment.

With that move, IBM now resells a directly competing product for 100% of their Systems Storage disk portfolio. From the lowly DS3000, to the DS4000, through the DS6000 and the DS8000 families, there is now also an N series product designed (by NTAP) to compete head-to-head with IBM's product lineup.

And even the vaunted SVC now has a direct challenger from the N series, in the N7000 "gateway", IBM's rebranded version of NetApp's V-Series (V-is-for-virtualization, don't you know).

That's gotta get confusing if you're an IBM sales rep or channel partner.

Not to mention if you're a potential customer.

Cue Flight of the Valkyries ...

0.062: r.i.p. dear ds6000 - forgotten, but not alone

On January 11th 2008, with no fanfare, comment or replacement,  IBM's ill-fated "enterprise-class storage in a small, scalable package" slipped silently into the Big Blue Storage Graveyard, with the final removal of all extended service agreements from the pricebook.

I guess this one slipped unnoticed out of Ringmaster TonyP's circus tent (to join the missing elephant, I'm sure). At least, he seems not to be shedding any tears.

When introduced (along with the DS8000) back in 2004, the DS6000 was touted as living proof of the flexibility and agility of the software that attempted to turn an RS6000 cluster into enterprise-class storage. Just over 3 years later and half of that announcement has already been end-of-lifed.

Go figure.

"These are the most significant storage announcements we have made in more than a decade. IBM is focused on being the storage innovator and clear technology leader," said Dan Colby, General Manager, IBM Storage Systems. "Today, we are delivering new economics and choice by leveraging common components, breakthrough technologies from mainframes and supercomputers, and unmatched virtualization and management capabilities."

IBM Press Release: IBM Delivers New Storage Economics and Choice
October 12, 2004

By all accounts of the day, the DS6000 was clearly intended to be a DMX-800 killer - a lofty ambition that seems not to have been able to meet the demands of the market (meanwhile, the DMX-4 950 thrives on).

 

0.061: swinging from the sidelines

He Hu Shall Not Be Named has returned from his vacation in Aloha-land to learn that EMC has announced something of which he knows nothing about. Predictably, he has wasted no time demonstrating his total lack of knowledge about enterprise flash drives in his latest blog post.

Makes me wonder what the "CTO of Hitachi Data Systems" really does, since he obviously isn't following emerging new storage technologies all that closely.

Nor did he even take the time to do any research before posting, choosing instead to throw wildly uninformed punches at the technology in an attempt to defend Hitachi being caught flat-footed.

Not surprisingly, HHSNBN even manages to drag virtualization into the discussion. Now, is it just me, or does it seems like he can't write a post without using the V-word? I'm beginning to think he must use a customized version of the Ergonomic Keyboard for Pirates that has been making the rounds of late (pictured at right). On his version, though, the "Avast" key types "Virtualization."

<Shift>VIRTUALIZATION<Space>RRRR<shift>!!!<Enter>

Swinging from the sidelines

Clearly lacking a relevant clue about the the technology (and unable to buy a vowel), HHSNBN alleges that anything NAND can do, DRAM can do better and faster. Which is true, I guess, if you include consuming your IT budget in that comparison. Because as expensive as SLC NAND flash is today, it's already an order of magnitude or two cheaper than high-performance DDR2 SDRAM. Must be that Hitachi Math thing again.

So I'll just tack that one on the bulletin board right alongside "Intermixing, slower, less reliable SATA or FATA disks in tier 1 storage systems will impact that system’s performance and availability", which was HHSNBN's excuse for not supporting SATA in the USP. Right up until Hitachi Japan added SATA support to the USP-V at the end of last year, that is.

Some words of advice seem appropriate here:

It is far better to remain silent and be thought a fool
than to speak out and remove all doubt.

(the debate rages over who actually said this first)

the truth about enterprise flash drives

For the record, the enterprise flash drives that EMC announced last week are not the same as the consumer flash drives that is going into Airbooks, laptops and IBM blade servers. And they won't silently lose data (they'd be pretty useless if they did) - like disk drives they remap suspected bad blocks before they cause a problem. They'll probably outlive the practical life of the storage array before they wear out - the nominal operating life of SLC NAND flash typically far exceeds the rated minimal 100,000 writes per cell, and when you add in wear leveling across nearly 2x extra capacity within the drive, they will outlive all but the pathological 100% write forever use case.

Yes, enterprise flash drives use SDRAM buffers to accelerate writes, with both internal and Symmetrix-supplied backup power to protect that memory against unexpected loss of power, be it momentary or an extended outage. They are shielded from electrical and mechanical interference in a disk-drive form factor. And they do indeed provide extensive status reporting (basically the Fibre Channel & SCSI equivalent of S.M.A.R.T.), affording the array the ability to be proactive in protecting customer data.

And you don't have to take my word on that.

Thankfully, the folks over at Wikibon have taken a much more thoughtful approach at evaluating last week's Symmetrix announcements. After what was obviously a lot of actual research, they today presented a comprehensive review of enterprise-class flash drives, the customer benefits they can deliver and the practical implications that they will likely have on the entire storage industry over the coming years. I encourage you to read and comment on their review.

Oh - it's aptly titled EMC Lands a Haymaker.

0.060: blinded by the light

For those of you who were so breath-taken by EMC's unexpected "viper on steroids" lightning strike with Enterprise Flash SSDs, here's my perspective on the rest of Monday's Symmetrix announcements:

They were pretty neat, too, although clearly not as
revolutionary
as the enterprise-class flash drives will be.

And so, before I dig into the rest of the neat that was announced, you gotta admit - it is truly exhilarating to be totally surprised with the announcement of a disruptive technology that could very well supercede the performance, power (and hopefully the cost) limitations of spinning disk drives!

Of course, the competition has responded with the expected aplomb. Hitachi has gone on record with the assertion that this is all an uninteresting niche play limited to the needs of the Fortune 50 . Meanwhile, IBM's designated storage blogger is gleefully cheering from the sidelines that EMC is retreating to its roots in solid-state storage.

Methinks perhaps they've been blinded by the flash (if not outright  blind-sided).

From my perspective, the roots of the so-called EMC Specialty Shop aren't in solid-state storage at all, but rather they are entwined with a proven track record of out-innovating competitors in the storage space for nearly 3 decades. You need only look at EMC's Innovation Timeline to see the legacy of being the first to deliver solutions to very real and broad-based customer problems over that timeframe - from RAID to ICDA to SRDF to DMX and now flash drives.

Even IBM's recent XIV acquisition is an admission of that fact, coming months after Joe Tucci let the world know that EMC had set its sights on the cloud storage market with the impending Hulk & Maui products. And given that it is likely to be at least a year before the IBM Blue logo goes on the Nextra box and it gets into the bags of IBM's mainstream sales machine, I suspect that Hulk/Maui will technically beat IBM into that market as well.

That said, rest assured that neither IBM nor Hitachi are internally treating enterprise-ready flash drives as another Al Capone's vault. Inside they all (now) know that enterprise flash drives are very real, that they serve a very real and current customer problem, that they will inevitably change the way we think about storage in the future, and that they need scramble to catch up to the lead that EMC has established. They're not really stoopid - they'll be trying to get into the game as quickly as they can.

And while today's enterprise-flash drive benefits may primarily be their incredibly fast response times and energy-efficient IOPS/watt, we all know that customer demand and cost erosion will rapidly expand the market. The future of flash-based storage is inarguably ahead of us.

As to why TonyP would try (in his blog) to compare the 73GB & 146GB enterprise flash drives that EMC just announced to the new "larger" 31.5GB (and 10x slower) consumer-grade flash drives that IBM just announced this week for their blade servers (the drives that come with only a one-year, limited warranty) ?

I honestly haven't a clue.

 
OK - enough of that fun. On with the new Symmetrix stuff...as usual, there's lots to talk about! 
 

0.059: bold, fast and green

No, I'm not talking about Kermit the Frog or a souped-up Kawasaki.

Nope, I'm talking about EMC's introduction today of Flash Solid-State Drives for Symmetrix DMX-4 - the first-and-only enterprise-class application of Flash technology.

Now, if you've already read Chuck's blog post (The Enterprise Strikes Back) and Mark's early-morning coverage (Enterprise Flash for DMX-4), you should have a pretty good understanding of who needs these things and why, and on the technology itself. No need for me to rehash that ground. And even Stephen-the-Packrat has noticed that What's Old is New Again, reinforcing the significant differences from these enterprise-flash drives and the stuff that Apple slaps into its iProducts. Oh, and here's the obligatory link to the original WSJ "scoop" on today's news.

Since I have had a front-row seat to the accelerated evolution of this technology into what today is a truly enterprise-ready solid-state storage solution, I thought I'd share a little about the journey that has brought us to this point.

Sorry for the delayed posting. I've been technical reference support for the SSD part of today's launch, which kept me pretty busy all day. Judging by the nature of the questions and the early coverage, this Flash thing seems pretty hot (pardon the pun). I'll cover the rest of today's Symmetrix announcements in a separate post.

Oh, and if you haven't stopped by The New EMC.com, you definitely should - it's a whole new experience. Today's announcement landing page is an excellent example of how the new technologies behind EMC.com provide a more rich and engaging approach to the company's web presence.

0.058: gotta getta life (line)

Despite the obvious relevance of this post's title to the recently waged still raging debate mental gymnastics over whether or not IBM's new XIV Nextra is really a DS8000 replacement Web 2.0-worthy, this post isn't about that.

By the way, Chuck Hollis has an thoughtful perspective over on his blog today where he explains that It's Not About Web 2.0 Storage anyway. See if you can figure out which "IT" he's talking about .

But being as my paychecks have a different 3 letters on them, I figure I should probably stop helping IBM figure out exactly what it is that they bought, and move along. I'm sure TonyP will appreciate that (providing that I stick to my word, that is) - I've obviously ensured I won't be on his Christmas list again in 2008.

Therefore, in keeping with the Monty Python sub-theme:

And now for something completely different... just over 6 months ago, I responded to a post by He Hu Shall Not Be Named (because he refuses to engage in blog dialogue of any sort, on any topic), anyway, I responded to HHSNBN's suggestion that there was no need for home-based storage because fat pipes to the home and (what we're now beginning to call SaaS) storage services would obviate the need. In my response, entitled a terabyte isn't enough for my home, I tallied the then 3.3-plus terabytes of storage that was then spinning in my home on a regular basis, and I explored the reasons why I would never let most of that live outside my house.

I then described the characteristics of the appliance I so desperately need to protect my family's digital assets.

I was pleasantly surprised that it was my own employer who tossed me the lifeline.

EMC Lifeline, that is. Announced earlier this week.

0.057: of blind men and an elephant

For some reason, IBM's brand marketing dude (and Fellow Blogger) Tony Pearson has taken it upon himself to single handedly justify and defend IBM's recently announced acquisition of XIV. (I don't know, maybe its his job, or something.)

In yesterday's salvo he attempts to clarify the alchemy of blob-based replication and recovery. But alas, his logic still doesn't hold up: there's nothing in Nextra that protects against data loss from the inevitable double drive failure, no matter how how hard he tries to mix in irrelevant "facts" to redirect the conversation.

But I'll have to admit he floored me with his "observation" (buried within the follow-up comments) that cosmic rays basically defeat any potential benefits of RAID6! I guess that explains why the DS8000 still doesn't support RAID6 or support drives larger than 500GB, since the DS8000's read memory isn't mirrored and there's no error detection/correction like the SNCDND logic that is utilized in all generations of Symmetrix DMX.

Go figure!

But what shocked me the most was Tony's assertion that SATA drives are cheap enough that the Web 2.0 world can in fact afford not only to mirror them, but also use that mirrored capacity at less than 50% full!

Now, I don't know about you, but in the world I'm living in, nothing could be further from the truth.

0.056: the emperor and his new clothes

Oh my. It seems I have ruffled the feathers of fellow blogger Tony Pearson.

Seems he can't understand why one little voice would dare disrupt the majestic unveiling of the emperor's new wardrobe, especially since it was crafted by none other than the master magician of storage himself, and now forms the cornerstone of IBM's newest invention - Web 2.0 Storage!

Move over, Al Gore! We need some room on that there podium!

My apologies Tony, sir, I mean not to offend, sir, but merely to point out that the emperor, well sir, the emperor...umm...you see sir, the clothes he's wearing, sir...well, umm...they aren't new, sir! Nor are they made of magical thread, sir. In fact, sir, yes indeed, sir...they look almost exactly like the clothes EMC made 6 years ago when they created the CAS market. Oddly similar, sir, as anyone who looks can plainly see!

But please, sir, I mean not to offend.

But apparently, sir, you did. The implications of the your response are repugnant and unprofessional.
 

0.055: obligatory "ibm buys xiv" post

Well, I thought I'd wait a day and let the dust settle on this before I made any comments.

Turns out I saved myself a lot of redundant typing. Chuck Hollis covered much of what I would have said (albeit a bit more elegantly). I share his notion that IBM may be using a Web 2.0 smoke-screen to hide their real intent to use Nextra as either A): a response to DELL+EqualLogic and/or 3PAR; or B): as a replacement for the woefully under-funded (and near-dead) DS8000.

I also think there's a potential C): merge Nextra with SVC to solve SVC's emerging Rube-Goldberg scalability problems and get FlashCopy/Global Mirror compatibility onto a truly scalable platform. I guess that the lack of end-to-end data integrity protection is starting to tarnish the SVC image, with wholesale replacements and exorcisms being held on both sides of the pond (or so I've been told). But that's just me being me, I guess (and perhaps in a manner that's a bit more argumentative than Chuck would have written - I'm sure I'll be hearing from BarryW soon on that one).

Steve Duplessie and Mark Peters over at ESG did an good job of explaining what the Nextra is all about, and lends some credibility that this really might be all about Web 2.0 after all, given IBM's need to find a viable replacement for the now aging and somewhat archaic DR500 (tape is dead, haven't you guys heard yet?). But I don't think you really know what Nextra can really do until you actually hear what the current customers are doing with it, and it seems that all of them have lost their tongues for some odd reason. And for the record, I also think Steve's comments that this is probably at least as much about Moshe as it is about Nextra are right on.

At the very least, on his reputation alone Moshe will probably get IBM an audience with a few of those Wall Street IT shops that have banished Big Blue storage from their data centers because of all the incompatible product churn they've incurred since the days of RAMAC, Iceberg, Sharks and now the dead-end can-you-say-downtime DS8000's.

Not to be outdone, Fellow Blogger Tony Pearson took his own shot at explaining what he thinks is the revolutionary neat new technology in Nextra. Unfortunately, he doesn't have much understanding of the Centera architecture, so he mistakenly thinks is this all new. But heck, even though back before Christmas he was joining forces with TwoEgos in a premature wake for Centera, I'll give him a pass on the fact that Centera's been doing this exact type of blob striping and protection since day one (back at the beginning of 2002).

I'm feeling oddly benevolent to start this New Year for some reason...

0.049: hitachi rifs mr. t

Like me, you probably noticed that the warfare and annihilation was markedly toned down in the latest round of press releases out of Hitachi Data Systems. So much so, I had to wonder why?

So I did a little digging, and learned that HDS's PR dude Steve Zivanic was recently RIF'd by the new VP of Marketing over an apparent culture clash. Steve was reportedly the guy responsible for those over-the-top (IMHO) Mr. T YouTube-omericals ( (original, "T" for Trucker and mid-TEEr T).

Or at least he was the guy held responsible for these tasteless productions (again, IMHO). Presumably he was also the brains behind the comic-book expressions littered throughout most of the HDS press releases we've seen over the past several years.

Steve has been reportedly replaced by a fellow named Emory Epperson.

While I personally can't say that I'm sad to see Mr. Zivanic go, I was also heartened to learn (from a source who requested anonymity) that former HDS blogger David Merrill was still under the employment of HDS (just muzzled for his honesty, apparently).

But I was more than a bit concerned that poor old Mr. T might be turned out to pasture as well. 

0.048: a "new deal" storage benchmark

Dr. Kartik has picked up on the challenge to define a real-world benchmark for storage arrays. This will be an inherently complex undertaking, probably rivaling the hornet's nest that was FDR's New Deal, but I'd like to be the first to put my support behind the effort.

More important than my participation, however, is YOURS.

And where the SPC benchmarks (and the TPC benchmarks before them) were designed by a membership-only club that worked in the privacy of their meetings, I encourage THIS attempt at defining a benchmark to be conducted entirely in the public, using the open & unrestricted platform of wikis, blogs and discussion forums to engage as many people around the globe as possible.

dotConnector has opened up the conversion in his blog, and his call to action needs your input and perspectives.                           dotConnector wants YOU!

Let's ALL join in!

0.047: sata for usp-v - trick, or treat?

I'm hearing from multiple sources that Hitachi will be announcing next week that their Japanese engineers have figured out how to make SATA-II disk drives work in a USP-V, with 750GB SATA-II drives shipping for the USP-V sometime in November, and 1TB drives available sometime in 2008.

Now, this must come as a complete surprise to HHSNBN and his HDS pals out in Santa Clara.

As I've pointed out before, Hitachi has repeatedly rejected the notion of putting SATA-class storage into an enterprise storage array, insisting instead to relegate the chore of managing and rebuilding slower drives to externally virtualized storage. In fact, if to hear them tell, you'd think that putting SATA drives into an enterprise array would be as dumb as putting screen doors on a submarine.

Given that well-established position, I wouldn't be surprised if there are a bunch of Hitachi (and HP and Sun) folks learning about this impending news right here, as they read this blog (oh, and they do read it, trust me - and so apparently do the Hitachi developers and management back in Japan, based on the traffic reports I get from Feedburner).

So it looks like we're going to see One Big Flip-Flop next week - a reversal of strategy and positioning worthy of realitycheck08.org ("all the flip-flops fit to print"). If so, this should be fun.

And imagine all those poor HDS Marketing folks who must be working overtime, trying to come up with a face-saving way to spin this one. That's even more entertaining.

I gotta wonder if they're going to have Mr. T explaining this to Wall Street?

Pity the fool who changes his mind!

0.045: pushing daisies, ds8000 style

Well, it seems I spoke too soon. And it turns out I was wrong. Actually, I was right first...THEN I was mistaken. I'm sure some of you were fooled as well.

I'm not a doctor or coroner, but let me be the first to declare that despite the best attempts of IBM PR department and their paid cadre of industry analysts, it turns out that the rumours of the rebirth of the DS8000 were in fact premature.

The DS8000 officially passed away today, Tuesday, October 23, 2007.

Dead. Finished. Kaput. Expired. Done. Departed. Kicked the bucket. All but buried.

Go ahead - Google today's IBM announcements and coverage and see for yourself.

Now there are still some press and analysts out there who haven't seen the obituary. There are a few analysts-for-hire who are hungry enough for income to sing the praises of the DS8000 and to publicly declare that assertions of the DS8000's demise (like my prior "not dead yet" post) are nothing but FUD. But I think its becoming clear that these analysts aren't doing customers (or the industry they serve) any benefit by trying to help IBM hide the fact that they haven't been investing in the DS8000 for quite some time now.

I'm reminded of a line from the movie The Sixth Sense:

I see dead storage products. They just don't know they're dead yet.
 

0.044: not dead yet, I guess

I feel somewhat like the poor sot at the beginning of the classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail, having tossed my poor plague-ridden uncle into the death-cart -- only to have him whimper "I'm not dead, yet!"

Seems I may have prematurely declared the demise of the DS8000 in my prior blognostications. Oh, the DS6000 has clearly succumbed to a myriad of afflictions, but there's been a growing rumble that there will be an update to the DS8000 Turbo announced on Tuesday, October 23^rd. I'd been hearing about this from my inside-EMC channels for a while now, but today I received what I will conclude is external confirmation in the form of this week's Peer Incite review over at Wikibon.

An excerpt:

On Tuesday October 23^rd the Wikibon community will be reviewing an announcement from one of the world's leading storage suppliers.

The Wikibon community will explore implications for customers, especially emphasizing near term procurement actions. [name redacted], a well known and highly regarded analyst for the storage industry will be the lead analyst on the call.

Each week, Wikibon hosts Peer Incite, a free, unbiased research and advisory call on important storage topics. Please join other practitioners, technologists and consultants as we explore critical storage industry issues.

Now honestly, I don't know how critical this could be in real life, especially given that [name redacted] isn't necessarily all that "unbiased." But if you want to see what all the fuss is about, you'll have to register to participate over at WikiBon.

 

0.038: how much is too much information?

IDC and EMC have collaborated on a cool new Flash widget that tracks the forecasted growth of information being created and replicated in the digital universe this year.
 

Pretty amazing, especially since we collectively only created about 161 exabytes of information in all of 2006!

Note that both the white paper and the ticker are compliments of EMC and IDC, free for appropriate use on your web site, blog or desktop. I'm going to try to give this widget a prominent position on my blog site somewhere (turns out it's pretty scalable).

Neat, huh?

0.035: hitachi drops another shoe (it sounded like a slipper!)

I guess I should be ashamed. Embarrassed at least.

Yesterday, someone asked me why I hadn't yet commented here about Hitachi's baby USP-VM announcement made earlier this week, and I responded "what announcement?"

Yep. I missed it. Completely.

Not that I wasn't aware it was coming...Mr. T doesn't make the rounds on Wall Street on the arms of HDS PR folks for nothing, nor do you wake poor old Claus from his year-long blogging hiatus unless something really important is about to happen.

As I had prior blognosticated, there were (and still are) gaping holes in the initial USPV announcement - clearly the team back in Japan had much more in mind than had been announced back in May. And at least a few rumors indicated that many of these would make it through the QA gauntlet before the end of Q3'07.

Guess this stuff really is hard for everyone.

So I guess because I'd expected so much more, the actual announcement of the USPV "mini-me" slipped right under my radar. I probably shouldn't have taken Nigel's advice and stopped stalking HHSNBN (although it has been therapeutic not to read about yet another world calamity that UVM can solve for a couple of weeks, mind you).

But now that mini-me has been brought to my attention, you just know I have to comment. Interestingly though, this time I'm not alone in correcting the typical misleading marketing that the Hitachi Data Systems Santa Clara marketing miscreants have become known for.

It seems I have some new friends in my quest to keep things honest.
 

0.033: elvis has left the building

Yesterday afternoon it became official: with the signing of the Product Ship Authorization (PSA), Enginuity release 5772+ ("plus") and the Symmetrix DMX-4 are now Generally Available.

Less than 24 hours later, shipments of both are already underway (along with the updated releases of Symmetrix Management Console, Solutions Enabler, the SMI-S provider and the mainframe Host Components, just for completeness).

Last month, I described the content and feature set of DMX-4 and the accompanying Enginuity 5772+ release (which also runs on existing DMX-3 platforms). There are lots of highlights, including the DMX-4's 4Gb back-end and its first (and still only) native support for SATA-II drives. And numerous software enhancements that deliver significantly improved response time, throughput and replication capabilities for both DMX-3 and DMX-4.

Since the announcement, customer interest in DMX-4 and the new software update has been strong, while the competitive response has been noticeably weak . In fact, I think that almost all of the DMX-4's in backlog will be shipping with at least some 500GB SATA-II drives alongside the faster FC capacity, in stark contradiction to the assertions that customers (and certain vendors) don't want to put lower tier data into their Tier 1 platform.

And like I said - it's great when you're the only SATA game in town. And even better when it's a game customers want to play. I expect our sales teams will be leveraging this /GB advantage pretty heavily for the foreseeable future.

Hats off to the team of development, quality assurance, customer service, product management, marketing, professional services, training, manufacturing, finance and human resources for a job well done! It takes more than a village, and y'all done good.
 

but wait - there's more!