the storage anarchist

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.

 

0.018: no more bad things after 2011

Good news for those of us who have been following the wide-ranging discussions on the risks and perils of thin provisioning over the past month or two: it appears that all the "Bad Things" we've been discussing could be avoided altogether if we all simply unite and elect John Edwards as President of the USA next year.

John Edwards Vows to End All Bad Things (on The Onion)

Note that John doesn't specifically list "runaway demand for unavailable storage" or "double drive failure in a RAID 5 thin storage pool" as Bad Things to be eradicated, but maybe we could get a petition together to include these under either the "soil erosion" or the "not having enough spending money" categories. Worst case, we would probably be at least partially covered from the most damaging risks by the elimination of "procrastination," although that's not necessarily the root of all Bad Things related to thin provisioning.

I expect Edwards campaign contributions from 3par, DataCore, Equallogic, NetApp and Hitachi to start pouring in overnight (EMC is not included owing to its strong Republican party ties).

I sincerely apologize to my readers, I just couldn't resist. I'll have an update on the DMX-4 announcement by week's end, I promise.

0.016: storage blognostications

From time to time, several of us engineers will get together for an hour or two of non-linear thinking, just for the heck of it. In the office, we call these Innovation Events - the sort of brainstorming sessions I'm sure you've all participated in. But we also hold special outside the office sessions, where our focus areas tend not to be on customer problems, new technologies or The Next Big Thing.

And yes - there is usually alcohol involved in off-site these mental calisthenics events. It is indeed very convenient that we have a tavern virtually in the middle of our South Street campus in Hopkinton so that we can stop off for a quick, ah ... brainstorming session on our way home. And in fact, the establishment is owned and operated by EMC'ers no less - a pretty smart bunch, those O'Tooles.

Anyhoo, after the third beer or so, what does the conversation inevitably turn towards (after all the Red Sox gossip has been exhausted, that is)? Simple -- it's EMC's competition -- and what people think they're going to do next.

And the more beer, the better the prognostications .

Try these on for size ...

0.011: strategies for world domination

Like many of you, I've been watching the recent discussions about who stole what from whom with more than a little bit of glee. Chris Mellor started it, Tony Pearson responded, Kirby piled on with innuendo of similar BigCo misbehavings in the past, and Storagezilla took the time to correct Tony's obvious misunderstanding of how Invista is packaged and delivered (as an integrated solution, Tony, not as a kit of bits). Oh, and then last Friday Kirby whined a bit more (guess BigCo's lawyers forgot to get a gag order, huh?).

Such fun.

In parallel, and seemingly unrelated to this, there have been a slew of assertions about who is really #1 in storage. Tony and IBM claimed world dominance in overall storage (if you include tape), HP claimed #1 in overall disk storage, Chris granted EMC #1 in external storage, and Kirby asserted that the real overall winner in disk storage was Seagate. Mark Lewis clarified the obvious and questioned IBM's motivations. And of course, the rest of the wanna-be's all chimed in with their own context-ridden slice of IDC's concoction of data-that-would-be-useful-if-only-it-were-verifiably-true. I must admit that NetApps' "fastest growing in multiple shrinking markets" announcement left me a bit confused, especially coming on the heels of their forecasted 6-7% downturn in revenues for calendar Q2. Given that calendar Q2 is historically stronger than Q1, I don't think these press release necessarily add up to a positive for NetApp shareholders.

This all followed by a couple of rounds of marketing 101 training between Chuck and Kirby. (Psst. Kirby - the colloquialism is "nursing at the corporate trough," even if it is occasionally pronounced "troth"!)

Pure entertainment.

But today's blog entry isn't about those shenanigans.

No, I thought I'd write about what's behind all these seemingly unconnected discussions - the motivations of the leading storage suppliers that drive us to compete to be king-of-the-hill. A look into the unspoken (but quite apparent) strategies being employed to get to the top. And my anarchist's view of what they/we are all missing.

Ready? Read on...

0.004: get ready for tagma-too!

Word's out - there's soon to be a new USP from our pals at Hitachi/HP/Sun. And I'm sure you didn't hear about it first from me.

It's about time.

Hitachi had been on a pretty set schedule of bringing new high-end platforms to market just about exactly every 24 months. And in fact, it seems many customers were specifically told in early 2006 to expect the next-gen "Tagma" in the September 2006 (ish) time frame, almost exactly 2 years after the original USP12000/9990v was announced.

That would make next week's (rumored expected) announcement just about 8 months late. Makes one wonder what when wrong - what happened in 2006 to cause such a delay? A delay so long that Hitachi's Wall Street Minions were out in force late last summer, admitting to anyone who'd listen that the company would likely suffer significant loss of market share through calendar Q4'06 and Q1'07.

Although the numbers aren't all in yet for Q1'07, the predicted loss of storage market share the last couple of quarters looks very likely to have been correct. In fact, estimates I've seen indicate that IBM's DS8000 surpassed Hitachi's USP+NSC sales in the high-end for the first time back in Q4'06.

After such a long wait, I'm pretty sure what the folks over at Hitachi are thinking right about now...

...Welcome to the machine!