the storage anarchist

1.015: stranger danger

If you have children, hopefully you've taught them about Stranger Danger at a very young age - prevention and awareness are the most powerful weapons we have to protect our families and friends.

And if Symmetrix DMX could talk, it surely would be yelling at the top of it's blower fans:

NO! I don't know you! You are not my Dad!

Let it hereby be known that Moshe Yanai is not the father of Symmetrix DMX.

No, despite the public assertions of IBM to the contrary, Moshe had virtually nothing to do with the creation of Symmetrix DMX. And on behalf of the hard-working, dedicated engineers, developers and patent-holders who did in fact design and deliver DMX to the market in February of 2003, it is high time to set the record straight.

Moshe's responsibilities for Symmetrix development ended in 2001, long before DMX production even began. And Symmetrix DMX was a radical change in virtually every dimension from the 5 generations of Symmetrix that preceded it under Moshe's watch.

I'm pretty sure Moshe didn't like anything very much about Symmetrix DMX.

And I will point out that Moshe left EMC in 2002 (for whatever reason), which was well before DMX was even introduced to beta sites or discussed under NDA with analysts and prospects.

I was the marketing lead for the launch of Symmetrix DMX, so I know first-hand that he wasn't involved.

So, as you can imagine, I find it curious that IBM is attempting to mislead everyone who will listen that the success of DMX is a feather in Moshe's cap - evidence of his storage prowess and foresight.

On behalf of DMX I say: thanks for the recognition as the market leader. But he still ain't my dad!
 

1.013: more on enterprise flash

Sometimes I just can't keep my opinions to myself.

Last Friday afternoon while I was perusing Chris Mellor's Blocks and Files, I was struck by the discontinuity of messaging that is emerging around the "best" application of Flash drives. From the "flash can't write fast enough" doom and gloom of the relatively unknown wanna-bee Infortrend to the "flash is too fast for external storage" justification for Sun's focus on server-based flash, it struck me that uninformed readers were likely being confused, if not outright mislead by the contradictory misinformation.

So I dashed a letter off to Chris outlining my concerns and rebutting the misrepresentations of the real benefits that the right flash drive is already delivering today - despite the unfounded claims of others in the storage and server industries. And upon his request, I granted him permission to publish this as an opinion piece on Blocks and Files, which he has done under the title of Missing the flash point (a fitting play on words, IMHO).

N.B. - Normally, I would have posted this to my own blog, but part of my concern is that the misleading information is being distributed by sites like Blocks and Files. My letter was in fact originally written in a context beseeching Chris to present a more balanced perspective on the realities of flash technology. When he offered to publish my opinion outright, I figured the best way to provide balance was to use the same billboard, so to speak.

Anyway, I hope that my opinion letter helps expand the conversation about flash technology. In my opinion, there's nothing to be gained by trying to polarize this into an either-or discussion. In fact, I honestly believe that there are appropriate applications for Flash-based storage in both servers and external storage arrays. And judging by the applications I've seen flash targeted for by customers, the early adopters are going to have a pretty big competitive advantage on their competitors.

The bottom line is this - the sooner that more vendors stop quibbling over who, how or where flash is "best" and actually start bringing real flash technology to market in their respective products, the sooner (and faster) we collectively will drive up demand and drive down the costs.

And that, my friends, is the whole point...the flash point, as it were: leveraging Flash to cost-effectively bypass the inherent limitations of mechanical disk drives...

IMHO

 

technorati tags: flash drives,flash SSDs,enterprise flash drives,EFDs,Infortrend,Sun,Pillar Data Systems,storage performance,storage consolidation,NAND flash,SSD

1.012: flash drives in enterprise storage

Yesterday I presented a webcast on Enterprise Flash Drives to EMC's investment community, as part of Investor Relations' ongoing Tech Talk series. If you'd like to see it, the slides and replay are available on EMC.com here: Tech Talk for Investors: Flash Drives in Enterprise Storage, but only until July 25, 2008.

Chris Mellor has also reported about this presentation over on Blocks and Files in his "EMC on enterprise flash drives" analysis piece. (Thanks for noticing, Chris - glad you were able to participate).

On a related topic, Network World's Jon Brodkin takes a look into the growing market demand for Flash technology in his article titled Flash storage gets enterprise attention as prices decline. The article provides a fairly comprehensive look at what's going on in the realm of enterprise flash across both storage and server vendors, and it is definitely worth the read.

But I have to admit I was kinda surprised by this quote that Jon included from Michael Workman, president and CEO of Pillar Data Systems:

"The best use of solid-state disk is direct-attached, not in a shared network array. The reason for that is the latencies for solid-state disk are so low that putting it on a network to get at it actually makes the latency of the solid-state disk much worse than it could be."

IMHO, that's a pretty uninformed position to take, especially by the chief executive of an external storage vendor.
 

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?
 

1.009: fun with numbers (and charts)

One thing I've grown to depend upon over my past 13 months of blogging is that Fellow Blogger Tony Pearson will try and refute, twist and manipulate anything I say that could be construed as a challenge to IBM and/or its products. Guaranteed action/reaction.

It took him a couple of weeks to get around to responding to my post on GDDR vs. GDPS, but he didn't let me down.

And true to form, our resident Mr. Pennybags-lookalike spares no opportunity to misrepresent the facts in IBM's favor. Sure, you can run compile your own open-source version of Linux to run on IBM mainframe hardware as he says, but I sincerely doubt anyone would ever do that. That's awfully expensive hardware to be running generic home-brewed Linux on...

But fact is that you can't get IBM mainframe hardware from anywhere else but IBM, nor can you license the software necessary to run your z/OS-, z/VM-, z/VSE-, or z/TPF-based applications from anyone but IBM. And while GDPS might indeed support third party storage, the pre-requisite is that the storage vendor have licensed and implemented bug-compatible equivalents of PPRC and FlashCopy.

Hardly an "open system."

No, a real "open" version of GDPS would natively support TimeFinder and SRDF instead of the feature-limited IBM wanna-bee alternatives.

And though indeed EMC's GDDR supports only a subset of the capabilities of IBM's GDPS, that subset is pretty much 100% of what the vast majority IBM's GDPS customers are deploying - two site automated disaster restart for their geographically dispersed IBM z/OS-based Parallel Sysplexes running on IBM Series "z" hardware.

Yet GDDR costs SIGNIFICANTLY less to implement and maintain than IBM's GDPS for this same functionality. Does the same thing that most people need, for less. Plain, and simple...

To that fact, TonyP would have you believe that EMC is offering GDDR below cost - but you'll have to trust me on this one, nothing could be further from the truth.

No, the simple reality is that IBM has long been taking advantage of it's position as the sole-source provider to charge a massive premium for its mainframe products (hardware, software AND services). I'll go so far as to say that EMC's and IBM's costs to deploy their respective disaster restart solutions are probably very close to identical - IBM just charges more. A LOT more.

Which is why TonyP is throwing up all the FUD he can muster: he hopes to diffuse the very real threat to the exorbitant profits that GDPS has been delivering to IBM's bottom line.

Go figure....

 

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...

 

1.006: 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...
 

1.003: maybe it really isn't all about the hokey-pokey

If you haven't read yesterday's post yet (1.002: that just about says it all) you probably should do so before proceeding with today's.

After yesterday's post, I received the following email from an EMC colleague that I've worked very closely with over the years:

Hi Barry,

Your most recent blog entry reminded me of a B-school paper I wrote equating brand equity (one of - if not the most - critical element for long term success) to trust.  Enjoy!

-Tom

Context: circa 2002

After I read the attached paper, I immediately asked Tom if he'd mind if I posted it here in my blog, and he readily agreed. So here it is...

The Technology Brand
Bridging Companies Through Inevitable Lifecycle Troughs
Copyright © 2002 Tom Broderick. Reprinted With Permission.

Hopefully you'll find his paper as interesting (and relevant) as I did.

Tom is another one of those smart people I am fortunate to work with. I'm proud to say that I learned a ton from him - most of it while I was his "manager" (though looking back on it, I'm not quite sure who was managing who ). I do know that I owe most of my understandings about the business and operational side of Symmetrix to him.

And FWIW: I'm not casting any aspersions on anyone with this trust theme. It is just something that hit me smack between the eyes yesterday...one of life's "aha" moments...

Or maybe it's one of those over-50 things - I dunno!

 

technorati tags: brand value,branding,brand equity,trust,tom broderick,business lifecycle,product lifecycle,business strategy,smart people,EMC,Symmetrix

1.002: that just about says it all

When I'm not calling attention to the foibles and FUD being tossed around like spring pollen by Symmetrix wanna-bees, I usually spend a large part of my day helping EMC's customers, prospects and sales teams understand what Symmetrix is really all about.

Earlier this week, I spent the day with the EMC SPEED Gurus at their annual SPEED Summit. These are the men and women who set the appropriate performance configurations and expectations in pre-sales situations, and/or implement them post-sales. (During this annual Summit, we provide the Gurus with in-depth understanding of the performance characteristics of virtually every aspect of Symmetrix, as well as its competition. Consider them Armed and Dangerous)

Then today, I was in back-to-back discussions of current and future Symmetrix capabilities with two different long-time EMC customers in the Hopkinton EBC.

The discussions with both audiences were similar - centered around the recent enhancements delivered for Symmetrix DMX3 & DMX4, including Enterprise Flash Drives, Virtual Provisioning, Symmetrix Compatible Flash(copy) and the rest of the features delivered in Enginuity 5773. And of course we spent some time looking towards the future of storage technology, and how EMC is evolving Symmetrix to leverage key technology changes that are likely within the next few years.

Throughout these discussions, I am repeatedly struck by the notion that as interesting as all the technology is, it wasn't why I am asked to meet with these audiences. It hit me that no matter how much focus we put on performance, availability, scalability, competition or even the "efficiencies" (as in utilization-, energy- and cost-efficiency), that wasn't what was most important about these meetings.

No, as a member of the executive team that defines and drives the Symmetrix business, I'm there (and here, in fact) for a very basic purpose.

 

1.001: this is like déjà vu all over again

Is it just me, or have IBM's storage execs suddenly started sounding like their mainframe execs used to a few decades ago?

Seems that every day someone else over there at Big Blue wants to go on record insisting that the best IT solution is one that is supplied by a single vendor - end-to-end integration, replace the "stickiness" of unique solutions with the "stickiness" of IBM software. And all that.

In Andy Monshaw's interview with eWeek.com, he makes it pretty clear that he believes that the best IT solution comes from a single vendor, with end-to-end integration. As in: buy your servers, your storage, your networking, your applications and your services all from IBM. Don't worry about vendor lock-in, because you'll be able to put IBM SVC kit in front of your old third party gear and do things the Blue Way with little or no hassle.

Oh, and really fast flash-based storage simply isn't good enough (go figure, since they don't have that in their portfolio). No, apparently (according to Andy) you're going to need to integrate flash into every aspect of your compute platform before you can gain any measurable value.

Bullship, I say to that: Bullship!

Andy goes on to say he no longer needs to "sweep the floor" - that an unintended benefit of the SVC is that customers no longer have to be locked into their storage platforms (as if they ever where - really).

But don't be fooled - despite the eloquent words, make no mistake: in Andy's vision, you'll still be handcuffed. He'll just paint whatever you have on the floor IBM Blue with his SVC spray paint.

It's what's best for the customer, he asserts.

In Andy's world, apparantely, there's nothing wrong with vendor lock-in, so long as you're wrapped from head to toe in IBM Blue.

Go figure! 

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...

 

0.074: 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)

0.071: changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes

I took off for a week-long sojourn to the Conch Republic [history] last week, where I celebrated the half-century mark of my life with friends and family on St. Patrick's Day .

It couldn't have been better - from the boat drinks by the pool and the strolls down Duval St. in the unseasonably warm (and humid) weather, to an afternoon listening to Michael McCloud and sucking down Land Shark lager at Schooner Wharf, to the tours of the homes of Hemingway, Truman, Audubon and more butterflies than you can possibly imagine, to watching some of the most picturesque sunsets I've ever seen from Mallory Square and Fort Taylor State Park. And then there were the dinners at Louie's Backyard, Blue Heaven (in the company of chickens), Salute' and El Siboney (twice!). Not to mention the night life! [link intentionally omitted ]

Yes, Key West is a great place to turn 50, even if you're NOT a pirate (did I mention that it was Spring Break?)

Amazingly, and even though I did bring my laptop, I was able to resist the temptation to respond to the storage news of the week. With all the R&R I was enjoying in Margaritaville, it was a struggle to keep my fingers off the keyboard (NOT!).

Something about the weather just made it all seem so...unimportant!

But trust me, the week's events didn't go by without notice...
 

0.070: horton hears a hu

My sides hurt.

I ended last week rotflmao!, thanks to IBM's Charlie Andrews and his creative response to flash-based solid state storage (tape, he said...TAPE!). At the time, I figured that nobody could top that for the flat-out wackiest statement of the year.

Apparently, I underestimated Hu Yoshida.

Not content with his first round of uninformed comments about flash SSDs, HDS' so-called "chief technology officer" piled on a few more layers of baloney in an interview with IT Week UK's Dave Bailey:

IT Week:

What are your views on Flash memory storage, which EMC recently announced it would be putting onto its DMX systems?

Hu:

There are a number of problems with Flash memory. First, the price, which can be up to 20 times as much as spinning disks. Secondly, there’s supplier viability – there’s only a few vendors of this technology at the minute. You’ve also got to remember that Flash disks have a rewrite limitation and we need to have some diagnostics to predict when that limit could occur. For hard disks, we have self-monitoring analysis and reporting technology (Smart), but there’s nothing like that for Flash disks. What happens if you’re in the middle of a financial transaction and a write failure occurs, after a write commit? As for performance, just because it’s solid state doesn’t mean it would be any faster than a spinning disk. Remember all those interfaces between your application and the disk are slowing the data transfer rates, so it would be a good idea to benchmark your set-up.

What happens on a write failure, he asks?

LSHIPMP!

OK, well, I almost PMP...

Wait, let me catch my breath...

Come on, he can't be serious...I mean, it's not like disk drives don't suffer from the occasional write failure, yet somehow we manage not to lose data. At least, EMC arrays manage not to lose data - with multiple layers of protection and recovery.

Can it be that Hu is really that out of touch with reality?

 

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

0.065: 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 ...

0.064: meet bob and joe

You may have run across these two already, but Bob and Joe are two rising superstars in the world of storage administration, and there's a lot of things we all can learn from these guys.

You know, things like "A Mind Is A Terrible Thing to Waste" (ad slogan quoted respectfully in honor of Black History Month).

So grab some popcorn, set aside a few minutes on your weekly timecard for OTJ training and tune in to these soon-to-be-classic edutorials (and if you only watch one, I recommend it be the last one):

Bob and Joe: Fun With Tape
 

Bob and Joe: Energy Efficiency
 

Bob and Joe: Mainframe Show and Tell
 

Oh, and I am very sorry, but I cannot promise that there won't be more of these in the future.

 

technorati tags: viral video,viral marketing,EMC,Symmetrix,Mainframe,Mainframe Storage,Energy Efficiency,Green IT,Tape is Dead

0.063: a totally different benchmark standard

There seems to be a lot of talk lately about benchmarking, especially the so-called "vendor-neutral" kind. Oddly, the Council behind all this seems to be anything but "vendor-neutral," especially when you take a look at the member roster for this exclusive club.

Notice anything odd?

Vendors in the storage industry outnumber "customer" members on the SPC by something like 28-5.

Go Figure.

Even though they managed to squeak the word "customers" into their mission statement, it is pretty clear this organization is really more about the competitive objectives of their vendor-led membership, and not so much about the interests of the consumers. At least, it's the vendors who are paying the bills (and you know that works the same for the SPC as it does down in DC).

In fact, given the relative dearth of customer participation, you really have to wonder if customers care about these benchmarks at all. Obviously, they clearly don't care enough to spend their money to ensure that the tests and the results are truly meaningful, unbiased and accurate. And you might even ask yourself why the press makes such a big deal about these benchmarks when clearly the customers don't see them as being all that important or relevant.

OK. So maybe it's just ME that wonders about these things. Oh, and Beth. And John. And Marc.

So where is the voice of the customer?

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).

 

0.059: 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.

0.055: 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...

0.051: thin provisioning planning guide(s)

It seems my little foray over to Wikibon this week has sparked some serious thought and consideration about the realities of thin provisioning, whether in-the-box or as a so-called "service" for aging external storage. The collective community has forged several documents which I believe should be mandatory reading for any storage administrator planning to deploy thinly provisioned storage from any vendor (in addition to my own collection of observations and advice, of course).

Heck, these probably should be mandatory for anyone selling this stuff as well - it's always easier if both sides of the sale have common understanding and expectations.

The storage anarchist's recommended thin provisioning reading list (in suggested reading order):

1. Thin provisioning: Where to start (ignore the Hitachi focus, the guidelines are universally applicable)
2. Integrating thin provisioning into the fabric of IT
3. Thin provisioning: Look before you leap (originated by yours truly)
4. Planning for safe thin provisioning on external storage (these tips actually apply to thin provisioning on both internal and external storage)

I'll update this list as time goes on, and if you have other references that you think belong here, drop me an email or a comment and if I agree, I'll happily include them.

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!

0.042: yeah, what he said

Chuck Hollis' blog today is a tribute to EMC's (not so) "secret" sales force.

I too am down here in the Land That Walt Built, surrounded by those who are inarguably EMC's best and brightest, and I just wanted to add my shout out to these unsung heroes.

And importantly, I don't mean "unsung heroes of EMC."

No, as several of the customers who have appeared on stage today have testified, this community of technology specialists are the Trusted Advisors who are helping some of the world's most demanding IT organizations wade through the ever-changing technology landscape to solve information challenges not even imagined by the one-trick-pony startups that seem to attract so much attention. And without these insightful ladies and gentlemen, there are an awful lot of household-name information enterprises that wouldn't be who they are, and there is an awful lot of digital information that you and I just wouldn't be taking for granted every day.

So my "thank you" to this community goes out for the challenges you handle every day, AND for the challenges you bring back to me and my peers back in headquarters. As many of us discussed today, understanding and responding to the challenges our customers face is an EMC competitive advantage that doesn't happen on trade show floors or in catered cocktail seminars. No, it happens only because you have earned the right to live, breathe and influence our customers' IT strategy and infrastructure.

My personal and professional thanks to each and every one of you. You are indeed our EMC's most important competitive advantage.

0.041: the oxymoronic spc-1 results from sun and hp

OK, now this is really, REALLY funny. I have to give credit to Steve Duplessie for pointing this out, but did you realize that both the HP and Sun entries for the USP-V on the SPC-1 results page are the identical documents posted by Hitachi?

The hilarious oxymoron here is that the server platform used by Hitachi is the IBM p5 595 Model 9119. Not an HP SuperDome, nor a Sun Enterprise M9000 or a Fire E25K. In fact, it seems that both Sun and HP have published the Hitachi SPC results verbatim - complete with photos of the p5 and everything. Only the title page and the product name has been changed.

Seems strange, given that the SPC-1 is supposed to be a storage benchmark - some might assume that the choice of server wouldn't have any bearing on the results - ANY server should get the same answers using the same storage - right? (Nope - wrong. Even the SPC knows that isn't true...that's why they include the disclaimer I posted about earlier.)

Now given that neither Sun nor HP specialize in enterprise-class storage, opting instead to OEM the wares of the world's largest tractor manufacturer, I'm sure that I'm not the only one that finds it ironic that they'd both choose to promote their #1 competitor's server platform in their quest to establish storage superiority.

Can it be that challenging EMC to an SPC duel is more important to HP & Sun than conceding the server market to IBM?
 

0.039: ibm and spc vs. hitachi math

Hitachi dropped another shoe Monday with its announcement of the best-ever SPC-1 benchmark results for an Enterprise Storage System.

I'm sure the "thud" was pretty deafening over in Blue-ville, especially given this recent reiteration of IBM superiority by Tony Pearson - partially on the back of the DS8000's (now defunct) claims to the top spot on the SPC stepladder.

I pretty much established my position as a disbeliever in the real-world value of benchmarks such as the SPC in my prior post entitled the case against standardized benchmarking, so I won't rehash my arguments of irrelevance here.

But I will take the opportunity to add to my continuing expose of Hitachi math, both as a service to my readers, and in support my pals Tony & BarryW over at Poor Old Big Blue. I'm sure they'll have their own spin soon, but I figured I might be able to jump-start their responses.

But before you read on, I'm curious: Were YOU able to recognize the Hitachi math in this announcement?
 

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 pape