the storage anarchist

2.030: emc fast and the big 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope you have enjoyed the pictures!

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

2.029: don't look back!

I’m just back from 2 weeks of holiday in South Africa, passing through home long enough to switch suitcases for my trip back across the Atlantic to Prague for Customer Council (I promise to post more pictures soon).

Up early to try and stay in the Czech Republic’s time zone during my brief stop-over, I noticed that self-proclaimed storage historian Claus Mikkelsen has leveraged a new report by his long-time compatriot and fellow Symmetrix-hater Josh Krischer to take yet another pass at bashing the Symmetrix architecture in his latest blog entitled Oh, the Commodity of it All!!

Of course I couldn’t just let that post go un-answered.

Follows an open letter response to Claus (and Josh). Normally, I would have posted this as a comment on Claus’ blog, but it appears I continue to be persona-non-grata on HDS blogs (excepting Michael Hay’s, who continues to respectfully engage…thanks Michael).
 

2.027: scale-out for virtual servers!

Earlier this week, Hu Yoshida wrote a blog post challenging the viability of scale-out storage architectures as a platform for virtual server compute platforms (such as VMware).

I can't sit on the sidelines and let that post go unanswered.

Hu is asserting that scale-out cannot support the Virtual Server world, but he makes no real case to back this assertion up. More importantly, it appears to me that he still doesn't understand how V-Max scale-out works.

What's more, his attacks on “modular” appear to be nothing more than an obvious attempt to defend Hitachi's “monolithic” architecture. And those of us with longer memories will recognize that Hu's position is in fact a 180-degree reversal of the position HDS took against Symmetrix for the last decade or so – Hu rarely missed an opportunity to beat EMC up for the fixed-cabinet “monolithic” storage of Symm 5 and DMX 1&2. Hitachi even had slides (and a few You-Tube videos) attacking the “Symmetrix monolith”.

And here Hu is today defending the very monolithic approach that HDS so aggressively challenged not so long ago.

 

2.024: stuck in the middle with hu

You've got to admit that the lyrics of the Stealer's Wheel hit have an uncanny resonance with the FCoE misinformation being promoted by
you-know-Hu.

I hereby refer my readership to
Storagezilla's latest post on FCoE. 

technorati tags: FCoE,FUD

2.023: the future of flash is fast

I had the honor yesterday of hosting an EMC Investor Relations "Tech Talk" webcast on the subject of Flash Drives and EMC FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering).

Although Chris Mellor scooped me with his second-hand coverage of the event (Chris leveraged a report put out by Aaron Rakers to customers of Stifel Nicolaus Equity Research for his story), I thought I'd share the session with my readers first-hand.

So, if you have an hour or so, pop over to the IR landing page on EMC.com and click the banner link to the recorded webcast (or go directly to the webcast hosting site). But take notice – this webcast will be available on-line only through October 21, 2009.

I also included the net result of the FAST demo that Chad Sakac presented at VMworld 2009 in yesterday's presentation. If you'd like to see the complete demonstration, it's available on YouTube here:

I have also received a few follow-up questions from the event; I'll answer several of them after the break…
 

2.012: how to mind the future of a mission-critical world

A couple of weeks ago, in the midst of Hitachi's recent green eggs and HHAM announcement, HDS bloggers Claus Mikkelsen and Michael Hay teamed up to assert that I have nothing better to do with my time than to comment on their blogs. Michael even went so far as to comment:

Claus I agree with your approach here, and I do wonder if our Boy Wonder, Barry, is a full time blogger for EMC without anything else to do.

After that slap-in-the-face, both Claus and Michael have has chosen to censor my comments on their respective blogs his blog, and it appears that Christophe Bertrand will no longer publish my comments either. [UPDATE 21 June 2009: Although he obviously agreed with Claus’ decision to censor me, Michael now says he hasn’t received any of my comments on his blog- I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt – for now.]

Was it something I said? 

Fortunately, the storage anarchist does have a day job.

In fact, the latest issue of the EMC.now magazine includes an article about how the Symmetrix Product Group stays closely connected with the requirements and future vision of its customers and prospects, and provides some insight about what I really do here at EMC. If you're interested, the article is How to mind the future of a mission-critical world and it can be found on page 18 of the on-line version or on page 10 of the PDF version of the EMC.now magazine.

In fact, this close customer interaction that the Symmetrix management team maintains is the real reason why the words "from a unique perspective" is included in my blog's masthead. I get to see the future of storage technology through the eyes of customers dealing with the here and now.

Customer insight is also why I can ask EMC's competitors the tough questions so quickly and precisely whenever they make an announcement – I actually DO live and breathe customer requirements for storage, and it really IS part of my job to understand if, when and how competitors are addressing the customer requirements I learn about daily. So as irritating as my questions are, I know that the competitors are getting these same questions from their prospects. And their bloggers have come to know that  that I won't hesitate to call them out on a BS answer – especially when they make stuff up or misrepresent the facts.

And if that makes me persona non grata, so be it. Anarchy cannot be censored!

By the way, there are lots of other interesting articles in this issue of EMC.now. Whether you are an EMC customer, partner, prospect or competitor, I encourage you to give it a thorough read. And if you'd like to discuss any of the content, feel free to post your thoughts and questions here.

I promise you won't be censored, even if I might not be able to answer all of your questions.

 

This is another post from the storage anarchist.

technorati tags: EMC,strategic planning,Symmetrix,V-Max,EMC.now,voice of the customer,TCE,mission-critical,storage strategy,HDS censorship

2.010: pity the fool

V-Max sure has gotten under the skin of the HDS and their bloggers.

Not only has the pitiful HDS marketing machine rushed out yet another overhyped and underwhelming (green eggs and HAM) announcement, but every HDS blogger seems determined to take as many uninformed pot-shots of FUD at a product they clearly have not even yet begun to comprehend.

And it’s not just the bloggers who clearly don’t get it: a customer recently told me about some Hitachi marketing materials he has seen that attacked V-Max based entirely upon a Hitachi “suspicion” about the architectural utility of the Virtual Matrix. Seems based on that (mistaken) “suspicion” Hitachi’s conclusion is that V-Max simply cannot work. PERIOD.

When you don’t understand how something works, I guess all you CAN do is make sh*t up!

The latest blatantly uninformed attempt to discredit V-Max comes from HDS’ Christophe Bertrand as he delves deep into the FUD-bucket. In his latest post he tries to cast aspersions against V-Max while trying to deflect several of my very, shall-we-say, PESKY observations about the limitations of TSM – especially when it comes to relocating volumes that are being replicated.

Historically, Chris tends to mislead through incompletely reasoned logic and abject blind bias (I’ve suggested to him on more than one occasion that he is insulting the intelligence of his audience, but he still persists with his blissfully ignorant attacks). And he doesn’t fail to follow form with his latest…

In fact, it’s almost as if Christophe is Mr. T reincarnated (remember THOSE silly adverts?)!
 

2.002: meh – ibm really, really doesn't get flash

Someone sent me this today:

And I have been trying so hard not to be The Storage Antagonist ;-}

Word to the wise, though – if you don't understand something, don't blog about it as if you do.

I've tried to get IBM's Tony Pearson to understand this repeatedly over the years, and he just keeps making the same mistakes. Probably has him despising me as much as that other blogger with the same first name, because every time he slips up, I'm usually there to correct him before his misinformation gets any traction.

This week TonyP is trying to wax intelligent on Flash Drives for the DS8K, but in his attempts to discredit my previous post, he removes any lingering doubt that IBM doesn't "get" flash.

Be sure to take the time to read the comments, and you'll see that TonyP clearly didn't take the time to understand the STEC ZeusIOPS drive or its wear-leveling algorithms. As a result, he pretty much embarrasses himself and his employer (not to mention the IBM Distinguished Engineers he throws under the bus) in the process.

At least he didn't try to drag Master Scientist BarryW down with him!

So, knowing that TonyP wouldn't dare to actually do the math for his readers, I will…
 

2.001: ibm's amazing splash dance, part deux

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

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

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

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

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

So, I asked myself…
 

1.063: vmware vsphere 4 to the power of v-max

Last month, Cisco UCS. Last week, EMC Symmetrix V-Max. This week VMware vSphere 4.

The virtual data center becomes real.

And if I may be so humble, more important to customers than the announcements themselves is the Day 1 integration between and across the products and companies.

Case in point: EMC has so many integration points with vSphere 4 that it takes two press releases to include everything:

• EMC Integrates with VMware vSphere 4 for Next-Generation Virtualized Data Centers
  Aligns Products, Solutions and Services with VMware vSphere 4 for Next-Gen Levels of IT Choice, Control and Flexibility
• EMC Delivers High Availability Path Management for VMware Vsphere 4 Data Centers
  New EMC PowerPath/VE Enables Customers to Improve Performance, and Simplify, Standardize and Automate Path Management Across Physical and Virtual Environments

Many of the V-Max ease-of-use features announced last week are targeted specifically for massive-scale vSphere environments, while things like the EMC Storage Viewer vCenter Plugin,   EMC's adapters for Site Recovery Manager, and now the new EMC PowerPath/VE work equally well with all of EMC's arrays, including both DMX and V-Max.

Chad Sakac, EMC's resident VMware evangelist-extraordinaire provides his take on today's announcements over on his Virtual Geek blog – I imagine he'll have more to say (he's the only storage blogger that writes longer articles than me, BTW – you were warned!).
 

1.062: symmetrix v-max virtual launch videos

This is the eighth in a series of posts covering EMC's Overtake the future launch on 14 April 2009.

For those of you who weren't able to participate in this week's Symmetrix V-Max virtual launch, here are most of the video's used in the event:

emc's vision for the virtual data center

Joe Tucci, EMC Chairman and CEO

 

1.061: the voice of the customer

Listening to the voice of the customer is good advice for us all…(be sure to read the comments):

techmute.com: Response to Tony’s V-Max Questions

 

Thanks, Matt – There's clearly room for improvement on EMC's communications to some audiences, but I think you received almost 100% of the intended message.

In answer to Matt's lingering uncertainty in questions 9 & 10 at the end of his 1st comment response to TonyA:

9. Being purpose-built for the its current (and future) functionality, rest assured that the performance of Symmetrix V-Max wide-striping and SRDF are not restricted by the Virtual Matrix Architecture…in fact, most customers will realize improvements to both relative to DMX4.
10. Best practices for Symmetrix V-Max were made available simultaneously with General Availability of the system. Although not radically different from DMX4 for existing features, best practices for new capabilities were developed and validated with the assistance of Beta Sites and in-house CSE expertise.

technorati tags: EMC,Symmetrix V-Max,Virtual Matrix Architecture,blogger-for-hire,Tony Asaro

1.058: v-max does what hi-star can't?

This is the fifth in a series of posts on EMC's Overtake the future launch on 14 April 2009.

Taking a pause here from the launch to present an observation.

Remember how Hu Yoshida spent the first half of 2008 telling everyone who would listen that customers didn't need or want flash drives (if you missed it, I wrote about it here and there)? Hu was later silenced once Hitachi Japan announced that they actually would be selling the very same EFDs that EMC had been shipping since the beginning of 2008. (FWIW: Hitachi was supposed to ship the first of those drives in Q1'09, but I haven't been able to verify anyone receiving them).

Well, with the introduction of Symmetrix V-Max and the Virtual Matrix Architecture, it seems that EMC has once again done precisely what Hitachi's technical experts have been telling the world cannot be done. This time, however, I don't think Hitachi is going to be able to play follow the leader, since they're so mired in their backplane-limited Hitachi Universal Star Network crossbar switch architecture (formerly known simply as "Hi-Star").

Moreover, given their ever-increasing dependence on custom (expensive) ASICs, FPGAs and off-load engines, I predict it will be years before Hitachi's engineers can re-tool to leverage the price/performance curve of industry-standard components.

In support of these opinions, I offer the perspectives of none other than Hu Yoshida himself and fellow Hitachi blogger Michael Hay, in two separate and otherwise unrelated stories.

1.057: symmetrix v-max - scale up, scale out, scale away!

This is the fourth in a series of posts on EMC's Overtake the future launch on 14 April 2009.

Introducing the new Symmetrix V-Max^tm – the first enterprise storage platform to integrate the performance and efficiency of Scale-Up with the cost-effective flexibility of Scale-Out.

• Simple: Redefines enterprise storage architecture, ease-of-use and automation
• Scalable: start small, grow incrementally, supporting multiple tiers in a single array
• Cost-effective: more IOPS and more usable capacity per dollar (euro)
• Efficient: more IOPS and more usable GB per kilowatt
• Autonomic: Optimized for Fully Automated Storage Tiering across Flash, Fibre and SATA
• Compatible: Common management and SRDF interoperability with Symmetrix DMX
• Ready: Purpose-built for the Virtual Data Center

When you can list all those attributes for a single storage platform, you’ve made a statement.

Several years in development, today the new Symmetrix V-Max takes its place atop the world of external storage – right above the reigning #1 enterprise storage platform (according to IDC), the Symmetrix DMX4.

With its revolutionary scale-out Virtual Matrix Architecture, the Symmetrix V-Max literally redefines not only enterprise-class storage, but the entire storage landscape – because when an enterprise array offers the simplicity, performance, TCO, scale and flexibility previously found only in midrange offerings, you know you’ll change the world.

(By the way, BOTH Symmetrix DMX4 and Symmetrix V-Max are newer than either of IBM's and Hitachi's flagship enterprise arrays. It's like they're asleep at the wheel!)

And watch-out, you enterprise wanna-bees; V-Max has just raised the bar.

So, let’s take a look at the new king of the storage hill… 
 

1.056: inside the virtual matrix architecture

This is the third in a series of posts on EMC's Overtake the future launch on 14 April 2009.

The cornerstone of today’s Overtake the future launch is of course the new EMC Virtual Matrix Architecture, the foundation upon which the virtual data center will scale and thrive henceforth.

Combining the market-proven functionality that has made Symmetrix the World’s Most Trusted storage platform with the latest in industry standard compute and I/O technologies, the Virtual Matrix Architecture liberates the power of Symmetrix from the physical barriers of backplane-based monolithic storage arrays and redefines ease-of-use for storage in today’s increasingly virtualized data centers.

But while this new architecture is inarguably revolutionary in the world of storage, the Virtual Matrix is in fact borne of a Darwin-esque evolution of the same Symmetrix architecture that launched the external storage market over 18 years ago. The result is the first storage architecture that integrates the performance and efficiency of traditional scale-up architectures with the cost-effective flexibility of scale-out, blurring the distinction between modular vs. monolithic while redefining the scope of scalable enterprise storage.

In this post I will explain the path that has led EMC to The Virtual Matrix, and along the way I’ll highlight several of the key features of this revolutionary new architecture.

1.055: symmetrix v-max - a revolutionary evolution

This is the second in a series of posts on EMC's Overtake the future launch on 14 April 2009.

but first, a bit of nostalgia

For over 18 years, Symmetrix has been the very definition of enterprise storage - even as that definition itself has changed over time.

The first Symmetrix array was built as an alternative to expensive IBM mainframe storage at a time when data centers were largely still centralized and mainframe-based. In the mid-1990's, EMC added Open Systems support to Symmetrix, allowing a single array to support multiple different servers and bringing the cost-benefits of storage consolidation to a broader market.

Read on…

1.054: overtake the future - with symmetrix v-max!

This is the first in a series of posts covering EMC's Overtake the future launch on 14 April 2009.Updated on 16 April 2009 at 9:45 PM EDT 

1.051: skate to where the puck is going

I'm not an ice hockey fan, but I do know that skating to the puck is usually ineffective (and often embarrassing). As the great Wayne Gretzky explained, the winning strategy is to "Skate where the puck is going!"

Skating to where the puck is going is also a good business strategy.

As I've discussed over the past couple of weeks, when it comes to Enterprise Flash Drives and the storage array industry, EMC's competition is still chasing the puck.

Oh, sure, there are lots of visions of future capabilities being cast about by the competition. Promises of flash-as-cache, tighter application integration (often via proprietary lock-ins rather than open standards) and more efficient approaches to tiering – everyone seems hell-bent to publicly declare grand promises for tomorrow even as they belatedly (and begrudgingly) add support for 73GB and 146GB EFDs to their product lines today.

Well, guess what – they've missed the puck. Again.

With today's announcement of 200GB and 400GB Enterprise Flash Drives for the Symmetrix DMX4, EMC has once again netted a breakaway score (that's hockey talk). Through even tighter integration with the array hardware and software, these new 4Gb/s Fibre Channel EFDs are far more cost-effective on a $/GB basis than the significantly smaller drives that EMC's competitors are just now getting into the market.

And the fun thing is, I don't think anyone saw this coming this time, either!
 

1.050: e for efficiency

It started out innocently, with the introduction of the CLARiiON CX4:

Chronicles of Innovation: Energy Efficiency

Then you might say things got a little whacky.

Extreme Efficiency: Project Outdoor Office

Then folks got back to the very real ways EMC can help you save money – today...

1.049: would a "sixth sense" make us more rational?

Apologies for the off-topic diversion, but I can’t resist making a mashup of two topics I found this morning on TED.com.

If you don’t already know, TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Their annual conferences have been the platform for the initial introductions of some incredible inventions and ideas, and they have made hundreds of videos of earth-moving TEDtalks available to the public (their 400th TEDtalk was released today this week – you can get them ALL on your iPod here – apologies in advance, Martin).

If you don’t follow TED, you should. You’ll be amazed by the scope of the topics they present. (subscribe to their blog, podcast and vidcasts here).

The first subject to catch my eye was a teaser on TEDblog for Daniel Ariely’s talk this coming Monday night (16 March 2009) on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Daniel is the author of Predictably Irrational, my current audio book diversion (see more of my recommended audio book diversions here).

In this post, Dan offers 3 irrational lessons from the Bernie Madoff scandal. For those of you who haven’t read his book yet, Dan is a leading expert in behavioral economics, and his book explains a lot about how we work. For example, he discusses why we’ll drive 15 minutes out of our way to save $7.00 on a $25.00 pen, but won’t make that same diversion to save $7.00 on a $450.00 suit. The aforementioned Madoff essay highlights some of the overreactions he predicts we will make as a result of the disgusting Ponzie scheme, even if we weren’t personally caught in the trap.

But it was the second subject I found that inspired me to wonder if Dan’s observed human irrationality could be overcome…
 

1.047: dancin' with the starz

No, I'm not talking about The Woz's performance last night with Karina Smirnoff (although "A Teletubby going mad" was indeed an accurate description).

Nope, this is yet another follow-up to my flash dance / splash dance observations of the wild and sometimes whacky world of solid state storage.

Somebody has been taking dance lessons.

Or at least, they're paying attention.

Now appearing on the main stage: HP!

Yup, unlike IBM who seem to be totally unable to figure out the steps to this Flash SSD tango, HP has delivered a fairly coherent white paper outlining their perspective of Flash technology, entitled Solid State Disks for HP StorageWorks Arrays Whitepaper.

A welcome contrast to IBM's gloom-and-doom SSD white paper (the one that they still haven't figured out needs correcting).

I'll hasten to add that HP's paper represents a totally NEW perspective for the company – it was just a few weeks ago that the only thing SSD on HP's solid state landing page was about laptop and server applications. And after spending most of last year telling everyone that the technology wasn't ready for the enterprise and that it was being overhyped (by moi?), their solid state landing page has been recently updated to reflect a far more optimistic and comprehensive outlook for the technology. This is a most welcomed change of tune, because it will take the support of all of us in the storage industry to drive down the cost and expand the applicable use cases for solid-state technologies.

Welcome to the party, gents. You can stop trying to dance now, I guess.

But I do hope the Tucson Boys in Blue are paying attention.

1.044: ibm's amazing splash dance

Leave it to the folks over at Big Blue to throw cold water on the whole flash storage revolution.

On the same day that both IDC and Gartner confirmed that IBM is losing share in the external storage market while EMC is gaining, the following Tweet from "ibmstorage" floated across my TweetDeck:

IBM's approach to new storage technology
"Solid state disks for enterprise storage" http://tinyurl.com/acom2s (pdf)
ibmstorage , Fri 06 Mar 10:32 via web

The links gets you this white paper: Solid state disks for enterprise storage - IBM’s approach to new storage technology.

UPDATE: Just in case IBM moves or withdraws the referenced white paper, I have saved a copy of it here on my blog site.

With a title like that, I figured this paper would be the long-waited IBM response to my previous Flashdance post, even though it was probably at least in draft weeks before I started my post.

I wasn't to be disappointed.
 

1.043: the fine art of strategy

If you stopped by to engage in the latest round of storage blogger smackup, I'm sorry to disappoint.

Today's post is about "strategy."

Or, more honestly, it is about the right-brained approach to strategic thinking. As opposed to the analytical left-brained approach to strategic analysis that Michael E. Porter codified in his definitive works, Competitive Strategy and Competitive Advantage.

Why?

Well, first, because a recent commenter here on my blog accused me of "hiding" the fact that my job is in fact Chief Strategy Officer for EMC's Symmetrix Product Group. That accusation came with stinging indictments that I was intentionally misleading my readers by posing as an "independent storage analyst" while deriding competitor products and praising EMC's.

Those of you who know that i am anything but objective
can stop laughing now, before you hurt yourself.

I realize that while most of my readership is well aware that I live, breathe and bleed Symmetrix, not everyone does. Some of my more recent audience may not have taken the time to go back and review my earlier posts which pretty clearly define the platform from whence I pontificate. If you are one of those, I encourage you to enter the way-back machine and review my very first post, where I introduced myself and my context. And if you're interested, you can find all of my prior posts organized by date and categories in the archives.

As to the reader who accused me of hiding my identity, I will note that he actually contacted me by way of my Linked-In profile, which is plainly included in the sidebar on the right. I also include links to my About page, my Facebook profile and several on-line communities where you can learn more about me with a few clicks than you could have ever known about any trade journalist or industry analyst 10 years ago.

I am not attempting to hide anything; it's all there, in plain daylight.

The second reason for this post is in response to the myriad of people who ask me how I came to be a "strategist" and how they too might prepare for such a position. It's a question that used to be hard for me to answer, but I recently have begun to understand myself what it takes.

And I'd like to share a little of what I've learned…and how I learned it…

1.040: efd - what's in a name?

It seems that at least some of the Flash Dancers I called out in my last post are embarrassed to admit that their dance moves aren't all that awe-inspiring.

Other's seem intent on proving that they actually can't dance at all, like the Giraffes in Giles Andreae's book.

Or so it seems in the viral blogger war that's broken out over on one of NetApp's blogger's site (where else?).

At the root of the debate is EMC's use of the term "Enterprise Flash Drive," or EFD. Seems that representatives of at least two of the Flash Dancers (HP and, you-guessed-it, NetApp) have taken issue with this term, calling it a "new acronym" that proves that EMC "doesn't have a clue how to use flash technology at all."

This from a company that to date has delivered nothing flash-based to market other than a simple qualification of a third party solid-state storage device, and the as-yet-unfulfilled promise of a NAND-based PAM at some point in the future (as far as I can tell, they're only shipping DRAM-based PAMs to date).

Why am I not surprised? 

Because that's exactly what I meant about Flash Dancing – those that can't DO have to tap-dance around with competitor attacks and acrobatic misdirection to mask their inability to deliver.

But here's the thing – EMC didn't invent the term EFD as a marketing ploy. Nor did EMC bloggers all-of-a-sudden just start using it within the past couple of months.

No, the term has been used consistently since EMC's introduction of flash drive support back on January 14, 2008. In fact, my very first blog post on Flash drives described Enterprise Flash and EFDs.

Granted, that's before at least some of the anti-EMC attack squad were even participating in the blog-o-sphere, but that's hardly an excuse.

Given the confusion (and ruckus) that's spun up around the term, I thought I'd take a moment to explain what's behind EMC's intentional use of "EFD" instead of the more generic "SSD."
 

1.035: enterprise flash drives get wired!

Despite the fact that the Right Honorable Martin Glassborow (aka Storagebod) doesn't think EMC's first-to-market enterprise-ready flash drives are all that innovative, the folks over at Wired Magazine have included flash storage as one of their Top Technology Breakthroughs of 2008.
 

Coming in at a respectable #7 (and ahead of Flexible Displays, Edible Chips and Michael Phelp's Speedo LZR), Wired shares my optimism that most data centers will begin deploying enterprise-class flash storage for their most performance-demanding tiered storage applications in the coming year. Especially now that all the nay-sayers back in 1H08 now admit that they'll be shipping the same drives "soon" – including the previously vocal opponents over at Hitachi, HP, Pillar and 3PAR. (Sadly, IBM demonstrates its continued inability to even play catch-up in the storage technology space…let's not forget that IBM's official response to flash was to promote the increased use of TAPE!).

No, all the storage vendors who want to survive to see 2010 will be shipping and supporting flash drives in 2009, mark my words. And as Martin underscores in his post, the secret ingredient for both the Memristor and the flash drive will be the that leverages them .

Like many others, though, I question how the Apple App Store won out on Wired's Technology list…or even why the top 2 positions were awarded to personal communication device-related products. Personally, I'd say Mozy will have a bigger impact on the world than either the AppStore or the Android.

But then, I promised myself not to do one of those prediction posts this year.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention: Robin Harris apparently made no such promise – he ranks EFDs #3 in his 2008 Top Storage Products (like Martin, he picks Atmos in the top position).

Well, anyway, that's probably all I have for the remainder of the year. So…

Have a Happy New Year!

 

technorati tags: enterprise flash drives,EMC,Symmetrix,DMX,memristor,Wired Magazine,Mozy,Decho,Apple,Android,iTunes App Store

1.033: the end of the world

I found this little flash dittie whilst searching for clip art for this article, and I just couldn't resist posting it (warning - strong language):
 

attribution unknown

If you've been reading the storage blogs over the past couple of weeks, you might be inclined to believe that the end of the world is near. Especially if your world has anything to do with EMC - it seems like everyone lately is gleefully predicting the impending demise of EMC.

Why is everybody always picking on EMC!
 

1.030: flash as cache - really?

Over the past week or so, Robin Harris, Chuck Hollis and Stephen Foskett each discussed the "appropriate" use of flash technology going forward. Chuck comes down pretty solidly in the "best as persistent storage" camp, while Robin seems more aligned with FusionIO and the "flash as cache" side of the argument, while Stephen seems content to accept that flash will appear at both the initiator and the target sides of the I/O conversation.

I myself tend to agree with Stephen.

BUT!

(You know there's always a BUT! with me).

A few things have been nagging at me about this whole flash-as-cache discourse. The first is centered around the fact that it takes longer to WRITE a block to NAND flash than it does to READ it.

Unlike traditional SDRAM where reads and writes complete at the same speed, with NAND even if your flash controller is smart enough to asynchronously pre-erase blocks, it still takes longer to perform a write than a read. And if you take the time to verify the accuracy of the write, it gets even worse.

So my question is, since it takes longer to write than to read a NAND block, and every read hit required at least one prior write:

What read hit ratios and repetitive reads of a block
are required to overcome the NAND write penalty?

inquiring minds want to know...

1.029: atmos. with, and without, the sphere

I'm just back from vacation cruising several Italian, French and Spanish ports aboard the Wind Star on the Mediterranean with my wife. It was a relaxing, multi-cultural Adventures Afloat trip arranged by her employer (Elderhostel), a not-for-profit who specialize in educational travel and learning opportunities. With a foundational belief that learning is an integral part of a healthy and fulfilling life, the organization offers its unique Adventures in Lifelong Learning to anyone who is interested - at an exceptional value! So, if you're looking for a travel programme with more than just the usual tourist trap visits, I encourage you to visit their web site and/or order their free catalog.

Oh, and don't let the name fool you: participation is quite diverse, and you'd better be in good shape or you might just get left behind.

Anyway, being on such a trip with my wife, I wisely avoided all things work for the duration.

Preserving the atmosphere, you might say.

But so much has gone on in the past couple of weeks, I thought I'd take a stab at connecting some of the key sights from my cruise with a few of the more interesting events of the past week or so.

So let's have a little fun. Shall we?
 

1.025: flash wars and the great debate

No, I'm not talking about the on-again US presidential debates scheduled for tonight in at Ole Miss.

Nor the decades-long debate over whether Nikon or Canon make the best intelligent TTL flashes for their cameras. (I choose Canon).

I'm referring to the ongoing debate about where NAND Flash should be used - server, network or storage.

It seems that everywhere I turn I find proponents arguing about where the technology is "best utilized." And like the presidential debates, the positions tend to fall along party lines: server vendors and their suppliers insist you can't get everything NAND has to offer unless you install in right next to the server CPU, ideally with a native memory bus or I/O bus (e.g. PCI/x) interface; the external storage vendors and their supply chain insist that the disk drive form factor and interface is best; and of course the network storage appliance world insists that NAND belongs as a service in the middle.

And they're all correct.

That's right - while EMC and I are both proponents of using persistent solid state storage as a faster alternative to spinning rust, I personally believe that there is no reason the technology won't be applied at every layer - and probably in multiple places along the same I/O path!

In support of my postulate, look no further than all the rest of computing technology - CPU's, DDR SDRAM, spinning disks, PCI/x, protocols, interfaces, connectivity, etc...every single component - both hardware and software - is today applied in servers, and in networks, and in external storage. We put DDR SDRAM and/or processing power into external storage devices and connect servers to them using Fibre Channel, and we also build servers with terabytes of addressable local memory - both approaches can accelerate existing applications without requiring applications to be re-architected or redesigned.

Is there any reason to believe that NAND (or any solid state storage technology) should be applied any differently?

I think not.

So why the continuing debate?

 

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?
 

1.008: 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

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...

 

0.073: 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...
 

0.071: 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?

 

0.068: 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]
 

0.066: 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

0.063: 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?

0.061: 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.

0.059: 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...