the storage anarchist

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...