the storage anarchist

4.001: when you say tiering, do you mean degradation?

(Wow, has it really been 4 years since I started blogging?)

Hu Yoshida posted yesterday a perspective on the evolving meaning of the word "Tiering," presumptively as a context for making a cost- and performance-benefit argument for Hitachi Dynamic Tiering (HDT), as implemented on the VSP.

After the usual Hitachi riff about external storage and thin provisioning pools, Hu turns to a discussion of "Page level Dynamic Tiering with HDT." Here he highlights that HDT moves data in 42MB pages, allowing for relocation at the sub-device level based on utilization of the page(s).

Hu then makes a not-so-subtle attempt at asserting superiority against competitive implementations (e.g. VMAX FAST VP, I suppose), with this claim:

The VSP was architected to address this additional load with a global pool of quad core Intel processors that is tightly coupled across an internal switch matrix to a global cache and front/back end processors. Storage systems that do not have this extra processing power will suffer some performance degradation when they do sub LUN level tiering. (emphasis mine)

Folks, permit me to inject a dose of reality…if anything suffers degradation when auto-tiering, it is the VSP…

 

3.017: vmax 2011 edition - powerful. trusted. smartest.

In the 20 months since its launch back in April of 2009, VMAX has literally redefined the storage landscape. Back then, EMC focused the messaging around how VMAX was purpose-built for the virtual data center, leveraging multi-core Intel technology to deliver a highly efficient and scalable modular and tiered enterprise storage platform. We introduced the new Virtual Matrix architecture, the first array built upon that architecture, and the first wave of automation that has simplified the whole deployment model of Symmetrix storage.

EMC also did a bit of a Babe Ruth at that launch – pointing to the bleachers where we intended to deliver, in two phases, the innovation of Fully Automated Storage Tiering. FAST v1 for VMAX began shipping just about a year ago.

On December 15th, 2010 the second phase of FAST began shipping, along with more than 50 other significant features and new products in what we now call Enginuity 5875. Included also were some new hardware updates to VMAX – a new native 10Gb Ethernet director for SRDF and iSCSI, plus a new VMAX engine that sports an encrypting back-end to support Data at Rest Encryption.

Today (January 18th, 2010), EMC publicly announces what is inarguably the largest set of new storage products ever to be simultaneously introduced on one day. With over 40 new products and scores of new features, today's launch truly lives up to its Record Breaker theme. (If by chance you've missed all the hype, there's still time to learn about it at the #EMCBreaksRecords web site.)

So, what's all the hype about? Well, for the full effect, you'll have to go see for yourself. But within the context of VMAX, there's lots of new things in this latest release of Enginuity 5875, and I thought I'd lead off my contribution to the launch day communications with a quick run through of the major ones…

 

2.031: manual or automatic?

My, but hasn't EMC's FAST announcement generated a lot of discussion this week?

I've been very busy out in the land of social media, answering questions on Twitter and clarifying things for a broad range of bloggers – most supportive, others well, not so much.

In the midst of a rather respectful tete-a-tete with Pete Gerr over on his HDS "Ars Indicium" (the art of information) blog, I suddenly had a revelation about what distinguishes Symmetrix vs. the USP-v (et al).

It's the different approaches we each take to addressing customer problems.

Now, to be sure, we actually sell to many of the exact same customers, often competing head-to-head for business. So you'd figure we're both seeing the same requirements from these customers. We each have our own well-established technology and storage platforms, and we both get our drives and components from pretty much the same place. I'll stop short of saying that our software does the same thing, though, because this is where it is that I suddenly realize we really differentiate.

But it's not what you think. No, it's not about Virtual Provisioning vs. Dynamic Provisioning or SRDF vs. TrueCopy.

I think it is really something more fundamental than that: Hitachi Ltd. builds tools that customers can use to solve problems, while EMC provides automation to solve those same problems.

We're automatic, they're manual.

Let me explain what I mean…

1.015: stranger danger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0.033: elvis has left the building

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

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

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

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

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

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

but wait - there's more!

0.010: operating at exa-scale

You've seen the IDC/EMC report on the staggering rate of information growth the world faces. At something like 56% CAGR, we collectively today manage over 161 exabytes of data storage. If you have read the press release or the complete study, you'll have noted that the bulk of this growth is in data that resides outside of the typical IT data center - digital video, photography and audio. And unless you work within the industries that are building value on or around these new storage-hungry data types, you might harbor the impression that this growth is really somebody else's problem.

And you'd be wrong.

Many Individual IT organizations around the globe are dealing with the same levels of compounded growth in their storage requirements as is the entire global information economy cited in this report. And many of these IT departments are already dealing with 10's or even 100's of petabytes of on-line storage, not to mention perhaps a couple of exabytes of off-line or near-line capacity.

I've seen a few of these environments up close, and it literally boggles the mind. Off the top of my head, some of the larger ones include:

• the cellular communications company in Japan that services real-time "debit card" type transactions from millions of customers' cell phones and the cell phone company in China that has more customers than the United States has residents;
• multiple different global financial institutions that handle the billions of concurrent stock, currency and credit transactions that make up the global economy;
• the airline reservation and scheduling systems that keep pilots, planes and passengers moving in relatively organized chaos;
• the processed foods and consumer goods companies that constantly analyze point-of-sale and shelf-life information for its products in near-real-time so that it can maintain just-in-time manufacturing and delivery in response to geographical and seasonal  demand shifts;
• the DoD and national security organizations that um...well...ahem... do whatever it is they do with all that information that they've intercepted collected over the years (and it's a lot, or so I've been told d:^).

Bottom line - there are literally thousands of IT organizations operating at a scale that most of us can't even imagine.

And whether by vendor intent or sheer customer need, EMC supports the storage requirements of (dare I say it) the majority of these largest IT organizations in the world. Dealing with the evolving (and exploding) information demands of these customers has largely defined EMC's product and services portfolio, from the early days of Symmetrix through the latest server virtualization, data-dedup and information security additions. We've learned a lot by supporting these bleeding edge consumers of storage, including one very sobering reality.

And you know what that is?

Operating at exa-scale is extra-hard.

0.005: self tuning storage - today & tomorrow

Over in the land of Dullness, Chris Evans drops an interesting challenge - self-tuning storage.

For now, I'll overlook his jabs about the "whose array is better" tete-a-tete and focus instead on the admittedly more interesting story (although I will note that Hu's pretty much been playing solitaire in the "mine's better" game until the Anarchist came along ;*).

Self-Tuning Storage: that's what we've been working on with Symmetrix for about 16 years.

Now, I was going to write about this from an entirely different angle, exploring how no matter how much you improve on the interface for managing performance, customers will want more. I'll (eventually) get to that, but first things first.

Fact is, Symmetrix was the first self-tuning storage array, and remains essentially the only array that actively optimizes itself, in real time, dynamically under changing workloads, with little or no need for human intervention.

It's not yet perfected or complete. But Enginuity 5772 takes this to a new level.