the storage anarchist

4.006: missing the point (yet again)

I guess I struck a nerve.

Although Hu Yoshida chose to show the top 10 largest Hitachi arrays as evidence of the benefits of virtualized external storage, his rebuttal to my response post claims that Hitachi isn't in competition with EMC to see who can ship the largest box.

Not surprising, I guess. Especially when the evidence reveals that there are no customers daring enough to push a Hitachi array beyond 1.4PB usable.

You can't compete if you can't demonstrate that you can deliver what customers want.

And that's exactly the point that Hu misses:

4.002: Does page size matter -- a rebuttal

Hitachi Data System's CTO Hu Yoshida continues to try to defend the 42MB page size utilized by the Hitachi Dynamic Tiering (HDT) on the VSP. Apparently his first attempts to put lipstick on the pig didn't go over so well, so now he has resorted to good-old competitive FUD as he tries to convince his readers that the smaller granularity employed by VMAX FAST VP (7.5MB) delivers poorer "cost performance" than HDT.

Hu's basic premise is that the smaller the page size, the larger the amount of metadata that has to be maintained. He (incorrectly) asserts that VMAX FAST VP requires 54 times as much metadata than does VSP HDT. Further, he claims that managing and checking all that metadata requires 54 times more CPU cycles, reducing performance. He also makes a rather outlandish claim that the smaller page size requires 54 times more data movement.

With all due respect to Hu, his claims are total hogwash!
 

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…

 

3.019: fast vp - world's smartest storage tiering (part 2)

In Part 1 of this article, I discussed how the new VMAX FAST VP is highly differentiated when it comes to implementation, architecture, algorithms and simplicity. In Part 2 I focus on differentiation in the granularity of data management and in the advanced controls for FAST VP.

Before I dive in, I also wanted to re-iterate that FAST VP is not the end-game for EMC’s investments in automated tiering. As we’ve said since we introduced the concept back in April 2009, EMC’s FAST Vision (and roadmap) is laid out in 5 stages, of which FAST VP is only the 2nd. Over the coming months and years, you will see EMC extend FAST in a progression:

1. Thick: VMAX FAST V1 provided policy-based optimization at the Full LUN level
2. Thin: VMAX FAST VP provides sub-LUN automated optimization
3. Small: Next up will be the incorporation of data reduction technologies to reduce the footprint of both idle and active data
4. Green: This phase will take efficiency to another level, moving idle data to spindle groups that will be automatically spun down until the data is actually needed
5. Gone: Finally, aged data blocks will be archived out of the VMAX itself to external archive platforms (like the one announced during the Record Breakers launch today)

So, in addition to the unique value propositions offered by The World’s Smartest Storage Tiering product, EMC’s larger vision is also highly differentiated. Although I do expect others will try to copy our vision as well…

On to Part 2!

 

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…

 

3.011: hot air reclamation

As I said in a prior post, sometimes we in the storage industry misbehave.

And other times, we spew fish stories – the kind that would make Pinocchio’s nose grow a couple of feet instantly.

The latest fish tale to be exaggerated beyond all sense of reality is the Unused Space Reclamation geyser, and to hear it told is to be convinced that the world of underutilized storage hath been all but eliminated at long last by the ingenuity and design of a unique new magic trick that allows host software to tell storage systems they are no longer in need of certain blocks within a LUN.

Now, don’t get me wrong – this feature is extremely valuable and it will undoubtedly help us all to improve storage utilization and efficiency. But I’ve seen practically every vendor who is shipping support for this feature today practically claiming to have invented it, that it’s a key differentiating feature for their platforms, and that THEY are the ones driving the hypervisor, host operating system, file system, database and volume manager vendors to implement this new feature.

Reality Check Time

Folks, the fact is that the T10 SBC-3 committee has stabilized the RFCs for the two (yes 2) new SCSI commands that underpin all this hoopla. With stable RFCs, vendors are now able to implement one or both of these new operations without concern that the API is going to change (again). And these standards have been under development for over a year, with representation and comment from practically every vendor in the list I scribed above – as with most standards, it has been a communal effort.

Somehow, the early adopters see no need to explain these facts to their audiences, allowing encouraging them instead to think that each vendor alone has mastered alchemy to turn deleted files into reusable space.

Alchemy, indeed…

2.038: the anarchist's universal storage guarantee*

 

I, the storage anarchist, do hereby guarantee to any and all information storage consumers, irrespective of such consumer’s chosen storage vendor or supplier, and/or said consumer’s geographic locale, and, without limits as to time or space, the following:

1. Your storage requirements for a given set of application(s) currently deployed on RAID 1 will be reduced by approximately 43% if you convert to using RAID 5 (7+1) or RAID 6 (14+2). If you choose a different source or target RAID protection ratio, your savings will vary. Your savings percentage can be calculated as 1-(NEW/OLD)%.
2. If you currently use “fat” provisioning and over-allocate capacity by 30% for a set of applications, you will reduce your storage requirements by 30% if you convert that capacity to a “thin” provisioned logical storage device(s). If your storage admins have been over-allocating more than 30%, your savings will be larger; if they have been carefully optimizing their provisioning and over allocating less than 30%, your savings will be less.
3. Your storage requirements for file-system based data can be reduced to only that capacity currently in use by objects stored in that file system if you convert the logical storage device containing that file system to a thinly provisioned device – but only if you are not already using thin provisioning.
4. “Zero space reclamation” features of thin provisioning can recover unused space and space that is specifically released by the host operating system/file system; however, on some popular host/server platforms (e.g. Windows), space for deleted files is not typically released or zeroed, reducing your total opportunity for savings.
5. Consolidating the storage from multiple applications, servers or “virtual machines” can reduce your capacity, CapEx and OpEx requirements vs. direct attached storage installed in your servers/hosts, especially if those applications have capacity and/or retention requirements that are not optimal for so-called “captive storage.”
6. If 10% of your data for a given set of applications changes between backups, you will require 90% less capacity for those applications’ point-in-time backup images if you use logical snapshots instead of full-volume clones. If more changes, your savings will be less.
7. Your on-line and/or backup storage requirements will be reduced by up to 50% through use of data compression, dependent upon data type, content, prior compression, etc.
8. If you routinely store and/or backup a large number of similar data containers (e.g., system/boot images, shared documents, development clones of production data, etc.), your physical storage / backup requirements will be reduced to 1/Nth of the total logical capacity of those containers (where “N” is the number of identical logical copies of the objects in those containers).
9. Archiving of information no longer being accessed but for which extended retention is required (e.g., by government or industry mandate) can significantly reduce both on-line and backup capacity requirements.
10. Your storage costs (CapEx and OpEx) will be reduced if you store your infrequently accessed data on larger capacity drives (e.g. large SATA drives), your frequently-accessed data on solid state storage (e.g., cache, DRAM, flash, etc.) – done right, you will be able to eliminate the most expensive storage device from your infrastructure in combined terms of $/GB and $/IOPS: the 10K/15K rpm enterprise disk drive.
11. If you use larger and/or faster drives as described, you will also reduce your total power, cooling and space requirements for storage.
12. Additional types of persistent storage may further reduce your costs, including both on-premises solid-state storage devices and the emerging availability of large-scale low-cost capacity made available by so-called “cloud” service providers.
13. You will further reduce your OpEx if your storage platform eliminates the need for time-consuming human intervention by autonomically optimizing the utilization of applied DRAM, Flash and SATA to meet your defined service level policies and objectives.
14. If combine multiple of the above conditions to a specific set of application(s), your savings will increase, although the savings may not be additive nor multiplicative.
15. Variation of actual savings will likely vary between vendors/suppliers, but any difference will generally be insignificant or temporary. The dynamics of supply and demand will continually drive vendors/suppliers to deliver similar solutions; thus market differentiation is most likely not to come from specific space-saving features themselves in the long run.
16. Oh, and yes: your information storage requirements will continue to increase year over year, ad infinitum (or as long as governance dictates, whichever comes first).
17. Your performance, availability, business continuity, disaster recovery and/or data retention requirements may limit your ability to realize one or more of the above savings potentials <thanks, Alex, for pointing that one out>

I personally guarantee it.

* excess installed capacity may be required to support future growth, and is therefore excluded from this guarantee.

 

Feel free to offer improvements, corrections and additions – I will update this Guarantee so long as the assertions are generally universal.

Change Log
2010-02-04 10:04AM EST: Added #17 in response to Alex's suggestion (below).
2010-02-04 04:00PM EST: Corrected syntax errors in #9

technorati tags: EMC, storage, guarantee

2.033: v-max is much more than fast

Hot on the heels of last week's FAST introduction comes today's formal announcement of additional features and hardware for Symmetrix V-Max. Collectively, these enhancements are designed to improve the efficiency, flexibility and cost-effectiveness of V-Max in its rapidly expanding community of customers.

Even as some competitor bloggers struggle to comprehend the architecture of V-Max and/or the differentiated value of Fully Automated Storage Tiering (as opposed to Professional services-Based Management), today I will offer some insights into the other updates for V-Max that started shipping to customers at the end of November '09.

If you're a V-Max customer or prospect, there's a lot more than just FAST in this year's Symmetrix Christmas/Holiday package:

• New Hardware support
• Virtual Provisioning enhancements
• Performance enhancements
• Replication Enhancements
• Security enhancements

Let's take a peek at each of these areas, shall we?
 

2.022: free migrations

As the beginning of Fall approaches in North America, much of our wildlife prepares for their annual migratory trip south to warmer climes.

What better time to announce the No-Charge Symmetrix Migrator Package?

Effective this month, this new package provides both current and new V-Max and DMX customers with free licenses to three powerful storage migration utilities:

1. Open Migrator, for host-based migrations. Runs on most popular operating systems and server cluster software. OM can mount the new target LUN(s), copy data (on another array or from within the platform itself) in the background, and it will mirror writes to both old and new storage during the migration;
2. SRDF/DM (Data Mobility), Symmetrix-based replication frequently used to make a mirror of current Symmetrix volumes onto a new array before swapping the hosts over to the new storage. Used by customers for more than a decade to effect both Open Systems and Mainframe data migrations;
3. Open Replicator/LM (Live Migration), array-based "hot pull" migration for Open Systems hosts. Simply insert the new Symmetrix into the SAN in between the hosts and their current storage array(s). LUNs are copied off of the old storage in the background, while any host reads or writes are moved to the head of the queue for maximum efficiency. Works to migrate data into a Symmetrix from virtually any SAN-based storage platform, and it can even move a small existing LUN into a larger one in the process.

As with the recently announced FREE status for Symmetrix Virtual Provisioning, this new package comes with only one string: you have to own or purchase a Symmetrix DMX or V-Max. Other than that it is truly no-additional-charge. Customers can take advantage of these new tools immediately upon arrival of their system (or license keys), without concern for the amount of capacity they want to move (or Virtually Provision).

Yet another way that EMC is helping to reduce the TCO and expand the use cases of Symmetrix, the enterprise storage market share leader for nearly 20 years.

Enjoy!

 

technorati tags: EMC,Symmetrix,V-Max,DMX,Virtual Provisioning,Symmetrix Migrator Package,FREE,No-Charge,Open Replicator/LM,Open Migrator,SRDF/DM,data migration,tech refresh

2.016: ds8000 finally gets thin provisioning -- for a fat price

So today IBM announces thin provisioning is finally going to be available on the DS8000 (at the end of August) more than 18 months after IBM begrudgingly admitted that thin was indeed a requirement for enterprise (wanna-bee) storage last year.

Both Beth Pariseau and I found it pretty funny back then that IBM was only just changing its tune from "nobody needs it" to "ours will be better" when they started talking about TP last year – in fact, I was ROTFLMAO if you recall.

But once again, IBM is late to the party, and as usual they've shown up without the requisite invitation.

The starting asking price for IBM's Thin Provisioning on the DS8000?

SIXTY NINE THOUSAND CLAMS!

Jeez, Louise – what are they thinking?

I thought marketing was supposed to lipstick the pig, not INFLATE it!

For that kind of money, you could just put an SVC IO group in front of your DS8000 and get VP for FREE (see BarryW, I do pay attention)!

In fact, TonyP asserts in his blog that most people wanting Virtual Provisioning have ALREADY put SVC in front of their DS8000's. So this new product is only for the late comers (and those who figured out that adding the price of SVCs to their DS8Ks isn't really "cost effective.")

With a reported 5050+ SVC installations worldwide, I hardly think that "many" DS8K users are also using SVC nor that “few” are not. But Tony has never been much of a stickler for the facts a lengthy track record of exaggerating things a bit.

News Flash: Virtual Provisioning is a standard, basic feature that customers expect on all of their storage platforms. And unlike IBM and Hitachi (and 3PAR) who seem to think that a technology that saves customers money should cost extra, EMC is now providing Virtual Provisioning to all Symmetrix DMX3, DMX4 and V-Max customers at no additional charge!

That's right – Symmetrix VP is Free!

But we can excuse IBM I guess. As David Vaughn, IBM's information infrastructure platform manager, explained to David Raffo of SearchStorage in Mr. Raffo’s coverage of the IBM announcement, the only people left buying DS8000's these days are those customers who were unfortunate enough to have standardized on the platform before they realized IBM wasn't investing in it any more. Oh, and those who run mainframes and have no other IBM-branded solution available. Because according to Mr. Vaughn, all the new open systems business is now going to XIV. [UPDATED to correct attribution]

With IDC documenting a rapid decline in XIV revenues (down from ~$80M ~$52M in Q4'08 to just over $50M $18M in Q1'09), I guess that means that the majority of the enterprise storage business isn't going to IBM at all – a fact that is surely to be accelerated with this whacko pricing strategy for Thin Inflated Provisioning on the DS8K. [UPDATED to correct XIV revenues]

Hey, IBM – we're in a recession here!!!

This is another insightful post from the storage anarchist!

technorati tags: EMC,Symmetrix,V-Max,Virtual Provisioning,Thin Provisioning,Free,DS8000,IBM,DS8K,thin provisioning,expensive,overpriced,inflation,inflated provisioning,overweight provisioning,lipstick the pig,johnny-come-lately

2.015: challenge accepted -- free vp

No, Joe Biden isn't being set free – he's not even in jail as far as I know. Nor is this about VP wanna-bee Sarah Palin, who indeed will be free from her gubernatorial responsibilities at the end of July.

No, this post is about a different kind of VP altogether.

In his latest blog post (Set the Wide Stripes Free) Martin Glassborow (aka StorageBod) makes yet another passionate plea for enterprise storage vendors to make thin provisioning a standard feature of their products rather than a separately licensed, chargeable option. His request is in response to HDS's recent deluge of blog posts touting the benefits of their thin provisioning offering (Dynamic Provisioning), including the inherent performance benefits of wide-striping LUNs across a large number of spindles.

In his post, Martin insists that the current pricing strategies for thin provisioning from both HDS and EMC are a disincentive to the adoption of the otherwise compelling feature that makes enterprise arrays easier and more cost-effective to manage and deploy.

These very conversations have been going on within the walls of EMC, and it has been decided that Virtual Provisioning will in fact be included at no charge and with no capacity limitations for all Symmetrix V-Max and DMX 4 orders beginning this quarter.  As a result, all Symmetrix V-Max and DMX 4 customers will be able to leverage the speed and ease of storage provisioning, improved capacity utilization and the inherent benefits of wide striping afforded by Virtual Provisioning, all at no extra charge.

We'll see if others follow suit.

 

UPDATE 13 Jul 2009: Corporate has clarified that Virtual Provisioning will be free for ALL supported Symmetrix platforms, new and existing, beginning this quarter. That’s ALL V-Max arrays plus DMX3 & DMX4 arrays running Enginuity 5773.

Another exciting post from http://thestorageanarchist.com
[UPDATED to add DMX 4 at about 3:30pm on 10 July 09]

technorati tags: EMC,Symmetrix,V-Max,Virtual Provisioning,thin provisioning,Dynamic Provisioning,HDS,Hitachi,USP-V,wide striping,chunk,extent,free,no charge

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?)!
 

1.059: fully automated storage tiering (fast)

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

Today's announcement is chock-full with exciting news.

First, there is the breakthrough Virtual Matrix Architecture, combining the best of Scale Up and Scale Out to revolutionize enterprise storage.

And then, the Symmetrix V-Max itself, integrating the proven power and functionality of the Enginuity storage OS on a new industry standard platform to deliver cost-effective flexibility and a new definition for ease-of-use in enterprise storage.

Next up? Perhaps the most exciting (and unexpected) announcement of all.:

Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST)

As Chief Strategy Officer for the Symmetrix Product Group, my role in today's global Virtual Launch is to describe and answer questions about FAST in one of the half-dozen or so "break out" sessions available to all participants. Given the high level of interest in the topic, I thought I'd take a few moments and discuss FAST here as well.

So, what exactly is FAST?
 

1.052: over-hyping wide striping

When the capabilities you use to differentiate your product in the market are no longer unique, marketing tends to morph into hype.

That appears to be what’s happening to 3PAR.

Once the paragon of Thin Provisioning and Tiny Chunklets, today they struggle for relevance in a market where virtually every storage platform offers thin provisioning as just one among a long list of features.

What’s worse is that 3PAR, like XIV, is saddled with an architecture that makes it difficult (although surely not impossible) to integrate support for Enterprise Flash Drives. In fact, along with NTAP and XIV, 3PAR remains one of the few companies that have not yet figured out how to deliver the performance benefits of flash storage technology to their customers.

Marc Farley, who I respect immensely (and not just for his rappin’), stepped out this week in his blog to assert that while 3PAR is working on flash, they are “in no rush to be a me too player.”

(Out of respect, I’ll pass over that obvious softball.)

But I did find his suggestion that Wide Striping was 3PAR’s answer to EFDs rather funny. Almost as hilarious as IBM’s assertion that had me rotflmao! last year – the one where they said that their customers didn’t need flash drives, they needed TAPE!

Even more, um, dare I say ridiculous, was Marc’s assertion that EMC was using EFDs to avoid the efforts of re-architecting their products to deliver wide striping.

No offense intended, Marc, but you know I’m not one to let anyone get away with such misleading hype and outright false FUD.

Allow me to set the record straight…

1.031: meet the symmerator

Ever wonder what happens to old Symmetrix arrays?

Frequently customers will "cascade" them as they age: as new Symms are purchased for production deployment, the older arrays that they replace often become the BC/DR "target" at the other end of the SRDF link.

And the old SRDF target? Well, some simply get returned at the end of the lease term, while others get traded in for credit towards a shiny new Symmetrix.

Some old Symms, of course, meet with a somewhat less fortunate demise:

How sad....

But at least one old Symmetrix 8000-series array has found happiness in a totally new retirement career...
 

1.017: vp cred

It appears that Chuck Hollis and I have earned a little credibility with Margaret Rouse over at TechTarget nee SearchStorage.com. Or at least, our blog discussions of Virtual Provisioning (yes, that "VP," not the Dick Chaney kind) have caught her attention over the weekend (might have been the heat and humidity - I don't know).

Anyway, we both were recognized back-to-back on Margaret's Overheard in the Blogosphere (RSS feed) - me first with Virtual provisioning is a Catch-22, followed closely by Chuck's Feature lust can be a bad thing.

Toot-toot!

Margaret also asked for (and received) permission to use my definition of virtual provisioning in SearchStorage's ever-expanding IT encyclopedia and learning center. She even made it the Word of the Day (RSS feed) on the Whatis.com portal for Monday, July 21, 2008!

Thanks for the shout-out Margaret, and keep it up - I think both the Overheard... and the encyclopedia are great additions to the blogosphere!

And welcome to first-time visitors to my blog. If you're interested in learning more about my perspectives and observations on virtual provisioning (or any topic) you can find all of my posts by scrolling down to the categories section of the sidebar and clicking the appropriate link(s).

Or simply click here for my thin provisioning category.

 

technorati tags: virtual provisioning,thin provisioning,EMC,Symmetrix,dynamic provisioning,space efficient volumes,SEV

1.014: the laurel and hardy of thin provisioning

UPDATED (July 3, 2008): Deletions struck-out, additions noted in green.

One is decidedly skinny.

The other is unabashedly portly.

And I'm not talking about Stan and Ollie, folks.

No, such is the differentiation between the thin provisioning implementations of IBM's SVC and Hitachi's USP-V/USP-VM.

Sir Barry White eloquently describes the petite implementation of SVC's fine-grained Space-Efficient Virtual Disk (SEV for short) in a recent blog post (any resemblance of BarryW to fellow Brit Stan Laurel is purely coincidental, I'm sure).

Not to be outdone (and in an obvious attempt to justify the Hardy-ness of Hitachi's Dynamic Provisioning), HHSNBN explains why DP's heavyweight approach makes for better thinness (at least on the USP-V). Given the title of his post (When is Thin Provisioning Too Thin?), I figure ole' HHSNBN doesn't think the SVC's implementation is all that, shall we say, robust.

IMHO, both have managed to gloss over details that are very pertinent to understanding if, when and where one implementation is better than the other. Not surprising, especially since BarryW & I both know full well HHSNBN will never respond directly to any inquiries or challenges. No, HHSNB prefers only one-sided discourse (his side, of course), so I guess that leaves it up to me to try to tease out the truth.

So let's look a little deeper at these near-opposite implementations and see what we can figure out for ourselves, shall we?

Warning: readers of this blog have asked that I spend more time talking tech,
and less time bashing the competition.

This post is about as close as I can get to fulfilling those requests...

 

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!

 

0.068: 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]
 

0.063: 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?

0.060: blinded by the light

For those of you who were so breath-taken by EMC's unexpected "viper on steroids" lightning strike with Enterprise Flash SSDs, here's my perspective on the rest of Monday's Symmetrix announcements:

They were pretty neat, too, although clearly not as
revolutionary
as the enterprise-class flash drives will be.

And so, before I dig into the rest of the neat that was announced, you gotta admit - it is truly exhilarating to be totally surprised with the announcement of a disruptive technology that could very well supercede the performance, power (and hopefully the cost) limitations of spinning disk drives!

Of course, the competition has responded with the expected aplomb. Hitachi has gone on record with the assertion that this is all an uninteresting niche play limited to the needs of the Fortune 50 . Meanwhile, IBM's designated storage blogger is gleefully cheering from the sidelines that EMC is retreating to its roots in solid-state storage.

Methinks perhaps they've been blinded by the flash (if not outright  blind-sided).

From my perspective, the roots of the so-called EMC Specialty Shop aren't in solid-state storage at all, but rather they are entwined with a proven track record of out-innovating competitors in the storage space for nearly 3 decades. You need only look at EMC's Innovation Timeline to see the legacy of being the first to deliver solutions to very real and broad-based customer problems over that timeframe - from RAID to ICDA to SRDF to DMX and now flash drives.

Even IBM's recent XIV acquisition is an admission of that fact, coming months after Joe Tucci let the world know that EMC had set its sights on the cloud storage market with the impending Hulk & Maui products. And given that it is likely to be at least a year before the IBM Blue logo goes on the Nextra box and it gets into the bags of IBM's mainstream sales machine, I suspect that Hulk/Maui will technically beat IBM into that market as well.

That said, rest assured that neither IBM nor Hitachi are internally treating enterprise-ready flash drives as another Al Capone's vault. Inside they all (now) know that enterprise flash drives are very real, that they serve a very real and current customer problem, that they will inevitably change the way we think about storage in the future, and that they need scramble to catch up to the lead that EMC has established. They're not really stoopid - they'll be trying to get into the game as quickly as they can.

And while today's enterprise-flash drive benefits may primarily be their incredibly fast response times and energy-efficient IOPS/watt, we all know that customer demand and cost erosion will rapidly expand the market. The future of flash-based storage is inarguably ahead of us.

As to why TonyP would try (in his blog) to compare the 73GB & 146GB enterprise flash drives that EMC just announced to the new "larger" 31.5GB (and 10x slower) consumer-grade flash drives that IBM just announced this week for their blade servers (the drives that come with only a one-year, limited warranty) ?

I honestly haven't a clue.

 
OK - enough of that fun. On with the new Symmetrix stuff...as usual, there's lots to talk about! 
 

0.051: thin provisioning planning guide(s)

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

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

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

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

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

0.050: thin provisioning - don't leap before you look

I've been hanging out over at the Wikibon this week, both to monitor the feedback on Hitachi's latest announcements as well as just getting to know some of the folks there. Lots of familiar faces, and far too many "lurkers" who haven't yet stepped up to be heard. I have high hopes that this Web 2.0 approach to collaborative storage analysis is the wave of the future. Heck, I can't imagine why anyone would pay the Gartners, IDCs or Evaluator Groups of the world anything once this Wikibon community gets its legs under it.

There are lots of interesting topics flying around over there in Wikibon-land in addition to coverage of vendor announcements and strategies. If you've followed my call to action to join Dr. Kartik's efforts to redefine storage performance benchmarks, you'll notice that Dave Vellante has thrown the energy of Wikibon behind that initiative. And capitalizing on the benefits and returns of green storage is another interesting topic that's getting a lot of attention over at the Wikibon.

0.019: dmx-4 and oh so much more

As you probably already have seen, EMC had a pretty major platforms update announcement on Monday, with updates to virtually every storage platform product we offer.

Given the size of the company and the scope of our product portfolio, gone are the days when we have the luxury of launching only on a single product at a time -- there just aren't enough weeks in the year (and it does take weeks, with all the pre-briefings, scheduling, invitations, etc.). So we pretty much have to do these so-called "roll-up" announcements, and this one was pretty significant.

In fact, there were so many, many things announced across Symmetrix, CLARiiON, Celerra and Centera that it's near impossible to summarize them all in one place. For the next several weeks, if you want to learn about specific updates, I invite you to visit www.EMC.com directly. You can select the key product line areas from the rotating landing page banner, or you can follow the link to the Executive Summary presented by Barbara Robidoux, the Storage Platforms Marketing VP (but be forewarned, she has a LOT to summarize!).

I'll throw in a special recognition of EMC's marketing folks who created this launch - they've done a bang-up job of announcing a boatload of stuff without the overwhelming use of superlatives and hyperbole. In fact, it's obvious that there was a focused effort to communicate this announcement in terms of realizable customer benefits, instead of mind-numbing speeds-and-feeds. It certainly makes everybody's job easier when we don't have to answer questions like "so what?"

But if you really want to know the inside scoop about the launch, you've come to the right place. Well, so far as the Symmetrix side of the launch is concerned that is. My pal Storagezilla has adeptly covered the CLARiiON, Celerra, Centera, and RainFinity announcements over at his blog.

So, want to know more about DMX-4? Read on, Gunga Din!

0.017: can you take back your blogketing?

I noticed this morning that Hu Yoshida has updated his "Take Back Your Storage" blog entry.

July 9th version (thanks, Google!):

[ . . . ] Up to now, thin provisioning has only been available from some modular storage or filer vendors, now it is available from Hitachi in their Dynamic Provisioning service on the enterprise class USP V. This same feature is available on the HP XP 24000 and the SUN ST9990 V. Hitachi also makes thin provisioning available on their HNAS high performance NAS system. [ . . . ]

July 14th version:

[ . . . ] Up to now, thin provisioning has only been available from some modular storage or filer vendors, now it is available from Hitachi in their Dynamic Provisioning service on the enterprise class USP V. This same feature is available on the HP XP 24000 and the SUN ST9990 V. Currently Dynamic provisioning is only available for internal storage, but will soon be available for external storage that is virtualized within the USP V. Hitachi also makes thin provisioning available on their HNAS high performance NAS system. [ . . . ]

Was it something I said? 

0.014: beware of blogketing

Hu Yoshida has done another bang-up job of explaining the utilization challenge bearing down on customer budgets in his latest 2-part bloguturial (my contraction of "blogger's tutorial"). In the first part, he does a great job of outlining the problem, and in part 2, he credibly describes a vision for a solution. In fact, if you removed all the references to Hitachi products, those two blog entries should probably be mandatory reading for every storage architect in both mid-tier and enterprise IT shops (and probably their suppliers as well).

It could have been that good - if only Hu had separated fact from vision.

Written in the style of a print-media advertorial (a contraction of "editorial advertising," where ad space is purchased to run an editorial-like assessment of a product or service), the blogutorial is emerging as a new, and so-far unchecked marketing tool. Importantly, truth-in-advertising laws require published advertorials to be plainly marked as "paid advertisements" (usually in tiny font in the header where you might not notice it). Apparently this isn't so for blogketing ("blog marketing")- even when done by official corporate spokespersons in the public forum of the Internet. Apparently the blog-world is unfettered by truth-in-advertising rules.

This concerns me, because it allows bloggers to act like the snake-oil vendors of the past, getting away unchecked with unsubstantiated claims and misleading inferences of undeliverable capabilities.

Hu's blogutorial is a prime case in point. The way he litters the product references throughout the two articles would lead the uninformed reader to believe that Hitachi's newly-announced (and yet to ship) Dynamic Provisioning solves all the problems Hu describes. And in fact, this is clearly his intent - the two blogs are nothing more than thinly veiled marketing collateral written by an authoritative industry expert and delivered in the latest marketing medium, the Corporate Blog.

But the complete lack of any disclaimers begs for someone to call "foul."

Enter the storage anarchist...

0.009.2: catch-22 part deux, redo

(OK, I blew it. In the original version of this entry, I somehow lost about a third of what I had written and edited. This is the entire entry, and I've deleted the original. Apologies to those who commented on the original version; feel free the chime in again. Thx - tsa)

In a recent blog entry, Hu Yoshida pronounces the benefits of thin provisioning with wide striping as if it were something new and innovative recently invented by Hitachi's corps of Japanese engineers.

Many of you (especially the OSG's) will recall that StorageTek Iceberg was the first practical implementation of thin provisioning, back in 1994. Although innovative and cutting edge (some would say daring), it never really caught traction, proving first-to-market isn't always an assurance of success. Garbage collection was its Achilles heel, although many believe the demise of Iceberg was more due to the fact that mainframes don't really need a lot of help to manage storage utilization effectively.

Since Iceberg, there have been more than a handful of companies who have tried to leverage thin provisioning into the magic sauce that cost-effectively improves utilization, simplifies allocation and reduces the demand for physical storage - all while maintaining predictably acceptable performance. But none of them have solved the Catch-22's of thin virtual provisioning that I discussed in my earlier blog entry.

Hitachi is the most recent (and exuberant) entrant in this long line of would-be storage alchemists, and frankly, there's nothing to indicate that they've done anything to differentiate their implementation from all the rest.

No, despite all the hype, this latest quest to deliver the virtual provisioning grail by the Hitachi Ltd. developers from the Land of the Rising Sun appears to do nothing to help customers break out of the virtual provisioning catch-22.

0.007: virtual provisioning catch-22

There's been a lot of discussion lately about what I will henceforth refer to as virtual provisioning (as the only appropriate use of the term "virtual" in relationship to storage - see here for my reasons). I've seen many a blogger and blog commenter discuss the implementations, implications and merits of this so-called thin provisioning technology, and for the most part, I think people have got the basics figured out.

Put simply, virtual provisioning technology presents hosts/applications/file systems the illusion that they have more physical storage than is physically allocated, and allocates physical storage only when it is used (written). The technology thus improves storage utilization and simplifies the tasks of storage administration.

But does it really?

From my vantage point, I see a few things about virtual storage provisioning that seem to have been overlooked - paradoxes that may well prove to limit the utility and value of this technology to a subset of the storage domain that is smaller than most think.

Will virtually provisioned storage fit in your environment?

0.002: storage virtualization: naming gone awry

Naming a product or capability is probably one of the hardest things to do well, especially in high tech where you try to strike a balance between descriptive and inspirational monikers. As one of my mentors oft noted, "All the good names are already taken; the trick is to find the available one that stinks the least" (rest in peace, JH).

I think we, as an industry, failed miserably with the term "storage virtualization."

Here's why:

Shall we play a game?

No, not Global Thermonuclear War. Or even Tic-Tac-Toe. (Already been done.)

Let's play: One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn't belong.

1. Virtual Memory
2. Server Virtualization
3. Storage Virtualization
4. Virtual Reality
5. None of the Above

Give up? You might be surprised...