the storage anarchist

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...