the storage anarchist

4.010: when lightning strikes

There has been lots of discussion since EMC's announcement of VFCache, much of it about the implications of said announcement on the storage industry. I've seen all sorts of assertions made by analysts, competitors, wanna bees and prognosticators from all backgrounds – some thoughtful, some diversionary and some that are just down right silly.

There are those that say EMC's entry into the server-side Flash market validates the market for the early entrants. While that may be true in some regards, I will point out that when considered within the entire scope of the announcement, VFCache actually offers significant differentiation from would-be competitors. It is yet to be seen if or how the "established" players in server-side Flash market will respond to that differentiation. (More on this after the break).

There were some who turned this argument around – because VFCache was implemented as a "cache", it couldn't compete with the "established" players in this space – this even though VFCache offers the traditional "Flash-as-DAS" for those that want it. So then they said VFCache was too small to be competitive, especially since some of the other players were talking about 10TB devices and such. I found all this humorous – not surprising, just funny. I always get a chuckle when the success of something revolutionary is measured using the yardstick of the "old" way. Like when EMC introduced the first Flash drives for an enterprise storage array back in January 2008. There were a lot of people (and even a certain competitor's CTO) who asserted Flash was too expensive to have any real utility, and that "nobody was asking for it." Today, barely 4 years later it is hard to find any commercial mid-range or enterprise arrays that don't offer SSDs in ne capacity or another (pun intended).

Then there are those that assert this movement to server-side (Flash) storage represents a full circle return from the 20+ year external storage "diversion," portending the impending doom of the disk drive and/or the external storage array altogether. I assert that for either of these to be true requires an unforeseen discontinuity of pricing: solid state has to get a LOT cheaper than any reasonable projection, or hard disk drives have to get a LOT more expensive. Short of that, there remains a niche opportunity for flash-only solutions, but the sheer economics of $/GB will ensure that the vast majority of the storage market will be dominated by spinning rust for a VERY long time – though increasingly complimented by solid-state persistent storage to deliver the performance required by the typically small subset of any dataset that is "hot" at any given time.

And finally there are those that have made claims that server-side Flash is the precursor to entirely new ways of developing applications, fueled by the heretofore unattainable I/O performance levels delivered by affordable server-side large-scale solid state storage. Some of these pundits go on to assert that server-side solid state technology will drive such a revolutionary overhaul of application development that external storage itself will cease to exist. I personally believe these are fool's forecasts, proffered by those who ignore the reality of history. In the high-tech industry, new technologies rarely supplant the old – neither overnight, nor even over-decades. The IT landscape is littered with still-functioning dinosaurs that may well never be recoded or replaced: mainframes, tape, COBOL, SCSI, Ethernet, perl, , etc. Switching and conversion costs are formidable barriers to overcome. In a world where more than 2/3 of the average IT budget is spent just keeping things running, and the other 1/3 is being invested in storing the growing flood of new information in perhaps in a token few NEW applications to leverage it all, there is little opportunity to invest in rewriting anything. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The more probable reality is that server-side Flash (like ever-cheaper DRAM) will lead to new ways of building file systems, databases and applications – BUT these will not represent an overnight revolution. Instead, this new “new” will follow the same evolutionary path as have the new technologies that have come before.

With that expression of my humble opinion, I'll spend the 2nd half of this post exploring how I see VFCache fitting into this information-centric world we live in…

4.009: leading from the front

Earlier this week, IDC published the results of its  Storage User Demand Study, 2011 — Spring Edition: Unlocking the Minds of Storage Users. Among their findings this year was a notable use of outsourced storage, emerging demand for FCoE (but with limited commitment to the technology), and a predominant preference for midrange and modular storage.

Surveyed users also forecasted that little would change in the way they utilize storage subsystems over the coming year. If true, I would think this bodes well for EMC, especially in light of the results of two key findings presented the SUDS, 2011 report.

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:

4.005: you call that big storage?

Earlier this month, Hu Yoshida posted yet another missive in his never-ending series of hype about the virtues of array-based virtualization. In it, he cited records from Hitachi's tracking systems showing the top VSPs and USP-Vs ranked by total capacity. Oddly, the older USP-V racked up the largest capacity deployed on a Hitachi array, even though its maximum internal capacity is less than the newer VSP (a feat that Hu asserts is because the USP-V has been in the market longer (4 years vs. the VSP's 10 months).

I had to laugh, especially given Hitachi's long-standing (and ridiculous) claims of supporting more than 240-something PB of external capacity.

For the record, being launched in April 2009, VMAX has indeed been shipping longer than VSP, but not as long as the USP-V. VMAX also does not (at the time of this writing) support virtualization of external storage.

With those caveats, herewith the top 10 VMAX arrays, sorted by usable internal capacity:

That's right, folks. The smallest of the top-10 VMAX arrays is larger than all reported VSPs and all but 2 of the largest USP-Vs.

Note also that several of these VMAX arrays are over-provisioned. Leveraging Symmetrix Virtual Provisioning, these arrays are exporting more capacity than they physically support contain. This affords customers improved capacity utilization, driving up efficiencies and driving down acquisition and operational expenses. In addition, most of these arrays are already positioned to leverage the benefits of Symmetrix FAST VP (if they aren't already – you can't tell from this report).

I have to say, though, that I almost spewed coffee on my keyboard when I read Hu's claim that the largest USP-V was actually virtualizing TWENTY FOUR frames from different vendors.

In an age when floor space, power, cooling, maintenance charges and operational complexity are seen as negatives to the bottom line, I'm actually quite surprised that there is even one USP-V customer operating in such an extremely inefficient manner.

It is quite probable that this poor customer would realize significant savings were he/she to replace that multi-headed behemoth of intertwined FC switches and multi-vendor arrays with the elegant simplicity of a single VMAX.

At the very least, he or she wouldn't be such a lonely pioneer of mega-capacity consolidation.
 

technorati tags: VMAX,EMC,Symmetrix,Big Data,Hitachi,VSP,USP-V,capacity,virtualization,efficiency,utilization,virtual provisioning,FAST VP,Fully Automated Storage Tiering,Hitachi Math

4.003: a big thing in a small package

Imagine:

• Start with the world's most Powerful, Trusted and Smart enterprise storage array, hardened by almost 23 years of protecting the world's most critical information assets.
• Scale down its Intel-based infrastructure and dial-back its innovative scale-out architecture to optimize for less-demanding enterprise environments.
• Remove the layers of complexity associated with supporting legacy hosts such as mainframes and iSeries to simplify configuration and operations.
• Eliminate physical drive and RAID configuration altogether and pre-configure the array at the factory for pool-based Virtual Provisioning to radically simplify resource allocation and management while maximizing utilization efficiency.
• Allow customers to add factory-configured Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST VP) to further drive down the acquisition AND operational costs of both capacity AND performance.
• For local and remote data protection, include the world's most widely adopted heterogeneous Continuous Data Protection and Remote Replication capability, EMC RecoverPoint.
• Simplify the product installation to no more than a 4 hours to power-up, and 4 minutes to first I/O after the keys are handed over to the customer.
• Package that all in standard 19" racks configured to optimize floor tile utilization, requiring only single-phase power as evidence of reduced power requirements and deployment simplicity.
• Oh, and don't forget the trademark blue LED bar and one of those fancy little "e" thingies that the VNX guys introduced earlier this year.

What do you get?
 

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…

 

3.022: powerful, trusted and smart...meet dumb and dumber

So I posted back in January a two-part review of the key differentiating features and capabilities that make VMAX Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP) so much better than anything any competitor has put forth to date (or since, for that matter).

If you missed the posts, 3.018 is part 1 and 3.019 is part 2.

Oddly, I received nary a peep from either competitors or their customers about this post, which I found somewhat odd at the time (there was the one commenter who chastised me for being such a VMAX fanboi – sigh!).

Since those posts, I have had the opportunity to become better educated about the implementations of automated tiering from some competitors, including IBM (Easy Tier), Hitachi (Dynamic Tiering), and HP 3PAR (Adaptive Automation Optimization). Vendor documentation and best practices guides mostly, but I also gleaned some information from competitors' and independent blogs along with personal conversations with several with first-hand knowledge.

In my assessment, competitor silence in response to FAST VP simply underscores the assertion I made in those posts that VMAX FAST VP is in a class alone in comparison to those other products.

 

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!

 

3.018: fast vp - world's smartest storage tiering (part 1)

With the availability of VMAX Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP), there will undoubtedly be a raft of "we were first" and "me too" claims from competitors.

I will preemptively respond to both in this post.

As I've said many times before, being "first" in the market only really matters for as long as you are also "the only." As soon as there are more than one supplier of a feature, the discussion moves on to "which implementation is better."

I hereby assert than VMAX FAST VP is the smartest, most efficient, fastest,
easiest and most affordable sub-LUN automated tiering available in the market today
(and for the foreseeable future)

Second, I contend that no other vendors' automated tiering offering even comes close to VMAX FAST VP – and thus nobody has a basis for claiming "me too."

As I hope to explain, effective automated storage tiering requires much, much more than the basic ability to relocate data across tiers at a sub-LUN granularity. To even be considered as a contender, competitors will have to address three areas of FAST VP differentiation:

1. Effective Implementation
2. Granular Data Management
3. Advanced Controls

For each of these I will propose some questions the customers may want to consider when comparing implementations, along with the specific unique advantages offered by VMAX FAST VP.

I have split this post into two parts (it got a little longer than I planned).

Part 1 follows…

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…

 

3.016: commodity vs. custom, hu cares?

Nigel Poulton has written a fair and insightful post over on his blog comparing EMC’s VMAX to Hitachi’s VSP. In it, he notes Hitachi’s use of not one but FIVE custom ASICs, as compared to VMAX’s single custom chip. He also (rightfully, IMHO) points out that it is likely these custom ASICs that caused Hitachi Japan to deliver VSP to market nearly 18 months later than VMAX, even though both use the same generation of Intel processor (quad-core Harperton) and the same first generation PCIe.

Even for a vertically-integrated company like Hitachi, ASICs take time – a LOT of time – to get right. Mess up one little thing, and you face months to respin the design and recast the die. And if you are doing low-latency memory I/O management, you face another respin each time the architecture changes; chips built for the PCIe gen 1 interface won’t work for PCIe gen 2 or 3, for example.

Hitachi’s Japanese engineering teams have invested heavily in the “hybrid” ASIC/Intel design for this “first generation” VSP. Maybe they had no choice – the USPV architecture doesn’t adapt well into Intel’s chip designs, where memory and CPU are tightly coupled, and not separated by a crossbar switch as is the foundation of the USP/USPV/VSP. By the way, I don’t think Hitachi’s architecture can survive long-term – in fact, I suspect that Hitachi Japan is hard at work right now re-architecting future VSP follow-ons to eliminate all the ASICs from their design. Looking at the designs of Intel’s next generation processors (Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge), they really have no other option.

This leaves Hitachi Data Systems’ marketing with no choice but to try to position the (temporary) use of ASICs as an advantage – even though it has already proven a significant time-to-market disadvantage. Japan has sent lemons, HDS has to make lemonade while they wait for the elves to finish redesigning their flagship enterprise array.

But back to Nigel’s post…

3.002: expert advice on tiering with ibm db2

Someone sent me this link to an article on IBM developerWorks this morning:

Feature: Right Data, Right Place, Right Time
Storage tiering for the DB2 database administrator

Interestingly, the author was not someone from within IBM. Instead, this article comes from the company that has been pioneering the practicalities of tiered storage for several years:

Paul Pendle, Consulting Systems Integration Engineer, EMC Corporation

Nice work, Paul!

 

technorati tags: IBM,EMC,Tiered Storage,Storage Tiering,FAST,DB2,Flash Drives,EFD,SATA,Fully Automated Storage Tieringi,Symmetrix,VMAX,V-Max,DMX,Easy Tier,iPad

2.044: ibm dumbs down storage marketing (again)

OK, this isn't going to be another one of my competitor-bashing diatribes. I've learned my lesson, based on reader feedback on my comments about IBM's past transgressions (who can forget IBM's initial "Let them use Tape" response to flash drives?)

Nope, this time, I don't have to be the one to do the tear-down: independent storage consultant self-proclaimed IBM proponent "PRJ" has exposed the (dare I say it) stoopidity in his post IBM Storage UK Has Codified Stupidity. In the middle of his post he highlights the following.

Yet again, this does not mean XIV does not meet some needs. What it does mean is that XIV is still not equal to nor does it offer performance comparable to the DS8000, and that IBM has said you - the customer - are too stupid to understand this blatantly obvious fact.

If I wrote that, you'd have blasted it as blatant FUD. But this guy says that he LIKES IBM…go figure.

And it appears that IBM Storage US is no better.

Case in point: in his latest post covering this week's IBM Storage product announcements, arch-nemesis Tony Pearson couldn't resist taking an entirely unrelated swipe at me and V-Max at the end of his post. (Tony clearly didn't appreciate my publicizing the impending death of the DS68000, nor my chastising of the way he (apparently intentionally) twisted a recent Chuck Hollis post into the offensive and insensitive accusation that EMC markets storage to terrorists).

In his attempt to take the high ground, TonyP steps into the land of Codifying Stupid when he includes a link to an (IBM-funded) "ITG white paper" titled Cost/Benefit Case for IBM XIV Storage System - Comparing Costs for IBM XIV and EMC V-Max Systems, and he then uses that paper to support an assertion that the XIV is up to 63% less expensive than "a comparable" V-Max.

With an assertion like that, you know I had to respond.

 

2.043: storage wrappin' about tiered storage

This just in…a particularly timely episode of Storage Wrappin' (source unknown)

(If you cannot see the embedded video, click here)
 

technorati tags: 3PAR,auto-mneumonic tiered storage,Hey Now!,Marc Farley

2.042: bring out your dead!

My, what a week already.

IBM finally got around to putting the still-borne DS6800 out of its misery – something I had thought they were smart enough to do over two years ago (I was apparently wrong). Not to worry, I guess – if you really want to have one of these useless beasts, I understand they are still available over on e-bay.

Once touted as the entry level Shark, the DS6800 was purported to share the vast majority of its code with the higher-end DS8000 series. Over time, it became clear that no such miracle had been performed – the DS6800 was even less feature rich than the DS8K. And with the brandy-spanking-new DS8700 lacking several features that were touted as foundational for the DS8000 platform family (e.g. thin provisioning, LPARs and the like), it has got to make you wonder how serious IBM is about this space.

But undoubtedly attracting the most attention has been the comments from NetApp's CEO Tom Georgens late last week that the notion of storage tiering is dead.

There has been a lot of Twitter chatter about Tom's assertion, and at least a few blog posts - e.g., Mark Twomey's (@StorageZilla) Virtual Vs. Static Provisioning. Martin Glassborow's (@storagebod) The Crying Game, and Chris Evans' (@chrismevens) Enterprise Computing – Death of Tiering?. And even today the debate rambles on in Twitterville, with Alex McDonald (@alextangent) in the middle of the debate over whether PAM II + SATA is "tiering" or simply "caching."

All good fun, but I'd like to bring forth a slightly different perspective for why there is more to tiering than simply Flash and SATA.
 

2.040: dmx gets some fast love!

(Title intentionally modeled after Chris Mellor's articles on The Register)

Last quarter EMC gave V-Max customers a couple of pretty special Christmas/Holiday gifts. First, there was FAST for Symmetrix V-Max, followed closely by new hardware (8Gb FC/FICON) and several new software features.

This week, in a timely show of love for DMX customers (Sunday is Valentine's day, after all), EMC delivers a software update for the DMX-3 and DMX-4 platform that includes FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering) for Symmetrix DMX.

Like FAST for Symmetrix V-Max, FAST for the DMX platform automates the movement/relocation of Open Systems LUNs and CKD Volumes across different storage types based on performance requirements. FAST can both promote data to faster storage types (like flash drives) to maximize the ROI, and it can demote data to other storage types (like SATA drives) to leverage lower-cost/high-capacity storage for less-frequently accessed data. With FAST, systems will typically require fewer total drives to meet their performance and capacity requirements, making for a smaller footprint and more energy-efficient storage solution.

 

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

2.035: fast, nice and easy

With the introduction of FAST, Storage Tiering can now be automated to optimize performance and reduce both CAPEX (acquisition costs) and OPEX (people, operational and maintenance costs).

In support of the introduction of FAST for the Symmetrix V-Max platform, EMC has made several key enhancements to Symmetrix Management Console (SMC) and Symmetrix Performance Analyzer (SPA). The goal behind these changes is to radically simplify storage allocation and management in a FAST environment, largely by building upon the constructs of Auto-Provisioning and non-disruptive V-LUN migration that were introduced on the initial software release for V-Max back in April 2009.

That's right, boys and girls. Despite all the misinformed FUD you've been hearing from wanna-bee competitors, Symmetrix V-Max is indeed both FAST and easy!
 

2.030: emc fast and the big 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope you have enjoyed the pictures!

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

2.029: don't look back!

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

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

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

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

2.028: not so fast, hitachi & hp

Today's post comes verbatim from one of EMC's respected Technical Business Consultants, Jerry Zeisler. Jerry recently posted this analysis of misleading claims that Hitachi and HP are making that they already deliver what EMC's FAST is promising on EMC's internal social media community (EMC|One). With the launch of EMC's first FAST deliverables fast approaching, I thought this article might be of interest to my readers (customers, partners, technical advisors and yes, even competitors alike).

Not so FAST: Responding to Hitachi and HP FAST Claims

As one might expect, this incredibly important and innovative feature from EMC is beginning to bring out the “Me-too,” “We had it first,” and the “You don’t need it because we have a better solution” crowds. Since the announcement of EMC’s FAST solution for Symmetrix V-Max and other EMC  storage arrays, Hitachi and HP have been claiming that they’ve had a similar capability since 2000.

Nice try.

When Hitachi or HP try to claim their data migration tools are comparable to FAST or claim that they’ve had automation since 2000 or so, I start by first defining FAST, as it appears that they misunderstand or ignore what FAST is all about: FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering) is an automated, policy-driven method of placing the right data on the right storage at the right time, allowing for unattended and quick response to rapidly changing business and application requirements. FAST does the research for you to uncover migration and target candidates, as opposed to other methods that require user input or effort. FAST is not a performance tuning or load balancing application. Other competent tools provide those capabilities.

What are Hitachi and HP Claiming?

• They’ve had automated storage tiering in their high-end arrays since 2000, and in 2004 they claim to have extended automated tiering to externally attached storage.
• Tiered Storage Manager “allows you to automatically and non-disruptively migrate data between tiers of storage while applications remain on line.”
• “You set performance goals and limits, and HP XP AutoLUN Software does the rest.”
• “The capabilities are built into the XP’s firmware and therefore native and are licensed key enabled.”
• DMX and V-Max require external software to read and write data across internal tiers of storage and move or copy data from the DMX to V-Max.
• Tiering by File is the way to go, not volume.
  

2.023: the future of flash is fast

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

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

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

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

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

2.020: perspectives on emc's it virtualization journey

Today's perspective announces the first episode in a documentary series that will follow EMC's IT organization on their journey to implementing the Virtual Data Center of the Future.

Drinking our own champagne.

This introductory episode outlines the quest for the VDCotF, and it stars none other than Symmetrix V-Max (and some guy from IT who seems intent in blocking our view).

Join me on this journey, if you will:

And yes, that's the same V-Max that starred in my "bootleg" video a few months ago.

 

Another inspiring perspective from the storage anarchist.

 

technorati tags: EMC,Symmetrix,V-Max,Virtualization,IT Infrastructure,VMware,VDI,Virtual Desktop Infrastructure,View,vSphere,cloud,private cloud,Virtual Storage

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

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

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

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

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

Was it something I said? 

Fortunately, the storage anarchist does have a day job.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

This is another post from the storage anarchist.

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

2.010: pity the fool

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2.003: sgt. friday and the ibm flash competency debate

It appears that both Tony Pearson and Barry Whyte are wont to try to diffuse the debate I started in my ibm really really doesn't get flash post with yet more innuendo, misinformation and unsubstantiated fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD).

Which is all they can do, I guess, unless they are going to publicly explain in concrete terms why IBM is unable (or unwilling) to support the larger-capacity STEC ZeusIOPS drives in the DS8K that EMC has been shipping for Symmetrix since February 2009.

In the interest of those who really don't want to sift through the cruft to get to the reality behind the discussion, I outline for you here the simple facts of the debate:

1. EMC is shipping today the two largest-capacity enterprise-class flash drives available in the market – the STEC ZeusIOPS 4Gb/s Fibre Channel SLC-based drives in 200GB and 400GB capacities.
2. EMC refers to these drives as "Enterprise Flash Drives" (EFD) in recognition of their specific designs to support the availability and data integrity requirements of enterprise storage, and as opposed to the more common drives targeted at the server or laptop markets.
3. IBM reports to be shipping today the STEC ZeusIOPS 4Gb/s Fibre Channel SLC-based drives in 73GB and 146GB capacities only.
4. IBM calls its flash drives simply Solid State Drives (SSDs).
5. EMC's 200GB EFD and IBM's 146GB SSD are the same physical STEC ZeusIOPS drive, with 256GB of internal SLC NAND flash – the only difference between the two is that the EMC version provides more usable capacity from the same amount of flash.
6. EMC alone ships STEC's newest and largest ZeusIOPS 4GB/s FC drive with 512GB of SLC NAND, formatted for 400GB usable capacity.
7. EMC's 400GB EFD further reduces customer cost per usable GB, enabling customers to get more than twice the usable capacity from the same number of drives as IBM's largest SSD, or to use fewer 400GB EFDs to meet their capacity targets and thereby enjoy not only lower acquisition costs vs. the IBM DS8K, but reduced power, cooling and space requirements as well.
8. EMC asserts that the 200GB and 400GB formatting does not significantly reduce the practical life of either drive in any workload when used in EMC arrays, including pathological/artificial write-intensive workloads.
9. EMC stands behind this assertion with the same replacement and service warranty as is offered for both Fibre Channel and SATA-based hard disk drives in EMC storage arrays.
10. IBM has not yet explained publicly why it can not (or will not) offer similar capacities and the corollary cost savings on the DS8K.

Just the facts , ma'am.

This post is from the storage anarchist.

technorati tags: EMC,enterprise flash drive,EFD,SSD,solid state storage,STEC,ZeusIOPS,Symmetrix,DMX-4,V-Max,Tony Pearson,Barry Whyte,IBM,DS8000

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

Someone sent me this today:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?
 

1.056: inside the virtual matrix architecture

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

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

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

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

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

1.052: 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…

1.051: skate to where the puck is going

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1.050: e for efficiency

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

Chronicles of Innovation: Energy Efficiency

Then you might say things got a little whacky.

Extreme Efficiency: Project Outdoor Office

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

1.048: news flash! information is still growing!!!!

From the Business Section of the March 11, 2009 Financial Times comes this earth-shattering dilemma:

Storage: The bytes build up –
but where can we put them?

Seems that Mark Vargo, IBM’s own Chief Strategy Officer, and Hu Yoshida, Hitachi Data System’s Chief Technology Officer both agree that digital information is still growing.

Shocking!

Oddly, it was almost 2 years ago to the day the Mark was quoted by the very same Financial Times on the very same topic, except back then, he seemed to have an answer:

Surely we can squeeze a bit more in somewhere

I don’t know which is sadder, the fact that the Financial Times reruns topics, or that IBM and HDS are taking ipso-facto credit for the EMC-sponsored IDC research on the Expanding Digital Universe that is behind the observations of these two. (That some of their quotes are lifted directly from the research papers is, well, no longer astonishing).

OK – I’ll make it unanimous: EMC’s Chief Strategy Officer for Symmetrix also asserts that indeed, we will collectively have more digital information to store tomorrow than we did yesterday.

Who knew?

 

There, that said, I’ll return to working on The Perfect Storage Array, per Martin’s specifications.

 

technorati tags: digital universe, digital information, EMC, IDC, research, Financial Times, information explosion, data growth, IBM, HDS

1.044: ibm's amazing splash dance

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wasn't to be disappointed.
 

1.039: don't miss the amazing vendor flash dance

UPDATED: 17 Feb 2009 - changes in green

Flash dancing was a form of tap dance evolved in 1920s-1930s which combined tap with acrobatics.

That description pretty much sums up what Sun, HP, Hitachi, IBM and NetApp have been doing (and saying) about Flash Storage over the past couple of weeks. Some are tap dancing around their continual delays in getting product to market, while others have resorted to high-wire theatrics to cover up the fact that they’re still nowhere near ready to integrate flash tech.

And almost all of them have finally realized that EMC was right over a year ago – the first place we’re going to see benefits from flash technology is indeed as a new tier in high performance storage arrays. That’s right, after a year of excuses and a cacophony of claims that EMC’s introduction of Enterprise Flash Drives (EFDs) wasn’t innovative, today we find virtually every storage vendor (with one major exception) having announced that they, too, will soon be shipping EFDs in their arrays.

And every one of them has chosen the very supplier (STEC) and the same drive (ZeusIOPS) that EMC introduced to the world over a year ago.

To be honest, I’ve expected all along that this is where we’d be at this point in time, but I surely didn’t think it would take them this long to admit figure out that array-based EFDs is where they should start.

Where we are today is remarkable, and no one can argue that we’d be here were it not for EMC’s vision and investment in bringing the game-changing NAND technology to market ahead of all expectations.

But though the road we’ve travelled to get where we are today is relatively short, it has been littered with some remarkable Flash Dancing (and FUD) from the competition.

Let’s take a look at each of these vendors journeys on this Road to Flash, shall we?

WARNING: this one’s long – probably the longest ever. My apologies…I had lots to say

1.035: enterprise flash drives get wired!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a Happy New Year!

 

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

1.034: i've been working on the (redacted)

As the end of the year draws near, I realize I've not offered any explanation for my recent rather lengthy spells of silence here on my blog.

The thing is, I've been busy, working on several rather exciting projects that quite honestly have been consuming nearly all my waking hours. Some really neat, game-changing stuff – even more interesting perhaps than the stuff I was working on last year at this time!

Not only have these projects kept me away from the keyboard, but I've been living in abject fear that I'd somehow slip up here on my blog and reveal some corporate secret or another in what surely would have been a very poorly timed CLM.

But you know me – anarchy means there are no rules. So I sucked it up and went ahead and wrote a post anyway.

But with my last sliver of common sense, I paused just before hitting the "Publish" button, and sent my draft out for a peer review.

Follows is what came back from my wizened peers and advisors…(and thanks to all of you for saving my butt!)

 

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...
 

1.029: atmos. with, and without, the sphere

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

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

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

Preserving the atmosphere, you might say.

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

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

1.026: development strategies for solid state storage

There have been some good discussion started on last week's flash wars post. This week, Marc Farley has extended the conversation a bit to include the perspective of NAND-vs.-SDRAM for I/O caching and raises some of the challenges of using solid-state storage merely as a disk drive. I've commented on his post with some added perspective, and I encourage others to weigh in with their own points of view, both here and over on Marc's blog.

Another battle front in these so-called flash wars is whether or not application re-architecture and custom development will be required to leverage the value of NAND flash.

Clearly, integrating NAND as a cache buffer in front of spinning disks might require some hefty integration work - or perhaps not, as has been suggested by the ZFS folks. On the other hand, using a flash SSD in place of a bunch of 15K rpm disk drives requires little more than segmenting the application I/O workload onto the faster media - database administrators and applications developers already do this today when they segment tables and indexes between 15K rpm and 10K rpm drives (for example).

My own opinion is that while solid-state storage will enable application architects as programmers some new opportunities, the fact is that most applications today are able to gain incredible acceleration from DRAM-based solid-state storage and from intelligent cached disk arrays with little or no programming required. In one test case I've seen, simply moving the LUNs off of the 8 heaviest utilized drives from a workload that spans 192 15K rpm 146GB disk drives onto 8 146GB enterprise flash drives resulted in reducing average response times across all the drives by more than 60%. That's a huge improvement that can drive significant ROI without the inherent overhead or complexity of the development/test/change control process.

Not to be outdone by Marc's near-daily vidblog posts, I was recently interviewed on the subject of developing for flash technology by the EMC Developer's Network. If you are an applications developer interested in what it takes to leverage the performance benefit of flash, you might enjoy the interview.

And if you develop applications or tools for use with (or on) EMC products who isn't really interested in developing for flash storage, you might still want to do some social networking with other developers at the new EMC Developer Network - it's the essential community for the EMC developer.

 

technorati tags: enterprise flash drives,EFDs,EMC,Symmetrix,NAND flash,EMC Developer Network,storage cache,application acceleration,database acceleration,SSDs,solid-state storage

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!
 

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.
 

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!

 

0.074: emc world 2008

EMC World 2008 is just about a month and a half away, and the preparation  activity around the office is really picking up. Presentation content is being reviewed and critiqued, the kinks are getting worked out of the hands-on workshops and show-floor challenges, the chatchkies and prizes are starting to come in, and everyone's travel arrangements are being buttoned up.

And now that Q1 is complete (and 5773 is shipping), the excitement will really start building, hopefully to crescendo May 19-22 in Las Vegas.

A couple of weeks ago, I recorded a "teaser" for my session on Flash Drive performance and best practices. Mostly, the teaser is just the marketing side of the story. In my session I'll actually be diving into details on the performance customers can expect to attain for different workloads, as well as discussing the various tools that can be used to identify applications (or parts of applications) that could benefit most from sub-millisecond response times that Enterprise Flash Drives deliver on Symmetrix.

(Check out the video after the page break)

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]
 

0.067: revenge of the mainframe

Hot on the heels of the raging debate between Chuck and TonyP over who's really leading the Open Systems Disk Library market, EMC this week announced its newest EMC Disk Library for Mainframe. Now, in my mind, the press release is improperly titled, in that it positioned the EDLm (as we affectionately call it) as a "Virtual Tape Library" - but unlike traditional VTLs, the EDLm is tapeless!

That's right - it is 100% made up of SATA disk storage, transparently managed behind zSeries-compatible FICON- or ESCON-attached tape emulation engines, with the performance and bandwidth to support backup/restore, batch "tapeless" processing, and/or nearline storage - all in a single, integrated package. Already there are several pilot/beta sites, and general availability will begin in March 2008.

Marketing used this week's SHARE Conference down in Orlando as the venue for this announcement, and they even crafted this video-mercial for the event (and no, it's not Bob & Joe this time):

 
Revenge of the Mainframe

For those interested in learning more about the EMC Disk Library for Mainframe, as well as EMC's other mainframe storage solutions, stop by the Ready2Rule landing page on emc.com.

And there's now a whole EMC channel on YouTube, where you can find a lot of "video white papers" on EMC solutions (in addition to more funny videos - check out the Celerra NS20 Installation SMACKDOWN for one of the better ones).

And for the record, if you are in the market for cost-effective SATA storage for your zSeries, whether for bulk storage, near-line, compliance retention or even on-line applications, EMC is ready, willing and able to help you fulfill those needs...today!

 

technorati tags: EMC,disk library,disk libraries,EDLm,virtual tape library,VDL,mainframe storage,SATA storage,tapeless,EMC disk library for mainframe,IBM,mainframe,mainframe sata,mainframe nearline storage

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.

0.060: 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!