How could a company as mighty and diverse as HP have had so many issues with executive management?

HP stumbled mightily in 2011, and it had nothing to do with product or people. Even sales remained strong, though the PC business is changing. HP’s mighty stumble was a crisis of confidence due to a chain of shenanigans at the very top. This culminated with the short reign of Léo Apotheker, leaving HP to reassure the market of its strategy.

HP And the Enterprise IT Industry

Sometimes, it’s hard to get a sense of scale when talking about very large things. How big is the solar system? How far away is the nearest star? The same is true of earthly things, exemplified by popular misconceptions about the global financial crisis. It’s difficult for people to understand just how much money a trillion dollars is.

In my little world of enterprise storage, it’s difficult to reconcile “big storage” players like EMC and NetApp with “big storage and everything else” players like HP, Dell, Oracle and IBM. Sure, EMC and NetApp lead the pack in terms of market share, but they’re nowhere near as large as the integrated players. HP has more than 7 times the revenue of EMC, which makes 3 times more than NetApp.

This old slide might need updating, but you get the picture...

HP is an incredibly diverse company, dominant in the PC, printing, and blade server market and top 5 just about everywhere else, including networking, services, and enterprise storage. And HP has nearly 325,000 employees, all working to move the company forward in one direction or another.

NetApp is a motorcycle, with one drive wheel pushing it forward at high speed; HP is more like NASA’s shuttle crawler-transporter, a 16 motor mammoth. Single-purpose companies can be agile, but they can also be derailed by market downturn or technological shift. Storage specialists like NetApp continually try to innovate and acquire to keep themselves vital, while larger companies like Cisco and EMC try to diversify while maintaining market leadership. HP doesn’t need to try; it is diverse.

HP Is a Very Large Thing

I watched HP's rise in the server market of the 1990's

HP has long been synonymous with innovation, high-technology, and silicon Valley. I have been an HP customer as long as I have been in IT, and watched as they integrated technology from Apollo and Convex in the 1990’ s. The server products that resulted became the dominant UNIX platform, but HP’ s innovative storage concepts didn’ t take the market by storm.

After HP merged with Compaq (which brought Tandem and Digital Equipment Corporation), the company vaulted ahead in the Wintel market and also gained valuable storage expertise. Throughout the last decade, HP was firing on all cylinders and dominant in nearly every arena. The company owns half the blade server market, is tied for first in servers, leads in PCs and printers, and is a contender in networking and storage. It’s simply impossible to say what HP is in a single sentence.

HP storage has an extremely broad product range, which management is working to reconcile. Acquisitions of LeftHand, Ibrix, and 3PAR gave HP storage shot in the arm to be sure. An injection of startup mojo has energized the marketing and product groups within HP just when the company needed it. HP’ s market share has grown somewhat as a result, though not as much as the hyper-focused NetApp. HP networking similarly took on 3Com, bedeviling Cisco in the Ethernet switch market.

The Executive Soap Opera

It takes a lot to bring a mammoth to its knees, but a shot between the eyes usually does the trick. While the many engines of HP push it forward, the company’s upper management has seemed, at times, suicidal. Business schools could design an entire curriculum around the folly of Patricia “I spy” Dunn and Mark “penny-pinching” Hurd. Who would think that HP management could top this?

From August 2010 through September 2011, HP dominated IT headlines in completely the wrong way. The board wanted a change, and selected Léo Apotheker to transform HP. But it was a soap opera from the very start, with Oracle hiring Mark Hurd and sending Apotheker into hiding among accusations of corporate espionage while at SAP.

The new CEO didn’t seem to understand HP at all, though he was intent on steering it in a new direction. Apotheker set about dismantling HP’s consumer and end-user businesses, killing Palm/WebOS and threatening to sell off the PC business. The company was to focus instead on enterprise computing, but these drastic moves spooked the entire industry.

It wasn’t long before HP’s board struck again, with a shake up at the hands of Ray Lane and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman brought in to replace Apotheker. The first order of business for the new HP executive team appears to be reassuring the entire world that management has not gone completely insane.

Stephen’s Stance

To an outsider like me, the most disappointing thing about HP’s mighty stumble is that it has nothing to do with the people who really make the company what it is. I have met many creative, hard-working individuals in HP’s storage, server, networking, and printer groups, and they could not be more different from the executive soap opera. I only hope that this new board and CEO will bring some stability and let HP cruise forward once again.

Disclaimer: HP has sponsored the Tech Field Day events which I organize, and has on occasion invited me to attend events at their expense.  But I do similar work with nearly every company in the IT industry, and this piece is my own opinion.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | HP’s Mighty Stumble
This post was categorized as Computer History, Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Do you want X-series or P-series storage? Is A-series networking gear any good? And where did all these HP products come from?

HP has always been an alphabet soup company, assigning just about every item in their bewildering array of products a unique product number. Like Mercedes-Benz cars, even the product names are a mix of letters and numbers that can be off-putting to browsers. Now that they have grown to supersize proportions through internal expansion and acquisition, just about everyone outside the company seems to have trouble decoding the product line, so I decided to take a stab at decoding the enterprise lineup in plain english.

An Important Note

This is not a political activity. I’m not trying to comment on which product is better than which or pigeonhole something by calling it “midrange” when HP thinks it’s “high-end”. I’m trying to be descriptive and helpful to prospective buyers working to understand the multitude of products sold by HP.

I welcome your input. In fact, I demand it! I don’t know which product is which and need your help to improve this list. Please feel free to comment and suggest corrections and additions (wireless?)

Storage Products (“StorageWorks”)

HP’s storage products are divided into three categories:

• P-series is block (SAN) storage using Fibre Channel or iSCSI
• X-series is file (NAS) storage
• Disk backup will presumably get a letter series in the future

Storage Product Notes

HP engineering input into OEMed products ranges from minimal to substantial. The EML tape library, for example, is very different from the standard Oracle (STK) product on which it is based. The high-end Hitachi-based storage includes substantial HP input as well.

HP StorageWorks VP of Marketing Tom Joyce informed me that the 3PAR T- and F-Class boxes won’t be renamed at this point. This is probably a good move – capitalize on the value of the 3PAR name rather than the virtually-unknown “P-series” nomenclature.

Others tell me that the StorageWorks 4400 is hitting end-of-life in the now-ish timeframe. So it won’t get a new name either.

Networking Products

HP’s networking products are divided into three categories:

• A-series is enterprise-class core switching, routing, and 200+ AP wireless
• E-series is mid-market and SMB switching and smaller wireless
• V-series is SMB and SoHo web-managed and unmanaged switching and wireless

Networking Product Notes

HP’s 3Com acquisition focused primarily on the H3C (former Huawei/3Com joint venture) high-end switching and routing products. Although some 3Com gear remains in the E-series line (particularly stackable switches), the low-end fixed-port switches have seemingly been eliminated from the product line. The Colubris acquisition provided HP with scalable wireless products now slotted below the H3C gear.

Stephen’s Stance

Product lines are always confusing at large companies, and doubly so where acquisitions bring in legacy products and customers. I wish HP the best of luck sorting all this out!

Note: The photo at the top is of a Japanese clone of the Enigma Machine from World War II.

Image credit: Japanese WWII Enigma Machine by Radio Rover

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Stephen’s HP Product Line Decoder Ring
This post was categorized as Computer History, Enterprise storage, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Tech Field Day is all about community

As some readers of my blog know, I organize the independent Gestalt IT cooperative. We’re a group of folks who investigate and discuss enterprise IT technology, writing articles, running online communities, and organizing live events. Field Day is our chance to come together in various locations for face-to-face meetings with interesting product and technology companies. We’re in San Jose this week for our first networking-focused Field Day event, and things are getting interesting!

Networking on Networking

We brought a dozen well-known networking pros to San Jose for Field Day, most of whom had never met in person. It’s ironic that our online-centric world highlights the value of live interaction to such an extent, but it was evident right from the start. While planning the event, Greg Ferro and I put together a list of dozens of possible delegates, finally picking a “dream team” we hoped to get involved. Amazingly, just about every one of these folks walked through the doors and sat down Wednesday night!

The networking community is much like other enterprise IT crowds like storage and virtualization. They are reeling from the pressures of vendors driving adoption of products, the impact of server virtualization, and the increasing industry consolidation. A key topic of discussion was the continual assault on perennial market leader, Cisco. They see an opportunity for HP, Juniper, Brocade, and the other challengers to chip away at Cisco’s margins and topple their control of major niches.

Consolidation on Ethernet and IP continues to be a challenge. Network-centric vendors try to pull storage and other traffic into their traditional protocols, and the results are controversial to say the least. Topics like TRILL, FCoE (and FCoTR), and DCB/CEE caused intense debate in this crowd. But their discussions were nearly as heated when discussing Apple’s role in the enterprise world, the future of IT, cloud computing, and many other topics besides. The talk ranged to photography (cameras seem to be a hobby for many), coffee, travel, and family as well.

HP’s Attack on Cisco

Thursday began with a half-day session at HP’s beautiful Executive Briefing Center. The focus here was the burgeoning war between HP and Cisco. HP’s A-series networking products (acquired with 3Com) appear to match the technical capabilities of Cisco’s high-end datacenter networking equipment, but the Field Day crew remained skeptical. They continually returned to questions about HP’s support for professionals like themselves with documentation and training, as well as their long-term commitment to the networking field.

They were impressed by HP’s Intelligent Management Center (IMC) demonstration, and presenter Les Stuart was ready and able to field their questions. The S-series of security products (acquired with TippingPoint) also piqued interest, though many were concerned about the pricing.

Through it all, though, everyone remained respectful of HP. They seems ready to take on any company everywhere in the data center stack. Although questions remain on whether they will succeed, everyone agreed that they are uniquely positioned due to their size, resources, customer footprint, and broad product range. HP is the enterprise IT company to watch.

SolarWinds: Mining Metrics

Being a storage guy, I was not familiar with SolarWinds, but just about everyone in this networking group had experience with them. In fact, this session was much more focused on feedback and suggestions than education and exploration. SolarWinds dived deep into their ability to collect performance metrics and presented their future architecture for scalability. Although it was difficult for me to follow the discussion, the Field Day crew was impressed!

Cradlepoint Links 3G/4G and the LAN

Turning the tables, the Field Day delegates were unfamiliar with one of my favorite networking companies, Cradlepoint. This small firm from Boise markets a line of routers that link networks with wide-area wireless data on 3G/4G mobile networks. Tech Field Day runs on a PHS300 battery-powered router while on the road, and I am impressed with the MBR1200 high-availability router I’m testing at my home office. Once they took a look, the entire Field Day crew was excited about this technology, even suggesting new product ideas.

Force10 Takes the Whiteboard

Breaking from the more-corporate sessions of the day, Force10 eschewed the projector and turned to the whiteboard exclusively. Steve Garrison gave the lay of the land before turning the session to a deep dive into networking architecture and the company’s 10 GbE products. The Field Day delegates really responded to this presentation method, a lesson that future presenters would be wise to learn!

Computer History and the Babbage Engine

Thursday ends with a retreat to one of my favorite San Francisco locations, the Computer History Museum. All delegates, presenters, and a few friends will gather for socializing, ogling artifacts from our industry, and even a demonstration of the Babbage Engine!

Friday: Juniper, Arista, and Xsigo

Tomorrow will see Juniper Networks, Arista Networks, and Xsigo Systems take the floor. I will update this post with coverage of their sessions tomorrow evening!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Notes From Networking Field Day 2010
This post was categorized as Computer History, Enterprise storage, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

The players are lining up for the biggest acquisition game enterprise IT has witnessed in a while

Today is the (a?) day of reckoning in the 3Par saga, with Dell widely expected to make a counter-offer higher than HP’s bid. But this mega deal, like the Data Domain war before it, sends a strong signal to the enterprise IT world: It’s open season on data storage companies! But the rising superpowers are also likely looking at networking as an area of expansion. The game is afoot!

The Competitors

The simple fact is, enterprise IT prefers to buy from large, established names like HP and IBM rather than smaller and less-familiar companies with names like Ocarina, EqualLogic, or even 3Par. The acceleration of sales by enterprise providers is what makes these big acquisitions so successful and why others involving less-powerful players often fail to deliver the same results.

Full-line “superpowers” like IBM, HP and now Dell and the new Oracle can influence purchasing decisions across a broad spectrum of hardware and software. Many large organizations are tightly coupled to one of these vendors, and will give their products stronger consideration even when they are new or unfamiliar. HP is already flexing their muscle selling their broadened network lineup, and Dell found that it could do this in data storage.

Software vendors like Microsoft, Citrix, and Oracle adamantly maintained a neutral stance toward hardware, but Ellison and company seem serious about changing this. Oracle’s success in selling Sun hardware will likely dictate further software acquisitions for Dell and HP, though IBM already has strength there. Then there is Intel, the wild card who just got wilder with their acquisition of McAfee.

Companies with narrower focus like Cisco, EMC, NetApp, Juniper, and Brocade have the same power within their sphere of influence but cannot pull in wholly-distinct products. Cisco is in the midst of this fight with their technically-excellent UCS blade servers: Although they were certainly a strategic CIO-level vendor in the largest organizations, “blades from a networking company” isn’t the as easy a decision as “networking gear from a full-line company.”

The Game

Then one must consider the market in contention. The enterprise IT space is not expanding, especially in the United States. This is very close to a zero-sum game, with Oracle’s or Dell’s wins being HP’s or IBM’s losses and vice-versa. There is massive money in play, and flexibility enough for it to swing between the competitors, but growth is not unlimited.

Enterprise storage and data center and campus networking are two areas where smaller companies retain enviably-large slices of the pie, explaining the interest in these spaces among the superpowers. These verticals still have room for sales to grow without displacing a fierce full-line foe, and the superpowers have lately been weak here. Storage and networking are enticing opportunities, but each slice is similarly dominated by “vertical superpowers” and partners EMC and Cisco.

So this is the game: Four full-line enterprise superpowers battling each other for datacenter dominance and coveting the extra profits of a few verticals. HP clearly believes they can chip away at EMC and Cisco in storage and networking; Dell and IBM have so far focused mainly on storage; and Oracle hasn’t made a move in either direction, instead challenging the other three in the core server and software space.

Pawns or Knights?

So where does this leave the smaller players? Are they merely pawns in the game, waiting to be sacrificed, or are they knights who can wield power across the field? The largest (Cisco and EMC especially) appear to have ambitions of their own as well as the financial and technical strength to shake up the game. They are unlikely to be acquired by the superpowers. Brocade, too, has broad strength in storage and networking but maintains relationships across the board that make an acquisition difficult.

Strong vertical players like Juniper, NetApp, Riverbed, and Compellent are ripe for acquisition, as were Foundry, 3Com, Data Domain, and 3Par. IBM, Dell, and Oracle are all likely buyers of the networking players, though HP may consider filling in where 3Com was found lacking. All four will likely take a strong look at the remaining storage players as well, with the loser in the battle for 3Par likely to be hungry indeed.

One should also consider the potential impact of smaller acquisitions. Although they would not immediately “move the needle” for a massive superpower, there are many excellent technology companies that could be bought low and pushed strongly. The enterprise-class technology at Sepaton, Pillar Data, Xiotech, BlueArc, Extreme Networks, Force10, Blue Coat, Isilon, CommVault, FalconStor, and many others should not be overlooked. If a superpower can drive a larger acquisition to succeed, imagine what they can do with strong but inexpensive technology from one of these!

Stephen’s Stance

This game is nowhere near finished. The 3Par acquisition will not only generate revenue, it will shake up the ranking of data storage array dominance. This is very likely to kick off additional acquisition in the data storage space, spurring either Dell or HP to pick up additional technology and perhaps causing IBM or Oracle to engage as well. With no easy alternatives to 3Par, I expect Compellent, Xiotech, and Pillar to get closer looks, but Sepaton and BlueArc are just as ripe. NetApp may be too expensive at this point, but would be a nice match for Oracle’s strategy.

HP’s acquisition of 3Com could also signal a race to integrate datacenter and campus networking technology into the stack. Many are suggesting a Brocade acquisition, and it would be much cheaper than Juniper, but OEM ties make it a difficult purchase for any of the superpowers. Extreme and Force10 would be excellent and less-expensive alternatives.

We should also keep our eyes outside the superpower space. Intel showed that they can make big moves, and Microsoft might consider a diversification into hardware as well. One should also look to the East, where Huawei could try to enter the Western market with a merger or joint-venture to cast off the China stigma. Although I would love to see a rebel alliance rise (imagine Juniper, NetApp, and Symantec joining forces!) this is not a likely scenario.

Image credit: Chess Board by mosdave

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | The Enterprise IT Acquisition Game
This post was categorized as Computer History, Enterprise storage, Everything, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Who will power the enterprise? The smart money is betting on a few superpowers taking over.

After years spent focusing on personal technology, businesses are increasingly turning back to the enterprise. There are many reasons for this, but the biggest one is the poor economy. Individuals simply have less free cash to spend on gadgets and software, and the meagre profits are increasingly going into the pockets of a single company: Apple.

The corporate IT market is much more dynamic and competitive, with a few very large “superpower” companies discovering their power to drive purchasing decisions. If a supplier can create an integrated “stack” of hardware and software, they can push product purchases that might otherwise be overlooked or postponed. This is the main reason that enterprise IT acquisitions work so well: Where a small company must fight to sell their product, a large one can hitch it to a much more strategic sale and have it pulled along.

The old IBM model is the prototype, with that company once selling everything from office equipment to datacenter gear as well as the consulting and integration services to make it all work.

HP has spent almost two decades bulking up to become the new IBM, buying their way into open systems laptops, desktops, and servers (Compaq), networking (3Com), services (EDS), and storage (Compaq, LeftHand, Ibrix, and perhaps 3Par). HP has been remarkably proficient at executing on this enterprise plan: In talking to enterprise IT folks, I often hear IBM-esque sentiments regarding the new HP. They tell me they’re willing to give HP the benefit of the doubt when it comes to new technologies and products, buying on basis of the company’s reputation and ability to make everything work. This bodes well for the company’s post-Hurd future, and HP has the most-complete “enterprise stack” in the business.

But HP has a target on its back, pinned there by Dell. The folks from Round Rock believe they can be more efficient (and thus profitable) than HP in the same markets, and have been making moves to fortify their enterprise offerings. Dell was always more of a manufacturing than R&D business, but they have shown a desire to broaden their focus. Intrigued by the high-margin mid-enterprise storage business built from their EqualLogic acquisition and their success selling EMC storage, Dell is moving into the enterprise. They matched HP/EDS by purchasing Perot and have made smaller buys in storage (Ocarina, Exanet) as well as the big move for 3Par.

The next big emerging stack player is Oracle. The acquisition of Sun gave Oracle a strong hardware base to complement their command of enterprise software, and many expect further acquisitions. But Oracle is playing a different game than HP and Dell, focusing on the high-margin enterprise space and ignoring more competitive outlying areas. Many suspect the company might make a play in the network space (Brocade, Juniper, and F5 have been mentioned) but storage is possible as well. CEO Larry Ellison is a major investor in Pillar Data Systems, so many expect a spin-in here. But Oracle has the appetite for something much bigger, even EMC or NetApp.

Then there is Cisco, who have attempted to parlay their data center networking strength into a broader position. But Cisco’s halting moves into storage (Fibre Channel switching and SAN extension) did not displace the market leaders, and their server products (UCS) have not made much of a dent on HP, IBM, and Dell either. A solid partnership with EMC has delayed further forays into the enterprise storage market, and Cisco seems puzzlingly interested in low-margin access businesses (Linksys, Flip) and their Cius tablet.

There are other players in the enterprise space as well. EMC has diversified under CEO Joe Tucci, taking a dominant position in server virtualization (VMware) and making a strong enterprise security acquisition (RSA). But the many faces of enterprise storage remains EMC’s strength, and they seem content to partner with Cisco for a stack sale. Hitachi, NEC, and Fujitsu also offer varying enterprise hardware and software stacks, but their comparatively small sales presence in the US market limits their ability to execute. In the final analysis, only IBM, HP, Dell, and perhaps Oracle can claim to be enterprise IT superpowers at this point.

Image credit: Steam Engine by Stuck in Customs

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Meet the Enterprise IT Superpowers
This post was categorized as Computer History, Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

This is the second entry in my Top-Ten in Storage series.

Not every innovative product can succeed in the market, and no matter how good some ideas seem, they can fail to make much of an impact. The truth is, people buy solutions, not technologies.

This list includes products so cool, so ahead of their time, that they just couldn’t fail. But they did.

1988 EMC Orion/Allegro

EMC’s RAM-based storage array predated and presaged its Symmetrix, offering lightning-quick I/O for very small workloads. But the Orion had a few serious drawbacks: It was astonishingly expensive, offered tiny capacity, and was never available for open systems. EMC’s initial offerings in the open systems market, Centriplex and Harmonix, also deserve mention though the company proved its worth with its “best” Symmetrix a few years later.

1985 3COM 3Server

I’ve written about the 3Server before, but let’s sum up: Before RAID, SAN, and NAS, and even before NetWare and NFS became entrenched, 3COM introduced a flexible multi-disk network storage and print server called the 3Server. It was an innovative combination of hardware and software, but it lost out to NetWare on open PC hardware in the market. Although the 3Server lasted just a few years, it made a lasting contribution to the field: Its 3+Share software became 3+Open, then LAN Manager, and was finally absorbed by Microsoft to become SMB/CIFS.

HP AutoRAID (High Availability Disk Array Model 12)

The first post-RAID virtual sprang fully-formed from the big brains at HP to challenge the industry-leading modular offerings from Data General’s CLARiiON and DEC/Compaq’s StorageWorks. It one-upped everyone with automatic relocation of LUNs between different RAID levels based on workload about a decade before Compellent, EqualLogic, and 3PAR had anything of the sort. But the AutoRAID had two key drawbacks: Like mama bear, it wasn’t big enough for big companies but was too big and expensive for little ones, and it was SCSI-only (though a Fibre Channel bridge was a common accessory). Some of the concepts lived on in the HP EVA line, but AutoRAID didn’t last long.

Microsoft Object File System (OFS)/Relational File System (RFS)/WinFS

Microsoft shoulda-coulda-woulda revolutionized file storage with nearly every major operating system release. It looks the same every time: A database/filesystem hybrid that would add structure to the vast unstructured file world. Despite the hype, we haven’t seen it yet. 

MangoSoft Medley

Consider the typical LAN: Lots of clients with lots of hard drive space connected to a server with yet more disk capacity. Wouldn’t it be nice if the space on these clients could be used as a virtual network server? Well that’s just what MangoSoft announced in 1997, gaining much attention in the PC press. Sadly, the idea never really caught on, although MangoSoft continued. But distributed network storage has become the industry’s Brigadoon, trotted out as a new idea year after year.

StorageNetworks

This is my flop – I worked for StorageNetworks from 1999 through 2001.

StorageNetworks was launched in 1998 to provide off-premise storage and backup as an on-demand service for enterprise customers. They sought to take advantage of the emergence of high-speed Fibre Channel connectivity over metro distances to commoditize storage capacity. But only Houston (where I worked) had an acceptable infrastructure for the service, so the company changed focus to hosting centers. Then off-site backup. Then software. Nothing worked apart from vendor-independent services, and the (now public) company was shy to base its revenues on that. StorageNetworks was gone in 2003, but does the service remind anyone of Amazon S3 or Nirvanix? Maybe it was just ahead of its time.

Compaq VersaStor

Announced in 1999, VersaStor would have been a revolution in Fibre Channel SANs, a full out of band virtualization solution leveraging specialized HBAs directing traffic. It was continually pushed back, finally being “merged” (after Compaq) with HP’s StorageApps in-band SANLink to become CASA. But then EMC sued HP over virtualization patents, derailing CASA, and the whole mess was permanently shelved at the end of 2003.

IBM Ice Cube/Collective Intelligent Bricks Hardware

IBM rocked the storage press in 2003 with their announcement of Almaden Research’s Ice Cube concept. Instantly dubbed “Lego brick storage” (trademarks be damned!), the storage units could be stacked in two dimensions, scaling without limit. Coolest of all (literally), the bricks were chilled with water! Although the concept progressed, we still haven’t seen it. But this didn’t stop Seagate from developing a similar concept, ISE, which is now Xiotech’s main offering. IBM’s Storage Tank and VSS could have been nominated, too, but I’m not a sadist.

Revivio CDP

Revivio was the pioneer of continuous data protection (CDP), with great technology and people. But no one (other than Symantec, eventually) bought it.

Pirus

Little Pirus was working on a small but scalable virtualized target when it was acquired by Sun in September of 2002. Their technology was launched as the StorEdge 6920, a mini alternative to the HDS USP in 2004, but (according to insiders) it didn’t exactly light the world on fire. Sun finally pulled the plug on the 6920 in early 2007, with HDS taking over continuing support for anyone who bought the moribund product.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Top Ten Coolest Enterprise Storage Flops
This post was categorized as Computer History, Enterprise storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Notice that all of my PC’s run windows, while all of my servers run Linux! This got me wondering what role Linux plays in enterprise storage. Sure, Linux has a huge role to play on the computing side of the equation. But which enterprise storage devices are based on a Linux kernel?

Xiotech made a big splash a few years ago by announcing that they would switch from a proprietary operating system to Linux. I remember seeing Open-E’s Linux based iSCSI software somewhere, and hearing that Snap Appliance (now part Adaptec) of was using it as well. I consulted LinuxDevices.com and found out about Infrant (now part of NetGear), MaXXan (nee CipherMax), and Raidtec.

There have got to be more! So tell me, who is using Linux as their embedded kernel and why? Was it for convenience, hardware support, or perhaps a financial decision?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2007. | Where is Linux in Storage?
This post was categorized as Computer History, Enterprise storage, Everything. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

H3C already has a long list of products, most based on in-house hardware and OEM software. On the storage side, the company makes an iSCSI storage array platform dubbed “Neocean”. This storage platform, selling strongly in China, is alleged to leverage technology licensed from FalconStor (on the low-end IX1000), Intransa (on the bigger IX5000), as well as iVivity and Xyratex. OEM storage developer Ciprico today announced that it will be working with H3C on the next generation. H3C also sells a WAFS accelerator leveraging Expand Networks software. All of these should be coming to the United States next year.

Huawei itself is also getting back into the storage market in the form of a joint venture with Symantec, creatively called Huawei-Symantec. This company is set to be coming out with a line of network devices with Veritas-based software built in. We’re hearing about virus scanning and content indexing appliances, as well as NAS and SAN arrays which will include storage foundation software from Symantec right out of the box.

Who knows what’s next from Huawei? I’d guess expanded services, more resellers in the West, and more OEM deals to create bigger systems. In a few years, they might give Hitachi and EMC trouble in the enterprise market, especially when big server vendors like Sun, SGI, Dell, and HP start rethinking their OEM strategies…

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2007. | Storage from behind the great wall
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

I’d like to kick off a series of articles with an exploration of a key piece of storage technology, the open systems NAS array. Now, lots of people think that NAS is a new development, but this is not so. In my research, I’ve come to the conclusion that NAS predates SAN by a few years at least, and its history is linked to the development of open systems servers, too!

Let’s start with some basics. I’m assuming that NAS is defined as the sharing of files (rather than blocks) over a high-level protocol. NAS generally addresses offsets within files within folders, and we usually encounter it today in the form of CIFS or NFS servers, which operate over the familiar IP protocol and Ethernet networks.

This was not always the case, of course. The earliest file servers I could find were created at Stanford using Xerox Alto servers, and headless file servers were named and in place by 1979, according to Byte magazine. Certainly, development of the concept of a “server” and file server in particular was helped by the introduction of XNS around 1981, as it included RPC functionality.

Novell took this concept and ran with it, transforming XNS SPP into IPX/SPX and introducing NetWare in 1983. It’s safe to say that NetWare was the first file server software, at least in the open systems world.

But there was another heavy hitter in town – 3Com. These days, it’s easy to forget just how important this company was back then, but the networking and storage world would look very different without 3Com! It was founded to exploit Xerox PARC’s Ethernet protocol, and like Intel today spent much of its first decade pushing networked applications into the market.

3Com developed a network server operating system of their own on top of DOS – 3+Share. Over two decades, this product would evolve into LAN Manager, SMB, and CIFS!

But 3Com released a hardware product, too, and this is critical to our exploration of the storage industry. The 3Server was based on the Intel x86 architecture and booted MS-DOS, but was not a PC. It had no provision for a “head” (keyboard and monitor), and was managed remotely over the network. It included seven disk drive slots from its 1985 introduction and included software to manage these disks and present storage over the network. Let’s see – headless dedicated server with disk slots running a proprietary file serving OS. Sound like a storage array to you? Me too!

Although it originally supported XNS over Ethernet and AppleTalk, Token Ring support was added quickly. The 3Server (like NetWare) also supported network applications, but it was its storage protocol that had the most impact. 3Com worked with IBM to develop a successor to 3+Share, which IBM called LAN Manager and 3Com called 3+Open. This was based on OS/2 and was handed over to Microsoft in early 1991 as 3Com refocused on network infrastructure.

So who knows of an earlier storage array in the open systems world? I’ll cover Auspex/NetApp, EMC, and the rest in future installments of Storage History.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2007. | Storage History: The 3Server
This post was categorized as Computer History, Enterprise storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Networked:

1. Dell XPS M1210 laptop (killer!) with 120GB internal and 500 GB Western Digital My Book backup drive
2. TiVo Series 3 with 250 GB (yeah yeah not yet upgraded)
3. TiVo Series 2 with 140 GB
4. Homebrew Celeron 4 desktop with 320 GB
5. Wife’s Compaq laptop with 100 GB
6. Sa-weet HP Photosmart all-in-one with no storage (but it’s networked!)
7. Linksys 54G running Tomato (16 MB flasher!!)
8. 2 3Com Audreys (16 MB flash bay-bee!)
9. Old junker laptop with 10 GB
10. Virgin Webplayer Internet appliance with 64 MB disk-on-chip
11. Toshiba Portege booting from a 4 GB CompactFlash disk
12. Homebrew AMD K6 system with 20 GB

So my network has up to 11 devices on it… Interesting!

Now for the rest of the machines:

1. 40 GB iPod
2. Nomad Jukebox with 20 GB
3. Atari MegaSTE with 40 MB
4. Atari 1040STFM with a floppy
5. Atari 800XL with a floppy
6. Oldest junkiest Dell 382SX-20 laptop with 20 MB
7. AT&T PC6300 with 20 MB (my first PC)
8. Broken Mac SE

There’s at least a terabyte and a half right there… Plus my collection of odd hard disks – just today I was marveling at the fact that I have 50 MB, 500 MB, 5 GB, 50 GB, and 500 GB hard disks!

Yeah, we’re nuts.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2007. | These computers are not junk!
This post was categorized as Computer History, Everything, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.