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.

I Promise Not To Quote That Old Annoying Dell PC Slogan

I’ve been buying Dell computers for decades, but not really because I loved them. Sure, my XPS laptop was awesome, but it burned out its motherboard and I never really touched the RMA replacement, having bought a MacBook Pro in the meantime. Enterprise buyers seem to have the same ambivalence about Dell. They buy it, but I’m not sure they really “buy” the company as an IT partner.

I’m sure you’ve heard the same comments as me: “Dell just assembles off-the-shelf components and sells them in volume” or “Dell’s a follower, not an innovator.” There seems to be a great deal of respect for Dell’s ability to produce competitive products and sell them at reasonable cost. Truly, most of their competitors would love to have this kind of reputation. But most of their competitors also have a reputation for partnership, innovation, and solution selling.

Dell Is Making An Effort

It seems clear that Dell would like to change this attitude, and they are investing serious resources to make it happen. While acquisitions like Compellent and Force10 raised eyebrows in storage and networking, it is the activity I see behind the scenes that paints the clearest picture. Dell isn’t just buying into new markets, they’re investing to change the company.

When Dell acquired EqualLogic in 2008, many assumed it was a tactical investment to increase margins over the (resold) EMC storage equipment the company was then pushing. Pundits were similarly dismissive of the acquisition of Perot Systems in 2009, calling it a “me too” effort after HP acquired rival EDS. Regardless of the motivations, however, Dell was becoming more of a serious challenger to HP and IBM every day.

After failing to acquire 3PAR in 2010, then picking up Compllent shortly after, accusations that Dell was “mini me” to HP were rampant. But HP stumbled mightily in 2011, and many in IT quickly lost confidence in that company’s management. All the while, Dell moved forward, increasing in-house IP and expanding enterprise offerings.

What Is The Result?

Today, one sees a very different landscape than just last year. Dell’s acquisitions focused on some of the ripest spots in storage and networking, and no one would disagree that the company has the ability strongly to push these products. Compellent and Force10 went from interesting startups to serious contenders overnight.

Dell really pulled out all the stops to tell us they are "Fluid by Design"

More importantly, Dell has retained much of the innovation these companies offered, from employees to support programs. Last week, I attended the Dell Storage Forum in London, an event initiated by Compellent prior to the acquisition. At the event, I talked to many Dell employees who came to the company through acquisition but had now been given power to challenge the status quo in their respective areas.

If Dell really intended only to push product, why retain marketing personnel? Why invest in the Dell Storage Forum? Why continue Compellent’s beloved Co-Pilot support program?

Then there are the products. Dell leveraged its investment in Ocarina Networks to create a deduplicating backup appliance, the new DR4000. They salvaged file system startup ExaNet and are beginning to bring scale out technology to market. The latest revision of the Compellent software finally brings it to parity in terms of VMware support. And Dell is really working to sell their DX Object Store.

This is the sort of activity one would expect from a contender, not a “box pusher”.

Stephen’s Stance

In the words of Malcolm Reynolds, my days of not taking Dell seriously are certainly coming to a middle. Dell is investing in product IP, innovative marketing and PR events, customer support, and personnel. This does not mean that Dell is instantly a player in the enterprise storage and networking markets, or that all this work will pay off. But I don’t laugh when I hear Dell boast that they intend to be a “top three” enterprise storage company in a few years. It could happen.

Disclaimer: Dell sponsored two Tech Field Day events in 2011, paid me as a speaker at two DX events, and paid for my trip to Dell Storage Forum in London. But no one can buy a post on this site, and I did similar business with IBM, HP, Cisco, and many other companies. This is my opinion.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | Why Should Anyone Take Dell Seriously in Enterprise Storage?
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.

VASA allows a "provider" application to tag vSphere storage with a "capabilities" string

The list of VMware storage integration features in vSphere is growing at a rapid pace. From backup to enterprise array offload, VMware is staking their claim. But information about one new storage feature in vSphere 5 has been scarce: The true nature of the Storage API for Storage Awareness (VASA) is only just beginning to be revealed.

VASA: Born of Necessity

vSphere has some amazing automated storage mobility features. The ease of moving data between LUNs and even arrays with Storage vMotion is a revelation to those of us unlucky enough to have used manual migration methods in the past. And VMware has automated this with the new Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) capability, allowing vSphere to make its own decisions about data placement.

But this kind of dynamic movement can hurt as well as help. What if an administrator moves a VMDK from high-performance to low-performance storage? Server responsiveness would suffer, perhaps even resulting in an application outage. And how could Storage DRS avoid doing the same thing?

VMware realized they needed some mechanism that could “tag” a storage resource with its capabilities. This is the real reason for their creation of Profile-Driven Storage and VASA.

VASA Does One Thing

In vSphere 5, VASA is incredible simple: It is a basic protocol for vSphere to request a “capabilities” string regarding a LUN or NFS share from a “provider”. The content of this response, and indeed the form that this provider will take, is left up to the individual storage vendors.

VASA Providers can take many forms. Dell is reportedly developing a vCenter plugin to report capabilities. EMC and NetApp will use a software application that runs on a virtual or physical server. In all cases, the software uses a proprietary call to the storage array, in effect relaying and translating the VMware request.

The VASA “Capabilities” string is undefined as well. Most vendors use a list of technical attributes as their response string, and each has adopted their own strategy about how to present information:

• Dell’s EqualLogic returns a comma-separated list like “RAID, SSD, REPLICATED”
• NetApp’s provider uses semicolons, as in “Dedupe; Replication”
• HP’s is very detailed, with a schema specifying Drive Type, RAID Type, Provisioning Type, VV Type, and Remotecopy
• EMC appears to have a standardized set of much-shorter tags, like “Performance”, “Multi-Tier”, “Capacity” and such

These are passed through to vCenter, where an administrator can decide how to interpret them.

VASA Today and Tomorrow

In its simplest form, VASA capabilities tags enable both manual and automatic storage placement features to respect tiered storage policies. This is important to maintain proper system performance and availability. In the future, I expect more advanced VASA providers, perhaps even integration of the providers into vCenter plugins. I also look forward to a standard capabilities tagging schema and smarter handling of returned tags. Right now, for example, EMC’s Clariion and Symmetrix lines both tag LUNs as “Performance”, but these are obviously not equivalent.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | What is VMware VASA? Not Much (Yet)
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Features, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Ready For Prime Time?

Now, “ready for prime time” isn’t really a technical term with a defined meaning, and perhaps this is the root of our issue. “Prime time” refers to the weekday night hours that have  traditionally been popular with television viewers and from which network ratings are derived. A program in prime time must have broad appeal and be developed well enough for a good long run if it becomes popular. It doesn’t need to be popular yet, but it must be ready for mass market acceptance.

J Metz goes out of his way to argue that FCoE really is “ready for prime time”, refuting four “statements” attributed to critics (including me). But he appears to be using a different definition of that term, suggesting that Cisco’s product GA is sufficient. This is his opinion, but I don’t share it. I think it takes much more than a few initial products and deployments for any technology to be ready for prime time, especially in storage!

Multi-Hop Standards

My article poses the question, “why use a 10 Gb Ethernet standard that remains in flux when 16 Gb FC is shaping up nicely?” Looking back, I agree that the standards aren’t what’s in flux so much as the interpretation and implementation of them. Although the standards will evolve (and are already evolving), they are fixed and functional today.

The standards for DCB are done, and implementation and interoperability is looking good (with the exception of QCN, which is of questionable value). But multi-hop FCoE needs way more than DCB. FC-BB5 is the real standard for placing Fibre Channel over an Ethernet backbone, and that’s been accepted for a long time. Real scalable FCoE networks will also probably need a datacenter fabric, and Cisco’s TRILL-esque FabricPath technology is closest to some kind of standard for that.

But real, functioning end-to-end multi-hop FCoE networks need more than standards, they need consistent and predictable implementation, and that picture is a lot less clear. For every confident Metz, Miniman, or Onisick there’s a Ferro, Fratto, or Bourke who continue to question the implementation of, and need for, these standards.

Multi-Hop Implementation

I later call Fibre Channel Forwarding and Ethernet fabric technology “decidedly experimental.” Metz counters that Cisco has a functional implementation, and I do not doubt that. But one company’s recent GA status doesn’t make Multi-Hop FCoE “ready for prime time” by my standards. By his own admission, “multihop FCoE for Director-Class systems (the most common for Aggregation and Core deployments) has only been available for two months.”

I trust that Cisco and Metz have a working implementation, but not enough to go out telling enterprise storage administrators to take the plunge on multi-hop FCoE in general or even Cisco’s product in particular. Give it a little more time to mature, and give me a reference customer or two. And it would be nice to have more than one vendor to buy from.

FCoE Interoperability

I also state that Multi-Hop FCoE interoperability “is a serious question” and Metz points out that HP and Cisco have an interoperable solution. But his example is an FEX module for HP blade servers, not an FCoE-capable switch that interacts correctly with Cisco Nexus using standards-based Multi-Hop FCoE technology. It’s not even using FabricPath, let alone TRILL or some other FCoE standard!

This whole interoperability conversation reminds me of the “Fool the Guesser” scene in The Jerk: Your interoperability is right here, between the ashtrays and the thimbles. As long as you want to connect this very specific thing with that very specific thing, ignoring the rest of the world of products, you’re interoperable. And don’t ask for multi-vendor FC forwarding yet.

Metz also makes a non-sequitur suggestion that someone wants the industry to wait for Brocade, but I’ve never said anything of the sort. We don’t need everyone to proceed, but we do need more than one company. Standards only matter if they help us do something productive and positive, and single-vendor standards might as well not exist at all.

The bottom line is that we do not have interoperability of FCoE switches today, and we won’t have it for a long, long time. This is not Cisco’s fault, since they’re closest to standards-compliant, but it’s the truth. Eventually someone (Juniper? HP? Brocade? Dell?) will come out with a standards-compliant FCF/TRILL FCoE switch and they will issue a joint press release with Cisco and the industry will rejoice. But most customers probably won’t mix switch vendors anyway…

FCoE Adoption

This big V8 is a "mild hybrid", delivering all of the "warm fuzzies" of alternative fuels without changing the world...

Metz’ final point is to refute something I’ve often said: That “no one” is using FCoE today. Truly, I say this more for laughs and to provoke thoughtful questions than as a statement of fact. I know that lots of customers are using edge-only FCoE in critical production environments with Cisco UCS today. In fact, I consider edge-only FCoE to be a sound practice and do recommend it to buyers of high-end enterprise IT gear.

But edge-only FCoE adoption is a double-edged sword (if you pardon the pun) for proponents of convergence. It benefits customers with simplified client connectivity, delivering much of the benefit of convergence in an easy-to-adopt package. And it gets the protocol out there in production, offering a path to an Ethernet-based SAN future. But it might just short-circuit the value proposition for full end-to-end FCoE, blunting its impact and slowing the urgency for exactly the kind of customers who might adopt FCF switches.

Metz and I have often talked about real customer adoption, and he assures me that there are customers of “Full Monty FCoE” out there, but they’re not talking yet. After all, it’s only been available for two months.

Stephen’s Stance

I leave it to the reader (and the buyer) to decide if FCoE is ready for prime time.

• First, they have to define FCoE: Does edge-only count?
• Then they have to decide if they have a use case that some flavor of FCoE fits.
• Then there’s the real question of risk: Are you ready to take the plunge?

I know that a number of FCoE-related standards are settled, and I know that there are products in the market and even some limited multi-vendor compatibility. I even accept that some customers are deploying real “Full Monty FCoE” in production. But I just can’t recommend that technology yet: It’s not prudent, widespread, and low-risk, so I say it’s not ready for prime time.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Multi-Hop FCoE Is Not Ready For Prime Time (Yet)
This post was categorized as Computer History, Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

whith·er – Adverb/ˈ(h)wiT͟Hər/
1. To what place or state: “whither are we bound?”.

VMworld always generates buzz, but news of a major push to change the basic access method for enterprise storage took many by surprise. Extending the work already done with VAAI and VASA, this new development takes VMware storage integration to a whole new level. But the one element of announcement caused alarm for many: VMware’s admission that they would be working with just five major enterprise storage companies to develop this technology. Missing along with the many exciting storage startups is Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), undoubtedly a major player in the industry.

HDS and VMware: Expertise and Partnership

Where is HDS in VMware's roadmap?

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) is perhaps not as well-known as storage giants EMC and NetApp and server leviathans, IBM, HP, and Dell. But HDS is a major player in the industry with a long history of innovation and expertise in storage and server virtualization.

HDS has lately driven innovation in virtualization of block storage (the VSP), object storage (HCP), midrange performance (AMS), and recently announced they would acquire enterprise NAS contender, BlueArc. Although not quite market leaders, HDS has a huge base of enterprise storage customers and a broad product line from midrange to massive scale.

HDS was right there with EMC and NetApp at VMware’s original announcement of VAAI, even as the mainstream products from IBM and HP lagged months behind. And HDS’ Chief Scientist, Clais Mikkelsen, assured me at their “Geek Day” earlier this year that his company was deeply involved in developing the VAAI specification with VMware. Indeed, VAAI was a major theme of the presentations back in March, with Virtualization Product Manager Michael Heffernan dazzling us with his knowledge of the subject.

You might also like reading Concerning HDS and VMware VAAI Storage Array Support in Plain English

Wherefore Art Thou, HDS?

Now that all that has been said, consider how startling VMware’s omission of HDS was when outlining “VAAI 3.” This is a huge snub for such a major player in the industry with deep expertise and a long history of partnership with VMware. Contrast this to IBM and HP, who were notably absent in many earlier discussions of VAAI, and are still working to bring VAAI to all their platforms. Only HP’s LeftHand and (ironically) Hitachi-sourced XP/P9000 arrays included VAAI plugins from the start. HP’s 3PAR had VAAI too, but HP didn’t have that yet.

Many will likely blame EMC, claiming their influence on VMware (a child company) pushed HDS aside. This same line of reasoning was suggested regarding IBM and HP when VAAI version 1 appeared. But IBM and HP (not to mention NetApp and EMC’s new rival Dell) are at the table this time around, and EMC seems far more concerned by competition from them (not to mention new startups!)

So Where is HDS?

Let me get this straight: WMware is NOT working with HDS on next-gen VAAI storage?

Perhaps this is all some sort of gigantic mistake. Maybe the VMware presenter simply failed to include HDS in his list. Or maybe HDS didn’t choose to get involved this time around, though I can’t fathom why. I put the question to HDS on Twitter over the weekend and hope to hear some sort of answer, though I fear that a convincing response might not come.

The HDS response was unsurprisingly nonspecific (and surprisingly "teen txt-spk")

The only response I got from HDS was a tweet from Claus Mikkelsen stating that HDS and VMware “work all levels to deliver solutions” and that there was “more 2 come.”

What does this mean? I can think of a few possibilities:

1. HDS is way beyond every other storage company, and the “VAAI Cabal” are themselves the odd ones out, trying to keep up with HDS’ “L33T” tech and VMware influence
2. HDS was indeed omitted from the list and possibly the “cabal” and are busy working in the background to make sure they’re included in the future

Personally, the second possibility seems much more plausible.

Update: Some responses to this post:

• Exclusion or Not? (Scott Lowe of EMC)
• VAAI Posturing (Chris Evans)

Stephen’s Stance

If VMware aims to transform storage presentation, and is working with major storage vendors to make it happen, HDS ought to be part of it. Their history, technology, and market position earn them a spot in the “VAAI Cabal” and their omission was a bombshell to industry-watchers like me.

Then there is the other question: What about the startups? Innovation in enterprise storage is often driven by new companies, and VMware would be better served by working with the likes of Tintri, Nutanix, and Fusion-io than the same old major players. But this, as they say, is a topic for a different day.

Disclaimer: I’ve never done business with HDS, but they did fly me to the UK for their 2011 “Geek Day” along with a number of other independent bloggers. I have attended similar events sponsored by HP, IBM, and EMC. VMware, EMC, Dell, HP, and NetApp have sponsored Tech Field Day, and I am currently writing for an online community supported by IBM.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Alas, VMware, Whither HDS?
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.

Is this a secret spying tool for the Chinese military?

There have been a few press reports recently suggesting that one newcomer on the enterprise storage scene, Huawei Symantec, is more than meets the eye. According to a Washington Times story, a sale of the company’s storage products to a supercomputing lab was blocked after allegations that the Chinese government or military would use the platform as a Trojan horse for spying. Normally I wouldn’t comment on political matters on this blog, but I happen to know a thing or two about Huawei Symantec, and I hate to see jingoistic nonsense interfere with the progress of technology.

The Allegation

You should probably read my earlier write-up, Huawei Symantec Enters The United States Storage and Security Market

I’ve covered Huawei Symantec before, but let’s get a little housekeeping done right at the start: A 51/49 joint venture between Chinese telecom giant Huawei and American storage and security software leader, Symantec, Huawei Symantec is actually an independent company with its own leadership and software/hardware engineering teams. The company entered the United States market in 2010 with a line of storage and security devices and has steadily expanded, bringing in new products from their international portfolio. Despite the implications of their famous parentage, most of Huawei Symantec’s products are engineered in-house and apparently little use Huawei or Symantec components.

In an August 16 article, Eli Lake of the Washington Times reports that four Republican senators and a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence raised concerns about the purchase of Huawei Symantec storage systems by the National Center for Computational Engineering at the University of Tennessee. In an August 9 letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and others, the lawmakers refer to “Huawei’s close ties to the [Chinese] government and its military and intelligence sectors, its history of alleged corrupt practices and infringement on intellectual property rights, and concerns it may act as an agent for a foreign government…”

The suggestion is that Huawei Symantec will somehow use these storage arrays to pass information on sensitive scientific and engineering tests to the Chinese government or military. But no specific evidence is cited apart from the allegations of connections between parent-company Huawei, the government of China, and very real concerns over corruption and a disregard for intellectual property in China as a whole.

In short, these allegations have nothing to do with Huawei Symantec specifically and everything to do with American fears over competition and unfair business practices. It is telling that the four senators involved in these allegations (Kyl, DeMint, Coburn, and Inhofe) are among the five most conservative members of that body.

All This Happened Before

Allegations that foreign companies are spying in America for their respective governments are nothing new. Similar suggestions remain widespread concerning Israeli companies in the security and telecom fields: Check Point is continually disparaged as an avenue for Israeli spying, even though I can find no concrete evidence of this. And Huawei itself was blocked from selling telecom equipment to Sprint based on similar allegations from Senator Kyl. Both of these companies were founded by ex-members of their national military, giving a bit of heft to the accusations.

Could Huawei Symantec leverage their storage systems to spy on American labs? Absolutely! But there is no evidence that they are doing this, only allegations based on generalizations about the Chinese people and their business practices. And most reporters (and indeed the Senators themselves) failed to notice that Huawei Symantec is not Huawei itself! This is a separate company yet it is being criticized for hazy allegations about its parent.

Then there is the technical challenge of actually leveraging an enterprise storage array for spying. Although movie spies often grab a hard disk on their way out of the building, it’s actually very difficult to sift through petabytes of data stored across multiple devices. Huawei Symantec would have to include computational power and intelligence in the array controller to analyze data locally before sending it out through some kind of hidden encrypted WAN link. Disguising that link means controlling security and network infrastructure as well, and they would need to keep throughput at a reasonable level so no one would notice the data transfer. In short, it would be very difficult technically for the Chinese military to use a storage array for spying even if this was their plan.

One must also consider the efficacy of spying through IT devices. Since these are purchased by each organization separately, a “spy vendor” we have a great deal of difficulty targeting sensitive environments and ensuring access to sensitive data. Huawei Symantec could try to target government labs, but there’s no telling whether they would actually succeed in the open market. It would be much more effective if a spy agency simply embedded spy technology in a wider range of products from less recognizable names.

HP, for example, sells a range of high-end network switches developed in cooperation with Huawei itself. Wouldn’t these switches be easier to leverage then a few storage arrays in Tennessee? But then reactionary senators with no concept of the business of IT would never recognize these efforts. Apparently, they need a big colorful Chinese name in order to get up in arms.

Stephen’s Stance

Huawei Symantec is being unfairly targeted based on its parentage, its name, and its national origin. There is absolutely no evidence presented, only vague suggestions and generalizations about China, and their accusers are a handful of ultraconservative congressmen. There is no reason to put any faith whatsoever in these allegations. To those concerned about these companies, I say this: Give me evidence or keep your anti-China feelings to yourself.

Disclaimers: I’ve never done business with Huawei Symantec or Huawei itself, though I have been briefed by them repeatedly. I work closely with Symantec Corporation on Tech Field Day and other projects, but they do not pay me a retainer and were not involved with this article.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Is Huawei Symantec Spying For the Chinese?
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

HP's new 564XL cartridge isn't so "XL" as before - it's got 1/3 less ink!

If there is any area of the electronics market more prone to shenanigans than mobile phones it is the fabulous world of printers. Although not exactly a “razors and blades” market, the world of printers is all about maximizing profits on the purchase of supplies, especially ink cartridges. Although HP’s games with expiring inks (and whole printers) last year gave me pause, I decided to buy another HP printer. Now I’m not sure I made the right move.

The Ink Racket

HP’s printer ink business is one of their most profitable, and ink is real “black gold”, far more expensive than blood, oil, or penicillin. And printers are constantly asking for replacement ink cartridges, even when a substantial amount remains inside!

My new HP PhotoSmart C410a came “starter” ink cartridges, and these didn’t last long. I decided to buy a full set of replacement inks at the same time, including an “XL” black cartridge. This is the printer racket: Keep the customer coming back for ink!

Annoyingly, like every printer I’ve owned, the new PhotoSmart stops printing when the ink is low and asks you to replace the cartridge. But there is still some ink left, as you can plainly demonstrate by overriding the warning by pressing “ok”. In my cast, my printer is still going a week after asking for new black ink!

Many techies realize this and won’t replace the ink immediately. But casual computer users would run out and buy a new cartridge and replace it right away. So HP sells more ink than gets used – I bet they love that!

XL Means What Exactly?

I was interested to see that the new PhotoSmart printer used HP’s “564″ inks, which include a line of “XL” cartridges with extra capacity. I did the math and found that, assuming HP’s yield numbers were trustworthy, the XL was indeed slightly cheaper per page than the regular 564, though this didn’t hold up after taking into account the “Staples Rewards” $2 per cartridge recycling rebate.

Fast forward to this week. I went to buy a replacement black cartridge, since the printer was asking for more, and grabbed the 564XL black pack off the shelf. I immediately noticed a major price reduction – the price was $22.99 rather than the $34.99 I paid previously. Could HP have actually reduced the cost of ink?

Read the fine print: "Smaller size cartridge, lower ink volume"

No way! It turns out that this new 564XL pack (part number CN684WN) has “lower ink volume” than the old 564XL pack (part number CB321WN)! The old cartridge was good for “800 pages”, but the new one will only do “550 pages”, according to HP. That’s a nice way of saying “no longer all that XL after all!”

Bait and Switch?

There is a lot of anger online over this, with many Amazon customers reporting they ordered a CB321WN and got a CN684WN. I feel for those folks – that’s definitely “bait and switch”, and should draw an investigation from Amazon.

Were it not for two facts, I’d be all up in arms over this:

1. I noticed the difference in the store before buying anything. The low price seemed too good to be true, so I inspected the packaging and saw HP’s truthful statement, “new lower price, smaller size” emblazoned in red. And I noticed that it said “up to 2x more pages” rather than the “3x” the old package claimed.
2. I did the math and the new 564XL is actually a better deal than the old one! In fact, the old black 564XL was actually more expensive per page after the Staples rebate than the regular 564! But the new one is cheaper than both in all cases.

Stephen’s Stance

Although HP reduced the size of their “XL” ink cartridge without telling anyone, it really is a better deal for the consumer. They’re upfront about the change, too, though I wish they had used a different part number. Rather than redefining “XL”, HP should have called the new size “564L” or used some other name.

But HP and Amazon simply must do something about the sales there. It’s unconscionable for customers to order one part number and receive a different, smaller product. Even though these are sold through a third-party, Amazon is the merchant of record and it they have the power to fix this situation!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | When Does XL No Longer Mean “Extra Large”? HP’s Printer Inks, Of Course!
This post was categorized as Apple, Deals, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

These look to be Teradata Extreme Data Appliance racks

1. In the first photo, we have rows of swoopy racks – at least 30 are pictured. These appear to be Teradata Extreme Data Appliance racks. The gray color and funky doors give them away.


This photo features rack servers and NetApp storage

2. The second photo includes a 1U rack server with six 2.5″ drives featuring “HP purple” drive eject buttons. There are over 100 in this photo, receding to infinity. Looks like HP ProLiant DL360 G7 servers to me.
3. We also have a 2U rack server with 16 2.5″ drive bays. I count over 20 of these. They don’t quite look like HP to me, but could be high-density HP DL380 G7 servers.
4. What looks like a NetApp FAS6200 to me is at the lower right. It looks to be 6U high, compared to the shelves.
5. We also have a number of disk shelves for the NetApp. I’m guessing NetApp DS2246 shelves.


This still from Apple's official video shows more NetApp storage and HP servers

6. In this third shot, we see more HP 1U servers, possibly ProLiant DL360 G7′s as noted above.
7. We have another NetApp filer “head” similar to the one in the second shot.
8. Some sort of 6U beige rackmount device is found in the bottom of two racks
9. We have many more NetApp disk shelves or 1U servers above

Note that these racks contain many 1U Chatsworth “HotLok” filler panels. They’re not very efficiently racked, but perhaps this was due to flexibility or power requirements…

Stephen’s Stance

Whatever Apple bought for this datacenter, they bought a lot of it. Just the hint that they purchased Isilon bumped parent company EMC’s stock a few months back. I imagine Teradata and NetApp might see similar bumps from these images!

It’s also interesting to speculate on the political implications of Apple’s datacenter buys. Would they still buy HP equipment, now that Palm and WebOS are re-emerging as iOS-killer contenders? Would Jobs’ friendship with Larry Ellison indicate a proclivity to buy Oracle or Pillar Data? Maybe the Apple/Cisco Détente would suggest UCS or even EMC? And what about that rumored Isilon buy. Was that displaced by Teradata and NetApp?

Images from MacRumors.com

Note: This has been one of my most-popular posts, and has been referenced a lot by major news organizations. Here’s a list of those who linked and mentioned me. Thanks!

• The web’s watchful eye fixes on Apple’s cloud gear
• Steve Jobs Provides A Look Inside the iDataCenter
• WWDC: Has Apple turned to Oracle for iCloud?
• What Kind Of Gear Is Apple Using In Its Huge New Data Center? (AAPL)
• How Green Is Apple’s iCloud?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | What Datacenter Equipment Is Apple Using?
This post was categorized as Apple, Enterprise storage, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

SME storage arrays like the AberSAN Z-Series pack solid enterprise-class features

It’s never been a better time to be in the market for enterprise storage products, with many excellent options available at affordable prices. But the market can be confusing for the uninitiated, with a variety of network options and capabilities. Even those of us “in the know” about enterprise storage are sometimes surprised by the offerings and companies in this space! So when Jerome Wendt from DCIG approached me to collect data for a market overview and buyer’s guide, I was excited. It was my big chance to really get to know these products!

Dividing the Storage Market

An enterprise storage array is a strategic investment, with prices often reaching into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. But there are smaller arrays as well, and these aren’t just stripped-down cheapies: Midrange storage arrays are emerging as serious challengers for the high-end enterprise arrays, and even the small array segment is improving. Long the home of simple RAID systems, small enterprise storage arrays are now full-featured systems with advanced integration and features.

This is the segment of the storage market I was eager to take a look at: The small-enterprise arrays, ranging in price from $5,000 to $30,000 and capacity from a few terabytes to over one hundred (with expansion shelves). To keep it sensible, I eliminated systems with less than 8 hard disk drives (since they really couldn’t deliver the IOPS needed for a production application) and those that can’t be shared using storage networking protocols like iSCSI, Fibre Channel, or NAS. This left a great cross-section, including small systems from big players like EMC, NetApp, Dell, and HP as well as smaller companies like Drobo, Aberdeen, StoneFly, and Promise.

Little Systems With Big Capabilities

Gathering data for this buyer’s guide entailed creating a master list of all the features any of the systems might have and then filling in the blanks with vendor input and public information. Although I felt that my list of questions was comprehensive, I was amazed to find that the available systems exceeded even my expectations. For example, I was surprised to see 10 GbE support in more than 1/3 of the arrays I looked at, yet only 1/4 of them included NAS protocols. Amazingly, every NAS system also supported iSCSI, meaning unified storage dominates the SME array market!

DCIG likes to rank the systems listed in their buyer’s guides, so it was left to me to come up with weights and scores. I decided to score each feature on a 1 to 5 scale based on my own expectations: A feature I was surprised by (more than 4 GB of cache, for example) got a 5 while one that was conspicuously absent (scalability beyond internal drives) got a 1. An average system would get all 3′s, but there really were no average systems!

I then weighted the features based on how relevant they are to small enterprise IT. Features like scalability (drives), data protection (RAID 6), and reliability (redundant power supplies and dual controllers) received more weight than less-critical things like ROHS compliance and even multi-pathing.

After all this work, we boiled down the scores to categories (controller, capacity, support, etc) and finally a single overall score. I was surprised at the results, really. I hadn’t spent much time with Aberdeen or StoneFly prior to this experience, but came away impressed by their products. The strong showing of EMC’s new VNXe and NetApp’s FAS2020 was as I had expected, but the D-Link DSN-5110, Dell’s PowerVault MD3200i, HP’s P2000, and the Promise and Winchester arrays caught me off-guard. These really-capable systems at low prices and should be on buyers’ short-lists!

Stephen’s Stance

I tried to put myself in the place of the buyer evaluating these systems, but of course every buyer will have his own priorities. Perhaps in the future we will make the raw data available so they can make their own ranking and determine which array works best for them. I will work with DCIG to make this happen, since the feature-focused rankings used this time aren’t right for everyone.

I have been working on this guide for almost a year now, and think the finished product really shines. I hope it will help buyers come up with a list of products to consider, and also that it helps the smaller vendors get some attention in this crowded space. Due to their strong showing, Aberdeen has licensed the guide and made it available for free (after registration) on their web site.

Download the guide and see for yourself!

Note that Aberdeen did not “sponsor” the creation of the guide: DCIG paid Foskett Services to create it with no sponsor in mind, I alone gathered the data, and our ranking and editing was finished before Aberdeen or any other vendor got involved financially. No one was more surprised than me by the strong showing of their AberSAN storage system, though the fact that it features Nexenta’s excellent software piqued my interest. Some have criticized DCIG’s guides and methodology in the past, but I personally stand behind this effort. I will happily answer any questions – just leave a comment here!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Which Small Enterprise Storage Arrays Are Worth Considering?
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

• My writing:
  • How Will Thunderbolt Affect Enterprise Storage?
  • Introducing Storage for Virtual Environments (From My Seminar)
• Other great stuff:
  • 1394, DMA, and BitLocker
  • Open-FCoE: Will Software Initiators Win Again?
  • NetApp’s Purchase of Engenio
  • VMware View Client for iPad Released
  • VMware’s Consolidated Backup (VCB) & User Requirements
  • The Ultimate In-N-Out Secret Menu (and Super Secret Menu!) Survival Guide
  • Why I Am Dropping Android Phones And Moving To iPhone
  • HP Networking – Part 2(More vision…)
  • Content-Type: joke; genre=bar/packet
  • Gestalt IT Tech Field Day – The First Ever Wireless #TechFieldDay
  • Site Survey Rigs

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© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, March 11, 2011
This post was categorized as Everything. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.