I'll be presenting at two private events and one public webinar this week!

I’ve been quite busy lately recording webinars, writing articles, and setting up speaking events. This week, I’m in Boston and New York for private speaking engagements. I’ll also be recording a webinar with an exciting new storage/virtualization company, Nutanix, and I urge you to tune in to that one!

Nutanix is Truly Innovative

Watch Nutanix present at Tech Field Day 8

It’s rare to come across a truly innovative idea in enterprise IT, but that’s exactly what Nutanix is. They’ve taken the scale-out Google Filesystem and ran with it, applying it to the core issues of sever and desktop virtualization.

My webinar with Nutanix is little bit different from the typical “give them an excuse to go through their slide deck” event. We’ve organized it as a discussion between me, Tiffany To of Nutanix, and a customer of the company. Tiffany will have a set of slides as backup, but we won’t walk through them one by one.

I’m glad to be able to shake things up a little bit, since the old webinar formula is getting pretty stale. We were able to do this thanks to the third party involved in this production: Truth in IT. They have put together an excellent webinar platform and are eager to try new ideas.

If you would like to view the recording, it is now available. You can register to view this webinar at the TruthinIT website.

Speaking Engagements in the Northeast

I’m also speaking on a couple of interesting topics this week. Today, I’m giving an overview of enterprise storage industry trends to an investment banking firm. I often get this sort of request, and am happy to develop a customized presentation. In this case, the event was initiated by an attendee at my Storage for Virtual Environments seminar.

On Thursday, I’ll be speaking at a private event in New York City sponsored by Dell and Symantec. This time, the topic is the divergent paths of performance and capacity in enterprise storage. This is another topic I’ve spoken and written about in the past, but developed some new content just for this CIO audience. I will probably be delivering similar evening speeches and events next year.

Sadly, my Storage for Virtual Environments seminar in San Diego next week has just been canceled by the organizer. I was really looking forward to this, my final seminar of the year. But I’ll be in San Diego regardless, and look forward to meeting up with some of my friends who are planning to attend. If you are around next week, drop me a line.

Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance

I’ve also recorded a webinar with Oracle last week. We talk about my favorite Oracle product: The Sun ZFS Storage Appliance. This hasn’t been posted yet, but I’ll link to it here when it appears!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Two Online Events You Should Attend (And Two More That You Can’t)
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.

Hard disk drive makers are adding flash storage to their conventional spinning-platter drives to improve performance and are targeting the performance PC market. Wait a second, haven’t we seen this before? As Rocky eventually said to Bullwinkle, “but that trick never works!”

Flash as a Cache

Using flash memory as a disk cache is a pretty good idea. Flash has awesome random read performance and fairly good write speed (compared to a hard disk drive, at least). That’s why more and more enterprise storage vendors are adding flash as a disk cache, not just a plain tier of storage.

EMC is the latest to make the move, announcing “FAST Cache” for their midrange Clariion and Celerra enterprise storage systems last week. They join NetApp, Sun, and others already offering similar capability. Fusion-IO has been the champion PCIe flash provider, but STEC is expected to join them soon.

See my post, Is Flash A Disk Or A Cache?

Flash-as-a-cache hasn’t been as easy to roll out as flash-as-a-disk, but it promises to be more effective. An array that completely integrates flash can take advantage of its positives (fast random read, fast-ish write, low power) without stumbling over its shortcomings (big write blocks, shorter lifespan).

Flash in a Disk

Although EMC is doing the right thing by adding FAST Cache, their implementation uses disk drive form factor flash rather than the PCI cards selected by others. It may prove more-difficult to optimize the system for the characteristics of flash when one is writing through a conventional disk drive interface like Fibre Channel or SAS. Would-be flash-and-platter drives face the same issue: How do you use flash effectively when it’s abstracted from the server and presented as a conventional disk?

The hybrid hard disk drive (H-HDD) method, rolled out back in 2007, added ATA commands allowing a compatible operating system to specify whether data sent to a hybrid drive should be written to flash or disk. These products were paired with Windows Vista’s ReadyBoost and SuperFetch to produce performance gains that never materialized in practice. The so-called “ReadyDrive” has become a footnote in history, along with Intel’s “Robeson” effort to add a flash cache to the motherboard.

It is unclear what the new generation of hybrid hard drives allegedly on the drawing boards at Toshiba and Seagate would look like. It is unlikely that they would use the H-HDD interface, but they will likely be aimed at the same performance laptop and desktop market. Servers have continued migrating towards advanced enterprise storage systems that pack their own cache, reducing the impact of bare hybrid drives.

Ingredients for Success

Rather than repeat the mistakes of the past, these companies could integrate real smarts into the disk controller, allowing it to autonomously move data to the flash cache to improve everyday performance without any special operating system support. This “tiered storage in a can” approach might deliver the goods that old-fashioned H-HDDs never could.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Hybrid SSD/Hard Disk Drives: This Time For Sure!
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

It’s that time again, when everyone who thinks they’re a pundit (that would be everyone with a blog or Twitter account) has to make predictions for the coming year. But predictions are perilous: Get it right and you look like a mere trend-watcher; get it wrong and you look like a fool. It’s such a hassle! So I’m doing something different this year: I’m going to make predictions for 2009 now that it’s over, and reflect on just how smart I am (not) to have made them. Or something.

What I Would Have Gotten Right

I definitely could have predicted a lot of what happened in 2009. I mean, these were slam dunks!

1. Twitter rocks the world – I wasn’t early to Twitter, but I spent the early part of 2009 evangelizing its benefits to companies and co-workers alike. Considering how common Twitter is today, it’s hard to believe how roundly criticized and misunderstood it was this time last year. Yet here we are, on the verge of 2010, and Twitter has seeped onto our business cards, presentation templates, and web sites. I might not have predicted how stable (!) Twitter got by the end of the year, though.
2. Apple’s Macs and iPhones rule – I switched to the iPhone and the Mac in 2007 and 2008, respectively, but it looks like I wasn’t much of an iconoclast after all: By November, half of the Tech Field Day delegates were using MacBooks, and the Windows and Blackberry holdouts have started vocally defending their operating system choice. Pretty much like Mac folks used to do way back in 2008.
3. The recession is a serious pain – Companies put the brakes on spending and hiring, many even shifting both into reverse in 2009. This came as no surprise to humans capable of thought. The impact on enterprise IT companies was similarly predictable: Although most were able to survive, the impact of 2009 will continue to be felt for years. I might have predicted it would be worse, though I’m glad to say I would have been wrong.
4. EMC, NetApp, HDS, HP, and IBM continue to quibble – Surprise: Big company bloggers spend way too much time criticizing the products and actions of each other and way to little time talking about the true value of their own products.

Non-IT slam-dunk predictions: Obama was reviled by the right; the war in Afghanistan continues; people do stupid stuff in the name of reality shows.

What I Probably Could Have Predicted

Although some details would likely have been missed, I think I would have seen these coming.

1. Cloud compute and storage hits the enterprise – I was a believer in the cloud this time last year, and I bet my future on it by taking a position at enterprise cloud storage provider, Nirvanix, in March. I would have predicted that enterprise buyers would be putting serious thought to buying cloud products, but the scope has surprised me. We’re talking enough petabytes that the non-cloud players felt compelled to strike back with the private cloud pitch. Awesome!
2. Sun and Data Domain were acquired – My money would have been on Dell, IBM, or HP as buyers for this pair, but EMC wouldn’t have been outside my guesses. Still, Oracle buying Sun and vocally committing to keep it going, SPARC and all, would never have come to mind. But I wouldn’t have guessed against it either, so I’ll give myself a point here!
3. Cisco and EMC buddy up – I’ve long thought an outright merger of these two was in the cards, but even the recession couldn’t make the financials work. A partnership would have been on the list, and Acadia came as no surprise to anyone.
4. Cloud outages and data loss – I definitely could have predicted that high-profile cloud services would fall over throughout the year, and that some would lose data. Not all are enterprise-grade, after all. But the outages at Google, Rackspace, and Amazon, and Microsoft’s Danger data loss, surprised me. Don’t those guys have their acts together?
5. IT conferences falter – I spoke at Interop in 2009, but it lacked the 20,000-strong crowd it once had. Storage Decisions and Storage Networking World managed to fill their halls, but the old-school IT conference has lost its luster. Although VMworld remains strong, attendance was definitely off.
6. FCoE and SSD are still starting – I’ve been lukewarm on Fibre Channel over Ethernet and Solid State Drives, but I’m a bit surprised that storage vendors didn’t push them harder in 2009. I might have guessed there would have been more customer uptake to match the buzz.
7. SMB storage is hot – There’s a hole in the storage market between $1,000 and $20,000, and companies like Drobo and Iomega are rushing in to fill it. Now that ESX has solid iSCSI support, I expect a world of innovation here. (Oops, that sounds kind of like a 2010 prediction!)

Also in the predictable category: Goldman Sachs and Bank of America thrived while others fell; Ford is the strongest of the remaining US automakers; Boeing finally got the 787 off the ground.

What I Never Would Have Guessed

I’m not perfect, even in retrospect. Some of the Tech news from 2009 was just completely off the wall.

1. Microsoft Bing: This time for sure! – Seriously, Microsoft should stick to in-house thinking instead of trying to copy its rivals. Yet somehow, miraculously, Bing appeared and did not suck. In fact, I’m hearing regular (non-techie) folks around town talking about using the search engine. I’ve even used it! Could they actually have a winner?
2. Windows 7 rocks – Really? Seriously? Could Microsoft have come up with a solid replacement for Windows XP?
3. Ship it! – It’s not even 2010, and enterprise storage buyers can go out and purchase NetApp’s OnTap 8, EMC’s FAST, EMC Atmos Compute, and unicorn tears. Well, maybe not unicorn tears.
4. Still no GDrive – Seemingly every company has a cloud storage platform, from Amazon to Rackspace, Nirvanix to EMC, so why not Google? Could GDrive join Duke Nukem Forever as the most famous vaporware of the decade?
5. The executive shuffle – Dave Donatelli was supposed to lead EMC, not HP. Alan Atkinson was supposed to launch another startup, not take over Xiotech. At least NetApp was gentle.
6. Mac OS X (still) lacks iSCSI and ZFS – Come on, Cupertino, what’s wrong with you guys? I’ve been hyping ZFS for years, and iSCSI is commonplace. Yet Snow Leopard is stingy with both. Makes me want to hiss like one of those blue folks in Avatar.
7. Gestalt IT is a success – On a personal note, Gestalt IT didn’t even exist this time last year, and now we have a successful IT infrastructure blog and social media event. Amazing!

Other total shockers: Everyone loves Michael Jackson again; digital Beatles tunes are available everywhere but iTunes; Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize arrives 10 years early.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | My 2009 IT Industry Predictions
This post was categorized as Apple, Computer History, Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

EMC is Mercedes-Benz

It’s big. It’s expensive. It’s powerful. Lots of folks say it’s the best, but some think the emperor isn’t wearing a stitch of clothing. Either way, you know you want one. But what’s up with all the weird models and brands? Even the low-end models cost twice as much as their competitors, and it’s awfully hard to justify the price when there are so many competitors running around… Some thought the purchase of a low-end, mass-market company** would drag the brand down, but it led to weird synergies that we’re just starting to see, let alone figure out.

HDS is Toyota/Lexus

The top models are pricy, but not as bad as the big guy. The low-end ones are killer, but not the super value they once were. They’re efficient, powerful, and luxurious, offering everything you might want and lots that no one else has. But they just don’t have the same cachet. No matter how great it is or how much it cost, everyone has a sneaking suspicion that you cheaped-out or just picked up the first thing you took for a test drive.

IBM is General Motors

They once ruled the whole market and were the standard of the world. They invented or popularized pretty much everything in the industry, had massive market share, and commanded huge margins. After some stumbles, they’re back with solid offerings and a touch of real innovation. But folks just don’t seem to give them any credit anymore. Even though they still sell like crazy, the glamour is gone. Now it’s time for rebuilding, and no one can tell what will happen: Will they rule again or fail completely?

HP is Ford

That other company thinks they invented everything, but insiders know that this one actually did. Sure they don’t rule the market right now, but they’ve been there a few times before. Some of their best technology is borrowed from acquisitions, but who’s to say that’s bad? Put it all together and you have a real force in the market, one that’s rapidly gaining while everyone else isn’t looking.

Sun is Chrysler

No one has fanboys like these guys. Sure they never really ruled the world, but they brought out wave after wave of killer products for decades. Everyone counted them out, but they always came back with something interesting. Then the realities of the business world hit. Will they have yet another act or is this really the end?**

Dell is Hyundai

They have a wide range of offerings, ranging from good economical models to near luxury, but people often overlook or ignore them. Maybe that’s because so much of their business is done with the kind of folks who just aren’t fanatical about this stuff, or maybe it’s because they weren’t even in this market until (relatively) recently. But watch out: Their new stuff is on the rise, and they might put forth a real challenge to the market leaders soon!

NetApp is Honda

They’re not as cheap as they used to be, but they’ve shown that you can do a lot without over-extending yourself. They steadfastly refuse to match what everyone else is doing, sticking to what they know best and adding enhancements until it becomes real competition, even for the biggest guys. In fact, if you asked them privately, everyone else would point to this little company as their biggest threat!

3PAR is BMW

Ask anyone who owns one and they’ll wax poetic about how great it is. Sure it’s expensive, but it’s just as good as the market leaders, if not better! But they’re still a little company trying to make the most of just a few core components. Everyone is amazed they’ve remained independent this long, and analysts keep predicting they’ll sell out very soon!

BlueArc is Jaguar

They’ve only got a few models and they offer killer performance at a premium price. A certain kind of customer would never buy anything else, but the rest of the world just scratches their heads and wonders who’s going to buy them and when.

Compellent is Mazda

They did some strange things way back when but the model has proved itself. They may not be right for everyone, but they’re perfect for a certain price point. Even though their market share is small, they continue to get an inordinate amount of press due to innovative features and high performance. But can this little player survive alone?

Pillar is Tesla

Awesome! That’s all anyone seems to say, since they’re doing crazy innovative things. But it’s awfully hard to find anyone who owns one, and folks seem to pay more attention to the investors than the product.

Xiotech is Nissan

Even folks who own them aren’t generally all that excited, but everyone tells you they’re solid and affordable. But they’re working on some things that are totally off the wall and might have a second wind yet!

Nexsan is Kia

They’re cheap and solid and just keep raking in the dough. But the press and analysts always ignore them…

NEC is Mitsubishi

Did you forget they made this stuff? Seriously, they’re selling well and some folks just love them. Really! You should take a look! Hey, wait, where are you going?

Texas Memory Systems is Lotus

You’re more likely to encounter them working with another vendor, but they offer totally killer performance if you’ve got the money. But how long can a tiny niche vendor like this last?

Violin is Spyker

Who? Ask the man who owns one…

* This is all in fun – let’s not get our panties in a bunch!

**Yes, we’re ignoring obvious mismatches in ownership

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | If Storage Vendors Were Automakers…
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.

Enterprise IT

• Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle Your Reliance On Backup Tapes – What’s wrong with backup tapes? They’re inaccessible, making them unsuitable for most applications. My latest post for my Enterprise Storage Strategies blog.
• Is Licensing Turning vSphere Into Vista? – A group post for Gestalt IT suggesting that VMware’s tiered licensing strategy for the vSphere 4 family might cause anguish for customers
• Infosmack Episode 2 – EMC, David Donatelli and Non-Compete Agreements – I joined the StorageMonkeys Infosmack podcast to discuss EMC, Dave Donatelli, and con-compete agreements with Greg Knieriemen, Marc Farley of 3Par and StorageRap, and Tony Asaro of the INI Group
• IT utilities, the biggest game in town – Chris Mellor of The Register suggests that the biggest IT vendors are positioning to lock up the IT market.
• The Non-Compete Clause Debate….. - Steve Duplessie muses on the pros and cons of non-compete agreements and what they mean for the IT industry
• Who’s the pot & who’s the kettle? - W. Curtis Preston reacts to the skirmishes between Tony Asaro and the EMC bloggers
• The Only VMware-certified NAS in its Category: Why the Iomega StorCenter ix4-200r Will Resonate with Small Businesses - Jerome Wendt expands on the Iomega StorCenter Pro ix4-200r
• Don’t focus too much on costs, cloud computing is about business agility - CapGemini reminds us that cloud computing isn’t just about reducing costs
• What we talk about when we talk about cloud computing - The Google Enterprise blog lays down some of the hard facts about building a cloud on your own
• Review: Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System - Chris Evans provides one of the best reviews yet of Sun’s Amber Road open source-based storage systems
• Brocade Pokes Cisco in the Eye, Switches for IBM - A great headline and solid reporting by Om Malik on one of the first reactions to Cisco UCS
• TheInfoPro: Analysis or Marketing? - StorageMonkeys continues their probing of the storage analyst community
• A “Tweeterview” with Stephen Foskett, Nirvanix Consulting Director - Sunshine interviews me about Nirvanix, storage, and my new role

Apple

• Achieving Email Bliss with IMAP, Gmail, and Apple Mail – A deep, long post on GMail, IMAP, Mac OS X Mail, and how to get all three to play nicely together.
• Monitor Your Mac Remotely With iStat for iPhone - I love iStat for Mac OS X and the iPhone and had been meaning to write a review. This AppleBlog post is just about what I might have written!

Life

• There Goes Chrysler – NPR’s awesome Planet Money blog reported the breaking news of Chrysler’s bankruptcy
• The Venture Capital Math Problem and The Venture Capital Math Problem (continued) – Fred Wilson points out that there can be no such thing as unlimited venture capital
• Is it time to cut the Ethernet access cable? – Has pervasive wireless Ethernet made wired ports unnecessary?
• Interview with Micah Baldwin, Father of FollowFriday – Micah calls me out as someone who is doing interesting things on Twitter!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Back From the Pile: Interesting Content From the Week of May 2, 2009
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.

For more information on earlier updates, see my articles:

• Storage Fixes in VMware ESX Server 3.5 Update 2
• Storage Changes in VMware ESX 3.5 Update 3

Expanded Support for Enhanced vmxnet Adapter

Not specifically a storage change, but the enhanced vmxnet adapter introduced back in the original release of ESX 3.5 now works with most versions of Windows Server 2003 and XP Pro. Look for improved performance when using guest-side SMB and NFS as well as the guest iSCSI initiator. Note that you cannot select this driver when configuring non-Enterprise Edition machines; you have to select Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition (64-bit) regardless of which version of Server 2003 you are using.

Expanded SAS and SATA Controller Support

If you’d like to install ESX on a server equipped with a PMC 8011, Intel ICH9 or ICH10, CERC 6/I SATA/SAS Integrated RAID Controller, or HP Smart Array P700m Controller, you’ll find happiness in Update 4.

The Intel controllers are especially important, as we’re seeing them used more and more and this driver is more full-featured than the earlier Broadcom HT 1000 and Intel ICH7 drivers. The Intel ICH9/ICH10 is a dual-mode (IDE/ATA and AHCI/SATA) driver, supports SATA hard drives, SSDs, and optical drives, and now enables VMFS support when in AHCI/SATA mode. It’s not clear whether VMware actually supports VMFS datastores on ICH9/10 SATA, but it says it works. Anyone want to try it out? One thing is certain: You can’t use SATA drives in a shared/clustered environment because SATA does not include reservations. See this tech note and especially this question:

Earlier, it was mentioned that we can create VMFS if we use AHCI/SATA mode. If so, why did VMware not claim VMFS support when using SATA controller running in AHCI/SATA mode?

VMware might decide to add support in the near future. There is no strong need to have VMFS support on a SATA drive, because native SATA protocol does not support reserve/release. Reserve/release is needed if VMFS is used as clustered file system in a shared disk environment.

PXE Boot Support

Rich at VM/ETC points out that Update 4 includes experimental PXE boot support for ESX and ESXi. As he notes, this has major implications for cloud computing platforms, since it means that ESX servers can boot guests without local storage at all. Very interesting! Let’s bet that Update 5 (expected in June or July) will include this as a supported option.

Updated QLogic, Emulex, and LSI Drivers

Like most ESX updates, this one included updated Fibre Channel drivers.

• The QLogic Fibre Channel Adapter driver and firmware (versions 7.08-vm66 and 4.04.06, respectively) include bug fixes and enhanced NPIV support.
• On the Emulex side, driver version 7.4.0.40 supports the company’s HBAnyware 4.0 management software.
• Users of SAS and SCSI LSI MegaRAIDs will find driver version 3.19vmw (megaraid_sas) and 2.6.48.18 vmw (mptscsi) which improves performance and enhances event handling capabilities.

Expanded Sun Storage Array Support

All you StorageTek loyalists out there will be happy to see support for Sun’s low-end StorageTek 2530 SAS array as well as the modular 6580 and 6780 Fibre Channel arrays. It looks like just about every model in Sun’s current storage lineup is now supported in ESX.

Expanded Network Card Support

Support for Gigabit cards is greatly expanded, including HP’s quad-port NC375i and dual-port NC362i and NC360m, Intel’s Gigabit CT and 82574L, and NetXtreme’s BCM5722, BCM5755, BCM5755M, and BCM5756. Intel’s widely-used 10-gig 82598EB cards are now supported as well.

Tweaks and Fixes

Looking through the release notes, a few storage-related tweaks and fixes stand out:

1. WMware can optionally automatically throttle back the queue depth when congestion is encountered. See Controlling LUN queue depth throttling in VMware ESX for 3PAR Storage Arrays for more information.
2. VMklinux module heap size can now be adjusted as LUN queue-depth values are increased. Since tuning LUN queue depths is one common trick of the storage trade to improve performance, especially in queue-stingy systems like ESX, this is welcome news. But call VMware support before you monkey with it!
3. An RDM-related issue where SCSI inquiry data over 36 bytes was truncated or corrupted (for example when using Microsoft VSS and NetApp SnapDrive) has been resolved.

Well, that’s all folks. I suggest you all read the release notes for yourself, and please leave a comment if you see an error in what I wrote here or have something to add!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Storage Changes in VMware ESX 3.5 Update 4
This post was categorized as 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.

Sun is getting into the cloud services business, but which market is their target?

While the bulk of Sun-related news this week relates to reported talks of a buyout by IBM, the company took a break from negotiations to introduce their own cloud computing and storage infrastructure, challenging Amazon, Google, Rackspace, and perhaps VMware, Microsoft, and Nirvanix.

Sun is leveraging the assets they acquired from Q-layer earlier this year on top of OpenSolaris, MySQL, ZFS, and just about everything else in their arsenal to offer their own virtual data center (VDC) strategy. The Sun Cloud will be a private (inside the firewall) environment offering mobility of virtual machines. Q-layer had partnerships with both VMware and Microsoft and functioned with Windows, OpenSolaris, and Linux, suggesting that this will be quite a full-featured offering. Suddenly Sun’s free OpenSolaris offering on Amazon EC2 makes a lot more sense – it provides a gateway to take virtual computing business from the Bezos team!

One very nifty angle Sun is taking is enabling VirtualBox system images to be saved to (and presumably run in) their cloud. I wonder about monetization, since VirtualBox is more of a desktop virtualization system than VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V, but the prospect of clicking “Upload to Cloud” is intriguing! OpenOffice will also allow cloud storage, a foil to Google Apps.

The Sun Cloud also includes a managed storage service. Sun apparently has three storage protocols: A proprietary Sun Cloud Storage API, WebDAV, and an object API likely leveraging Amazon’s AWS. The company claims that they are API-compatible with AWS, allowing applications written with Amazon in mind to be easily ported to their cloud storage service.

One key point to consider with all of this cloud talk, however, is how prepared each company is to support enterprise computing needs. Long-term viability depends on paying customers, and only the largest systems can attract enough end-user nickels and dimes to survive. Enterprise solutions are where the real money is, and questions remain about how prepared companies like Amazon, Google, and Rackspace are to support the needs of corporate users.

There are really three cloud markets: Shared clouds for small developers and enterprise customers and private cloud systems. Amazon was strong from the start with the little guys, Web 2.0 startups and end-user services like Jungle Disk, and Rackspace/Mosso and Google are challenging them in this space. Sun’s focus on AWS compatibility and VirtualBox suggests that they plan to play in this sandbox.

But the enterprise cloud is another matter entirely. Nirvanix stands strong in shared managed storage services, racking up win after win with big customers. EMC, VMware, Microsoft and others are positioning themselves as private alternatives in this space. Will Sun try to compete here, too? They are certainly talking about private clouds and the virtual data center, but there is a serious risk that they will lose focus trying to take on too many roles, and enterprise users won’t tolerate poor pre- and post-sales support! 

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Sun Launches Their Own Cloud, But For Which Market?
This post was categorized as 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.

Today, Brocade announced that it has completed its acquisition of Foundry Networks.  This is just the latest move in the strategic game to control the next generation of Ethernet, and possibly all local connectivity, including storage. Although 1 Gb Ethernet, 4 and 8 Gb Fibre Channel, and InfiniBand are all still going strong, the attention of the industry, the pundits, and the prognosticators (myself included) is firmly fixed on enhanced 10 Gb Ethernet. So Brocade’s move seems especially relevant to the core question of which companies will thrive and which will fail in a 10 Gb world.

Cisco is, as always, the big player everyone is gunning for. They created a subsidiary, Nuova, to develop a next-generation architecture, then absorbed the company in April. The result of Nuova’s work is Cisco’s Nexus line of data center switching products as well as much contribution to enhancements to Ethernet, known as Data Center Bridging (DCB) to the IEEE, Data Center Ethernet (DCE) to Cisco, and Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) to others. The whole Nuova episode worked out quite well for Cisco, and they are well-positioned in the next-generation Ethernet game.

Although the fight to control the next generation of datacenter I/O can sometimes seem like a two-way battle between Cisco and Brocade, there are many players involved:

• Woven Systems launched its second-generation product in October. Aimed squarely at the largest data centers, the Woven line sells at bargain prices and expands incrementally, maintaining performance, according to the company.
• Force10 has also found success selling a complete line of 10 Gb Ethernet products, from the core data center to the edge.
• HP’s ProCurve line is mostly focused on smaller businesses, but the number-two supplier of networking hardware shouldn’t be discounted in this horse race!
• Arista Networks is another dark horse. With ex-Cisco “Data Center 3.0 commander” Jayshree Ullal and ex-Sun Andy Bechtolsheim, Arista has so far played its 10 Gb song to a cloud computing refrain. But the company reportedly has strong technology, and could be a contender in the converged I/O space as well.

This playing field is wide open. I expect Brocade and Cisco to be major players over the next few years, and that HP will acquire one of the other players at some point to add to their ProCurve line. But no matter who wins, the dominance of 10 Gb Ethernet is a safe bet.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Who Will Capture the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Crown?
This post was categorized as 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.

The Register did a nice job of summing up the (late 2008) flash positioning of the various storage companies, and I recently posted a strategic look at this core issue. Note that some, like HP and Sun (and probably IBM), seem to have an end-to-end strategy, while others are firmly in one camp or the other. In the “not yet” column, apparently, are 3PAR, BlueArc (though they offer TMS RAM), Dell/EqualLogic, HP/LeftHand.

Update: 3PAR has joined the “disk” camp.

It’s a Cache

Fusion-IO has rocketed to the forefront of the cache side with their PCI Express flash boards for servers. Joining them in this position are the following companies:

• HP (blades and servers)
• NetApp (PAM read cache card)
• Pillar (Slammer cache)
• Sun (read and write cache)

It’s a Disk

STEC is the darling of the flash-as-a-disk world, though Intel, Marvell, and Samsung are also playing here. Joining them in the corner are the following:

• EMC (STEC flash drives shipping the DMX now and CLARiiON in the future)
• Compellent (flash drives)
• HDS (flash drives in the USP-V)
• HP (flash drives in the MSA, perhaps, and maybe that Oracle thing)
• IBM (Fusion-IO storage behind SVC and standard flash drives in the DS5000)
• LSI (flash drives in the 7900)
• NetApp (ssd drives)
• Pillar (flash drives)
• Sun (flash drives in Thumper and JBOD)
• Xiotech (flash drives in the next Emprise canisters)
• 3PAR (flash drives in InServe)

So there you have it. It’s both a disk and a cache, depending on whether you sell servers or arrays apparently. If you sell both, it’s both. Simple!

If anyone wants to correct any of this, drop me a line or comment below!

See my posts on Gestalt IT for similar enterprise IT infrastructure commentary

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | Is Flash A Disk Or A Cache?
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.