• My writing
  • First up, a battery charger? La Crosse BC-700 Review: A Battery Charger That Does Not Suck
  • I urge you to See W. Curtis Preston’s Backup Central Live!
  • I was looking for The Best Network Card For VMware ESX Home Lab Machines
  • From my Network Computing blog: Unified Storage: What Is It Good For?
  • I was amazed to see the result of my HP Photosmart printer series: The Power of Negative Publicity
• Other great links
  • Chris Evans wrote a solid piece for Datamation: Virtualization and Storage: Overview, Vendor Solutions
  • Matt Simmons talks about dealing with storage: I’m here to shard data and chew bubblegum…
  • Alex Popescu’s 5 Approaches to Scalable Storage Solutions led to Jeff Darcy’s Introduction to Distributed Filesystems
  • Xangati talks Field Day: Running Comprehensive and Deep at Tech Field Day #5
  • And then there’s Wireless Field Day, courtesy of Andrew von Nagy: Shamrockin’ the Wireless Industry
  • Greg Ferro continues spreading the word on FCoTR: Presenting Silvano Gai With FCoTR Button
  • Howard Marks takes up the topic of specialized hard disk drives: Yes, Virginia, RAID Drives Are Different
  • Howard was spurred by Simon Gallagher, among others: Home Labbers beware of using Western Digital SATA HDDs with a RAID Controller
  • The continuing saga of Google Chrome and H.264 takes a weird turn: Microsoft adds H.264 support to Google Chrome
  • Simon Long fights the good fight, presenting solid technical info: VMware View Desktops: IDE or SCSI? BusLogic, LSI Logic or PVSCSI?
  • A key topic in storage is the balance between performance and capacity, as noted by Xiotech: Performance and Capacity Tradeoffs and the Rise of a New Class of Storage
  • An amusing infographic: The United States of Shame (CHART)
  • Kevin Houston takes on Cisco UCS: What Cisco Has to Do to Win the Blade Server Market
  • Finally, Jeremy Gaddis is back with Bypassing the Internet Kill Switch

Subscribe to my Google Reader feed or follow me on Twitter to see these in real-time.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, February 4, 2011
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, 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.

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.

I’ve long wished for a new enterprise storage superpower. Competition is good for everyone, and the enterprise storage space has always been highly competitive. Traditional SAN storage powers (EMC, HDS, HP, and IBM) have been under continual attack from tech-heavy upstarts like EqualLogic, LeftHand, Compellent, Xiotech, and 3Par. The smaller (revenue-wise) NAS market has been more serial, with NetApp knocking off Auspex, then challenged by EMC. Yet innovators have been thick there as well, from Exanet to Ibrix, Isilon to Onstor.

Through it all, one thing has been clear: The major companies, though perhaps lagging in technology, were usually able to withstand the attack of the upstarts through sheer strength of salesforce. Storage is a strategic investment, and selection of a storage platform is much more far-reaching than many IT product decisions. The inertia of an installed storage environment makes it a real challenge to switch vendors, giving the established players massive leverage.

It became clear to me and many others that the best way for upstart companies (and, by extension, technologies) was to be part of an established vendor’s sales process. OEM relationships were a big part of this (witness the success of BlueArc and even NetApp and HDS) but acquisition was a much stronger proposition. If customers were warmer to OEM products than independent sales, they are much hotter when it comes to acquired technology. HP, Dell, IBM, and EMC have all demonstrated the power that comes when an established company buys a startup and puts the power of their sales force behind these new products.

This explains Dell’s fantastic success with EqualLogic. They took a product that was emerging as dominant in its niche (midrange iSCSI SAN) and blasted it into the market, while at the same time optimizing manufacturing and deployment. EMC did the same with Clariion and DataDomain, and HP is showing strong signs of health with LeftHand and Ibrix. Then there is IBM, who took XIV out of Israel and made it a source of irritation to the rest of the industry.

Many industry watchers have long wondered what would happen if the smaller guys got together, forming a new superpower of their own. Would 3Par, BlueArc, and Sepaton be a real challenger? What about Xiotech or Compellent and Isilon or FalconStor? Is mixing and matching some smaller companies a recipe for success? The answer was often a counter-question: What if someone like Dell, who knows how to manufacture and sell, picked them up instead? This seemed much more like a sure-thing, since the established management and financials stave off potential integration issues.

It appears that this is the future. Established players will pick up smaller companies, fortifying their offerings and accelerating sales in a way the little guys weren’t capable of. Dell’s billion-dollar acquisition of 3Par reportedly headed off a similar offer from HP, and will likely spark another acquisition. I imagine the management teams at Compellent and Xiotech just got a lot busier…

Clearly, Dell and HP are playing this game. IBM and EMC are in it, too. But what about Cisco and Oracle? Could they be planning storage acquisitions of their own, to the detriment of partners like EMC and Hitachi? What about the strong contingent from Japan, NEC and Hitachi? And who gets picked up next? We shall see!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Dell + EqualLogic, Exanet, Ocarina, 3Par = What?
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.

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.

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.

Now a handful of storage players are talking about SSD’s again, including some respectable names like LSI and Xiotech and some lesser-known outfits like Solid Data Systems and Texas Memory Systems. IDC is predicting mainstream uptake of the technology, too, but note that they’re mostly talking about the PC market, not enterprise storage.

I say that if SSD ever gains footing in the enterprise, it’ll most likely be in a virtualized hybrid system, acting like a mega-cache. Or maybe a non-RAM permacache, if you will! Of course, we’ve seen just how much uptake that feature has had, eh EMC? But hey, it could happen. Even though Apple is soaking up more than a quarter of the world’s NAND flash this year, maybe they’ll force prices down. Or maybe Samsung’s or Hynix’s PRAM will conquer the world!

Let’s get serious, folks. What good is SSD? It improves random access read performance over disk at the expense of longevity, throughput, and, well, expense! ReadyBoost looked like a nice application for flash memory, since the potential content was bounded and could fit on a flash drive, but it seems to have done precisely nothing for performance.

If enterprise applications could benefit from better random access performance, we’d be putting large amounts of memory in front of the disks already. Oh, wait, that’s right, we already do that! Modern enterprise arrays have gobs of cache, more than any SSD, and use it quite effectively. Remember the old RAID-5 penalty?

SSD just serves to remind me of one of those performance-tuning axioms I learned long ago: It’s always better to let an intelligently-designed system manage itself than try to second-guess it. This applies to all areas of system performance tuning, from filesystem and LUN layouts to cache tuning. And this is why permacache and things like it never caught on.

And it’s why SSD will continue to play just a bit part in the enterprise until it’s just as cheap as disk. Like that’ll happen anytime soon.

Edit: Looks like I got the name wrong – the EMC SSD was the Orion.  Introduced in 1989, this evolved into the Symmetrix in 1992.  I used one of these back at Texaco in the 1990′s.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2007. | Wherefore Art Thou, Solid State Disks?
This post was categorized as Apple, 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.