Image by Getty Images via Daylife

     Users of NetBackup’s PureDIsk feature set may have gotten over the hump of the pain, but for the majority, they have ignored Symantec’s product because of complexity of software installation, software configuration, and performance configuration/tuning for a specific storage configuration. 

     Why does this matter?  Because today InQuinox is announcing the release of the SD3, a NetBackup PureDisk Appliance.  By announcement I mean general availability of this product.  So what does this mean for customers?  Typically, InQuinox (known for industry leading consulting services for Symantec products) is engaged to profile NetBackup installations, make recommendations for sizing and configuration of PureDisk, and ultimately contracted for the deployment and tuning of the PureDisk configuration.  While rich in consulting hours, many of the tasks are solved by the SD3 appliances.  These appliances are configured in a few different configurations (SD3-T1, SD3-T4, SD3-T32, & SD3-T96 – data sheet) based on performance and capacity requirements.  These appliances are pre-built with PureDisk installed (licensing offered via InQuinox or other sources, including Symantec), pre-configured with information from a customer’s NetBackup environment and shipped almost plug-n-play to the customer site.  With minimal onsite configuration, validation, and testing these appliances can be up and running in significantly less time then a services engagement.  The T1 and T4 versions of the appliances use captive storage configurations,  The T32 and T96 configurations are powered by ATRATO disk storage (which I’ve covered in the past).  The appliance itself is sourced as a powerful Corvalent hardware platform.  This isn’t just a “install PureDisk”  on a platform with storage play, InQuinox has put time and engineering effort into having options such as remote office solutions, ruggedized solutions, HA configurations, and scalability within the product models.

     Another great thing about this synergy of products simplifying PureDisk, is the recent announcement that PureDisk will be supported for BackUp Exec as well, which opens up a huge potential marketplace.  Claims of storage reduction via implementations of PureDisk are estimated between 40% and 90% depending on the implementation, backup policies, and application types.  For more information on PureDisk, support matrix, and features see Symantec’s website.

Updated: InQuinox Press Release: http://www.inquinox.com/media/news_release_10142009.php

Image by Joe Penniston via Flickr

     Have to give a short shout out to Disney for the recent launch of DisneyDigitalBooks.com  Disney Publishing released an online version of more than 500 books available as a service online.  Each membership looks like it supports up to three children.  The best quote came out of the New York Times business section by someone I know very well.

“For parents, this isn’t going to replace snuggle time with a storybook,” said Yves Saada, vice president of digital media. “We think you can have different reading formats co-existing together.”

     I like the idea of multiple learning platforms, and I was a big fan the the Disney books growing up, so I’m looking forward to seeing this site gain major traction.  Check it out, they have a limited evaluation, and the annual subscription is at a great price point.  For the full NYT article look here.

Image via Wikipedia

     Time for an update about storage protocols, I say protocols, because the transport layer is something that is in flux right now.  NFS, iSCSI, Fibre Channel, and FCOE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) are storage PROTOCOLS!  It is pretty important to understand this as base knowledge when discussing storage connectivity to a VMWare environment.  So what does this mean for you.

     Recent published White Paper from VMWare shows in little detail the testing they did for these protocols.  However, this assumes that ALL storage and storage solutions are equal, which we all know NOT to be the case.  The white paper can be found here.  So let me first explore what they tested, and then we can look at some changes to the components.

The Storage:

     So I have when a software company does things like this, they take a “storage server” and emulate different storage protocols in order to test them.  This configuration used 9 disks, how it was configured, what type of “storage server” wasn’t disclosed, and how the LUNs were emulated wasn’t disclosed either.  So I can’t really make too many judgments, because they will end up being assumptions and we all know what you get from that.  I can however say that this was not “purpose built” and seemed to have been thrown together for this test, most likely using some Linux distribution.  The problem with this approach is it doesn’t take into account the massive development that a storage vendor has gone through either with hardware or software to get the most out of a protocol.

The performance:

     Looking just at the basic configuration, comparing GigE ethernet (with any protocol) compared to 4Gb FC doesn’t seem like a fare test.  Looking closely, VMware really was trying to prove out scalability regardless of storage protocol.  They also pointed out clearly that not using the VMFS might have a significant impact on performance, but they excluded it in order to not give a block level device an advantage over NFS mounted storage.  They also clearly pointed out that an update to this White paper was needed in order to consider 8Gb FC and 10GigE, which I think will be a much closer comparison of technologies.  If you look at the differences in performance, 4Gb FC was almost exactly 4x the performance of any of the 1Gb Ethernet used in the test, which I would expect.  It also showed that the packet size/block size was a significant differentiator because of the extra processing that needs to occur with a 1500MTU packet limitation on GigE.

The Point:

     The point is simple, why even bother putting out a “White Paper” that really proves nothing, well, it does prove something.  When using basic volumes iSCSI and NFS have pretty much equal performance over a single GigE connection.  NFS has more of a CPU overhead (minimally) then software initiator based iSCSI, and if you are counting clock cycles, then you really need to go with iSCSI or FC HBAs.  I would have rather seen NFS compared to VMFS over the iSCSI connections, that would have at least compared similar access functionality.

      So changes I would like to see, compare 1Gb FC to GigE for these protocols.  Use the best of breed NAS, iSCSI, and FC arrays for these tests (oh that would create a field day for us out here in the stoblogosphere).  Compare like functionality, NFS offers shared access, VMFS offers shared access.  In any case, someone has to write something over there, I would have named this What Paper, “VMWare 4.0 Scales Regardless of Storage Protocol”.

Comments always welcome.

Image via Wikipedia

     I am sitting on a plane from Charlotte to NYC, which airport in the NYC area isn’t important, but how I’m getting there and where I’ve come from right now is.  I’m on my 3rd airline in 48 hours, and will end up in my 4th city.  We talk about green initiatives in IT, the automotive industry, our homes, and our businesses, but I haven’t heard too much about a “green” airplane, maybe because we’d all feel safer knowing that our flights weren’t dependent on solar power or leftover frying oil.   That tangent done, there are many things “green” going on in the world of today.  Denver is about to open it’s first LEEDs compliant apartment building (rating to be determined).  DOE/NREL is in the process of breaking ground for a new LEEDs Platinum campus in Golden, CO.  Business parks all over the U.S. have “green” roofs that support plant life, and not only cool the building but now help support the failing business I’ve had of rooftop lawn mowing services.  Oh, in case you haven’t noticed, this is going to be a rant of rants.  If you think I’m serious please see the latest entry in wiki for serious.

     Let’s be honest, though, some businesses don’t give a crap about being “green”.  A major content delivery company’s IT Director literally said he’d support the burning of whale oil in power plants if it meant it was cheaper to his bottom line.  Ok, maybe it was dirty coal, but you get the point.  I don’t need the Sea Sheppard crew coming and launching an attack on my whale oil power plant, I‘m sure they are already upset about me clubbing a baby seal, which if you’ve never done give it a try, it is much more enjoyable then spilling oil in the ocean, or hunting the Bald Eagle, which taste like chicken in case you’re wondering.

     So here I am heading to one of the more congested cities in the US, and I’m thinking does anyone really give a crap about “greening” IT.  No, I say, they really don’t!  Not for the purpose of spending more money to save the environment, the “green” story they want to hear is how this product, any product will take up less footprint, use less energy, and require less cooling!  Why, not to keep the polar ice caps from melting, but because building a new data center, bringing in new cooling systems, and dropping more circuits costs too much money, oh and electricity, regardless of getting it from the SUN or the WIND, still seems to be going up in price.  If they could buy a product, at a reasonable cost, that was cheaper to run, cooler to run, but killed 20 sea turtles to make, I think we’d still have a lot of takers, maybe even a line, they are slow and easy to catch anyway.

     I like car analogies, does someone really go out and buy a hybrid to reduce greenhouse gasses? No, they want better MPG (Km/L for our metric folks) Why?  Gas isn’t going away, and will only go up in price and it will be cheaper to run a hybrid with that regenerative breaking and electric assist stuff, the only problem is, hybrids are so darn expensive, you have to do a ton of driving just to break even, let alone save money over the traditional fossil burning beasts.

     So where is this rant going?  I’m working on a few opportunities right now where actual rack space, cooling, and electrical needs are critical components because the locations this hardware is going to be going is limited on all of them, oh and the budget is tight too, oh and high performance is critical as well.  It is like the old triangle of IT, where you really can’t ever get all the sides, you have to compromise somewhere.  I told them I’ve got a storage system, very inexpensive (can’t say cheap because that dilutes the value), super fast, gives energy back to the grid, and as a by product of running it, cools the data center, however, once you buy it, you and your family will spend the rest of eternity in Purgatory.  I have had 10,000 units ordered to date, some with conditional P.O.s however, because they want to make sure they are on the other side of Purgatory from their spouses.  I’m looking for investors, my "angel investor” has fallen.

     So, why does any of this matter?  I really don’t know, I’m tired, I’m stuck on a plane, and I have a bunch of readers that typical want something funny, or angry, or inflammatory out of me.  Automakers, try running whale oil in the engines, not like we don’t have a shortage of whales right now.  Airlines, I sign up for the first all solar commercial flight, Iccarus we learned nothing from you.  Baby seals, I do like you guys, but I have a weird whack-a-baby seal fetish lately.  Oh and I hate Soy beans, so there.

Image by global oneness project via Flickr

There is a story about a sales call that I did that has been passed around enough that I heard it as almost a legend the other day.  I am exaggerating a bit, but I was asked if I knew who the people were in the story.  Well, it my story, so with a little litterary license and changing names, dates, and places to protect everyone other then me, I will tell a story of the “How to get thrown out of an account in a few easy steps!”

     In a land not so far away, a sales region near you, there was a team, a team that legends are made from.  This team worked for a start-up storage company, a company on the path to greatness!  This company was little, but in the dawn of explosive growth, this team was new to each other, but fought like they had been in battle for ever side by side.  The typical battle was hard to get into, but once in the fight we were pretty much unbeatable.  The team was Steven (me) and Sean (name changed to protect Sean, oops).

     One day, this mighty team was introduced into an account by a weak partner, strong in revenue, but weak in the ability to do anything other then cause trouble.  What kind of trouble?  Registration issues, bringing in multiple storage vendors into the same account, and not being able to close even the easiest of deals.  This account was a simple, let’s parade our list of vendors by the Director of IT, of what?, a Zoo.  Yes that is right, lions, bears, elephants, etc. Zoo. 

     So we do our awesome “dog & pony” show, but the questions being asked are too clearly directed, both by our partner and by the customer.  We were getting sloppy second sales meetings vibes.  Towards, the end of the meeting, Sean and I are getting a bit jaded about the opportunity, and figure let’s at least enjoy our meeting at the Zoo.  This is how the conversation went:

Sean: (to IT Director) “Hey before we get out of here, any chance we could feed a lion?”

IT Director: (laughs) “No, but maybe you’d like to feed a giraffe?”

Sean: “Nah, a lion would be much more fun, how about a monkey?”

Steven: “Forget a monkey or giraffe, any chance I could club a baby seal?”

all: (silence)

IT Director: (in his head – did he really say he wants to club a seal?)

Sean: (in his head – STEVEN!!!! he doesn’t know you are sarcastic and kidding)

Steven: “I mean I’m pretty quick, I will be able to grab it before it sinks!”

IT Director: “Here let me show you guys to the door.”

     Needless to say, we didn’t win the deal, as the legend stands, we were physically thrown out of the Zoo, and a permanent ban is in place.  My name in on the PETA most wanted list, and Sean has to get family members to buy dog food since he is shunned in the animal community as well.  The real events, how it happened, where it happened, well kiddos, that is why it has become a sales legend.  The moral of the story, no matter how badly you want to club a baby seal, asking to do so will loose you the storage deal.

Image by wynner3 via Flickr

About a week ago I tweeted that I had been invited to a storage vendor’s event, was invited as a potential customer by two different parties.  Funny thing about email lists, people get invited that you wouldn’t expect to attend.  I took off my storage hat, put on my analyst hat and promised a few old friends that I would behave.  I’ve competed against Compellent in the past (sometimes very aggressively!).  I’ve also said some nice things about the technology as well.

Compellent

Strong storage player, public company surviving in a harsh IT economy, and locally here in Colorado working with some great internal talent and one of my favorite partners.  Basic premise of the storage technology is controller based disk array (controllers are commodity based architecture which I’ve mentioned before) with a plethora of storage software services.  The special part that they bring to the table is at the storage service level, Data Progression™, Fast Track, replication, etc.  They have a very compelling story, proven scalability and a growing revenue and customer base.  The recent introduction of SSD support brings what most like to consider as a Tier0 storage layer, and although they have SATA, I would really like to see a strong archival tier in the near future.

Lewan and Associates

Lewan, is one of my favorite local integrators.  They did a very nice presentation about how they have several lines of business, specifically broken into two main lines of business, the traditional printer/copier side, and the IT Solutions side.  Lewan was relatively recently acquired by Xerox, but remains a very independent subsidiary.  What I liked the most about Lewan’s presentation was that they get the whole IT picture, and to date have had some of the key technology partners to create best-of-breed solutions for customers in the Rocky Mountain region.  The quick elevator pitch from Lewan?  D.N.A. – Data Center, Network, and Application Delivery.  They cover it all, and do it not only from a pure product basis, but from a consultative model that keeps the customers coming back!

Latisys

Latisys was another sponsor of this event, and they have some great solutions to the remote data center/hosting/co-location problem.  The purpose of the presentation on this day was to talk about Compellent’s place within Latisys, specifically to offer a target for secure remote replication.  This is something that any customer should look at that is currently running a Compellent SAN, because it reduces the complexity and I would assume costs associated in owning your own remote installation of Compellent gear, while giving you a place to recover too.  The better play they are offering however, is the ability to bring up your VMware based environment in a disaster, which is something that is very powerful for business continuance.

The SAN Technologist

I felt like a spy, I got funny looks, got directly asked if I had any questions, but I behaved and while I made no promises, I learned, I liked the things I saw, and I could without loosing sleep write something that is meaningful about these companies.  It isn’t everyday that you get a chance to see old friends, not try to destroy them, and leave with friendship renewed.  Quick shout out to my lovely mother who will greatly enjoy the Wizard of Oz reference, although not Judy’s greatest role, it is a good one. 

Image by www.ericcastro.biz via Flickr

I while ago I poked fun at the NetApp 50% Guarantee.  The idea that most of the savings come from taking a RAID10 environment and switching it to NetApp’s RAID-DP (btw, they only guarantee 35% if you are using your own storage behind a v-filer platform), is something I’ve touched upon in the past.  Now they have released a $1M’s worth of, at list, hardware if they can prove the reduction vs. a non-NetApp customer’s current environment.  What you win:

4. Prize

a) The prize ("Prize") to be awarded is comprised of the following NetApp products, and will be based on NetApp’s published US price List: storage hardware valued at $850,000, Professional Services Deployment, valued at $100K, and Software, valued at $50K.

b) The Prize will be subject to the Winner’s agreement to be bound by NetApp’s standard commercial terms. No purchase will be necessary to utilize the Prize; provided, however, after the applicable warranty period has elapsed for the hardware, software and service elements of the Prize, additional charges may apply to any requests for repair and maintenance.

c) To become the winner, the selected corporation must agree, if needed, to allow its representatives to be filmed by a NetApp representative and the winner’s representatives must execute a release and consent form that authorizes NetApp to use the video in NetApp Marketing material and activities. The winner must also agree to have a third party, nominated by NetApp, to evaluate the winner’s virtualization environment, both prior and after the commencement of NetApp’s implementation services to confirm the agreed upon virtualization metrics. Winner shall also agree to adhere to NetApp’s recommended best practices and requirements, including having NetApp’s professional services personnel on site to conduct a virtualization requirements analysis.

d) The Prize is not transferable. No Prize substitution is allowed except at the discretion of NetApp Inc. If the Prize cannot be awarded due to circumstances beyond NetApp Inc.’s control, a substitute prize of equal or greater retail value will be awarded.

So you get all this good stuff!  This is really a great marketing idea.  Get a bunch of non-customers to tell you exactly what they are running (lead generation), pick a customer and make a case study of it (great P.R.), and finally, still get them, after all is said an done, to pick up support costs after warranties are expired and upgrades for other features they will want to use.  This is a win-win though, take a company that has legacy hardware that was looking to refresh, quick easy way to get into a NetApp solution.

Image via Wikipedia

     Couldn’t make it to VMWorld this year for various reasons, but I have been eagerly listening in to all the chatter, social networking, and general fun being spewed across the internet.  There have been funny cartoons, funny videos, blogs, tweets, Facebook updates, etc.  The updates and news coverage is pretty great, but there has been one vendor’s daily updates that of course are self serving, which they should be, but are a brag about something 100% in their control.

     Not trying to launch a war here, but twitter man @HPStorageGuy, (who you should follow because he has some good thoughts when not bragging about LeftHand’s VSA)  Calvin Zito has been busy tweeting these past few days.  Typically he talks up the LeftHand Networks, now owned by HP, iSCSI storage solutions and other HP storage products.  Recently, Calvin has been bragging about how HP has the most VMWare HCL certified storage systems, server systems, and the ONLY virtual storage appliance that is certified.  Not sure everyone knows, but getting on VMWare’s HCL is an easy, but expensive task.  So, considering that all it takes is money and a little time, why brag about something like this? Regardless, Congratulations!!!  Also, Congratulations to RedHat for having the most certified OSs!!!

Image via Wikipedia

     What happens when your storage system is a “klunk”?   In the start-up/up-start space there are still numerous storage vendors, two recently have moved from that I would consider up-start to Corporations due to acquisitions.  These two companies are what I would NOT consider “klunks” in the Treasure Hunt vernacular.  These two companies were the $25k prize check for Dell and HP, who going against some odds took the risk to spend large sums of money for non-traditional storage companies.

     Now that I’m in a different storage game I can take a serious look at two competing technologies in the iSCSI space.  As my audience knows I did work for Equallogic, Inc.  What they may not know is that I spent a good amount of time interviewing and looking at LeftHand Networks prior to looking at Equallogic.  Now to be fair, it wasn’t Equallogic that kept me from going to work for LeftHand, and it wasn’t anything I found out about LH that made me go over to Equallogic.

     iSCSI, while that used to be a “name we shall not speak” it has become a household storage protocol in the past few years.  I can remember when Windows software initiators would literally bring a server to its knees when running any type of IO.  So, LH spent some serious time about a decade ago working on a proprietary network storage protocol, but quickly switched over to iSCSI as it was standardized.  Equallogic started down the route as a potential NAS device, but also moved quickly to the iSCSI block level standard.

     I discussed before the merits of hardware vs. server as a storage platform, and both of these entries to market have very valid attributes.  So I’m going to leave this alone.

     The PS4000 vs. the P4x00, I mean really?   Just as HP releases a formal product naming conventions (thank G-d they minimized the “starter-SAN” nomenclature), Dell releases an “entry” level Equallogic product called the PS4000.  I can’t wait to see online pricing for this product line, it looks like it will fit nicely in the “S” of the SMB space as well as the remote office/branch market.

     The future of these products will be very interesting considering the relatively small revenue % they drive for HP and Dell, but I really do hope the best for both products, and it is like two rival players each getting drafted to rival NFL teams.

Image by themanikone via Flickr

While tweeting today, David Graham (http://www.flickerdown.com/) gave me a great idea for a new game.  Use your GPS and the location data from your cloud storage and see how many chunks you can find around the state, country, world!  Anyone who can recreate a single file manually gets a trinket!

Image by ThisIsIt2 via Flickr

In Storage, in sales, in life, “Three’s A Crowd”.  In life, that third wheel is annoying when you’re on a date, the thought of a “menage trois” is a lot like the writings of Marx, good in theory and on paper, but we know how it turns out in real-life.  In sales, the multi-legged sales call usually becomes a goat rodeo.  In storage, I always consider the competition the crowd, it could be just one single other vendor, but the addition of several, with both direct sales, and indirect sales forces can cause massive confusion for customers. 

     Lately in the “Stoblogosphere” (credit to M. Farley, and recently added to the urban dictionary), the FUD has been flying!  Lately there has been FUD about revenue growth, invention of features, blah blah blah blah blah.  At the end of the day, it still is a weak sales team that spends its time trying to show the blemishes of a competitor vs. the great functions and features of their own products. 

     Even us bloggers can be the third-wheel when we butt our noses into press releases, make comments on vendor blogs, and hear back channel things that we just can’t bare to keep quiet about.  In general though, keeping it simple is the best way to forge forward.

     Well, I’ve got a cowboy hat, some great Tony Llama boots, a pair on wrangler jeans, and some cowhide gloves for this goat rodeo.

Image by tschaut via Flickr

     In my career I have worked for a Fortune 50 company, companies with less then 50 employees, private companies that have closed their doors, private companies that have been acquired, and the holy grail of private companies that went public.  What eludes me is how private companies, who are built on sweat equity, go from passionate intimate environments to painful work places. 

     I’m thinking maybe it is my fault, maybe I’m just not cut from the “corporate” cloth.  I’m willing to dive into this first.  About me, I’m what I would consider to be a young professional.  I have a formal education, I have over a decade of industry experience, however, a good portion of that experience has been working with every type of customer across the globe on the sales side, the implementation side, and the consulting services side.  Maybe it is my east coast attitude, being raised in NY, watching people sellout their mother to get a deal closed, taxis literally running each other off the road to get to the next red/green light faster, the march of ants that occurs during rush hour in NYC.  I’ve always taken that as a cherished attitude, and used to have a great sign in my office: “I wanted it done yesterday!”  In NYC this was just typical average passion and energy. 

     Maybe it isn’t about me.  Small companies, especially private companies have the ability to so agile, literally turning on a dime.  While this bring a tremendous amount of instability, it also allows stuff to get done.  Large corporations, while generally stable, get so bogged down with process and procedure that hiring, firing, developing, fixing, and just quickly accomplishing anything becomes almost impossible.  Many things are sacrificed for stability of the all might stickholder, oops, Freudian slip, I meant stockholder.  Sometimes being public is a curse.

     So, I’ve seen it go both ways, I’ve seen very passionate people working for some of the largest companies in the world, I’ve seen deadheads (not Jerry G. fans, but “deadhead” def. #6) working at start-ups, and of course the reverse of both exists in the largest version of the bell curve.  For me, I like being “David”.  So I’ll throw my world wide pants on, help another fledgling company spread its wings, and like all start-ups, if we fly too close to the sun too soon we risk failure, timing is everything.

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;
        

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that, the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,
 

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I marked the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way

I doubted if I should ever come back.
 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.
 

     A well known poem, memorized by myself and my entire 3rd grade English class years ago.  The regularly missed point is that there really was no better choice, no better road, they were equal for different reasons, and only in blind hindsight can someone say one would have been better then the other. 

     Recently I was asked to talk about the reasons a storage start-up would chose to built a custom hardware platform vs. leverage a commodity server platform.  In reality, they both have merits, both, in early consideration, pretty equal. 

Servers as a Platform

     The commodity server platform as an appliance has always been an interesting one.  The benefits for a start-up are many.  Firstly, you get to leverage current technologies easily, toss in a new network card and you’ve got IB or 10GigE.  Secondly, open source Linux gives an instant development baseline, leverage the work others have done before you.  Lastly, your time can be spent on software development and features as a priority.  The complicated part is not getting the solution to work, but to get the most out of a platform not designed for IO, but for general computing.  The mix of software development between user space and kernel space, staying on top of security within a very open OS architecture, and overcoming the inherent single points of failure in today’s common server platforms, all become pain points very quickly.  However, for a cash poor start-up, the initial minimal costs and rapid development typically make up for choosing this road, especially if the exit strategy is change of ownership.  In recent years upstarts like Compellent (OEM’d SuperMicro Servers), LeftHand Networks(Dell, HP and a few other servers, although most recently ONLY HP Servers), Exanet (IBM, Dell, and a few other server vendors), DataCore (pretty much any server), and several others, chose the commodity server route and have had mixed success.

Hardware as a Platform

     The custom hardware road is much more complicated from the get go, but the effort up front can pay out big in the long run.  The upfront pain with custom hardware is running two engineering teams, one for the hardware side and another for the software.  The benefit of custom hardware is that chipsets, real-time operating systems, and form factors allow for HA hardware architectures, system built for performance and reliability, and ownership of every detail of the solution.  However, the effort to support hardware, roll with technology updates, and costs for manufacturing can burden even the most experienced engineering teams.  In mainstream storage the custom hardware route has been the standard of the likes of IBM, HP, EMC, HDS, and SUN STK, who cumulatively own the storage market. 

How to choose?

     In the end, how the technology was implemented is far less important then the impact of the architecture decisions to support the vendors choice.  The things I always pay attention to is the data path, what happens to the data path in normal state, degraded state, and a failed state.  The next area I will tend to look at is how has a company really leveraged either technology, was custom hardware required, or it is not a differentiator.  In the end, there isn’t always a clear winner, and doing a technology bake-off is always a good idea if the vendors will allow for it.

Image via Wikipedia

     Well in light of a filed and I’m pretty sure expired S-1 at this point BlueArc is still churning through the storage upstart stage, and what better way to gain some extra market share, then to hire a VP from NetApp.

SAN JOSE, CA – BlueArc® Corporation, the leader in scalable, high-performance unified network storage, today announced the appointment of Bridget Warwick as Vice President of Marketing. Warwick brings more than a decade of experience in the storage market, including a diversified history of management positions across marketing, engineering and business operations, to BlueArc.

 

Warwick joins the company from her most recent position at NetApp, where she was the vice president of business operations, responsible for the storage systems division’s worldwide technical marketing and product operations. During her time at NetApp, Warwick helped the company establish deep product integration with partners, including Microsoft, and was a chief proponent of the company’s growth in the Windows file services and applications market.

Image via Wikipedia

In the past 10 years RFP (Request for Proposal) has been growing in the mid-Enterprise space.  I actually saw an RFP, written by Glasshouse under contract, for a smaller law firm in Illinois.  This RFP was about 80 pages (25 of witch were detailed technical questions on SAN, NAS, and Backup/Recovery).  This customer wanted the entire solution of the top three chosen vendors set-up for testing in the Vendor’s labs, for a minimum of two weeks for the customer to test performance, features, and functionality.  Additionally, they wanted to fully test replication and application failover during this lab time, they required the full proposal to be built out with the proposed servers, switches, storage, etc.  Now I’m all for bending over backwards for a customer, but to put together a FULL POC(proof of Concept) with NO Conditional Purchase Order in place???  I’m not unreasonable, but this seemed a bit unreasonable.  The reality, budget got pulled away from this IT project for the customer, and the RFP was killed.  However, in the process for responding to the RFP there were several questions that were “crafted” to a specific solution from a specific vendor.

RFP Authors

     So, this leads me to who authors a customer RFP.  In complete disclosure, when I was  Infrastructure Architect many years ago, and I had personally chosen the solution I felt was write for our company, I wrote an RFP (which was required by our purchasing process) that leaned very heavily in features and specifications toward a single vendors product.  I would assume that others have done the same, however, where I drew the line, was letting the vendor help me write the RFP.

     The “consulting firm” is also contracted for RFP creation.  In general, hired contractors are just that, they have a job to do, and they get paid for it.  They typically have relationships with the customer and with vendors.  The problem with a consulting firms, is typically they are also paid for implementation and design work as well, they have a bag of vendors that they know work, and they know enough about to meet the customers requirements.  The problem with this model, it is usually a biased opinion, NOT INTENTIONALLY!!!!

     Lastly, the vendor.  I’ve had several vendors over the years offer to “help” with canned RFP templates,so that “I wouldn’t have to start from scratch”.  Clearly, we know all of the legal, ethical and moral problems with this approach.  This is disgusting behavior on the part of a vendor!

     So, in order to help potential customers and vendors out there I’ve put together the following list of terms and phrases that are RED FLAGS that an RFP has been written for a specific product.  This helps customers, so that they don’t use terms like this causing other vendors the in-ability to compete.  This helps vendors, because it shows if an RFP has been “unintentionally” biased.  This are primarily geared to storage RFPs.

1. Storage Group
   1. Most likely PS-Series, Dell | Equallogic
2. Member(s)
   1. Most likely PS-Series, Dell | Equallogic
3. All Inclusive
   1. PS-Series, Dell | Equallogic
   2. SAN IQ, LeftHand Networks (HP in 2009)
4. Frameless Architecture
   1. PS-Series, Dell | Equallogic
   2. SAN IQ, LeftHand Networks (HP in 2009)
5. Campus SAN
   1. SAN iQ, LeftHand Networks (HP in 2009)
6. Data Progression
   1. Compellent
7. Commodity Architecture
   1. SAN IQ, LeftHand Networks (HP in 200)
   2. Compellent
8. Filer (Clustered Filers)
   1. NetApp
9. Aggregates
   1. NetApp
10. FlexVol
    1. NetApp
11. Primary Volume A-SIS
    1. NetApp
12. High Performance RAID6 (Fast RAID6)
    1. NetApp
13. Meta Volumes
    1. EMC
14. Business Continuance Volumes
    1. EMC
15. Shadowimage
    1. HDS
16. Composite Device
    1. HDS
17. TrueCopy
    1. HDS
18. FlashCopy
    1. IBM
19. Space-Efficient Disks
    1. IBM
20. Global Mirror
    1. IBM
21. Grid Containers
    1. SUN | STK
22. Predictive Self-Healing
    1. SUN | STK

     This list can go on and on, but these are some common ones that I’ve seen in some recent RFPs that have crossed my desk.

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Joshua: Shall we play a game?
David Lightman: Oh!
Jennifer: I think it missed him.
David Lightman: Yeah. Weird isn’t it? Love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War.
Joshua: Wouldn’t you prefer a nice game of chess?
David Lightman: Later. Right now lets play Global Thermonuclear War.
Joshua: Fine.

     Over the past few weeks/months NetApp and SUN Microsystems have been in a legal battle over patent infringement.  These arguments are about ZFS and WAFL.  There seem to be specifically a little over half a dozen patents that NetApp has filed ZFS is infringing on.  At the end of the day (today), both NetApp and SUN are growing revenues around WAFL and ZFS.  In fact, this publicity, has taken the obscure ZFS and “Open Storage” infused product line from SUN and made it much more public, and it seems to be showing up in more places daily.

     So why the movie reference?  They way these types of legal battles play out, in the end, there is no winner.  Legal fees, the man hours, the courts time, and in the end the only one who suffers will be the customer and share holders.  Customers will absorb the costs of the legal and PR fight, share holders will suffer with every new press release.

     For the most recent reading on this check out Dave Hitz’s blog, he references the recent releases by SUN’s legal team as well.

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I     n a recent announcement, Dell and Microsoft have a tight condensation going on.  Dell will be providing the hardware for Microsoft new cloud computing initiative.  Windows Azure is Microsoft’s cloud services operating system.  This will compromise a collection of services and hardware from Dell.

   Of course, when there is cloud computing, there are some pretty large storage requirements as well.  i wonder what the storage sub-systems will be behind these hosting center deployments.  Now I know Microsoft isn’t going to deploy and NFS solution!  Only time will tell, it looks like this is pretty early on in the planning stages.  The good part, is it looks like Dell will help make it a “greener” cloud.

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StorageBod’s recent post had me falling over, both in it’s clear silliness, but more so in the extremely hidden un-known humor.  

File System: “ In computing, a file system (often also written as filesystem) is a method for storing and organizing computer files and the data they contain to make it easy to find and access them. File systems may use a data storage device such as a hard disk or CD-ROM and involve maintaining the physical location of the files, they might provide access to data on a file server by acting as clients for a network protocol (e.g., NFS, SMB, or 9P clients), or they may be virtual and exist only as an access method for virtual data (e.g., procfs).

 

More formally, a file system is a special-purpose database for the storage, organization, manipulation, and retrieval of data.”

StorageBod wrote the following: 

“I’ve decided that after reading Kostadis’ interesting and well-written series on why WAFL is not a file-system; that it is a platypus! In much that same way that a Platypus is mostly mammalian but does some-things in a distinctly non-mammalian way; WAFL is mostly a file-system! 

 

So from now on; I shall be referring to WAFL as the Platypus Layer!”

Which is much funnier when I recalled and researched the history of the Platypus:

…“Aware of the monstrous impostures which the artful Chinese had so frequently practised on European adventurers,” Knox noted, “the scientific felt inclined to class this rare production of nature with eastern mermaids and other works of art.”

 

It was only when more platypus specimens arrived in England that naturalists finally, grudgingly, granted that the creature was real….

So, clearly WAFL is here to stay, it is most commonly referred to as a filesystem, it clearly shows File System attributes, but…it also have some non-fi1l3 $y$t3m attributes as well. 

note: No Platypus were injured in the writing of this post, nor any WAFL users, nor NetApp employees.  This is a Green Post, no paper was used in its creation. 

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     In 1999, the Billboard TOP 40 had hits like Rodeo Clowns – by G Love & Special Sauce & Higher – by Creed.  Y2K was on the minds of companies and IT folks.  The DOTCOM boom was in full swing, and Bill Clinton was in office.

     In 1999, LeftHand Networks was founded to bring a block level storage protocol over Ethernet to the storage industry.  However, the Advanced Ethernet Block Storage (AEBS), and became a dead protocol around 2003, when LeftHand adopted iSCSI as its protocol.  Back in 2003 iSCSI heavily hit the street.  At the time iSCSI HBAs were very limited, iSCSI Software initiators had HUGE performance penalties, and copper/optical GigE was expensive.  The typical overhead of an iSCSI software initiator back in 2003 was roughly 40% at the CPU and up to 20% of available memory.  We’ve come a LONG way since 2003 with the iSCSI protocol, including additional ratifications of the iSCSI standard with RFC-3720.

     In October of 2008, FCoE is still a “working draft”.  This is why some recent announcements at SNW are comical at best.  Have we forgotten the problems of pre-standard products such as wireless access points?  While the FCoE standard has moved from the development to the review process in recent months, the reality exists that it is still not a formal standard.  Historians say, history repeats itself.  QLogic came out with iSCSI HBAs early on, and so did Intel.  Will the industry make the same mistakes it had with iSCSI in the early days with FCoE?  Based on recent announcements it looks more and more like it will.  I’ve tried to do a search to see if any FCoE software initiators have been benchmarked for memory and CPU utilization, however, I’ve found nothing so far, and haven’t had the time to run my own tests (I’d rather an independent post results anyway).

     So what is the benefit of FCoE?  The benefits of FCP over Ethernet.  The CONs?  This technology will ONLY run on DCE supporting 10GigE.  This means, from my understanding, that all HOSTs, Switches, and Storage will need to support this technology.  So, the real question, and what will be a topic in my next poll, how many customer run 8Gb FC too all SAN attached servers?  The reason iSCSI over GigE has been so popular, is because enterprise customers don’t have 100% of servers on the FC SAN, to has been and will continue to be TOO EXPENSIVE.  They have deployed iSCSI to reach servers that will benefit from the performance and storage consolidation that iSCSI brings to the data center.  Supporting iSCSI over 10GigE is a different proposition.  Since this will still run over TCP/IP, the storage devices can benefit from network consolidation (less cables, less infrastructure), while the majority of clients will still leverage 1GigE, in the few rare cases that throughput requires 10GigE  (note that I said THROUGHPUT, and not PERFORMANCE, because IOPs of iSCSI for small block sizes will be equal to IOPs of 2Gb, 4Gb, and 8Gb FC), then those hosts will run over the much more expensive port and network.

     Flashback, this is very similar to what occurred with standard Ethernet deployments.  Most companies kept 10/100 to servers, and used 1GigE for backup networks, slowly 1GigE became standard on critical servers, then finally on all data center based servers.  MANY companies still run 10/100 to the desktops still today.

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     Nothing more to say that hasn’t been said already.  Basically, if you’ve have VMWare running on NetApp appliances ( SPECIFICALLY USING NFS), and have followed the best practices guides dated prior to Sept. 2008, then your IT environment might be at risk.

     Please contact NetApp ASAP for the configuration changes that should be made.  I am also including the information posted by the Storage Monkeys:

There are a couple of important things to note:

• This is not a NetApp problem, but rather the result of a recommendation from NetApp. At that time, it was believed that this setting was necessary.
• In most cases VMs affected by this split-brain scenario will get corrupted and must be rebuilt or restored from backup.

We’re not the only ones who have seen this behavior, either:

VMWare and NFS on NetApp Filers
NFS Datastores and what was their BIG issue…

The key takeaway from this is the following:

• If you haven’t yet applied ESX350-200808401-BG, you should apply it. Don’t wait. Now.
• If you did follow NetApp’s recommendations and set NFS.Lock.Disable, then review the instructions below (credit to Rick Scherer and several others, thank you!) to remedy the situation.

The instructions you should follow to restore NFS locking are here (these instructions include applying the patch):

1. Download patch ESX350-200808401-BG
2. Identify an ESX server against which you will apply the patch
3. Use VMotion and migrate the running VMs to other VMware ESX nodes
4. Install this patch on the selected VMware ESX server
5. In the Advanced Configuration settings ensure that NFS file locking is enabled with NFS.Lock.Disable=0 (you can also use the esxcfg-advcfg command to set this value)
6. Edit the /etc/vmware/config file and add this line:
   prefvmx.ConsolidateDeleteNFSLocks = "TRUE"
7. Save the changes to the file and reboot the VMware ESX host
8. Use VMotion to move VMs back to patched/NFS lock enabled/prefvmx enabled host
9. Repeat the steps above on each host in the cluster

So, again, if you haven’t applied ESX350-200808401-BG, please do so as quickly as possible, and then ensure that NFS locking is enabled. If you’ve previously disabled NFS locking, then follow the steps above to restore NFS locking and protect yourself against this possible split-brain scenario.

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     In Marketing 101 you learn about the concept of Bait and Switch in advertising.  The idea is "fraud” and is based on the idea of advertising on product to get customers in the door, not have the advertised product in stock anymore and offer a substitute to close the business.  This practice is still alive and well in retail, but is even in the disk storage industry.

Bundles, bundles, everywhere…

     In the storage industry the bait and switch doesn’t really exist in the same fashion, although some vendors are known to switch a lower model into a quote when presenting a lower quote, however this is usually “caught” by a customer.  Today’s scam is the Software Feature Bundle!  As one vendor puts it in internal documents “Know your current bundles!”.  (Since this isn’t a public document, the vendor and screen shots will be excluded from this post)  What exactly is this sales technique?  It is the basic premise that a vendor can hide software license costs and software maintenance(support) costs within a single line item on a quote.  The act of the single line item isn’t what my gripe is about, it is the gouging that occurs next.  The “bundles” are heavily discounted (great for the customer) for the first year! (BAD FOR THE CUSTOMER)

     Why would this be bad for the customer?  Because no amount of savings in the first year will make up for the gouging that will occur on license renewal and maintenance renewal in years 2-5.  When I go up against the traditional a la carte license unified storage vendor, it is an easy sale, once a customer looks at quotes for the products over a 3-5 year period (typical timing between technology refreshes in the storage industry).  Believe it or not, about a year ago, Customer X was able to buy a complete new iSCSI solution for less then the cost of the quote to renew his existing infrastructure’s support agreement.

     So, I’m NOT telling everyone to buy all-inclusive products (although, I really should!).  I’m giving the advise, price out your solutions up-front for the expected useful life with ALL of your vendors.

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The date is 1969 and the Muscle Car is king of the roads.  Nobody cared that they only got 8 miles a gallon because gas was only 30 cents a gallon.  The end of the muscle car era was coming however.  The gas crisis was looming in the future and people could not afford to continue driving cars that got such horrible gas mileage regardless of the “benefits” .  Though the muscle car has never gone away because there will always be a market for those impressive machines, their time as the everyday car has gone. 

As we approach 2009, storage is coming to a similar crossroads.  Through the 90’s and 2000’s, people bought the biggest and fastest storage with little consideration for any of the extra costs involved with maintaining that storage because they needed the capacity and the horsepower.  There was incredible increases in performance and capacity but the hidden costs of running and maintaining that storage was increasing exponentially as well.  Costs of the extra processors, fans and memory that are required for that capacity and performance takes more power and cooling which raises the overall cost of running your data center. 

With the cost of energy rising and our data centers today becoming more dense and costly to keep cool, data centers even built 2 years ago are running out of power and cooling.  Companies are now starting to look at alternatives to combat those rising energy costs.  Whether that is looking at a cheaper iSCSI storage solution as opposed to a big enterprise box or even looking at new technology like MAID,  there is a change on the horizon for storage and how IT managers handle the rising costs of keeping their data centers running and on budget.  I personally haven’t seen a RFP in the last year that didn’t have “green” requirements specifically stated.

The big costly storage unit is not going to go away because it is a invaluable and irreplaceable piece of the enterprise environments.  We are however seeing a end of the “bigger and better at all costs” storage era because data centers just can’t continue to pay for the power and cooling to support that storage model. 

http://www.woodstock69.com/costofliving.htm

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     In recent news, and in reaction to H-Ds claim 50% tire reduction announcement, SEARS® released claims that using it’s trash compactors will condense the amount of trash a given household puts into trash bags.  There are of course some limitations and requirements.   Firstly, this will be measured over 30 days.  Secondly, if you are only filling a single bag of trash a week currently, you must increase your trash output to 5x this amount as a minimum.  Lastly, you must be throwing out certain types of trash.

    I know I’m cheating here, taking my idea from before and playing it out again, but give me a break guys!  Your customers aren’t this naive!

In similar news, SEPATON released its own “quarantine”:

SEPATON guarantees that the FastStart Plus Deduplication Package will reduce the capacity of backup data at a 40:1 ratio under the following conditions: Guarantee only applies to currently GA backup applications with Microsoft Exchange 2003 and 2007 Agent, Oracle 10 and 11 using flat files or RMAN. The package must be installed and configured by a SEPATON Professional Services representative. The customer must
follow SEPATON best practices including performing full backups of applicable data at least five times per week for thirty days…

Now to be fair, SEPATON, is doing much more then just just compression, but requiring customers to go from traditional back-up practices of weekly full backups, to daily full backups is NOT a fair requirement.  I am beginning to question the marketing firms and marketing teams that are working on these programs.  There is a time in our industry that it feels like the vendors believe that our customers are stupid…that’s right I said it.  I would like to hear from customers, end-users, and IT professionals on this…is anyone buying into these marketing programs at the worker levels?  Or are these programs being pushed on your by executives that don’t understand technology?

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     The storage blogosphere has erupted with financial market comments, analysis, and concern.  My friend Marc Farley described it as potentially ”…the wheels come off the bus…”   NetApp’s Dave Hitz, had an anecdote from the .Com crash that was very impactful to me personally (as I sat in executive meeting just like that), and its relation to the current market situation.

     I agree strongly with Dave Raffo over at StorageSoup: “Until now, the storage industry has held up well this year in the face of any economic slowdowns – even those affecting the financial services sector.” 

     Well, it appears, the shoe did drop, the wheels are missing some lug nuts, and this is more than a slowdown.  The DOW closed another 500 points down yesterday.  The banking industry is going through major consolidation, mostly forcibly.  Rumors of GE, possibly the largest company in the United State, having problems securing additional lines of credit. 

     I do think however, that the purchasing habits of large spending IT organizations has changed

drastically inte the past 10 years.  I can remember buying 3 frames of EMC Symm in late 90s a purchase that should have carried our storage needs for at least 3 years.  In today’s market companies have moved to purchasing for the next 3-6 months of growth, not 3-5 years.  This leaves organizations to get better pricing as costs drop for technology, and requires continued storage purchasing.  I do think we will all be effected more by companies not being able to finance capitol purchases rather than not needing to make those purchases, however, companies will find a way to survive!  I think the storage vendors will come up with unique financing terms from their own back accounts.

     I tweeted the other day “I think the bottom of the DOW will be 8500, that’s when I plan on buying back in!”, but deep down in my heart I know a crash that low will destroy many peoples savings, retirements, and futures.  This is a time for deep reflection, prayer (if you pray), luck, and a lot of hope.  When times are at the worst, things can only get better.

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     “Stay Tuned” is what M. Dell, CEO of Dell Computers Corp. said in response to DELL | EQUALLOGIC PS-Series storage future support of SSD drives. 

     This would be groundbreaking in the performance tiers that are available on PS-series storage today.  PS-series already supports 7200RPM SATA, 10k RPM SAS and 15K RPM SAS drives in the PS5000 product line.  WHEN?  THAT IS WHAT WE WANT TO KNOW!  While you are at it, when is this product going to get 10GigE?

     I honestly believe that PS-series storage tiering and SSD drives puts the HSM story for DELL | Equallogic storage far ahead of the storage industry curve.  This also, puts any claims by Compellent, just hot air. 

The only thing left to even the playing field for iSCSI vs. FC will be general adoption of 10GigE…we all can’t wait.

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