Taylor's Take on Sun Storage

Donate in Simon Shepherd's Name

Simon Shepherd "Si" was a brilliant Market Analyst on our Market Strategy & Intelligence team. He worked out of our London, UK office; was with StorageTek before Sun and with IDC before that.

Simon helped size and scope the early markets for new Sun innovations like Project Blackbox (Sun Modular Data Center) and Thumper (Sun Fire X4500). He was given the task to size markets that essentially didn't exist at the time due to his creativity, hard work and intelligence.

Unfortunately, Simon's 14-month battle with glioblastoma (brain cancer) ended several months ago. We have lost a great man and colleague who was in his youth. Simon is survived by his wife Stephanie and young daughter Scarlett.

How can I help?
Simon was very aware of the lack of research into glioblastoma due to lack of funding, and his wife has asked for our help. If you want to help and give hope to others who have the same diagnosis as Simon's, then please donate to the following requested charity:

The Royal Marsden Cancer Campaign
The Institute of Cancer Research
123 Old Brompton Road, London SW7 3RP

You can donate by check or credit card online at:

• The Royal Marsden Cancer Campaign Online donation 

Please note that the donation is in memory of Simon Shepherd and they will ensure that it goes to the right fund.

Sun will match Sun Employee gifts!
If you are a Sun employee, be sure to fill out Sun's Matching Gifts program form  and in most cases Sun will match your gift by 100%!

Posted at 10:33AM Jul 10, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[1]

New Open Storage Products: J4000 & X4540!

Today we announced the newest product editions to our Open Storage offerings:  The Sun Storage J4000 product line and our next-generation "Thumper" (aka "Thor" or the Sun Fire X4540).  

Below is our take on the significance of these new storage products:    

This is not your Father's JBOD: J4000 is Sun's new JBOD product line.  And yes, I did use the words "new" and "JBOD" in the same sentence! To truly see the relevance and impact of a new JBOD product line, we need to look at it in context with recent technology innovations and through an Open Storage filter. 

Let's first look at the new disk interconnects SATA and SAS.  Unlike their ATA and SCSI predecessors, newer SATA and SAS drives provide better performance, flexibility, scalability and reliability (while still using the SCSI and ATA command sets).  They move from parallel and multidrop technologies to serial and point-to-point technologies.  So data transfer is faster (SAS offers 3Gb/s today which comes to 12Gb/s in a 4-lane port.)  You don't have to daisy chain a bunch of SCSI devices together and worry about contention or terminators anymore.  You can connect more devices now; transfer data at longer distances; increase data transfer speeds; and not worry about any past reliability issues you might have had with older ATA and SCSI technologies.  By leveraging these new technologies, today's JBOD offers significant advantages over yesterday's JBOD.           

So who needs new & improved JBOD?  First, Sun's newest JBOD offerings are a great solution for anyone that needs inexpensive, reliable and fast storage added to their servers running applications in any Solaris, Linux or Windows environment. 

Second, JBOD is a perfect building block for an Open Storage device.  It helps answer the question, "How do I build a better and more affordable storage system today?" 

Below is a diagram that sums up the advantage of Open Storage - and why Sun customers can build storage systems for 90% less that purchasing a proprietary storage system:

In the above diagram we see that users have access to open source storage applications and platforms via OpenSolaris.org.  Users can also use an industry-standard server running ZFS to provide RAID, data integrity and disk management capabilities - similar to a controller offered in a closed storage system pictured on the right.  So this is a new architecture that let's users customize storage to meet their unique needs while saving a ton of cash (which can then be used to deploy MORE storage or maybe fund a well-deserved trip to some tropical island...) 

When you have all these components, JBOD moves from simply being direct-attached disk for servers to a fundamental building block in deploying a cost-effective, scalable and high-performing storage solution.  (And let's not forget that SSD/Flash is/will be another building block for an even high(er)-performing storage solution!)  

Let's take a look at Sun's new JBOD lineup, available today and starting at ~$3,000 USD list:

• Sun Storage J4200:  Great entry product.  It's a 2U, 12 drive enclosure which scales to 36TB.  It has 6 ports (each port offers 12Gb/s as mentioned above).
  
• Sun Storage J4400:  Great for higher performance and capacity.  It scales to 192TB and has 6 ports.  (Pictured at right)
  
• Sun Storage J4500: Great for bulk storage.  The J4500 offers:
•  The highest capacity in its class - 48TB per tray
• The highest scalability in its class - scales to 480TB
• Best density in the market - 12TB per RU
• Sun StorageTek SAS RAID HBAs: For Sun servers and hardware RAID implementations. 
  

Thumper's newest sibling - Thor:  Thumper, or the Sun Fire X4500, has been an excellent innovation in the industry.  As a Storage Server hybrid, the X4500 has helped users save significant eco and consolidation costs while boosting storage performance, capacity and flexibility.  

The X4500 sold 70PB of storage in its first year of shipping; was named an InfoWorld 2008 Technology of the Year; and has been used in countless customer implementations - from a Virtual Tape Library, to one of the world's largest supercomputers, in NAS solutions, to a data warehouse and even an IP-based video service.  As I've blogged before, if Thumper came from a start up, it would be worth a billion...     

So today we also announced the next product in our storage server family - Thor, or the Sun Fire X4540, starting at ~$22,000 USD list and available this month.  

Let's look at the specs of these two systems to see what we have upgraded.  The key value of a storage server (for me at least) is that you can replace multiple servers and disk arrays with just a couple of these systems for better performance and lower costs (saves on footprint and power costs) - and you can repurpose these systems into any storage application or solution you need over time:  

Complete Open Storage Portfolio:  Today's announcement helps complete all the components Sun if offering for an innovative, flexible and game-changing new storage architecture - from the storage application layer, to the storage platform, to the disk, tape and upcoming Flash/SSD hardware.  

For more information on today's announcements, click on the info below: 

• John Fowler video on J4000
• Kris Bakke, Ray Austin and Geoff Mershon talk J4000
• Open Storage Portal
  

Also be sure to check out the two recent Open Storage White Papers we have authored - What is Open Storage?  and Open Storage Adoption

Posted at 10:29AM Jul 09, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[1]

NetApp's David Hitz Declaration

I have made it a point to not comment or offer opinion on the ongoing NetApp litigation for obvious reasons - I'll leave that task up to Sun's lawyers and our Chief General Counsel.  

Fortunately, the court recently unsealed a document in the ongoing litigation.  So for anyone interested in details; a copy of a declaration from NetApp's co-founder and EVP, Dave Hitz, can be viewed below: 

• DECLARATION OF DAVID HITZ IN SUPPORT OF NETAPP, INC.'S OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT SUN MICROSYSTEMS, INC.'S MOTION FOR PARTIAL STAY 

Below are some quotes taken directly from the document:     

On patents being discussed that revolve around Sun ZFS and NetApp's WAFL technology: 

"Sun's ZFS technology appears to be a conscious reimplementation of NetApp's innovative WAFL filesystem, as admitted by the creators of ZFS: 'The fie system that has come closest to our design principles, other than ZFS itself, is WAFL...the first commercial file system to use the copy-on-write tree of blocks approach to file system consistency.'" 

On Sun open sourcing ZFS software: 

"Irreparable harm to NetApp through Sun's open sourcing of ZFS: 
Sun has open-sourced ZFS and thereby given away for free NetApp's patented technology to anyone that wants to download a copy. That means Sun has created infringing computer code and made it easy for software users and software companies everywhere to infringe, instead of having users compensate NetApp for its technology through normal product purchases. This is not much different from the problems caused when an entity builds a business by distributing for free infringing copies of music. In both cases, there are practical problems in any attempt to recover the infringing copies or to enforce rights against everyone that has downloaded copies of the infringing software. One difference is that adoption of ZFS requires time because it is a software program and not just a song. The next two or three years are very significant for the proliferation of ZFS and it is vital to shut down Sun's distribution promptly."

Mike Dillon updates us that Sun submitted 6 reexamination requests on the patents asserted by NetApp to the US Patent Office (PTO); asking that it reconsider whether those patents should have ever been issued.  According to Mr. Dillon, the PTO has already issued a first action rejecting all the claims of one patent - no 6,857,001.  Sun has also asserted 22 patents in response against NetApp's product line.  

On Sun freely licensing ZFS to other companies:

"Sun is not the only company that could potentially hurt NetApp's market position. Because Sun freely licenses ZFS to other companies, it is possible that the entire competitive profile of the data storage market might change within the next 3-5 years.

REDACTED

Moreover, because ZFS is open-sourced, it lowers the barier to entry for startup companies to bring products incorporating ZFS technology to market and start competing with NetApp. Indeed, because Sun is distributing ZFS at no cost, it dramatically lowers the product development costs for any company, not just startups."

I encourage anyone to read the document in its full context.  For any legal updates, be sure to bookmark Mike's Blog.

Posted at 02:11PM Jul 01, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[0]

Friday's Storage Links: Week of June 23, 2008

Posted at 04:18PM Jun 27, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage News Links  |  Comments[0]

Open Storage: Early Customers

Now let's talk about what really matters when it comes down to Open Storage - customers.  Now, forgive me for repeating myself because I mentioned some of these customer testimonials in my first Open Storage blog.  But it just so happens that the ones I blogged about ended up in the Open Storage Adoption White Paper.    So, I'll talk about them (again), but also throw some new ones in... 

Customer Blog Comments:  Before I do, I want to point to a couple of blog comments.  The first one was submitted to Chuck Hollis' EMC blog post Do-It-Yourself Storage.  After Mr. Hollis finished criticizing Open Storage, an experienced storage and IT customer posted this comment in response to his critique:  

"I think you are missing the point. I did actually a price comparison. Building your storage solution (in my case several hundred TBs) from cheap disks using x86 servers + ZFS + Open Solaris + Solaris Cluster + ZFS, where all software is not only open sourced it is also for free, *does* make a huge difference. We actually started building our solution on EMC Symmetrix (great box) and EMC Celerra years ago and endup on really cheap storage + ZFS as a replacement and a way to move forward. Additionally all features like snapshots, cloning, end-to-end checksuming, remote replication, built-in compression, built-in cryptography, NFS, CIFS, iSCSI, ... are also for free. Better - they work exactly the same regardles what cheap storage or server we put underneath.

What ZFS brings to the market is the open sourced and free Google like approach to storage - how to cheaply build reliable storage from small to large scale installations.

Sure, especially for SMB market, what is needed is an easy GUI interface built on-top of Solaris + ZFS. I'm sury you will see one sooner or later."

I like the "Google like approach to storage" comment (and the fact that a disk + ZFS system replaced an EMC DMX and Celerra system for this particular customer!)  I also had a customer post these comments to my blog -  they just deployed a 2TB OpenSolaris ZFS + COMSTAR storage system for a VMWare Cluster with off the shelf components saving €2,000 in the process.  Cool stuff.   

Open Storage Customers:  Not surprisingly, a lot of these early adopters use open source to compete in their respective businesses.  You may also expect that early Open Storage adopters would come from Sun's Solaris install base - while true, many new customers do NOT come from Sun's current base.  In fact, a lot are Linux users.  They have chosen Sun because of...Storage. (Open Storage to be precise). 

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DigiTar
DigiTar provides messaging security and processing services over the Internet (antivirus, antispam, antiphishing, firewall, and archiving).  DigiTar is using Open Storage to improve the performance and efficiency of their database servers. They are using Sun's X4500 storage servers and ZFS to automate database storage administration - with ZFS they have reduced the identification and fixing of database corruption by days and/or weeks.   They are also an active member of Sun's OpenSolaris community and use the OpenSolaris community and SunSpectrum for tech support.

What I personally love about DigiTar's story is that they were (still are) a Linux shop.  So what made them a Sun OpenSolaris customer???  Storage!

Why? Read their CEO/CTO's blog:  Democratizing Storage.  He basically states that OpenSolaris was brought into the company because it made for a superior storage platform.  The clencher (and essence of Open Storage) for me is when he compares deploying Open Storage vs. a traditional storage architecture: 

"To replicate the level of redundancy we get with two X4500s, we’d have to install two completely separate storage arrays…not to mention also buy two very large beefy servers to run the databases. By using X4500s, we get the same reliability and redundancy for about 85% less cost. That kind of savings means we can deploy 6.8x more storage for the same price footprint and do all sorts of cool things like:

• Create multiple data warehouses for data mining spam and mal-ware trends.
• Develop and deploy new service features whenever we want without considering storage costs.
• Be cost competitive with competitors 10x our size."

Want do do more with less?  DigiTar is with Open Storage...

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Nexenta
Nexenta is unique in that they are an Open Storage customer - but they are using Open Storage to build and sell storage products of their own.  They bill their product as “Enterprise-class data storage for everyone!” Nexenta has built its NexentaOS and NexentaStor software appliance from OpenSolaris and ZFS; and they can deploy it over the Sun Fire X4500 as well as other HW.

Like DigiTar, Nexenta was founded by Linux gurus.  In fact, the Nexenta team developed the iSCSI stack that was adopted by the Linux community. So what platform did these experts in storage and open-source software choose to build a new storage offering?   OpenSolaris & ZFS - due to its advanced storage functionality and long history in enterprise environments.  

So now the company offers NexentaStor - a software-based NAS and iSCSI solution with unlimited incremental backups, snapshot mirroring and the inherent virtualization, performance, thin provisioning and ease of use benefits of ZFS.

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Sapotek Inc.
Sapotek Inc. is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider that offers online desktop services to (currently) 200,000 users worldwide.  This SaaS provider had a classic Web 2.0 storage problem - how to massively scale, efficiently and affordably? 

Sapotek was running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Dell servers and had been maxing out at five concurrent threads per server. So they migrated to Sun Fire X4200 servers and the Sun Fire X4500 storage server running ZFS.  They replaced four (4) Dell/EMC storage systems with one (1) Sun Fire X4500.  Sapotek also used Sun's ZFS snapshot feature, and reported that it had reduced backup and recovery times by 99%!  (From hours/days to minutes).  Here is what their cheif tech officer,  Oscar Mondragon, said about Sun Open Storage: 

"The ZFS file system feature of the Solaris 10 OS is a marvel. It creates a common storage pool where all storage performs as fast as if it were local. Our administrators can grow, add, or remove storage on the fly in a single step. Just two people administer 24 TB."

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Above is just a sampling of early customers that have deployed components of Sun's hardware and software Open Storage portfolio.  Read the Open Storage Adoption White Paper for more case studies or my previous blog post.  Additionally, take a look at these customer testimonials (Some have bought commercial versions of Sun's storage offerings and some have deployed open source offerings)

• Dow Corning Corporation: Increased storage capacity by 50% with ZFS
• Joyent: Sun Fire X4500 gave them a hosted storage business at $1/GB as opposed to $6-$7/GB for EMC
• Nomura Bank: Used ZFS to create a common storage pool, with no partitions to manage. Admins can now provision or grow storage, and add or remove a file system with a single command.  ZFS also safeguards data at the bank by running 64-bit checksums
• OmniTI: During a catastrophic accident when 1.8 TBs were lost, they restored their entire database in just seconds with ZFS
• University of Calgary: Deployed SAM-QFS software for 229TBs of storage, moves data between Sun StorageTek Disk and Tape via policy
• University of Oxford: Their digital library project will manage 9 million library items and support an average of 9,000 library resource requests a week
• IN2P3/CNRS: Optimized datacenter space and reduced energy consumption with X4500

Posted at 05:54PM Jun 26, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[1]

Friday's Storage Links: Week of June 16, 2008

Posted at 02:12PM Jun 20, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage News Links  |  Comments[0]

My Switch from PC to Mac....

Well, I'm officially blogging from my new MacBook Pro after my old Dell PC fizzled out on me.... 

What a difference a decade makes.  I started out on Apple as a Web developer.  It was my platform of choice and I never thought I'd go to a PC - I was loyal to the core.  I remember the good 'ol days of making sure my Config PPP screen showed two connected smiley faces; and the days of posting docs to my websites with my Gopher or Fetch (FTP) applications.  The days of Mosaic...and then Netscape (I still remember how excited I was when I first saw Netscape).  But then I left Web development to join an HP distributor and it was PCs from then on...

Why the switch?  

Despite the great ads; I got into multimedia and Web 2.0 for lack of a better term.  Even though I'm a "business/marketing guy"; I get to re-live the good 'ol days through my blog, Wikis and Podcasts.  I also develop home movies and videos.  So the switch started at home - I bought a Mac for our home computer several months ago b/c of all the multimedia features it had. 

I made the switch to Mac for business this week after leaving Mac over 10 years ago.  I use multimedia and Web features in business more now than I ever have before.  The design and innovation coming out of Mac has been incredible lately - so the geek in me had some influence as well.  Also, so far, all the applications I had on my PC work well (sometimes better) on this Mac (but of course I just got it).  

But a large driver was also working at Sun - while my new Mac is pretty foreign to me at this point in time; I did see something familiar in its disk utility - ZFS.  It's pretty cool to see your company's enterprise-class file system on your consumer laptop.  A testament to the versatility to ZFS and open software...  

Posted at 12:28PM Jun 19, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[1]

Open Storage: Vendor Landscape

Ok - chapter 5 in the Open Storage Adoption White Paper talks about the vendor landscape.  We'll start with Sun.  

Sun's Open Storage Differentiation
There are three areas that position Sun as the best partner for Open Storage solutions:

1. Innovative HW systems: Sun’s hardware differentiation lies in design innovation.  Three examples of this are the Sun Fire X4500 (Thumper) which combines a four-way x64 server with 48 TB of SATA disk in a 4U rack space - one of the most efficient and dense storage servers on the planet (and there is more to come).  Sun's unique ST5800 (Honeycomb) archive platform scored perfect 10s in reliability and scalability with InfoWorld.  On the server side, Sun's Blade 6000 is the most open blade platform in the industry - delivering Solaris, Linux, Windows or VMware on single and multicore processors by Sun, AMD, and Intel in one chassis.
   
2. OpenSolaris as a storage platform:  One of the most robust and reliable OSes in IT.  Sun also offers advanced open-source file systems including NFS, the upcoming Parallel NFS (pNFS) and ZFS.  ZFS can manage zettabytes of storage and offers data services including volume management, data integrity and software RAID.  
3. Open-source storage applications: Sun has now open-sourced more high-level storage application software than any other storage vendor.  Applications like remote-mirror-copy and point-in-time-copy.  Take a look at Sun's complete open-source, end-to-end storage portfolio (a storage developer's dream):
• Traffic management, disk, and tape drivers
• Volume snapshot and replication applications
• Media management and data migration applications
• Volume management and HSM software
• Fixed-content, archive applications
• Storage file systems
• FC, iSCSI, OSD, and object-based targets and initiators

Other "Open Storage" Efforts

In keeping with the definition of open source software + industry standard HW = Open Storage (aka a more scalable, economic storage architecture) let's look at what other vendors are doing with open source software and industry-standard hardware.  But remember, several vendors use open source software and industry standard hardware - but still limit customer choice and charge higher rates in their implementations...

IBM: In terms of industry-standard hardware, IBM sells Intel and AMD servers as well as SAS- and SATA-based disk and JBOD systems. IBM does see value in open source as it is a large Linux supporter. (However, Sun has more than 3,000 members and 30 open-source storage projects in development for OpenSolaris AND has even open-sourced its commercial applications like the Sun StorageTek Availability Suite - giving its customers full and affordable access to its own IP).  IBM’s recent investment in the storage market has been its recent acquisition of XIV - see IBM buys XIV - good move or bad?  XIV NEXTRA does use industry-standard hardware, but its software is proprietary (not open source).  XIV shows IBM has realized customers need more than what traditional disk products offer today - the design points of the XIV architecture are low cost and massive scalability.  However, the technology is new and IBM’s claims of low cost are yet to be determined.

HP: HP also sells Intel and AMD processor-based servers; as well as SAS, SATA and SCSI JBOD arrays.  HP sells ProLiant servers or industry-standard servers running Windows Storage Server (Not open source, but obviously a high-volume OS).  HP acquired PolyServe in 2007 to cluster its storage and server systems.  HP recently announced its HP StorageWorks 9100 Extreme Data Storage System (ExDS9100) - a large NAS appliance with an entry configuration of a whopping 246TB of standard disk.  HP also broke away from Windows in its implementation - using open-source Linux as the platform for this higher-capacity platform.   HP says it will ship the ExDS9100 by year's end, but without some features like CIFS support.  (And by the time the ExDS9100 ships, Sun's X4500 will have been on the market for over 2 years with over 250 petabytes installed.)

EMC: EMC primarily offers closed systems today - custom components and software that are available only through EMC.  But EMC can identify business/IT trends and adapt to them. In January 2008, EMC announced its first Storage as a Service (SaaS) or “Cloud” storage offering.  EMC is also investing in two products code-named “HULK” and “MAUI.”  MAUI is software that will provide what EMC calls a “global repository” - but not much in known at the time of this blog.   According to this blogger, HULK's official name is EMC InfiniFlex and a single system consists of a full 44U rack with up to 300 drives (10 disk trays x 30 disks).  They fit these 30 drives in 3U it looks like (and does the front-to-back cooling suggest they stick the extra disk behind the front-end disk?)  It also uses 12 dual core, 1U servers as well as 2 ethernet switches.   So, it essentially looks like industry-standard HW (storage & servers) with TBD software.  HULK and MAUI may be EMC’s first venture into the open-storage space - especially if the systems are able to work with other, third-party, industry-standard components. But the benefits to EMC’s new offerings, and just how “open” they are, are yet to be announced...

NetApp: NetApp sells their own proprietary hardware and also develops their own custom operating system called Data OnTap (while others in the industry have been moving to an open or high-volume operating system for storage - like Solaris, Linux or Windows.)  NetApp does not open-source its storage operating system software.

Dell: Dell has built its business on industry-standard, volume-based products.  Dell lets customers configure servers with industry-standard Intel and AMD processors, SATA disk drives and various Linux distributions. Dell can be credited for its online configuration and ordering services; but Open Storage customers really require enterprise-class software, services and tech support from their Open Storage vendors - like Sun offers. 

Next Blog...
Open Storage Case Studies

Posted at 03:10PM Jun 17, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[0]

Friday's Storage Links: Week of June 9, 2008

Posted at 10:52AM Jun 16, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage News Links  |  Comments[0]

Open Storage: Size & Growth

Both EMC and IBM have chimed in on what their thoughts are on Open Storage's future.  Tony's analogy made me think about a simple way to explain what I think Open Storage's future will be like: 

Open Storage & Builders Square: Let's rewind to the 1990's.  At that time I knew very little about home improvement.  In my mind, the only option was to save up to hire an expensive contractor to update my kitchen/bathroom/bedroom, etc.  But then a new store opened up close to my home - Builders Square.  That shop was subsequently replaced by a new store called Home Depot.  I was intimidated when I first walked in - there were only serious contractors around and I couldn't believe the amount of stuff they had.

Well the time came to update our bathroom - and as I was looking up contractors and plumbers in the phone book my wife said, "why don't you see how much it would cost to do it yourself by going to that new home store down the street?"  Fast forward to today and the people at our local Home Depot and Lowe's know me by name.  I have installed bathrooms, kitchens and built our basement.  I had help from store employees, instruction guides and affordable house "components" to do everything.  And when I walk into a store today; I see families make up the majority of customers - not contractors.   The simple fact is this - I could  not have done what I wanted to do with my house if it wasn't for the introduction of these new DIY home stores.   Open storage will help users do more with less - and reference architectures, solution blueprints, online communities and consultant services will help customers deploy open storage.

Open Storage & Stay-at-Home Moms:  Let's go back to the 90's.  I was also an early Web developer back then.  In fact, a quick Google search of my name will find a question I posted to a developer's help desk in 1996 where I ask, "Do you know when Netscape 2.0 for mac will be able to pick up Java applets?"  Pretty funny; and a testament to the longevity to open standards like HTML.  But my point is this - back then my wife was working in consumer PR and had absolutely no idea what I was doing for a living in high tech.  The Internet? The WWW? 

Today my wife has taken on the full-time job of raising our kids.  And I am happy to report that she is looking into starting her own blog - and she is looking at a blog from another stay-at-home mom as an example.  Now, if I told my wife she would be "developing" her own WWW journal back in the 90's she would have thought me crazy (which happens often) or the task impossible.   But Internet tools have evolved in away that let's anyone self-publish on the web for little to no cost.

I believe open storage will find its way in early markets; and the support resources and tools around it will evolve over time, bringing open storage to more traditional, mature markets.

Open Storage Size & Growth: (From the Open Storage Adoption White Paper)
How do we know this short of getting out our crystal ball?  Well, we don't - we need to estimate - and this is how we did it:  We took multiple IDC forecasts and rolled them into an internal Sun model - forecasts which included revenue from industry standard storage (JBOD, SSD, etc.) and open source software.  Then we made our own assumptions on how the market will behave - for example, we believe the fastest open storage adoption rates will appear in the entry and midrange NAS, unified storage (iSCSI, FC, etc.) and object-based storage markets.  We assume adoption will be slower in more traditional, higher-end markets.  So, this is NOT an IDC model - but an internal Sun model based on IDC and industry data (to be clear).  And this is an industry/market revenue estimate - it includes ALL vendor revenue from industry-standard hardware + open source software used in ANY storage system and does not give ANY info on Sun revenue or performance (to be clear again). 

So...we estimate open storage products and services will represent just under 12% percent of the total storage market in 2011. With IDC estimating the total storage market (hardware, software and services) generating approximately $90B in 2011, the open storage portion could be just over $10.6 billion.

We also predict that open storage will represent more than 20% of the external disk market by 2011.  At $5.2 billion, hardware represents the largest portion of the open storage market.  Tape storage and storage networking products are not included in the open storage forecast (although one could argue that LTO is industry standard hardware).

Next Blog: Sun Open Storage vs. Other Vendor Efforts

Posted at 05:00PM Jun 12, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[0]

Open Storage: Early Markets

As promised, below is a second White Paper on Open Storage. This second one addresses Open Storage market drivers and growth and is titled Open Storage Adoption.  It can be downloaded here:

• Open Storage Adoption White Paper

Again, I would like to thank Bruce Norikane, our Sr. Analyst, for his help as well as our market research manager, Chris Ilg, for his forecasting work. And again, I'll use this blog to post the CliffsNotes for those short on time.  Below I will cover the need for a new storage architectures and early target markets.   In subsequent blogs I'll cover the Open Storage future market forecast, other vendor initiatives and customer case studies - early adopters who have used Open Storage to solve their critical business needs...

The Need for a New Storage Architecture

Bruce, mentioned above, made a profound statement during our Open Storage planning that ended up in the White Paper.  He said, "Google and Amazon would not exist if they hadn’t built their own storage infrastructures."  They certainly wouldn't exist in their current state.  When they started, traditional storage architectures were too expensive and inflexible to support the business model they had in mind.  So what did they do?  They had to buy commodity components and developed their own software like the Google File System (GFS). 

Certainly not everyone can build their own file system today.  But the requirements that drove Google to build their own file system have done nothing but increased.   Consider the following facts:

• IDC’s report “The Expanding Digital Universe" states that new digital data will grow 6X between 2006 and 2010 (Emerging market data is growing up to 40% faster)
• 70% of this data will be created by individuals (me, on this blog for example)
• Enterprises will be responsible for storing 85% of this new digital data (Sun's IT dept has to manage the data I create)
• YouTube was founded in February 2005, and by May 2006, 50,000 videos were being added every day
• A YouTube search today can return about 72.1 million videos and 2.89 million user channels

A new, more economic and scalable storage architecture is desperately needed - enter Open Storage...

Open Storage Growth Markets

Open Storage can (and will) compete with traditional storage architectures.  But Open Storage won't "take over the world" overnight.  Most likely the data center mix of open storage architectures vs. closed storage architectures will change over time and vary data center to data center (if history is our guide).  But what markets will adopt sooner?  What are the Open Storage "sweet spots"?

Web 2.0:  I count Web 2.0 apps as applications delivered via the Web.  Apps like blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds, mashups, and social-networking sites like MySpace, Facebook or SmugMug.  Consider this:

• Technorati stated in March 2008 that there were 112.8 million blogs
• Bloggers update their content with 1.6 million posts EVERY day (or more than 18 updates per second!)
• There are currently 3,115 mashup applications on the Internet

And Web 2.0 apps are not just for up starts - Forrester surveyed 2,200 IT decision makers from traditional enterprises and found that 33% were planning on investing in Web 2.0 applications.  Web 2.0 storage requirements differ from traditional storage requirements as well. They need massively scalable but low-cost systems. Web 2.0 users are even willing to trade high availability for lower costs.  Everyone needs high scalability at lower costs - but the need in the Web 2.0 space is acute.   Thus, Web 2.0 will be the key driver for Open Storage architectures. 

HPC Storage:  IDC estimates that HPC storage systems added about $3.9 billion to the 2006 server revenue total and will undergo faster annual growth than HPC servers.  Maximizing I/O bandwidth and minimizing latency while scaling storage capacity is the top priority for HPC storage users. Because of this, data locality is an issue for many HPC implementations.  What's data locality?  HPC services provider Instrumental, Inc.explains:

To manage issues such as data locality, an open storage architecture is needed. The one thing that HPC storage deployments have in common is that they are all custom built. HPC users need direct access to their storage components and software along with the flexibility to swap components and customize software to optimize their storage.  This is difficult to do with closed storage systems.

Additionally, parallel, shared or clustered file systems that leverage global namespace technologies are used in most HPC storage environments. This includes the HPC open source file systems Sun offers - like Lustre.  In fact, Lustre is used in 15% of the top 500 supercomputers in the world and in six of the top 10 supercomputers.

Lastly, an additional top storage requirement in HPC is Hierarchal Storage Management (HSM) software (moving data from disk to tape).  Why?  Just look at the massive amounts of data HPC applications generate. The San Diego Supercomputer Center states their earthquake simulations alone generate 47TB every week!  By 2011, they expect archived data to grow to more than 100PB. HPC centers must leverage the economics of tape to store such massive amounts of data.  Sun offers tape as well as open-source HSM software for disk-to-tape data migration - Sun's Storage Archive Manager (SAM) software.  

To see the real-world benefits an open storage architecture can offer HPC customers, see the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) implementation of Sun Constellation - aka Ranger.   

Server Virtualization:  Open storage introduces more flexibility and consolidation benefits to the server-virtualization market. This added functionality can be realized in two ways:

1. By running open storage software inside a virtual machine (VM)
2. By running any vendor’s storage software on an open storage server
   

Storage users can now consolidate three servers and a storage appliance onto a single server. In a closed architecture, storage software cannot be separated from the hardware.

In the second scenario, users can use an open storage server, such as the Sun Fire X4500, as a storage target or shared appliance. What’s unique is that users can repurpose their storage appliance as their needs change. For example, customers can repurpose the same Sun Fire X4500 into a NAS device, a Virtual Tape Library (VTL) or a data replication appliance without buying more hardware. Now that's investment protection!

In the following diagram, a customer has taken a Sun Fire X4500 server running Linux-based VTL software and has repurposed it into a remote replication appliance by leveraging server virtualization and open source Sun StorageTek Availability Suite software. 

Sever Virtualization and Open Storage can deliver better investment protection and significant cost and consolidation advantages ...

Next Blog...

 What we predict the size and growth of the Open Storage will be

Posted at 04:06PM Jun 10, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[1]

Flash! Ahhh, Ahhhh...

Looks like 2008 is the year Flash has moved from its home planet in the consumer space and has entered Enterprise IT. 

EMC announced its Flash-based Solid State Drives (SSD) for its enterprise disk arrays in January; and today I can talk about some (not all) of Sun's plans with Flash - or to be more accurate - our plans for an entire systems product line of Flash-based technologies for the enterprise...

Read today's announcement here...

First of all - is Flash part of Sun's Open Storage plans?  Yes - not only part; but a critical part.  Remember Open Storage is industry standard hardware + open source software.  Having the option between HDD and SSD storage platforms will give Sun Open Storage customers a HUGE advantage in designing their storage systems.

We have also been designing our open source storage platform, OpenSolaris, and our storage file system, ZFS, to manage volumes or data pools based on SSD OR HDD storage platforms. (Let's also not exclude the economic tape tier with our media management and HSM open source projects!)

Read more about Flash in Open Storage here...

As you can read in today's announcement, our Flash-based server and storage product lines will be delivered in the second half of 2008 - at that time I can blog more on the detailed product lines and specs; but all I can say now is that they are pretty darn cool and innovative.  What also separates our Flash-based efforts from other competitors is that we are simply not announcing Flash as part of one product or as a product feature - we are introducing a new product line with multiple options that span storage and server systems.  

Lastly, our Sr. Disk analyst Bruce Norikane gives an excellent example of Flash benefits when he is educating internal audiences on the advantage of Flash in the enterprise.  The example is excellent because it is so simple.  We all know that Flash's largest benefits are efficiency (Eco) and speed.  But just how big is Flash's performance advantage?  When you put yourself in an application's shoes, their is a HUGE response time gap when you are saving your data to Volatile storage like L1 Cache and RAM vs. saving data to Non-Volatile storage like disk, tape and optical.  SSD is Non-Volatile storage that can offer an application a response time more than 1,000x faster than HDD disk!

Now applications think in nanoseconds, which can be a little abstract in human terms.  So let's take a look at the tables below - but instead of looking at nanoseconds; we'll look at seconds.

Without Flash:
In Human terms; if 1 nanosecond = 1 second. 

With Flash:
In Human terms; if 1 nanosecond = 1 second. 

Long live Flash! 

 ------------------------------------------------ Updates-----------------------------------------------------

Great info in Johnathon Schwartz's blog: Anything But a Flash in the Pan

Posted at 12:25PM Jun 04, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[0]

Open Storage Support

I've received a lot of questions about the support for Open Storage from customers and competitors.  And for good reason - if something isn't working the way you want it to, you need to know there is someone to count on for support.  This is true for traditional products; and is even more critical when it comes to products that incorporate open source software.     

I'll briefly explain Sun's support model around open source and Open Storage.  This model is also evolving over time and will only get better...

Professional Services: Sun offers architecture, development, implementation and management services for Open Storage.  Instead of writing about them here, I'll send you to this link.  

Appliance & Hardware Support:   Sun offers commercial versions of its Open Storage products, like the Sun Fire X4500, which comes with traditional support AND better storage economics.  You can also purchase Sun hardware for Open Storage.  These obviously come with the expected Sun support and service offerings.  (Remember that in Open Storage, users can essentially build a storage controller out of a standard server to save cost and improve flexibility.)   

Solaris Support: Sun's commercially available enterprise server O/S can be used as a storage platform in an Open Storage implementation.  It is also critical to point out that Solaris and ZFS offer advanced storage services like point-in-time-copy, volume management, storage administration and data integrity features like copy-on-write, end-to-end checksumming and RAID.  These are storage software features that typically reside in a storage controller or as an independent software application that has to be purchased separately.   So it is important to note that when we are talking about Solaris (and OpenSolaris) - we are also talking about all the storage software features and services that come with it. 

According to the Whitepaper, "OS Subscription Support Services: A Comparison of Sun and Red Hat" by the Crimson Consulting Group, Solaris support is comparable but better than Red Hat Enterprise Linux support.  Read the paper for the detail; below are the high-level findings when comparing Solaris vs. Red Hat Linux support:     

• Sun has a lower average price for annual support subscriptions - 16% lower per year, list.
• Sun has longer product lifecycle support - 7 years of support vs. 3 years for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (see diagram below)
  
• Sun has a larger support organization - 18x the support staff compared to Red Hat.
• Sun had a 27% lower total cost compared to Red Hat Enterprise Linux over a three-year period.
• Sun offers a commercial OS (Solaris) and an open source OS (OpenSolaris)

Customers who buy a Sun Server also get a free commercial Solaris RTU (right to use).  So customers get integrated support for Sun hardware and software comparable to support from other enterprise server vendors like HP or IBM.

OpenSolaris Support:  Sun is leading the way in offering support for the open source version of its storage platform - OpenSolaris.  OpenSolaris support also covers the storage applications embedded in the OS or file system.  Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is similar to commercial software in that the community does not update the distribution directly (but instead provides input via feedback, bug fixes or contributions).  Fedora is Red Hat's community-lead distribution of Linux.  So it is important to note that while Red Hat offers RHEL support, it currently does not offer traditional support for Fedora (beyond community support).   By contrast, Sun offers Solaris AND OpenSolaris support.  This is truly unique. 

Currently there are two OpenSolaris support subscriptions available - buy them here.  These subscriptions support OpenSolaris running on Sun Servers AND multiple 3rd-party x64/x86 systems.  OpenSolaris Subscription services include the:

1. OpenSolaris Essentials Subscription: 24x7 telephone support, online technical support and bug escalation services
   
2. OpenSolaris Production Subscription: 8x5 business hour and online technical support

If you are already a SunSpectrum System Plan customer, then OpenSolaris support is included with your System Service Plan.  Also, if you have a Solaris Subscription you are automatically entitled to the OpenSolaris Essentials service - pretty good deal if you ask me...

OpenSolaris Community Support:  So what about storage applications on OpenSolaris that are not part of the current OpenSolaris distribution/code base?  What if I am a developer and create a NEW storage application from the open storage offerings available to me?  This is where the Sun Developer Network (SDN) offers great support. Sign up to the Sun Developer Expert Assistance program for online support, technical assistance, code support, programming questions and diagnostic advice.  (You can even learn fun stuff like how to build an OpenSolaris NAS box in 5 easy steps!)

So, Sun has more than 7,000 employees dedicated to service and support - not all dedicated to Open Storage of course (I wish), but dedicated to storage, servers, software (commercial and open source!) and everything in between.  Sun's enterprise support offerings now cover open source software; and Sun has a strong and growing open source community that supports its open source initiatives worldwide.  Sun offers direct services in 55 countries and services in 160 countries either directly or through partners.    

 So hopefully some support questions were answered above - if not, pls comment and we'll see if we can find an answer...

Posted at 12:36PM May 28, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[0]

What is Open Storage? White Paper

Our Open Storage announcement drummed up interest in the industry - and for good reason...

• Tony Pearson at IBM related Open Storage to "Simply Dinners" - which is not a bad analogy.  I was thinking of the analogy of going to Home Depot or Lowe's vs. hiring a contractor for your house project - but Simply Dinners will do.  
  
• Marc Farley at Dell asked if Sun was giving up or changing the game?  I can assure you that we aren't giving up (storage is a pretty big market after all), but he nails it with his changing the game remarks - that's exactly what we are trying to do. 
  
• Lastly, EMC blogger Chuck Hollis aired his thoughts on Do-It-Yourself Storage, and we had a good discussion in the comments I thought.  (Until Chuck said I had turned from simply disagreeing to becoming disagreeable when I answered his questions on Open Storage - that ended that discussion!  Oh well, I guess he was trying to be rhetorical...) 

With that said - there is still a lot more to discuss about Open Storage.   We will have announcements upcoming, and we will also be publishing some White Papers on the subject. 

This first one is appropriately titled, What is Open Storage?  And it can be downloaded here:

• What is Open Storage? White Paper

I'll post the CliffsNotes below.  I would also like to thank Bruce Norikane, our Sr. Analyst, for his help in writing these papers - his intellect on storage infrastructures, past and present, is astounding.  I'd like to also thank or intelligence manager, Chris Ilg, for his forecasting work; as well as Graham Lovell, Jason Schaffer and our army of developers/engineers for their direction and edits (and leading the way to Open Storage...)

What is Open Storage?   (The short version)
Open Storage refers to open systems storage products based on industry-standard hardware and open source software.  Also, in an open storage architecture, customers can select the best hardware and software components for their individual needs.  By contrast, almost all modern disk arrays and NAS storage offerings are closed systems.

To see the evolution of disk architectures and benefits to Open Storage, see the blog post, "Sun is on to something"

Open Storage Versus Traditional Storage
The following chart compares vendor products, first ship dates, and storage system components. Red items are system components that are closed, proprietary, and available through a single vendor. Yellow items are built from industry-standard components yet sold as part of a closed, proprietary system. Green items are truly open components. They are industry-standard or open-source software, giving customers choice over how their systems are built.

Of significance, since 1992, storage systems have started to utilize open-source, commodity, or industry-standard technologies.  FreeBSD and Linux are used in several systems from vendors such as IBM, EMC, NetApp, and HP.  However, these open technologies are deployed in a closed-system approach.

Storage software is the last major storage infrastructure software to become open source, and Sun’s OpenSolaris Storage community has been leading the change.

Sun Open Storage Value Proposition 
The market shift to open storage systems and Sun’s open storage approach offer four distinct advantages:

1. A global development community working to make storage more innovative, functional and affordable
   
2. Breakthrough economics that can save storage users up to 90% over closed, proprietary storage
3. Enterprise-class quality storage systems that are reliable and offer some of the highest data integrity in the industry
4. The ability to easily and dynamically scale IT infrastructures to meet changing business needs
   

Sun Open Storage Offerings.

• Sun Open Storage Servers: The Sun Fire X4500 server leverages industry-standard hardware and software. It is a Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor-based server with 48 hot-swappable SATA drives in a single 4 U chassis that can achieve 48 TB of raw capacity with 1 TB SATA drives.
• Sun Open Storage Archive: The Sun StorageTek 5800 system also leverages industry standard components. It is the first integrated, fixed content archiving system built using open-source software.  In a recent InfoWorld product review, it scored perfect 10s in reliability and scalability.
• Sun Open Storage HPC: The Sun Constellation System builds on cost-effective, off-the-shelf components
  and state-of-the-art technologies to deliver an open, petascale architecture capable of up to 1.7 petaFLOPS of
  computing power.
• Lustre file system: Lustre is Sun’s open-source shared disk file system that is generally used for largescale
  cluster computing. The Lustre file system is currently used in 15% of the top 500 supercomputers in the world, and six of the top 10 supercomputers.
  
• Sun Open Storage Software: OpenSolaris is the cornerstone of Sun Open Storage offerings and provides a solid foundation as an open storage platform.  It includes:
• Solaris ZFS: ZFS can address 256 quadrillion zettabytes of storage and handle a maximum
  file size of 16 exabytes.
• Solaris DTrace: DTrace enables users to ask arbitrary diagnostic questions of the storage subsystem
• Solaris Fault Management Architecture: Solaris Fault Management Architecture provides automatic monitoring and diagnosis of I/O subsystems and hardware faults
• Sun StorageTek Availability Suite: Sun AVS delivers open-source remote-mirror-copy and point-in-time-copy applications as well as a collection of supporting software and utilities.

Posted at 01:00PM May 15, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[3]

Big news - HP and EDS to merge

So I have been heads down on finalizing a Sun Open Storage white paper we just wrote which I'll post here - but the HP-EDS announcement is big news so I'll pop my head up for a bit to offer some thoughts on the subject... 

This will be a big job for HP
First of all, a $13.9B merger is a monumental task with considerable risk - especially when 140,000 employees are involved.  HP and EDS will have a lot of challenges integrating - this move will more than double the size of HP's services business.  The HP-Compaq merger was another large acquisition, and gave HP significant challenges in the storage market. 

This will bump HP to #2 - above EMC, still below IBM
In storage market share, this merger will move HP from #3 in total storage (disk, tape, software, services) to #2 behind IBM.  EMC has been in second place, and this move would put HP ahead of EMC and just behind IBM.   Sun will remain #4 in overall storage (which is why we are aiming to change the game btw - to answer Marc's question) and Dell will remain at #5.   (This is based on IDC data btw)

HP is buying managed and enterprise services
This deal shows that HP is investing more in outsourced IT infrastructure and professional services (and perhaps less in consumer printers/scanners/computers?) - moving closer to IBM's core focus.  While HP has been historically strong in the SMB space, it has not had as strong a portfolio of services and offerings in enterprise disk and tape storage segments - especially when compared to Sun and IBM.  HP has also been trying to move into the managed services space to compete more effectively against IBM.  IBM and EMC have been investing heavily in managed storage, data protection and disaster-recovery services through acquisitions and internal investment - EDS will put HP in their backyard and help HP fill in some of these gaps (assuming the integration goes well.) 

A new HP storage channel? 
From a storage products perspective, an HP-EDS merger could have a similar impact on HP's products as IBM Global Services (IGS) has on IBM Storage products (or so HP desperately hopes).   IGS is essentially IBM's largest channel to move its storage products through.  IBM focuses on attaching services to all of its products, but when it leads with services it pulls through as many products in its portfolio as it can.  HP is no doubt betting that EDS's account control in larger environments can open the way for HP storage in the enterprise. 

Any HP/EDS changes will be gradual
A large part of EDS's business is dependent upon the innovation and features that come from Sun products and other vendors.  EDS is a profitable company, posting revenues above $22B prior to this acquisition.   To suddenly start recommending HP products in lieu of recently recommending Sun or other storage products could alienate EDS customers - protecting EDS's revenue stream and partnerships is in EDS' and HP's best interest.  So any preference for HP products in EDS' services offerings will be slow and gradual - and existing business and business partners will continue as planned no doubt - I'll go so far as to say that HP will ensure it. 

Sun and EDS are strong business partners
And we will continue to be.   I can't count how many EDS projects we have been involved with.  We are an EDS Agility Alliance partner and value EDS very highly.  As a result, Sun is baked into a lot of what EDS does - from Solaris, our servers, our Sparc and CMT processors to our storage.  

If anything, Sun (and other storage players) will just have to be all the more diligent in communicating how our products can better meet the needs of EDS and EDS customer's storage services goals - which isn't a bad proposition for customers btw.  Sun is definitely an innovator at the infrastructure level - and a more robust, reliable, cost-effective and eco-friendly infrastructure is an excellent backbone for any managed service offering...      

Posted at 12:22PM May 14, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[2]