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[2]

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]