Taylor's Take on Sun Storage
My storage team and I focus on three of the most important aspects in any industry: customers, competitors and market trends. There is insight to gain and share in this role, so here is our take on Sun and Storage - Taylor Allis
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: 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:
- 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.
- 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.
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):
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]
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[3]
HP's Upline goes Offline
HP Upline is HP's new SaaS
offering for online storage,
backup and data migration services - from HP's recent acquisition of
Opelin. They offer "unlimited storage" for $299 for year 1 or $599 for
2 years.
Unfortunately HP Upline crashed just a few days after it was launched. To be fair, this stuff isn't always easy - we had several obstacles to overcome with our own SaaS compute service.
However, HP probably didn't count on an active EMC blogger as an early adopter (openness has its pros and cons). EMC's Storagezilla posted a blog with HP's notice to customers about the crash. EMC's own SaaS storage service, Mozy, wasted no time on capitalizing on HP's crash in true EMC fashion - launching a Google text ad titled "Shafted by Upline?" and "Is Upline jerking you around?"
Another significant point Mr. Zilla points out is that the current SaaS leader, Amazon Web Services' (AWS) total revenue for 2007 was $100M.
Bottom line:
The market and storage industry is adopting SaaS - but the
market is still new and emerging. Like most trends, SaaS won't
take over the world - but the datacenter mix will change, evolve over
time. And while simple backup technologies and strategies are not as
sexy as new trends like Web 2.0 or SaaS - a simple backup strategy will
still have its place in the new world.
Posted at 02:12PM Apr 23, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence | Comments[2]
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