Taylor's Take on Sun Storage

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[1]

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]

Sun Talks Strategy at SAS 2008

Yesterday, Feb 5, we had Sun's annual SAS event.  And no, SAS doesn't stand for Serial Attached SCSI in this case - it stands for Sun Analyst Summit.  We techies like our acronyms....

SAS 2008 invites industry and financial analysts to hear how Sun is doing and what it's outlook and strategy is moving forward.   Sun Keynotes were Jonathan Swartz, CFO Mike Lehman, Sales & Services EVP Don Grantham and CTO Greg Papadopoulos. 

After watching 9 sessions and viewing 11 presentations (whew!), my key takeaways are below - as well as the graphics that spelled it out for me.  SAS 2008 Cliff Notes if you will.  If you wish to view any of these sessions or presentations download them at our SAS 2008 website. 

Sun's Strategy

I grimace when talking strategy even though it is part of my job. Why?  People have different ideas of what a "strategy" is or should be - are you talking financial strategy, business strategy, technology strategy, sales strategy, marketing strategy? A lot of people who "talk strategy" usually have a strong opinion and ultimately think their take is the best (including me sometimes I'm sorry to admit).  With that said - I like Wikipedia's simple definition of strategy:

A strategy is a long term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal,  most often "winning".

What's the goal (i.e. winning) for Sun?  Growth - profitable revenue growth.  What's Sun's long term plan designed to achieve growth?  Let's take a look at some SAS slides, starting with the markets we wish to grow:      

This slide shows the customers we are focused on: Developers, Consumers and Communities.   They can be found in markets Sun is focusing on:

• Enterprise Infrastructure:  Customers here include GE, American Express, GM - i.e. traditional datacenters.   But we also have "Web 2.0" customers that need to build enterprise infrastructures to support their customers and communities, customers like eBay, SugarCRM and Salesforce.com.  
  
• High Performance Computing (HPC):   This ties into Greg Papadopoulos' Redshift observations - these are companies whose computing and storage needs are not being met by today's systems.  Sun's expertise and IP lies in massively scalable, efficient and high-preforming systems - so finance, manufacturing, Oil & Gas, Life Sciences and Government organizations needing high performance computing for their modeling and analysis applications are a great fit.  Customers here include TACC, Tokyo Institute of Technology and KiSTi.  In addition, some traditional and Web 2.0 customers of ours also have HPC needs, like Exxon Mobil, FedEx and even facebook.  
  
• Web Buildout:  Our market is in the middle of another great web infrastructure buildout.  Traditional systems and architectures don't support these customers, so they are looking for more open, flexible, scalable and affordable systems.  Classic customer examples include Fotolog, LinkedIn and facebook.   But traditional companies are also building out web infrastructures to support content, communities and services over the web - customers like Bank of America, Virgin Atlantic and China Mobile. 
  

So these are our markets - what is Sun's long term plan to grow them?  One graphic used by our Systems and Storage VPs John Fowler and Jon Benson at SAS sums it up, and also happens to be one of Johnathan's favorite venn diagrams: 

Their are two important points to this slide - the outside of the Venn and the inside of the Venn:  

Outside the Venn diagram (Empowering Sun's Practices):  This has been a mini revolution inside Sun and I have to credit Mr Swartz for his leadership and vision here.  One thing that contributes to the brilliance of great engineers is their passion and singular focus.   Sun did this as a company and it hurt them in the past.   In IT there is an ecosystem of other partners that one has to work with in order to be successful.   In the past, Sun built Solaris and microprocessors for Sun servers and Sun servers for Solaris and microprocessors.  Lines of business within Sun were limited in their market reach.

This has changed...the simple fact that Microsoft, Intel and AMD are on the above slide is evidence of this.  Sun has recently announced major deals with Microsoft, Dell and IBM.  What this means is that each line of business within Sun is encouraged and empowered to grow their business through the sales, marketing and partnership programs they deem appropriate.   The software group can grow Solaris business on Sun, IBM or Dell platforms.  The server and storage groups can grow their business though partnerships with Intel, AMD and Microsoft.  Storage can serve the open systems and mainframe markets. 

Another slide that exemplifies this change was presented by our Sales & Services EVP Don Grantham.  Just a couple years ago, the only things this slide would have on it would be Solaris, Java, Sun Servers and SPARC...

Inside the Venn diagram (Building an Open Platform):  While growing business through sales and technology partnerships is happening outside the diagram, building an integrated, open platform is what's happening on the inside.  Sun is taking its expertise and technology in microprocessors, operating systems, servers, networking and storage and converging them.   Why?  Better economics for our customers - and what will be touted as the fundamental value proposition of future innovations coming out of Sun.  Less integration, more efficiency, less power, less space - all while getting more computing and storage for your money.  What's happening in Web 2.0?  Developers are buying volume processors, servers and storage - choosing an open platform to develop on like Linux or OpenSolaris - and developing their own software to differentiate their business.  Why not have all the compute, storage, networking and operating system components on one integrated, open platform to build your business on?  Spend less time managing and more time developing.  And I would argue that with all the IP Sun has in all areas of IT - we are one of only 3 systems companies in the world that could pull something like this off. 

So let's take a look at what recent innovations have come from integrating our technologies into one efficient system.   Let's start from our largest system down to our smallest to give an idea of range and scalability.   The slide below is from John Fowler's Systems overview - it's called the "Sun Constellation System" - and is being deployed as a system supporting supercomputing at TACC.   Here are some Constellation specs:

• Compute Engine Data Cache: Will scale over 72 GB/sec sustained bandwidth with 1.728 Petabytes (PB) of raw capacity
• Configuration includes 72 Sun Fire X4500s (over 3,000 500 GB drives in 8 racks)
  
• Long-Term Retention & Archive: Will scale over 3.1 PB of online storage and 200 PB of near-line storage
• Configuration includes 5 StorageTek SL8500s (not pictured), 48 StorageTek T10000, 3 ST6540s and 6 Sun Fire Metadata servers running SAM-FS
  

If this integrated platform is a little too much for you (and it is for 90% of the world), then the Sun Fire X4500 is a better example.  With this one system, users can buy a 4U integrated server, storage and networking platform running Solaris for approximately $1.50/GB - roughly 13x less than enterprise disk arrays and 7x less that midrange arrays (which don't come with server and networking components)!  See my Trends post.  That's changing IT economics.  You can see the X4500s lined up in the rack on the left in the slide above.      

Other innovations coming from the "center of the Venn" include Sun's open Archive System, the Sun StorageTek 5800 (aka "Honeycomb") and now shipping, our complete datacenter in a portable container - the Sun Modular Datacenter S20 (aka "Project Blackbox"). 

So what's Sun's Storage Strategy? 

With the summary above to give it some context, I'll post the last slide from John Fowler and Jon Benson's "The New Value Equation for Storage"  presentation to answer this question:

--------- Update --------

• TACC calls Sun's Constellation System "Ranger" and it is up and running.  See Marc Hamilton's Blog for More Ranger Facts and Figures
  

Posted at 04:25PM Feb 06, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[1]