Taylor's Take on Sun Storage

Imation knows how to treat its customers

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to speak at Imation's 15th Annual End User Council (EUC) Symposium along with IBM, HP, some of Imation's larger customers and industry storage guru Fred Moore. 

Imation is the leading removable data storage developer and supplier - offering magnetic tape, optical, flash and removable hard disk storage to the consumer and enterprise markets.  Imation is a co-developer and supplier of Sun StorageTek 9840 and Sun StorageTek 9940 1/2 inch enterprise tape cartridges - and the product management and sales folks at Imation and Sun have done an excellent job growing this business over the past year.

Customers at the event include Bank of America, Citigroup, FedEx, JPMorgan Chase and Wachovia.  The event is at the Hyatt Regency in Bonita Springs, Florida - a beautiful place (despite the multiple mosquito bites I left with).

What I said at the venue 

My topic was "IT Trends Impacting Sun Storage Investment" - download my presentation here.

There was one important question that I heard in several 1:1 customer conversations.  These customers were large tape users - which means their business is dependent on enterprise tape, fast-access tape drives and most (if not all) work in mainframe shops.  There were several customers that wanted to know about Sun's commitment to tape and Sun's commitment to the mainframe.  This is a fair question, as Sun's core operating system is an open platform - Solaris. 

But I was also saddened to hear that a Sun storage competitor had been telling some customers that "Sun is not committed to tape and does not have future tape roadmaps."  This is simply a falsehood.  Below is what I told these customers and what I said during my presentation about Sun's current commitment to tape and mainframe storage:

• Fact: Sun has Tape roadmaps for every tape product.  If a customer wants to see them, they can under NDA.   I make this offer to any customer with a concern. 
  
• Fact:  StorageTek was a mainframe tape company and Sun acquired StorageTek for ~$4B.   Why would Sun (or any company) spend that much on an acquisition to discontinue that company's products?
• Fact (and the most impressive fact to me):  Sun StorageTek has launched the following Open Systems and/or Mainframe products JUST THIS YEAR (1H CY08).  I'm from StorageTek - and can't remember this many tape announcements in the first half of a year: 
  
• Sun StorageTek SL3000:  Brand new Mainframe & Open Systems Library.  200-3000 slots, up to 50% the footprint and 1/3 power improvement over competitive products.  Supports LTO, T10000 and T9840 drives & media. 
  
• T9840D Tape Drive & Media: 4th generation drives that re-use the same media.  Backward compatible over 4 generations - now that's investment protection.  2x capacity increase with built-in data encryption.  <20 second access time to the 1st byte.
• Crypto KMS 2.0: Policy-based encryption key management station that now supports T10000A, T9840D and HP LTO4 drives.
• Sun StorageTek VTL Prime: Open systems VTL now with de-duplication!

Sun can be criticized for a lot of things - but Sun should be credited for its new investments in mainframe storage and tape systems.  Between the recent SL8500, SL3000, T10000 + Encryption and the new T9840D products, Sun StorageTek has the newest and most comprehensive line of enterprise tape systems in the industry - over IBM.  And most of the above items were announced AFTER the StorageTek acquisition. 

About the venue 

The event was well run - and there was a closeness and loyalty between Imation and its top customers that had to be admired.  People had fun, there was a stacked agenda and great networking opportunities.  Imation treated its customers (and speakers) right.  Kudos to Imation for thanking its customers in this way - especially at a time where everyone's budgets are tight.  The customers I spoke to were the people who did the real storage work as well - storage managers, administrators, etc.  There were no execs or VPs (that I saw) but Imation treated their core users like they were top-level execs.

My Nature Walk 

The hotel and grounds were amazing too - I didn't get to stay long, but I got to walk the grounds before I jumped on my flight.  I am a bit of a nature person, so here is what I saw:  The hotel is located in Southwest Florida - on the edge of a great Florida Mangrove Forrest. To get to the ocean you have to walk on a pathway that cuts through the Mangroves (picture at left).  On the path, I saw thousands of Fiddler Crabs scurry to their holes as I walked.  I saw the shell to a horseshoe crab - but not a live one unfortunately.  There were a ton of orb spider webs among the trees and I came upon a very large and beautiful "Crab-Like Spiny Orb Weaver" in the middle of its web.  Amazing if you like spiders - scary if you don't.

You are awarded at the end of your walk by a pier that jets out into the ocean (picture at right).  There was a beautiful White Egret standing at the edge of the pier.  But one of the coolest things I saw was when I looked into the water off the pier.  I saw several green reeds that looked like floating grass and Mangrove leaves - until I walked by and the "reeds" started to swim away.  Turns out I was standing over a school of Alligator Pipefish - pretty amazing...

 Thanks Imation!

Posted at 11:09AM Apr 15, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[1]

Game-changing Storage Economics

In the open systems VTL space, EMC is the leader in market share.  (Sun leads in the Mainframe space btw).  How can Sun compete?  Answer - By changing the Economics at the infrastructure level.  See below: 

This is an example I use because both EMC and Sun (and IBM for that matter) use the same software - FalconStor. 

So, wouldn't you take a closer look at a product that offers similar functionality at 16% less power consumption in 73% less space? 

Posted at 08:12AM Mar 10, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[1]

Sun's Open Archive Announcement

If you've been walking the halls of Sun StorageTek of late, you would have heard a lot of talk about the "Archive Launch" and changing IT and storage economics...

Today, Sun made a large announcement in the Archive storage space.

First a word on messaging:  Internally, Sun Systems recently went through a healthy reality check on how we message our products and solutions.  We looked at where we are in the industry and where we can, and should, differentiate.  It's no secret that Sun's core assets reside at the infrastructure level - storage, servers, processors, O/S.  These segments are the backbone of IT infrastructure - on which applications are deployed to meet business requirements and goals.  We have come to a single conclusion in which today's (and tomorrow's) messaging will focus on - the Economics of IT needs to change.  With data sprawl, longer retention periods and a paradigm shift happening in how data is generated (more and more by individuals) - traditional IT infrastructures are becoming too expensive or too inflexible...

What we announced today:  So, you will hear an overall message of changing Economics through open IT architectures and infrastructures coming from Sun.  And you will hear us announce categories of the market in which we aim to change the economics in- today's happens to be archive.  What we announced:  

• Brand new product:  Sun StorageTek SL3000 Tape Library
  
• New product to existing family:  Sun StorageTek T9840D Tape Drives
  
• Product enhancements:  Sun Crypto Key Management System (KMS) 2.0 & Sun Customer Ready Infinite Archive System (aka Sun CIS)
• Open sourced digital archive: We donated the source code for the Sun StorageTek 5800 (aka HoneyComb)
  

Since I have personal experience with the SL3000 library and CIS - I'll paint some color on these products and their history :

Sun StorageTek SL3000 Tape Library:
10x the power savings and 50% footprint advantage vs. Quantum & IBM

How the SL3000 came to be was a Product Manager's dream:  A) We saw a gap in our tape portfolio between entry and enterprise libraries; B) we did extensive customer research and focus groups to get customer requirements; C) we flew customers in to see and comment on the prototype D) we announce it today.

No sloppy welds:  My team was fortunate enough to conduct the research for SL3000.  When we were in Asia focus groups, customers told us something that took us by surprise.  Our customers would actually look at the inside edges of a tape library to see how it was welded together.  If the weld was "sloppy" - put together hastily - they'd notice.  In a culture of quality - the little stuff is an indicator of overall quality.  Suffice to say, we've been poking our heads inside libraries looking for sloppy welds ever since.  A good indication on how customer feedback drove this product to market (and our quality focus at Sun StorageTek).  

Some quick stats on the library itself:

• SL3000 scales from around 200TB to 3PB (200 - 3,000 slots)
  
• Supports open and mainframe environments and mixed media
  
• Fully redundant robotics & non-disruptive capacity upgrades
  
• Up to 10x power savings and 50% footprint advantage vs. Quantum Scalar i2000 and IBM TS3500 (Economics!)
  

 Sun Customer Ready Infinite Archive System (aka CIS)
Costs 46% less and consumes 1/3 the power of a 2PB EMC Centera Solution

Skunk Works?  I just learned that the origin of the term "Skunk Works" came from Lockheed Martin when they were developing one of my favorite WWII fighter planes - the P-38 Lightning.  In tech, Skunk Works can have positive and negative connotations - I personally think a lot of innovation has come from working around the process, but you need a healthy balance.   Sun's X4500 (aka Thumper) came straight from engineering and by all measures its turning out to be a huge success.   I'm supporting a Skunk Works project in fact, and I'd love to see it get off the ground one of these days (perhaps more in a later blog, but its open source Systems Managed Storage software brought out of the mainframe world into open systems, available over SourceForge). 

So while SL3000 has its origins in traditional product management, CIS (er... "Customer Ready Infinite Archive System") got its origins more on the Skunk Works side of the house - from the Field Sales and Engineering side specifically.   I don't know the full story, but I am guessing it went something like this....a Sun systems engineer is at a customer site deploying a tiered storage architecture (disk, tape, server, HSM)  for the umpteenth time and thinks, "what if we did this integration BEFORE we shipped this to customers???"  And CIS was born (or something like that...)

Call it a tiered storage platform, or ILM-in-a box, or whatever - but this is what it is (and it can be used for more than just archive btw):

• Pre-configured and integrated
  
• Server, Disk & Tape in a single rack
• Sun X4200 or T5220 Server
• Sun StorageTek 2540 SAS or SATA disk
• Sun StorageTek SL500 Tape Library, supports LTO-4 tape drives
  
• Comes with HSM software (SAM) - fully automated backup and data migration
• Highly scalable - scales to petabytes by stringing multiple racks together under a single file system (QFS)
• Ready to run - just hook it up to the network - cool stuff...

So, since we are talking archive, we compared this integrated architecture to another popular archive appliance in the market.  In a 2PB configuration, Sun's Customer Ready Infinite Archive System costs 46% less and consumes 1/3 the power of a 2PB EMC Centera solution.  Additionally, data migration cost extra for Centera customers while it comes part of Sun's solution. 

So, the industry is looking at IT economics closer than it ever has before.  Sun is innovating here at the infrastructure level - adding functionality and performance while reducing cost through open source software, integrated systems, Eco-efficient hardware and leveraging the economics of tape...

---- Update ---

Other Sun blogs discussing Open Archive:

• Storage Stop
• Management Monogatari
• Bob Porras 
• QuickStick 
• Analyze This
• Georg's Weblog
• 数据管理
  

Posted at 01:48PM Feb 28, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[1]