Taylor's Take on Sun Storage

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]

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]

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[5]

Honeycomb is sticky sweet (and Open...)

In my last post I illustrated Sun's economic advantage with a system similar to the competition, but consuming 16% less power in 73% less space. (Built from the Sun Fire X4500)

I'm happy to post a recent InfoWorld product review on another Sun product, the ST5800 (aka Honeycomb).  Read it here: Sun's StorageTek Honeycomb is sticky and sweet

Open storage: One thing these two systems have in common is that they are truly "open" storage.  Now there are a lot of different meanings to the term open - so when I use it with storage I primarily think of two items: Industry standard hardware coupled with open source software.  (one could also add open standards to the term). 

Truly open storage systems like the products mentioned above are hitting the storage market.  And for good reason.   Open saves cost - from software licensing fees to the use of volume components.  Open is more flexible - developers can build applications directly in the system itself (which also allows a "product" to be re-built or re-purposed into another "product" as business needs change.)

Web applications: Open storage allows for mass customization as well as massive scalability at economics that make sense for today's "Web 2.0" applications. 

One of the most revealing analyst statistics I have read was from IDC's White Paper titled: The Expanding Digital Universe: A Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2010.  In it, IDC predicts that 70% of the new digital data (988 exabytes) in the year 2010 will be created by individuals.  But 85% of this data will be managed by enterprises or organizations.   As I write this blog (content generated by me, stored and protected by Sun IT) Technorati cites 112.8 million blogs with 175,000 new blogs added every day...with 1.6 million new posts each day or 18 updates per second! 

Traditional closed storage architectures do well supporting a lot of enterprise IT applications (I  know because Sun sells them).  But new, more open architectures are needed to match the data growth rates and trends the market is currently seeing. 

And that's what Sun is building - and what Honeycomb is.  We launched our open source developer community for storage back in April.  We donated Honeycomb digital content (fixed archiving) code to this community last month.   And now InfoWorld has put this new open storage system to the test. 

Some Honeycomb Review Highlights: 
Honeycomb scored a 9.3 out of 10, with perfect 10s in Reliability and Scalability.  Here was the InfoWorld reviewer, Senior Analyst Mario Apicella's, bottom line:

"...Impressive resilience together with excellent performance and powerful administrative tools make “Honeycomb” one of the most interesting solutions in the emerging fixed-content archiving space. With a foot in the open source community, Honeycomb promises to deliver more software features faster than competing proprietary solutions, and customers that can’t wait have an easy and free alternative with a flexible SDK."

On Honeycomb's differentiation & open architecture:

"Sun has taken a different approach to companion software than vendors such as EMC, Hitachi, and HP, which have married their fixed-content archiving solutions to compliance applications...Sun has not wedded Honeycomb to any specific application, leaving that task to partners and customers. The upside of Honeycomb's openness is that the possibilities are endless. In fact, Honeycomb's powerful, built-in administrative software is complemented by an SDK that allows Java or C developers to define their own metadata schemas consistent with the specifics of their application."

On Honeycomb being a new breed of storage:

"Conventional NAS simply isn't designed for long-term archiving. The typical NAS would choke under the load of storing multiple large objects at the same time, and it would die with its third consecutive drive failure. Honeycomb addresses the performance and resilience requirements of content archiving with a new architecture. Unlike plain NAS solutions -- and fixed-content archiving solutions built on conventional storage systems (think EMC Centera) -- it's made for the job."

Expect more open storage products coming from Sun.  In this new Web 2.0/digital data world,  Sun storage (to quote Mario) will be "made for the job."

Posted at 01:58PM Mar 24, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[0]

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]

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]

Top 10 Storage Technology Trends

It’s getting to be the end of the year – and Sun, like every other vendor I assume, is looking at the new technology trends that have (or will) impact our industry.

My team and I were asked to evaluate some – to see where to prioritize future investments, evaluate current and future competitive threats, etc.  Ensuring we stay ahead of the technology game.  So below is our very own top 10 list of emerging technologies.  (As well as some color to what Sun is doing here) 

I’m sure we’re missing some and comments and claims are our own, they don’t represent any commitment or position from Sun Corporate (For official news on Sun go here…)    

 Top 10 Storage Technology Trends:  

1. Open Storage Platform (aka general purpose storage, open source storage):  Trend #1 is a term we coined, so it may not sound familiar.  It is a combination of market trends as well as a direction Sun is taking with its newer products.  The concept of a common platform is not new – several vendors have tried to build one platform that can run multiple storage applications, saving users time and money.  “Open” is a relatively new concept for storage, but not for software or servers.  There are generally three components that make up an Open Storage Platform:

• General Purpose Components: General-purpose servers, processors, storage and operating systems are now being deployed in enterprise-class storage devices. Previously, storage vendors had built proprietary operating systems, ASIC chips and other custom-built components. As commodity chips, components and software have matured, storage vendors are now using general purpose components in their systems. The cost savings are significant - however, most vendors' prices remain the same (contributing to vendor margin). Sun's philosophy is to pass these savings to the consumer. Enterprise-class systems based on general purpose components give customers higher-value systems at a fraction of the cost (see graphic below). They are also much more flexible, as they can be re-purposed for other uses.
• OS/File System Storage Services: Traditional appliances charge customers extra in software licensing costs for data management services like administration, replication or volume management.  What if this functionality came already embedded in the storage system itself?  Sun's newest file system, ZFS, has started to incorporate these services at the File System level. ZFS deploys point-in-time-copy, volume management, administration and data integrity features like Copy-on-write and RAID. Storage services deployed at the OS-level have several benefits, including efficiency, performance, reliability and affordability (no more licenses for extra software needed).  And before we think this is a new concept, mainframe has been doing it for years. The new concept is doing this in the open systems space – and Sun Solaris ZFS is leading the charge.      
• Open Source Storage Software: The ability to download software, test it and add features to it is critical to developers building new applications – we’ve seen this in the OS market.  But what about storage?   This has been an investment area of Sun’s - Sun actually offers one of the most complete open source storage software stacks (from protocols to drivers to data management software).  Developers can build their own storage solutions and sell them by leveraging Sun’s open source software (see the Nexenta Storage Appliance for a perfect example).  Open source has an added benefit to customers with in-house development resources - customers can deploy new software features by searching for it in the open source community or even developing it themselves (why wait for vendor roadmaps?). This is not possible with a proprietary appliance. 

The simplest way to show the impact the Open Storage Platform concept will have on the storage industry is a basic economic comparison.  We used IDC's Pricing Database to compare over 50 actual purchase orders of enterprise disk (Sun ST9900, EMC DMC3), Midrange Disk (Sun ST6140, EMC CX3) and a Sun product built on our Open Storage Platform (the SunFire X4500):

• Enterprise Disk = $18.84/GB
• Midrange Disk = $10.39/GB
• Open Storage Platform = $1.50/GB
  (7x less than Midrange and 13x less than Enterprise)

Game-changing economics…

2.  Virtualization:  Where to begin?  The benefits are obvious – massive savings through optimization, consolidation and optimization.  The best definition of virtualization I have seen came from the 451 Group’s Virtualization Report which defined Virtualization as, “A software abstraction layer that permits aggregation, emulation or partitioning.”  Let’s look at the different types of virtualization out there today

• Server Virtualization:  The ability to host Windows, Linux and Solaris operating systems on one platform has literally taken the market by storm.  A huge boon to IT managers and developers alike.  VMWare led the charge with some start-ups and open source initiatives in tow.  On October 5, 2007 Sun entered the race with Sun xVM.  (And if virtualization has hit the systems world, expect to see it hit the desktop market soon…)      
• File Virtualization (a.k.a Clustering, Global Namespace, Unified Namespace, NAS Virtualization):  A few years ago we were talking about Grid Storage – a bunch of storage nodes acting as one, single system.  File virtualization is shaping up to be the technology that will take us there.  In 2005 & 2006 we saw EMC buy Rainfinity, NetApp buy Spinnaker and Brocade buy NuView.  In recent years we we have seen EMC announce Rainfinity, NetApp announce a rough start to Data OnTap GX (based on Spinnaker technology) and file virtualization start ups Ibrix, Isilon and LeftHand Networks continue to grow.  Expect this market to heat up, and consolidate as start ups are either bought, or simply run out of runway.    
• Virtual Tape: A disk system that emulates a tape library.  Virtual Tape has been in the mainframe market for years, and Sun is the market leader here.  Virtual Tape Libraries (VTL) in the open systems market are relatively new – disk prices have eroded to a point where backup administrators can now take advantage of disk’s access speeds without replacing their exiting backup infrastructure.  IDC pegs this market as small, but growing at 16.2% (2006-2011 CAGR). 
• Virtual Disk (aka Storage Virtualization):  A disk system that aggregates 3^rd-party disk and offers disk partitioning.  A necessity for anyone that needs to consolidate their environment and/or make data migration between independent systems easier.  Virtual Disk Systems include IBM’s San Volume Controller (SVC), FalconStor’s IPStor and Sun’s award-winning StorageTek 9000 arrays.          

3. Thin Provisioning:  Better system utilization is the name of the game.  Most admins know that the utilization rates on their disk systems are not where they need to be.  Thin Provisioning allows admins to allocate or provision space to specific applications, making full use of their system’s capacity.  3PAR spearheaded open systems Thin Provisioning and NetApp offers it as a part of Data OnTap.  Sun announced Thin Provisioning on its StorageTek 9990V system in May – meaning consumers can have the world’s fastest enterprise array, Virtual Disk AND Thin Provisioning all on one platform. 

Pretty cool…  

 
4. Data Deduplication (aka De-dup, Single-instance storage):  In a world where there is more data coming into a company than can possibly be managed – data compression ratios ranging from 10:1 to 50:1 sound pretty darn nice (See how De-dup works here).  Data Domain, Diligent, FalconStor and other upstarts get credit for bringing this new technology to market and larger vendors are quickly following suite.  De-dup is still emerging, can have performance issues and does not work perfectly for every application – but economics dictate its worth consumers investigating where it can work for them.

There are two emerging de-dup architectures:  “Inline” – where the de-dup magic happens in real-time, as data comes into the system, as found in Diligent's ProtecTIER appliance.  Or “Post-Processing” where the magic happens as a secondary process after the backup job, as found in FalconStor’s Single Instance Repository (SIR) software.  Both have their pros and cons, and deciding which approach to use depends on balancing your performance vs. complexity needs.  For the record, Sun sells both….         

5. Data Encryption:  One need only read the horror stories of lost tape and disk drives to see the importance of data encryption.  While it has been around for a while – the need has never been greater.  Growing storage capacity has caused another problem – one can store a lot of personnel records on a single cartridge or drive.  In an age of identify theft, losing one storage device can put a company out of business.  The new trend is not how to encrypt, but where to encrypt…  On the host server?  On an appliance in the network?  In the storage device itself?  Decru (since bought by NetApp) benefited from this trend with their encryption appliance.

I once worked with a brilliant engineer whose favorite saying was “never put a product where a feature should be.”  I’d say this was Sun’s philosophy when we delivered the Sun StorageTek T10000 tape drive.  Put simply, Sun put an encryption chip next to the compression chip on the drive – so data is encrypted as it is fed onto the tape.  Simple and affordable – no extra appliance needed.  Sun also offers the StorageTek Crypto Key Management Station to centrally authorize, secure and manage encryption keys.

6. Eco Storage (aka Green Storage/IT):  I freely admit that when I was first approached with “Green Storage” I was a skeptic.  I would have also never guessed Al Gore would win the Nobel Peace Prize!  But Eco also stands for Economics.  If you save power and footprint, and the world while you are at it – who can argue with that?  But the challenge for storage customers will be sorting through the vendors who make REAL Eco investments vs. the ones that just add “Eco” or “Green” to their marketing collateral.  Sun’s in the “real” category, investing heavily in Eco IT.  Sun’s Eco efforts can be seen here...        

7. Object Archive (aka CAS, Application Aware Archive): The dizzying array of regulations, compliance requirements and influx of data have made the archive market one of the fastest growing markets in IT and storage.  And customers must continually evaluate which archive approach will work best for them.  The trend here is to “build a better mousetrap archive.”  The challenge is this, an archive system must:

• Store a lot of data affordably
• Have WORM  functionality so documents show up un-altered in an audit or court of law
• Be easily and quickly accessible
• For more than 100 years…

But do keep in mind for deep archive; Sun’s StorageTek SL8500 Tape Library is tough to beat – just one library's max raw capacity is 56 Petabytes, and data sitting on tape consumes 0 kilowatts and generates 0 CO²… (see above trend #6)   

8. New Interfaces, Protocols & Configurations: There is a lot of change happening in storage systems and how they are configured.  The three primary ways storage is attached is Direct Attached Storage (DAS), Storage Area Networks (SAN) and Network Attached Storage (NAS).  A disk system can also be configured in a couple different ways.  RAID configurations stripe data across multiple drives and impact a system’s reliability and performance.  JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) is more affordable because it does not require a disk controller, but provides no data redundancy.  New interfaces and protocols will impact each of these markets significantly. 

• SAS:  In DAS, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) is a newer serial communication protocol that will make data transfer speeds much faster and at a lower cost.  SAS drives have replaced parallel SCSI for internal storage, and SAS HBA external host interfaces are just starting to ship in volume.  SAS disk arrays started shipping this year and SAS JBOD are starting to ship.  To complement the SAS HBA's and SAS arrays, there are new network components called expanders which are basically switches.  Generally SAS disk will be cheaper than Fibre Channel (FC) with similar performance and capacity.  (Sun has SAS host I/F, disk I/F and SAS disk drives)
• iSCSI:  In the SAN market, the iSCSI protocol is making a significant impact by taking the cost out of expensive Fibre Channel SANs.  iSCSI allows users to send SCSI commands over their existing IP networks. 
• File Virtualization:  In the NAS market, file virtualization is making NAS farms much more scalable and manageable (See trend #2)
• Clustered RAID:  A new innovation to watch in the RAID market is horizontally scalable RAID or clustered RAID for large applications.  Digi-Data is a small storage company pushing this innovation. 
• JBOD:  Keep your eye on Sun in the JBOD market.  JBOD is more affordable than RAID, but does not have RAID’s redundancy and reliability features.  But what if you had an infinitely scalable file system with data integrity and RAID features running on JBOD, say, something like ZFS?
• Unified Storage:  Another trend in this area are unified or hybrid devices – storage systems that can handle multiple protocols and interfaces, including iSCSI, Fibre Channel, and NAS – all in one unit.  Makes sense to users with a dizzying array of choices in the market.             
• 10GbE:  Lastly, 10 Gigabit Ethernet or 10GbE is the latest and fastest of the Ethernet standards that will re-shape data center networking – offering a fast, common and affordable network technology for IT and Web 2.0 applications from supercomputing to networked storage.

 

9. Solid State Disk (aka SSD, Flash, Memory):  We see the perfect storm happening around SSD.  SSD has no moving parts, making it one of the most reliable and fastest storage mediums in the world.  But it is incredibly expensive when you compare $/GB vs. Disk and Tape storage.  However, SSD has made a name for itself in the consumer market (digital cameras, phones, iPods, etc.)  The price pressure in the consumer arena is enormous – and this had been rapidly eroding the price of SSD.  As SSD prices drop, expect to see hybrid disk drives and storage systems that leverage more SSD for greater speed and IOPS.        

10.  Storage as a Service: 

Storage as a service offered over the Internet has been talked about for years – but poor performance and implementations have cooled this trend.  However, Amazon has given Storage as a Service a power boost with its Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).  By leveraging Amazon’s existing e-commerce and storage infrastructure, the company is offering customers storage capacity for $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used – possibly the cheapest $/GB on the planet.  And while this may have more play in the consumer market, Amazon could re-invigorate the storage as a service trend.  Also keep an eye on Sun’s Internet Service offerings over Network.com...             

--- Updates ---

• For more color on Trend #1 and open storage platforms, read about IBM's latest acquisition...
• For more on Trend #9 (SSD) see EMC's SSD announcement
• An update on #10 (SaaS) see EMC's announcement of MozyEnterprise and EMC Fortress 

Posted at 12:51PM Nov 30, 2007 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[6]

Is Thumper worth a Billion?

Our Senior Disk Analyst, Bruce Norikane, just walked into my office and asked this very interesting question:  "If the following is true, how much is Thumper (aka The SunFire X4500) worth?"

Data Domain:  Deduplication Storage System

• Annual Revenue = $96.62M
• Market Cap = $1.66B

EqualLogic: iSCSI SAN System

• Annual Revenue (YTD) = $91M
• Dell's Announced Acquisition Price = $1.4B

SunFire X4500 (Thumper): Storage Server System 

• Annual Run Rate: $100M
• Worth a Billion???

We think so...

Posted at 02:57PM Nov 09, 2007 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[1]