Good Night Gracie-It's Been a Great Run At Sun
This will be my final blog entry as the Sun has set on my career at Sun. You can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Posted at 09:59PM Mar 29, 2009 by gwaterson in General |
Configuring J4000 and ZFS in Ten Minutes
Great tutorial on Configuring J4000 and ZFS in Ten Minutes Cool Stuff!.
Posted at 09:29AM Jul 10, 2008 by gwaterson in General |
Sun continues to be #1 in worldwide UNIX server revenue and shipments
According to IDC's Q1CY08 Worldwide Server Tracker released in May 2008, "Sun continues to hold the #1 position in worldwide UNIX server revenue and shipments, driven by the power of the Solaris Operating System (OS)." Among the compelling statistics IDC's May 2008 report highlights is Sun's number one position in the following categories:
#1 Worldwide UNIX server unit shipments
#1 Worldwide UNIX volume (<$25K) server factory revenue and unit shipments
#1 U.S. and Western Europe UNIX server revenue
#1 U.S., Western Europe, Japan, APAC, and Rest of World UNIX server unit shipments
#1 Worldwide UNIX server Operating System unit shipments, Solaris OS
#1 Worldwide UNIX OS on Opteron processor based server revenue and unit shipments
#1 Worldwide UNIX Disk Storage Systems unit shipments
Posted at 09:23PM Jul 09, 2008 by gwaterson in General | Comments[2]
Sun Expands Storage Line
Today, Sun introduced a line of storage arrays called the Sun Storage J4000 series, designed for customers ranging from small businesses to large enterprises with the biggest and fastest-growing storage needs anywhere. The arrays, available now, can cost just US$1 per gigabyte for bulk storage, with significant savings resulting from free software, according to Sun. The systems' high density is designed to save precious rack space.
The lineup starts at $3,000 and includes systems with maximum capacities ranging from 46TBs to 480TBs. The basic models are as follows:
J4200, with as many as 12 drives per tray, for up to 48 SAS (Serial Attached Small Computer Storage Interface) or SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) drives
J4400: four drives per tray and as many as six SATA ports, with a maximum 192 SAS/SATA drives
J4500: four racks, with 48 drives per tray and as many as four SAS ports, for a total of 480 SATA drives
Sun also introduced the StorageTek SAS RAID HBA (Host Bus Adapter), which lets users attach the J4000 arrays directly to servers running Solaris, Linux or Windows, in OpenStorage and OpenSolaris environments.
Sun is also updating its Sun Fire X4500 hybrid server-storage platform, nicknamed "Thumper," with the X4540, which has twice the computing performance for the same price, according to the company. The system includes both server and storage capacity in a single device that takes up just four standard rack units and can hold 48 drives, Sun said. Like the X4500, introduced last year, it is designed for sites where space is at a premium. The X4540 will be available this month, with the X4500 family starting at $22,000. Sun has built its Open Storage initiative around free storage software it offers for download, as well as the company's overall emphasis on free software. Used in combination with Sun's OpenSolaris server operating system and Solaris ZFS (Zettabyte File System), the J4000 series offers a cost reduction of as much as 10 times over traditional storage arrays.
Posted at 10:48AM Jul 09, 2008 by gwaterson in General |
Mac OS X v10.6 to Support Solaris ZFS File System
"Snow Leopard," also known as Mac OS X v10.6, will support the Solaris ZFS file system when it is released in about a year's time. Apple's Web site is made the announcement.
Posted at 01:03PM Jun 22, 2008 by gwaterson in General |
Join the Open Storage Revolution
Open Storage combines open source software with industry standard hardware to change the way the world stores, accesses, and manages its data.
To download OpenSolaris software or to learn more about the Open Storage community, go to www.sun.com/openstorage
Posted at 08:06PM Jun 15, 2008 by gwaterson in General |
Sun Announces SSD Strategy
In case you haven't seen the news Sun Microsystems announced on June 5, 2008 that we will ship our homegrown flash-based storage systems that combine general-purpose hardware, solid-state disks (SSDs), and open-source software.
The new products scheduled to be available in the second half of this year, promise higher read/write performance than traditional arrays while consuming less power than systems based on traditional disk drive technologies. SSDs that will give customers greater application performance, massive scale and value through the integration of the Solaris Operating System (OS), Solaris ZFS and other open source technologies. Sun is already shipping Solaris ZFS software optimized for SSD technologies through the OpenSolaris community and is the first major systems vendor to add an end-to-end Flash-based disk product line to its portfolio, leapfrogging competitors and giving customers 3x better performance at one-fifth the energy consumption of traditional spinning disk offerings. New Flash disks integrated in storage systems and servers will join Sun's list of industry-leading products available for free, no-risk trials under Sun's Try and Buy program at www.sun.com/tryandbuy/. Because the New Flash arrays so dramatically reduce energy use, they will join Sun's growing portfolio of Eco Innovation products and services. To download OpenSolaris software or to learn more about the community, go to www.sun.com/openstoragePosted at 07:47PM Jun 15, 2008 by gwaterson in General |
Sun StorageTek ST9990V vs. EMC DMX4
I am often asked what our competitive advantages are over EMC's DMX-4. Here are my personal thoughts:
On the EMC DMX-4:
The BIN file is so 70's.
The Absence of SPC-1 benchmark lends very serious doubt to EMC's Symmetrix DMX-4 performance claims. We proudly publish our SPC performance numbers on http://www.storageperformance.org/results/benchmark_results_all>.
The DMX-4 remains a legacy architecture that no longer provides the ability to scale linearly. The Sun StorageTek ST9990V is based on 4th generation Crossbar architecture.
The DMX-4's single footprint capacity approach for combined performance and archive workloads is cost prohibitive for large enterprises.
The direct matrix architecture of the DMX-4 is an antiquated approach to provide high performance inter-component networking.
The Symmetrix hardware-centric addressing limits the maximum number of Logical Volumes available to applications.
It's static mirrored cache and lack of dedicated shared memory limits user cache to less then 50% of installed capacity. ) The Sun StorageTek ST9990V has dynamic mirrored cache. Separate DATA and CONTROL cache!
The Symmetrix DMX-4 requires greater floor space and demands higher power and cooling then the ST9990V. The Sun StorageTek ST9990V does not!
The DMX-4's lack of support for ”Thin Provisioning” significantly increases a customer’s storage capacity and administration costs and does not at all help the Eco challenge many customers are facing today. The Sun StorageTek ST9990V offers Dynamic Provisioning. A great feature that doesn't require you to have all the physical storage to meet large growth DB demands.
The DMX-4 has Active/passive Disk Directors which limit the ability to support concurrent cloning and replication. The Sun StorageTek ST9990V has ACTIVE/ACTIVE disk directors.
The DMX-4's use of global memory for both data cache and control functions compromises access to customer data. The SunStorageTek ST9990V has separate data and control cache and paths.
The DMX4 does not offer Storage Virtual Partitioning which the Sun StorageTek ST9990V does. This is a excellent for supporting very stringent QoS and SLA requirements.
Virtualization:
EMC's Invista is an appliance-based virtualization solutions that inherently adds more complexity to an already complex environment. It is extremely difficult to install and administer.
For high performance storage that requires very low latency, why put the Invista in the path at all? Why introduce more latency? Since all the Invista targets are already on the SAN, why not just go straight to the high performance disk. The Sun Storage Tek ST9990V Virtualization does this and absolutely makes more sense!
With the Sun StoeageTek ST9990V virtualization we handle the high performance I/O internally with no added latency and still use virtualization to offload the second tier application loads. With Invista, you need the Invista switch and a high performance array.
EMC supports Invista on only 3 switches, Brocade AP7420, Cisco 9216 and Cisco 9500. If your customer has a significant McDATA investment, they are probably out of luck. The Sun StorageTek ST9990V virtualization supports a very diverse switch environment, just about all of them!
If Invista users are Brocade or Cisco customers, they will need 2 Invista switches per fabric for redundancy. Many customers have multiple fabrics per large array so they would need more new Invista boxes than they currently have arrays on the floor. The Sun StorageTek ST9990V does not have this limitation.
Another consideration, Invista is on the switch and can only see the storage on the fabric that it is part of. It cannot even see the storage on unconnected fabrics. A Sun Storage Tek ST9990V can support many fabrics simultaneously.
EMC's Appliance-based solutions cannot scale to customer requirements. The SunStorageTek ST9990V scales wonderfully to support all customers requirements.
Invista is a point product designed to address the virtualization support gap on the Symmetrix DMX. The Sun StorageTek ST9990V Virtualization is fully integrated in the HW/SW platform.
Invista has achieved limited market presence. The SunStorageTek ST9990V Virtualization does not have limited market presence (INSTALLATIONS).
The SunStorage Tek ST9900V virtualization offers: Greater Scalability, Greater Addressability, Greater Simplification, Single Replication Footprint, Superior Architecture, and Superior Resiliency
Posted at 11:29AM May 06, 2008 by gwaterson in General | Comments[2]
Common Multiprotocol SCSI Target is now available On Open Solaris
COMSTAR is the software framework to use a Solaris host as a SCSI Target platform and is available on http://opensolaris.org/os/project/comstar/. What a cool way to use the Thumper (x4500) as a FC target!
Posted at 07:16PM Apr 22, 2008 by gwaterson in General |
If Cloud Computing is the next big thing in computing why and how SHOULD “Cloud Compute Storage” be implemented?
Cloud computing is a relatively new approach for the next generation of computing that, among other resources, includes massive compute cluster, operating as a single machine, to enable the use of shared resources.
The term cloud computing suggests that function comes from a public network and provides storage as a service.
So given the ongoing discussion of cloud computing is there a concept of could storage? Sure there is. Amazon provides cloud computing along with their associated Simple Storage Service (S3) offering. Additionally Microsoft, Sun, 3tera.com and Google provide variants of cloud compute + cloud storage.
I'd argue that for cloud computing to be the next big thing, somebody has to define, build and run a secure, highly scalable and stable computing storage cloud. This cloud based computing storage needs to massively scalable, reliable and immune to the latency and response time delay that are inherent in distance based computing and storage.
I am working on a paper that will discus how to define, build, run and secure, a highly scalable and stable compute storage cloud based Open Storage on commodity components, Open Solaris + ZFS.
Posted at 10:31AM Apr 15, 2008 by gwaterson in General |
Recent Activity
Over the past 6 months I have been working with 2 very large Sun server customers that haven't been Sun storage friendly. Based on the work I have done in conjunction with the local sales teams I have learned that one of these accounts has now certified Thumper (as a server) and has identified ZFS as their file system of choice. The second account has decided to undertake a Proof Of Concept on our ST9900 enterprise storage offering with external storage virtualization.
Posted at 10:24AM Apr 15, 2008 by gwaterson in General |
Infoworld Review - REVIEW: SUN’S STORAGETEK HONEYCOMB IS STICKY AND SWEET
InfoWorld REVIEW: SUN’S STORAGETEK HONEYCOMB IS STICKY AND SWEET
Posted at
01:08PM Mar 24, 2008
by gwaterson in General |
SAM-QFS Code is now open sourced
We are pleased to announce that we have open sourced the SAM-QFS code! This major contribution to the OpenSolaris community is available on http://opensolaris.org/os/project/samqfs. We are very excited to take this big step in creating an open source community around SAM-QFS and continuing to grow Open Solaris as a premier storage OS.
Posted at 09:33AM Mar 19, 2008 by gwaterson in General |
Sun's Revenue Growth for Disk Storage Systems Rises 16.1%-Largest Increase for Top 5 Vendors
Sun's Revenue Growth for Disk Storage Systems Rises 16.1%
Largest Increase for Top 5 Vendor
Numbers for the IDC Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Quarterly Tracker show Sun's revenue growth during the fourth quarter of 2007 (4Q07) for total disk storage systems rose 16.1 percent when compared to the same quarter in 2006. This is the largest increase in revenue growth within the top five vendors in this category. Sun and Hitachi statistically tied for the number five ranking.
Overall, the total disk storage systems market increased by 7.6 percent when compared to the fourth quarter of 2006, for a total of $7.5 billion. Total disk storage systems capacity shipped reach 1,645 petabytes, growing 56.3 percent.
Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide Total Disk Storage Systems Factory Revenue, Fourth Quarter of 2007
(Revenues are in Millions)
1. IBM: $1,720 in revenue 4Q07 for 22.9% market share; $1,670 in revenue 4Q06 for 23.9% market share; totaling 3.0% in revenue growth
2. HP: $1,362 in revenue 4Q07 for 18.1% market share; $1,349 in revenue 4Q06 for 19.3% market share; totaling 1.0% in revenue growth
3. EMC: $1,200 in revenue 4Q07 for 16.0% market share; $1,059 in revenue 4Q06 for 15.2% market share; totaling 13.3% in revenue growth
4. Dell: $671 in revenue 4Q07 for 8.9% market share; $595 in revenue 4Q06 for 8.5% market share; totaling 12.7% in revenue growth
5. Sun: $428 in revenue 4Q07 for 5.7% market share; $369 in revenue 4Q06 for 5.3% market share; totaling 16.1% in revenue growth
5. Hitachi: $410 in revenue 4Q07 for 5.4% market share; $356 in revenue 4Q06 for 5.1% market share; totaling 14.9% in revenue growth
Posted at 08:02PM Mar 08, 2008 by gwaterson in General |
iSCSI Technology Primer
If you are unfamiliar with the iSCSI interface, participate in this brief self-paced training (27 minutes) on the foundations of iSCSI. iSCSI Technology Primer
Posted at 11:01PM Jan 20, 2008 by gwaterson in General |
2008 Technology of the Year Awards: Hardware--BEST STORAGE SERVER-Sun X4500
2008 Technology of the Year Awards: Hardware--BEST STORAGE SERVER-Sun X4500
Posted at
12:04PM Jan 18, 2008
by gwaterson in General |
Sun StorageTek 5800 System Architecture
The third generation of fixed content storage systems is now available, notably in the Sun StorageTek 5800 system, an on-line, highly reliable storage system developed to solve the unique problems associated with large-scale file storage applications typically classified as fixed, static, or reference data, which consume greater than 20 terabytes (TB) in storage and scale over time as data collections grow. This paper provides an overview of the architecture of the Sun StorageTek 5800, which offers the ability to run data services inside the storage device that can manipulate the stored objects as they are stored or retrieved. Sun StorageTek 5800 System Architecture
Posted at
04:03PM Jan 06, 2008
by gwaterson in General |
In Storage Outlook '08: Sun reveals plans for disk arrays
In Storage Outlook '08: Sun reveals plans for disk arrays
Posted at 02:46PM Jan 03, 2008 by gwaterson in General |
Treating Storage as If It Were a Utility
Treating Storage as If It Were a Utility
Posted at 11:05PM Dec 23, 2007 by gwaterson in General |
Suns Mainframe Storage
Sun's commitment to Mainframe Storage. By investing heavily in R&D and working closely with industry partners, Sun delivers breakthrough technologies in key areas such as mainframe storage systems, virtualization, security, and data management.
Posted at 06:43PM Dec 16, 2007 by gwaterson in General |
A Explanation Of Solaris Between Commercial, Nevada and Open Source
A explanation Of Solaris Between Commercial, Nevada and Open Source
Posted at 03:49PM Nov 29, 2007 by gwaterson in General |
Sun Storage Executive Reports and Sun Storage Solutions
Take a look at the Sun Storage Executive Reports and Sun Storage Solutions.
Posted at 09:05PM Nov 26, 2007 by gwaterson in General |
What I Do At Sun Microsystems.
I am a storage technical specialist in the Storage Practice.
I work in the Americas Storage Practice Technical Specialist Team My primary responsibility is to provide the storage sales teams with next level PreSales technical expertise and business value knowledge necessary to support our customer's business challenges while driving revenue within the practice. I have vast knowledge in business value through technology across our entire storage portfolio as well as our emerging technology products Thumper and Honeycomb and individual in-depth specialization in our ST9900 Sun StorageTek Disk Storage. Aditionally I am a expert in ILM as well as a Sun Data Management Ambassador.Posted at 12:38PM Nov 20, 2007 by gwaterson in General |
GEH and Americas Sales Meeting FY2008 Kickoff
June 28-Aug 3 I attended the Government, Education, Healthcare sales meeting followed by the Sun Americas Sales Meeting.
Posted at 08:06PM Aug 01, 2007 by gwaterson in General |
NY Jets Game Sunday 10/15/06
My son and I went to the NY Jets game today. We tailgated and had a great time. A bonus to a wonderful day, the Jets won 20-17 over the Dolphins (should of been 20-3, but with 6 min or so left the Jets almost gave this one away).
Posted at 09:32PM Oct 15, 2006 by gwaterson in General |
10 Years Of Happiness
On October 25 my wife and I celebrate our 10th anniversary.."God onky knows where I'd be without her"
Posted at 10:38PM Oct 13, 2006 by gwaterson in General |
2006 Data Management Ambasadors Conference
The 2006 Annual Data Management Ambasadors Conference will be held on the Sun Microsystems campus in Broomfied Colorado October 21-27. The Sun DMA organization is made up of storage experts from worldwide locations and has approximately 100 nominated members. The DMA Group focuses on storage technologies and their relevance to the total data management solutions. This includes arrays, storage area network components, software to manage and virtualize these storage assets as well as the associated hardware and software offered by Sun and its partners to craft a full storage architecture. I am really looking forward to getting together with my peers. This year we welcome the new DMA members from ther fromer Storage Tek.
Posted at 10:36PM Oct 13, 2006 by gwaterson in General |