Taylor's Take on Sun Storage

An Easier Storage Platform - OpenSolaris

With data growth, higher energy costs and the emergence of Web 2.0 applications that demand scalable storage at low costs - vendors, end users and market analysts are focusing more on storage architectures.  Storage economics need to change - a fundamental change that can only happen at the infrastructure level.  

Key to any system is the operating system or platform.  OSes obviously hold tremendous importance when evaluating servers - what type of OS and applications are supported?  Historically, the underlying OS has not mattered as much in storage.  Or at least compatibility and interoperability has mattered more.  As long as my storage supports a Mainframe/Unix/Linux/Windows environment, what do I care about the OS?

Storage Platforms
In the open systems market today, the storage OS matters more than ever before.  Adding data services at the OS level can change storage economics and increase storage performance and efficiency.   Using a common storage platform can save on training and admin costs.  Using an open source OS can speed innovation, increase flexibility and save on software costs.

HP is using Windows Storage Server as a storage platform; EMC is leveraging the economics and flexibility of Linux inside its Centera archive product; and NetApp has built its own storage platform - Data ONTAP (originally leveraging FreeBSD open source code).

Sun offers Solaris and OpenSolaris (to see the difference b/w the two, click here). OpenSolaris is the platform for Sun's Open Storage offerings which provides open access to developers (something the storage platforms or implementations mentioned above do not...)

An Easier OpenSolaris
Today Sun announced an easy-to-use OpenSolaris at the 2008 CommunityOne Developer conference.   There are several benefits to using OpenSolaris and ZFS as a storage platform - built-in data integrity, snapshot software, volume management and software RAID being a few.  But one request the developer community had of OpenSolaris was ease of use - easier to get, install, use, maintain and support.  Especially compared to Linux in the open source realm. 

Today's announcement is just that - it comes from "Project Indiana" which has been underway for the past year after Ian Murdock joined Sun.  Ian is the former Linux Foundation CTO and Debian founder (one of the first Linux distributions.)

So what makes this OpenSolaris distribution easier?  An easier to use environment based on GNU-based utilities that's currently leveraged in the GNOME desktop and other applications (See Disk Usage Analyzer screen shot to right).  ZFS is also the default root file system now - and as mentioned above, ZFS has some pretty innovative features including a "rollback" option where you can essentially do a "Ctrl-Z" if a software installation or update goes bad.  OpenSolaris also includes a new Image Packaging System (IPS) software which enables easier access and downloads to a full suite of additional software.  Software updates have also been made easier.

OpenSolaris Support
Of course support is always a large question around anything open source.  Sun offers enterprise support for Solaris; support for its commercial storage products built from open storage components; and now Sun will offer two OpenSolaris subscription support offerings beginning May 13.  OpenSolaris Production Subscription Support will include 24x7 telephone support, online technical support and bug escalation services.   OpenSolaris Essential Subscription Support will include 8x5 business hour online technical support. 

OpenSolaris as a Storage Platform
It seems today there are three viable platforms to base a storage platform on that will stand the test of time - Linux, Windows and Solaris.   Sun and its community have invested heavily in Solaris as a storage platform - and even some die-hard Linux developers are noticing:

DigiTar is a Linux advocate, but when it came to storage they choose Solaris.  In his blog, DigiTar COO/CTO says, "it was storage that brought Solaris into our environment and continues to drive it deeper into our services stack.  Which begs the question: Why?  Isn't DTrace just as cool as ZFS?   Haven't Solaris Containers dramatically changed the way we provision and utilize systems?  Sure...but storage is what drives our business and it doesn't seem to me that we're alone." 

When the Linux developers at Nexenta decided to build "Enterprise Class Storage for Everyone" they choose OpenSolaris as their storage platform.   They could only accomplish their storage goals through Solaris.

The fact that OpenSolaris is getting easier to use is good for developers, the community and ultimately to customers.  Ease-of-use in addition to enterprise quality, data integrity and data services is a powerful combination....

---- Update ----

We announced that OpenSolaris can be run in a virtual computing environment (aka the cloud)!  See Jonathan's blog and the OpenSolaris service offered on Amazon EC2...

Posted at 03:44PM May 05, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[2]

Sun is on to something - Open Storage

I freely admit, when Sun announced its open source storage community a year go I was a skeptic.  Sure, open source has its play in software and servers - but storage?  

Well, after a year of watching Sun's open storage investments, industry-standard hardware used in enterprise storage and working within Sun on today's announcement - Sun Extends World's First Open Storage Platform - I think Sun is on to something...

Also read all about Sun Open Storage here.... 

I'll make a brief case for open storage and Sun's leadership in it here.   We have also developed a series of open storage White Papers that give more detail on the below info - I'll post them here.  

What is Open Storage? 

Here is a simple definition:  Open storage is the combination of open source software with industry-standard hardware to create enterprise-class storage systems

Open source software like Linux or OpenSolaris OS.  Open source applications like MySQL database software.  And Sun has been one of the first companies to break the barrier with higher-level open source storage applications which include:

• Volume Management
• Snapshot, Data Mirroring and Replication
• Hierarchal Storage Management (HSM)
• Fixed Content Archive
  
• And one of the most advanced file systems on the planet - ZFS (Which includes advanced software RAID, data integrity, self-healing and storage management services) 
  

Industry-standard hardware is typically available through multiple vendors and is very price-competitive.  Examples include x86 servers and standard FC/SATA/SAS disk drives.  One could also include LTO tape because it is an industry-standard tape technology - but I'll primarily focus on disk systems, as this is the market that will be most impacted by open storage. 

In an open storage architecture, the customer selects the best hardware and software for the job.  In contrast, almost all of today's disk arrays and NAS appliances are closed - customers are locked into using the vendor's disk drives, controllers and proprietary software. 

The irony being that a lot of closed systems are built from open source software and industry-standard hardware - helping vendor margins but not customer budgets     

The Evolution of disk Architectures  

Our brilliant disk analyst, Bruce Norikane, also points out that industry disk systems have been evolving to more open architectures over time and with each new market introduction.  A similar trend has also happened in the server market.  Consider the graphic below:   

Early disk systems were custom, proprietary engineering projects starting with IBM's SLED (Single Large Expensive Disk)  in 1956 where everything was custom.  Then in the 1980's a high-volume disk market emerged thanks to PCs and servers; and in the 1990's Enterprise RAID was adopted.  Enterprise RAID incorporated a custom disk controller and these new market drives.  Modular storage then hit the market, consisting of a separate controller and disk enclosures that fit in a standard rack - more flexible and affordable.  Most recently we have seen the RAIN (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Nodes) architecture emerge - distributed storage based on server technologies offering better scalability at a better price point.  RAIN architectures are largely based on industry-standard servers, operating systems and networks.  However, while RAIN systems leverage open components, they tend to be build as closed systems with locked-in components from traditional vendors.

The next logical step is open storage - industry-standard hardware and open source software that drive down storage economics and spur greater innovation.  Again, this storage systems evolution is not unlike what happened in the server world - where servers were large, proprietary and expensive years ago. Smaller, industry-standard servers and open source software changed the economics in the server market - and they are doing the same thing to storage.

Why Open Storage?   

Four reasons:

1. Enterprise-class storage:  Systems that offer as much or more quality, reliability and data integrity as closed systems.  Sounds like a stretch?  Just see the InfoWorld review of Sun's x86, SATA, open source software-based archive solution.  It scored perfect 10s in reliability and scalability.  Let's also not forget that ZFS offers 19 9s of data integrity with predictive, self-healing features.          

2. An Open Storage Software Community:   This is important if you are a developer, a company that has developers or a company that is planning on hiring developers to differentiate through IT.  When we launched OpenSolaris Storage last year we had only a handful of open source projects - we now have over 30.  The OpenSolaris community has more than 96,000 registered members in all.  Why is this important?  Customers don't have to wait on a vendor for the features they need - they can find new innovations in the community or develop features themselves.  Innovation is not held back by vendor objectives or limited R&D budgets...  

3. Breakthrough Economics:  Probably the most compelling argument for open storage and why open storage is needed today.   The best way to understand how open storage can impact storage economics is through an overly-simplistic diagram of a closed system:

Now consider an open storage architecture:

In a nutshell, storage applications are free from licensing costs and open to developers.  Open storage users can choose the platform their IT staff is most familiar with.   An industry-standard server with ZFS (which again includes RAID, data management and data integrity features) can take the place on an expensive controller.   And affordable, market-priced disks can be deployed under the system - even fast and cheap JBOD if you leverage ZFS.

To see the real-world impact we compared some closed systems vs. open systems using Ideas International pricing:

In full disclosure, these are US list prices.  We did configure every system to be as close in capacity as possible using affordable SATA drives in most every configuration.  And finally, certain applications, features and environments simply must run higher-end arrays today - I am not implying that everyone throw out their closed storage and go with 100% open.  But at this economic price difference - users will be compelled to determine which applications and which data should migrate to more open storage - and we presume the data center mix of open vs. closed storage will change over time.         

You can also read about the open storage impact in the VTL space here...

4. Dynamic Scalability: Lastly, the ability to dynamically and efficiently scale to meet today's huge data demand has become business critical, especially with emerging Web 2.0 applications.  Sun sells systems that scale from less than 10TB to greater than 100PBs.   And OpenSolaris ZFS is a 128-bit file system that provides 16 billion, billion times (yes you read that right) the capacity of 32-bit or even 64-bit file systems. 

Sun Open Storage 

Sun offers every component of open storage:  A tried-and-tested enterprise platform in OpenSolaris, the leading HPC file system Lustre, and the open source storage applications mentioned above.  Sun also offers a complete portfolio of innovative and efficient industry-standard servers and storage. 

Sun has, and will announce, storage systems built on an open storage platform as well - Sun Fire X4500 and Sun StorageTek 5800 are Sun's first products built on a truly open storage platform. 

Sun also offers open storage services and resources through its community :

• Learn how to build a Storage Server in 10 minutes or less here
• Build a simple NAS appliance using Sun Open Storage components here 

Sun Open Storage Customers

More compelling than anything I can write is what our customers say about Sun and open storage:

DigiTar
DigiTar provides advanced messaging security and processing services over the Internet.  They are using the opensolaris, Solaris ZFS and Sun Fire X4500's.  Jason Williams is DigiTar's COO/CTO and highlights his expereince with Sun open storage in his blogpost Democratizing Storage.  Even though the DigiTar team is self-described as “Linux zealots,” OpenSolaris was brought in because it made a superior storage platform.  Some of my favorite quotes are below:

“That’s the really amazing thing about OpenSolaris as a storage platform. It has all of the features of an expensive array and because it allows you to build reliable storage out of commodity components, you can build the storage architecture you need instead of being held hostage by the one you can afford.”

“When you’ve got rock-solid iSCSI, NFS, and I/O multipathing implementations, as well as a file system (ZFS) that loves cheap disks…and none of it requires licensing…you can suddenly do anything.  Need to handle 3600 non-cached IOPs for under $60K? No problem. Have an existing array but can’t justify $10K for snapshotting? No problem. How ‘bout serving line-rate iSCSI with commodity storage and CPUs? No problemo.” 

“By using X4500s, we get the same reliability and redundancy for about 85% less cost. That kind of savings means we can deploy 6.8x more storage for the same price footprint and do all sorts of cool things..."

Nexenta
Nexenta has built its NexentaOS and NexentaStor software appliance on Sun open storage products – OpenSolaris and ZFS.  This is significant, as the Nexenta team developed an iSCSI stack that was adopted by the Linux community.  Nexenta's team choose OpenSolaris for their storage platform to actually build a new NAS appliance.  Nexenta's NexentaStor offering is a software-based NAS and iSCSI solution - read about it here.  There is also an excellent blog on ZFS and Nexenta here.   

TACC 
Open Storage also has a large play in HPC - consider one of the world's largest supercomputer built from Sun's open storage, servers and traditional storage offerings.  TACC's Ranger system will be used in computational science & technology research.  Ranger runs 3,936 nodes and 62,976 processing cores; has 23TB of memory and 504TFlops at peak performance; and uses 1.73PB of shared disk and 31.4TB of local disk.  Ranger uses Lustre file system running across 72 Sun Fire X4500 servers. For long-term data retention and archive, Ranger runs Sun StorageTek SAM software over six metadata servers - and deploys five Sun StorageTek SL8500 libraries with 48 StorageTek T10000 tape drives.  Ranger will scale to over 3.1PB of online storage and 200PB of near-line storage. 

From a simple NAS appliance to one of the world's largest supercomputers - open storage scales!

You can read more user case studies below: 

• The University of Oxford is storing 19th century works with the ST5800
  
• Gracenote uses Sun Fire X4500's for its mobile music services
• Web 2.0 SaaS provider Sapotek says, "The ZFS file system feature of the Solaris 10 OS is a marvel. It creates a common storage pool where all storage performs as fast as if it were local. Our administrators can grow, add or remove storage on the fly in a single step. Just 2 people administer 24 terabytes.”
  

What about Sun's other Storage offerings? 

I invariably get this question when we highlight one architecture or approach.  So, to be clear - Sun sells closed systems too...and we sell a lot of them.  We now sell both depending on customer needs.  But we see the need for open storage - and we are investing in it while other vendors are not.  We are also investing in our traditional storage products - our customers deploy a mix of storage architectures depending on their needs - so Sun sells both.  Lastly, you can't claim breakthrough economics without leveraging tape in your portfolio.  If you want to hear about Sun's tape commitments, read about my trip down to Imation. 

But as far as open storage goes, I think Sun is on to something...

---- Updates ---- 

Other Open Storage Blogs: 

• Bob Porras says Open Storage IS the news...
• Lynn Rohrer's Community Perspective 
  
• Jeff interviews Sun Open Storage customers Nexenta and LiveAmmo

Posted at 07:19AM Apr 29, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[0]

HP's Upline goes Offline

HP Upline is HP's new SaaS offering for online storage, backup and data migration services - from HP's recent acquisition of Opelin.  They offer "unlimited storage" for $299 for year 1 or $599 for 2 years.

Unfortunately HP Upline crashed just a few days after it was launched.   To be fair, this stuff isn't always easy - we had several obstacles to overcome with our own SaaS compute service.

However, HP probably didn't count on an active EMC blogger as an early adopter (openness has its pros and cons).  EMC's Storagezilla posted a blog with HP's notice to customers about the crash.   EMC's own SaaS storage service, Mozy, wasted no time on capitalizing on HP's crash in true EMC fashion - launching a Google text ad titled "Shafted by Upline?" and "Is Upline jerking you around?"

Another significant point Mr. Zilla points out is that the current SaaS leader, Amazon Web Services' (AWS) total revenue for 2007 was $100M.  

Bottom line:  The market and storage industry is adopting SaaS - but the market is still new and emerging.  Like most trends, SaaS won't take over the world - but the datacenter mix will change, evolve over time.   And while simple backup technologies and strategies are not as sexy as new trends like Web 2.0 or SaaS - a simple backup strategy will still have its place in the new world. 

Posted at 02:12PM Apr 23, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[2]

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]

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]

The Internet is the Medium

My best friend and 'ol college roomie Hari Sreenivasan is a CBS News Correspondent (see his handsome mugshot here).  Hari just did a pretty cool story on 3D sidewalk chalk drawings by artist Julian Beever.  See Hari's CBS News Video.   

About ten years ago I remember brainstorming about the future of the Internet - the thought was that the Internet will be less like a new communications channel and more like an actual medium for new content and services.

That's what makes Hari's story so cool - look at about 4:40 into the video.  Hari asks about Julian's art lasting past the next rainfall.  Here is Julian's answer:

"It doesn't worry me at all - the fact the drawing will disappear after a couple of days in the rain.  Because the final product is the photograph, and if that photograph goes on the Internet then thousands of people will see it and it will be there forever."      

You can see Julian Beever's canvas by just searching for his name on YouTube... 

Posted at 12:09PM Mar 03, 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]

EMC's Big Bet

So EMC just announced an all-cash acquisition of a small startup as well as a new "Cloud Infrastructure and Services" division.  And while they do A LOT of acquisitions - EMC's Chuck Hollis doesn't think this is your everyday acquisition. 

I agree with him...

As we know, Sun and others in the industry believe the future will hold utility-like "Information Data Centers" - where customers can buy/rent/lease CPUs and GBs.  An emerging buzz term for this is Cloud Computing or Storage.  Sun is building next-gen technology (another buzz word, thank you) that can be leveraged by these emerging mega-data centers - for more on this, see Greg Papadopoulos' SAS 2008 Keynote on building network-scale computing.   

So, while Sun is providing  the technology for future "Information Data Centers" - EMC is trying to become one.

Let's look at what EMC has been up to these past couple years in this space (dates are close but not exact): 

• 2/21/08:  EMC announces new Cloud Infrastructure and Services division to be run by ex-Microsoft exec Paul Maritz
  
• 2/21/08: EMC announces all-cash acquisition of Pi Corporation, developer of Personal Information Management Technology
  
• 1/22/08: EMC announces EMC Fortress SaaS infrastructure &  Mozy online backup service 
• 10/1/07:  EMC acquires online storage provider Berkeley Data Systems (Mozy) for $76M
• 11/1/06:  EMC acquires online storage provider Avamar Technologies for $165M (Avamar is a de-dup technology, but it sits behind online storage service offerings like Arsenal's)
  
• 6/30/06:  EMC buys RSA Security for $2.1B - they have security and authentication software, key in providing storage services
  

So, EMC's big bet looks like it is to become a "Utility Information Data Center" (for lack of a better term). 

More power to them if they can pull it off.  And while EMC may have already made its investments in storage infrastructure, software, server virtualization and security for this - they are going to need some pretty innovative server and networking technology to pull it off.  I think I may know a company ;-)

Posted at 01:11PM Feb 22, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[0]

Server Virtualization's Impact on Storage

Today Sun announced it entered into a stock purchase agreement to acquire innotek.  In a nutshell, innotek develops VirtualBox, an open source desktop virtualization platform.   On the server virtualization side, Sun has had an alliance with VMware for 2.5 years now, and Sun has also delivered its own Sun's xVM platform with some pretty unique self-healing and management capabilities. (Get OpenxVM here).  innotek will add to Sun's xVM platform, it allows laptops or desktops running Windows, Mac, Linux or Solaris to run multiple OSes side-by-side.  Cool stuff.  To learn more on innotek see the Weblogs of Steve Wilson and Joe Bonasera or download VirtualBox here. 

So all this server virtualization talk got us to thinking...

What is server virtualization's impact on Storage? 

I admit, my team and I have discussed this and we believe that the true impact is yet to be determined - this is new stuff after all.   This is what we do know:

Server Virtualization's link to storage: The most important link b/w server virtualization and storage is application mobility.  In server virtualization, customers can ultimately move applications from box-to-box and system-to-system much easier than ever before.  But as applications move to different systems, customers need to maintain the links to storage.  If customers have to maintain links to storage as they move their applications around, it would make sense for virtualized environments to leverage networked storage - maintaining the links through the network.

Which storage network benefits the most from Server Virtualization? SAN, iSCSI or NAS?  All of the prominent storage networks, FC, iSCSI and NAS, are fighting for virtual server market share. After reading several IDC briefs, all three show signs of growth.  In one brief, IDC claimed that Server Virtualization contributed to the increase of industry FC SAN sales in 2007.  IDC also predicts that ~50% of virtualized servers will be attached to iSCSI in the future - citing that server admins are generally more comfortable with IP-based storage and networks.  NAS vendors are also pushing file server networking to support virtual servers.

Server Virtualization has the potential to dramatically impact Storage customer requirements:  Server Virtualization is still emerging and maturing, but it will impact storage purchase patterns.  This will (or should)  impact how storage is marketed and sold and will most likely disrupt analyst's long-term forecasts of the storage market.  The amount and type of impact to vendors and customers should be interesting to watch.    

 I'd love to hear any comments on how others think server virtualization will impact storage....

Posted at 03:36PM Feb 12, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[3]

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[0]

Wow! NetApp posts EMC SPC benchmark

In a gutsy move, NetApp just posted a Storage Performance Council (SPC) Benchmark....on the EMC CLARiiON! 

Now EMC has made clear statements that they "don't participate in performance benchmarking" - EMCer Chuck Hollis blogs about this in detail.  But this is not entirely true - as EMC is an active member in SPEC NAS performance benchmarks.  So the real issue is that EMC does not participate in SPC disk array performance benchmarks.  They have been pressured to do so, but it is ultimately their choice (until now it seems).  

In a pretty bold move - NetApp looks to have acquired an EMC CLARiiON disk array and posted some benchmarks for them.  NetApp even issued a press release on it.  Now to stay above the fray (I expect a pretty heated battle over this), I won't offer any opinions or judgments.  What I will do is post commentary from EMC and non-EMC bloggers below; as well as the public SPC results...

(For the record, I do consider the SPC Council to be a good and fair 3rd-party benchmark organization that tries to replicate real customer workload behavior accurately.  They are supported by Sun, IBM, HP, NetApp, Hitachi, Fujitsu, LSI Logic and Dell...)

Relevant Blogs:  

• NetApp's Dave Hitz shares why NetApp did it...
  
• EMC's Chuck Hollis says NetApp has taken benchmarks to a new level   
• ESG's Steve Duplessie's take
• IBM's Tony Pearson chimes in
• IBM's Barry Whyte can't wait for the excuses (be sure to read the EMC commentary)   

  
The SPC results (Submitted by Network Appliance and posted to SPC 1/29)

 EMC CLARiiON CX3 Model 40 pictured at right (no SnapView):
 http://www.storageperformance.org/results/benchmark_results_all#a00059
 http://www.storageperformance.org/results/benchmark_results_spc1#a00059

   SPC-1 Submission Identifier:  A00059
   SPC-1 IOPS(tm):               24,997.49
   SPC-1 Price-Performance(tm):  $20.72/SPC-1 IOPS(tm)
   Total ASU Capacity:           8,465.016 GB
   Data Protection Level:        Mirroring
   Total Price:                  $517,851


 EMC CLARiiON CX3 Model 40 (SnapView enabled):
 http://www.storageperformance.org/results/benchmark_results_all#a00060
 http://www.storageperformance.org/results/benchmark_results_spc1#a00060

   SPC-1 Submission Identifier:  A00060
   SPC-1 IOPS(tm):               8,997.17
   SPC-1 Price-Performance(tm):  $59.49/SPC-1 IOPS(tm)
   Total ASU Capacity:           7,054.148 GB
   Data Protection Level:        Mirroring
   Total Price:                  $535,251

One stat that industry insiders are pointing out is that the EMC CLARiiON took a 2.7x hit in performance with snapshots enabled (~25,000 IOPS down to ~9,000 IOPS).  This looks to be a pretty high performance penalty and may be something EMC needs to address. 

What of Sun StorageTek SPC results?   

As stated above, we're big SPC Benchmark supporters.  It is just another good tool that gives customers more intel into choosing the best storage system for their business.  You can find a ton of Sun benchmarks on SPC, two notable ones in this midrange disk array space are:

• Sun StorageTek 6140 (Submission # A00048): We posted 17,396 IOPS in a Mirrored RAID configuration with an industry leading Price/Performance metric of $4.91/IOPS. 
  
• Sun StorageTek 6540 (Submission #A00051): We posted 46,492 IOPS in a Mirrored RAID configuration with an industry leading Price/Performance metric of $6.62/IOPS.      
  

Posted at 05:09PM Jan 30, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[1]

Web 2.0 Needs Good Backup Too

To backup or not to backup, that is the question; Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous downtimes, Or to protect data against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them...

Five years ago I was managing StorageTek's Advanced Technology Research department in RD&E (we were the "R").  One of our research probes was "Grid Storage."  At the time we used Grid Storage to describe an emerging storage architecture.  We also researched "Utility Storage" - or paying for only the storage you use as a type of service.   Even at StorageTek, where tape was king, we were talking about how "Grid Storage" could get rid of backups forever!  Imagine, multiple cheap nodes on the network, data striped across all of them - a whole section of the "Grid" goes down and you have redundancy across other sections. 

No more need for data backup and all the admin/management pains that go with it...

Today we have new innovations on the service and infrastructure side.   When talking about SaaS, I have used Amazon S3 as a prime example.  EMC just entered this space with their announcement of an online backup service available through EMC Fortress - their storage service infrastructure/platform.  On the infrastructure side, companies (and, more importantly, end users) are building grid-like enterprise storage nodes with volume components and clustered/parallel/virtualized file systems.  Sun is one vendor leading the charge here.  And Web 2.0 companies have emerged as the primary consumers and developers of these systems. 

But for some Web 2.0 companies good backup (and backup practices) is an afterthought.   Afterall, start ups can't afford enterprise protection practices like hot replication.  Oftentimes they have to restore data from backups during a crash or outage - but if their processes are not up to snuff, or their backup/restore system is faulty - they succumb to longer outages and lost data.  Bottom line - the utopia of "Grid Storage" is not here yet so having a good backup and recovery plan in place should be a necessity for Web 2.0 companies too...

NOTE:  While I am using some public examples below, I do need to note a couple of important items:

• First, these companies should be commended for being open w/ their users.  There is something to be said for flat out honesty, and I couldn't link to these examples if these companies weren't honest and open.
• Second, these companies most likely implemented very high quality storage systems with advanced RAID protection - even the best systems fail.  (The odds are against 3 drives failing simultaneously, but unfortunately, it happens) 
  
• The point it that these were GOOD systems that failed - so even advanced systems need some sort of backup...
  

There have been several outages in some social networking/photo sharing sites of late.  PBase as a great example.   Read about their outage here.  Below is an excerpt from their IT dept to their end users on PBase's discussion forum: 

"On Saturday, we lost 3 disks simultaneously in our main storage system which runs on NetApp hardware. This caused an 8 Terabyte volume to have some inconsistencies which have to be analyed and repaired before we can put the volume back online. ... I wish the recovery process could have gone faster, but after a problem with the filesystem, it's important to analyze it carefully so we can be sure everything is healthy."

Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) posts an update about its recent outage:

"On January 18th 2008 we had a multiple disk RAID failure...The forums are now back up and running again. There are three caveats: firstly that messages posted before 1st January 2008 are still restoring, secondly that it appears that messages posted in the last five days have been lost and that search is disabled..."

Now, let's say as a Web 2.0 company you choose to go with a storage service (SaaS) rather than an internal system.  Most notably, SmugMug uses Amazon S3 for this.  This is a viable option, and while I am a fan of Amazon S3, users need to read Amazon's Terms & Conditions first.  Here is an excerpt from Amazon S3's T&C (bold sections mine for emphasis): 

"7.1. Downtime and Service Suspensions.  In addition to our rights to terminate or suspend Services to you as described in Section 3 above, you acknowledge that: (i) your access to and use of the Services may be suspended for the duration of any unanticipated or unscheduled downtime or unavailability of any portion or all of the Services for any reason, including as a result of power outages, system failures or other interruptions; and (ii) we shall also be entitled, without any liability to you, to suspend access to any portion or all of the Services at any time, on a Service-wide basis: (a) for scheduled downtime to permit us to conduct maintenance or make modifications to any Service; (b) in the event of a denial of service attack or other attack on the Service or other event that we determine, in our sole discretion, may create a risk to the applicable Service, to you or to any of our other customers if the Service were not suspended; or (c) in the event that we determine that any Service is prohibited by law or we otherwise determine that it is necessary or prudent to do so for legal or regulatory reasons (collectively, "Service Suspensions"). Without limitation to Section 11.5, we shall have no liability whatsoever for any damage, liabilities, losses (including any loss of data or profits) or any other consequences that you may incur as a result of any Service Suspension."

So outsourcing storage may be a great option for a lot of companies - but there is also risk here...

Ay, there's the rub...

To backup is clearly the answer - it was years ago, it still is today.  But the rub is this: the time investment and cost between a poor backup process/system and a good one is probably minimal. 

Let me repeat that:  the time investment and cost between a poor backup process/system and a good one is probably minimal.      

I've been doing stuff in storage and IT for 14 years now, and I know that a basic, thought-out data protection plan will give you one of the best returns on investment in IT.  Odds are that every Web 2.0 company has some type of data protection practice in place - but it may be ill defined or largely neglected in lieu of the million other things going on there.   But a little time investment will go a long way in keeping customers confident that they can rely on you safeguarding their data. 

And, if you need to know how to pull together a good backup or data protection plan, Sun StorageTek Service Plans are a good place to start...

Posted at 02:58PM Jan 29, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[1]

Sun's Latest Web 2.0 Investment - MySQL

For the record, I am not completely attached to the term "Web 2.0" - it has quickly become another buzzword, making its meaning even more ambiguous.  But it does give a general idea of a certain data center application that has vendors investing more and more in it these days.  (Sun's own term for these types of apps is Redshift).  

But I do love that my last blog analyzing the IBM XIV buy touched on the two primary IT markets Sun is investing in - our traditional market (where most of our revenue comes from today - let's not forget) and our Web 2.0/Redshift markets (our emerging customer base).  What has also been nice here at Sun (I came through the StorageTek acquisition - has it really been 2.5 years already???), is that Sun is focused on the entire IT infrastructure - from storage to the server to software to services.    

With that said, Sun has made big news today with its announcement to acquire MySQL (pronounced My S-Q-L by the MySQL folks, but they also don't mind if they are called My "sequel" either).  Links:

• MySQL Press Kit
• Johnathan helps dolphin's fly
  
• Simon swims with the Dolphins
  
• MySQL Audiocast
  

So, I stated previously that Web 2.0 apps require massive scalability, high performance, open/flexible platforms, efficiency and lower costs.   Some facts on MySQL:

• It's the world's second largest independent open source company believe it or not (Red Hat is the largest)
• It's the leading database for online applications and services, and the world's most popular open source RDBMS (the “M” in LAMP)
• They have over 400 employees in over 25 countries
• They get more than 50,000 product downloads daily(!)
  
• MySQL reduces database licensing costs by up to 90%
• MySQL runs on 20+ platforms
• See some select "Web 2.0" customers at right -->
  

So, Sun made a big bet in the "Web 2.0" space today - in the software stack, at the database level.  We also continue to invest in the entire IT infrastructure.  In storage, we have one of the most complete portfolios for traditional storage applications, and are making heavy investments on the Web 2.0 side.  

Sun's most recent and significant storage investments in the Web 2.0 market are "Thumper" (Open server, software and 48TB of storage in a 4U rack for only $1/GB!) and Lustre (one of the world's most scalable, high-performance storage cluster file systems).  

One innovation built and the other bought - a healthy mix I'd say....

Posted at 12:00PM Jan 16, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence  |  Comments[0]

IBM buys XIV - good move or bad?

Our team wrote an internal analysis for Sun Execs on IBM's XIV buy last week (thanks to Bruce Norikane for his brilliant analysis as usual).  

So, was this a good move for IBM? IMHO, yes.  I don't know if the deal will pan out for IBM (who does), and I don't know how solid the technology is (all I can do it read what is public) - but from one competitor to another, I think it makes strategic sense for IBM (and for the industry). 

Before I get to my thoughts on why, I do have to say this has been a fun analysis to do - primarily because of the Blog battle that broke out between some EMC and IBM bloggers.   There is history here too, which always make things interesting.  For those who are not storage insiders, here is the story (and feel free to use comments to correct anything I get wrong here...)

• XIV was founded in Israel in 2002 by Moshe Yanai who is known as the father of EMC's Symmetrix disk system, one of the most successful storage products in history.
• Moshe left EMC 8 years ago, and EMC focused its M&A money on buying software
• Moshe continued his innovation efforts at the infrastructure level, and has been involved with several startups including Diligent 
• Now IBM picks up XIV, and Moshe, as part of its “on demand” information management strategy
• Moshe's latest infrastructure innovation, NEXTRA, is radically different from the traditional monolithic infrastructure of EMC's Symmetrix and IBM's DS enterprise storage arrays
• Although details are scarce, in a nutshell, Moshe's NEXTRA (pictured at right) implements an asymmetric cluster architecture with 2 types of nodes - interface modules and data modules:
• The Interface modules perform the front-end processing and host interface. They present virtual SCSI LUNS through either FC or iSCSI host ports.
• The Data modules store the data on 15 1TB SATA disks.
• Interface and Data modules use dedicated 1Gb Ethernet switches to pass data and control commands. Both modules use dual 2.6 Ghz Intel processors.
• Customers can add either Interface modules for more front end processing or Data modules to scale storage.

IBM bills its NEXTRA acquisition as a "Web 2.0" storage investment - which it should.  Web 2.0 applications demand open, flexible storage - that are both affordable and can scale massively.  Something expensive and hard to do with proprietary, monolithic architectures - but easier and cheaper to do with volume, general purpose storage "parts" strung together w/ clever software to achieve enterprise levels of capacity and performance.

So, if I may be allowed to speculate (that's what blogs are for right?) - it seems to me that IBM is positioning XIV as a Web 2.0 storage architecture to compliment its traditional DS enterprise array architecture (Sun has already taken this approach - more on this later).  EMC is positioning XIV as an attempt to help/replace IBM's "failed" DS8000 pro