EMC FAST - Validating Intelligent Tiered Storage
By Tony Asaro on Dec 9, 2009 | In Data Management, Business Issues for IT, Storage, Storage Management | 10 feedbacks »
I believe that intelligent tiered storage (aka automated tiered storage) is one of the most valuable capabilities that can be provided by a storage system especially as capacities continue to sky rocket. What is intelligent tiered storage? It is the ability to move data - based on policy and behavior - from high cost storage to lower cost storage. The goal is to increase utilization and optimization of storage assets while driving down cost. This needs to be a transparent process with no downtime or impact to users or applications. Companies of all sizes can benefit reducing their capital costs by significant percentages. And those environments that have massive storage capacities can literally save millions of dollars.
Based on various research and talking to hundreds of customers over the years network storage utilization is typically 50% or less. It is also common that 60-80% of all data stored on tier 1 and 2 storage is dormant 90 days after its creation. In fact, much of it is dormant two weeks after it is created. These statistics represent a huge amount of waste. However, very few companies have actually implemented intelligent tiered storage. One of the main reasons for this is that most of the storage systems that can move data do so at the volume level and this is not granular enough. For example, if a policy to move data is based on how many I/Os hit that volume within a 90 day period then that volume may never be moved. A volume could have 10% of its data that is in constant use and requires optimal performance but the other 90% of the data on that volume is never accessed. However, the active 10% dictates the policy for the other 90% and that volume would not be moved. Therefore, it is important to be able to "stretch" a volume across different storage media and RAID levels in smaller chunks.
Compellent is the leader and innovator for intelligent tiered storage and based on policy they move data at the block level - a feature they call Data Progression. Compellent has provided this functionality for over four or five years. They have a large number of customers using Data Progression and it has been extremely successful for them. I actually wrote a report on this back in 2006. Now that EMC is validating intelligent tiering, Compellent would be wise to leverage the momentum that is sure to follow around this capability (EqualLogic experienced a real increase in sales when EMC announced iSCSI).
EMC announced general availability of their intelligent tiering solution called FAST. There are a number of articles that provide you with the details of this announcement - but one of the best is from StorageNerve. For me, the details of this announcement are less important than the implications.
What I think is important about the EMC FAST announcement is they are validating intelligent tiered storage. EMC has the clout and the resources to educate the market on what customers should be thinking about, investing in and implementing. Additionally, they will mobilize their competitors to put their shoulders to the wheel and provide competitive functionality. And the result is that customers will be able to take advantage of this capability by multiple vendors in 2010 and 2011. For example, 3PAR just announced Policy Advisor - this is a software tool that analyzes data usage on their InServe storage system and based on policy and behavior will move data to different tiers. It is no coincidence that 3PAR announced general availability of Policy Advisor right before EMC announced FAST.
At the moment EMC FAST is able to move data at the LUN level - which isn't granular enough - in my view - to provide the value customers are really looking for with this technology. EMC's stated vision is to be able to move data at a "sub-LUN" level later in 2010. I believe that once they achieve this much more value will be derived from FAST.
2010 promises to be the year of intelligent tiered storage with a number of storage vendors coming to market with their version of this capability. I am looking forward to hearing the announcements, general availability and customer implementations.
We are on the threshold of intelligent tiered storage becoming a reality in the data center and I believe it will significantly change the economics of storage.
10 comments
Tony
I think Compellent needs to go further and develop a federated infrastructure with the ability to move LUNs between arrays, Load balancing and horizontal scaling to get a big enterprise system with standard building blocks managed as a single one!
Enrico
It is interesting - I had a conversation with them about what you propose maybe four years ago. And their answer was - "why". Yes, all of the things you mentioned can add value but it doesn't impact the lion share of the market. Especially not the market that Compellent is going after.
One could argue that things have changed over the last four years and there is more of a need for a scale out or federated architecture. But I don't believe that is true for them. I believe that Compellent can reach a billion dollars in revenue with the solution they have.
IT vendors have to be careful and not move towards every shiny object that presents itself. Instead, they need to understand the requirements of the majority of market.
Additionally, they need to understand what battles to fight - going after the large Enterprise customers is not what I would recommend.
Even if (when) the established vendors implement similar features? I mean, FAST (et al) is just another storage feature that everyone will (evenutally) support, much as is thin provisioning or VMware integration - right?
Or are you saying that it's break-away differentiation and Compellent enjoys a defensible market segment?
Seriously - I'm curious.
Well first I said that Compellent \"could\" reach a billion - not saying that they necessarily will. In other words, the midrange market is such that there is certainly enough market opportunity for them to achieve this with the capabilities that they have today.
There is no silver bullet, new feature or capability that will change the landscape for them - and I am saying they don't need it. Certainly the things that Enrico suggested would not add that much to their top line. Rather, their continued success requires business execution year after year after year.
Additionally, going after higher end environments would most likely detract from their current go-to-market focus and hurt them.
Remember that features may appear similar but often what is comparable on paper is not so in the real world. Additionally, it is the overall experience of working with the product and the vendor that also matters. Compellent has an excellent storage system - it is feature-rich and it is very easy to use. And that ease of use extends over its life cycle - which is very important.
Compare LeftHand and EqualLogic. Arguably, LeftHand had some advanced technologies that EqualLogic did not - such as a true clustered n-way architecture - one of the very things that Enrico is talking about. And yet, EqualLogic executed on their business much more successfully than LeftHand.
At the stage that Compellent is at - the MOST important thing for them is executing on sales with laser-like focus. They need to become a machine. And perhaps they have achieved this already - I haven't spoken to them in some time. But that is more important than feature-creep.
In any case, my blog wasn't about Compellent. But it is a good discussion :)
Enrico and Tony are right - federation of arrays is something we’ve discussed; we realize a super SAN structure like that offers a lot of advantages for end users. Though Compellent continues to focus on the midsized enterprise, we also recognize large enterprises can benefit from our features. We’ll definitely continue to expand usage models and functionality for automated tiered storage. A persistent, modular architecture—which is what we base Storage Center on-- provides a lot of flexibility in the way it supports new SW and HW tech as they emerge (Infiniband, FCOE, 10GbE, etc). That’s why we’ve been able to add support for SSD with automated tiered storage without having to introduce a new model. We’ll have more info to share over in 2010.
Tony
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