Contemplating IT

Updated August 23! HP jumps into the mix. Bottom line - HP sells a ton of storage in both the midrange and high-end environments. But the EVA is old in the tooth and they OEM their high-end from HDS. It will be interesting to see where each of these big vendors draws the line in the sand.

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Dell has been doing extremely well with EqualLogic. Here is what I speculate they have learned since the acquisition:

1. Selling storage isn't easy but there is a real stickiness factor. You don't just swap out storage systems. Once you have embraced a solution you will most likely continue working with it for years to come and buy more and more and more of it. That is, if it is a good/great solution. If it sucks - even then it isn't easy to replace. Have you ever performed a data migration?

2. There is a ton of money to be made in little spinning platters especially if you don't have to split the pie. Dell storage margins eclipse the other stuff they sell. Damn it feels good to own intellectual property.

3. Dell figured out if they acquired a storage company that is already healthy and has differentiated products then it can catapult it to the next level far faster than if the startup was to run on its own steam. They know how to make this model work. Rinse and repeat!

4. Storage customers want FC. Turns out - iSCSI isn't the end all and be all for everyone.

5. The storage market is segmented. Again, EqualLogic doesn't fit every environment and a high-end FC system is just what they need to fill out their portfolio. 3PAR can cover mid-tier to high-end FC opportunities. There really isn't much overlap between these two solutions from a market perspective.

Interestingly, EMC and IBM made 3PAR more viable with their scale-out solutions, V-Max and XIV. 3PAR preceded both solutions by many years and is an Enterprise-class scale-out storage system. It is far more mature, feature-rich and field proven than V-Max and XIV. However, since EMC and IBM have basically redefined the next generation of Enterprise-class storage and 3PAR is already ahead of the curve, it validates them as an architecture and a product. If EMC and IBM stuck to their monolithic approaches and convinced the market that true Enterprise-class could never run on commodity hardware or support a scale-out architecture, then arguably 3PAR would be less compelling.

However, one of the main hurdles with 3PAR, from a customer perspective, they were still a little guy relatively speaking. However, now that Dell owns them this will no longer be the case. They can now play with the big boys and leverage their best-in-class scale-out Enterprise storage system.

I have been a proponent of 3PAR for years. Great architecture. Great technology. Easy to use. Excellent storage optimization. Field proven. Customers love it. It is perfect? Of course not. Does it fit every environment? You know the answer. But Dell buying them is pretty damn close to a no-brainer as you can get in the storage market.

Okay - who do you think is going to buy Compellent?

We did research on IT professionals and their major priorities over the last 18 months and all of them emphatically stated that implementing VMware was one of their top initiatives significantly driving down costs and improving operations. These IT professionals also said, however, the biggest challenge they faced with their VMware environments is network storage. Dedicated storage managers are buried under a mountain of projects and day-to-day operations that consume so much of their time that taking on new tasks is nearly impossible.

Another important dynamic we’ve observed is that VMware administrators are finding themselves becoming quasi-storage administrators, which is somewhat akin to asking a brain surgeon to operate on the heart. This is not due simply to the inherent complexity of most networked storage systems; it is an issue of specialization as well.

Ironically NFS, the protocol of geeks, is a means to simplify VMware and networked storage. It turns out there are a number of customers using NFS with VMware and as a result they have eliminated much of the day-to-day complexity of managing network storage with VMware. The following are the advantages of using NFS with VMware versus FC and iSCSI SAN approaches:

• It’s very simple to add NFS datastores. With NFS there is no LUN management. This simplicity addresses configuration issues that might come back to bite you in a SAN environment. The storage provisioning process for SANs often requires a dozen or more time-consuming steps. Missing any step may result in disaster and you might not know it until it happens.

• You don't have to deal with all of the complexity of Fibre Channel, WWNs, zones, ISLs, etc.

• You can easily increase or more importantly decrease the size of NFS datastores online for capacity reclamation.

• Since you are using NFS you don't have to deal with VMFS or RDMs. This means you can have volumes bigger than 2 TB. NetApp supports a 16 TB file system; Isilon and BlueArc can support 100s of TBs in a datastore (and theoretically more).

• There is no single disk I/O queue with NFS, which means that performance is dependent on network bandwidth and the storage system itself. It also means that NFS performance can keep up with even FC in VMware environments.

• You can backup whole VMs, or files within VMs.

• Restoration of VMs is flexible including individual VMs, multiple VMs or files within VMs.

• The cost of FC is higher including the equipment and support. This is an argument for both NFS and iSCSI over FC.

• One customer pointed out that the tools to troubleshoot IP networks are much better than FC, another advantage for both NFS and iSCSI.

• SAN expertise is more specialized than IP – it is harder to find the experts and to retain them (and they usually paid more).

The problem is there aren’t many vendors that offer storage systems that support NFS. There are literally dozens of SAN-based storage systems but only a handful of NFS or NAS storage systems in the market. Customers want choices and the fewer there are the less likely they will go down a particular path. And there are good reasons since competition fosters innovation, cost effectiveness and better service.

NFS for VMware has the potential of changing the storage landscape, but sadly, it probably won’t. The reasons are: it is a major challenge to educate the market; there is an enormous amount of incumbent SAN storage systems; and there is no one taking up the mantle to fight this good fight. Even NetApp has lost its fervor for NFS and has instead taken a “we provide whatever protocol you want” attitude, responding to the market versus driving it. That isn’t to say that NetApp isn’t promoting the use of NFS with VMware but it is not a core strategy and is only one of many things they talk about. BlueArc and Isilon are now focusing on NFS for VMware but they don’t have the same level of awareness or resources as the big storage vendors. However, if NFS for VMware is going to take off, these two vendors are in a position to sow some seeds and reap the rewards.

NFS is a more highly virtualized protocol than FC and even iSCSI. As a result it works much more easily and efficiently with VMware. If NFS is to become the dominant VMware protocol it is probably not the storage specialists that will make this happen but rather the VMware administrators who want highly virtualized networked storage without having to be a storage expert. The implications of this are significant as VMware continues to proliferate and those that manage these environments influence and decide what they need to be successful.

Some people believe that private IT clouds are just a different name for the same stuff we already have in the data center. I disagree. Regardless of what we call this new “thing”, a true IT utility or private IT Cloud, it isn’t synonymous with what we have today in the data center although many of the ingredients are the same.

The IT professionals that I’ve spoken to about private IT Clouds consider it to be the realization of IT as a utility within their own companies. It utilizes physical IT infrastructure for greater economies of scale, which is the essence of what a utility is all about. We've been talking about turning IT into a service utility for decades, so what has changed in that time? The biggest thing has been server virtualization, which creates an N-to-1 virtual server to physical server ratio. VLANs have done the same thing for networking. Additionally, some storage systems allow you to create virtual storage systems in a similar fashion. We have advanced IT technology to enable multi-tenancy and create logical systems within physical ones. The virtualization of IT infrastructure is relatively new and essential to enabling private IT clouds.

The critical pieces still missing for private IT clouds is the management, policy-based controls, reporting, analysis and "billing" systems for the entire IT ecosystem holistically. This is what will elevate private IT clouds from being a disparate set of virtual and physical infrastructure solutions to the new way we manage our data centers. However, this is the harder part to build because it requires core competencies that the infrastructure vendors don’t have. Additionally, you need to work with a wide range of solutions and vendors that may or may not cooperate.
Private IT clouds are real and will change the IT landscape but nothing is binary. We don’t go from doing things one way and switching it to another over night. It takes years with progress occurring step-by-step. There are points of acceleration and depending on the ease of making the shift, the clarity of the value proposition and the support of the ecosystem, this can happen sooner or later. Additionally, as markets emerge no one can really predict how it will all play out.

So what is an IT professional to do? Do what you always do when faced with something new and emerging. The early adopters will lead the way and some will make great choices and others will make mistakes. Keep reading, researching and analyzing. You might want to even dip your toe in if the cost and risk is minimal. Set cynicism aside and understand how private IT clouds can impact your environment for the short term and continue to evaluate the long-term implications.

Retiring applications is something that I must confess I haven't thought much about. However, I recently met with the Sai Gundavelli -CEO of an emerging vendor called Solix and he shared with me their new product called ExAPPS. Solix has been selling its data archiving appliance and in the course of doing so recognized the value of providing a solution for application retirement.

A brief description of the Solix ExApps appliance. First, this solution is designed for data base applications. It is an appliance that provides the software and storage for access and retention of the data from the retired application. In other words - you will move the data from the retired app off of your primary storage system to the ExAPPS appliance. And since the application is retired you will also access the data via the ExAPPS appliance as well as a gateway.

The things that I think are valuable and compelling about ExAPPS:

1. It is application-aware and supports ODBC and SQL92. You can retire your applications but still read all of the data, run reports and queries.

2. It re-organizes the database format and reduces the storage capacity requirements - according to Solix - by 90%. This significantly reduces your capacity costs, floor space, power consumption and cooling requirements. Remember that the application is being retired and the data is fundamentally being stored as an active archive. "Compressing" it - or more accurately - reformatting the data so that it is capacity optimized is the smart and practical thing to do. Will it perform as well? Probably not - but not because of the reformatting but because it isn't being run on big servers or big storage any more. But who cares? It's retired!

3. Since ExAPPS is actually reformatting the structure of the database it doesn't require any "rehydration" of the data. This means that even if you have to fire up the data and access it - the entire process requires no additional capacity or processing cycles as a result of a rehydration process.

It is also important to note that retiring applications is typically not taken care of by an appliance alone but requires planning and services. These projects can take months to accomplish effectively. So Solix and probably over time their channel partners will work with you on this process as well as provide the appliance.

ExAPPS is an interesting solution. Solix has taken what they've learned with database archiving and developed a solution specific to database application retirement. They were able to use a good portion of their current technology and add some additional functionality - in effect creating a blue ocean market for themselves leveraging their unique application retirement appliance.

I haven't spoken to any of their customers yet. Solix claims to have a handful of early installations with some big companies. And I intend to talk to more customers in general about the challenges with application retirement and how big of a priority this is for their respective companies. Application retirement appliances could be a new segment and other archiving companies may follow Solix's lead. It could be very interesting to see how this evolves. The IT world is getting "old" and we really do need to start thinking about application retirement as a priority.

I went to the Computer History Museum last week in Mountain View, CA to see the Difference Engine conceived and almost invented by Charles Babbage in the 1830s.   Basically this was a computer run by kinetic energy (a person moving a crank) using sophisticated mechanics to make complex calculations.  Babbage also conceived of the Analytical Engine - a general purpose computer that took the Difference Engine concept to the next level.  

The cost of these systems and the amount of time required to build them were daunting and his personality was so volatile that he alienated the ecosystem required to build them.  He finally gave up and said that "another age must be the judge".  Babbage was a victim of his arrogance and as a result he played a big part in the destruction of his own dream. He also over-promised and under-delivered spending years and years on the project and endless amounts of money. At some point his funding source - which was the British government - terminated the relationship after spending what it would cost to build 22 brand new steam locomotives. Not only did the funding end but so did any good will he had with the British government since they refused to consider further funding of his Analytical Engine - which could have changed the world in deep and profound ways.

This is from the Computer Museum website - "The first complete Babbage Engine was completed in London in 2002, 153 years after it was designed. Difference Engine No. 2, built faithfully to the original drawings, consists of 8,000 parts, weighs five tons, and measures 11 feet long."  And it works.

It was very cool to see the thing in action - all of the little widgets rotating and gyrating making clinking and clanking noises.  I highly recommend visiting if you are in the area.  (Btw - the photo was taken by a very nice girl named Sara. I left my camera back at the hotel and asked Sara if she could take one and email it to me. She did a great job too! She got Babbage in the background, the Difference Engine and me all in the frame. Well done Sara and thank you!)

What would have the world have been like if the computer was invented over 120 years earlier? Would there be an IBM? Intel? Microsoft? Apple? VMware? It was so close to happening, albeit in a different manifestation but the value would be very similar. Certainly the world as we know it would be measurably different - a compelling pun to consider when contemplating the Difference Engine.