Contemplating IT

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.

I've been pondering Cisco and their Unified Computing System (UCS) and decided to finally blog on it. I participated in a InfoSmack podcast that included a brief discussion on UCS and recently talked to Cisco's Jesse Freund - who manages analysts relations for the Cisco UCS.

My first reaction when Cisco announced getting into the server business was - well let's just say I was a bit skeptical. First , Cisco UCS upsets the IT ecosystem, which is not necessarily a bad thing but it does have ramifications that need to be considered in terms of go-to-market, the impact to Cisco's channels and alliances, and of course it creates natural enemies that are big and powerful enough that even Cisco needs to be mindful of them - including Dell, HP and IBM. Certainly all three are already competitors on various levels but they also have alliances and must live together in the data center. But now Cisco is going after their bread and butter server business, which is a whole new ball game.

The second major reason to be skeptical is that the core competencies needed to sell and support servers is different than supporting networking devices. Cisco doesn't have the operations, sales, marketing, support, on and on and on. Third, server margins are not nearly as healthy as typical Cisco products. Do you want to focus your time and resources making 60 or 70 cents per dollar or 20 or 30 cents per dollar? The math is pretty simple. Related to that the server market is boring - it is declining and not growing.

Now this is a big deal to Cisco. Clearly a lot of thought went into this. And there are some really smart people that work there. So what is the business case that makes UCS compelling and strategic? Now maybe everyone reading this is already way ahead of me and get why this is important but I haven't read or seen anything concerning UCS that really focuses on my hypothesis and why this matters:

Cisco isn't really going after the server market per se but rather it wants to own the core of the data center. It wants to own the infrastructure that runs applications that run the business. At the heart - at the very core of the data center are compute resources - CPU and memory. "Owning" the core of the data center - can make you strategic, valuable and essential.

But it will take a lot more than just providing commodity CPUs and memory to own the core of the data center. Server virtualization by its very nature enables you to move from one CPU to another transparently. That is why if you want to own the core of the data center you need to really consider the value add provided in addition to the compute resources. And that value add has to be very, very sticky. Additionally, it should be something you are already really, really good at. For Cisco the first step in the value add strategy is a natural and obvious - go to where you are strongest - and with Cisco that is networking.

Therefore the other part of the UCS strategy is focused on converged networks, everything over Ethernet including the last big hold out, Fibre Channel. Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) becomes very important to them especially since networked storage is a critical part of the data center. A converged network using Cisco infrastructure including LAN, backup, management, VOIP and all storage protocols including iSCS, CIFS, NFS and FCoE results in lower cost, less support, and the reduction of cable spaghetti. The Cisco vision is to have all roads lead to Cisco UCS via a converged Cisco network.

By binding the core of the data center to the network - the arena that Cisco owns - gives them a major advantage and allows them to leverage their core competencies. And they can add more value - easier management, consolidated infrastructure, more efficient controls between the core of the data center and all the roads that lead to it. Additionally - you need the network in order to have a more efficient virtual server environment for mobility, availability, reliability and disaster recovery.

Cisco doesn't own the server virtualization software, the network storage, the applications - but they provide a platform to bring all of these things together. And they have the leverage - based on economics - to have everyone want to be their partner, even some of their major competitors - co-opetetion - because again of the economics involved. That is another essential part of Cisco's value add strategy, get all the partners to integrate and optimize around the UCS platform as evidenced by the VMware, EMC, NetApp, Cisco alliances. This intelligent and important move brought them closer together with the biggest players that provide the other essential aspects of the virtual data center - server virtualization and storage.

I am not convinced that Cisco is going to rule the universe with this strategy but it certainly poises them for owning more strategic footprint within their customer base (which is pretty much everyone). And I am just talking about strategy and vision - it is the go-to-market execution that will matter here and there are still a number of challenges facing them.. Dell, HP and IBM will not sit idly by and watch Cisco run rampant over them. Keep in mind that while Dell, HP and IBM servers are in a lot of places, they do not enjoy the same ubiquity as Cisco networking solutions. On the other hand these leading server companies are ready and willing to move money around to make deals. Cisco will have to perform a tough balancing act. They cannot win this game by matching hard dollar savings versus soft dollar esoterica and cost saving rhetoric. At the same time they can't allow themselves to lose sight of the bigger vision and driving customers viscerally towards it.

Integrating compute resources with networking solutions makes a ton of sense if you are Cisco. UCS enables Cisco to be the core of the data center with all roads leading to that core provided by Cisco's converged networking solutions. It is a strategy of Core + Access. For years Cisco has struggled to be more than IT "plumbing" - to be more strategic to IT, let alone the actual business units. By running business applications on Cisco equipment they are far better positioned to achieve this objective. By elevating themselves through providing solutions where business applications "live" is strategic and could be landscape changing.