Storagebod's Blog

Sort of Right, Kind of Wrong!

Steve Duplessie is both right and wrong in his post on SSDs here!

He is right that simply sticking SSDs into an array and treating them as just Super Speedy Disk can cause yet more work and heartache! Concepts such as Tier 0 are just a nightmare to manage!

He is also right that the problem should be defined high-level as the interaction between the user and their data, getting them access to the data as quickly as possible.

He is also right that just fixing one part of the infrastructure and making one part faster does not fix the whole problem. It just moves the problem around!

Unfortunately, whilst every other component in the infrastructure has got faster and faster; arguably, storage is actually getting slower! At a SNIA Academy event recently, they suggested that if storage speeds had kept up with the rest of the infrastructure improvements; disks would now spin at 192,000 RPM. The ratio of capacity to IOPs gets less and less favourable every year; wide striping has helped mitigate the issue but as disks get bigger, we either look at the situation where we waste more and more capacity as the areal density of IOPs means that most of the capacity on a spindle should just be used for data at rest or we need a faster storage medium.

But we probably don't need a huge amount of faster storage medium and a small sprinkling will go a long way; that's why we need dynamic optimisation tools which move hot chunks of data about. SSDs will be good but just treating them as old-fashioned LUNs might not be the best use of them.

Automation is the answer but I think Steve knows that! Dynamic optimisation of infrastructure end-to-end is the Holy Grail; we are some way off that I suspect! I'd just settle for reliable and efficient automation tools for Storage Management at this point. 

Storage Virtualisation - Not Magic!

Okay, I am getting increasingly irritated by the argument that storage virtualisation somehow magically reclaims large amounts of disk!

Implementing storage virtualisation with a consolidation and data classification project enables storage managers to reclaim large amounts of disk. The process of putting in a new storage technology should allow you to reclaim large amounts of disk as you identify and re-classify data; taking the opportunity to re-tier on occasion, archive files which are not accessed any more.

Storage Virtualisation can make the task easier but Storage Virtualisation is not a magic bullet in itself.

Moving to a thin-provisioned environment is probably a more useful way of managing your storage growth but if we are being honest; get your management and your processes right and you will find that your utilisation rates grow. Capacity plan properly, get realistic views of data-growth.

Stop short-stroking disks for performance; this will drive up utilisation. This means you might consider SSDs or wide-striping across the whole array (note all the spindles in the array, not a subset(s)).

Deduplication, this will drive up utilisation.

Archiving and architecting archive-aware and capable applications; this means ensuring that you can get data out as well as in. This will drive up utilisation.

What is needed is process change, mind-set changes; without this, you will find that even your virtualised environment has extremely poor utilisation rates. Implementing virtualisation may well be the kicker to address your problems but it is not the answer in itself.

Instead of selling us more technology widgets; sell us management tools so we can get information about utilisation etc which work quickly, reliably and without a data-centre of their own and I bet a lot of the historic utilisation issues start to get resolved without resorting to storage virtualisation. But hey, then you lot couldn't brag about year on year record growth.

I wanted Bacon not HAM

HDS' announcement yesterday was interesting in that it shows that HDS are beginning to understand that they need to create a buzz about their storage products; HDS' marketing machine has been in the past mostly MIA. However, they seem to have now forgotten that they need a product to hype and sell; the blogosphere and the storage tweets were completely underwhelmed with the HAM announcement, their competitors were underwhelmed and I suspect even their own staff were not exactly jumping with excitement.

The USP range is a good range of arrays and actually in all honesty, it is probably good enough for most customers but it is an aging range and which-ever way you spin it; it needs a refresh (as does the DS8K range from IBM).

The V-MAX may well simply be DMX-V but there are some significant changes and there is a roadmap, both public and NDA, which leads into the future; EMC needs to be held to this and kicked if they fail to deliver. But HDS (and IBM) need a roadmap which challenges EMC at the high-end; we cannot afford to have this become a one horse race.

I am struggling to see at the moment what HAM really gives me that I cannot do already? If I want to mirror across arrays, I can do so; I can do this at the volume manager level. I can also use volume-manager to migrate non-disruptively. These are all things which storage admins and system admins have been doing for years; moving between DAS and SAN, EMC and IBM or HDS at the host level. Sure it's a pain and HAM will make these things easier (at a cost).

But HAM is not going to push EMC to deliver on their promises, it's certainly not going to make them loose sleep. I wish I could be more positive about this but I am struggling like everyone else to make sense of this unless this is part of a series of announcements leading to USP-NEXT.

Pots, Kettles, Stones and Glasshouses

I have a lot of sympathy for Chad's and Chuck's recent posts here and here on Oracle support for VMWare but I would have a lot more sympathy for them if EMC did not have such a track-record for using the support matrix as a marketing weapon.

EMC's continued refusal to certify another controller in front of their arrays, be it NetApp, HDS or IBM; makes their current spat with Oracle quite amusing from where I'm sitting. I know many customers who have requested that EMC certify NetApp v-class in front of various EMC arrays, this always met with an unequivocal NO with dark mutterings as there being issues. If you challenge EMC as to what the issues are, you generally get a lot hand-wafting and nothing more.

Now, we know that various EMC arrays work behind NetApp because there's an increasing number of customers who are doing so without EMC's certification but certification would be nice or at least an open discussion to as to what the problems are?

The support matrix should not be used as a marketing and sales tool; it should be used to genuinely add value to the customer/vendor relationship. So guys put your own houses in order before throwing stones!

Market DeDupe

At the SNIA-Academy this week in London, a presenter said that according to their surveys that 'BackUp and DeDupe' were the number one hot topic in their conversations with large enterprises in relation to storage. I didn't see anyone from NetApp taking notes but it seems that NetApp agree with their consumption of Data Domain yesterday.

And so the market consolidation continues or is that market deduplication?

Monday meanderings!

I type this sitting in the sunny UK and yes, it is actually sunny as I type this; it will probably be raining when you read this but the sun does on occasion shine in the UK. I am not in sunny Orlando with the great majority of the storage community, well those members of the storage community whose chosen brand is EMC.

I wonder what EMC World will bring this time, more V-MAX revelations I suspect; there is more to come on that front and I'd expect EMC to at least tease a few more. You would be disappointed to get all the way to Orlando and not have some exclusive revelations. I wonder if we are going to see more on the future of Control Center and some insight on version 7?

I think EMC are learning, they have been told enough times by people that Control Center is not good enough, they have been asked enough times why they did not buy Onaro and I think that they have got the message. Storage Configuration Advisor is a nod in that direction and hopefully they will reveal a little more. They should announce that Control Center 7 is going to be free and in fact that anyone who has had to put up with all previous versions will actually be paid to use Control Center 7 but I somehow doubt that as a possibility.

So I look forward to reading all the various blogs from EMC World; I'm off to the SNIA Academy event tomorrow in London to hear what some non-EMCers have to say about the industry. Not as glamorous as Orlando but it's quicker to get to and a lot cheaper! If you are there, say hello; I'll even let you buy me a beer!

 

Still More Cash

UPDATED - 13th May

Firstly, apologies for the length between updates; this will continue for a little while though as I'm doing house-related stuff and it is a busy time of year for birthdays and anniversaries in the 'Bod household. As it appears that the UK may get a summer this year, the update frequency may well end up reflecting this as well!!

So after saying lots of positive things about V-MAX and especially the announcement if not the delivery of FAST; a technology which will change storage management and administration; I would like to throw a big rock in the direction of Even More Cash. Symmetrix Management Console, a great administration tool for simplifying the administration of Symmetrix; reducing complexity of what is an historically overly byzantine environment to something more in line with the simplicity of the Clariion.

A tool which EMC should be proud of, a tool which proves that they can do something better than ECC, a tool which was free and rightly so; a tool which to manage their new V-MAX range is no longer FREE!

That's right like a crack dealer, your initial hit of SMC was free but if you want to continue to use it to manage their new arrays...it's going to cost you! So if you've foolishly based your processes and documentation around SMC, to continue with these, you are going to have to pay the man! Sorry guys but simply, that's a cheap-shot and in today's market; it's not acceptable.

Okay, I thought SMC was free because we get it for free; it is only free, if you are an ECC customer. Most large users do have the misfortune of being ECC customers and hence get SMC for 'free'. However, if you do not want to use the bloated monstrosity that is ECC; you will have to pay to get SMC. So EMC are still charging if you want an easy-to-use graphical configuration tool; you either buy ECC and get SMC thrown in or you can buy SMC.

NetApp have completely refreshed their GUI administration tool and enhanced it's functionality in NMC; a completely new tool, yet they realise that one of their main selling points is the simplicity of management and hence they continue to give the tool away. You can even download the tool for free and use it to manage the NetApp simulator, I hope someone from NetApp will pop-up and confirm that the NMC will continue to be free even once the mythical OnTap 8 ships.

So EMC, in the spirit of the continued push to simplify the management and administration of storage; re-think the idea of charging for SMC and leave it as a make it a free product. Publicise it, push it, demonstrate it and show how it can really simplify the administration of enterprise storage. You might even find it actually helps to sell a few more arrays. Otherwise, I have a horrid suspicion that storage management and administration will continue to be seen as a black-art.

Offload the Work

For a number of years, at least one major storage array manufacturer has had the ability to run applications in their array. It has appeared on the road-map a few times but never happened. Use-cases were using it as a database offload engine, back-up services, email-archiving and a few other infrastructure related applications; nothing startling but potentially extremely useful.

As other arrays start to gain this ability, at least in theory; I wonder if we will see this idea percolate back up again. For example, if you look at the V-MAX; it has a huge amount of processing power and certainly once it gets on the processor upgrade tread-mill from Intel; I suspect we will see something from that direction.

Actually, if you look at the idea of the software mainframe from VMWare; couple that with V-MAX and with some of the advances made in high speed connectivity; you might have an interesting server/storage cluster.

Of course, if you start looking at things in this light; Oracle’s acquisition of Sun becomes a whole lot more understandable. Joined-up thinking allowing platform plays. Also HP’s courting of Dave Donatelli looks an extremely sensible move on their part; they certainly need someone who can drive this initiative in HP.

We’ll probably need to come-up with some new terminology to describe this because it will have characteristics of both DAS and networked storage.

 BTW, we already have done this in the media space with some storage products able to run transcodes in the ‘array’. Perhaps it is time for this to become more mainstream.