Tag: "IT"

Dell/Ocarina – Too Little, Too Late


On October 11, 2011, at Dell World, Dell announced a component to their DX6000G object based storage called an “SCN” or Storage Compression Node.  It is interesting that Dell would mention in their blog post that this is “Dell’s first Ocarina based solution…” What makes this interesting is the value proposition behind Ocarina was its ‘content aware’ deduplication, not necessarily compression.  That said, this blog post seems to be the ONLY information on Dell’s web site about the product and there is very little in the press about this product and the technology.

While it is nice to see that Dell, who has committed to their own storage technology, understanding that storage optimization is important, the reality is they are a little to late to the game.  I say this because the announcement that came from Dell around their 6000 is really bizarre.  First, the solution is an object based solution.  Didn't they learn anything from EMC?  The Centera is not gaining a lot of momentum these days, even if they had a lot of ISV partners.  In fact, it is loosing ground.  Object based storage was good before the whole 'Big Data' thing was the 'next big thing' but today, people need a big clustered file system, that is optimized, that can server not only unstructured based data, but also some structured data that allows you to find stuff quickly.  Also, the DX may be a good solution for data types that are of the media / entertainment only segment, but when it comes to running a business, it takes more than just this object based file structure to be successful.

To me, this solution is too little, too late.  Dell, in order to be a true competitor in the space that is highly scale-able, clustered file systems that are optimized, they need to advance their thinking.   This will be difficult for Dell.  First of all they are not known for technology advancement or integration.  Until they announced thier departure from EMC they didn't really have a major focus on storage and now with their acquisitions, the question is, what is their value prop.  Couple that with the fact that IBM has 1000's of patents in storage and Dell doesn't where does that leave the direction of Dell storage?

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Oct 27, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

5 Golden Rules of IT


Last week I was briefing Dan Kusnetzky, storage analyst from the Kusnetzky Group.  I was briefing him on the value proposition of Real-time Compression and it's value proposition to all down stream processes, especially backup.  Specifically I told him that there is NO technology available today that can have even 50% of the effect on the existing backup process that Real-time Compression could have without changing any architecture in the backup process.

Dan agreed, in fact, he told me that the Real-time Compression technology meets the "Golden Rules of IT".  I asked Dan, "What are the Golden Rules of IT?" and he enlightened me.  I didn't make these up so I can't take credit but thought they were definitely worth sharing, and a good rule of thumb to follow for IT.  Here they are:

  1. If its not broke, don't fix it.
  2. Don't touch it, you'll break it.
  3. If you touched it, you broke it.
  4. Good enough, is good enough.
  5. Accept your "jerkdom" (Everybody is an Monday morning quarterback)

I have to agree, these are good rules to follow and a great complement to the Real-time Compression technology.  The fact that this technology fits into any storage environment, transparently and can optimize storage up to 5x without any performance impact, is very simple and one of the only ways to have a significant, compounding budgetary affect for very little dough.

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May 17, 2011 | 5 comments View Post

Storage Tiers – Take 3


I find myself in a true quandary.  First, I have true admiration for my good friend and fellow blogger 3Par Farley and never feel comfortable being on the other side of the coin from him.  Second, I find myself agreeing, to a degree, with Jon Toigo (who still uses crazy permalinks and considers Novell a serious storage player.  What is up with that?).

I’m sure by now most of you all have read the fury lately over Tom Georgens’ comments about the future of storage tiering.  A number of folks who have ‘tiering’ technology reacted with disdain (see a list on Storagerap).  Some wondered how a storage visionary like Tom could turn his back on technology that helps people save money in storage.  Some even suggested that this is just marketing to overcome deficiency in the NetApp product line.  However, one applauded Tom for understanding how the real world deploys storage.  All good points, but I have my own theory on storage teiring...

I want to come right out and say I think that storage tiering is an incredibly smart concept.  (Now that that is off the table…) I would also say that much like the prediction that tape is ‘dead’ (I guess Data Domain didn’t get that memo), storage tiering, while it can’t be dead, because in reality, it never actually was, nor do I think it will be for a very long time.  Let’s look at the facts:

First, HSM never really went anywhere.  There is not mass adoption of HSM technology.  Second, tiering is not a technology issue.  Humans are lazy.  What do I mean?  HSM / Tiering or whatever you want to call it depends on policy.  IT can’t get any two groups in a company to decide on anything other than storage is too expensive.  When I speak to well respected people in IT the ‘real world’ (my dad), they tell me it is too difficult to get organizations to agree on when data can be archived in order to save money (and that is what this is all about really).  Finally, IT processes get in the way of a good tiering strategy.  Getting data to go one way is easy – move data to cheaper and cheaper tiers of storage until it vanishes.  Try getting it back.  That takes a lot of management tools and integration and costs just as much as doing nothing.

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Mar 07, 2010 | 15 comments View Post