Chuck's Blog

VMware Virsto: A Very Smart Volume Manager For VMs

I think many IT professionals realize that many application performance issues eventually boil down to storage and physical I/O.  That was true before server virtualization, and it's certainly true now.

Storage array vendors do what they can.  Operating system, hypervisor and database vendors do what they can as well.  

But between the two, there's the potential for a smart layer of storage software that does what others can't.

As an example: way back when Solaris was popular, Veritas' VxVM and VxFS were almost ubiquitous.  Both products offered an important value-added layer than neither the host OS nor the storage array did well.   As a result, the Veritas products become almost a de-facto standard in an larger Sun environments.

While I was exploring Virsto (recently acquired by VMware), I was struck by similarities to what Veritas did years ago.   It's clearly a smarter storage abstraction layer than either the hypervisor or the array can provide on their own.

The real question — now that Virsto is owned by VMware, will Virsto technology end up being a de-facto standard for many VMware environments?

Introducing EMC ViPR: A Breathtaking Approach To Software-Defined Storage

I'd like to think I have a pretty good capacity for approaching new technology concepts, internalizing them and explaining them effectively. 

Those capabilities were severely put to the test when I first approached EMC's new product announced at EMC World: ViPR.
 
The effort paid off: I came away with a deeper understanding of some of the more powerful forces at work in our industry, as well as a breathtaking appreciation for what ViPR intends to achieve: both now and into the future.
 
Rather than debate terminology and categories, the best approach with ViPR might be to relax, follow the discussion, and come to your own conclusions: what ViPR does, what it means to the IT industry, and -- most importantly -- how it might affect you in your world.
 
Trust me, the journey will be rewarding ...

Isilon's OneFS -- The Definition Of A Modern File System?

As part of the EMC World festivities, EMC's Isilon group is announcing a few new features available today -- as well as previewing their next release, dubbed Waikiki.

Even with my obvious EMC bias, I can make a strong argument that OneFS is now clearly in a class of its own: architecture, functionality, robustness, performance, efficiency, etc.  You could teach an advanced course in file system design and use OneFS as a perfect example.

The gap between OneFS and everything else shows every sign of widening over time.  The Isilon team now uses a fast-cadence development model, and we should be expecting regular drops of tick-tock functionality on a 6 month cadence going forward.

Join me for a quick recap of "what's new" in the OneFS world -- there's a lot to like.

Are Snaps Dead?

No, not really -- but a surprising number of IT shops have moved beyond simple snapshots towards continuous data protection -- a DVR-like model that allows recovery to any point in time, and not just to potentially stale snapshot.

Perhaps the best example of continuous data protection in today's marketplace is EMC's RecoverPoint.

There's a lot to like in the product: extreme flexibility in defining protection modes, well-integrated with applications, operating systems and hypervisors alike, extremely efficient in its use of network and storage resources, and seriously storage agnostic on the back end.

Customers have embraced the product enthusiastically -- there are now over 10,000 RecoverPoint units in production today, and more of our customers are coming on board every day.

Don't get me wrong: snaps are handy things to have around, and they've saved more than one administrator's bacon over the years.

But when you start studying the challenges associated with larger environments, better automation, efficiency, etc. -- you start looking for something with a bit more architectural meat on it. And that's where RecoverPoint shines.

Today, EMC is announcing version 4.0 of RecoverPoint. This is no minor release; there's a slew of new capabilities that are worth reviewing. Hopefully, you'll come away with the same conclusion I've reached: snaps have their historical place, but the industry is moving to a continuous data protection model for recovery -- for good reasons.

Going To EMC World? Interested In Software-Defined Storage?

EMC World is right over the horizon (May 6-9 in Las Vegas) and we’re all busy making preparations. 

If you're debating whether or not to attend, I'd strongly recommend it -- every year the event is more amazing: more content, more big ideas, more great people to interact with -- and (yes!) more fun stuff!

One of the bigger themes at EMC World this year will be software-defined storage: what is it, why does it matter, and what EMC is doing about it.

But the EMC storage team isn’t the only part of the broader EMC federation focused on this topic: related efforts are well underway at VMware as well.

The fun part is that I’m now working with the VMware team: focusing on software-defined storage, software-defined availability and related topics.

This VMware team will be at EMC World 2013 -- and would very much like to meet with a small number of interested customers and partners: to share their strategy and roadmap, and get valuable feedback.

We’ll be scheduling small NDA sessions throughout the EMC World event. Figure about 60 minutes of your time – and conveniently close to the main show floor.

If this sounds like something you and your team might be interested in, please drop me a note at chuck dot hollis at emc dot com. We’ll try and accommodate as many of these as we can handle, but – understandably – space is very limited.

Looking forward to seeing you at a great show!

From Storage Products To Storage Workloads

We, as technology vendors, are collectively obsessed with products and technologies -- not only our own, but those of our competition.

Our fixations on debating the merits of Product A vs. Product B, C and D inevitably draw other groups in: partners and customers.  Any random walk of the interwebs will show countless opinions, comparisons, debates, shouting matches, etc. along these lines. 

All of this may not be particularly productive, but I guess it's entertaining to all the participants -- sort of the way people tend to debate sports.  But getting stuff done in IT is a serious endeavor for most people; the outcomes matter so much more than how your favorite team is doing.

Here at EMC, we've started to make some changes to improve the situation.  We've begun to shift our discussion from products to workloads.  We talk about use cases and customer requirements first, and then debate the merits of one approach over another in a specific context.

In addition to sharing how we're trying to improve the discussion, I'd like to enlist your help in encouraging others to do the same.

How EMC Views The Evolving Storage Market

A while back, I shared how the industry analyst firm of IDC viewed the storage market.  A surprising number of people were interested in what could ostensibly be categorized as a rather boring tech subject.

As part of the recent EMC investor day, David Goulden shared a very detailed, behind-the-scenes EMC view of the evolving storage marketplace. 

It's probably the best segmentation model I've seen to explain the macrodynamics of what's going on right now -- and well into the future.

IDC and the other industry watchers do a nice business in studying the storage landscape, and selling their insight to subscribers.  Not to be disrespectful of anyone's work (we do buy their services) but you should to keep in mind that -- as EMC -- the majority of our multi-billion dollar business is either storage, or things that relate to storage. 

So we really, really care about having good models :)

If your interest in storage technology and market dynamics is more than a passing one, you'll find this model very interesting. 

I did.

The Shape Of Today's Storage Market

So often, I talk about industry directions and future scenarios.  That's to be expected, but my view is built on decent understanding of what the marketplace looks like today. 

IDC just released their storage market estimates for 2012 -- both Q4 and for the full year.  As I was going through the numbers, it struck me that many people might not have a high-level appreciation of how big the market is, what the major categories might be, and so on.

Although EMC continues to do very well as you might expect, this post isn't really about taking yet another victory lap -- it's more about drawing the broader picture of the storage industry as it stands today.

Consider it Storage Marketplace 101?

It's A Flash World: EMC's "Flash.next" Announcement

By now, most people who work with storage -- vendors, customers, partners -- appear to have read the memo: we're in the midst of a technology transition from spinning disk to flash storage. 

All the signs are clearly visible.  From an industry perspective, it's certainly gotten noisy and will only get noisier: all the familiar players and many new ones are out there with newer, flash-based products.   Just as you'd expect.

Even the slower moving storage vendors have started to respond to the inevitable -- it's becoming a flash storage world, perhaps faster than some may have thought.

I love a good disruption ...

Today, EMC announced significant enhancements to our existing all-flash storage products, now rebranded under a new "Xtrem" moniker, and -- perhaps more importantly -- shared a bit more perspective of what's coming before too long.  

Chris Mellor, as usual, does a great writeup at The Register.

While I'm sure that the merits of EMC's offerings will be widely debated, there's no debating that we're investing like crazy to stay ahead of the technology and customer demands.

From a vendor perspective, that's what a good technology disruption is all about ... take it seriously, or suffer the consequences.

Introducing VMAX Cloud Edition

To this day, too many people still get hung up over the word "cloud" -- they dismiss it as merely marketing fluff, or an unpleasant flavor of vendor hype.  To each their own, I say.

However, if you're closer to the topic, you'd probably agree it's a fundamental restructuring of how IT services are produced, managed, delivered and consumed.

Collectively, we've thankfully moved beyond debating definitions, and started on the more challenging work of embracing the new models.

But just because the model changes doesn't mean the core requirements change.

Critical IT services still need to be highly available, performant, secure, recoverable, efficient, etc. -- irregardless of whether we're talking about cloud or a more traditional IT delivery model.  And that discussion applies to enterprise-class storage as well.

That's the core essence of the new VMAX Cloud Edition.

It still delivers on the core values a VMAX is known for -- but it now fully embraces the newer as-a-service model behind cloud.  And I think it's clear proof that an even an older dog can learn some impressive new tricks -- if it's smart enough!