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Trick or treat: 2011 IT Zombie technology poll

Warning: Do not be scared, however be ready for some trick and treat fun, it is after all, the Halloween season.

I like new emerging technologies and trends along with Zombie technologies, you know, those technologies that have been declared dead yet are still being enhanced, sold and used.

Zombie technologies as a name may be new for some, while others will have a realization of experiencing something from the past, technologies being declared deceased yet still alive and being used. Zombie technologies are those that have been declared dead, yet still alive enabling productivity for customers that use them and often profits for the vendors who sell them.

Zombie technologies

Some people consider a technology or trend dead once it hits the peak of hype as that can signal a time to jump to the next bandwagon or shiny new technology (or toy).

Others will see a technology as being dead when it is on the down slope of the hype curve towards the trough of disillusionment citing that as enough cause for being deceased.

Yet others will declare something dead while it matures working its way through the trough of disillusionment evolving from market adoption to customer deployment eventually onto the plateau of productivity (or profitability).

Then there are those who see something as being dead once it finally is retired from productive use, or profitable for sale.

Of course then there are those who just like to call anything new or other than what they like or that is outside of their comfort zone as being dead. In other words, if your focus or area of interest is tied to new products, technology trends and their promotion, rest assured you better be where the resources are being applied and view other things as being dead and thus probably not a fan of Zombie technologies (or at least publicly).

On the other hand, if your area of focus is on leveraging technologies and products in a productive way, including selling things that are profitable without a lot of marketing effort, your view of what is dead or not will be different. For example if you are risk averse letting someone else be on the leading bleeding edge (unless you have a dual redundant HA blood bank attached to your environment) your view of what is dead or not will be much different from those promoting the newest trend.

Funny thing about being declared dead, often it is not the technology, implementation, research and development or customer acquisitions, rather simply a lack of promotion, marketing and general awareness. Take tape for example which has been a multi decade member of the Zombie technology list. Recently vendors banded together investing or spending on marketing awareness reaching out to say tape is alive. Guess what, lo and behold, there was a flurry of tape activity in venues that normally might not be talking about tape. Funny how marketing resources can bring something back from the dead including Zombie technologies to become popular or cool to discuss again.

With the 2011 Halloween season among us, it is time to take a look this years list of Zombie technologies. Keep in mind that being named a Zombie technology is actually an honor in that it usually means someone wants to see it dead so that his or her preferred product or technology can take it place.

Here are 2011 Zombie technologies.

Backup: Far from being dead, its focus is changing and evolving with a broader emphasis on data protection. While many technologies associated with backup have been declared dead along with some backup software tools, the reality is that it is time or modernizes how backups and data protection are performed. Thus, backup is on the Zombie technology list and will live on, like it or not until it is exorcised from, your environment replaced with a modern resilient and flexible protected data infrastructure.

Big Data: While not declared dead yet, it will be soon by some creative marketer trying to come up with something new. On the other hand, there are those who have done big data analytics across different Zombie platforms for decades which of course is a badge of honor. As for some of the other newer or shiny technologies, they will have to wait to join the big data Zombies.

Cloud: Granted clouds are still on the hype cycle, some argue that it has reached its peak in terms of hype and now heading down into the trough of disillusionment, which of course some see as meaning dead. In my opinion cloud, hype has or is close to peaking, real work is occurring which means a gradual shift from industry adoption to customer deployment. Put a different way, clouds will be on the Zombie technology list of a couple of decades or more. Also, keep in mind that being on the Zombie technology list is an honor indicating shift towards adoption and less on promotion or awareness fan fare.

Data centers: With the advent of the cloud, data centers or habitats for technology have been declared dead, yet there is continued activity in expanding or building new ones all the time. Even the cloud relies on data centers for housing the physical resources including servers, storage, networks and other components that make up a Green and Virtual Data Center or Cloud environment. Needless to day, data centers will stay on the zombie list for some time.

Disk Drives: Hard disk drives (HDD) have been declared dead for many years and more recently due to popularity of SSDs have lost their sex appeal. Ironically, if tape is dead at the hands of HDDs, then how can HDDs be dead, unless of course they are on the Zombie technology list. What is happening is like tape, HDDs role are changing as the technology continues to evolve and will be around for another decade or so.

Fibre Channel (FC): This is a perennial favorite having been declared dead on a consistent basis over three decades now going back to the early 90s. While there are challengers as there have been in the past, FC is far from dead as a technology with 16 Gb (16GFC) now rolling out and a transition path for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). My take is that FC will be on the zombie list for several more years until finally retired.

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE): This is a new entrant and one uniquely qualified for being declared dead as it is still in its infancy. Like its peer FC which was also declared dead a couple of decades ago, FCoE is just getting started and looks to be on the Zombie list for a couple of decades into the future.

Green IT: I have heard that Green IT is dead, after all, it was hyped before the cloud era which has been declared dead by some, yet there remains a Green gap or disconnect between messaging and issues thus missed opportunities. For a dead trend, SNIA recently released their Emerald program which consists of various metrics and measurements (remember, zombies like metrics to munch on) for gauging energy effectiveness for data storage. The hype cycle of Green IT and Green storage may be dead, however Green IT in the context of a shift in focus to increased productivity using the same or less energy is underway. Thus Green IT and Green storage are on the Zombie list.

iPhone: With the advent of Droid and other smart phones, I have heard iPhones declared dead, granted some older versions are. However while the Apple cofounder Steve Jobs has passed on (RIP), I suspect we will be seeing and hearing more about the iPhone for a few years more if not longer.

IBM Mainframe: When it comes to information technology (IT), the king of the Zombie list is the venerable IBM mainframe aka zSeries. The IBM mainframe has been declared dead for over 30 years if not longer and will be on the zombie list for another decade or so. After all, IBM keeps investing in the technology as people buy them not to mention IBM built a new factory to assemble them in.

NAS: Congratulations to Network Attached Storage (NAS) including Network File System (NFS) and Windows Common Internet File System (CIFS) aka Samba or SMB for making the Zombie technology list. This means of course that NAS in general is no longer considered an upstart or immature technology; rather it is being used and enhanced in many different directions.

PC: The personal computer was touted as killing off some of its Zombie technology list members including the IBM mainframe. With the advent of tablets, smart phones, virtual desktops infrastructures (VDI), the PC has been declared dead. My take is that while the IBM mainframe may eventually drop of the Zombie list in another decade or two if it finds something to do in retirement, the PC will be on the list for many years to come. Granted, the PC could live on even longer in the form of a virtual server where the majority of guest virtual machines (VMs) are in support of Windows based PC systems.

Printers: How long have we heard that printers are dead? The day that printers are dead is the day that the HP board of directors should really consider selling off that division.

RAID: Its been over twenty years since the first RAID white paper and early products appeared. Back in the 90s RAID was a popular buzzword and bandwagon topic however, people have moved on to new things. RAID has been on the Zombie technology list for several years now while it continues to find itself being deployed at the high end of the market down into consumer products. The technology continues to evolve in both hardware as well as software implementations on a local and distributed basis. Look for RAID to be on the Zombie list for at least the next couple of decades while it continues to evolve, after all, there is still room for RAID 7, RAID 8, RAID 9 not to mention moving into hexadecimal or double digit variants.

SAN: Storage Area Networks (SANs) have been declared dead and thus on the Zombie technology list before, and will be mentioned again well into the next decade. While the various technologies will continue to evolve, networking your servers to storage will also expand into different directions.

tape summit resources: Magnetic tape has been on the Zombie technology list almost as long as the IBM mainframe and it is hard to predict which one will last longer. My opinion is that tape will outlast the IBM mainframe, as it will be needed to retrieve the instructions on how to de install those Zombie monsters. Tape has seen resurgence in vendors spending some marketing resources and to no surprise, there has been an increase in coverage about it being alive, even at Google. Rest assured, tape is very safe on the Zombie technology list for another decade or more.

Windows: Similar to the PC, Microsoft Windows has been touted in the past as causing other platforms to be dead, however has been added to the Zombie list for many years now. Given that Windows is the most commonly virtualized platform or guest VM, I think we will be hearing about Windows on the Zombie list for a few decades more. There are particular versions of Windows as with any technology that have gone into maintenance or sustainment mode or even discontinued.

Poll: What are the most popular Zombie technologies?

Keep in mind that a Zombie technology is one that is still in use, being developed or enhanced, sold usually at a profit and used typically in a productive way. In some cases, a declared dead or Zombie technology may only be just in its infancy getting started having either just climbed over the peak of hype or coming out of the trough of disillusionment. In other instance, the Zombie technology has been around for a long time yet continues to be used (or abused).

Note: Zombie voting rules apply which means vote early, vote often, and of course vote for those who cannot include those that are dead (real or virtual).

Ok, nuff said, enough fun, lets get back to work, at least for now

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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Summer 2011 StorageIO News Letter

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Summer 2011 Newsletter

Welcome to the Summer 2011 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) newsletter. This follows the Spring 2011 edition.

You can get access to this news letter via various social media venues (some are shown below) in addition to StorageIO web sites and subscriptions.

 

Click on the following links to view the Summer 2011 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the newsletter page to view previous editions.

Follow via Goggle Feedburner here or via email subscription here.

You can also subscribe to the news letter by simply sending an email to newsletter@storageio.com

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO newsletter, let me know your comments and feedback.

Nuff said for now

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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Whats your take on open virtualization alliance and VMware?

Have you heard about the open virtualization alliance (OVA), their kernel based virtual machine (KVM) and their diverse membership list?

If not, here is a link to the OVA FAQ, also take a moment and read this here that talks about OVA along with some perspectives commentary from others as well as myself.

Virtual Servers and Virtual Machines

Figure 1: Generic representation of virtual machines (VMs) and virtualized environment

In a nutshell, OVA can be seen by the faithful as a move or ploy to catch up and buck the success trend of VMware. To those who are not on the VMware bandwagon, this could be seen as a move to level the playing field for virtual machines, kernels and servers.

Yet to others, this can be seen as DejaVu to past attempts at operating systems or other technology alliances to bring parity to the ranks of those not at the top of the technology list of a particular topic, product or theme. For example, a decade or two ago, there were the various Unix groups (remember SCO etc?) that were attempted involving the late Ray Norda of Novell fame in a quest to battle Microsoft among others.

The industry road side is littered with alliances that either still exist yet collecting dust or that faltered. For storage people does anybody remember Aperi and how those in the IBM lead storage management alliance were all singing Kumbaya around a virtual campfire and later partnering with SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association)? Speaking of SNIA, anybody remember the various supported solutions forums (SSFs) popular back in the early 2000s as a means to demonstrate and stimulate interoperability between different vendors technologies?

Alliances are not bad, however generally to be successful, they have to exist for the right reasons in addition to being well funded, have strong leadership that also means having clear objectives to minimize chances of compromise by committee. While we are talking about alliances, have you heard about the Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA)? The ODCA alliance of which StorageIO is a member is a bit different than many IT related groups in that it is customer or non vendor focused. ODCA has good potential for doing some interesting things as long as they do not get bogged down in bureaucracy as is to often the case with industry driven trade groups, associations or alliances.

Open Data Center Alliance Member

Lets see how these and other alliances move forward or what becomes of them, not to mention the expanding awareness around virtualization, life beyond consolidation (and here).

Whats your take on OVA and other alliances?

Ok, nuff said for now.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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Full RSS archive feeds are now available for StorageIOblog

To speed up access to the StorageIO and StorageIOblog site RSS full and RSS summary feeds, older posts have been moved to a new archive RSS feed. Theese changes are only to the RSS full and summary feed files, no changes have been made to the StorageIOblog site.

View or access the full StorageIO RSS feed (httP://storageioblog.com/RSSfullArchive.xml) here.

Enjoy the faster access RSS full and summary feed, plus archived feeds. Ok, nuf said for now.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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Winter 2011 Server and StorageIO News Letter

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Winter 2011 Newsletter

 Welcome to the Winter 2011 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) newsletter. This follows the Fall 2011 edition.

You can access this news letter via various social media venues (some are shown below) in addition to StorageIO web sites and subscriptions. Click on the following links to view the Winter 2011 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the newsletter page to view previous editions.

Follow via Goggle Feedburner here or via email subscription here.

You can also subscribe to the news letter by simply sending an email to newsletter@storageio.com

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO newsletter, let me know your comments and feedback.

Cheers gs

Nuff said for now

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
twitter @storageio

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Dude, is Dell doing a disk deal again with Compellent?

Over in Eden Prairie (Minneapolis Minnesota suburb) where data storage vendor Compellent (CML) is based, they must be singing in the hallways today that it is beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.

Sure we had another dusting of snow this morning here in the Minneapolis area and the temp is actually up in the balmy 20F temperature range (was around 0F yesterday) and holiday shopping is in full swing.

The other reason I think that the Compellent folks are thinking that it feels a lot like Christmas are the reports that Dell is in exclusive talks to buy them at about $29 per share or about $876 million USD.

Dell is no stranger to holiday or shopping sprees, check these posts out as examples:

Dell Will Buy Someone, However Not Brocade (At least for now)

Back to school shopping: Dude, Dell Digests 3PAR Disk storage (we now know Dell was out bid)

Data footprint reduction (Part 2): Dell, IBM, Ocarina and Storwize

Data footprint reduction (Part 1): Life beyond dedupe and changing data lifecycles

Post Holiday IT Shopping Bargains, Dell Buying Exanet?

Did someone forget to tell Dell that Tape is dead?

Now some Compellent fans are not going to be happy with only about $29 a share or about $876 million USD price given the recent stock run up into the $30 plus range. Likewise, some of the Compellent fans may be hoping for or expecting a bidding war to drive the stock back up into the $30 range however keep in mind that it was earlier this year when the stock adjusted itself down into the mid teens.

In the case of 3PAR and the HP Dell budding war, that was a different product and company focused in a different space than where Compellent has a good fit.

Sure both 3PAR and Compellent do Fibre Channel (FC) where Dells EqualLogic only does iSCSI, however a valuation based just on FC would be like saying Dell has all the storage capabilities they need with their MD3000 series that can do SAS, iSCSI and FC.

In other words, there are different storage products for different markets or price bands and customer application needs. Kind of like winter here in Minnesota, sure one type of shovel will work for moving snow or you can leverage different technologies and techniques (tiering) to get the job done effectively the same holds for storage solutions.

Compellent has a good Cadillac product that is a good fit for some SMB environments. However the SMB space is also where Dell has several storage products some of which they own (e.g. EqualLogic), some they OEM (MD3000 series and NX) as well as resell (e.g. EMC CLARiiON).

Can the Compellent product replace the lowered CLARiiON business that Dell has itself been shifting more to their flagship EqualLogic product?

Sure however at the risk of revenue cannibalization or worse, introduction of revenue prevention teams.

Can the Compellent product then be positioned lower down under the EqualLogic product?

Sure, however why hold it back not to mention force a higher priced product down into that market segment.

Can the Compellent product be taken up market to compete above the EqualLogic head to head with the larger CLARiiON systems from EMC or comparable solutions from other vendors?

Sure, however I can hear choruses of its sounding a lot like Christmas from New England, the bay area and Tucson among others.

Does this mean that Dell is being overly generous and that this is not a good deal?

No, not at all.

Sure it is the holiday season and Dell has several billion dollars of cash laying around however that in itself does not guarantee a large handout or government sized bailout (excuse me, infusion). At $30 or more, that would be overly generous simply based on where the technology fits as well as aligns to the market realities. Consequently, at $29, this is a great deal for Compellent and also for Dell.

Why is it a good deal for Dell?

I think that it is as much about Dell getting a good deal (ok, paying a premium) to acquire a competitor that they can use to fill some product gaps where they have common VARs. However I also think that this is very much about the channel and the VAR as much if not more than it is just about a storage product. Servers are part of the game here which in turn supports storage, networking, management tools, backup/recovery, archiving and services.

Sure Dell can maybe take some cost out of the Compellent solution by replacing the Supermicro PCs that are the hardware platform for their storage controllers with Dell servers. However the bigger play is around further developing its channel and VAR ecosystems, some of whom were with EqualLogic before Dell bought them. This can also be seen as a means of Dell getting that partner ecosystem to sell overall, more dell products and solutions instead of those from Apple, EMC, Futjisu, HP, IBM, Oracle and many others.

Likewise, I doubt that Mr. Dell is paying a premium simply to make the Compellent shareholders and fans happy to create monetary velocity to stimulate holiday shopping and economic stimulus. However, for the fans, sure, while drowning your sorrows in egg nogg of holiday cheer that you are not getting $30 or higher, instead buy a round for your mates and toast Dell for your holiday gift.

The real reason I think this is a good reason for Dell is that from a business and financial perspective, assuming they stick to the $29 range, it is a good bargain for both parties. Dell gets a company who has been competing with their EqualLogic product in some cases with the same VARs or resellers. Sure it gets a Fibre Channel based product however Dell already has that with the MD3000 series which I realize is less function laden then Compellent or EqualLogic; however it is also more affordable for a different market.

If Dell can close on the deal sticking to its offer which they have the upper hand on, execute including rolling out a strategy as well as product positioning plan. Then educate their own teams as well as VARs and customers of what products fit where and when in such a manner that does not cause revenue prevention (e.g. one product or team blocking the other) or cannibalization instead expanding markets, they can do well.

While Compellent gets a huge price multiple based on their revenue (about $125M USD), if Dell can get the product revenue up from the $125 to $150 million plateau to around $250 to $300 million without cannibalizing other Dell products, the deal pays for itself in many ways.

Keep in mind that a large pile of cash sitting in the bank these days is not exactly yielding the best returns on investment.

For the Compellent fans and shareholders, congratulations!

You have gotten or perhaps are about to get a good holiday gift so knock of the complaining that you should be getting more. The option is that instead of $28 per share, you could be getting 28 lumps of coal in your Christmas stocking.

For the Dell folks, assuming the deal is done on their terms and that they can quickly rationalize the product overlap, convey and then execute on a strategy while keeping the revenue prevention teams on the sidelines you too have a holiday gift to work with (some assembly will be required however). This also is good for Dell outside of storage which may turn out to be one of the gems of the deal in keeping or expanding VARs selling Dell based servers and associated technologies.

For EMC who was slapped in the face earlier this year when Dell took a run at 3PAR, sure there will be more erosion on the lower end CLARiiOn as has been occurring with the EqualLogic. However Dell still needs a solution to effectively compete with EMC and others at the higher end of the SMB or lower end of the enterprise market.

Sure the EqualLogic or Compellent products could be deployed into such scenarios; however those solutions are then playing on a different field and out of their market sweet spots.

Lets see what happens shall we.

In the meantime, what say you?

Is this a good deal for Dell, who is the deal good for assuming it goes through and at the terms mentioned, what is your take?

Who benefits from this proposed deal?

Note that in the holiday gift giving spirit, Chicago style voting or polling will be enabled.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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Fall 2010 StorageIO News Letter

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Fall 2010 Newsletter

 Welcome to the Fall 2010 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) newsletter. This follows the August 2010 edition building on the great feedback received from recipients.

You can access this news letter via various social media venues (some are shown below) in addition to StorageIO web sites and subscriptions. Click on the following links to view the Fall 2010 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the newsletter page to view previous editions.

Follow via Goggle Feedburner here or via email subscription here.

You can also subscribe to the news letter by simply sending an email to newsletter@storageio.com

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO newsletter, let me know your comments and feedback.

Cheers gs

Nuff said for now

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

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Who is responsible for vendor lockin?

Who is responsible for vendor lockin?

data infrastructure server storage I/O vendor lockin

Updated 1/21/2018

Who is responsible for vendor lockin?

Is vendor lockin caused by vendors, their partners or by customers?

In my opinion vendor lockin can be from any or all of the above.

What is vendor lockin

Vendor lockin is a situation where a customer becomes dependent or locked in by choice or other circumstances to a particular supplier or technology.

What is the difference between vendor lockin, account control and stickiness?

Im sure some marketing wiz or sales type will be happy to explain the subtle differences. Generally speaking, lockin, stickiness and account control are essentially the same, or at least strive to obtain similar results. For example, vendor lockin too some has a negative stigma. However vendor stickiness may be a new term, perhaps even sounding cool thus it is not a concern. Remember the Mary Poppins song a spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down? In other words sometimes changing and using a different term such as sticky vs vendor lockin helps make the situation taste better.

Is vendor lockin or stickiness a bad thing?

No, not necessarily, particularly if you the customer are aware and still in control of your environment.

I have had different views of vendor lockin over the years.

These have varied from when I was a customer working in IT organizations or being a vendor and later as an advisory analyst consultant. Even as a customer, I had different views of lockin which varied depending upon the situation. In some cases lockin was a result of upper management having their favorite vendor which meant when a change occurred further up the ranks, sometimes vendor lockin would shift as well. On the other hand, I also worked in IT environments where we had multiple vendors for different technologies to maintain competition across suppliers.

As a vendor, I was involved with customer sites that were best of breed while others were aligned around a single or few vendors. Some were aligned around technologies from the vendors I worked for and others were aligned with someone elses technology. In some cases as a vendor we were locked out of an account until there was a change of management or mandates at those sites. In other cases where lock out occurred, once our product was OEMd or resold by an incumbent vendor, the lockout ended.

Some vendors do a better job of establishing lockin, account management, account control or stickiness than compared to others. Some vendors may try to lock a customer in and thus there is perception that vendors lock customers in. Likewise, there is a perception that vendor lockin only occurs with the largest vendors however I have seen this also occur with smaller or niche vendors who gain control of their customers keeping larger or other vendors out.

Sweet, sticky Sue Bee Honey

Vendor lockin or stickiness is not always the result of the vendor, var, consultant or service provider pushing a particular technology, product or service. Customers can allow or enable vendor lockin as well, either by intent via alliances to drive some business initiative or accidentally by giving up account control management. Consequently vendor lockin is not a bad thing if it brings mutual benefit to the suppler and consumer.

On the other hand, if lockin causes hardship on the consumer while only benefiting the supplier, than it can be a bad thing for the customer.

Do some technologies lend themselves more to vendor lockin vs others?

Yes, some technologies lend themselves more to stickiness or lockin then others. For example, often big ticket or expensive hardware are seen as being vulnerable to vendor lockin along with other hardware items however software is where I have seen a lot of stickiness or lockin around.

However what about virtualization solutions after all the golden rule of virtualization is whoever controls the virtualization (hardware, software or services) controls the gold. This means that vendor lockin could be around a particular hypervisor or associated management tools.

How about bundled solutions or what are now called integrated vendor technology stacks including PODs (here or here) or vBlocks among others? How about databases, do they enable or facilitate vendor lockin? Perhaps, just like virtualization or operating systems or networking technology, storage system, data protection or other solutions, if you let the technology or vendor manage you, then you enable vendor lockin.

Where can vendor lockin or stickiness occur?

Application software, databases, data or information tools, messaging or collaboration, infrastructure resource management (IRM) tools ranging from security to backup to hypervisors and operating systems to email. Lets not forget about hardware which has become more interoperable from servers, storage and networks to integrated marketing or alliance stacks.

Another opportunity for lockin or stickiness can be in the form of drivers, agents or software shims where you become hooked on a feature functionality that then drives future decisions. In other words, lockin can occur in different locations both in traditional IT as well as via managed services, virtualization or cloud environments if you let it occur.

 

Keep these thoughts in mind:

  • Customers need to manage their resources and suppliers
  • Technology and their providers should work for you the customer, not the other way around
  • Technology providers conversely need to get closer to influence customer thinking
  • There can be cost with single vendor or technology sourcing due to loss of competition
  • There can be a cost associated with best of breed or functioning as your own integrator
  • There is a cost switching from vendors and or their technology to keep in mind
  • Managing your vendors or suppliers may be easier than managing your upper management
  • Vendors sales remove barriers so they can sell and setting barriers for others
  • Virtualization and cloud can be both a source for lockin as well as a tool to help prevent it
  • As a customer, if lockin provides benefits than it can be a good thing for all involved

Additional learning experiences along with common questions (and answers), as well as tips can be found in Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials book.

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

Ultimately, its up to the customer to manage their environment and thus have a say if they will allow vendor lockin. Granted, upper management may be the source of the lockin and not surprisingly is where some vendors will want to focus their attention directly, or via influence of high level management consultants.

So while a vendors solution may appear to be a locked in solution, it does not become a lockin issue or problem until a customer lets or allows it to be a lockin or sticky situation.

What is your take on vendor lockin? Cast your vote and see results in the following polls.

Is vendor lockin a good or bad thing?

Who is responsible for managing vendor lockin

Where is most common form or concern of vendor lockin

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert 2010-2017 (vSAN and vCloud). Author of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press), as well as Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com any reproduction in whole, in part, with changes to content, without source attribution under title or without permission is forbidden.

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved. StorageIO is a registered Trade Mark (TM) of Server StorageIO.

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IBMs Storwize or wise Storage, the V7000 and DFR

A few months ago IBM bought a Data Footprint Reduction (DFR) technology company called Storwize (read more about DFR and Storwize Real time Compression here, here, here, here and here).

A couple of weeks ago IBM renamed the Storwize real time compression technology to surprise surprise, IBM real time compression (wow, wonder how lively that market focus research group study discussion was).

Subsequently IBM recycled the Storwize name in time to be used for the V7000 launch.

Now to be clear right up front, currently the V7000 does not include real time compression capabilities, however I would look for that and other forms of DFR techniques to appear on an increasing basis in IBM products in the future.

IBM has a diverse storage portfolio with good products some with longer legs than others to compete in the market. By long legs, that means both technology and marketability for enabling their direct as well as partners including distributors or vars to effectively compete with other vendors offerings.

The enablement capability of the V7000 will be to give IBM and their business partners a product that they will want go tell and sell to customers competing with Cisco, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, HDS, HP, NEC, NetApp and Oracle among others.

What about XIV?

For those interested in XIV regardless of if you are a fan, nay sayer or simply an observer, here, here and here are some related posts to view if you like (as well as comment on).

Back to the V7000

A couple of common themes about the IBM V7000 are:

  • It appears to be a good product based on the SVC platform with many enhancements
  • Expanding the industry scope and focus awareness around Data Footprint Reduction (DFR)
  • Branding the storwize acquisition as real-time compression as part of their DFR portfolio
  • Confusion about using the Storwize name for a storage virtualization solution
  • Lack of Data Footprint Reduction (DFR) particularly real-time compression (aka Storwize)
  • Yet another IBM storage product adding to confusion around product positioning

Common questions that Im being asked about the IBM V7000 include among others:

  • Is the V7000 based on LSI, NetApp or other third party OEM technology?

    No, it is based on the IBM SVC code base along with an XIV like GUI and features from other IBM products.

  • Is the V7000 based on XIV?

    No, as mentioned above, the V7000 is based on the IBM SVC code base along with an XIV like GUI and features from other IBM products.

  • Does the V7000 have DFR such as dedupe or compression?

    No, not at this time other than what was previously available with the SVC.

  • Does this mean there will be a change or defocusing on or of other IBM storage products?

    IMHO I do not think so other than perhaps around XIV. If anything, I would expect IBM to start pushing the V7000 as well as the entire storage product portfolio more aggressively. Now there could be some defocusing on XIV or put a different way, putting all products on the same equal footing and let the customer determine what they want based on effective solution selling from IBM and their business partners.

  • What does this mean for XIV is that product no longer the featured or marquee product?

    IMHO XIV remains relevant for the time being. However, I also expect to be put on equal footprint with other IBM products or, if you prefer, other IBM products particularly the V7000 to be unleashed to compete with other external vendors solutions such as those from Cisco, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, HDS, HP, NEC, NetApp and Oracle among others. Read more here, here and here about XIV remaining relevant.

  • Why would I not just buy an SVC and add storage to it?

    That is an option and strength of SVC to sit in front of different IBM storage products as well as those of third party competitors. However with the V7000 customers now have a turnkey storage solution to sell instead of a virtualization appliance.

  • Is this a reaction to EMC VPLEX, HDS VSP, HP SVSP or 3PAR, Oracle/Sun 7000?

    Perhaps it is, perhaps it is a reaction to XIV, and perhaps it is a realization that IBM has a lot of IP that could be combined into a solution to respond to a market need among many other scenarios. However, IBM has had a virtualization platform with a decent installed base in the form of SVC which happens to be at the heart of the V7000.

  • Does this mean IBM is jumping on the using off the shelf server instead of purpose built hardware for storage systems bandwagon like Oracle, HP and others are doing?

    If you are new to storage or IBM, it might appear that way, however, IBM has been shipping storage systems that are based on general purpose servers for a couple for a couple of decades now. Granted, some of those products are based on IBM Power PC (e.g. power platform) also used in their pSeries formerly known as the RS6000s. For example, the DS8000 series similar to its predecessors the ESS (aka Shark) and VSS before that have been based on the Power platform. Likewise, SVC has been based on general purpose processors since its inception.

    Likewise, while only generally deployed in two node pairs, the DS8000 is architected to scale into many more nodes that what has been shipped meaning that IBM has had clustered storage for some time, granted, some of their competitors will dispute that.

  • How does the V7000 stack up from a performance standpoint?

    Interestingly, IBM has traditionally been very good if not out front running public benchmarks and workload simulations ranging from SPC to TPC to SPEC to Microsoft ESRP among others for all of their storage systems except one (e.g. XIV). However true to traditional IBM systems and storage practices, just a couple of weeks after the V7000 launch, IBM has released the first wave of performance comparisons including SPC for the V7000 which can be seen here to compare with others.

  • What do I think of the V7000?

    Like other products both in the IBM storage portfolio or from other vendors, the V7000 has its place and in that place which needs to be further articulated by IBM, it has a bright future. I think that the V7000 for many environments particularly those that were looking at XIV will be a good IBM based solution as well as competitor to other solutions from Dell, EMC, HDS, HP, NetApp, Oracle as well as some smaller startups providers.

Comments, thoughts and perspectives:

IBM is part of a growing industry trend realizing that data footprint reduction (DFR) focus should expand the scope beyond backup and dedupe to span an entire organization using many different tools, techniques and best practices. These include archiving of databases, email, file systems for both compliance and non compliance purposes, backup/restore modernization or redesign, compression (real-time for online and post processing). In addition, DFR includes consolidation of storage capacity and performance (e.g. fast 15K SAS, caching or SSD), data management (including some data deletion where practical), data dedupe, space saving snapshots such as copy on write or redirect on write, thin provisioning as well as virtualization for both consolidation and enabling agility.

IBM has some great products, however too often with such a diverse product portfolio better navigation and messaging of what to use when, where and why is needed not to mention the confusion over the current product dejur.

As has been the case for the past couple of years, lets see how this all plays out in a year or so from now. Meanwhile cast your vote or see the results of others as to if XIV remains relevant. Likewise, join in on the new poll below as to if the V7000 is now relevant or not.

Note: As with the ongoing is XIV relevant polling (above), for the new is the V7000 relevant polling (below) you are free to vote early, vote often, vote for those who cannot or that care not to vote.

Here are some links to read more about this and related topics:

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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Re visiting if IBM XIV is still relevant with V7000

Over the past couple of years I routinely get asked what I think of XIV by fans as well as foes in addition to many curious or neutral onlookers including XIV competitors, other analysts, media, bloggers, consultants as well as IBM customers, prospects, vars and business partners. Consequently I have done some blog posts about my thoughts and perspectives.

Its time again for what has turned out to be the third annual perspective or thoughts around IBM XIV and if it is still relevant as a result of the recent IBM V7000 (excuse me, I meant to say IBM Storwize V7000) storage system launch.

For those wanting to take a step back in time, here is an initial thought perspective about IBM and XIV storage from 2008, as well as the 2009 revisiting of XIV relevance post and the latest V7000 companion post found here.

What is the IBM V7000?

Here is a link to a companion post pertaining to the IBM V7000 that you will want to have a look at.

In a nut shell, the V7000 is a new storage system with built in storage virtualization or virtual storage if you prefer that leverages IBM developed software from its San Volume Controller (SVC), DS8000 enterprise system and others.

Unlike the SVC which is a gateway or appliance head that virtualizes various IBM and third party storage systems providing data movement, migration, copy, replication, snapshot and other agility or abstraction capabilities, the V7000 is a turnkey integrated solution.

By being a turnkey solution, the V7000 combines the functionality of the SVC as a basis for adding other IBM technologies including a GUI management tool similar to that found on XIV along with dedicated attached storage (e.g. SAS disk drives including fast, high capacity as well as SSD).

In other words, for those customer or prospects who liked XIV because of its management GUI interface, you may like the V7000.

For those who liked the functionality capabilities of the SVC however needed it to be a turnkey solution, you might like the V7000.

For those of you who did not like or competed with the SVC in the past, well, you know what to do.

BTW, for those who knew of Storwize the Data Footprint Reduction (DFR) vendor with real time compression that IBM recently acquired and renamed IBM Real time Compression, the V7000 does not contain any real time compression (yet).

What are my thoughts and perspectives?

In addition to the comments in the companion post found here, right now Im of the mind set that XIV does not fade away quietly into the sunset or take a timeout at the IBM technology rest and recuperation resort located on the beautiful someday isle.

The reason I think XIV will remain somewhat relevant for some time, (time to be determined of course) is that IBM has expended over the past two and half years significant resources to promote it. Those resources have included marketing time, messaging space and in some instances perhaps inadvertinly at the expense of other IBM storage solutions. Simiarly, a lot of time, money and effort have gone into business partner outreach to establish and keep XIV relevant with those commuities who in turn have gone to their customers to tell and sell the XIV story to some customers who have bought it.

Consequently or as a result of all of that investment, I would be surprised if IBM were simply to walk away from XIV at least near term.

What I do see as happening including some early indicators is that the V7000 (along with other IBM products) now will be getting equal billing, resources and promotional support. Weather this means the XIV division finally being assimilated into the mainstream IBM fold and on equal footing with other IBM products, or, that other IBM products being brought up to an elevated position of XIV is subject to interpretation and your own perception.

I expect to continue to see IBM teams and subsequently their distributors, vars and other business partners get more excited talking about the V7000 along with other IBM solutions. For example, SONAS for bulk, clustered and scale out NAS, DS8000 for high end, GMAS and Information Archive platforms as well as N and DS3K/DS4K/DS5K not to mentiuon the TS/TL backup and archive target platforms along with associated Tivoli software. Also, lets not forget about SVC among other IBM solutions including of course, XIV.

I would also not be surprised if some of the diehard XIV loyalist (e.g. sales and marketing reps that were faithful members of Moshe Yani army who appears to be MIA at IBM) pack up their bags and leave the IBM storage SANdbox in virtual protest. That is, refusing to be assimilated into the general IBM storage pool and thus leaving for Greener IT pastures elsewhere. Some will stick around discovering the opportunities associated with selling a broader more diverse product portfolio into their target accounts where they have spent time and resources to establish relationships or getting thier proverbial foot in the door.

Consequently, I think XIV remains somewhat relevant for now given all of the resources that IBM poured into it and relationships that their partner ecosystem also spent on establishing with the installed customer base.

However, I do think that the V7000 despite some confusion (here and here) around its recycled Storwize name that is built around the field proven SVC and other IBM technology has some legs. Those legs of the V7000 are both from a technology standpoint as well as a means to get the entire IBM systems and storage group energized to go out and compete with their primary nemesis (e.g. Dell, EMC, HP, HDS, NetApp and Oracle among others).

As has been the case for the past couple of years, lets see how this all plays out in a year or so from now. Meanwhile cast your vote or see the results of others as to if XIV remains relevant. Likewise, join in on the new poll below as to if the V7000 is now relevant or not.

Note: As with the ongoing is XIV relevant polling (above), for the new is the V7000 relevant polling (below) you are free to vote early, vote often, vote for those who cannot or that care not to vote.

Here are some links to read more about this and related topics:

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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Apple iPad: Is it a Business iTool or iToy?


Apple iPad via www.apple.com

With the formal release and availability of the Apple iPad (See previous post here) along with networking capabilities including 3G and WiFi, needless to say there has been plenty of buzz in the tech sphere and beyond on both what you can do, as well as what you can not do with the new Apple iProduct. Similarly, there has been buzz from Apple co-founder and chairman Steve Jobs defending why there is no Adobe flash capabilities on the iPad or perhaps a different way, attaching flash as a non standard which is ironic for those who see many Apple products as being non standard.

What has also been getting some buzz and discussions is if the iPad is a business iTool or iToy including a recent discussion on the StorageMonkeys Infosmack 48 podcast with hosts Greg Knieriemen @Knieriemen, Marc Farley @3parfarley, guest emeritus Mark Twomey @Storagezilla and Chris Weil LeBlanc @c_weil .

Also check out the StorageMonkeys weekly Tuesday Tech Fight for May 4, 2010 (May require registration which is free)

Granted like any other desktop, portable or handheld display device with a real or virtual keyboard and some type of networking interface combined with creative programming or hacks, almost anything can be used as a monitor or display or management tool interface to a variety of technologies.

That also begs the question along with others mentioned in a post a few months ago of what is the real value for the iPad today?

Certainly there are some business or organizations that simply need a very thin client for accessing public or private cloud applications, entertainment or other web content in addition to being a personal information device or digital assistant along the lines of a traditional iPod or similar device where a PC or Mac is not needed.

Likewise down the road as pointed out here, there could be other use cases (e.g. build it and they will come).

However today for business, the question remains, is the Apple iPad a business iTool or iToy or do you simply iDont Care?

Here is a link to a related post along with poll where you can cast your vote as well as see what others are thinking about the iPad.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

Technorati tags: iPad

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Spring 2010 StorageIO Newsletter

Welcome to the spring 2010 edition of the Server and StorageIO (StorageIO) news letter.

This edition follows the inaugural issue (Winter 2010) incorporating feedback and suggestions as well as building on the fantastic responses received from recipients.

A couple of enhancements included in this issue (marked as New!) include a Featured Related Site along with Some Interesting Industry Links. Another enhancement based on feedback is to include additional comment that in upcoming issues will expand to include a column article along with industry trends and perspectives.

StorageIO News Letter Image
Spring 2010 Newsletter

You can access this news letter via various social media venues (some are shown below) in addition to StorageIO web sites and subscriptions. Click on the following links to view the spring 2010 newsletter as HTML or PDF or, to go to the newsletter page.

Follow via Goggle Feedburner here or via email subscription here.

You can also subscribe to the news letter by simply sending an email to newsletter@storageio.com

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO newsletter, let me know your comments and feedback.

Also, a very big thank you to everyone who has helped make StorageIO a success!.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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RAID Relevance Revisited

Following up from some previous posts on the topic, a continued discussion point in the data storage industry is the relevance (or lack there) of RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks).

These discussions tend to evolve around how RAID is dead due to its lack of real or perceived ability to continue scaling in terms of performance, availability, capacity, economies or energy capabilities needed or when compared to those of newer techniques, technologies or products.

RAID Relevance

While there are many new and evolving approaches to protecting data in addition to maintaining availability or accessibility to information, RAID despite the fan fare is far from being dead at least on the technology front.

Sure, there are issues or challenges that require continued investing in RAID as has been the case over the past 20 years; however those will also be addressed on a go forward basis via continued innovation and evolution along with riding technology improvement curves.

Now from a marketing standpoint, ok, I can see where the RAID story is dead, boring, and something new and shiny is needed, or, at least change the pitch to sound like something new.

Consequently, when being long in the tooth and with some of the fore mentioned items among others, older technologies that may be boring or lack sizzle or marketing dollars can and often are declared dead on the buzzword bingo circuit. After all, how long now has the industry trade group RAID Advisory Board (RAB) been missing in action, retired, spun down, archived or ILMed?

RAID remains relevant because like other dead or zombie technologies it has reached the plateau of productivity and profitability. That success is also something that emerging technologies envy as their future domain and thus a classic marketing move is to declare the incumbent dead.

The reality is that RAID in all of its various instances from hardware to software, standard to non-standard with extensions is very much alive from the largest enterprise to the SMB to the SOHO down into consumer products and all points in between.

Now candidly, like any technology that is about 20 years old if not older after all, the disk drive is over 50 years old and been declared dead for how long now?.RAID in some ways is long in the tooth and there are certainly issues to be addressed as have been taken care of in the past. Some of these include the overhead of rebuilding large capacity 1TB, 2TB and even larger disk drives in the not so distant future.

There are also issues pertaining to distributed data protection in support of cloud, virtualized or other solutions that need to be addressed. In fact, go way way back to when RAID appeared commercially on the scene in the late 80s and one of the value propositions among others was to address the reliability of emerging large capacity multi MByte sized SCSI disk drives. It seems almost laughable today that when a decade later, when the 1GB disk drives appeared in the market back in the 90s that there was renewed concern about RAID and disk drive rebuild times.

Rest assured, I think that there is a need and plenty of room for continued innovate evolution around RAID related technologies and their associated storage systems or packaging on a go forward basis.

What I find interesting is that some of the issues facing RAID today are similar to those of a decade ago for example having to deal with large capacity disk drive rebuild, distributed data protecting and availability, performance, ease of use and so the list goes.

However what happened was that vendors continued to innovate both in terms of basic performance accelerated rebuild rates with improvements to rebuild algorithms, leveraged faster processors, busses and other techniques. In addition, vendors continued to innovate in terms of new functionality including adopting RAID 6 which for the better part of a decade outside of a few niche vendors languished as one of those future technologies that probably nobody would ever adopt, however we know that to be different now and for the past several years. RAID 6 is one of those areas where vendors who do not have it are either adding it, enhancing it, or telling you why you do not need it or why it is no good for you.

An example of how RAID 6 is being enhanced is boosting performance on normal read and write operations along with acceleration of performance during disk rebuild. Also tied to RAID 6 and disk drive rebuild are improvements in controller design to detect and proactively make repairs on the fly to minimize or eliminate errors or diminished the need for drive rebuilds, similar to what was done in previous generations. Lets also not forget the improvements in disk drives boosting performance, availability, capacity and energy improvements over time.

Funny how these and other enhancements are similar to those made to RAID controllers hardware and software fine tuning them in the early to mid 2000s in support for high capacity SATA disk drives that had different RAS characteristics of higher performance lower capacity enterprise drives.

Here is my point.

RAID to some may be dead while others continue to rely on it. Meanwhile others are working on enhancing technologies for future generations of storage systems and application requirements. Thus in different shapes, forms, configurations, feature; functionality or packaging, the spirit of RAID is very much alive and well remaining relevant.

Regardless of if a solution using two or three disk mirroring for availability, or RAID 0 fast SSD or SAS or FC disks in a stripe configuration for performance with data protection via rapid restoration from some other low cost medium (perhaps RAID 6 or tape), or perhaps single, dual or triple parity protection, or if using small block or multiMByte or volume based chunklets, let alone if it is hardware or software based, local or disturbed, standard or non standard, chances are there is some theme of RAID involved.

Granted, you do not have to call it RAID if you prefer!

As a closing thought, if RAID were no longer relevant, than why do the post RAID, next generation, life beyond RAID or whatever you prefer to call them technologies need to tie themselves to the themes of RAID? Simple, RAID is still relevant in some shape or form to different audiences as well as it is a great way of stimulating discussion or debate in a constantly evolving industry.

BTW, Im still waiting for the revolutionary piece of hardware that does not require software, and the software that does not require hardware and that includes playing games with server less servers using hypervisors :) .

Provide your perspective on RAID and its relevance in the following poll.

Here are some additional related and relevant RAID links of interests:

Stay tuned for more about RAIDs relevance as I dont think we have heard the last on this.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

Posted on

Poll: Networking Convergence, Ethernet, InfiniBand or both?

I just received an email in my inbox from Voltaire along with a pile of other advertisements, advisories, alerts and announcements from other folks.

What caught my eye on the email was that it is announcing a new survey results that you can read here as well as below.

The question that this survey announcements prompts for me and hence why I am posting it here is how dominant will InfiniBand be on a go forward basis, the answer I think is it depends…

It depends on the target market or audience, what their applications and technology preferences are along with other service requirements.

I think that there is and will remain a place for Infiniband, the question is where and for what types of environments as well as why have both InfiniBand and Ethernet including Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) in support of unified or converged I/O and data networking.

So here is the note that I received from Voltaire:

 

Hello,

A new survey by Voltaire (NASDAQ: VOLT) reveals that IT executives plan to use InfiniBand and Ethernet technologies together as they refresh or build new data centers. They’re choosing a converged network strategy to improve fabric performance which in turn furthers their infrastructure consolidation and efficiency objectives.

The full press release is below.  Please contact me if you would like to speak with a Voltaire executive for further commentary.

Regards,
Christy

____________________________________________________________
Christy Lynch| 978.439.5407(o) |617.794.1362(m)
Director, Corporate Communications
Voltaire – The Leader in Scale-Out Data Center Fabrics
christyl@voltaire.com | www.voltaire.com
Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/voltaireltd

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

IT Survey Finds Executives Planning Converged Network Strategy:
Using Both InfiniBand and Ethernet

Fabric Performance Key to Making Data Centers Operate More Efficiently

CHELMSFORD, Mass. and ANANA, Israel January 12, 2010 – A new survey by Voltaire (NASDAQ: VOLT) reveals that IT executives plan to use InfiniBand and Ethernet technologies together as they refresh or build new data centers. They’re choosing a converged network strategy to improve fabric performance which in turn furthers their infrastructure consolidation and efficiency objectives.

Voltaire queried more than 120 members of the Global CIO & Executive IT Group, which includes CIOs, senior IT executives, and others in the field that attended the 2009 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium. The survey explored their data center networking needs, their choice of interconnect technologies (fabrics) for the enterprise, and criteria for making technology purchasing decisions.

“Increasingly, InfiniBand and Ethernet share the ability to address key networking requirements of virtualized, scale-out data centers, such as performance, efficiency, and scalability,” noted Asaf Somekh, vice president of marketing, Voltaire. “By adopting a converged network strategy, IT executives can build on their pre-existing investments, and leverage the best of both technologies.”

When asked about their fabric choices, 45 percent of the respondents said they planned to implement both InfiniBand with Ethernet as they made future data center enhancements. Another 54 percent intended to rely on Ethernet alone.

Among additional survey results:

  • When asked to rank the most important characteristics for their data center fabric, the largest number (31 percent) cited high bandwidth. Twenty-two percent cited low latency, and 17 percent said scalability.
  • When asked about their top data center networking priorities for the next two years, 34 percent again cited performance. Twenty-seven percent mentioned reducing costs, and 16 percent cited improving service levels.
  • A majority (nearly 60 percent) favored a fabric/network that is supported or backed by a global server manufacturer.

InfiniBand and Ethernet interconnect technologies are widely used in today’s data centers to speed up and make the most of computing applications, and to enable faster sharing of data among storage and server networks. Voltaire’s server and storage fabric switches leverage both technologies for optimum efficiency. The company provides InfiniBand products used in supercomputers, high-performance computing, and enterprise environments, as well as its Ethernet products to help a broad array of enterprise data centers meet their performance requirements and consolidation plans.

About Voltaire
Voltaire (NASDAQ: VOLT) is a leading provider of scale-out computing fabrics for data centers, high performance computing and cloud environments. Voltaire’s family of server and storage fabric switches and advanced management software improve performance of mission-critical applications, increase efficiency and reduce costs through infrastructure consolidation and lower power consumption. Used by more than 30 percent of the Fortune 100 and other premier organizations across many industries, including many of the TOP500 supercomputers, Voltaire products are included in server and blade offerings from Bull, HP, IBM, NEC and Sun. Founded in 1997, Voltaire is headquartered in Ra’anana, Israel and Chelmsford, Massachusetts. More information is available at www.voltaire.com or by calling 1-800-865-8247.

Forward Looking Statements
Information provided in this press release may contain statements relating to current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections about future events that are "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements generally relate to Voltaire’s plans, objectives and expectations for future operations and are based upon management’s current estimates and projections of future results or trends. They also include third-party projections regarding expected industry growth rates. Actual future results may differ materially from those projected as a result of certain risks and uncertainties. These factors include, but are not limited to, those discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" in Voltaire’s annual report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2008. These forward-looking statements are made only as of the date hereof, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

###

All product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

 

End of Voltaire transmission:

I/O, storage and networking interface wars come and go similar to other technology debates of what is the best or that will be supreme.

Some recent debates have been around Fibre Channel vs. iSCSI or iSCSI vs. Fibre Channel (depends on your perspective), SAN vs. NAS, NAS vs. SAS, SAS vs. iSCSI or Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel vs. Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) vs. iSCSI vs. InfiniBand, xWDM vs. SONET or MPLS, IP vs UDP or other IP based services, not to mention the whole LAN, SAN, MAN, WAN POTS and PAN speed games of 1G, 2G, 4G, 8G, 10G, 40G or 100G. Of course there are also the I/O virtualization (IOV) discussions including PCIe Single Root (SR) and Multi Root (MR) for attachment of SAS/SATA, Ethernet, Fibre Channel or other adapters vs. other approaches.

Thus when I routinely get asked about what is the best, my answer usually is a qualified it depends based on what you are doing, trying to accomplish, your environment, preferences among others. In other words, Im not hung up or tied to anyone particular networking transport, protocol, network or interface, rather, the ones that work and are most applicable to the task at hand

Now getting back to Voltaire and InfiniBand which I think has a future for some environments, however I dont see it being the be all end all it was once promoted to be. And outside of the InfiniBand faithful (there are also iSCSI, SAS, Fibre Channel, FCoE, CEE and DCE among other devotees), I suspect that the results would be mixed.

I suspect that the Voltaire survey reflects that as well as if I surveyed an Ethernet dominate environment I can take a pretty good guess at the results, likewise for a Fibre Channel, or FCoE influenced environment. Not to mention the composition of the environment, focus and business or applications being supported. One would also expect a slightly different survey results from the likes of Aprius, Broadcom, Brocade, Cisco, Emulex, Mellanox (they also are involved with InfiniBand), NextIO, Qlogic (they actually do some Infiniband activity as well), Virtensys or Xsigo (actually, they support convergence of Fibre Channel and Ethernet via Infiniband) among others.

Ok, so what is your take?

Whats your preffered network interface for convergence?

For additional reading, here are some related links:

  • I/O Virtualization (IOV) Revisited
  • I/O, I/O, Its off to Virtual Work and VMworld I Go (or went)
  • Buzzword Bingo 1.0 – Are you ready for fall product announcements?
  • StorageIO in the News Update V2010.1
  • The Green and Virtual Data Center (Chapter 9)
  • Also check out what others including Scott Lowe have to say about IOV here or, Stuart Miniman about FCoE here, or of Greg Ferro here.

    • Oh, and for what its worth for those concerned about FTC disclosure, Voltaire is not nor have they been a client of StorageIO, however, I did used to work for a Fibre Channel, iSCSI, IP storage, LAN, SAN, MAN, WAN vendor and wrote a book on the topics :).

    Cheers
    Gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved