Users get "excited" over storage vendors, technologies

Which vendors or technologies come to mind when you think about “exciting” storage products and services? According to IT industry research firm TheInfoPro (TIP), storage professionals in Fortune 1000 and midsize enterprises definitely have an answer to that question.

The firm’s latest research on storage adoption plans, management strategies, and vendor performance has been released and more than 250 Fortune 1000 and midsize end users say they are turning their attention to vendors that provide de-duplication, thin provisioning, virtualized provisioning, and capacity optimization technologies, according to TIP’s managing director of storage research, Robert Stevenson.

As a result, NetApp and Data Domain have seen the largest increase in mentions. Both vendors offer data de-duplication technologies and coincidentally each has pushed further into the de-dupe market over the past couple of days.

NetApp, which already offers de-duplication for primary storage via its Data ONTAP operating system announced this week that de-dupe is now available for its family of NetApp Virtual Tape Library (VTL) systems. Also, Data Domain this week entered a partnership with F5 Networks to co-market a joint solution that automates the movement of static and archive data from primary storage to a secondary storage tier. The joint offering will combine the de-dupe capabilities of Data Domain’s disk-based storage systems with the F5 ARX series of file virtualization devices.

Stevenson says his “Wave 11 Time Series Storage Study” shows that end users are looking for SAN architectures that are more active in managing storage utilization. It makes sense since the top technology in end users plans is once again data de-duplication, which has been dominating TIP’s list for more than a year.

Overall, Fortune 1000 users gave EMC the nod as the most exciting storage vendor followed by NetApp, Data Domain, IBM and 3PAR, while midsize users surveyed listed Data Domain, 3PAR, Compellent, EMC and HDS as their top five most exciting vendors.

Dell mulls FCoE support

After shelling out $1.4 billion to buy SAN maker EqualLogic last year, it is safe to say that Dell has a hefty stake in the success and growth of the iSCSI storage market. Given all of the recent noise in the industry around Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) being the preferred storage protocol of the future, Dell held a conference call with media and analysts this morning to offer its two cents on the topic.

What it boils down to is that Dell’s storage folks believe converged networks based on lossless Ethernet technology will float all storage boats. According to Eric Endebrock, senior manager for Dell’s storage product group, iSCSI is here to stay and Fibre Channel storage will bolster FCoE as a way to connect legacy FC systems over 10GbE networks (and eventually 100GbE networks).

"Dell is a big believer in unifying the fabric, but that is long-term," said Endebrock. "We are not looking to take our customers and forklift them away from the environments they have today, but they will soon have to start making some choices."

Dell’s official stance is that unified fabrics make the most sense financially for customers in the long-term.

"We are going to support 10GbE and Data Center Ethernet (also known as Converged Enhanced Ethernet) in our EqualLogic PS arrays. Today our PS arrays support iSCSI and will continue to support iSCSI in the future," said Endebrock. "We are not changing now, but protocol flexibility is going to be a key to our success. EqualLogic equals iSCSI is not the best way to think about our investment in that area."

In other words, the company is not ruling out support for FCoE in its Dell EqualLogic PS5000 Series iSCSI SAN arrays.

At last week’s Storage Networking World conference, I asked Dell’s director of enterprise storage, Praveen Asthana, for his take on FCoE and how it might fit into Dell’s product plans going forward.

Asthana said FCoE has already been successful in one respect. It has prompted customers to start thinking about the future. However, he maintained that FCoE requires a networking overhaul and iSCSI is still less expensive overall. He also referred to FCoE as "a stop on the way to iSCSI."

It is no surprise that Dell, like its competitors, is keeping its options open. In the end, customers will ultimately dictate which protocol will dominate or whether FCoE and iSCSI will truly coexist in converged networks.

Time to optimize?

Recessions are often the mother of innovation. Times are tight and it is in these circumstances that technology upstarts have an opportunity to make some hay. Look no further than NetApp’s growth post-2001.

My colleague Dave Simpson recently listed his top 5 “hot” technologies from the floor of the Storage Networking World conference, giving the nod to Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and server virtualization as the top-two tech topics. Both are consolidation plays with FCoE solving network and cabling complexity and virtual machines reducing server hardware requirements. However, I find his third pick – storage efficiency technologies – to be the most intriguing segment of the storage market.

Also referred to overall as storage optimization technologies, data de-duplication, compression and thin provisioning are moving up the stack from secondary storage applications to primary systems.

It is in this area that new companies like Ocarina Networks and Storwize may now get a seat at the table as customers look for ways to squeeze more out of their existing hardware investments, especially given the near term purchasing plans of IT buyers.

The latest wave of research from TheInfoPro (TIP) shows that technology refresh purchases during the middle of 2008 are offsetting typical year-end purchases and will lead to a significant drop in storage spending for the fourth quarter of 2008.

Ocarina’s products identify patterns and use a blend compression and de-duplication to apply file-specific algorithms to optimize data and how it is stored. Storwize offers a high-performance compression appliance that drops into existing networks to shrink primary storage requirements. NetApp is also offering de-dupe for primary storage as a free option in its Data ONTAP operating system and Riverbed is ramping up for next year’s debut of an appliance that also eliminates redundant data on primary storage systems.

These approaches seem to be worthy of a look. Data is not going to stop growing, but the amount users spend on storage capacity can be controlled using these types of technologies.

For a complete overview of the optimization market and the vendors involved, check out InfoStor contributor and Taneja Group analyst Eric Burgener’s article “It’s time for primary storage optimization.”

SNW and unanswered questions

After eight years of making the semi-annual pilgrimage to Storage Networking World (SNW), the trip tends to become about routine. Make sure you register and reserve a hotel room in time. Book as many vendor and analyst meetings as possible and try to be at the right place at the right time so as not to throw your schedule into a tailspin. Oh yeah, try to cover all of the news.

Sometimes I need to tie a string around my finger to remember to eat.

There are a lot of trade-offs at trade shows. Face-time with storage vendors and analysts often usurps time that could be spent talking to end users.

I did manage to have a few interesting conversations with some of the SNW attendees in-between running to the press room and vendor briefings. When asked about new technologies like solid-state disks (SSDs) and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), 100% of those kind enough to indulge my curiosity responded in the same way: “I can see their benefits, but talk to me when they can help me with the problems I have now.”

So what are those problems? Backup windows, playing catch-up with unexpected capacity growth, grappling with ILM strategies and, the big one, figuring out how to support virtual servers as they multiply like rabbits.

The breakout sessions and tutorials at SNW are informative and covered all of the above issues to a degree, but they tend to be general their scope. The users seemed to need much more information and advice specific to their challenges.

I drop a business card on users once I’m done picking their brains and invite them to e-mail or call me any time they can’t get straight answers to their questions in the hopes that I can help. Given the frequency with which the InfoStor team talks to storage vendors, it only makes sense to ask these companies real-world questions from real-world users.

Consider this a virtual business card and an invitation to do the same. If a vendor tap dances around your questions, feel free to shoot them off to me at kevink@pennwell.com. I’ll ask them for you and post the questions and responses in this blog.

The better the questions, the better the coverage. This way there are no trade-offs and I might even remember to eat breakfast.