June 18, 2009 – According to the most recent Storage Study from independent research firm TheInfoPro (TIP), storage resource management (SRM) tools are in the midst of a comeback as enterprises attempt to boost utilization in tough economic times.
TheInfoPro's most recent study, which is based on data gathered from interviews with 250 IT pros at Fortune 1000 and medium-sized enterprise organizations, revealed that managing storage growth, capacity forecasting and storage reporting, and managing costs are the "top pain points" facing end users.
Enter: SRM.
A few tidbits from a press release on TIP's latest Storage Management Technology Heat Index – a barometer of the user needs and planned spending:
• Top technologies on the F1000 Storage Management Technology Heat Index include capacity planning and forecasting, storage performance monitoring and storage resource management – with capacity planning and forecasting jumping nine spots from number 11 six months ago to the number one technology on the index.
• Top technologies on the MSE Storage Management Technology Heat Index include capacity planning and forecasting, information lifecycle management, disk-to-disk and email archiving.
• Top Technologies on the European Storage Management Technology Heat Index include storage resource management, email archiving and thin provisioning.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Tucci appeals to Data Domain's rank and file
June 9, 2009 -- The acquisition agreement between Data Domain and NetApp precludes EMC from communicating with Data Domain directly, but no one says EMC can't state its case to the public or to Data Domain's employees.
EMC chairman, president and CEO Joe Tucci issued an open letter to Data Domain's personnel this morning in which he praises their achievements, congratulates them for their successes and highlights the impact of their data deduplication technologies are having in data centers across the globe.
He even writes, "In many ways, you remind us of EMC."
Tucci also promises Data Domain's employees an "exciting future" if they should become part of the "EMC family."
All flattery and promises aside, Tucci continues to make the financial argument that EMC's $30 per share all-cash tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding stock of Data Domain is the better deal than NetApp's part-stock, part-cash offer.
It appears that NetApp will win the day and acquire Data Domain, but its sure is fun to watch the day-to-day developments.
The full text of Tucci's open letter to the employees of Data Domain can be found on EMC's website.
EMC chairman, president and CEO Joe Tucci issued an open letter to Data Domain's personnel this morning in which he praises their achievements, congratulates them for their successes and highlights the impact of their data deduplication technologies are having in data centers across the globe.
He even writes, "In many ways, you remind us of EMC."
Tucci also promises Data Domain's employees an "exciting future" if they should become part of the "EMC family."
All flattery and promises aside, Tucci continues to make the financial argument that EMC's $30 per share all-cash tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding stock of Data Domain is the better deal than NetApp's part-stock, part-cash offer.
It appears that NetApp will win the day and acquire Data Domain, but its sure is fun to watch the day-to-day developments.
The full text of Tucci's open letter to the employees of Data Domain can be found on EMC's website.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Update: Data Domain sides with NetApp
June 4, 2009 -- Another day, another development in the EMC-Data Domain-NetApp saga. Less than 12 hours after NetApp publicly raised its offer to buy Data Domain, the two companies have officially entered into a revised acquisition agreement.
The volleying has been worthy of a match at Roland Garros. NetApp responded to EMC's surprise bid for Data Domain yesterday morning by raising its offer. The price seems to have satisfied Data Domain, for now.
Late yesterday, the pair issued a joint press release stating that they have entered into a revised acquisition agreement under which NetApp will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Data Domain common stock for $30 per share in cash and stock in a transaction valued at approximately $1.9 billion, net of Data Domain's cash.
EMC is standing pat. The company issued a statement of its own on Wednesday, in which Joe Tucci, EMC chairman, president and CEO, said, "EMC's all-cash tender offer remains superior to NetApp's proposed part-stock merger transaction. We are proceeding with our superior cash tender offer, which is not subject to any financing or due diligence contingency. We do not believe that the Data Domain stockholders will approve the merger transaction with NetApp."
Tucci added, "EMC urges the Board of Directors of Data Domain to not take any actions that would further impede a transaction that is a superior alternative for Data Domain's shareholders."
Whether EMC counters the counter offer remains to be seen.
The volleying has been worthy of a match at Roland Garros. NetApp responded to EMC's surprise bid for Data Domain yesterday morning by raising its offer. The price seems to have satisfied Data Domain, for now.
Late yesterday, the pair issued a joint press release stating that they have entered into a revised acquisition agreement under which NetApp will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Data Domain common stock for $30 per share in cash and stock in a transaction valued at approximately $1.9 billion, net of Data Domain's cash.
EMC is standing pat. The company issued a statement of its own on Wednesday, in which Joe Tucci, EMC chairman, president and CEO, said, "EMC's all-cash tender offer remains superior to NetApp's proposed part-stock merger transaction. We are proceeding with our superior cash tender offer, which is not subject to any financing or due diligence contingency. We do not believe that the Data Domain stockholders will approve the merger transaction with NetApp."
Tucci added, "EMC urges the Board of Directors of Data Domain to not take any actions that would further impede a transaction that is a superior alternative for Data Domain's shareholders."
Whether EMC counters the counter offer remains to be seen.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
NetApp responds to EMC's bid for Data Domain
June 3, 2009 -- The bidding war for Data Domain has begun. NetApp has responded to EMC's surprise offer to buy the company by upping its offer to $1.9 billion and claiming that a combined NetApp-Data Domain has a bigger upside for both companies.
NetApp issued a revised offer this morning, raising the acquisition price to approximately $1.9 billion versus EMC's $1.8 billion offer earlier this week.
In a press release, NetApp's chairman and CEO, Dan Warmenhoven, said his company's "strategic rationale remains the same" and "the complementary nature of the Data Domain and NetApp product lines will result in higher aggregate growth compared to the redundancies that would result with the EMC product line."
Warmenhoven added, "The cultural compatibility between Data Domain and NetApp will maximize the potential for continued innovation from a creative and motivated employee base. This will not only create a meaningful choice for our customers but also lead to a complementary combination with no obstacles to an expeditious close of the acquisition. Therefore, we are as committed to this partnership now as we were when we first announced our intent to acquire Data Domain."
Mum's the word over at Data Domain as they company has yet to comment on the EMC-NetApp tug of war. The industry pundits, however, are keeping a close eye on the back and forth.
Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Lauren Whitehouse wonders whether EMC is just playing the spoiler, especially given its wealth of data deduplication technologies and OEM deals.
"I am having a hard time understanding why EMC wants the Data Domain technology. EMC has deduplication solutions through the Avamar product and its partnership with Quantum. I'm not sure what opportunities there are for technology integration with Avamar and EMC recently made a sizeable investment in Quantum," said Whitehouse. "The company has also promoted the benefits of the being able to replicate between Dell, EMC and Quantum solutions. What statement is EMC making about its investments in Avamar and Quantum by bidding for Data Domain?"
She continued, "Who can better leverage and integrate the Data Domain technology? EMC definitely has a better track record of doing acquisitions and leveraging technology purchases. Without really knowing the motivation for either company's bid, it's hard to judge who will leverage the technology better. It's just not obvious what the intentions are for either bidder. What a rollercoaster ride this has been."
David Vellante, co-founder and contributor to The Wikibon Project, believes EMC may have the edge.
"EMC plays for keeps. It doesn't mess around when it comes to competing. I think if EMC really wants Data Domain it will outbid NetApp for sure," he said.
So what does EMC's unsolicited bid for Data Domain say to the industry? Vellante sees it as a defensive move by EMC.
"It says to me that EMC recognizes it can't grow its core storage business organically and needs to acquire growth," Vellante said. "It says EMC is making a defensive move, albeit an aggressive one, to stop Data Domain from getting in NetApp's hands."
He also believes smaller vendors are fast becoming hot commodities.
"The market is continuing to consolidate and companies like CommVault, FalconStor, Sepaton and even 3PAR and Compellent are worth more today than they were yesterday," Vellante said.
NetApp issued a revised offer this morning, raising the acquisition price to approximately $1.9 billion versus EMC's $1.8 billion offer earlier this week.
In a press release, NetApp's chairman and CEO, Dan Warmenhoven, said his company's "strategic rationale remains the same" and "the complementary nature of the Data Domain and NetApp product lines will result in higher aggregate growth compared to the redundancies that would result with the EMC product line."
Warmenhoven added, "The cultural compatibility between Data Domain and NetApp will maximize the potential for continued innovation from a creative and motivated employee base. This will not only create a meaningful choice for our customers but also lead to a complementary combination with no obstacles to an expeditious close of the acquisition. Therefore, we are as committed to this partnership now as we were when we first announced our intent to acquire Data Domain."
Mum's the word over at Data Domain as they company has yet to comment on the EMC-NetApp tug of war. The industry pundits, however, are keeping a close eye on the back and forth.
Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Lauren Whitehouse wonders whether EMC is just playing the spoiler, especially given its wealth of data deduplication technologies and OEM deals.
"I am having a hard time understanding why EMC wants the Data Domain technology. EMC has deduplication solutions through the Avamar product and its partnership with Quantum. I'm not sure what opportunities there are for technology integration with Avamar and EMC recently made a sizeable investment in Quantum," said Whitehouse. "The company has also promoted the benefits of the being able to replicate between Dell, EMC and Quantum solutions. What statement is EMC making about its investments in Avamar and Quantum by bidding for Data Domain?"
She continued, "Who can better leverage and integrate the Data Domain technology? EMC definitely has a better track record of doing acquisitions and leveraging technology purchases. Without really knowing the motivation for either company's bid, it's hard to judge who will leverage the technology better. It's just not obvious what the intentions are for either bidder. What a rollercoaster ride this has been."
David Vellante, co-founder and contributor to The Wikibon Project, believes EMC may have the edge.
"EMC plays for keeps. It doesn't mess around when it comes to competing. I think if EMC really wants Data Domain it will outbid NetApp for sure," he said.
So what does EMC's unsolicited bid for Data Domain say to the industry? Vellante sees it as a defensive move by EMC.
"It says to me that EMC recognizes it can't grow its core storage business organically and needs to acquire growth," Vellante said. "It says EMC is making a defensive move, albeit an aggressive one, to stop Data Domain from getting in NetApp's hands."
He also believes smaller vendors are fast becoming hot commodities.
"The market is continuing to consolidate and companies like CommVault, FalconStor, Sepaton and even 3PAR and Compellent are worth more today than they were yesterday," Vellante said.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
NetApp's competitors take aim at Data Domain deal
May 21, 2009 -- It didn't take long for NetApp's competition and industry experts to begin poking holes in NetApp's acquisition of Data Domain as questions abound less than 24 hours since the deal was announced.
There is no question the $1.5 billion deal to buy disk-based backup vendor and deduplication specialist Data Domain will immediately expand NetApp's market share and reach into the backup market. However, as the experts and competitors are quick to point out, NetApp's path is strewn with obstacles.
Wikibon president and co-founder Dave Vellante's blog on the topic raises some interesting questions. If NetApp can successfully integrate Data Domain's products and technologies (specifically deduplication), they will be poised to make serious inroads with customers seeking data reduction/Storage Capacity Optimization (SCO) technologies. However, he writes:
"This vision will take forever to execute. Meanwhile, IBM with Diligent and TSM; and EMC with Avamar and Quantum are further down the path. This will lower the time to value for NetApp, which I'm defining as the valuation being incremental."
Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Lauren Whitehouse says deduplication – one of Data Domain's strengths – is a feature, not a market.
"Having the feature on storage systems may help NetApp win business in segments of the secondary and archive storage markets where it wasn't as strong before," she says.
Her biggest issue with the acquisition is overlap between VTL-interface products, NetApp NearStore and the Data Domain DD series.
"The answers NetApp provided regarding technology integration and conflict were tentative. They deferred to the soon-to-be-formed integration team to address those issues at a later time. The focus was squarely on positioning the acquisition as increasing the business opportunity rather than a technology leverage move." She continues, "NetApp spent $11 million on the VTL acquisition (Alacritus) several years ago and has made investments in NearStore over the years; however, the product is lacking some features that make it competitive with others in its class."
She cites VTL-to-VTL replication as an example. "It's going to be hard to justify incremental investment in NearStore when they've just spent $1.5 billion on a similar solution with a few more advanced features," she says.
NetApp's positioning the acquisition as a business play, rather than a move to gobble up valuable intellectual property. As reported in our story about the deal, NetApp's chief marketing officer, Jay Kidd, said NetApp's rationale was based on an incremental growth opportunity for both companies.
"The overlap between NetApp's customers and Data Domain's customers was fairly small. The addition of Data Domain's products to our portfolio was a clear market expansion opportunity," said Kidd. "We are doing this for the expansion of the business opportunity and not to acquire technologies that would allow us to consolidate product lines."
Roughly 77% of Data Domain's business comes from North America. NetApp, however, has a global reach. Kidd said NetApp's global reach makes the acquisition a perfect match. "We have access to enterprise accounts that they are not in yet. Our [global presence] will accelerate the business that Data Domain already has," he says.
Competing vendors, of which there are many, began offering their two cents on the acquisition minutes after the news broke. Here is a sampling of the vendor reaction in their own words…
David West, vice president of marketing and business development at CommVault:
"We believe that deduplication is a feature and not a company. We also believe that to gain operational efficiencies and dramatically reduce data management and related storage expenses, a global embedded software-based approach to deduplication is the best option for customers.
Yesterday's announcement did little to address these fundamental customer needs. While we applaud NetApp's effort to capture more market share through deduplication, ultimately a feature-based approach, tightly integrated within an overall backup/archive strategy is the optimal way to reduce redundant data in your environment. Like minded companies will continue to pursue an embedded approach to dedupe and we anticipate additional adoption with key strategic partners as we continue to address customer needs."
Permabit's CEO, Tom Cook:
"This is one more outstanding execution move by the management of [Data Domain]. They needed to make a move and did.
This is a ‘worst fear' scenario for the likes of Dell, EMC, IBM and HP. The last thing in the world they wanted in the market was another NTAP. They all had [Data Domain] in their sights to acquire or beat in the marketplace. They will all spring to aggressive action.
This will disrupt the partner ecosystem. F5's (who partners effectively with [Data Domain]) play is to consolidate NAS – not exactly a NTAP objective and this places the combined organization in direct competition with the likes of CommVault and Symantec.
Finally – this is a huge positive for Permabit. In the market it enables us to contrast our offering more directly with NearStore rather than [Data Domain] near line FUD. Of course, Dell, EMC, IBM and HP will help us with this. And it puts a huge focus and premium on technologies and products that can compete on merit with the combined [NetApp/Data Domain] offerings."
Bill Andrews, president and CEO of ExaGrid:
"This is an interesting move for Data Domain as it started out targeting mid market and small enterprise customers with 1TB to 60TB of primary data to be backed up. Since then Data Domain has altered its course by targeting the large enterprise and was moving the company in that direction. NetApp is an enterprise play and therefore completes this large enterprise transition for Data Domain.
Today, ExaGrid competes with Data Domain in the mid market to small enterprise and was pleased to see Data Domain moving up market. This latest development is exciting for ExaGrid as it accelerates Data Domain's move to the enterprise and leaves a hole in the mid market to small enterprise. When competing, ExaGrid has won against Data Domain the majority of the time thanks to a faster and more scalable product at a better price and this latest development will only make the mid market to small enterprise segment a more significant opportunity for ExaGrid.
There is no question the $1.5 billion deal to buy disk-based backup vendor and deduplication specialist Data Domain will immediately expand NetApp's market share and reach into the backup market. However, as the experts and competitors are quick to point out, NetApp's path is strewn with obstacles.
Wikibon president and co-founder Dave Vellante's blog on the topic raises some interesting questions. If NetApp can successfully integrate Data Domain's products and technologies (specifically deduplication), they will be poised to make serious inroads with customers seeking data reduction/Storage Capacity Optimization (SCO) technologies. However, he writes:
"This vision will take forever to execute. Meanwhile, IBM with Diligent and TSM; and EMC with Avamar and Quantum are further down the path. This will lower the time to value for NetApp, which I'm defining as the valuation being incremental."
Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Lauren Whitehouse says deduplication – one of Data Domain's strengths – is a feature, not a market.
"Having the feature on storage systems may help NetApp win business in segments of the secondary and archive storage markets where it wasn't as strong before," she says.
Her biggest issue with the acquisition is overlap between VTL-interface products, NetApp NearStore and the Data Domain DD series.
"The answers NetApp provided regarding technology integration and conflict were tentative. They deferred to the soon-to-be-formed integration team to address those issues at a later time. The focus was squarely on positioning the acquisition as increasing the business opportunity rather than a technology leverage move." She continues, "NetApp spent $11 million on the VTL acquisition (Alacritus) several years ago and has made investments in NearStore over the years; however, the product is lacking some features that make it competitive with others in its class."
She cites VTL-to-VTL replication as an example. "It's going to be hard to justify incremental investment in NearStore when they've just spent $1.5 billion on a similar solution with a few more advanced features," she says.
NetApp's positioning the acquisition as a business play, rather than a move to gobble up valuable intellectual property. As reported in our story about the deal, NetApp's chief marketing officer, Jay Kidd, said NetApp's rationale was based on an incremental growth opportunity for both companies.
"The overlap between NetApp's customers and Data Domain's customers was fairly small. The addition of Data Domain's products to our portfolio was a clear market expansion opportunity," said Kidd. "We are doing this for the expansion of the business opportunity and not to acquire technologies that would allow us to consolidate product lines."
Roughly 77% of Data Domain's business comes from North America. NetApp, however, has a global reach. Kidd said NetApp's global reach makes the acquisition a perfect match. "We have access to enterprise accounts that they are not in yet. Our [global presence] will accelerate the business that Data Domain already has," he says.
Competing vendors, of which there are many, began offering their two cents on the acquisition minutes after the news broke. Here is a sampling of the vendor reaction in their own words…
David West, vice president of marketing and business development at CommVault:
"We believe that deduplication is a feature and not a company. We also believe that to gain operational efficiencies and dramatically reduce data management and related storage expenses, a global embedded software-based approach to deduplication is the best option for customers.
Yesterday's announcement did little to address these fundamental customer needs. While we applaud NetApp's effort to capture more market share through deduplication, ultimately a feature-based approach, tightly integrated within an overall backup/archive strategy is the optimal way to reduce redundant data in your environment. Like minded companies will continue to pursue an embedded approach to dedupe and we anticipate additional adoption with key strategic partners as we continue to address customer needs."
Permabit's CEO, Tom Cook:
"This is one more outstanding execution move by the management of [Data Domain]. They needed to make a move and did.
This is a ‘worst fear' scenario for the likes of Dell, EMC, IBM and HP. The last thing in the world they wanted in the market was another NTAP. They all had [Data Domain] in their sights to acquire or beat in the marketplace. They will all spring to aggressive action.
This will disrupt the partner ecosystem. F5's (who partners effectively with [Data Domain]) play is to consolidate NAS – not exactly a NTAP objective and this places the combined organization in direct competition with the likes of CommVault and Symantec.
Finally – this is a huge positive for Permabit. In the market it enables us to contrast our offering more directly with NearStore rather than [Data Domain] near line FUD. Of course, Dell, EMC, IBM and HP will help us with this. And it puts a huge focus and premium on technologies and products that can compete on merit with the combined [NetApp/Data Domain] offerings."
Bill Andrews, president and CEO of ExaGrid:
"This is an interesting move for Data Domain as it started out targeting mid market and small enterprise customers with 1TB to 60TB of primary data to be backed up. Since then Data Domain has altered its course by targeting the large enterprise and was moving the company in that direction. NetApp is an enterprise play and therefore completes this large enterprise transition for Data Domain.
Today, ExaGrid competes with Data Domain in the mid market to small enterprise and was pleased to see Data Domain moving up market. This latest development is exciting for ExaGrid as it accelerates Data Domain's move to the enterprise and leaves a hole in the mid market to small enterprise. When competing, ExaGrid has won against Data Domain the majority of the time thanks to a faster and more scalable product at a better price and this latest development will only make the mid market to small enterprise segment a more significant opportunity for ExaGrid.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Hype vs. reality – A Q&A with Wells Fargo's head of IT
April 24, 2009 -- I recently had an opportunity to have a conversation with Scott Dillon, head of technology infrastructure services at Wells Fargo & Co. The discussion covered a range of topics including the bank's storage priorities and needs, how he plans to extend the life of his legacy gear through storage virtualization, and his take on emerging technologies like solid-state disk (SSD) drives and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE).
Like many large enterprise organizations, Wells Fargo is dealing with massive amounts of storage and all of the management, migration and data protection tasks that come with it. Dillon says he has about 5PB of storage deployed in production. Storage infrastructures of that size require a pragmatic management approach. That's why the Wells Fargo IT philosophy is "standardize and optimize," while keeping clear of IT's bleeding edge.
To that end, Dillon's main goals are driving up utilization and enhancing availability and storage virtualization is the linchpin in the process.
"Virtualization is something that we are committed to and we are deploying it across our environment. It helps our cost models because it allows us to have heterogeneous [storage] providers behind virtualization devices. With virtualization, we don't have to throw out one infrastructure to bring in a new one," says Dillon. "We are big on leveraging what we already have."
He says virtualization has helped streamline a number of complex tasks, including capacity provisioning, data migration and storage tiering. He also credits storage virtualization with speeding service delivery to customers.
As for his take on vendors, Dillon would not name his storage suppliers, but he does hint at what Wells Fargo is looking for going forward.
"A lot of the large storage providers are starting to make their play into the end-to-end space. They are putting it all together, which is how we look at the big picture. We would like to see these organizations driving their products toward IEEE standards so that we don't get locked in [to any one vendor]," he says.
Dillon stresses the importance of the customer-provider relationship in his decision-making process. "The quality, availability and resiliency of a product in an industrial enterprise setting are incredibly important to us. I want the vendor engaged and I want the sales team to have as much incentive to deliver on their commitment as they do in selling me their next product. If the product is good and you deliver on your commitment you are going to sell me a lot more stuff," he says.
"What's amazing to me is how many people are just focused on the sale. I need to know they are going to be there for the long term. When times are tough it's about who is going to be there focused on your optimization and driving up utilization," Dillon says.
Dillon is also keeping on eye on several emerging storage technologies.
On SSDs: "There is a lot of initial hype. The value proposition is there. What's intriguing is reduced power consumption. But there are a lot of questions. How many times can you write to the drive? What about availability? I don't see [SSDs] as something we would deploy in production in the near future, but the promise is there and we see it."
On data de-duplication: "We have deployed some data de-duplication technologies in our environment. We are realizing some very good lift in [our de-dupe implementation]. There is a lot of promise, but the technology needs to mature."
On FCoE: "We continue to watch it very closely. We are, in general, very interested in any technology that fits with our pragmatic and customer-centric philosophy. Directionally, I think the concept of unified networking is great."
Once the aforementioned technologies mature, Dillon will weave them into his infrastructure when and if they make business sense.
"It all starts and ends with the customer experience. You can't do technology for the sake of doing technology. It has to improve the customer's experience," he says.
Like many large enterprise organizations, Wells Fargo is dealing with massive amounts of storage and all of the management, migration and data protection tasks that come with it. Dillon says he has about 5PB of storage deployed in production. Storage infrastructures of that size require a pragmatic management approach. That's why the Wells Fargo IT philosophy is "standardize and optimize," while keeping clear of IT's bleeding edge.
To that end, Dillon's main goals are driving up utilization and enhancing availability and storage virtualization is the linchpin in the process.
"Virtualization is something that we are committed to and we are deploying it across our environment. It helps our cost models because it allows us to have heterogeneous [storage] providers behind virtualization devices. With virtualization, we don't have to throw out one infrastructure to bring in a new one," says Dillon. "We are big on leveraging what we already have."
He says virtualization has helped streamline a number of complex tasks, including capacity provisioning, data migration and storage tiering. He also credits storage virtualization with speeding service delivery to customers.
As for his take on vendors, Dillon would not name his storage suppliers, but he does hint at what Wells Fargo is looking for going forward.
"A lot of the large storage providers are starting to make their play into the end-to-end space. They are putting it all together, which is how we look at the big picture. We would like to see these organizations driving their products toward IEEE standards so that we don't get locked in [to any one vendor]," he says.
Dillon stresses the importance of the customer-provider relationship in his decision-making process. "The quality, availability and resiliency of a product in an industrial enterprise setting are incredibly important to us. I want the vendor engaged and I want the sales team to have as much incentive to deliver on their commitment as they do in selling me their next product. If the product is good and you deliver on your commitment you are going to sell me a lot more stuff," he says.
"What's amazing to me is how many people are just focused on the sale. I need to know they are going to be there for the long term. When times are tough it's about who is going to be there focused on your optimization and driving up utilization," Dillon says.
Dillon is also keeping on eye on several emerging storage technologies.
On SSDs: "There is a lot of initial hype. The value proposition is there. What's intriguing is reduced power consumption. But there are a lot of questions. How many times can you write to the drive? What about availability? I don't see [SSDs] as something we would deploy in production in the near future, but the promise is there and we see it."
On data de-duplication: "We have deployed some data de-duplication technologies in our environment. We are realizing some very good lift in [our de-dupe implementation]. There is a lot of promise, but the technology needs to mature."
On FCoE: "We continue to watch it very closely. We are, in general, very interested in any technology that fits with our pragmatic and customer-centric philosophy. Directionally, I think the concept of unified networking is great."
Once the aforementioned technologies mature, Dillon will weave them into his infrastructure when and if they make business sense.
"It all starts and ends with the customer experience. You can't do technology for the sake of doing technology. It has to improve the customer's experience," he says.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
VMware's vSphere of influence
April 21, 2009 -- Today's release of VMware's vSphere 4 operating system – a new OS for building internal clouds – has brought with it a tsunami of support from dozens of storage vendors.
The vSphere 4 OS aggregates and manages large pools of infrastructure resources – processors, storage and networking – as a dynamic operating environment. VMware claims vSphere 4 will "bring the power of cloud computing to the datacenter, slashing IT costs while dramatically increasing IT responsiveness." VMware also touts vSphere as a path to delivering cloud services that are compatible with customers' internal cloud infrastructures. VMware plans to build in support for dynamic federation between internal and external clouds, enabling "private" cloud environments that span multiple datacenters and/or cloud providers.
Big, bad virtual machines
Using the vSphere OS, users can build bigger, faster virtual computing environments. According to VMware's published specs, the platform can pool together up to:
32 physical servers with up to 2048 processor cores
1,280 virtual machines
32TB of RAM
16PB of storage
8,000 network ports
It also creates bigger, faster virtual machines (VMs) with up to:
2x the number of virtual processors per virtual machine (from 4 to 8)
2.5x more virtual NICs per virtual machine (from 4 to 10)
4x more memory per virtual machine (from 64 GB to 255GB)
3x increase in network throughput (from 9 Gbps to 30Gbps)
3x increase in the maximum recorded I/O operations per second (to over 300,000)
New maximum recorded number of transactions per second - 8,900
Data protection and migration
VMware also claims vSphere offers zero downtime and zero data loss protection against hardware failures with VMware Fault Tolerance and minimized planned downtime due to storage maintenance and migrations with VMware Storage VMotion, which provides live migration of virtual machine disk files across heterogeneous networked storage types.
vSphere 4 also features integrated disk-based backup and recovery for all applications via VMware Data Recovery and VMware vStorage Thin Provisioning, which keeps capacity-hungry VMs in check.
Storage vendors on board
The announcements are coming fast and furious from the storage community as, so far, 3PAR, Akorri, CA, Compellent Technologies, CommVault, Dell, Double-Take Software, EMC, Emulex, FalconStor Software, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM, LSI, NetApp, Nexenta, StoneFly, Sun Microsystems, Symantec and Vizioncore have all pledged support for vSphere 4.
Read on for the details we have so far…
3PAR
3PAR's InServ Storage Servers are on the VMware Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) for VMware vSphere 4. In addition, 3PAR and VMware are investing in joint engineering projects. For example, the 3PAR already supports the VMware vStorage initiative and the recently released adaptive queuing technology that became available in VMware Infrastructure 3.5 and is included in VMware vSphere 4.
Akorri
Akorri's BalancePoint software will support VMware vSphere by the end of 2009. BalancePoint is available on a VMware certified virtual appliance and assists in cross-domain virtualized data center management, managing virtual and physical server and storage infrastructure from a single console.
Compellent Technologies
Compellent Technologies announced that its Storage Center SAN supports VMware vSphere. Compellent's Storage Center has completed the VMware Hardware Certification Program testing criteria and is now listed on the VMware HCL for use with vSphere.
EMC
EMC announced new high-availability advancements for next-generation virtual data centers with the new EMC PowerPath/VE software. The PowerPath/VE software provides path management, load balancing and fail-over capabilities for VMware vSphere 4.
Emulex
Emulex's LightPulse host bus adapters (HBAs) and converged network adapters (CNAs) are fully supported with VMware in-box drivers as part of VMware vSphere 4. The LightPulse 8Gbps Fibre Channel HBAs and 10Gbps Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) CNAs deliver more than double the IOPS performance in VMware vSphere 4 environments over the previous release, according to Emulex.
FalconStor Software
FalconStor Software's NSS-S12 storage array supports vSphere and on the vSphere HCL. FalconStor's Network Storage Server (NSS) technology integrates storage virtualization and provisioning across multiple disk arrays and connection protocols to create a scalable iSCSI or Fibre Channel SAN.
HP
Hewlett-Packard announced the integration of vSphere 4 into its HP Adaptive Infrastructure (AI) portfolio. The interoperability of VMware vSphere 4 with HP's portfolio includes hardware compatibility for a range of HP ProLiant and BladeSystem servers and StorageWorks systems and software integration of HP's Insight software with vSphere 4.
NetApp
NetApp also announced the integration and certification of its storage platforms with vSphere 4. NetApp storage platforms and software products such as SANscreen VM Insight and MultiStore are certified for vSphere 4 and available now. The NetApp Virtualization Guarantee Program for vSphere is also available immediately.
StoneFly
IP SAN maker StoneFly announced completion of VMware vSphere certification across its entire SAN product line. StoneFly IP SANs supporting VMware vSphere, including the StoneFly Voyager, Integrated Storage Concentrator and OptiSAN product lines, are now available.
The vSphere 4 OS aggregates and manages large pools of infrastructure resources – processors, storage and networking – as a dynamic operating environment. VMware claims vSphere 4 will "bring the power of cloud computing to the datacenter, slashing IT costs while dramatically increasing IT responsiveness." VMware also touts vSphere as a path to delivering cloud services that are compatible with customers' internal cloud infrastructures. VMware plans to build in support for dynamic federation between internal and external clouds, enabling "private" cloud environments that span multiple datacenters and/or cloud providers.
Big, bad virtual machines
Using the vSphere OS, users can build bigger, faster virtual computing environments. According to VMware's published specs, the platform can pool together up to:
32 physical servers with up to 2048 processor cores
1,280 virtual machines
32TB of RAM
16PB of storage
8,000 network ports
It also creates bigger, faster virtual machines (VMs) with up to:
2x the number of virtual processors per virtual machine (from 4 to 8)
2.5x more virtual NICs per virtual machine (from 4 to 10)
4x more memory per virtual machine (from 64 GB to 255GB)
3x increase in network throughput (from 9 Gbps to 30Gbps)
3x increase in the maximum recorded I/O operations per second (to over 300,000)
New maximum recorded number of transactions per second - 8,900
Data protection and migration
VMware also claims vSphere offers zero downtime and zero data loss protection against hardware failures with VMware Fault Tolerance and minimized planned downtime due to storage maintenance and migrations with VMware Storage VMotion, which provides live migration of virtual machine disk files across heterogeneous networked storage types.
vSphere 4 also features integrated disk-based backup and recovery for all applications via VMware Data Recovery and VMware vStorage Thin Provisioning, which keeps capacity-hungry VMs in check.
Storage vendors on board
The announcements are coming fast and furious from the storage community as, so far, 3PAR, Akorri, CA, Compellent Technologies, CommVault, Dell, Double-Take Software, EMC, Emulex, FalconStor Software, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM, LSI, NetApp, Nexenta, StoneFly, Sun Microsystems, Symantec and Vizioncore have all pledged support for vSphere 4.
Read on for the details we have so far…
3PAR
3PAR's InServ Storage Servers are on the VMware Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) for VMware vSphere 4. In addition, 3PAR and VMware are investing in joint engineering projects. For example, the 3PAR already supports the VMware vStorage initiative and the recently released adaptive queuing technology that became available in VMware Infrastructure 3.5 and is included in VMware vSphere 4.
Akorri
Akorri's BalancePoint software will support VMware vSphere by the end of 2009. BalancePoint is available on a VMware certified virtual appliance and assists in cross-domain virtualized data center management, managing virtual and physical server and storage infrastructure from a single console.
Compellent Technologies
Compellent Technologies announced that its Storage Center SAN supports VMware vSphere. Compellent's Storage Center has completed the VMware Hardware Certification Program testing criteria and is now listed on the VMware HCL for use with vSphere.
EMC
EMC announced new high-availability advancements for next-generation virtual data centers with the new EMC PowerPath/VE software. The PowerPath/VE software provides path management, load balancing and fail-over capabilities for VMware vSphere 4.
Emulex
Emulex's LightPulse host bus adapters (HBAs) and converged network adapters (CNAs) are fully supported with VMware in-box drivers as part of VMware vSphere 4. The LightPulse 8Gbps Fibre Channel HBAs and 10Gbps Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) CNAs deliver more than double the IOPS performance in VMware vSphere 4 environments over the previous release, according to Emulex.
FalconStor Software
FalconStor Software's NSS-S12 storage array supports vSphere and on the vSphere HCL. FalconStor's Network Storage Server (NSS) technology integrates storage virtualization and provisioning across multiple disk arrays and connection protocols to create a scalable iSCSI or Fibre Channel SAN.
HP
Hewlett-Packard announced the integration of vSphere 4 into its HP Adaptive Infrastructure (AI) portfolio. The interoperability of VMware vSphere 4 with HP's portfolio includes hardware compatibility for a range of HP ProLiant and BladeSystem servers and StorageWorks systems and software integration of HP's Insight software with vSphere 4.
NetApp
NetApp also announced the integration and certification of its storage platforms with vSphere 4. NetApp storage platforms and software products such as SANscreen VM Insight and MultiStore are certified for vSphere 4 and available now. The NetApp Virtualization Guarantee Program for vSphere is also available immediately.
StoneFly
IP SAN maker StoneFly announced completion of VMware vSphere certification across its entire SAN product line. StoneFly IP SANs supporting VMware vSphere, including the StoneFly Voyager, Integrated Storage Concentrator and OptiSAN product lines, are now available.
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