Storage lessons learned from the dot-com era

June 18, 2010 -- We're 10 years removed from the dot-com era and the storage landscape barely resembles that of a decade ago. At this week's BD Event here in Boston, Peter Bell, a General Partner at Highland Capital Partners, gave advice to storage startups and recounted some of the lessons learned from his time at the helm of StorageNetworks, the first–and–last of the true storage service providers (SSPs).

Bell was the co-founder, Chairman and CEO of StorageNetworks, were he guided the SSP from concept to a huge IPO in June of 2000, raising more than $700 million in funding along the way.

But, in 2003, the way-before-its-time SSP model (can you say cloud?) failed. StorageNetworks closed its doors and its competitors shifted to a software model or vanished into the ether (from the way-back machine, see: "The last–and first–SSP calls it quits").

In his current role, he represents Highland on the boards of Desktone, ExaGrid Systems, Gigamon, InXpo, Ocarina Networks, SCVNGR, Virtual Computer, VMTurbo, and is actively involved with a number of Highland's other investments.

Bell said the funding for storage startups just is not the same today.

"No startup is immune to what's going on in the market. The venture capital dollars going into software and networking startups in 2000 were about $35 billion. In 2009 they were $4 billion," he said. "The lessons learned from StorageNetworks are still relevant today. We raised $700 million in 21 months, but I don't think you can do that today."

Taking a startup public is a much longer process these days. Bell said it takes about 10 years, double the average length of time it took to go public during the dot-com boom. "It takes a lot longer and [a startup] needs to be bigger and raise more capital to reach an IPO."

Bell bets there are storage vendors out there that have filed S1s, but are waiting for the economic climate to improve before they take the plunge. There is an added bonus for the lucky few who reach an IPO. Bell said valuations are higher to the tune of about 25%.

Most startups, he said, look to acquisition as the most likely path to growth/exit strategy.

It's not all doom and gloom. Bell is still bullish on the storage market. "In 2008, it was virtually impossible for a tech startup. 2010 has been a little better, but it's still tough," he said. "But people are addicted to storage and it's legal. There aren't that many businesses out there like that."

Bell points to companies who have been acquired or are experiencing growth like Acopia, Compellent, Diligent, Data Domain, EqualLogic, Isilon, Onaro, and XIV, as recent "winners" in the storage market.

Storage startups looking for an angle should consider a few hot technologies as their foot in the door. Bell believes solid-state storage, automated tiering, open-source storage, video storage and, of course, cloud storage/virtualization, are the next big things.

Bell emphasized the importance of the management team and business model as the keys to raising venture capital.

"It's the company you keep. Pick your partners and executives very, very carefully. The business model is as important as your team, but it's often not given enough thought," said Bell. "Long, unpredictable sales cycles lead to very short CEO tenures."

Related articles:
F5 to buy Acopia for file virtualization
Compellent adds ZFS-based NAS
IBM acquires Diligent for de-duplication
NetApp bows out, EMC to acquire Data Domain
Dell to acquire EqualLogic for $1.4 billion
Isilon adds enterprise features to scale-out NAS
NetApp expands SAN strategy with Onaro acquisition
IBM buys XIV for fixed digital content

Brocade tries to One up Cisco in virtual data centers

June 10, 2010 -- Brocade answered many lingering questions in the past 24 hours about the integration of its Foundry platforms, its plans for converged network fabrics, its take on virtual machine (VM) mobility, and whether it had an answer for the Cisco-led Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition's Vblock strategy.

The company has introduced Brocade One, an architecture that brings together its operating system and management tools. The bottom line: put more smarts in the network to manage VMs in virtualized data centers.

"Brocade One represents one, unified company with one OS and one set of management tools under one architecture," said Bob Braham, vice president of product marketing at Brocade.

As part of Brocade One, the company introduced Brocade Virtual Cluster Switching, a software technology that collapses the access and aggregation layers of the network to create a masterless and distributed control plane.

Brocade VCS continuously synchronizes state, status and configuration information between nodes to enable converged fabrics to be self-forming, auto-healing and self-configuring – think VM metadata, network and storage policies.

Braham says VCS can be used to create true converged data center fabrics that are inherently multi-pathing and resilient, effectively eliminating the need for Spanning Tree Protocol (STP).

Also new is the Brocade Virtual Access Layer, a logical layer between Brocade converged fabric and server virtualization hypervisors. The Virtual Access Layer makes sure a consistent interface and set of services for VMs connected to the network. Brocade VAL will support all major hypervisors through industry-standard technologies, including the Virtual Ethernet Port Aggregator (VEPA) and Virtual Ethernet Bridging (VEB) standards.

There was a lot of high-level speak about Brocade One, but there was one clear message – they plan to take on the Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition's Vblock initiative directly. Brocade and its partners are prepping what the company calls Brocade Open Virtual Compute Blocks – tested and verified data center blueprints for VM deployments on converged fabrics.

The switching component of the Compute Blocks will be based on the Brocade 8000 Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) Switch and blade (for the Brocade DCX Backbone), the Brocade NetIron MLX Series and Brocade Converged Network Adapters (CNAs).

Braham says the Brocade-based stacks will be available by year's end.

Brocade's been busy. Here's a taste of InfoStor's recent related news coverage:

Brocade, EMC lay groundwork for private clouds
Brocade increases density, throughput of DCX Backbone
Brocade CNAs qualified by EMC, HDS, IBM, NetApp
EMC expands converged networking deals with Brocade, Cisco
Dell taps Brocade for FCoE, CEE gear
Weighing the pros and cons of unified computing

HP cuts 9,000 jobs in data center consolidation effort

June 1, 2010 -- HP is cutting 9,000 jobs and taking a charge of $1 billion as it begins refitting its data centers on the HP Converged Infrastructure Architecture.

Described by HP as an "initiative is designed to enhance the client experience and better position Enterprise Services for growth," the company announced plans to consolidate its Enterprise Services' commercial data centers, management platforms, networks, tools and applications to "create a more scalable, modernized and automated IT infrastructure that will better serve its clients' needs (see "HP strikes back with Converged Infrastructure Architecture")."

The unfortunate side effect will be the elimination of approximately 9,000 positions over the next few years.

Tom Iannotti, senior vice president and general manager for HP Enterprise Services, said "Over the past 20 months, we focused on integrating EDS and improving profitability. Now that the integration is largely complete, we have identified significant opportunities to grow and scale the business. These next-generation services will enable our clients to benefit from the combined technology and services leadership that only HP offers."

HP bought EDS for $13.9 billion in 2008 and rebranded it HP Enterprise Services in September of last year.

To fund the consolidation HP will take a charge of approximately $1 billion over a multiyear period that will be included in its GAAP financial results. HP expects that, once completed, the transformation will generate annualized gross savings of approximately $1 billion and net savings after reinvestment in a range between $500 million and $700 million.

HP's most recent earnings report was strong, as it posted net earnings of $2.2 billion for fiscal Q2 (up 28% from the prior year) with $4.5 billion in revenue in the Enterprise Storage and Server segment. However, software was down 1% from '09 and services only grew 2% to $8.7 billion. See Dave Simpson's blog: "Solid storage growth in HP's Q2 report."

HP will reportedly create a few thousand new positions in support of the consolidation effort.

There may be a silver lining for any storage pros facing unemployment. Sister site Enterprise Storage Forum reports that the job market for storage networking pros is on the grow. Brocade, CommVault, EMC, NetApp, Oracle and VMware all appear to be hiring (see "NetApp Leads Rebound in Storage Networking Jobs").

EMC World Redux

May 14, 2010 -- Just when you think you're out, I'm going to pull you back in. Here's a roundup of all of our EMC World coverage, including articles and lab reviews on VPLEX, Unisphere, Data Domain and a couple of Ionix and Atmos announcements that flew under the radar.

There's a clearinghouse of links with all of our articles and lab reviews related to the 10th annual EMC World conference below, but let's tackle the news we haven't covered. While sequestered in the hotel adjacent to the show, a couple of things went right by me.

First up, EMC built out its partner ecosystem for the EMC Atmos cloud storage platform with a new crop of service providers and ISVs.

The service providers – including AT&T, CBICI, Hosted Solutions, Peer1 and Unisys – are using Atmos technology to deliver cloud services to their customers, while the ISVs now pledging support for Atmos include Acuo Technologies, Atempo, Aspera, Cloudera, CommVault, Gladinet, Emulex, EnterpriseDB, Informatica, lifeIMAGE, Metalogix, MedCommons, Nasuni, RainStor, Riverbed Technology, Seven10 Storage, Signiant, StorSimple and TwinStrata.

EMC is also making a new edition of Atmos available in its efforts to entice more partners in the form of the EMC Atmos Virtual Edition.

EMC claims the Virtual Edition "extends the ability to deliver web-accessible, elastic cloud storage qualities to customers using EMC Symmetrix enterprise storage and EMC Celerra unified storage platforms. Running in a virtual environment, Symmetrix and Celerra customers can extend their platforms to address new workloads such as content-rich web applications, storage-as-a-service, cloud archiving and access to external Atmos-powered cloud services."

Secondly, EMC announced version 2.0 of the EMC Ionix Storage Configuration Advisor. The new software automates the validation of storage configuration best-practices in physical and virtual environments, utilizes agentless discovery to simplify storage deployment and management, and provides detailed reports and trend analysis that improve storage change and configuration management processes, according to EMC.

Ionix Storage Configuration Advisor 2.0 offers coverage of the storage infrastructure from the virtual guest, to the VMware vSphere host, and down through the storage array and detects infrastructure vulnerabilities.

It also provides an audit trail of SAN changes and rule violations, flagging potential service-affecting events as they occur.

Now for the recap.

EMC kicked off the show with the launch of VPLEX, a new appliance with a scale-out architecture that can "teleport" applications from one data center to another.

EMC unveils VPLEX appliance for global storage networks

EMC World: EMC takes the wraps off VPLEX

And here's a VPLEX/VMotion lab review from Enterprise Strategy Group…

EMC VPLEX Metro and VMware ESX: Enabling 100 km VMotion with New Distributed Storage Federation

After VPLEX, EMC made some moves in the unified fabric market with a pair of newly expanded partnerships with Brocade and Cisco:

EMC expands converged networking deals with Brocade, Cisco

Also of note was the introduction of Emulex's first hardware-based encryption HBAs, as well as its first design win for the adapters with EMC.

Emulex secures EMC design win for encryption HBAs

In the midrange, the rumors were right on. EMC unified the management of its Clariion and Celerra storage platforms and upgraded its FAST technology.

EMC debuts Unisphere, FAST for Clariion, Celerra

In disk-based backup/deduplication, EMC integrated its Data Domain products with NetWorker.

EMC boosts Data Domain deduplication

Finally, EMC added some SharePoint capabilities to its SourceOne family:

EMC launches SourceOne for SharePoint

Our sister site, Enterprise Storage Forum, also covered the news of the week. Check out their articles from the show:

EMC unveils VPLEX appliance for global storage networks

EMC boosts Data Domain deduplication

EMC World: Tucci focuses on clouds, virtualization

Deduplication, Storage Tiering and VPlex Star at EMC World

EMC World: EMC takes the wraps off VPLEX

May 10, 2010 -- Beam me up, Joe Tucci. EMC kicked off its "Journey to the Private Cloud" at its 10th annual EMC World conference in here in Boston with another offering upon the altar of virtual storage – EMC VPLEX, a new scale-out architecture that can "teleport" applications from one data center to another.

The VPLEX appliance creates scale-out clusters with up to 8 nodes (N+1 and N-1) that EMC says can be dropped into an existing data center, virtualize third-party storage arrays (even the ones made by the "bad guys") and non-disruptively move/relocate virtual machines (VMs), their applications and associated information.

For full coverage of the VPLEX product launch, see "EMC Claims Answer for Latency in Global Storage Networks" from sister site Enterprise Storage Forum.

I'd love to get some reactions from actual EMC users, but the media has been set up in a comfy ballroom in the hotel next to the convention center for our convenience, of course.

We're free to stroll over to the show floor, but that might be a bit tough to do and still make it back in time for the live video feed of the rest of the day's presentations.

Some tidbits from the show:

• There are two versions of the VPLEX appliance available today. 1.) A local configuration for "simplified mobility," meaning technology refreshes and rollovers inside the data center. 2.) The Metro version that connects synchronous data centers over distances of up to 100km.

• VPLEX only does block storage, no support for file or object-based storage.

• List prices start at $77,000 for a VPLEX local configuration and EMC is also offering a software subscription service for $26,000.

• EMC expects revenues for VPLEX to ramp in 2011, but expectations for 2010 are "quite modest."

• EMC also claims that their approach with VPLEX is to "really drive standards like SMI-S" – Brian Gallagher, president, EMC's storage virtualization product group…SMI-S? Really?

• Pat Gelsinger, president and COO, EMC information infrastructure products said a new version of EMC's FAST (fully automated storage tiering) technology is set to be announced tomorrow.

More to come. – KK

The InfoStor newsletter is going daily!

May 7, 2010 -- For nearly 15 years, InfoStor has provided readers with extensive coverage of storage trends and technologies. Now we're expanding to give you much more than that. Our Storage Daily newsletter is a concise aggregation of everything that enterprise storage professionals need to know. Delivered to your inbox by 9 a.m. each day, the newsletter is also packed with research, white papers, news from around the IT industry, and more.

The new daily format, which is set to begin on May 18, 2010, is designed to offer a single-page presentation of the critical storage-related news and information that technology managers need every day.

The Storage Daily newsletter will feature a combination of the following:

• Breaking news about the latest developments in storage technologies and business developments

• Expert columns and features offering perspective and advice about critical issues facing enterprise storage users and channel professionals

• Insightful blog posts about the state of the data storage industry – from emerging technologies to best practices.

• eBooks and white papers covering emerging trends such as cloud storage, virtualization and much more.

• How-to and management advice to ensure you get the most out of your data storage assets

• Leading research from organizations, such as Gartner and IDC, detailing cost-conscious and effective storage strategies

• A list of the latest IT job openings from across the U.S.

We hope the newsletter serves you well. As we continue to offer new features and products, we value your feedback. Please feel free to write our Editor-in-Chief, Dave Simpson, at dsimpson@internet.com.

New alliance calls for online access to all archived data

April 30, 2010 -- A cadre of storage vendors has formed the Active Archive Alliance with the goal of turning offline archive and backups into visible, accessible extensions of online storage systems.

The newly created organization claims that developments in active archive applications and in tape and disk technologies – most notably the ability to see and access data on tape through a file system interface – make it possible for users to cost-effectively maintain all data in online storage for fast, easy search and retrieval.

The group says tying applications to tape via a file system interface mitigates the delays and problems normally associated with retrieving data off tape media.

The first thing that popped in to my head was "HSM all over again," but the group states that active archives differ from hierarchical storage managers. "An Active Archive contains production data, no matter how old or infrequently accessed, that can still be retrieved online."

They also maintain that Active Archiving is a collaborative solution offered by software and hardware vendors and can be put in place using existing equipment.

Spectra Logic's Molly Rector, a founding member of the group, says we can soon expect to see Active Archive best practices and guidelines for end user education, white papers, webinars, videos and educational materials on ActiveArchive.com.

Founding members of the Active Archive Alliance include Compellent Technologies, FileTek, QStar Technologies and Spectra Logic.

The Alliance is taking all comers. Membership is open to providers of file systems, active archive applications, cloud storage, high-density tape and disk storage, as well as individuals and end users.

For the latest developments in the world of archiving, visit InfoStor's Tape & Archiving page.