BlueArc's shared items
Today Hitachi Data Systems is announcing the continued momentum of the Hitachi Content Archive Platform (HCAP). Of particular interest are the scaling discussions and points around the approach to an open API, you know the super-modern cloud-based REST interface. I’ve already posted quite a bit on HCAP and our other file products extensively so if you want to read a little more on the platform I highly suggest my File Storage category and this and this.
HCAP is critical in our file and content services strategy both today and going forward. It sports technologies that really mean customers don’t have to backup the information stored on it. Things like content policing policies that can detect and repair corruptions. We also take the time to ensure that when value added policies are executed across the content we take that extra step to make sure that the authenticity and integrity of the data is retained. Hitachi also “eats its own dog food.”
- We’ve integrated by developing a migration engine to move data from the Hitachi High Performance NAS (HNAS) platform to HCAP with the Hitachi Data Discovery Suite directing the migration through policy.
- Further we integrate to the leading Enterprise 2.0 application on the planet, Microsoft Sharepoint, allowing content from this upper layer application to easily find its way from document libraries into HCAP utilizing HDD-MS.
- And of course we are also a user of the system internally.
I won’t repeat the contents of the press release, but it is truly gratifying to bask in our success as I was on the team for our original OEM partnership and the team behind acquisition of the company. Kudos to all of the teams involved in this venture that continues to be successful.
In a recent article from Chris Mellor - "Circling Storage in vSphere" - he discusses new functionality provided by VMware that is similar to thin provisioning features provided by storage system vendors. He muses - "How far down the storage array controller application stack will it go? To the point that all you need is a virtual storage array controller in ESX looking after just a bunch of disks (JBOD) in an enclosure?"
VMware will inevitably provide more and more functionality typically found in storage systems. At the same time they will continue to improve and optimize how they work with existing storage systems. It is unlikely in the short term that VMware will render storage systems obsolete. VMware has a long way to go before they are a real threat to the storage players as a direct competitor. However, as they add new storage-oriented functionality they may soften some competitive differences between storage systems. For example, VMware's new thin provisionish feature conceptually could give a storage system vendor without thin provisioning an answer to a customer that wants this feature. Now before the thin provision guys argue that their technology is better - or that it is different - I admit that I haven't really looked into this new VMware technology and have no idea how good it is. The point is that you can expect VMware to continue to add more and more of storage features. And these capabilities will continue to mature over time.
Additionally, VMware must and will continue to make 3rd-party storage systems work better with their software because it is in their best interest to do so. Therefore, VMware will walk the thin line of competing and cooperating with the storage vendors pretty much forever. Both parties have no choice in this matter.
However, storage is complex and sophisticated technology and there are all levels and types of storage. I believe there are some smart people that know storage at VMware but it is not a part of their core DNA. If they do have grand plans to conquer the storage world - as Chris speculates - they have a long, long way to go.
Original post blogged on Contemplating IT.
Following up on previous blog posts, here is some information that the U.S. EPA is looking for comments from industry on an Energy Start for enterprise storage program following on the heels of the Energy Star for Server program.
U.S. EPA Energy Star Wants and Needs You!
Here’s the message received from the EPA via their mailing list this past week (in italics below):
Dear Enterprise Storage Equipment Manufacturers and Other Interested Parties:
Please see the attached letter from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announcing their intent to pursue development of an ENERGY STAR specification for Enterprise Storage equipment. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Andrew Fanara, EPA, at fanara.andrew@epa.gov or Stephen Pantano, ICF International, at spantano@icfi.com.
Thank you for your support of ENERGY STAR.
Here’s the intro letter excerpted from the above email notification (in italics below):
April 23, 2009
Dear Enterprise Storage Equipment Manufacturers and Other Interested Parties:
This letter is intended to inform all stakeholders that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) intends to continue its efforts towards the development of an ENERGY STAR® specification for enterprise data storage equipment. Following is an outline of EPA’s general goals and next steps.
ENERGY STAR is a voluntary partnership between government, businesses, and purchasers designed to encourage the manufacture, purchase, and use of efficient products to help protect the environment. Products that earn the ENERGY STAR prevent greenhouse gas emissions by meeting strict energy efficiency guidelines. Manufacturers that qualify their products to meet ENERGY STAR requirements may use the label as a tool to educate their customers about the enhanced value of these products.
To date:
•More than 2,000 manufacturers are partnering with ENERGY STAR,
•More than 40,000 product models carry the ENERGY STAR label across more than 50 product categories,
•More than 70% of Americans recognize the ENERGY STAR label,
•Consumers have purchased more than 2.5 billion ENERGY STAR qualified products, and
•Americans, with the help of ENERGY STAR, saved enough energy in 2008 to avoid greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those from 29 million cars — while saving $19 billion on utility bills.
In the last several years, the energy saving opportunities in data centers have been well documented. However, barriers to energy efficiency still persist and need to be addressed. EPA is pursuing a dual strategy to overcome these challenges by helping purchasers more easily identify energy efficient IT equipment with the use of the ENERGY STAR designation, and by encouraging organizations to benchmark the energy performance of their data centers.
In pursuit of this strategy, EPA will introduce an ENERGY STAR Computer Server specification in the coming weeks. In addition, EPA recently conducted a scoping effort to evaluate enterprise storage products for inclusion in the ENERGY STAR program. EPA reviewed available market research and facilitated discussions with product manufacturers, industry associations, and other interested parties. EPA concluded that IT purchasers would benefit from access to standardized information about the energy performance of storage equipment made available through the ENERGY STAR program. As a result, EPA intends to begin the specification development process. Details on this process will be forthcoming in the next several weeks.
To be added to the enterprise storage e-mail distribution list, please send your full contact information to Stephen Pantano at spantano@icfi.com. To stay informed about the ENERGY STAR specification development process for computer servers and other EPA data center initiatives please visit: www.energystar.gov/datacenters.
Thank you for your continued support of ENERGY STAR and please direct additional questions to Andrew Fanara at fanara.andrew@epa.gov or Stephen Pantano of ICF International, at spantano@icfi.com.
Sincerely,
Andrew Fanara
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Climate Protection Partnerships Division ENERGY STAR Program Manager
My take on the Energy Star programs is that as long as they add value including reflecting how energy is effectively used both when IT equipment such as servers and storage are in use, as well as in energy saving or avoidance modes are reflected, they can and should be a good thing.
However industry will need to work together across different trade and focus groups as well as factor in how supporting metrics will be applicable and reflective thus accepted by IT data center environments. This means metrics and measurements for both active or working while in use energy efficiency modes such as IOPS, bandwidth, messages or transactions, files or videos per watt of energy, as well as metrics for in-active or dormant data such as capacity per watt per usable footprint. Check out Chapter 5 (Measurements and Metrics) in "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC) to learn more.
Various industry trade and focus groups including Storage Performance Council (SPC), SNIA GSI, Green Grid, SPEC and others are working on various metrics and aligning themselves to work with EPA. If you are in an IT data center involved with servers or storage, consider getting involved with one or more of these groups to help influence and shape what these programs will look like or affect your organization in the future.
Cheers – gs
Technorati tags: Energy Star, EPA, Server, Green IT, Andrew Fanara, SPC, SNIA GSI, SPEC, Green Grid, Storage, Metrics, CRC, The Green and Virtual Data Center
Earlier this week on Twitter, we experienced what it’s like to have real time, public discussions with bloggers, analysts, and journalists about our product. It was a great example of why Twitter is such a powerful tool for talking about technology–not to mention one that can be a little hair-raising.
It started when Martin Glassborow, known to us all as Storagebod, tweeted about his results with the Ocarina Networks Simulator, OcaSim. We were of course aware that Martin was running these tests, but somehow none of us realized he would be releasing his results as they came in — all on this highly public forum. In short, this was one of those real rubber hitting the road type moments for a young company. Either Ocarina’s compression solution was going to knock his socks off, or it wasn’t.
As it turned out, his results were impressive. While he was less than amazed by our results on video files (which we make no claims to compress), he saw a 22% reduction on a fileset that was completely made up of JPEGs. As many people know, JPEGs are notoriously difficult to compress, as they are already compressed files. He noted this in his tweet.
Then things got a little crazy.
SearchStorage reporter Beth Pariseau retweeted his original tweet, while Stephen Foskett reported that he had seen 20% savings using the OcaSim on a set of family photos. At this point, a few analysts jumped in. Steve Duplessie from ESG said he’d be interested in running the OcaSim, while Greg Schulz of Storage IO suggested a challenge. He wrote:
“@pariseauTT @storagebod how about run against some PPT/PDF briefing/sales slide decks c which 1s compresses most, blind results of course ;)”
This raised an issue that we are getting more and more familiar with. One of the biggest challenges we face at Ocarina is getting past the disbelief factor. For so long, there have been rules about what can be compressed or deduped.
Customers will often say, “but everyone knows you can’t compress an already compressed file. It’s impossible.” Or, “I’ve tried dedupe for primary storage, and it hardly makes any difference.”
Much of what we are doing is helping people open their minds to the fact that the impossible is now not only possible, but fully operational and installed with major storage vendors such as BlueArc–which also tweeted during this exchange–and Isilon.
Oh, and Steve and Greg, we’re more than happy to send you the OcaSim. This is getting to be fun!
Fears of decreased storage budgets proved real in the first quarter of 2009, as EMC and IBM suffered large dropoffs from their 2008 revenue. Yet smaller and more focused vendors Data Domain and Riverbed reported their revenues increased more than 20% from the same period last year.
So why didn’t the budget freezes and uncertainties that stopped customers from buying EMC and IBM storage blow a hole in the business of Data Domain and Riverbed?
One reason may be that Data Domain (data deduplication for backup) and Riverbed (WAN optimization) are considered market leaders in the one market they’re in. But EMC and IBM are leaders in more markets and bigger markets than Data Domain and Riverbed, and their revenues declined in those segments.
More likely, the success of the smaller vendors has more to do with what they sell.
Perhaps Riverbed CEO Jerry Kennelly put it best on Riverbed’s earnings conference call: “You’re either selling capacity, or you’re selling efficiency. People don’t need capacity now, they’ve got it. But everybody needs efficiency.”
In other words, Riverbed and Data Domain help people get more value from the storage they already own. Storage admins and analysts have been saying that’s where money would be spent during these poor economic times. Now we know that’s the case. The bigger question is how long that will continue to be the case after the economy improves.
There is a growing trend in storage lately, the concept of a manufacturer tapping another developer to help them compete in the market. This allows two smaller suppliers to team up against the larger suppliers. One of the best examples of this is NAS vendors adding deduplication functionality to their systems.
