NetApp - The Missing Shade of Blue

An HP LeftHand Duplication Calculator

Our industry drives towards greater and greater storage efficiency. Green IT was the buzz in the media for a while, and although it's not getting the column inches it got last year, being efficient hasn't gone away as a business requirement.

It's a maturation effect; once the message is clear, media and CIO attention turns to other things, and the expectation is that the IT industry will get on with it and solve the problem. The storage industry has (with exceptions) risen to the challenge, with thin provisioning, virtualization of storage, larger and more energy efficient drives, and so on. Choosing the right storage system can make big savings.

• Smaller physical footprint
• Lower power and cooling
• Cheaper to buy and maintain

The list goes on. Deduplication on primary storage is the latest, and possibly greatest, contribution to really wringing every drop of space out of your storage system. Surprisingly (to me at any rate) some of these cost-saving measures have improved performance too. For example, deduplication and caching together works just as well on cheaper, slower and cooler disks as it does on expensive, hot and fast disks.

There are a number of efficiency calculators for primary storage out on the intertubes at the moment; one from NetApp, and one from EMC for NAS only -- which was originally entitled EMC Celerra Data Duplication. Although the title has been corrected, it still delivers the same poor results as before.

Leaving that aside for the moment, what the NetApp's calculator demonstrates quite clearly is that it's possible to store more data, more efficiently than ever before. Some in the storage industry don't appear to have got the message though.

HP's LeftHand.

I was confused by a video from Chris McCall, ex LeftHand Networks and now at HP. Two points about his video struck me as a little out of kilter in his positioning of LeftHand inside HP. LHN is now part of an HP "Unified Storage" division. Hold up! Unified? The "HP LeftHand P4000 SAN" is an iSCSI SAN system only. Doesn't sound terribly unified to me.

But the claim that really had me scratching my noddle was the claim that the LHN solution meets the needs of Green IT.

LHN uses something called network RAID over the top of storage nodes; they're HP servers running RAID5. Network RAID is nothing more than a fancy term for RAID5 synchronous mirroring, something that an LHN cluster needs to do because the individual storage nodes are SPOFs -- single points of failure. So copies of data on other nodes is essential if you ever expect to see your data again.

Let's cut to the chase. Here's the HP LeftHand Duplication Calculator. Unlike NetApp's space efficiency calculator, the LHN Duplication Calculator I've designed doesn't have any input fields or buttons. That's because, regardless of how small or how large your LHN SAN, it's always...

 

35% usable

Buy 10TB, get to use 3.5TB. That's about double the raw storage you'd need to buy from NetApp. No deduplication on an LHN system either, so you'll need to buy even more from HP.

LHN means more space, more power, more cooling, more cost per usable TB. Tell me, how can HP claim that this is green? 

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[Updated 24June2009: corrected Chris McCall of HP's name]

A History of Emergent Properties

Steve Duplessie's latest blog points at his ESG paper, Commercial Computing Market Dynamics, a continuation of a cloud discussion that started on Marc Farley’s blog, and it’s well worth a read.

Note the subhead to the paper; Predicting the Future by Observing the Past. That got me thinking, so here’s my response; not a criticism of Steve position specifically, more an attempt to point out that, just perhaps, prediction of the future might be pointless. 

What qualifies me to comment? We're all pioneers here. Some are more aware of the past than others, but no-one has yet sat their Cloud 101 exams, We're all rookies, stumbling our way forwards, and this is me (partly qualified based on my 30 years of past experience), adding to the discussion.

I'll assume you've read Steve's paper, because this blog is a (very) short review of a few of the ideas Steve presents, and some personal observations on them.

Steve identifies three eras; Transactional, Distributed and Internet/Cloud. I’d like to extend out in a separate dimension and identify three different eras;

• emulating and eliminating the manual
• the conceivable, but only achievable by IT
• the inconceivable.

Not as succinct or as snappy, I know.

Much of the business activity that drove the great computing revolution of the 1960s and 70s Steve identifies as; how do we get better at the things we have always done manually? Payroll and numeric clerical tasks were first; the great Lyon's systems of the 1950s paved the way. Growth continued in the 60s, but it was still focused on emulating and eliminating the manual.

An example. Cheque (or check) clearing was a major activity carried out by the banks manually prior to the introduction of machine-readable and clearable cheques. It was said (only half jokingly) that the entire population of Southern California would be required by the 1990s to manually process payments, and the replacement of this most labour-intensive of banking tasks with automation drove costs down and increased profitability.

Steve then identifies the next step; leveraging the technology to do tasks that would have been conceivable, but only achievable by IT.

More to the banks' liking, IT allowed growth beyond what was physically possible. They introduced ATMs (cash machines), electronic funds transfer, credit and debit cards, in a very short space of time. They exploited an emergent property of the systems they first employed to do payroll and to clear cheques; its ability to crunch numbers far beyond what was possible manually.

Storing and processing large quantities of data became the norm, as did generating new and different data. Data created beyond the simple analysis and management reports of the manual IT phase was possible, and became the dominant type in terms of its size and importance to the business.

And now we’re in the era of the inconceivable. Using IT for functions that were undreamt of; virtual reality, CT scans and tomography, modeling stochiastic business and scientific processes...

And so on. You get the drift, I'm sure. The inconceivable is now as much part of our daily lives  as breathing, eating, sleeping; and dreaming of yet more applications of the second industrial revolution that started, quietly doing your payroll, in the 1950s.

But who would have dreamt back then that this is where we would end up?

To cut what could be a long thesis short, Commercial Computing Market Dynamics is an educational, persuasive and thoughtful paper that explains the history well, and points to why the IT model of the last 50 years is getting turned on its head. But I believe that there’s more than the three periods identified (Transactional, Distributed and Internet/Cloud).

They are (to me at least) just convenient labels to mark the passage of time.

There’s another history that isn’t described; and it’s non-linear, near-random, opportunistic and messy. A history of emergent properties. A property that can’t be predicted by looking at the parts alone, that’s greater than the sum. It’s what’s driving this phase of IT development, the inconceivable.

Here’s an example. In Steve’s comment on Marc’s blog, he says; ”So, who cares if Google's service goes down? How much are you paying to use it?”

We’re in an era of free [software/storage/compute/network]. Or free for some and nearly free for the remainder. For the first time in IT, there’s almost no way of describing value in terms of cost, because the denominator is tiny; often zero.

“So who cares if you’re not paying for it?” has only one answer; anyone who uses it, that’s who cares. This stuff has become a right in the individual consumer market, not a contract based on an exchange of consideration. That’s an emergent property that I, for one, would have been hard pressed to identify from the process of "Predicting the Future by Observing the Past". For me it falls, fairly and squarely, into the inconceivable category.

Back on Marc Farley's blog, Steve noted; “We can't even agree on what the cloud means.” Sadly, I’m forced to agree.

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A Hornet Watching EMC

It's been launched, the party's over, the champagne bottles popped and drunk. The much-hyped V-Max is here.

As a professional EMC watcher, I have to congratulate EMC on keeping the launch under raps. It made a significant difference from Joe's usual chatty style on discussing futures (think Atmos, where the eventual official launch was a bit of a damp squib as the details were well known before lift off).

And StorageZilla was obviously in a straitjacket in a backroom of the EMC manufacturing plant in Cork, labeled up as due for release only after the event started.

The reaction to all this has been fairly muted, though. Val B had a blog up 24 hours before the bar opened, HDS have a couple of blogs on the subject -- one a whole list of questions which I thought pretty reasonable -- and 3Par did a rather odd guerilla piece. Some of the press had pieces; and no-longer-the-independent Steve Foskett summarised the whole thing for us. Lots of EMC!

All in all, given the scale of the hype, I thought the response fairly low key. Perhaps a day later we're all still a bit hungover from the party to work out -- is it any good?

That's why I haven't managed to digest the entirety of the announcement. There is rather a lot to take in, with a good deal of it marketing hooplah and broohah that needs to be sifted out before I can see clearly the direction EMC are headed. I can't speak for others, especially users, but that's where I am right now. Reading and trying to make connections.

And although Barry Burke breathlessly hyped blogged his little heart out on the subject of the technology, so far I'm having a hard time of connecting it back to reality and what you actually do with this stuff.

So I'm still digging through what EMC veep Dave Donatelli described at the launch as as the VMA and V-Max "twofer". (That's a word that's not well understood outside of the US, by the way. He may also not be aware that it also refers to attaching two light bulbs to a dimmer. Someone ought to tell him.)

Eventually, I suspect that although some to most of the V-Max and VMA details will turn out to be less impressive than at first sight, there will no doubt be some novel technologies that I can get my teeth into.

One thing I'm positive on; the reaction to the huge launch party wasn't big enough for EMC. Stirrer-in-Chief for EMC has his big stick out and is furiously trying to generate some reaction, mainly by poking a bunch of hornets who really weren't interested in stinging EMC for executing a fabby marketing launch.

Just give us a bit of time to clear our heads and dig through the mountains of discarded streamers and ribbons. When we've something to say, don't worry; we'll say it.

Here's one for starters; there are issues of when you can get a lot of this technology. There seem to be a number of futures, like FAST, that when subtracted out from the announcement, make for a much smaller ripple than EMC might claim in the pond that is the storage industry.

And am I surprised at this kind of pre-announcement by EMC? Not really, although EMC just hate it when we appear to do it to them.

Hypocrites! Bzzzzz... we're coming after you....

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Web2.0, meet Presentation2.0

So there I was, scouring around to try and find some Web2.0 cloudy storagey stuff to generate a new blog entry. Partly to try and understand why EMC loves it (summary from Chuck; “Buy Atmos”) and Oracle hates it (summary from Ellison; “complete rubbish”).

Then I stumbled on this. Identity management in the new Web2.0 world, or (you guessed it) Identity2.0. Yeah, yeah, just another 2.0 pundit.

I was wrong. The message is interesting; there really are some technologies that deserve the 2.0 tag. This identity issue might be be of them, even though I have a deep and abiding suspicion of giving too many details away. Especially to governments and corporations that want to sell my kids stuff.

But as I watched the video, what really struck me was the presentation technique.

This is Presentation2.0 for the brave new web world we’re creating. Web2.0, meet the newest member of the family. Play, enjoy and learn how to make your boring PowerPoint positively sizzle.

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Pillar of Weakness

Over at the Register last week, Chris Mellor was predicting doom and gloom for the storage industry, with the observation that, just as global warming is affecting our environment, the interconnectedness of everything in business will affect sales of disk storage.

It appears that Pillar Data Systems is the latest victim, with an October 29th report  (yesterday) that Pillar laid off 150 employees, or some 30% of the workforce.

That’s not good, and I feel for all those being dismissed in this downturn. I wish them all the best.

These are hard and unforgiving times for people and the companies they work for. And if a storage vendor wasn’t making a profit before the current credit crunch, they’ll struggle to make one now. The survivors in the storage industry will be those that can keep their cashflow positive. Whatever the figures for petabytes shipped show, up or down, the secret to survival for any company is making everything sold contribute positively to the bottom line.

I am interested in knowing, vendor or user, what you are doing to survive, and what you’re seeing out there. Dave Hitz recently asked the same question. With the layoffs at Pillar, the world’s changing fast, that’s for sure.

Comments here or on Dave’s blog are welcome.

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Photo: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported licence, by Tomas Castelazo

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3PAR’s Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde in pensive mood after hearing of
NetApp’s VMware 50% Space Guarantee 

Over at 3PAR, Marc Farley is briving (that’s blogging while driving) on the subject of funny guarantees.

Because 3PAR doesn’t have any serious guarantees of its own. Ditto Dell and EMC.

Marc reminded me of Oscar Wilde.

On hearing a remark that he thought profound, Oscar turned to his friend Whistler and said; “I wish I had said that”. To which Whistler replied;

“You will, Oscar, you will.”

You will, Marc, you will.

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HP Takes Right Hand of LeftHand

$360m iSCSI Dowry

HP has wooed and won LeftHand Networks in deal reputedly worth $360m.

Hmmmm….

Let’s see if HP can make more of this purchase than their PolyServe acquisition. It’s certainly a poke in the eye for Dell. Their purchase of EqualLogic cost them a whopping $1.4billion to get their mits on an iSCSI solution.

When will these guys learn? It’s all about unified storage, not about bodging up hybrid monsters from the parts bin.

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Blue is the Colour

I’d like to claim that the photograph above looks nothing like me, but it is. Shrek with a beard. What a dreadful picture...

Getting Started

One of the challenges I found to getting started here was picking a blog name. Don’t ask me why, it consumed more think time than sketching out a few opening topics. But eventually I settled on this obscure title for two reasons.

Reason 1: NetApp’s Branding

You’d have to be colour blind to an excessive degree not to notice that NetApp’s new branding is – well – blue. To put not too fine a point on it, it is Very Blue Indeed.

There are a range of NetApp bloggers on this site that represent shades of NetApp opinion, shades of NetApp blue if you like. I’m thinking of myself as one of the (previously) missing shades. A duller shade perhaps, a gray-blue, but here I am.

[Aside: I’m in exalted company here. Bright blue territory. Hitz, Palowski, Eisler, Bercovici et al. And little old me! All I can say is – wow, thanks! That’s trust for you. I can only assume that the NetApp powers-that-be know what they’re doing by letting me blog here… And no, I don’t have handlers. Just sub-editors.]

Reason 2: David Hume 

I’m lucky enough to be married to a very bright lady. When Carol comes home after a visit to the local bookshop, the stack of books she comes back with won’t be lightweight. True to form, the pile of “3 for the price of 2” she bought recently contained a couple of books that many have heard of, but I suspect that few have read. Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Causes of the Wealth of Nations, and David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, the major figures and authors of the most influential works of the Scottish Enlightenment. And both from Edinburgh, where I live. And no, I hadn't read them ether.

I prefer printed books for serious reading, so I “borrowed” Hume and read it first. Much to Carol's annoyance, as the third book was intended for me.

Hume is a great read, once you get past the slightly archaic language. What caught my eye while reading it was an argument called The Missing Shade of Blue. 

“Let all the different shades of that colour, except that single one, be placed before him, descending gradually from the deepest to the lightest; it is plain, that he will perceive a blank, where that shade is wanting, and will be sensible, that there is a greater distance in that place between the contiguous colours than in any other. Now I ask, whether it be possible for him, from his own imagination, to supply this deficiency, and raise up to himself the idea of that particular shade, though it had never been conveyed to him by his senses?

“I believe there are few but will be of opinion that he can..."

I like the idea, that you can imagine something you’ve never seen. So I borrowed the idea for the title and themes of this blog, where I'll be exploring the parts of NetApp's technology that fill in the missing shade of blue in the storage world. 

The third book?

This one. It's not all intellectual conversations in our house.