1T2C

Last week I was introduced to an offering by a Colorado Springs-based vendor, STORserver. They have an interesting value proposition: eliminate all, or as many as you would like, of the various point vendors and let us be the "one throat to choke", or, if I may, 1T2C.

They do this by providing a tested suite of standard products in a mix that meets clients' needs. It can range from as much as the backup software (Tivoli Storage Manager), their own TSM management software (changes the CLI interface to an easy-to-use GUI), their own reporting utility (Reporter for TSM), VMware Consolidated Backup (native VCB), the server(s) to run the software (IBM), the array to store the backup on (IBM DS3000, Xyratex or Compellent), and/or the library for tape (Spectra Logic or Qualstar). Or any logical combination of these where the client has already too much invested to replace. They then take ownership of the turnkey installation and ongoing maintenance, hence: 1T2C.

Now, obviously, any components that aren't supplied by STORserver are supported by the vendor that supplied it, which erodes the 1T2C paradigm. But it is interesting, nonetheless. Arguably "best of breed" components, fully qualified, integrated, installed and supported by one mature organization. I look forward to taking a deeper technical dive into their offering and plan to speak with some of their customers. And that is one thing they don't seem to be lacking. After 12 years in business, they have amassed over 600 clients. Not bad.

Let me not forget why I was talking with them in the first place. Credit where credit is due: they were introduced to me by Ken Ryan of Spectra Logic. I invited them in because, at TriAxis, we don't seem to provide as much value in existing TSM environments when it comes to data protection. What I was shown by the STORserver rep, Leslie Clater, was that they could make one of the best backup software packages on the planet work simpler and regurgitate pertinent information better in installed TSM customers.

I liked what I saw at first glimpse, but it was very interesting that this whole appliance approach plans to take on multi-vendor approaches for backup software replacement opportunities. The 1T2C approach instead of: “Data Domain says the problem is on the CommVault side…" followed by "CommVault says their application is providing the data as fast as it is receiving it, the problem is with your backup server…" followed by "Dell says the backup server is fine, call Microsoft to get the latest patches…" and so on.

Not to get too far off the subject concerning 1T2C, but earlier today I had an interesting conversation with Raju Chekuri, CEO of NetEnrich. He said that, especially in the data protection space, he has become the 1T2C to an increasing number of clients. Among other areas, he is finding increasingly that the complexity of legacy (read: NetBackup, Networker, TSM) backup applications is helping fuel his outsourced remote IT management services growth. This has been an area of interest to me of late and NetEnrich seems, after one conversation, to be doing it right. More to come on this topic as I continue to look at managed services to supplement our current storage-related offerings to our existing clients as well as to assist new ones.

Is EMC the "Recession Womb"?

Although the popular term on the web is to call this a "blog", I still think of it as an editorial. Feedback, some comments posted notwithstanding, has been that I don't take a strong enough stance and that I simply review from my own analysis. I think this is why I think of this as an editorial.

Last month I didn't make the time to jot down my thoughts and nothing was burning inside of me to let out through my fingertips. But, through management prodding, here is what has been on my mind over the last few weeks.

There has been an ongoing debate on whether or not the US economy is truly in a state of recession. I certainly have seen costs go up, no doubt much of it from the increase in the cost of energy, making it so there is less disposable income for most people and companies. But what is companies' disposable income?

I'm not sure I know the answer to that, but I have my own thoughts on what it may be.

I think that companies that have a need to respond to their own growing data storage challenges are doing what they must to get there. But what I'm also seeing is less interest in what are perceived as "risky investments" in technology. The propensity I've seen this year thus far is that the prospective customers with whom we have engaged are more often than not going back to the womb, per se, when it comes to investments. Let me give a couple of examples:

(1) A local architectural firm did an RFI, to which we responded, followed up by an RFP, to which we also responded. According to the customer, the solution we provided was the only one that me all of the requirements. They felt that our response was the most complete and the statement of work clear and realistic. Did our sales rep get the deal? No. The customer said they felt safer going with EMC, even if they had to compromise some of their requirements for now. And, besides, EMC said they would take another $100K off the price.

(2) A local hospital was very dissatisfied with their support for EMC's (formerly Legato) Networker and didn't feel they were able to take advantage of the stated feature set because the support group could never get it to work (the issue was SAN-based back-ups to minimize traffic over the LAN). When they were looking for an Email Archiving tool, they went with Email Xtender, a product that is notorious for being difficult to implement and get to actually work. Why? I never heard why they would go with that instead of Symantec's Email Archiving or, better yet, Mimosa's NearPoint for Exchange. The devil you know versus the devil you don't?

(3) A local energy management firm, who were dissatisfied with their AX100's (although they liked iSCSI as the protocol), reviewed EMC's larger iSCSI offerings, NetApp's and EqualLogic's (now Dell EqualLogic) and were amazed at how simple, yet sophisticated, the EqualLogic PS Array was compared to the other two. Pricing was comparable after large discounts from NetApp and EMC were applied. Now, with the playing field roughly equal from a price perspective, which way did the customer go? If you guessed EMC, you are following the theme here. The answer I heard from the customer was that the EqualLogic array was too much on the "bleeding edge" of technology for them to feel comfortable with it. At the time of that statement, EqualLogic boasted over 2,000 clients and were bought a few months later by Dell for $1.4B dollars. Hmmm.

(4) A local uniform service company evaluated their EMC environment. They were pleased that Dell had bought EqualLogic and were about to place an order for four EqualLogic units. EMC came in and, reportedly, knocked another $80,000 off their price to keep the customer. It worked.

So, to me, this downturn in economic growth, call it a recession if you want, seems to be making customers in New England compromise on features to ameliorate risk perception. I have yet to see our firm's recommendations get NOT chosen because of technical capabilities. We seem to lose on last minute pricing reductions and risk perception. It's frustrating, but we fight the good fight. And despite all of this, our business keeps growing. But like the GDP, not where it could be.

Inconceivable!

I was at a customer last week and got into a discussion about "dedupe" (data deduplication). It came up as a result of talking about reducing the amount of data stored. It was obvious to me that the marketing machines of the storage vendors are really getting good at this aspect of their job -- jumping on a buzzword, and obfuscating the intent of the original meaning of said word.

To wit: what is dedupe? First of all, if is an extremely hot phrase in the storage industry -- heck, one of the vendors actually has 'DDUP' as their ticker symbol. Second, in the movie 'The Princess Bride', the Spanish fencing master Inigo Montoya, played by Mandy Patinkin, in response to the short Sicilian criminal genius Vizzini (Wallace Shawn) repeating the word "Inconceivable!", replies "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

So, what does it mean?

According to Merriam-Webster, duplicate means: being the same as another. Therefore, deduplication would be the opposite; something that is unique. Which explains why this word can be used in the examples I'm about to give.

Single instance storage (SIS) traditionally meant that duplicated files are kept singularly, with pointers used to reference the needed location of the file. The idea being, if say, you created a 10MB document, then distributed it electronically to ten others on your LAN, each of whom stored it on a common server, that file would exist eleven times taking up 110MB. But with SIS, as long as those files are identical (duplicates), only one copy would be stored and pointers to the files for other users' reference. But what if each of the ten users made a 2 byte change to the file, then saved it. Each file would be unique, eating up 110MB of disk, regardless of SIS. SIS is called by many vendors a 'dedupe' technology. And it is, but at a file level. The problem with this is that all things gained at a file level are lost by the tiniest change in the file. Are SIS vendors wrong when they call their product dedupe? Technically, no -- but let's look at this a bit deeper.

In Brad O’Neill's seminal paper written in 2005, a Technology Brief titled "Introduction to Capacity Optimization", where he states "… the first principle by which CO (Capacity optimization) technologies approach the storing of blocks of data. Because they maintain maximally granular plans for all objects, they only need one instance of any given object. Most importantly, CO technologies only increase their efficiency the more they are used for storing content. This is true because over time, a capacity optimizing system is introduced to new objects, breaking those objects down into parts while maintaining all new plans in an optimized store…" The key piece here is that he is talking about blocks. Sub-file deduplication is far more efficient than SIS (for those who don't know him, Brad is a Senior Analyst and Consultant with Taneja Group Inc.) as it blends sub-file deduplication with compression, generally resulting in reduction in size by a factor of 20.

How does that efficiency translate? Let's use the example above of the ten copies of a 10MB file being distributed to other users on the LAN. As we saw above, as long as none of the copies of the files are altered in the slightest, this potential 110MBs of data will only take up 10MB using SIS. But, the slightest change causing each file to be unique, hence stored separately (no longer duplicates) and the 10MB balloons back to 110MB. What happens at sub-file deduplication? In the same scenario, as long as all files are identical, this method, too, will only take up 10MB, except, when compression is added, we reduce that further to ~5MB. Next, each of the files are changed by two bytes -- what is the net effect? At a sub-file level, depending on methodology (yet gaining the same results) either byte-level deltas are compared and only the bytes that have changed are stored, then compressed, or if block-level methodology is used, only the block that the changed bytes reside upon are stored, then compressed. In either case, instead of 110MB, slightly more than 5MB is stored. This is example shows, in gross terms, the key difference between SIS and sub-file dedupe.

So, is SIS dedupe? By definition, yes -- in our little world of data storage, that would be inconceivable!

Is Tape Worthy of Blogging?

One of the more interesting (to me – at a Led Zeppelin party, it would qualify as “boring beyond uninteresting” and you would rightfully be labeled a pariah) differentiators one of our vendors has to offer is the soon-to-be-released “C2 Media” option. But, before I go into that, let me get you up to date.

The vendor is Spectra Logic, a Boulder, Colorado-based tape library and backup-to-disk manufacturer. They have been offering ‘Certified Media’ as an option for some time now. For any astute buyer, you will find that this offering is more expensive than getting tapes on your own from many sources. And, when Spectra uses the term ‘certified’, to some in the market, the term implies “factory refurbished”. I spoke with Jesse Childs from Spectra, and he assured me that their tapes are not only 100% new, but tested to virtually eliminate ‘infant mortality’, which is where questions of whether a drive or a tape is a cause for backup failure. But, when I say ‘more expensive’, I mean in terms of initial purchase. Spectra’s offering includes bar-code labeled media in TeraPacks, which are removable and self-contained cartridge trays that make it simple to load and unload multiple (up to ten) tapes at once for offsite storage. Additionally, any tape that fails can be returned for a new, labeled replacement, no questions asked. The alternative to this is that the less expensive media needs to be returned to the tape manufacturer (TDK, Maxell, Fuji, etc.) and will only be replaced if they agree that it is, in fact, defective, according to Doug Broshar from Capital Media. This, of course, brings you back to the question of a backup failure – was it the tape or the drive? A perfect storm for finger-pointing.

So, in March or April of this year, Spectra Logic will be releasing their C2 Media option. This makes a good thing even better, or so I’ve been told by Ted Sarganis at Spectra. It will do the following:

The tape is manufactured by the manufacturer and shipped to Spectra. Spectra certifies it and ships it to the end-user. Using their BlueScale technology within their libraries, the creation date, serial number, bar-code label and unique BlueScale identifier are logged.
During the lifetime of the tape, BlueScale monitors the date tape was last accessed, number of reads and writes, the number of soft errors, the max tap capacity and the remaining tape capacity.
Then, BlueScale knows when to retire the tape and provides life-cycle vital statistics such as the encryption moniker and moniker expiration date, cleaning tape data with notice of expiration, and user-defined error rate threshold notification.

According to Childs, this is the next logical step for Spectra and it solves a lot of his customer media-related issues. My question is, do you agree? Let me know your thoughts.

Lastly, I said I’d try to make this entertaining. While I was googleing (a word(?) that, up until a few years ago, you could not use in polite company) recently, I came across an article of a guy that got fired for posting a Dilbert cartoon. Click here to view the cartoon and related article.

Welcome!

This is just a quick note to welcome you, as one of the first to poke your head in, to a new editorial section I am maintaining as Technical Lead for TriAxis Storage Solutions, Inc. (www.triaxis.com)

What has been driving this is to help you, an associate in the industry, learn more about how the vision, from a technical viewpoint, is developed for TriAxis. Additionally, I may be a bit late with this editorial (OK, I'll call it a weblog...) piece as I have been asked several times by clients and prospects if they could view white papers and evaluations I've developed while in this role. So, I will try.

I will try to...

... make it informative.
... make it entertaining.
... encourage you to be interactive.
... make it a site that you'll want to revisit.

Again, thanks for coming. This place holder is so our web team can finish developing this aspect of the site. Stay tuned.

Mumf