In today’s blog I simply wanted to recap some of the tidbits of information that I picked up while chatting with various folks while walking and talking at the Fall 2009 SNW show as well as comment on some interesting developments at a couple of companies.
Yesterday and today I am attending the Bare Metal Data Conference in Nashville, TN, which is a small gathering by all accounts (50 attendees). But what I enjoy about this conference is that it is a gathering of a select group of records management providers that provide paper and tape storage along with online backup services to their clients. The invaluable insight that I glean from this conference is a reality check as to the current state of tape. This time it revealed something new: Tape is still doing just fine but for the first time I am detecting genuine concern among the attendees about tape’s future.
It is hard to believe that it is October 2009 already and that we are over a year removed from last year’s economic meltdown even though everyone keeps talking about it like it just happened yesterday. However, the upside of the situation that we are in right now is that it is prompting more organizations to think outside of the box and look for better ways to do things.This is resulting in companies choosing some technologies that they may have overlooked or not considered in the past.
I arrived home from VMworld 2009 last night after spending much of the flight reflecting on what I learned, the conversations that I had and the technologies that I had a chance to view. However at every conference there is usually one technology that piques my interest and this one was no different as I had a chance to do a deeper dive into one company’s method of doing virtual machine backup while at the show. What made this technology transcend other virtual machine backup approaches is that it is by far the most scalable, easiest to implement and simplest to manage that I have yet encountered.
Over the last couple of weeks my weekly recap blogs touching on the subject of cloud storage has prompted a lot of emails and phone calls to me in the background to discuss this topic so I wanted to touch on that again this week. In addition, I’ve also been doing a little research into some of Data Domain’s claims (and the counterclaims of its competitors) in regards to the advertised performance numbers on its new DD880 and under what conditions enterprise users might expect to achieve those numbers. Finally, I wanted to comment on some of the statements that I made last week about a CEO change and a corporate acquisition and end up with a new rumor that is circulating in the storage industry.
It’s time to start thinking ahead. Over the next 60 – 120 days someone is going to acquire Data Domain – be it EMC, NetApp or some other suitor that may yet emerge. That means Data Domain, today’s leading mid-market deduplicating disk-based appliance player, will be changing its colors. To discuss how and if ExaGrid can take advantage of this opportunity, I recently met with ExaGrid’s CEO, Bill Andrews, to discuss this development, his perspective on the deduplication market as a whole and how ExaGrid stands to benefit (or lose) from Data Domain’s acquisition.
Normally I refrain from immediately jumping in the fray when major announcements occur in the storage industry. This is in part because much of the initial news is often speculation with insufficient facts to support any meaningful conclusions. However the announcement yesterday that EMC and not NetApp may be the likely acquirer of Data Domain is of a little bit different nature since the future of Data Domain has now been up in the air for a few weeks.
You can’t talk about storage these days without including virtualization somewhere in the conversation. The Spring 2009 SNW was no different as one of its Summits was devoted to virtualization. The Tuesday, April 7, Virtualization Summit proved very interesting even though it was dominated by vendors. Some of the better data points that came out of this Summit were from TheInfoPro and Boston Medical Center. Also, interesting tidbits on SSD are emerging as SSD appears to solve performance challenges for VMware-access-to-storage in high I/O environments as well as performance intensive development environments.
In continuing my dialog about my insights at the Spring SNW 2008, I did multiple briefings on Tuesday, April 7, but none was more insightful than the sit-down meeting I had with Fusion-io’s self proclaimed Chief Mind Bender Rick White. So while I plan to come back and cover material from some of the other briefings I had on Tuesday, what he revealed to me about what Fusion-io is doing and has on its roadmap is not just disruptive, it’s disturbing. Granted, a lot of what he told me he promised that I not reveal but he told me enough public information to get my head reeling with possibilities.
I have made no secret about my skepticism of using dual controller architectures for inline deduplication, specifically at the enterprise level. My concern was that the workloads in enterprise backup environments would essentially overwhelm the capacity of just using two controllers and negatively impact backup jobs. However a recent briefing I had with Data Domain’s VP of Product Management, Brian Biles, has started to change my perspective as to why doing inline deduplication using dual controller architectures is becoming a more viable option for enterprise environments.
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