Here are the million and, in many cases, the multi-million dollar questions that every enterprise of almost any size or consequence is making or will be making now or in the next few years, “Are Dell and HP serious about enterprise storage?” Or are they inclined to treat storage as they have in the past – a bolt-on accessory to a server sale?
Automated storage tiering (AST) seems to be getting ever more attention as more organizations move from physical to virtualized environments and look to use networked storage systems with AST to support them. But AST carries its own set of baggage and can potentially create as many problems as it solves, not the least of which is that it may not be as automated for all application workloads as some vendors may lead you to believe.
Of all the topics that I thought I might be writing about after my first day in attendance at the fall Storage Networking World (SNW) conference in 2010, I did not think tape would be it. In fact, it was not even on my radar screen walking into the show. But after meeting with the Ultrium LTO team yesterday at SNW, it is clear that tape is back in the storage conversation and those arguing for its broader adoption and continued use have much more to talk about than its power savings, larger capacities and faster speeds.
Today DCIG is pleased to announce that through a special licensing agreement with Nexsan Technologies, the 2010 DCIG Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide is now available for a free download on Nexsan’s website for a limited time. This is a full copy of the 105 page Buyer’s Guide exactly as it was originally published by DCIG with no additions, deletions or edits.
This week I am spending a couple of days at Compellent’s annual C-Drive conference in Minneapolis, MN where about 500 users, value added resellers (VARs) and Compellent sales reps are in attendance. Since a couple of years have passed since I attended the last one, I thought I would make the 6-hour drive from Omaha to Minneapolis to catch up on the latest going-ons with Compellent and gain some insight as to how they plan to recoup after their latest earnings stumble.
Last month I announced that DCIG is putting together its first annual Midrange Array Buyers Guide. Since then a lot has happened and over the last two weeks responses to the questionnaires that I sent out to over 20 storage providers representing over 100 midrange array models have been pouring in. So while it is still too early to announce any winners and results are still being tabulated, I am prepared to share some preliminary findings in the areas of total storage capacity and cache sizes on midrange arrays.
One thing that struck me was that Compellent users really understand what a game-changing technology that virtualization is. I sat through 2 or 3 presentations during the two days of the conference (May 7 – 8) and also met with a fair number of users (~10) between sessions, over meals and at the evening events and all of them were pretty stoked about the capabilities that virtualization in general and Compellent specifically delivers.
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