VMware

VMware might be the best thing that’s happened to networked storage since, well, networked storage.

So you think EMC bought VMware because it was cheap? At $635 million, it didn’t seem cheap at the time; many folks wondered if EMC knew what it was doing or if it was just chucking more garf against the wall to see what stuck.

VMware is worth approximately $20 billion today (post IPO trading at $58 beans a share, up 100% from the offering price in 48 hours), so no one is questioning the decision any longer, but that still doesn’t explain its real value to storage. EMC is no longer the nemesis;  VMware has invigorated the industry.

When people consolidate servers by jamming virtual servers onto the same physical platform, they also move to a network storage architecture. VMware has figured out the recipe to get us to migrate from a DAS world to the networked storage world … and it had nothing to do with storage.

Many VMware installations are also big SAN and NAS shops (more importantly, many aren’t), yet the decision to move to SAN/NAS is never retroactive. Because data growth is never-ending, we found ourselves starting the process with some new app and then constantly adding to the SAN/NAS environment as we learned that it was a smarter way of interconnecting storage to servers vs. having the storage bound to a single physical machine. We’ve known networked storage has been a better way to go for many years, but until VMware got hot, we allowed a massive percentage of our overall data to reside in single-server configurations. Why? Because the server is still the psychological king of the data center.

A server is a processor and memory subsystem that costs approximately $1,000. It’s almost a throwaway when compared to today’s true big iron—storage. Servers are grossly underutilized and their volume causes tremendous operational problems and inefficiencies. The storage connected to the average server houses data whose value is incalculable. The time and money saved by creating networked storage environments, along with the ability to better protect and deliver our most precious corporate asset—our information—isn’t debated anymore. Why won’t we move the DAS to a NAS/SAN environment when it’s the obvious thing to do? Why does it take a server consolidation to make it happen? We’ve found the motivation and it’s VMware.

I think VMware is brilliant, but I also think it’s unoriginal. Storage guys figured out that individually underutilized disks spread all over the place and directly connected to individual machines was dumb approximately 20 years ago. We “consolidated” those drives into large-scale RAID arrays and NAS boxes. We networked those consolidated drives back to the machines that needed them. Isn’t VMware doing for servers what storage guys figured out long ago?

As folks move to virtual server environments, they’re forced to move to networked storage (or they can’t take advantage of any of the VMotion-type features and that would be dumb). This is the catalyst to mass-market adoption of network storage technologies—to extend their use in existing SAN/NAS places and add new opportunities. Because of the virtual server phenomenon, there may be more networked storage implementations within the next year than we’ve seen in the last 10 years.

So instead of doing the normal EMC bashing, you might want to say thanks. VMware has opened more doors for old and new players than any other movement I can think of over the last decade. And once a door opens, all sorts of things can come in.

Two final notes:  first, in a panic reaction to the death toll that VMware potentially represents for Citrix, Citrix bought Xen (another server virtualization player) for $500 million beans.  I think Xen has about the equivilant revenues as my 6 year old's lemonade stand.  (For the record, he is willing to entertain offers between $200-$400 million).  Virtual Iron is the only other would-be player left (other than Microsoft of course, but I don't think they are considered a buyout target at this point), but no one knows who they are.

Second, I wrote this for Storage Magazine about 3 months ago (I updated the numbers), and since have discovered something - maybe DAS isn't going to have to go away afterall.  If VMware plops a distributed file system into their offering, they could effectively give you networked storage without having to physically move any of the DAS devices.  Hmmmm.

Was Dick Egan Right After All?

I remember him telling me two things - first, there was no need for tape, that everything would be disk.  Second, and this was much earlier and most likely will be denied but I swear it was true - he said that there would come a time where disk was unnecessary because memory would keep getting bigger and cheaper.  His first argument is coming to fruition, albeit slowwwwwly.  His second didn't take into account the absurd rate of data growth and therefore the economic impact associated with that.  FYI, Dick is the E in EMC.

Dell made this announcement which is using removable disk technologies from ProStor as a direct low-end/mid-market replacement for tape based media and systems.  These cartridges have the same basic form factor as tape and even higher levels of tolerance (for dropping them, for example) and longer media life - AND they are disk - good old random access, readable in twenty years, disk.  The possibilities are endless.

If there is a big business right now replacing tape and tape function with disk based subsystems, what if the data de-duped frenzy going on now could also have a removability element for deep bunker archive? 

The End Of The World

My latest Storage Magazine article -

Right solution for the wrong problem at the worst possible time

A new Web-based messaging service is ingenious, insidious or both.

If, during the process of eradicating gophers in the backyard, you came up with a nuclear-powered solution consisting of $11 worth of duct tape, Silly Putty and a can of Raid, would you market it to the world? You would if all you saw were dollar signs, which might make you forget that others could use your discovery for things not involving furry critters (at least the cute kind).

Case in point: VaporStream. This magical startup may make a billion dollars for all the wrong reasons or this may be the last you ever hear of them. I haven’t spoken with these surely upstanding capitalists, but my people have and they immediately knew I’d love this from an entertainment perspective.

VaporStream has created--now get this--recordless messaging. Invisible, untraceable, disappearing-ink e-mail. Create it, hit “Send” and it’s completely gone without a single smudge left on your machine, server, caches, DNA or your dirty mind. CSI couldn’t find a molecule of the message even with a four-hour, commercial-free special.

That’s because it never lived on your machine. It lived “out there” like an alien pod in the ether on some VaporSpaz server. Or did it? You don’t know. As soon as it’s transmitted to the only authorized viewer, all traces are hosed off VaporSpaz and the entire machine is tossed into Mount Doom next to Frodo’s ring. What message?

The company seems to think there’s a big market for “recordless messaging” because CEOs and the like don’t want a record of everything. That’s true, albeit a bit misguided. The only reason not to have a record of something is because: A) It’s illegal; B) It might be illegal; or C) I don’t think it’s illegal, but I don’t want to get caught having it because I’m surely gonna get canned if I do.

The pro-use argument is simple: For private, nonregulated messages where I want to ensure that my double-secret missive regarding our offer to acquire super-stealthy TechnoLuv Inc. isn’t intercepted by competitors or other bad people. Who needs encryption if the message disappears? No need to wear a costume if you’re invisible, eh?

I buy the theory; I just don’t trust people to use it right. Here’s what’s really going to happen: Everyone on the planet who harbors the will or intent to do others harm will use it to send “Atomic bomb a la mode recipes” and “Place the briefcase next to the traffic light” or “Really? I’m 13, too, and I love that mall” messages to accomplices or unwitting victims, knowing they’ll never be found out. Best case, we’ll have CEO types saying things they shouldn’t about subjects they shouldn’t mention to people who shouldn’t hear. Because it’s obvious this will happen (I have ADD and it took me about four seconds to figure it out), some government will have to: A) Buy them out and send them someplace far, far away; B) Arrange an unsolvable spelunking accident while the technology somehow gets misplaced forever; or C) Some giant archive/record management player will buy them and do some version of both A and B. If you’re VaporStream’s neighbor, consider a bulletproof vest and working away from the house.

Shouldn’t some spook have heard about this and “made it go away” by now? Didn’t VaporStream’s CEO realize there’s no legitimate business reason for this stuff, but huge, potentially bad, ramifications? I hope they get paid and not “disappeared,” I really do. It seems ingenious, assuming it works. Or maybe no one has done it (publicly anyway) because they want to live and not be the one responsible for all the potential damage it can cause? Thankfully, Congressman Mark Foley wasn’t a beta test site. How many more pages might have had the opportunity to become the victims of a high-ranking public figure/sexual predator if Mr. F had this stuff?

But what it really may enable is the end of the world, so I’m just gonna have to take a tough stand and announce that I’m against it. That’s just me, old school. Isn’t the only way to kill someone with a Centera or some Symantec/KVS software to either drop the box on them or wait until they have a heart attack when they see the new maintenance bill?

The Machine Has No Soul - Sha Doobie

I make a living in the computer world.  I love gizmo's, spec's, and waxing ethereal on all things IT.  I wanted to be a rock star, but this is as close as I could come.

We all face intense challenges in our IT lives because of gizmo's, spec's, and widgets.  We really do try to make our worlds better via the application of technology - and then we spend countless cycles trying to manage the new problems we just inadvertently created while solving some other problem by throwing more technology at it.  It seems we are caught in a vicious cycle.

Does it matter?  Kids are a good bell weather for such questions.  My kids are amazed I can A: make a living talking about this stuff and B: that there are other people out there that spend any time at all listening to people like me talk about stuff like this.  I try to explain to them that machines are the future - that some day computers will be so smart they will help us in unimaginable ways.  The kids say "they already do", and I say "ah, but they don't.  They stink.  They make us work much too hard on keeping them happy, so we don't really get to see them doing the good things they are capable of.  They are too complicated, too hard to manage, too hard to make them really useful."

Then my kids walk away with their eyes rolled up.  My daughter pulls out her phone, and listens to some rap music (which, by the way, is just awful.  I'm sorry, and I know I'm officially my father, but you have to be kidding me with this stuff.  The lyrics are not only stupid, but disgusting.  I grew up loving punk, to which my dad must have been equally thrilled, but at least those mohawk wearing freaks tried to say something ((albeit not well always - I love the Sex Pistols, and they aren't going to win any poetry contest)).  My son hops on IM like he's been doing it since he was born, which he pretty much was.

They don't see gizmo's as technology.  The see applications.  They don't care about pipes and cycles.  They care about how many songs fit on their phones, and how they can connect and grab other songs from friends and Internet sites.  They replicate more data in a day than most fortune 500 companies I think.

So, the interesting (to me) things learned are 1. I probably am an idiot for spending as much time as I do on how things are supposed to work and not on how they really do work, and 2. what they taught me is that technology will never have life.  It takes the soul of human to apply meaning and value to a gizmo, whether a phone or a data center.  The machine will run faster and faster, but it will never really think.

I brought my 14 year old daughter Katie to see Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) two weeks ago.  She has really eclectic musical tastes, she's also the one who enjoys listening to rappers tell tales of their sexual exploits over sampled (stolen) music and profess to how many cops they have shot, but I digress.  Anyhow, we are in the midst of 28,000 40 year olds smoking dope like it's 1970, watching what was probably the single greatest display of musicianship I've ever seen (really, and I've seen everyone - he had 3 guitarists, two keyboardists, sax, three back up singers and some guy who I couldn't figure out what he did.  They played every song note for note - no kidding, note for note.  If you happen to play an instrument of any kind, you realize that not only is that music effectively impossible to play as a soloist, but the fact that all eleven of them could be so perfect was astounding).  The only other comparative even close that I have witnessed would be Steely Dan.

Leaving, totally blown away, I said "what did you think?", and she said "That was awesome".  So I said, "yeah, I don't think I've ever seen better musicians".  She said "yeah, they were good, my guitar teacher can play a lot of that stuff, he plays along with a machine", which made me think.  They have keyboards that really are computers that can play stuff like Pink Floyd.  Roger no doubt used one or two.  They were programmed to play.  They created sounds that made the live show feel like you were listening to the album.  Now that's an application.  That's a great example of some of the good things that all this technology can do - but at the same time, it's why my kid was totally underwhelmed at witnessing what might have been one of the greatest musical performances she may ever see.  She expected it to sound like that - and why not?  Her cell phone plays Pink Floyd songs through her earphones and it sounds great, why the heck wouldn't some old guy and a bunch of young guys playing live sound the same way?

The problem isn't technology.  The problem is perception.  In IT we have become our fathers.  We still focus on the gizmo's, we haven't learned how to focus on the application.  We spend too much time figuring out how to make the cell phone work, and not enough time listening to the music.  The application is human, the gizmo's are not.

So even if Roger had a little help, the fact is that people wrote those songs - brilliantly.  The creative element and the ability to execute on it will never be done by a machine.  Sure, someone from some lab is going to tell me how I'm wrong, but I'm not.  There is no point in making the machine feel - we already do that.  The machine is how we deliver the post creative results on a consistent basis, but it doesn't come up with the plan.

Which, finally, gets me to the point.  Strategic thinkers will always have a role, whether as song writers or IT folks.  Would you rather be the guy who writes the song or the roadie who downloads it onto the machine?  If you spend all day chasing cables, you should at least spend the ride home thinking about what you would do IF everything infrastructural just worked - because someday it just might.

Of course this rant could be based on residual contact ingestion from last nights Stones concert.  This was my 6th (?) farewell "Keith can't possibly live another year" tour.  Jagger is the most strategic thinker in the history of the music business.  I'm guessing he personally pulls a million dollars a night out of the shows they do.  Keith gets a bottle of Jack and someone to tell him when to go to bed and wake up. The rest are just happy to be there.  They are the machines.

Fear the Framework?

My latest in CW

Incipient Network Virtualization

Good article/blog on Incipient's NSP here.  Good comment also - and one that will polarize the industry soon - as soon as Incipient type stuff is out in earnest.  At the end of the day it's going to be about how to add high-value services into the network and get them off of the end points exclusively.

By the way, I'm on vacation.  I'm at the beach.  I have my 4 kids, niece, in-laws and wife.  I need a vacation from my vacation already.

Virtualization Services

Here's my latest in CW.

A New Backup Construct - 3DR

Here's my latest in CW - an outline of the way we should be doing data protection.  Once you read it, let me know if you think it reasonable (as I do) that archiving become a parallel process in this construct.  It blows my mind that people backup archives - in the same vein as their production data.  One of the biggest values archiving offers is eliminating that data from the backup process - since it's already backed up, and doesn't change.  People do goofy things sometimes.  That's one of them, if you ask me.

Heidi and I will be working on getting out a more comprehensive piece shortly.

How The Market Stifles Innovation

I forgot to post this link to my last CW article.  I think I nailed the issue of what's happening in the current market and why it's going to be bad for all of us if things don't change.  Let me know your thoughts.

Integrated Enterprise Virtualization

Hu Yoshida, of HDS fame, spoke about a conference in his latest blog, and one of the topics was virtualization.

Hu says that users at a CIO panel commented that "the next step in virtualization is virtualized environments.  Where you can swap out a compliance environment for instance and then bring it back later when it is needed".

Exactly.  When we speak about virtualization in specific tactical terms, such as storage virtualization for migration purposes, or server virtualization for consolidation purposes, we lose the higher potential of the concept - which is really to do two things:  First, it should abstract the user from the infrastructure on thier way to and from the data they care about, and second, behind that abstraction should be a living, breathing, morphable blob that can alter itself in order to best fullfil the requirments from the top of the stack (user) or the bottom (data).

I like the fact that people are talking about the V word more openly, and with less visible disdain - even if it is in terms that are still too simplistic - such as "improved utilization".  Eventually people will come to grips with the fact that a fully integrated "Enterprise IT Virtualization" strategy will be the IT equivilant of the industrial revolution.

I wrote more on it in this weeks CW column.