Overland’s SnapServer will soon scale out to hundreds of nodes, thanks to MaxiScale’s technology

Overland Storage is showing intriguing signs of life. Once relegated to OEM tape library duty, Overland received an injection of cash and (more importantly) talent this year. Now the company is stepping up the technology behind their SnapServer NAS array by acquiring scale-out file storage company, MaxiScale. They intend to bring the scalable capacity and performance normally associated with enterprise and high-performance computing systems to the mass market.

Overland In A Snap

Snap Appliance and Overland Storage are familiar names in the enterprise storage space, but the two companies have had a convoluted history. Snap was born in 1998 as a product of Meridian Data and acquired by backup giant Quantum one year later for about $85 million. Although successful, the Snap NAS products were not at home among Quantum’s tape-heavy product lines. The division was re-purchased in 2002 as Snap Appliance by private investors, led by current CEO Eric Kelly, for just $11 million. Two years later Snap was again absorbed by a familiar storage name: This time $100 million brought it into Adaptec.

Quantum competitor Overland Storage re-purchased Snap from Adaptec in 2008 for just $3.6 million and brought Kelly back as CEO in 2009. Kelly brought back former Snap (and Data Robotics) marketing guru Jillian Mansolf this year, and they were soon joined by Dr. Geoff Barrall, founder of Data Robotics and BlueArc. Although a public company, Overland (NASDAQ:OVRL) also raised an additional $12 million in private equity financing, an unknown amount of which went to purchase MaxiScale.

You may also want to read The Rebirth of Overland Storage

This brings us to today, with Overland Storage on the rise, with strong OEM and channel sales in tape and disk storage devices. Overland’s product lines include the NEO tape libraries, REO virtual tape devices, SnapSAN block arrays and various SnapServer unified and NAS systems.

The highlight of Overland’s storage offerings is the SnapServer N2000, a unified iSCSI and NAS array solidly placed in the entry- to mid-market. Like many competitors, Overland relies on a single- or dual-controller storage “head” based on industry-standard CPU technology and scales with additional disk “shelves”. Unusually, Overland’s N2000 line currently relies on a single SAS connection daisy-chained to its E2000 expansion units. One hopes dual connections and faster connectivity are coming soon.

MaxiScale: Scale-Out NAS

Venture-funded startup MaxiScale developed a scale-out NAS capability, allowing multiple NAS servers to be consolidated into a unified namespace without the usual bottlenecks of clustered solutions. The company headed for the cloud storage market, boasting massive scalability and management benefits.

MaxiScale’s technology differentiator was in their rejection of conventional clustering and scale-out approaches. Many scale-out solutions rely on shared-nothing coordinated nodes, but it is often difficult to scale and manage these solutions. This has caused much effort to build cluster coordination through metadata, exemplified by SAN filesystems (including EMC’s MPFS and Quantum’s StorNext) as well as clustered NAS solutions like pNFS.

This MaxiScale illustration shows their distribution of metadata and content as well as their unified namespace

MaxiScale’s “FLEX” technology takes an entirely different approach. It distributes “peer sets” of data across multiple nodes like pNFS but also distributes metadata rather than relying on a single central node. Combining this with a unified namespace, MaxiScale claims to scale to thousands of nodes with linear performance. The company had targeted cloud service providers interested in massive scale using commodity hardware.

Overland + MaxiScale = SnapScale?

Overland appears to be bringing MaxiScale back down to earth, leveraging their technology to combine a set of in-datacenter SnapServers into a unified, high-performance cluster. Although a number of other companies claim scale-out capabilities (Isilon and HP X9000 spring to mind), this is a unique capability in the SMB and midrange NAS market, and Overland will surely make hay as a low-priced alternative.

The company could quickly implement MaxiScale’s software on their existing industry-standard hardware and push a line of “SnapScale” appliances. But things will get more interesting once they begin integrating the technology into their GuardianOS software. Imagine a scale-out solution that enables a company to grow from a single sub-$10,000 NAS to a vast cluster of thousands of nodes with linear performance gains. Even being able to add a half-dozen NAS heads would be a welcome alternative to Dell, HP, and NetApp offerings. In the longer term, Overland could use this technology to break from the head-and-expansion architecture they currently employ, shifting to a cloud-like distributed architecture.

Stephen’s Stance

Overland is making all the right moves. Eric Kelly should be commended for taking bold action to re-energize the company with an infusion of money, talent, and technology. The MaxiScale technology is impressive, and adding it to Snap for a mid-market offering is potentially game-changing.

There are lots of SMB and midrange NAS systems, and most are fairly similar in terms of technology. Overland fell in that group as well until now, but the addition of MaxiScale is a real differentiator for the company. Mansolf and Barrall have proven that they can take out-of-the-ordinary technology and market it to the masses, and this acquisition gives Overland another chance to execute. I will be watching their progress with great interest!

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2010. | Overland Snaps Up MaxiScale to Scale Up Snap
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The players are lining up for the biggest acquisition game enterprise IT has witnessed in a while

Today is the (a?) day of reckoning in the 3Par saga, with Dell widely expected to make a counter-offer higher than HP’s bid. But this mega deal, like the Data Domain war before it, sends a strong signal to the enterprise IT world: It’s open season on data storage companies! But the rising superpowers are also likely looking at networking as an area of expansion. The game is afoot!

The Competitors

The simple fact is, enterprise IT prefers to buy from large, established names like HP and IBM rather than smaller and less-familiar companies with names like Ocarina, EqualLogic, or even 3Par. The acceleration of sales by enterprise providers is what makes these big acquisitions so successful and why others involving less-powerful players often fail to deliver the same results.

Full-line “superpowers” like IBM, HP and now Dell and the new Oracle can influence purchasing decisions across a broad spectrum of hardware and software. Many large organizations are tightly coupled to one of these vendors, and will give their products stronger consideration even when they are new or unfamiliar. HP is already flexing their muscle selling their broadened network lineup, and Dell found that it could do this in data storage.

Software vendors like Microsoft, Citrix, and Oracle adamantly maintained a neutral stance toward hardware, but Ellison and company seem serious about changing this. Oracle’s success in selling Sun hardware will likely dictate further software acquisitions for Dell and HP, though IBM already has strength there. Then there is Intel, the wild card who just got wilder with their acquisition of McAfee.

Companies with narrower focus like Cisco, EMC, NetApp, Juniper, and Brocade have the same power within their sphere of influence but cannot pull in wholly-distinct products. Cisco is in the midst of this fight with their technically-excellent UCS blade servers: Although they were certainly a strategic CIO-level vendor in the largest organizations, “blades from a networking company” isn’t the as easy a decision as “networking gear from a full-line company.”

The Game

Then one must consider the market in contention. The enterprise IT space is not expanding, especially in the United States. This is very close to a zero-sum game, with Oracle’s or Dell’s wins being HP’s or IBM’s losses and vice-versa. There is massive money in play, and flexibility enough for it to swing between the competitors, but growth is not unlimited.

Enterprise storage and data center and campus networking are two areas where smaller companies retain enviably-large slices of the pie, explaining the interest in these spaces among the superpowers. These verticals still have room for sales to grow without displacing a fierce full-line foe, and the superpowers have lately been weak here. Storage and networking are enticing opportunities, but each slice is similarly dominated by “vertical superpowers” and partners EMC and Cisco.

So this is the game: Four full-line enterprise superpowers battling each other for datacenter dominance and coveting the extra profits of a few verticals. HP clearly believes they can chip away at EMC and Cisco in storage and networking; Dell and IBM have so far focused mainly on storage; and Oracle hasn’t made a move in either direction, instead challenging the other three in the core server and software space.

Pawns or Knights?

So where does this leave the smaller players? Are they merely pawns in the game, waiting to be sacrificed, or are they knights who can wield power across the field? The largest (Cisco and EMC especially) appear to have ambitions of their own as well as the financial and technical strength to shake up the game. They are unlikely to be acquired by the superpowers. Brocade, too, has broad strength in storage and networking but maintains relationships across the board that make an acquisition difficult.

Strong vertical players like Juniper, NetApp, Riverbed, and Compellent are ripe for acquisition, as were Foundry, 3Com, Data Domain, and 3Par. IBM, Dell, and Oracle are all likely buyers of the networking players, though HP may consider filling in where 3Com was found lacking. All four will likely take a strong look at the remaining storage players as well, with the loser in the battle for 3Par likely to be hungry indeed.

One should also consider the potential impact of smaller acquisitions. Although they would not immediately “move the needle” for a massive superpower, there are many excellent technology companies that could be bought low and pushed strongly. The enterprise-class technology at Sepaton, Pillar Data, Xiotech, BlueArc, Extreme Networks, Force10, Blue Coat, Isilon, CommVault, FalconStor, and many others should not be overlooked. If a superpower can drive a larger acquisition to succeed, imagine what they can do with strong but inexpensive technology from one of these!

Stephen’s Stance

This game is nowhere near finished. The 3Par acquisition will not only generate revenue, it will shake up the ranking of data storage array dominance. This is very likely to kick off additional acquisition in the data storage space, spurring either Dell or HP to pick up additional technology and perhaps causing IBM or Oracle to engage as well. With no easy alternatives to 3Par, I expect Compellent, Xiotech, and Pillar to get closer looks, but Sepaton and BlueArc are just as ripe. NetApp may be too expensive at this point, but would be a nice match for Oracle’s strategy.

HP’s acquisition of 3Com could also signal a race to integrate datacenter and campus networking technology into the stack. Many are suggesting a Brocade acquisition, and it would be much cheaper than Juniper, but OEM ties make it a difficult purchase for any of the superpowers. Extreme and Force10 would be excellent and less-expensive alternatives.

We should also keep our eyes outside the superpower space. Intel showed that they can make big moves, and Microsoft might consider a diversification into hardware as well. One should also look to the East, where Huawei could try to enter the Western market with a merger or joint-venture to cast off the China stigma. Although I would love to see a rebel alliance rise (imagine Juniper, NetApp, and Symantec joining forces!) this is not a likely scenario.

Image credit: Chess Board by mosdave

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2010. | The Enterprise IT Acquisition Game
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The storage industry got a lot more competitive this morning, as Dell announced plans to buy 3Par. This is the latest round in a well-established race for the enterprise storage dollar, challenging superpower (and Dell partner) EMC in the high-end SAN space. What does this acquisition say about the industry as a whole? Where are we headed?

I’ve long wished for a new enterprise storage superpower. Competition is good for everyone, and the enterprise storage space has always been highly competitive. Traditional SAN storage powers (EMC, HDS, HP, and IBM) have been under continual attack from tech-heavy upstarts like EqualLogic, LeftHand, Compellent, Xiotech, and 3Par. The smaller (revenue-wise) NAS market has been more serial, with NetApp knocking off Auspex, then challenged by EMC. Yet innovators have been thick there as well, from Exanet to Ibrix, Isilon to Onstor.

Through it all, one thing has been clear: The major companies, though perhaps lagging in technology, were usually able to withstand the attack of the upstarts through sheer strength of salesforce. Storage is a strategic investment, and selection of a storage platform is much more far-reaching than many IT product decisions. The inertia of an installed storage environment makes it a real challenge to switch vendors, giving the established players massive leverage.

It became clear to me and many others that the best way for upstart companies (and, by extension, technologies) was to be part of an established vendor’s sales process. OEM relationships were a big part of this (witness the success of BlueArc and even NetApp and HDS) but acquisition was a much stronger proposition. If customers were warmer to OEM products than independent sales, they are much hotter when it comes to acquired technology. HP, Dell, IBM, and EMC have all demonstrated the power that comes when an established company buys a startup and puts the power of their sales force behind these new products.

This explains Dell’s fantastic success with EqualLogic. They took a product that was emerging as dominant in its niche (midrange iSCSI SAN) and blasted it into the market, while at the same time optimizing manufacturing and deployment. EMC did the same with Clariion and DataDomain, and HP is showing strong signs of health with LeftHand and Ibrix. Then there is IBM, who took XIV out of Israel and made it a source of irritation to the rest of the industry.

Many industry watchers have long wondered what would happen if the smaller guys got together, forming a new superpower of their own. Would 3Par, BlueArc, and Sepaton be a real challenger? What about Xiotech or Compellent and Isilon or FalconStor? Is mixing and matching some smaller companies a recipe for success? The answer was often a counter-question: What if someone like Dell, who knows how to manufacture and sell, picked them up instead? This seemed much more like a sure-thing, since the established management and financials stave off potential integration issues.

It appears that this is the future. Established players will pick up smaller companies, fortifying their offerings and accelerating sales in a way the little guys weren’t capable of. Dell’s billion-dollar acquisition of 3Par reportedly headed off a similar offer from HP, and will likely spark another acquisition. I imagine the management teams at Compellent and Xiotech just got a lot busier…

Clearly, Dell and HP are playing this game. IBM and EMC are in it, too. But what about Cisco and Oracle? Could they be planning storage acquisitions of their own, to the detriment of partners like EMC and Hitachi? What about the strong contingent from Japan, NEC and Hitachi? And who gets picked up next? We shall see!

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2010. | Dell + EqualLogic, Exanet, Ocarina, 3Par = What?
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Snap and Overland – Hot Potato on a Sinking Ship?

The future of Overland is tied to Snap Appliance, makers of entry-level network-attached storage (NAS) systems. Current Overland CEO, Eric Kelly, snapped up the company in 2002 for just $10 million, quickly flipping it to Adaptec for $100 million. But the storage system market wasn’t right for the controller maker, so Kelly stepped up and directed Overland to repurchase Snap in 2008.

With Overland running a reported 70% of its business through Hewlett-Packard, that company’s decision to switch suppliers represented a potentially life-threatening challenge. Losses rang up and the company’s stock was pummeled. Shares of OVRL traded over $20 in 2006, but had slipped below $3 in 2008. Earnings declined, slipping into the red in the fourth quarter of 2005. The company hasn’t reported a profit since 2006 and the 2009 balance sheet shows a net negative total equity.

Control-Alt-Delete

The situation at Overland apparently does not appear quite as bleak to insiders. Eric Kelly stepped up to the helm as CEO in January of 2009 and quickly set about assembling a new management team. He brought in former Snap and Data Robotics marketing whiz Jillian Mansolf in July, presumably to focus on the Snap Appliance storage systems.

Overland NEO 4000E

Now Overland has taken another step, appointing BlueArc and Data Robotics founder Geoff Barrall as CTO and VP of Engineering. Kelly, Barrall, and Mansolf are a formidable team, lending the company the credibility it needs to steer Overland out of trouble.

Overland is in the process of expanding its Snap operations and moving it from Milpitas to San Jose. This month, the company revamped its NEO tape libraries and launched a new line of Snap appliances featuring enhanced support for VMware and Hyper-V. Overland also outsourced product manufacturing to Foxconn, improving gross product profitability.

On the financial front, Overland shored up its finances with $12 million in private equity funding on February 22.

Overland REO 9100 VTL

A Full-Line Storage Company?

Although known primarily for its NEO line of tape libraries, Overland has a much broader product portfolio. The company sells a line of virtual tape libraries that once used IBM’s Diligent deduplication technology but this relationship is long over.

The Snap line has expanded into both NAS and iSCSI SAN primary storage arrays as well. Although the low-end 2-drive SnapServer 110 might not look like much, the rack-mount SnapServer 600 series can be expanded over 100 TB. This is accomplished by adding storage expansion chassis behind the slim 1U SnapServer head, but we suspect I/O capacity and reliability will be limited when daisy chaining seven expansion units on a single SAS port.

Overland Snap Server 210

Overland’s storage lineup puts it squarely into the exploding small- and medium-sized business storage market. With server virtualization and database applications demanding ever more capacity and performance, many smaller IT operations are looking to add networked storage. But even the entry-level products of storage titans like EMC and NetApp are out of reach for these small shops, leaving a hole in the market. Companies like Overland are rushing to take advantage of this market with devices like the SnapServer, Data Robotics’ Drobo Elite, and EMC’s Iomega ix4 line. Those that offer low cost, ease of use, and integration with Windows and VMware are likely to be very successful over the next few years.

Overland may just surprise us all with a serious resurgence. CEO Kelly has lined up a great management team, brought in extra cash, and refocused the company on a nascent market opportunity. Not bad for a company many had long written off!

Listen to Overland CEO Eric Kelly on the InfoSmack podcast

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2010. | The Rebirth of Overland Storage
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Unlike IBRIX, which sold software to transform commodity hardware into a clustered NAS solution, ONStor designed both the hardware and software included in their home-grown products. The company also re-sold Fujitsu’s Eternus and Nexsan SATA storage systems and Tek-Tools software. ONStor raised $80 million in its 9 years of operation.

LSI has found success supplying hardware components to the storage and networking markets. In April, the company purchased the 3ware RAID adapter business from AMCC. LSI’s storage operations were to be spun out as Engenio in a 2004 IPO that never happened. That operation later re-joined the LSI mothership, combining with the storage controller business. This is where ONStor will land as well. LSI manufactures components on an OEM basis for many in the storage industry, including BlueArc, IBM, MaXXan, Sepaton, and Sun.

What does LSI get for their $25 million?

• ONStor’s EverON software, which powers its NAS and IP storage product lines and includes the StorFS scalable file system. EverON offers clustering with a global namespace, automated pooling and provisioning, and snapshots.
• The Bobcat and Cougar Broadcom-powered NAS gateway hardware platforms offer energy-efficient and scalable virtualized and clustered NAS in front of existing SAN or NAS storage capacity using the EverON OS.
• The Pantera system uses Intel Xeon CPUs and adds iSCSI to the mix. It uses a different operating system which leverages ZFS.
• ONStor also re-sold the Fujitsu Eternus 2000 and 4000 Fibre Channel SAN storage systems.

LSI is likely to be eager to leverage the EverON software and Bobcat/Cougar platforms with their OEM partners. Expect many vendors (ahem: IBM) to quickly counter HP’s new IBRIX-powered scalable NAS with LSI-powered alternatives. The Pantera seems less-likely to be of interest to OEMs, being based on commodity hardware and software. And continuation of the Eternus line seems flat-out illogical.

More coverage: Terri McClure and Mark Peters of ESG

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2009. | LSI Picks Up ONStor
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• Reliability – DMX-like reliability and robustness
• Scalability – DMX-like scalability for block, IBM SOFS for NAS
• Performance – DMX-like performance for block, BlueArc for NAS
• Flexibility – Support for all protocols in a common consistent manner like OnTap
• Thin Provisioning – 3Par’s thin provisioning
• Wide Striping – Genuine wide-stripping across ALL Spindles not just a proportion or across groups of spindles – Think 3Par
• Automated Storage Tiering – Think Compellant on steroids!
• Automated Optimisation – Think 3Par
• Dedupe – Dedupe at block or file level – not seen a truly great dedupe solution yet
• Scalable Heterogeneous Support – IBM SVC or HDS
• Minimal-performance impacting Snapshots – think NetApp or….Sun
• Writeable Thin Clones – think LSI’s DPM8400
• Synchronous Replication – think SRDF
• Asynchronous Replication – think of something which works without a huge amount of work
• Provisioning interface – think XIV, think 3Par
• Analytics – think Sun
• Monitoring/reporting – think Onaro
• Cost – think PC World (who are too expensive to but you get the idea!)

So a merger between IBM/EMC/HDS/NetApp/Sun/Compellant/BlueArc/LSI/3Par would be a great start. Let’s throw Cisco into the mix as well for a unified data-centre fabric and we’re done!

What features do you want to see? I’d love to know!

And vendors, without too much marchitecture, what are your killer features? The things that you are most proud of? I don’t want a big bragging list but what’s the one problem you think you’ve solved which you are most proud of?

© Martin for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Perfection…
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TechTarget's annual Storage Product of the Year awards have been announced!

The mainstream media is still digesting the Oscar awards, but we in storage had our own announcement this week: TechTarget’s (now PDF) Storage magazine announced their Storage Products of the Year award for 2008.

Without further ado, the awards and my reaction!

Disk and disk subsystems

A category of much annual contention, the gold award went deservedly to the�BlueArc Titan 3200. BlueArc’s product range is small, with just a few systems on offer, but the 3200 was indeed a major upgrade. The bronze-placed�Hitachi Data Systems�AMS 2000�might easily have taken the top award as well, however, introducing major advancements in the midrange market. Taking silver was the news-making�Intel X25-E SATA Solid-State Drive.

The placement of disk drives in the same category as SAN and NAS storage systems, however, highlights something of a categorization problem for this award. Should Seagate, STEC, and Intel really be battling it out with the very systems that use their drives? I’d like to see separate component and array categories in the future.

Overlooked finalists in this category were EMC’s CLARiiON CX4, IBM’s XIV,�Isilon’s X-Series, 3PAR’s T-Class, and�Xiotech’s Emprise 7000. Any of these might have placed, and 3PAR, IBM, and Xiotech might have taken gold with a different set of judges. Looking at this broad list, however, highlights the difficulty in this award. BlueArc, HDS, and Intel deserved praise, but the rest should be recognized as well!

Storage management tools

VMware�takes a deserved gold award for�Storage vMotion, certainly the MVP in storage software this year if one considers adoption and impact.�Silver went to NetApp’s Deduplication�technology, the first (and still only) deduplication certified for primary storage use.�Bronze went to CloudNAS from�Nirvanix, an addition that allowed the storage service provider to offer services using standard NAS protocols.

EMC’s integration of VMware with ControlCenter 6.1 deserved recognition as well, as did Mimosa’s updated NearPoint 3.5. One really overlooked product is SANPulse Technologies‘ SANlogics 2.0 – go check it out and let me know if you think it deserved to place!

Networking equipment

If you haven’t experienced Riverbed’s gold-winning Optimization System (RiOS) 5.0, you might not understand just what the big deal is. 5.5 might win again next year, with solid updates to accelerate even tough WAN traffic like encrypted MAPI and signed SMB.

The silver award went to Brocade’s DCX Backbone, but time will tell if this is a wiser choice than rival Cisco’s updated MDS. I suppose if we compare only the updated DCX to what little Cisco did to the MDS last year, Brocade clearly gets the nod. But I might have skipped both products to let�IBM’s�updated�SAN Volume Controller (SVC)�have a place on this list. It added thin provisioning last year and remains IBM’s best storage product.

Bronze-winning�NetEx HyperIP 5.5�could easily have taken top honors – it’s a real value for the money in WAN acceleration! Compared to Riverbed on features it doesn’t look like much, but compare price quotes and see if your head doesn’t spin!

Backup and disaster recovery software and services

VMware�continued their roll with a gold medal for�Site Recovery Manager 1.0. Like Storage vMotion, SRM came out strong to widespread acclaim, and is likely to have a major impact in the coming years. A solid choice.

FalconStor�claims silver with their�Network Storage Server (NSS) 6.0�platform. I’m puzzled by the placement of this product in the backup and DR category, but what can you do? Bronze went to�Acronis Recovery for Microsoft Exchange, a product I don’t know much about. Must be good, though!

Backup hardware

Data Domain�is everywhere lately, and their�DD690 Deduplication Storage System�picked up a gold medal here. I hear that these things are selling like crazy, though, which I’m sure Data Domain is happier with than the award!�Permabit�took silver with their�Enterprise Archive Data Center Series. Lots of folks who know more about the backup space than I have had good things to say about it, as well as the bronze-winning�Quantum DXi7500.

Although backup isn’t my thing, I wanted to point out that�Cleversafe deserved mention with their, well, clever�Dispersed Storage Network.

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Reacting to the 2008 Storage Products of the Year
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