Short answer: Yes, it will be SSDs + SAS and within 2 years.

The real quesion is when 15K RPM highspeed drives will be replaced with SSDs and 7.2K RPM high capacity drives.  SAS will probably end up replacing both FC and SATA in the majority of mid-range storage but the jury is still out on if this will happen in high-end arrays.

What are we talking about here? From an array design perspective, frequently accessed blocks of data should be served from ram and SSD.  SSDs have a much faster response time (microseconds vs. milliseconds) than traditional hard disk drives which enable this possibility.  The Sun Unified Storage platform was one of the first platforms to do this all in one array with their Hybrid Storage Pool design.  There are also some new appliances coming out like the Xcelasan from Dataram.  NetApp offers read accelerationt through their PAM 1 (Performance Acceleration Modules).  EMC will also start the transition at the LUN level with their implementation of FAST as described by Devang Panchigar.  This list is not meant to be comprehensive as I’m sure I have left out vendors and their roadmaps.

When will this happen? I expect the majority of storage vendors to implement this type of solution at the block level within the next 2 years based on current development cycles from most major storage vendors.  It will take some longer than others because of their architectures. It will be a key differentiating feature between vendors.  Beyond basic tiering between SSDs and high capacity disks we should see more advanced algorithms on what data and where to move it to.  I’ve followed journey of Sun’s ZFS  on the zfs-discuss mailing lists over the last year and have noticed that peculiar performance behaviors happen (write-pulsing) have required fine-tuning.

© edsai for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Can and when will SSDs + SATA replace FC/SAS?
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EMC’s Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) was one of the most welcome annoucements made during the Symmetrix V-Max introduction. It would be a significant modernization of EMC’s Symmetrix line, and would be one of the first unique features of the Symmetrix V-Max line. But many, including me, were disappointed to learn in May that FAST would not be available for upwards of a year. The exact release dates have been unclear since then, but the company is not becoming more open as the release nears: FAST V1, which works at LUN level, will be released in December, and FAST V2, with sub-LUN granularity, will follow in May of mid-2010!

EMC mentioned this schedule on their public earnings call, repeated it in discussions with Enterprise Storage Forum, and corporate PR confirmed it to me this morning. FAST is, if you will excuse the pun, fast-approaching!

There’s actually a very-significant difference between FAST versions 1 and 2:

• FAST version 1 (coming in December 2009) can automatically migrate an entire LUN between tiers of storage on the Symmetrix V-Max based on access patterns. This is a nice-to-have feature, but does not yet live up to the promise of automated tiered storage, as pioneered by Compellent and offered in various forms by many other storage companies. I am told that FAST version 1 also does not support virtually-provisioned (thin) volumes. Although FAST will make it much easier to take advantage of solid state flash drives (EFDs to EMC), it will do nothing to improve utilization.
• FAST version 2 (coming in May mid-2010?) will automatically move smaller sub-LUN pieces of storage between tiers of storage, and will reportedly support virtual provisioning. It is likely that FAST would use the same extent size supported by virtual provisioning, which is 12 tracks or 768 KB. The combination of virtual provisioning and fully-automated storage tiering will finally EMC the ammunition they need to defend their turf against smaller challengers when it comes to these sticky technical features.

So there you have it. EMC V-Max gets FAST in December 2009 and May mid-2010! Now how about a schedule for geo-distributed clustering?

Update: Fixed two typos above. I wrote “May 2009″ instead of “May 2010″. You should see my checkbook!

Note: Although Lou Przystas told Enterprise Storage Forum that FAST V2 would come in May, EMC has apparently not set a hard date and are saying “mid-2010″ at this point. Even this is an aggressive ship date, but I won’t say EMC missed it unless we haven’t got it by the end of summer!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. |
EMC V-Max FAST: Coming in December … And 2010!


This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Everything, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you’d like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2009. | EMC V-Max FAST: Coming in December … And 2010!
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Here are some requirements and limitations related to using the RAID-6 technology on the EMC Clariion platforms.

• RAID-6 is only supported with Flare Release 26 and above on Clariion systems.
• Flare 26 only works on the EMC Clariion CX300, CX500, CX700, all CX3-xx platforms and all CX4-xxx platforms.|
• Any systems running below Flare Release 26 (example Release 13, 16, 19, 24) are not compatible to run RAID-6 (Clariion Systems like CX200, CX400 and CX600).

• Minimum disk required to support RAID-6 with Clariion systems is 2 or 4 or 6 or 8 or 14 data disks with 2 Parity disks (Your typical configuration would look like 2D+2P or 4D+2P or 6D+2P or 8D+2P or 14D+2P, where D = Data Disk and P = Parity Disk)
• To configure RAID-6, you will need even number of disk drives in the RAID Group that you are trying to configure.
• RAID-6 is supported on either EFD (Enterprise Flask Disk) or Fiber (FC) or ATA or SATA drives on EMC Clariion Systems.
• RAID-6 Raid group (RAID SET) can be implemented within an enclosure or expanded beyond a single enclosure
• RAID-6 can co-exist in the same DAE (disk array enclosure) as a RAID-5 and/or RAID-1/0 and/or other RAID types.
• RAID-6 supports global hot sparing like other RAID technologies.
• Supports MetaLUN expansion through concatenated or striped expansion only if all the meta member LUNs are RAID-6 devices (LUNs).
• RAID-6 configuration is possible through Navisphere and naviseccli only.
• With RAID-6 traditionally supported CLI interfaces like Java CLI and Classic CLI have been retired.
• Defragmentation with RAID-6 is currently not supported on Flare Release 26.
• You cannot add new drives to an existing RAID-6 LUN, but you can expand the LUN through RAID-6 MetaLUN technology. Example of this will be, if you have a 6D+2P RAID-6 set and would like to add 16 more drives to the same RAID Group, you cannot accomplish it, but if you manage to create either 2 sets of 6D+2P or 1 set of 14D+2P, and then run a MetaLUN concatenate, you will be able to necessarily achieve the same end result.
• You can have Clariion systems with various different RAID group technologies in the same global domain, but again from a management perspective certain traditional CLI interfaces will not work with RAID-6.
• Using the Virtual LUN Technology with Flare Release 26, now customers can migrate various LUNs (RAID-5, RAID-1/0) to RAID-6 technology. The technology allows the new RAID-6 LUN to assume the exact identity of the previous LUN making the migration process much easy.
• Traditional replication and copy software’s like SANCopy, SnapView, MirrorView, and RecoverPoint are all supported for RAID-6 technology.
• Never use RAID-6 technology with a mix of EFD, FC, ATA and SATA drives in the same RAID Group.
• Never use RAID-6 technology with a mix of various drive speeds like 15K or 10K or 7.2K RPM, drive speed should be exactly similar.

• Oh the most important note: 2 drive failures in the same RAID Group and no data loss or data unavailable (DU / DL), making this a very robust RAID technology. There are some performance overhead related to use of RAID-6 systems with small and random writes. While there is an added penalty with Row Parity and Diagonal Parity calculations on the Clariion.

If you would like to see any further post on RAID-6 workings on Clariion Platforms, please feel free to leave a comment.

To read about other RAID-6 implementations with various platforms, please see below.

EMC Symmetrix RAID 6

SUN StorageTek’s RAID 6

HP’s RAID 6

NetApp’s RAID–DP

Hitachi’s (HDS) RAID 6

Different RAID Technologies (Detailed)

Different RAID Types

© Devang for Gestalt IT, 2009. | EMC Clariion RAID-6 requirements and limitations
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Below are some stats related to the supported drive types on a Symmetrix V-Max system with 5874.123.104 microcode.

Possibly with introduction of FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering) later in the year we will see an upgrade to the microcode family for the V-Max systems to 5976, also with that expect a much denser EFD support.

In the mean time we should atleast see some additional support for VSphere 4.0 (Vmware) in 2009 with 5875 family of microcode. With that we should see sort of a new concept of Federation with Symmetrix V-Max Systems where EMC might give some clues on how the 8 engine systems might be expanded into either 16 or 32 engine systems. A nice blog post by @edsai on the breathing data site. http://breathingdata.com/?p=20

The following size drives types are supported with Symmetrix V-Max Systems at the current microcode 5874: 146 GB, 200 GB, 300 GB, 400 GB, 450 GB, 1000 GB.

Drive Types, Rotational Speed and Formatted Capacity

146 GB FC Drive

Drive Speed: 15K

Open Systems Format Cap: 143.53 GB

Mainframe Format Cap: 139.34 GB

300 GB FC Drive

Drive Speed: 15K

Open Systems Format Cap: 288.19 GB

Mainframe Format Cap: 279.77 GB

400 GB FC Drive

Drive Speed: 10K

Open Systems Format Cap: 393.84 GB

Mainframe Format Cap: 382.32 GB

450 GB FC Drive

Drive Speed: 15K

Open Systems Format Cap: 432.29 GB

Mainframe Format Cap: 419.64 GB

1000 GB SATA II Drive

Drive Speed: 7.2K

Open Systems Format Cap: 984.81 GB

Mainframe Format Cap: 956.02 GB

200 GB EFD

Drive Speed: Not Applicable

Open Systems Format Cap: 196.97 GB

Mainframe Format Cap: 191.21 GB

400 GB EFD

Drive Speed: Not Applicable

Open Systems Format Cap: 393.84 GB

Mainframe Format Cap: 382.33 GB

Support for 73GB and 146GB EFD’s have been dropped with the Symmetrix V-Max Systems, they will still be supported with the Symmetrix DMX-4 Systems which in addition to 73 GB and 146GB also supports 200GB and 400GB EFD’s.

© Devang for Gestalt IT, 2009. | EMC Symmetrix V-Max: Supported drive type
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The following size drives types are supported with Symmetrix DMX-4 Systems at the current microcode 5773: 73GB, 146GB, 200GB, 300GB, 400GB, 450GB, 500GB, 1000GB. Flavors of drives include 10K or 15K and interface varies 2GB or 4GB.
The drive has capabilities to auto negotiate to the backplane speed. If the drive LED is green the speed is 2GB, if its neon blue its 4GB interface.

To read a blog post on supported drive types on EMC Symmetrix V-Max System

The following are details on the drives for the Symmetrix DMX-4 Systems. You will find details around Drive Types, Rotational Speed, Interface, Device Cache, Access times, Raw Capacity, Open Systems Formatted Capacity and Mainframe Formatted Capacity.

73GB FC Drive

Drive Speed: 10K

Interface: 2GB / 4GB

Device Cache: 16MB

Access speed: 4.7 – 5.4 mS

Raw Capacity: 73.41 GB

Open Systems Formatted Cap: 68.30 GB

Mainframe Formatted Cap: 72.40 GB

73GB FC Drive

Drive Speed: 15K

Interface: 2GB / 4GB

Device Cache: 16MB

Access speed: 3.5 – 4.0 mS

Raw Capacity: 73.41 GB

Open Systems Formatted Cap: 68.30 GB

Mainframe Formatted Cap: 72.40 GB

146GB FC Drive

Drive Speed: 10K

Interface: 2GB / 4GB

Device Cache: 32MB

Access speed: 4.7 – 5.4 mS

Raw Capacity: 146.82 GB

Open Systems Formatted Cap: 136.62 GB

Mainframe Formatted Cap: 144.81 GB

146GB FC Drive

Drive Speed: 15K

Interface: 2GB / 4GB

Device Cache: 32MB

Access speed: 3.5 – 4.0 mS

Raw Capacity: 146.82 GB

Open Systems Formatted Cap: 136.62 GB

Mainframe Formatted Cap: 144.81 GB

300GB FC Drive

Drive Speed: 10K

Interface: 2GB / 4GB

Device Cache: 32MB

Access speed: 4.7 – 5.4 mS

Raw Capacity: 300.0 GB

Open Systems Formatted Cap: 279.17 GB

Mainframe Formatted Cap: 295.91 GB

300GB FC Drive

Drive Speed: 15K

Interface: 2GB / 4GB

Device Cache: 32MB

Access speed: 3.6 – 4.1 mS

Raw Capacity: 300.0 GB

Open Systems Formatted Cap: 279.17 GB

Mainframe Formatted Cap: 295.91 GB

400GB FC Drive

Drive Speed: 10K

Interface: 2GB / 4GB

Device Cache: 16MB

Access speed: 3.9 – 4.2 mS

Raw Capacity: 400.0 GB

Open Systems Formatted Cap: 372.23 GB

Mainframe Formatted Cap: 394.55 GB

450GB FC Drive

Drive Speed: 15K

Interface: 2GB / 4GB

Device Cache: 16MB

Access speed: 3.4 – 4.1 mS

Raw Capacity: 450.0 GB

Open Systems Formatted Cap: 418.76 GB

Mainframe Formatted Cap: 443.87 GB

500GB SATA II Drive

Drive Speed: 7.2K

Interface: 2GB / 4GB

Device Cache: 32MB

Access speed: 8.5 to 9.5 mS

Raw Capacity: 500.0 GB

Open Systems Formatted Cap: 465.29 GB

Mainframe Formatted Cap: 493.19 GB

1000GB SATA II Drive

Drive Speed: 7.2K

Interface: 2GB / 4GB

Device Cache: 32MB

Access speed: 8.2 – 9.2 mS

Raw Capacity: 1000.0 GB

Open Systems Formatted Cap: 930.78 GB

Mainframe Formatted Cap: 986.58 GB

73GB EFD

Drive Speed: Not Applicable

Interface: 2GB

Device Cache: Not Applicable

Access speed: 1mS

Raw Capacity: 73.0 GB

Open Systems Formatted Cap: 73.0 GB

Mainframe Formatted Cap: 73.0 GB

146GB EFD

Drive Speed: Not Applicable

Interface: 2GB

Device Cache: Not Applicable

Access speed: 1mS

Raw Capacity: 146.0 GB

Open Systems Formatted Cap: 146.0 GB

Mainframe Formatted Cap: 146.0 GB

200GB EFD

Drive Speed: Not Applicable

Interface: 2GB / 4GB

Device Cache: Not Applicable

Access speed: 1mS

Raw Capacity: 200 GB

Open Systems Formatted Cap: 196.97 GB

Mainframe Formatted Cap: 191.21 GB

400GB EFD

Drive Speed: Not Applicable

Interface: 2GB / 4GB

Device Cache: Not Applicable

Access speed: 1mS

Raw Capacity: 400.0 GB

Open Systems Formatted Cap: 393.84 GB

Mainframe Formatted Cap: 382.33 GB

Support for 73GB and 146GB EFD’s have been dropped with the Symmetrix V-Max Systems, they will still be supported with the Symmetrix DMX-4 Systems which in addition to 73 GB and 146GB also supports 200GB and 400GB EFD’s.

© Devang for Gestalt IT, 2009. | EMC Symmetrix DMX-4: Supported Drive Types
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So let’s say a customer decided to purchase a new V-Max system from EMC today. What would they get?

• They would get a freshly-designed cabinet, controllers, and firmware with more cache RAM, faster CPUs, larger disk drives, and support for all of their existing Symmetrix DMX features. Beta customers actually had both components late last year, and customer orders are proceeding. So it is safe to say that the V-Max clustered array itself is currently shipping. Note that the maximum configuration is 8 engines, each with a quad-core CPU, 128 GB of cache RAM, and 16 each of host and drive channels.
• Like the DMX before it, the V-Max supports a variety of disk drive types, from flash to Fibre Channel to Serial ATA. The larger so-called enterprise flash drives (EFDs) also appear to be shipping this quarter.
• Automatic provisioning with templates and management is available now as well.
• Virtual provisioning (thin provisioning and non-disruptive relocation) are enabled and shipping, but they’re mutually exclusive (see more below).
• PowerPath/VE and vSphere Storage plug-ins are shipping, even though VMware vSphere 4 was just released.

So our V-Max customer would be able to buy and deploy a solid, scalable, next-generation enterprise storage array that does everything they expect from existing systems and a little more. This is more than many new or re-engineered storage products can boast.

But our customer does not get everything that has been talked about regarding the V-Max architecture. What don’t they get?

• Future protocols like 10 GbE iSCSI and FCoE and 8 Gb Fibre Channel are not shipping yet. No surprise there.
• One of the most important components of V-Max is its fully-automated storage tiering, called FAST by EMC, which will not be fully realized for years. This technology is a major departure for the Symmetrix, which has long had the capability to manually move volumes but lacked the sub-LUN granularity needed to truly take advantage of the newest storage technologies like flash SSD. Although EMC plans to release “FAST v1″ during the second half of this year, this functionality merely automates the existing LUN relocation capability of all current Symmetrix arrays (for non-thin-provisioned LUNs) and is nowhere near the promise of FAST. Full FAST will not ship until 2010, and we suspect it might be well into that year.
• True Virtual Matrix mode, where multiple V-Max array “clusters” link together virtually to form a system larger than 8 engines. EMC has also talked about extending this mode over distances, creating a geographically dispersed array. None of this is coming any time soon.

So the answer to the core question of whether the EMC Symmetrix V-Max is shipping is yes. Customers can go out and buy one. But they will not get all of the functionality discussed and presented by EMC and its representatives last month.

Not So FAST

Fully-Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) is one of the most significant capabilities of the V-Max platform. As described, FAST will not be available for a year or more. This is not a secret or a scoop – EMC is the first to admit that FAST was pre-announced and is “Coming Next”!

V-Max's FAST technology "automates movement and placement of data based on changing needs" (illustration courtesy of EMC)

What is FAST? It is an automated tiered storage technology that can place data on different tiers of storage based on requirements. High-performance data on flash, bulk data on SATA, and so forth. EMC V-Max marketing materials, and the launch content, spent much time focusing on this technology, telling us that it automatically adjusts tiering of data, not just volumes, and reacts as needs change, rather than statically placing data. We’ve reported some confusion about just how FAST accomplishes this in the past, but we all agree that this would be an awfully nice way for an array to manage data.

At the core of FAST is EMC’s recently-introduced virtual provisioning technology. Why is FAST so much better than VP, and other competing automated storage tiering technologies? According to EMC blogger, Barry Burke, FAST has five key benefits:

1. Change RAID protection types as LUNs and volumes are relocated
2. Relocate a large number of LUNs and volumes concurrently
3. LUN and volume relocation is very quick
4. LUN and volume relocation has low performance impact on the array, and on the applications using the data being moved
5. LUN and volume relocation is done without disrupting replication

Let’s give EMC some credit for its FAST vision, as well as the pieces that have already been shipped. But we’re still quite a way off from seeing this FAST vision realized in production technology:

1. Current DMX and V-Max hardware allows customers to use multiple drive types, including flash SSD EFD, for over a year. Many other vendors are just now getting around to shipping flash disks. No one would claim that this is “FAST”.
2. Current DMX and V-Max also allows thin provisioning (a component of EMC’s Virtual Provisioning). This isn’t FAST either.
3. Current V-Max software allows customers to non-disruptively relocate volumes between disk and RAID types (another component of Virtual Provisioning). This is very nice to have. But this is not fully automated storage tiering. It’s just easier storage tiering. And it doesn’t apply to thinly-provisioned volumes.
4. FAST V1, which EMC plans to ship in the second half of 2009, will automate the selection and migration of volumes to different disk and RAID types. Although this is technically fully automated storage tiering, it does not quite live up to the promise of FAST as described by EMC at the V-Max launch. And it still won’t support thin (Virtual Provisioned) volumes!
5. Finally, EMC claims that they will fully realize the FAST vision with FAST V2, which will ship in 2010. This would enable granular (sub-volume) tiered storage for thinly-provisioned volumes.

Why does it matter that EMC won’t ship FAST V2 until next year? Simply put, anything less than FAST V2 will still not effectively utilize the expensive EFD capacity paid for by EMC customers. Even FAST V1 will take up expensive high-performance flash capacity with the entire contents of a LUN, including empty space! Customers wishing to conserve EFD capacity will use virtual provisioning to only store “used” data on flash. But these cannot be easily relocated if demand does not meet expectations, and not all of that used data requires high-speed flash storage. EMC also lacks thick-to-thin (or thin-to-thick) technology, though we suspect they’re working on that.

So customers have a choice: They can either use their EFDs more efficiently with thin volumes, or move data between EFDs and disks as needs change. They cannot have both.

An open question is how much EMC will charge for FAST V1 and V2. Assuming they are like Apple with the iPod Touch, and their history affirms this, EMC will charge for FAST as each major new capability is delivered. EMC has always charged for major new features. This is due to accounting rules which prohibit a company from charging customers ahead of releasing major features. The only way around this would be for EMC to recognize V-Max revenue as recurring over time, as in the case of the iPhone at Apple. Fat chance of that! Note that EMC is also talking about bringing FAST to CLARiiON and Celerra, but those timetables are not disclosed.

How Big Is Your Virtual Matrix?

Many have wondered about EMC’s choice of a name for this new storage system, some speculating that since the “V” stands for “virtual”, the V-Max was designed for server virtualization environments. EMC CEO Joe Tucci’s comments at the V-Max launch seemed to indicate this as well.

However, while it certainly is targeted at VMware vSphere and similar systems, the “V-Max” name actually has a very specific, and very different, meaning. “V-Max” is actually a reference to EMC’s new “Virtual Matrix” architecture, which allows V-Max engines to combine into a scale-out array with a virtual matrix of interconnects. Like FAST, the Virtual Matrix Architecture is the real vision of revolutionary storage from EMC. And like FAST, this vision is nowhere near being realized.

V-Max is so far being sold as a stand alone machine, not a scale-out cluster. At current GA, EMC is only offering 8 engines that are part of the same system cabinet (physically connected through MIBE and SIB), but there is nothing available that would connect 2 of these system cabinets, where instead of 8 engines you are now running 16 or 32 engines, forming a real V-Max. 

The V-Max name refers to the Virtual Matrix architecture of the array cluster (illustration courtesy of EMC)

EMC’s “vision” clearly extends well beyond 8 engines and a single V-Max.  EMC’s design allows for a federated set of V-Max machines that can all be managed as a single entity, and the company alluded to this in their product introduction.  They suggested that these separate V-Max machines wouldn’t even have to be in the same place, physically.  

Although the vision articulated at the product’s introduction talked about massive scaling in multiple locations, EMC’s maximum current configuration for the V-Max is 8 engines with up to 128 Xeon CPU cores, 1 TB of RAM, and 128 each front-end and back-end storage interfaces linked to 2,400 disk drives. This is no tiny system, to be sure, easily doubling the current DMX-4 array’s scalability as well as besting the competition. In fact, EMC can rightly claim that a V-Max can be configured today to be the largest integrated enterprise storage array available.

But 8 engines linked by local RapidIO connections in a single data center isn’t a revolution. The revolution happens when EMC realizes its vision of linking “dozens” of engines, thousands of ports, and tens of thousands of drives into a geographically dispersed system. Former EMC executive, Dave Donatelli, now controversially linked to HP, claimed that the V-Max can support up to 256 engines in a product launch video that has now been removed. IDC analyst, Benjamin Woo, talked about EMC’s ability to support a “single namespace” across geographies during his launch coverage. EMC’s Chuck Hollis says that “the overall architecture can eventually grow into literally thousands of ports, thousands of processing cores, tens of thousands of disks, and many terabytes of cache memory — all operating as a single, tightly-coupled array.” EMC’s Barry Burke also suggests that future revisions to the Virtual Matrix architecture could scale well beyond anything hinted here.

Again, in that same post, EMC’s Hollis tells us that the architecture delivers four key benefits in terms of scalability (bulleted for your pleasure):

1. “The difference between the two?  The V-Max can grow and grow from that modest starting point — still capturing the economics of mid-tier arrays and linear cost scaling.
2. Second, the V-Max array isn’t limited to a single cabinet with short wires.  Think in terms of multiple cabinets, separated by many meters or — in the future — longer distances using optical connections – all behaving as a single, giant array.
3. Third, the scaling is utterly linear and modular.  As more building blocks are added, the array gets bigger and bigger, and there’s no need to replace the frame, buy a bigger cabinet, etc. — nothing gets thrown away.
4. Fourth, there’s no assumption that all the building blocks are exactly the same.  Some may be big, some may be small, some may be old, some may be new.”

So a reader would look at this and think to himself, “this new V-Max starts as cheap as a competing midrange array and can scale out with different building blocks to span my entire data center, or even my entire enterprise.” This is a great promise, and awfully near to the holy grail of enterprise storage.

The problem is that none of this is possible today.

1. The V-Max starts at “about $250,000″ for a single engine. This is much, much more expensive than competing midrange arrays. It has to be, since a single V-Max engine has a lot more horsepower and componentry than any midrange array!
2. All V-Max connectivity is currently done with RapidIO connections in “a single cabinet with short wires.” Perhaps you could define “cabinet” differently and claim that the V-Max uses multiples, but no one (especially an EMCer who wants to keep his job) would suggest that the V-Max engines can be “separated by many meters or … longer distances.” When Chuck says this is “in the future” he means it!
3. V-Max scales to 8 engines, and initial reports are that scaling is indeed fairly linear. So this is a fair statement. But what if EMC replaces RapidIO with InfiniBand or datacenter Ethernet? Would there really be no need to “throw away” components?
4. There are no “big”, “small”, or “old” V-Max building blocks. They’re all new, and they’re all identical, and you can have up to eight of them. EMC says you will be able to mix and match once new building blocks come out, and we expect them to live up to this promise.

So even today’s V-Max system does use the Virtual Matrix architecture. It’s got a virtualized matrix interconnecting the engines, after all. But it’s nowhere near the scale-out promise of the Virtual Matrix concept. That’s quite a ways off still.

Conclusion: V-Max Is Not Overtaking The Future Yet

It is important to note that EMC sales literature does not claim capability beyond what’s currently on the truck. The V-Max data sheet, for example, makes no mention of FAST or scalability beyond 8 engines. And EMC’s Dave Graham is characteristically straightforward listing what’s in the box. In fact, EMC’s official web site and literature probably errs on the too-cautious side: A casual visitor might well ask himself, “where’s the beef?”

Why might an average storage buyer think there is more “beef” to be had? One only needs to watch EMC’s V-Max launch, and the surrounding coverage. Indeed, EMC’s own theme for the launch was “Overtake the Future!” EMC’s customers expected a revolution, and a revolution is what the company promised.  This isn’t anything new, unexpected, or even out of place. Companies often tout the theoretical future capabilities of their new products but don’t deliver on those promises for some time. Many have accused Microsoft of using this tactic to combat Windows competitors, for example. And let’s not forget the industry’s fascination with legendary vaporware products!

But the company’s boosters seem to want to have their cake and eat it, too. They’ve poured on the verbiage describing FAST, and used this future capability to declare victory in the battle against the likes of HDS, 3PAR, and Compellent. EMC’s Hollis tells us that “there’s nothing remotely like V-Max in the marketplace today”, and other EMC folks have made similar claims. As Wikibon points out, “EMC’s pre-announcement of Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) is an admission that without FAST the answer is essentially no, EMC can’t compete on cost.” In other words, EMC was forced to prematurely unveil their FAST vision to keep their customer base from jumping ship to competitors already offering similar functionality. The same is true of the scale-out capability of the Virtual Matrix architecture.

For now, EMC has merely introduced a solid next-generation enterprise storage array. V-Max without FAST and scale-out is a nice-to-have refresh of the Symmetrix DMX-4. EMC should be especially respected for leaving all of the core Engenuity features like TimeFinder and SRDF intact, since this must have been no small feat. V-Max with FAST V1 is a more attractive proposition, but does not go that far beyond the capabilities of Symmetrix Optimizer. The same can be said of the 8-engine V-Max limit – it’s larger, but nothing to get too excited about.

V-Max with full-on FAST V2 and multi-site heterogeneous scale-out is the real revolution in EMC storage. If everything plays out, you could have several V-Max systems in the same data center, or perhaps even different data centers, all being managed as a single entity.  Then layer FAST on top of that (at the block level), and you have something unlike pretty much anything else on the market today. The question is, when can they achieve this, and will some of the other vendors catch up in the meantime?

This is what observers, analysts, and customers were looking for. And this is what they might think they saw. But in reality, we’ll all just have to wait another year or two and see what develops.

© Gestalt for Gestalt IT, 2009. | EMC Symmetrix V-Max: When Does It Get FAST and Virtual?
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EMC has been a pioneer it its Flash Drive (EFD) Technology. With the V-Max Systems EMC has taken another leap in the Flash Drive technology to support larger and denser drives. Typically with EMC Symmetrix V-Max systems you will see support for 73GB, 146GB, 200GB and 400GB EFD’s.

The following are some of the characteristics and benefits of using Enterprise Flash Drive (EFD) with EMC Symmetrix V-Max Systems.

1. 30X IOPS compared to traditional disk drives
2. 98% less power consumption per I/O compared to traditional disk drives
3. 60% lighter in weight than traditional disk drives
4. 4GB interface available with Flash Drives
5. No spindles, no mechanical failures
6. Used for very high I/O, throughput and data hungry applications like Stock & Currency Trading, Algorithmic Trading, Data modeling, Real Time data needs, etc
7. No special software required to manage the EFD technology on EMC’s
8. Same looks feels of external casing of the EFD like the Traditional drives, fits in the same enclosure as a standard fiber channel drives
9. Drives are seen by the storage and host as traditional fiber channel drives (73GB, 146GB, 200GB, 400GB)
10. The above drives are also supported on the DMX-4 Series of machines
11. Flash Drives are classified as Tier 0 in the customer’s ILM tiering
12. Mirroring, Raid 5, Raid 6 is supported on Enterprise Flash Drives now, all members of the Raid group have to be on Enterprise Flash Drives
13. Flash drives support MetaLUN technology and all the member volumes of a metalun have to be on flash drives for it to work
14. Flash drives cannot be configured as Vault devices in V-Max or prior DMX series machines
15. A hot spare of a flash drive have to be configured as another flash drive.
16. Also the Symmetrix File Systems (SFS Volumes) cannot reside on Flash Drives
17. EMC certified erasure services are not supported on Flash Drives. The Flash drives have to be scrubbed through EMC based appliances services. 

A nice blog post by Mark Peters at ESG about the SSD Technology

© Devang for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Enterprise Flash Drives (EFD) on EMC Symmetrix V-Max Systems
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Some of the figures are impressive; an un-named company believed that they were losing 15% of potential web-business potentially due to storage timeouts and the slowness of the response of the array.

That’s a huge amount of business to be loosing due to the slowness of the array but I wonder how true that is; was that really due to the end-to-end slowness of the system? Was it due to non-optimised SQL?  I’ve seen SQL queries tuned down from 300 accesses to half a dozen with a couple of hours work. Did they blame the storage because they were the one team who couldn’t give a transparent view of their environment?

Often storage is a great diagnostic tool; just looking at the I/O profile can lead to interesting questions. If you see weird I/O ratios which step way out of the normal profile for an OLTP application it can be an indicator of sub-optimal code. But to do so, you need the tools which present the information in quick and easily digestable manner.

At the moment, it is all too easy to blame the storage because the management tools are not great and the estate becomes very opaque to the outside viewer. If we had the right tools, we could often become a crack team of dysfunctional diagnosticians like House and his team and people would come to us asking we know it’s not a storage problem but perhaps you can help us identify what is going on in our infrastructure.

That’d be a great step forward, don’t you think?

© Martin for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Can I Be House?
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As usual, expected from EMC, the Big Bang!!!!!

So after a lot of speculation, finally the Next Generation Celerra is released now. Again this time around, EMC is pushing the technology towards unified storage, deduplication and virtual provisioning giving away some bells and whistles at no cost.

Here are the highlights of the product.

Celerra Next Generation Ultra Scale Architecture, Unified Storage with Deduplication, Virtual Provisioning, File Level Retention, Support for Flash Drives – 30X IOPS, LP SATA Drives 5.4K, 32% Energy Savings, 22% lower TCO, 960 drives, 960TB of RAW Storage.

Release date: 24th Feb 2009

Product availability: Feb 2009, the NS-8G and NS-960 might be available early March 2009.

Models: NS-120, NS-480, NS-960, NS-G8 (Gateway Version).

Introduction of LP Sata Drives: Low Power SATA Drives 5.4K RPMs.

Introduction of Flash Drives in Celerra: 30X IOPS, introduction of Tier 0.

Cost: Low CapEx, OpEx. Customer installation available with Low and Medium profile celerra’s. High End Celerra’s available to install through ASN Partners or by EMC.

Protocols Supported: NAS, MPFS, FC, iSCSI

Software: Deduplication (no cost), Virtual Provisioning (no cost), Startup Assistant (no cost), Celerra Manager (no cost), Volume Manager (no cost), Celerra Snapsure (no cost) –

Energy Efficiency: 32% less energy consumption

Lower TCO: 22%

Build on: Intel Xeon Chips

Choice of Delivery: File Based or Block Based, NAS to MPFS for throughput, iSCSI to FC for throughput

NS-120
Supports 120 Drives
Supports Flash Drives
1 or 2 Blades
64TB
120TB RAW

NS-480
Support 480 Drives
Support Flash Drives
2 or 4 Blades
192TB
480TB RAW

NS-960
Support 960 Drives
Support Flash Drives
2 to 8 Blades
760TB
960TB RAW

NS-G8
Supports 4 Arrays behind NS-G8
2 to 8 Blades
896TB RAW

Applications usable on Celerra: VMware, Oracle, MS Exchange, MS SQL Server, Windows, Linux File Server

Celerra Integration Available: With VMware, Oracle, MS Exchange, MS SQL

Classifications:
High End: NS-G8, NS-960
Mid-Tier: NS-40G, NS-480, NS-120
Low End: NX-4

Compliance: Meets file level compliance related to SEC Rule 17a-4(f). Also available for the Celerra is 3rd Party Compliance.

Celerra File Level Retention: Celerra is being pushed to allow Filesystem archiving. For Application and Filesystem archiving you will still need a Centera.

ROI Models: Better ROI on Celerra models than any comparative NetApp models.

Haven’t had a chance to play with it yet, but hopefully soon and looking forward to it.

© Devang for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Next Generation Celerra – Unified Storage with Deduplication
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The third rail of an electrical subway system carries the current - touch it and you're dead

See Martin’s response, Deal or No Deal

Every field has its untouchable “third-rail” topics: The metaphor is often used in American politics to describe things like social security, taxes, gun control, and the role of traditional allies – things that cannot be debated or discussed. In business, salaries and bonuses are often kept secret due to the same fear of upsetting apple carts.

The third rail of enterprise IT is the shockingly opaque and flexible pricing schemes applied to hardware, software, and services. How much does a high-end switch or storage array cost? Are you getting ripped off on your maintenance contracts? Which bundled software modules are required and which are pure profit? You’ll get no help in answering these questions from mainstream sources like technical media, trade shows, or corporate blogs.

The pricing game

Truthfully, all high-end IT purchases are priced on a case-by-case basis using rough formulas, spiffs, and secret targets that most buyers will never see. Pricing is ever-changing: Expensive items can literally be given away one quarter to create demand the next. Margins are often made up in other areas, like services, contracts, or required upgrades.

Software is especially prone to pricing flexibility, since there is no per-unit fixed cost: Microsoft’s incremental cost for each copy of Windows Server 2008 is very close to zero. But hardware, financial services, and professional services are not free. EMC, HP, IBM, and the rest certainly pay top dollar for quality components, steel, and plastic moldings. And technical engineers get paid a pretty penny (though perhaps not what the best are worth!)

Specificity is a major issue, too. The question is not how much a product costs, but what exactly a given product is! Surely one can buy a plain Nexus 7000 chassis from Cisco, but what good is that? A solution includes a complete set of cards, power supplies, cables, mounting brackets, software licenses, maintenance, and integration services, not a bare chassis. How much does that switch cost again?

Storage folks have long chattered about the cost per gigabyte of a storage array, but this can be gamed just as surely as a standardized performance test. It happens all the time in RFPs: A customer whips up a list of his requirements and a half-dozen responses come in. The oranges come in at half the price of the apples (Apple is never cheap!), but are they really comparable? A vendor can easily “accidentally” leave out a few line items to be added back in once the selection is made.

What is one to do?

Consider how you would respond, knowing all this, if someone demanded to know the list price for a new array, software package, or switch. Suddenly vendor pricing games don’t seem so nefarious, do they? But what can customers do? How can they compare solutions if not on price?

Truthfully, there is a time, once the solution components are finalized, that pricing is fixed. But by then it is usually too late to meaningfully negotiate, let alone switch the buying train to a different track. IT purchasing normally comes down to a qualitative analysis of various solutions followed by a leap of faith with one vendor’s offering. The “you made your bed” moment comes later.

Perhaps this is how it must be. Can an RFP ever truly reflect the total value and cost of an enterprise IT solution? Following this line of thinking, the best option a buyer has in this scenario is to develop a solid working relationship with just a few trusted sales reps, solution engineers, and companies and leverage these to deliver the best result. This is exactly what so many buyers of IT systems wish they did not do, but perhaps they should just accept it as the best option. This is the approach my friends at GC Marshall are taking, for example.

Back to the rail

But certainly there are items that are exempt, and a time for pricing discussions. When EMC introduced enterprise flash drives (EFDs, or solid-state disks) in their high-end DMX storage array line, they claimed that the high cost was justified by the extreme performance of these devices. But no one could say just what that high cost was! Now we hear that prices have dropped “by over 75%“, but are given no quantitative information.

It is one thing for a vendor to offer flexible solution-based pricing for a complete system and quite another for them to make cost justification claims with no real data. If a vendor wants to claim cost-effectiveness, then they must provide supporting pricing information. This is by no means aimed at EMC alone – every expensive new item includes a statement of cost, and these are often baseless.

Buyers ought to accept a close relationship with a vendor, complete with flexible solution pricing. But when it comes to groundless marketing claims, enough is enough. Give me the cost or give me a break!

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Let’s Talk Pricing
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