Like Ibrix, which was acquired by HP under better circumstances last year, and ONstor, similarly scooped up by LSI, Exanet was best known for clustered NAS software. Their ExaStore software, bundled with IBM and Xyratex hardware, put up impressive scalability and performance numbers. Dell will likely leverage this software with their own hardware as a NAS complement to their leading EqualLogic iSCSI line. Exanet’s Xyratex-sourced DX line of Fibre Channel storage devices is unlikely to be at all attractive to Dell.

Rumors of a white knight for Exanet were widespread last year. Fujitsu Siemens Computers was said to be the front-runner in May, and Exanet’s name came up mid-year as HP and LSI made their moves. Dell was apparently willing to put up some money to gain access to Exanet’s NAS technology later in the year but the company’s investors reportedly scuttled that deal. Plan B for the folks in Round Rock seems to have been to wait it out and secure the technology from the now-moribund company. If Dell keeps the doors open, Exanet’s R&D center will become their first such facility in Israel.

The acquisition gives Dell a retort when HP presents their invigorated Ibrix line to enterprise customers. It is likely that Dell will follow HP with a software/hardware NAS bundle possibly featuring their PowerEdge blades. Back-end storage could come from many sources: Dell’s own PowerVault MD line, their EqualLogic PS iSCSI gear, or the Dell/EMC CLARiiON AX and CX lines. Exanet is known as a higher-end scale-out offering (think Isilon or HP’s PolyServe) rather than a general-purpose NAS.

Two key questions arise from Dell-owned NAS software:

1. Would Dell reduce their reliance on Microsoft’s Windows Storage Server, as used in their PowerVault NX300 and NX3000 NAS devices? I suspect not, since Exanet is not a low-end product and Windows-powered NAS has typically sold into a separate market niche. Rival HP has certainly continued pushing Microsoft-powered gear since buying Ibrix.
2. What does this mean for Dell’s relationship with EMC? The company only started selling the EMC Celerra NX4 last year, and a homegrown Exanet/PowerVault solution is not a drop-in replacement. Dell’s relationship with EMC continues getting deeper, and a split is unlikely in the near term.

At this point, this looks like a vote for Exanet’s technology and a reaction to HP’s PolyServe and Ibrix moves, not a statement against EMC or Celerra. Indeed, considering that Dell was merely investigating an OEM relationship before this all fell out, it doesn’t look like a strategic move at all for the company. Exanet will likely become a new line item, but Dell’s storage roster will look largely the same.

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2010. | Dell Scoops Up Exanet After All
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Those HP StorageWorks guys have a lot of sounds-good-but-sells-nothing crap in their locker. Remember RISS? That’s the role the ExDS9100 whatever fancy box is doing now. Then he’s got to somehow knock sense into the PolyServe takeover (PolyCurve? No, forget that one) and Ibrix. We really kicked everyone’s NAS butt with Celerra. But EVA, damn it, EVA 2 could be good.

We got a unified stack with Cisco and VMware, but Cisco and servers, I don’t know. How good is Chambers really, I mean really really? He’s spread himself awful thin over the thousand and one things Cisco is doing and, I know, Cisco is Cisco. But Chambers isn’t going to be there for ever, and Hurd is probably going to outlive him.

If the Cisco servers don’t really hack it (and, you know, they may not), it’s not like Dell, HP and IBM are wallflowers at the server dance. Then there’s that Acer guy that says we’re all dinosaurs. He’s nibbling at the foursome’s heels and we need a backstop. Okay, put that off to one side for a minute. Let’s think about growth.

We’re a $53.4 billion market capitalization company. Ok, $36.6 billion if you strip out VMware. How are we going to gow more? I says to my guys, “look, there’s no more real growth in the storage business. To do something big there we gotta buy HDS or NetApp and both would give us a world of hurt in integrating their products, especially NetApp’s, and there’s a real chance the sum of the parts could be less than the sum of the separate pieces. Let’s not even go there.”

The information infrastructure stuff is growing. Hollis keeps yacking at me (even more than normal) about this. It’s two or three times a week now! Doesn’t that guy ever sleep or eat or play golf? But I tell him, “that stuff is organic and that means slow and we need something quicker than twenty years from now.” I’ll be long gone then. I want something big on my crown. I don’t wanna slink off like Warmenhoven, always thinking I coulda been a contender.

This is getting kinda long, so I’ll just cut it off here. But I got an idea that’ll kill you. Seriously, it’ll blow you away. But first I gotta make some calls and set some stuff in motion. Maybe I’ll tell you about it on Monday or something.

© Don Joey for Gestalt IT, 2010. | What’s Keeping Me Up At Night
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The unique IBRIX IP is in distributing metadata and “ownership” of files across a grid of systems, enabling massive scale. Most competing products have a centralized metadata database which makes them more difficult to scale. When an IBRIX node receives a read or write request, it simply checks the file against its own database and, if it is not found, against a so-called “area code” database which tells it which node should handle the request. This is conceptually similar to how massive distributed databases like DNS function.

The IBRIX system is focused on scalable file services, with the system appearing as a single massive NAS appliance. This is similar to the capabilities of the former LeftHand iSCSI storage systems currently offered by HP. The two products complement each other nicely, one being file and the other being block. Both are also sold as software solutions bundled with HP hardware. HP still lacks a similar Fibre Channel product, but LeftHand could be modified to support FCoE in the future.

What is more confusing is exactly how IBRIX fits with PolyServe, a former IBRIX competitor whom HP acquired back in 2007 and has had mixed success promoting. The two products could be merged, targeted at different markets, or one could fall by the wayside as the other gains traction. PolyServe can be seen as a higher-end or higher-performance solution, where IBRIX focused on scalability. Regardless, the sale suggests that HP is not in the market for NetApp, as had been rumored.

IBRIX was founded in 2000 and is headquartered in Billerica, Massachusetts. Details of the transaction (price and revenue) have not been released.

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2009. | HP Acquires Scale-Out NAS Maker, IBRIX
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