I finally had the chance to check out EMC Unified Storage Guarantee video with PGA Pro Bill Andrade competing against Pro-Amateur EMC Executive Bill Scannell
If you haven’t seen this yet, it’s pretty funny and covers things at a much higher level than all of the previous discussions I’ve had on this subject :)
I’ve been meaning to weigh in on this, but with the holiday weekend… well, you get the post-weekend weigh-in after everyone has had the chance to say everything good and bad on this (You’d be amazed at how little bad has been said on the subject. I say how little because it’s ALL been re-iterations of the same register article)
….What happened?!?? I was just using ATMOS Yesterday and all of a sudden every competitor of EMC is telling me that ATMOS is DEAD and it’s time to close up shop?!? Whoa, hold on there pardner, that’s not what we’re saying at all! (Yes, that is exactly how *I* read it from the NUMEROUS competitive coverage of this event occurring and happening :))
As far as you and I should be concerned, ATMOS hasn’t changed at all; except perhaps getting a little simpler in your choices of where to store ATMOS.
Prior to this June 29th event, you would have the choice of ATMOS Hosted internally as part of your Private Cloud. ATMOS Hosted externally at EMC’s ATMOS Online, or ATMOS Hosted externally at one of the three Service Providers listed below.
| Cloud Service Provider | Service Description |
| AT&T | Synaptic Storage as a Service |
| Hosted Solutions | Stratus Cloud Storage |
| PEER 1 Hosting | CloudOne Storage |
Now… as far as Production Grade ATMOS Online goes; You can choose between Internally, and Externally with the Cloud Service Providers where you can act and operate against their existing SLA structure you may likely be familiar with.
Looks pretty straight-forward if you ask me! I sat down, read all of the data which was available to me, and I saw a strategic decision being taken in order to remove the competitive pressures between EMC’s own sales force, and that of the partners and service providers offering up the ATMOS Cloud Service to the general purpose community. Or in the words of Dave Simpson who so eloquently said:
The winners, of course, are EMC’s Atmos cloud storage partners, which no longer have to compete with EMC. Likewise, EMC no longer has to compete with those partners. It’s a win-win on that front. In fact, on its Atmos web site, EMC is “strongly encouraging” its existing Atmos customers to migrate to one of its partners.
…..
The shuttering of Atmos Online should be seen not as a failure on the part of EMC but, rather, as another prescient and tactical move by the company.
And quite frankly Dave said it well; which I feel takes the whole debate about “where” should I host my Cloud Storage off the table; Discussion point over. But what now?
The EMC ATMOS Online Community is still strong and hearty. Your vehicle for open discussion on this matter is still available and at your disposal.
The ATMOS Online service can continued to be used for Development Purposes.
Keeping your Cloud Private and doing your own internal testing has never been stronger with the release of the ATMOS Online Virtual Server Appliance (VSA)
And last but not least – Customers DO continue to use this, and STILL will continue to use this. This is best of breed Cloud Storage in a growing world which needs more versatile solutions at your disposal. There will continue to be businesses like eBay who selected ATMOS to create a reliable, scalable cloud infrastructure.
There’s never been a better time to play with ATMOS, and with the public release of the VSA, I’ve been seeing internal and external adoption grow at exponential rates; which means you’ll likely see a lot more perspectives and use-cases of EMC ATMOS which will far trump that of what has been seen up until this point. More fun, more play, more winners! :)
References also discussing this:
Where to get your Cloud On:
Hi Guys! Remember me! I’m apparently the one who upset some of you, enlightened others; and the rest of you.. well, you drove a lot of traffic here to get my blog to even beat out EMC’s main website as the primary source for information on "Unified Storage" (And for that, I appreciate it :))
In case any of you forgot some of those "target" posts, here they are for your reference! but I’m not here to start a fight! I’m here to educate and to direct my focus on not what this previously OVERLY discussed Unified Storage Guarantee was or is, but instead to drive down in to what Unified Storage will really bring to bear. So, without further adieu!
I’ve seen a lot of definitions of what it is, quite frankly a lot of stupid definitions too. (My GOD I hate stupid definitions!) But what does it mean when you Unify to you and me? I could go on and on about the various ‘definitions’ of what it really is (and I even started WRITING that portion of it!) but instead I’m going to scrap all of that so I do not end up on my own list of ‘stupid definitions’ and instead will define Unified Storage at it’s simplest terms.
A unified storage system merges NAS and SAN. Optimized for performance and interoperability, the system simultaneously stores both file data and blocks of application data in virtually any operating environment
You can put your own take and spin on it, but at it’s guts that is seemingly what the basics of a "Unified Storage" system are; nothing special about it, NAS and SAN (hey, lots of people do that right?!) You bet they do! And this is by no way the definitive definition on what “Unified Storage” is, and frankly that is not my concern either. So taking things to the next level; now that we have a baseline of what it takes to ‘get the job done’, now it’s time to evaluate the Cost of Living in a Unified Storage environment.
I get it. No really I do. And I’m sure by now you’re tired of the conversation of ‘uniqueness’ focused on the following core areas:
All of these items are simply a FACT and an expectation when it comes to a Unified Platform. (Forget unified, a platform in general) Lack of support of multiple tiers, locking down to a single client, complicated provisioning which can only be done fat which makes you lose out on utilization and likely is a waste of time – That my friend is the cost of living. You’re not going to introduce a wasteful fat obsolete system and frankly, I’m not sure of any (many) vendors who are actually delivering services which don’t meet on multiple of these criteria; So the question I’m asking is… Why do we continue to discuss these points? I do not go to a car dealership and say “You know, I’m expecting a transmission in this car, you have a transmission right?” And feel free to replace transmission with tires and other things you just flat out EXPECT. It’s time to take the conversation to the next level though; because if you’ve ever talked to me you know how I feel about storage. “There is no inherent value of storage in and of itself without context or application.” Thus… You don’t want spinning rust just for the sake to have it spin, no you want it to store something for you, and it is with that you need to invest in Perfection.
What exactly is the idea of Unified Storage Perfection? It is an epic nirvana whereby we shift from traditional thinking and takes NAS and SAN out of the business of merely rusty spindles and enable and engage the business to earn its keep.
Still storage, yet sexy in it’s own right. Why? First of all, it’s FAST OMFG FLASH IS SO FAST! And second of all, it’s not spinning, so it’s not annoying like the latest and greatest SAS, ATA or FC disk! But what makes this particular implementation of EFD far sexier than simple consumer grade SSD’s is the fact that these things will guarantee you a consistent speed and latency through and through. I mean, sure it’s nice that these things can take the sheer number of FC disks you’d need to run an aggressive SQL server configuration and optimize the system to perform, but it goes beyond that.
Think back to that high performance SQL workload you had a moment ago, there might come a time in the life of the business where your performance needs change; Nirvana comes a knocking and with the power of FAST enables you to dynamically, non-disruptively move from one tier of Storage (EFD, FC, SATA) to another, so you are guaranteed not only investment protection but scalability which grows and shrinks as your business does. Gone are the days of ‘buy for what we might use one day’ and welcome are the days of Dynamic and Scalable business.
Wow, is this the triple whammy or what? Building upon the previous two points, this realm of Perfection is able to take the performance and speed of Enterprise Flash Disks and the concept of tiering your disks to let you use those same existing EFD disks to extend your READ and WRITE cache on your array! FAST Cache accelerates performance to address unexpected workload spikes. FAST and FAST Cache are a powerful combination, unmatched in the industry, that provides optimal performance at the lowest possible cost. (Yes I copied that from a marketing thingie, but it’s true and is soooooo cool!)
So, let’s put some common sense on this then, because this is no joke, nor is it marketing BS. You assign EFD’s to a specific workload you want to guarantee a certain speed and a certain response time (Win). You have unpredictable workloads who may need to be fast some times, but may be slow other times on quarterly of yearly basis’s, so you leverage FAST to move that data around, but that’s your friend when you can PREDICT what is going to happen. What about when it is slow most of the time, but then on June 29th you make a major announcement that you were not expecting to hit as hard as it did, and BAM! Your system goes in the tank because data sitting on FC or SATA couldn’t handle the load. Hello FAST Cache, how I love you so. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE EFD’s and I wish all of my data could sit on them (At home a lot of it does ;)) and I have massive desire for FAST because I CAN move my workload around based upon predictable or planned patterns (Marry me!) But FAST Cache is my superman, because he is there to save the day when I least expected it, he caches my reads when BOOM I didn’t know it was coming, but more importantly he holds my massive load of WRITES which come in JUST as unexpectedly. So for you naysayers or just confused ones who wonder why you’d have one vs the other (vs) the other; Hopefully this example use-case is valuable. Think about it in terms of your business, you could get away with one or the other, or all three… Either way, you’re a winner.
EMC is further advancing its storage efficiency innovation as the first storage provider to introduce block data compression, by allowing customers to compress inactive data and reclaiming valuable storage capacity— data footprints can be reduced by up to 50 percent. A common use case would be compressing inactive data once EMC FAST software has moved that data to the most cost-effective storage tier. Block data compression joins EMC’s existing capabilities, including thin provisioning and data deduplication, to automatically and transparently maximize storage utilization.
Yea, I DID copy that verbatim from a Press Release – And do you know why? Because it’s right! Even addresses a pretty compelling use-case too! So think about it a moment. Does this apply to you? I’d never compress ALL of my data (reminisces back to the days of DoubleSpace where let’s just say, for any of us who lived it… those were interesting times ;)) But think about the volume of data which you have sitting on Primary Storage which is inactive and otherwise wasting space when it continues sitting un-accessed and consuming maximum capacity! But this is more than just about that data type, unlike some solutions this it not an all or nothing.
Think if you could choose to compress on demand! Compress say… your virtual machine right out of vCenter! But wait there’s more! And there’s so much more to say on this, let alone the things which are coming.. I don’t want to reveal what is coming, so I’ll let Mark Twomey do it where he did it here: Storage Services for Clariion Storage Pool LUNs
Whoa, hey now! What do you mean what does all of this mean?! Are you cutting me short? Yes. Yes I am. :) There are some cool things coming, which I cannot talk about yet… and not to mention some of all of the new stuff coming in Q3 – But things I was talking about… that’s stuff I can talk about –TODAY- there’s only even better things and cake coming tomorrow :)
I can fill this with videos, decks, resources, references, Unisphere and every thing under the sun (You let me know if you really want that.. I’ve done that in the past as well) But ideally, I want you to make your own decision, come to your own conclusions.. What does this mean for you? Stop asking “What is Unified Storage” and start asking “What value can my business derive from technologies in order to save money, save time, save waste!” I’ll try to avoid writing yet another article on this subject unless you so demand it! I look forward to all of your comments and feedback! :)
(Part 2 in my series of “I hate SharePoint, and why every business should use it”)
Oh no you didn’t! You didn’t just compare my business application to a common STD often called “the great imitator” because it’s many features and functions are often indistinguishable from other products! I have to say, this is by far the PERFECT anecdote! (I’ve referenced SharePoint in this way in the past in my talks.. but never before did I have this VERBATIM and slightly modified caption from the CDC Website on STD Facts) So, let’s take a journey, slightly modifying and replacing a few words in this description of What is the Treatment
SharePoint is easy to cure in its early stages. A single injection of planning and training will cure a business who has had SharePoint for less than a year. Additional doses are needed to treat someone who has had SharePoint for longer than a year. For people who are allergic to planning, other forms of project management are available to treat SharePoint. There are no home remedies or over-the-counter solutions that will cure SharePoint. Treatment will kill the SharePoint sprawl and prevent further damage, but it will not repair damage already done.
Because effective treatment is available, it is important that persons be screened for SharePoint on an on-going basis if their legacy behaviors put them at risk for STD’s (SharePoint Team Deployments)
Persons who receive SharePoint treatment must abstain from sprawl with new partners until the SharePoint sores are completely healed. Persons with SharePoint must notify their partners so that they also can be tested and receive treatment if necessary.
As you can tell if you read the original sourced location, NOT A WHOLE LOT CHANGED! But this says SO MUCH for this STD and the SharePoint community as a whole!
If you’ve ever suffered through sprawl, be it SharePoint, Exchange, Notes, or Wiki-sprawl you know exactly what I’m talking about. I cannot emphasize enough how beneficial planning is, but this is not for naught! Just because you built a legacy infrastructure whereby your sprawl has left you almost crippled does not mean you have no recourse or option to turn this around. These lessons learned and best practices from Microsoft’s own Internal IT on what they did to get from where they ‘were’ to where they are today on 2010 is an eye-opener and a must check out!
Some of the best lessons I took away from these sessions (and more which I’m not referring to here) is I get it that you have a war-torn SharePoint environment which was created potentially years ago with bad patterns, practices and little strategy, direction or vision. Guess what? I don’t care! I don’t care about yester-year, I care about the future; and the strategy for the future is… Build for tomorrow, and migrate yesterday; Don’t try to migrate yesterday in ORDER to build for tomorrow. Is it possible? Yes. Is it enjoyable? NO! SharePoint easily migrates and data can shift and move far easier than other platforms. You DO HAVE OPTIONS! Take advantage of them, but don’t try and cripple yourself attempting to fix your SharePoint 2003 environment so you can TRY to migrate to 2010. Deploy 2010, get it the way you want, establish governance, proper practices, avoid the sprawl and migrate IN to it; don’t try to do this backwards – You don’t have to!
Oh, and get regular check-ups, you never know what your Partner has been getting in to. :)
Let me start off with a shout-out to every SharePoint Zealot out there who is going to seethe, scream and yell at the very presence of this topic; who will vehemently disagree with me before they even take the moment to disregard and throw away this article, because frankly they don’t need to read it at all! (Hi guys! :)) And for the rest of you, allow me to give you a journey in to some of the reasons I absolutely hands down DESPISE SharePoint; Oh did I mention that is also WHY you should not only be considering if, but be deploying it full-scale to take your business in that next direction? K, glad we got that out of the way!
Disclaimer: The following is a breakdown of entirely non-sarcastic statements with core sound, business and technical justifications of just why SharePoint is the flaming pile of destructive pleasure that it is and will continue to be part of your organizations ecosystem from this point forward. If you disagree, agree or are a contrarian this is the post for you!
Follow-up Disclaimer: I’ve decided to release this as a series instead of one really long blog post you likely won’t even read in the first place, so feel free to follow the entire series of why I hate sharepoint and why you should use it! :)