NetApp Takes On EMC With Future Ready Infrastructure
November 09, 2010 17:23 PM
Today NetApp announced new high-end and mid-range storage systems, support for 2.5 inch disk drives and Solid State Disks (SSD), Data ONTAP 8.0.1, unified connectivity for FCoE, CIFS, NFS, and iSCSI, along with the OnCommand Management Suite, and FlexPod for VMware which is a pre-sized and validated data center infrastructure solution. NetApp is clearly targeting the burgeoning Virtual Machine opportunity and is building the path to a future-ready infrastructure. In my opinion, today's announcement by NetApp represents the big bet that the company can provide storage, software, and connectivity technology that provides the infrastructure foundation for shared storage in both virtual and physical server environments.
Now We Know What Dell Will Do
October 29, 2010 10:07 AM
Back on September 29th, Dell announced new capabilities and services to its Virtual Integrated System (VIS) architecture. A few days before VMworld I met with senior Dell representatives in San Francisco where they explained VIS and how well the overall architecture and combined Dell services have enabled their customers to heavily leverage virtual technologies. Dell customer Black Board attended this meeting providing testimonial on the implementation of the VIS architecture and that they are accelerating their ability to meet SLA's and deliver compute capabilities that are enhancing their business growth. My last blog on Dell asked What Will Dell Do Now? in consideration of HP winning the bidding war for 3PAR. Now we know what Dell will do as they begin soaring ahead into the virtual era with VIS.
Compellent: Rising To The Enterprise Challenge
October 08, 2010 09:30 AM
Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Compellent and spend some time talking with them on a few hot topics. High on my list to talk about was getting their impression of the bidding war for 3Par. We discussed that subject and much more. I have been meaning to blog about Compellent for some time, taking a deeper look at their Auto Tiering capability, which is leading Compellent into enterprise opportunities. It appears the time is right to provide a glimpse into a storage company that has started to take on the enterprise challenge.
QLogic Launches New Attack On Network Convergence Landscape
October 07, 2010 13:24 PM
QLogic's announcement today of their Adaptive Convergence strategy is the equivalent of a nuclear blast across the converged networking landscape, metaphorically leveling the competition in its wake. As I have predicted in the past, QLogic is seriously committed to the converged networking sector and is innovating at a rapid pace, gaining material market share and bringing fundamentally new technologies to market that will benefit cloud service providers and highly virtualized environments. This new attack on the network convergence landscape is again bringing the fight, and the pain, to its competitors.
What Will Dell Do Now?
September 08, 2010 13:00 PM
For a company that prides itself on listening to its customers and delivering more than just what meets requirements, EMC received the message loud and clear from Dell about what the company is looking for in an enterprise class storage product: like a 3Par InServ. Can EMC deliver an enterprise storage array for Dell? Will Dell select a new acquisition target? Now that HP has won the bidding war, what will Dell do now?
FalconStor VDI Solution: Economics And Performance
September 08, 2010 08:00 AM
On August 24th, FalconStor announced their new NSS SAN Accelerator for VMware Virtual Desk Top Environments, and Network Computing covered it here. FalconStor briefed me on this solution prior to their announcement, and I was impressed with it. FalconStor has been developing some highly creative storage solutions, and I thought it time to take a closer look at this one and spend some time talking with someone who is using it. To say that I was even more impressed with the FalconStor solution after my conversation is an understatement.
Virsto Virtualizes Storage I/O For Virtual Machines
September 02, 2010 17:09 PM
Back in February of this year, Virsto launched their "Virsto One" storage virtualization software product. Much was written about Virsto at that time, and they were covered here on Network Computing. I had the unique opportunity to sit down and talk with Mark Davis, CEO of Virsto, in San Francisco this week while we were both in town for VMworld. Virsto is virtualizing storage in Microsoft Hyper-V based environments. A key question for Mark was why release storage virtualization in the Hyper-V space first before addressing the VMware market?
Summertime Tech Bidding Wars, Part Deux
August 30, 2010 10:00 AM
In 2009, we saw what we thought was a bit of an anomaly within the Information Technology industry: a multi-billion dollar summertime bidding war between two tech heavy-weights over a smaller technology company. EMC battled it out with Network Appliance over the acquisition of much smaller Data Domain which had cornered the market on data deduplication. This year, in a similar time frame, we are experiencing another summertime bidding war, this time between Hewlett Packard (HP) and Dell over utility storage provider 3PAR, Inc. In my opinion, we are starting to see a pattern emerge.
10GbE: Where Money Talks And Hype Walks
August 26, 2010 09:44 AM
Nearly everyone agrees that the 10GbE adapter market will be big. The latest forecast from the Dell'Oro Group says the market will quadruple over the next four years, reaching about $800 million. It's no wonder everyone from Broadcom to Mellanox wants a piece of the action. However, no company more than Emulex has tried to position itself as "the" 10GbE adapter company. The question is, has it worked? I don't think so.
With 3Par Acquisition, Dell Shows They Are Serious About Storage
August 17, 2010 09:52 AM
Over the past few years, Dell has taken carefully measured and calculated steps with its storage business, namely the acquisition of EqualLogic and the pumping up its engineering and sales organization to support greater storage sales. Now, Dell makes another smart move with the acquisition of 3Par, the 10 year-old enterprise storage provider that was first to deliver thin provisioning within high-end storage arrays, as well as developing abstracted storage virtualization techniques that allow rapid changes in storage configuration and RAID protection without the need to backup, or restore active data. There should be no remaining doubt that Dell is extremely serious about its storage business
Emulex & ServerEngines: A New Beginning or Armageddon?
June 18, 2010 13:00 PM
Emulex may have surprised a few people with their purchase of ServerEngines; however, many in the industry knew for some time that the company was sorely lacking control of their own destiny with regard to their struggling FCoE offering. Those keeping track of the players in the FCoE space have watched Emulex run around for nearly two years promoting the heck out of privately held ServerEngines, and ultimately it appears as though Emulex will have to cough up an absurd pile of money to finally buy the company--a staggering $225M.
Are Converged Network Adaptors Suffocating The Virtual Machine?
May 19, 2010 13:46 PM
Last week I reviewed real-world results of a test between the Emulex UCNA and the QLogic 8152 CNA. The testing illuminated a performance delta between the products, and it demonstrated another important issue: a big difference in CPU utilization while running FCoE. For the past few months, Emulex has been making some fairly broad claims that its UCNAs can support nearly one million IOPS, which it says towers over the performance available from all other CNAs in the marketplace. Emulex said that, for virtualized server environments, this leap in network performance is needed to fully realize the capacity of the new Intel Xeon-based servers.
Cloud Development In Real Time - Update From EMC World
May 12, 2010 16:03 PM
In discussion with Joe Tucci this week at EMC world, Joe stated that he saw two camps taking shape with regard to cloud solutions development: The Virtualization Camp and The Verticalization Camp. Tucci and EMC are clearly in The Virtualization Camp, and I agree with them in that this is the wave of the future. Virtualization, from servers to networks to storage is here and the future looks very bright indeed for solutions that will make IT operations easier and more cost efficient.
Big Blue Rolls-Out Features For Systems Storage
May 03, 2010 13:38 PM
During the weeks of April 12th and 19th, IBM announced the release of new features and functions for the IBM System Storage DS8700 and XIV, along with other enhancements and new products in their overall storage line up. Details of the whole announcement and a video with Doug Balog, IBM Storage Platform VP and Disk Storage Business Line Executive, can be located by clicking here.
Storwize Focuses On Optimization Without Compromise
April 12, 2010 14:00 PM
As the embers of the last decade slowly faded away, Storwize - a Massachusetts-based, storage optimization company - quietly planned for the start of a new decade with new executives and a plan to leverage the leadership of its CEO, Ed Walsh. At the start of 2010, I noticed the press release stating that storage analyst and EMC-veteran Steve Kenniston had joined the company as vice president of Technology Strategy. I know Steve from past work experience with EMC and found him to be a great guy and certainly chock-full of insight about the storage industry.
CORAID - A Disruptive Technology In The World Of Storage
April 05, 2010 11:30 AM
On March 23rd, CORAID - a California-based storage provider - announced availability of their new EtherDrive SRX Series storage arrays and extended family of Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) for high-speed Ethernet SAN connectivity for Windows, Solaris and Linux environments. With the announcement, CORAID delivers compelling price/performance characteristics that most certainly make its technology a disruptive entry in the storage market and an attractive offering for users who need connectivity and speed more than a laundry list of storage platform-based software offerings.
Dell Hits Home Run With Virtual Era And Health Care Solutions
March 31, 2010 08:48 AM
On March 24th, 2010, Dell stepped up to the plate in the virtual era solutions ball game and hit a home run with their announcements and positioning of new products and services offerings. The company was well prepared and came laced up and ready to play at the Bently Reserve in San Francisco where they made their announcements and provided a partner roundtable discussion that demonstrated support for the new Dell products and solutions. In the health care space, Dell announced the new Dell Medical Archiving Solution, which includes a new high-performance computing PowerEdge server along with object storage, connectivity and deployment support via partners and implementation support via Dell Perot services.
3Par Scores Another First With Enterprise Sub-Volume Optimization
March 23, 2010 14:00 PM
On March 8, 3Par announced their introduction of Adaptive Optimization for sub-volume storage tiering along with their support for SSD's within the InServ arrays. Looking back at my comments in my blog post of January 30th, it is clear that 3Par has moved past EMC with first-to-market positioning with sub-volume data optimization for enterprise-class storage arrays.
Gorillas In The Market
March 17, 2010 16:33 PM
The lush, changing landscape of the Fibre Channel market took another interesting turn today with QLogic's announcement of their addition of the 5800V Series stackable switches to EMC's Select program of product offerings. While some may view this announcement as just another new reseller for the 20 port switch, there are several larger implications here to consider.
Shockwaves In The Fibre Channel Switching Space
February 18, 2010 15:25 PM
Earlier this week I saw an article from the Motley Fool advising investors to be bearish on Brocade (to sell), highlighting the competitive challenges facing the company. Then, this morning I saw the challenges only get worse for Brocade, as HP and QLogic announced an OEM pact for Fibre Channel edge switches.
