When it comes to scale out, EMC was quick to recognize the shifting technology landscape by scooping up Isilon more than two years ago. While Isilon supplied the base technology, quickly becoming the most popular scale-out systems in the market, this year's EMC World demonstrates the EMC influence coming through in a big way. The company is introducing a new version of the OS, oneFS; breaking out of the traditional scale-out usage silos; and positioning modular storage systems such as Isilon to be key components in a new era of software-defined storage and big-data applications. As such, the big news about Isilon at this year's EMC World has nothing to do with new hardware and is all about adding new software features.

As we outlined in this Network Computing column detailing EMC's major software-defined storage product, ViPR, Isilon arrays can be full participants in virtualized, heterogenous storage pools that can include everything from high-performance VMAX and VNX arrays to Atmos private cloud object stores. But it's now clear that Isilon is inheriting other strands of EMC's enterprise DNA as several features of the upgraded oneFS are atypical for scale-out systems.

The need for Pivotal's promised "next-generation enterprise computing platform" starts with the premise that there has been a fundamental shift in IT, with Internet consumer giants like Google, Facebook and Amazon pioneering large-scale data-management approaches and rapid application-development capabilities supported by unprecedented levels of automation.

These approaches have yet to effectively reach the vast majority of companies and government agencies still mostly dependent on client-server applications built on relational databases and even mainframes, said Paul Maritz, Pivotal's CEO. What's needed, he said, is a next-era platform that can integrate with those legacy technologies.

In my experience, the main component that drives VDI costs up is the supporting storage infrastructure. If storage can be made to perform significantly better and still remain cost effective, the CapEx costs of a VDI solution would come down. As I covered in my original column, intelligent caching is one way to accomplish this.

My analyst firm, Storage Switzerland, recently was hired by caching software manufacturer VeloBit to run a lab test and potentially verify their product claims. My original column was not about any particular vendor, but more about the importance of reducing CapEx and the effectiveness of caching as a method to drive down the cost of the storage components of a VDI project. I did, however, link to that report as an example of our research.

The first of Art's concerns was how "real world" our tests were. That's a fair concern of any lab test as, obviously, no test can perfectly recreate a production environment. All you can do is accurately document the test methodology and the configurations that you tested. Users have to translate that into their reality. We learn something from every test we do and attempt to apply that to our next test suite.

]]> Recently in his blog, Art Wittmann took exception to a column in which I stated that capital expenditure (CapEx) could and should become a key factor in the evaluation of a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) project. Although the goal of saving money on hardware and software acquisitions should not replace the goal of reducing operational expenditures (OPEx), a VDI project that achieves both would be that much more appealing.

In my experience, the main component that drives VDI costs up is the supporting storage infrastructure. If storage can be made to perform significantly better and still remain cost effective, the CapEx costs of a VDI solution would come down. As I covered in my original column, intelligent caching is one way to accomplish this.

My analyst firm, Storage Switzerland, recently was hired by caching software manufacturer VeloBit to run a lab test and potentially verify their product claims. My original column was not about any particular vendor, but more about the importance of reducing CapEx and the effectiveness of caching as a method to drive down the cost of the storage components of a VDI project. I did, however, link to that report as an example of our research.

The first of Art's concerns was how "real world" our tests were. That's a fair concern of any lab test as, obviously, no test can perfectly recreate a production environment. All you can do is accurately document the test methodology and the configurations that you tested. Users have to translate that into their reality. We learn something from every test we do and attempt to apply that to our next test suite.

]]> http://www.networkcomputing.com/quickview/vdi-performance-and-cost-a-deeper-dive/3163?wc=4 http://www.networkcomputing.com/quickview/vdi-performance-and-cost-a-deeper-dive/3163?wc=4 http://www.networkcomputing.com/quickview/storage-networking-management?wc=4 Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:36 EDT http://www.networkcomputing.com/next-generation-data-center/storage/ibm-makes-economic-case-for-all-flash-ar/240153374 http://www.networkcomputing.com/next-generation-data-center/storage/ibm-makes-economic-case-for-all-flash-ar/240153374 http://www.networkcomputing.com/next-generation-data-center/storage Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:53 EDT