Posts by Erik (IBM)

Let... the SAN shine: 2013 – the year of virtual storage area networks

Re: IBM

Trevor, I appreciate the thorough response. I did not mean to kick a hornet's nest here. :-)

I agree with your "virtual SAN" definition as elaborated upon in your comment, and I too hate it when vendors muddy the generally accepted meaning of such terms - it hurts everyone in the industry. I was simply trying to provide more color for the earlier commenter who did not appear familiar with IBM's efforts in the universe of things that some people might associate with the term "virtual SAN".

Regarding your above PureSystems comments: I agree that PureSystems is not (currently) a vSAN play - rather it is a converged infrastructure play (as identified in my comment). But you named VCE as one of "2014's big names to watch in the vSAN space", so surely PureSystems would not be out of place in that list as well... right?

Regarding your above SAN virtualization comments: I never intended to imply that virtual SANs == SAN virtualization technology, but I have encountered many less-than-perfectly-informed customers who mix the two concepts due to lack of knowledge of one or the other, so I tried to clarify that distinction in my previous comment. BTW, since you expressed a dubious opinion about the value of SAN virtualization... actually our SVC virtualization platform does much more than just cut a big SAN into baby SANs, as you imply above. For example, SVC can provide inline real-time compression, which really can save lots of money with the right workloads, even if the SVC hardware and software is an incremental cost above the customer's existing array licensing.

Re: IBM

IBMer here, speaking for myself not my company of course. IBM is most certainly not simply sitting and waiting for others to innovate in the "virtual SAN" or broader software-defined converged infrastructure space. Unfortunately, Trevor's article mixes some admittedly nebulous concepts together under the overextended umbrella of "virtual SAN", losing some important nuances of each. And meanwhile my employer is not known for amazing product-level marketing like some of our competitors and flashy startups, but we do play well in all the categories the article mentions. Here's my attempt to clarify.

I believe the term "virtual SAN" should be more narrowly described as a specific *type* of software defined storage implementation that can provide some SAN functionality with software running in VMs on ordinary servers, usually (but not always) with DAS behind them. This is an area where IBM has some exciting developments, including our GPFS Storage Server offerings for file-based "virtual NAS" (if you will), FlashCache Storage Accelerator and Easy Tier Server for block-based caching, and lots more in the pipeline. IBM also works with a few companies like Atlantis Computing to provide "virtual SAN" functionality with features that benefit specific use cases like VDI. And of course IBM has a very close relationship with VMware...

BTW, "virtual SAN" is sometimes confused with "SAN virtualization", which I'd argue is a similar but distinct term used to describe the idea of "abstracting traditional storage array functions into a single common control and (sometimes) data plane". Virtual SAN implementations usually have some kind of SAN virtualization features. IBM was one of the *original* innovators in that space with our SAN Volume Controller product, which is now a very mature offering (ten years and tens of thousands of deployments using the technology) with leading features including real-time compression (from our Storwize acquisition), tiering (Easy Tier), and OpenStack integration.

More broadly, some of the companies on Trevor's list cover more ground than either of those buckets - in particular Nutanix and VCE. I'd classify those companies as "converged infrastructure" or (trendier) "software defined environment" players, and IBM plays well in that space with our PureSystems family of offerings. You get integration all the way up to the "business problem" level if you desire, without losing flexibility and choice. That total solution integration is a key weakness in competitive converged infrastructure offerings which are more often than not just a rack of semi-integrated components. But that's a discussion for a broader converged infrastructure article, not just the storage pieces...

Finally, one of my colleagues wrote a good summary of IBM's place in the SDS world which mentions some of these points and has some pretty pictures too:

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/ibmsyssw/entry/ibm_on_software_defined_storage?lang=en

All that said, tl;dr: Trevor, calling this article a list of "virtual SAN" players is perhaps a bit misleading, and you missed IBM. :-)

Violin Memory is winning flash-supply race – Quadragon™ rivals

Source?

Chris - which 451/TheInfoPro study did this come from? Is it "Solid state evolves storage architectures and ROIs" (https://451research.com/report-short?entityId=78389) from August or is it something else they published?