Charles Makes a Point (or Two)

Why am I occupying real estate in cyberspace?

This is the question I'll try to answer in this, my first blog post.

Why, in the name of all that is good and holy, am I writing a blog? There are probably billions of people in the world that know more than I do about any one of the topics I might post about. So why would I do this? Well, the fact of the matter is, my boss wants me to.

I asked him not to make me do it, so if you end up getting upset over something I write, take it up with him. :-] When I asked him why he wanted me to do this, his answer was pretty simple. I tell people what I think, based upon reason and facts, and I communicate what I think with passion based on those reasons. He didn't put it QUITE that way, but that's what he meant. I think.

I'm not sure how that qualifies me to be a blogger. I really don't. I regularly read Chad Sakac's blog over at VirtualGeek, Chuck Hollis' blog, StorageZilla, Storage Anarchist, Barry Whyte, and a lot of other guys and gals out there and never once put myself in the category of people that should regularly be read by a card-carrying, dyed-in-the-wool, proud to be geek. Not once. Still don't.

That said, I'm supposed to write. What can you expect from me? You can expect a lot of opinion. I'm probably not going to tell you how to configure your Avamar system for maximum throughput of de-duplicated bits across a converged network. I'm probably not going to give you great bits of Linux tweaking advice or try to be crowned the ESX guru of the century with sage advice on how not to tune all the kernel parameters. I'll tell you what I think of things going on in the technology world. I'll tell you how I think they really matter, or really don't matter, to real customers, with real data centers, and real jobs they're trying to keep. I'll try to make sense out of the hype, the homerism, and the marketing stuff and boil it down. If I do that, then maybe people will read. If I miss the mark, probably not.

Who am I?

I'm the newest member of IDS' engineering team. I come from almost 8 years of experience at EMC. While there, I supported Sprint PCS, the Channel, the Proven Professional program (yes, you can blame me for a lot of the questions on the E20-521 exam and a few others), and the Commercial Division. I was a Systems Engineer, Technical Consultant, District Channel Manager, Technology Solutions Manager, and a Global Solutions Architect. I did a lot of things in 8 years. Before that, I spent several years in the telco space, with a CLEC and an (at the time) up-start wireless carrier.

Why does any of that matter? To you, it might not. To customers, it means that I've seen a lot of different things. I've been involved in complete project failures, and partial project successes. I've helped customers who have 'data centers' the size of a small broom cabinet to customers with data centers the size of a shopping mall do one thing: meld the technical and the business.

That's why I do what I do (besides the fact it feeds my seven kids -- do you KNOW how much food seven kids can eat? That's another blog for another day :-]). Anyway, it's what I do. I knew from the time I took apart an Apple IIe in 5th grade and made it work with the LOGO turtle robot, that making computers do things for people in ways that mattered was what I wanted to do.

So, that's what I try to do.

I'm not always right (mostly not), but I always have a reason for what I think. I can always tell you why I think what I think and endeavor to do so in terms that make sense TO YOU. You don't have to agree with me. You don't have to like me. I honestly don't care either way. I'm going to make more than a few of you upset, I'm sure. I'll probably start more than a few flame wars, and I'm okay with that. As long as things stay civil, we'll all have some fun with spirited debate (assuming anyone actually reads my drivel). I have always thought that Chuck Hollis' approach to things was the right way to go -- let comments come and allow them to be seen even when they disagree with you, but I won't allow this blog to become a sounding board of derogatory remarks or silliness. Comments will be moderated.

SO, without further ado.............

Why the V-Max was cool, but not all that exciting to me.

Now before all you EMCers go off telling me I've betrayed the family and how could I defame the good name Symmetrix, hear me out. And anti-EMCers, back off. There's no blood in the water here or reason for you to take a swipe. I could fill reams of paper with the utter ho-hum nature of your last 3 or 4 product "updates".

I'm very impressed with the technology. I'm floored by the technology, actually. I think it's quite amazing what's been done to take DMX concepts into a virtualized hardware layer that then (without too much hyperbole) can infinitely scale (there's probably still some hyperbole there, because nothing scales infinitely outside of Time, but still).  The scale we're talking about here is truly astounding for a storage subsystem.

The fact that manageability has taken a quantum leap forward for the Symmetrix is an indication that the engineering sea change that was supposed to have happened several years ago may have actually begun to occur, and Symmetrix Engineering may have begun to realize that 1) not all customers are idiots who can't manage complex technology, but 2) not all customers want to obtain a PhD in how to manage storage technology because some of them have lives. That's a whole lot of goodness as far as I'm concerned.

The geek in me looks at this thing and says 'holy cow, how'd they really do that'? The fact that this technology enables VMware to truly scale and become serious about commoditizing the compute layer is utterly awesome. This, I think, along with a truly modularized server layer and the converged network, is what VMware needs in order to become the de facto data center OS.

I'm glad they moved to commodity processors. I see a ton of potential in management and down-market mobility afforded by moving to a commodity processor platform. I think this is an infinitely cool machine.

The business guy in me says 'great, another device on the market that is supposed to save the world, but only plays to the top 5%' (or less). I'm not sure how else to see this. Part of it is that I play in a space, and have for several years now, that looks at systems like the DMX, or V-Max, where to acquire one is more than the entire total cost of their infrastructure, including plumbing, electrical, the parking lot, the soda machine, oh, and IT. I get that my perspective is a little bit skewed toward the middle to lower end of the market. I'm happy to play here, because in my experience, they listen more, are more receptive to new ideas, and generally have a passion about what they do, more than most people working in large IT shops do. They're not a cog in the wheel, they ARE the wheel, so to speak.

So what set me off about the whole V-Max thing is how this is 'the vision of the future data center'. That's great. 150 of the data centers of the world will be able to take advantage of these ground-breaking features, functions, and benefits.

Okay, I'm being hyperbolic now, but you get the point. There's no down-stream message. If you don't play with V-Max, you aren't doing anything worth talking about. If you're not going to deploy something that can support 8 bazillion drives, you don't need the uber-integration with VMware (or perhaps aren't worthy of it).

Once again, EMC has basically laid it out that you aren't going to be included in the wave of data center efficiency if your data center consists of 3 or 4 ESX hosts running less than 100 VMs. Apparently it's okay for you to still do everything manually, with no end to end visibility and management capability.

Okay, now I'm being harsh. But again, you get the point.

Don't get me wrong, I love CLARiiON. I've sold and architected a LOT of it. It's a superb platform to everything in its space, hands down, bar none; NAS, SAN, whatever. What I guess I'm upset about is that EMC thinks the only place to revolutionize the industry is in the top 5%. And no, quite frankly, I do NOT consider the CX4 revolutionary. Putting modular connectivity was a must to stay ahead, not a revolutionary idea (servers have had PCIe slots you can put different multi-port cards into for years). But it goes deeper than that. Go back and compare the CX4 launch to the V-Max. Not even close in comparison. The CX4 launch was a blip on the sub-radar of the V-Max. There was no passion to it, no earth-shattering feel to it, just another generation of CLARiiON. 'yay'.

I understand how much revenue comes from that top space, but how much GROWTH? Not much, if any. I feel like EMC missed the opportunity to REALLY turn the tables upside down. Why not go completely downstream (not to the AX4 or CX4-120 space, but that CX4-240 or 480 level and up) with this massively scalable virtualized engine and introduce GREATER than 5 9s to the mid market? Scalable doesn't only mean bigger. It means it can grow and contract. It means it can start out small, AND SMALL MEANS <96 DRIVES IS AFFORDABLE.

This architecture should support that concept. These are Intel processors now, with even more commodity parts, right? Then bring the joy of mass production TO the masses, guys. Scale this baby down and turn the storage world upside down. How could HDS possibly compete with that? NTAP, are you kidding me? They couldn't touch it. Don't even get me started on Compellent, Xiotech, or 3Par. And Equallogic, errr, Dell? Right.

I'm sold on the V-Max conceptually. It's the reality I'm left to deal with, though, and I'm not feeling it. At least not yet.