Storage 1017 Final Rev

STORAGE
Home
Castagna: Storage
pros more business
than bits
MANAGING THE INFORMATION THAT DRIVES THE ENTERPRISE
Toigo: Storage SNAPSHOT 1 EDITOR’S NOTE / CASTAGNA

industry’s long,
hot summer NAS trifecta: More business
Price, features than bits and bytes
Dell EMC a year
later and performance for storage pros
NAS trifecta:
Price, features,
performance CLOUD STORAGE REVOLUTION / TOIGO
Multicloud storage Multicloud storage The storage industry’s

mitigates lock-in
mitigates lock-in long, hot summer
Scalability, capacity
important to NAS
buyers
New open source SNAPSHOT 2 HOT SPOTS / CRUMP

options for storage
Scalability and Integrated data
Crump: Data
capacity important protection in
center’s integrated
data protection to NAS buyers the data center
Matchett:
Dell EMC a year later

Secondary storage
now comes first OPEN SOURCE READ-WRITE / MATCHETT
About us Pros and cons of the storage and technology New open source Secondary storage
merger of the century. options for storage now comes first
OCTOBER 2017, VOL. 16, NO. 8

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 1
EDITOR’S LETTER
RICH CASTAGNA
Home
Castagna: Storage
pros more business
More business
than bits
Toigo: Storage
gone and is heading. It’s hardly news that the days of the
than bytes for

industry’s long, storage guru are winding down—at least in some respects.
hot summer
Storage has gotten smarter, easier to use and a lot less
complicated. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Dell EMC a year
later storage pros As much as you might’ve reveled in LUN configuration
as some arcane art, fess up; it really wasn’t ever fun. If you
NAS trifecta: Some storage skills may be obsolete,
Price, features, never diddle around with a LUN again, will it really matter
performance but storage has moved closer all that much? Likewise, those good old days of watching
to the bottom line. database administrators sweat for a week or so while you
Multicloud storage
mitigates lock-in carved out and provisioned some capacity for their apps
are gone. So long!
important to NAS
buyers
BOB DYLAN MEMORABLY intoned, “You don’t need a weather- CHIN UP, YOU’RE NOT EXTINCT
New open source
options for storage
man to know which way the wind blows,” pointing out that Hyper-converged is the poster child technology illustrat-
some shifts in the nature of things are easy to discern, if ing how so many of the old familiar lines that defined IT
Crump: Data not so easy to accept. roles are blurring. Roles are merging, and specialization
data protection Similarly, a veteran IT storage administrator doesn’t may seem passé. The virtual machine admin now handles
need a weatherman to tell that the climate for storage in storage, server staffers are using software to cobble to-
Matchett:
the data center has certainly changed over the past few gether networks and the storage team is learning all about
Secondary storage
now comes first years. And whether that change is a warming up or cool- PCI slots and CPU cores.
ing down, the tinkering with the IT thermostat is having It’s IT turned upside down.
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a chilling effect on some storage jockeys. Or maybe it’s just a different way of doing IT? But no
But it’s hardly the onset of a storage ice age. It’s more matter how cloudy or virtualized data centers get, there
like a changing of the seasons. are some immutable—at least for now—laws of physics
Hyper-converged, software-defined, cloud, virtual: that declare that data, if you ever want to see it again, must
These aren’t just buzzwords; they’re where storage has have a place to live.

Home Storage isn’t going away. Neither are the IT storage critical data resources in schools, hospitals, government
Castagna: Storage
administrators who know, understand and can make the offices, businesses and just about everywhere else. Secu-
pros more business best use of it. That’s you. If you’re responsible for storage, rity vendors struggle to keep up with new strains of these
than bits you’re going to be in the thick of things for some time. viruses and typically do a good job of protecting data. But
Toigo: Storage
So you can forget about being replaced by a cloud or all too often, the insidious software slips through security
industry’s long, whatever. measures and does its dastardly deed on your data. While
hot summer
prevention is still the focus, in the past year, attention has
Dell EMC a year shifted to ransomware recovery; if you can’t stop it, how
later GET SERIOUS, THE JOB IS CHANGING can you get your company back on its feet fastest? As an
Manual chores that were once the lot of the storage ad-
NAS trifecta:
Price, features, ministrator, like creating LUNs, might be gone, but you
performance still must know the best type of storage for the various YOU STILL MUST KNOW
Multicloud storage
types of data your company needs to store. That part of THE BEST TYPE OF STORAGE
mitigates lock-in the process is pretty close to business as usual, although FOR THE VARIOUS TYPES
your choices now range from spinning disk to hybrid ar- OF DATA YOUR COMPANY
rays to all-flash arrays to hyper-converged systems to …
important to NAS
buyers You get the picture. You’ll need the same smarts to get NEEDS TO STORE.
that data stored right, but you’ll be working with a new
New open source
options for storage
set of options. IT storage administrator, you know how to do that. It’s
Those kinds of changes are more like adjustments than called disaster recovery, and you’ve been refining those
Crump: Data abrupt shifts in responsibilities or skills. systems for years.
data protection A recent survey commissioned by Bluelock, a provider
of disaster recovery as a service, found that IT managers
Matchett:
BUSINESS AS USUAL IS BUSINESS were most concerned about preventing ransomware at-
Secondary storage
now comes first More and more, storage is being called on to play a key tacks and less prepared to deal with them when they do
role in business decision-making: Storage is becoming occur. And the threats to the business they cited as top of
About us
strategic. mind were serious indeed: loss of customer confidence
Just look at some of the critical issues facing IT these (64% reported this concern), loss of sensitive data (49%)
days: and breach of a customer contract or the threat of regula-
tory fines (35%). Those are all about the business’s bucks,
n Ransomware is all over the news; it has laid waste to not just its bit and bytes.

Home n GDPR,the European Union’s General Data Protection data analysis or development and testing, active archive
Castagna: Storage
Regulation, is another example of how business initiatives and so forth. And just like that, backup admins have be-
pros more business will drive—and are driven by—storage. With billions of come data management specialists.
than bits pieces of personal information stored on systems around
Toigo: Storage
the globe, it will take some serious storage and data man-
industry’s long, agement skills to ensure that a company complies effec- CLOSER TO THE BOTTOM LINE
hot summer
tively and avoids those multimillion-dollar penalties for All of this means an IT storage administrator must focus
Dell EMC a year noncompliance. less on the care and feeding of a bunch of flash drives
later or spinning disks and set their sights on the company’s
n Backup apps have evolved into management systems that business requirements. It’s an opportunity to apply your
NAS trifecta:
Price, features, do far more than copy data from here to there. Enterprise storage skills, play an active role in business planning,
performance backup software isn’t just about data protection anymore, and help develop strategies that promote business initia-
Multicloud storage
but has a growing emphasis on data management and data tives. n
mitigates lock-in availability. These platforms routinely offer functionality
such as file sync and share, copy data management for big RICH CASTAGNA is TechTarget’s VP of Editorial.
important to NAS
buyers
New open source

options for storage
Crump: Data
data protection
Matchett:
Secondary storage
now comes first
About us

STORAGE REVOLUTION
JON TOIGO
Home
Castagna: Storage
pros more business
The storage
than bits
Toigo: Storage
her husband, Brian, chief sales officer for Spectra, at a
industry’s long,
industry’s long, rustic Florida fish place in late July. Leigh, who hails from
hot summer
Louisiana, has never completely exorcised the lilt—the
hot summer
Dell EMC a year sonic equivalent of a weeping willow tree resting lazily
later on the shoreline of an alligator bayou on a humid August
afternoon—from her spoken dialect. (Brian grew up in
NAS trifecta: Magnetic tape is set to explode, cloud
Price, features, Boston, but we won’t hold that against him.) That, plus the
momentum slows and software-defined
performance po’ boy and clam chowder, put me in the right mindset to
storage HCI fizzles. make the connection.
Multicloud storage
mitigates lock-in
CLOUD MOMENTUM SLOWS
important to NAS
buyers Like many folks during this long, hot summer, I have been
IN CASE YOU aren’t up on your William Faulkner or Tennes- trying to make sense of several interesting developments
New open source
options for storage
see Williams, do yourself a favor and check out the 1958 in the enterprise storage market that may impact our
film “The Long, Hot Summer” on Amazon Prime, Hulu, 2018 buying decisions. In one recent chat with a Global
Crump: Data Netflix or your local cable provider. Not only is it a couple 2000 tech service provider, I was told that the cloud
data protection of hours of great entertainment, but you’ll also get insights thing isn’t working out as planned. Instead of jumping
into this month’s column. whole hog onto the cloud bandwagon, the big companies
Matchett:
Filmed in Clinton, La., the story centers on a difficult are choosing a hybrid cloud, or cloud bursting, model
Secondary storage
now comes first decision that a family patriarch (Orson Welles) must that uses cloud resources sparingly and only to meet
make between his son (Tony Franciosa) and an aggressive peak load requirements or to park data that isn’t ever
About us
interloper (Paul Newman) about the future of the family re-referenced.
plantation. The movie ends up being a fairly good meta- The blush seems to be off the rose when it comes to an
phor for the enterprise storage market today. active-active relationship with a cloud in the enterprise
This came to me during a delightful lunch with Leigh storage market. Clouds are too expensive, too prone to
Grainger, public relations manager at Spectra Logic, and outages and security breaches. And, let’s face it, WAN

Home links with sufficient bandwidth, throughput and distance small and remote branch offices and for cloud service
Castagna: Storage
are too expensive or hard to come by. Data deltas make providers to roll out software-based VTLs on demand for
pros more business failover clustering a huge hassle, and, when they aren’t a customers.
than bits problem, it usually means that the business is talking to But, according to Anton Kolomyeytsev, StarWind’s
Toigo: Storage
a cloud that’s within 40 miles of home. That makes the CEO and co-founder, a different kind of disruption was
industry’s long, business and the cloud equally vulnerable targets for the
hot summer
next tropical storm or overturned tanker truck carrying
Dell EMC a year some noxious chemical or poisonous gas. SDS AND HCI WERE SUPPOSED
later TO DECONSTRUCT THE
NAS trifecta:
ENTERPRISE STORAGE MARKET,
Price, features, SDS AND HCI REVOLUTION FIZZLES
MAKING IT EASIER AND
performance A week or so before meeting the Spectra Logic folks, I
skyped with a pal over at StarWind Software who told
LESS COSTLY TO DEPLOY,
Multicloud storage
mitigates lock-in me that another big phenom, the software-defined stor- ADMINISTER AND PROTECT.
age and hyper-converged infrastructure “revolution,” is
important to NAS
also fizzling a bit. Software-defined storage (SDS) and needed. Working against the “noisy” backdrop of an
buyers hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) were supposed to ongoing conflict in Eastern Ukraine, Kolomyeytsev has
deconstruct the enterprise storage market, making it eas- returned his focus to the enterprise data storage mar-
New open source
options for storage
ier and less costly to deploy, administer and protect than ket. By the time you read this, he will be announcing
was the case with those overbuilt, oversubscribed and initiatives to reinvent storage arrays so that they provide
Crump: Data underutilized big iron storage arrays of the past. previously unheard of scalability, resiliency, performance
data protection However, deconstruction had the unfortunate side and cost-efficiency in a green footprint. His “liquid” SAN
effect of decreasing enterprise-wide storage allocation architecture—StarWind’s code name for its enterprise
Matchett:
efficiency by siloing storage behind proprietary hyper- storage market play—competes with Dell EMC Unity
Secondary storage
now comes first visors and hypervisor-controlled SDS stacks. The good and Hewlett Packard Enterprise 3PAR. But it does so
news for StarWind was that their hypervisor-agnostic at a fraction of the price because of a novel innovation:
About us
SDS and HCI appliances, and especially their virtual storage nodes that use ARM processors and disposable,
tape library (VTL) HCI appliance, were still selling off-the-shelf components—similar to Raspberry Pi—that
well. The software VTL was especially successful, pro- communicate with the company’s SDS software control-
viding a convenient means for small and medium-sized ler nodes. This approach is a further deconstruction of
businesses to build a coherent data protection strategy for the software-defined and hyper-converged kit, capable of

Home universal hypervisor support. clouds and large enterprise IT shops with the introduction
Castagna: Storage
The fishtail from hypervisor-centric storage siloing back of LTO-8. About the time that this column prints, Grainger
pros more business to enterprise storage architecture will be a welcome one expects Spectra Logic to be shipping LTO-8 libraries that
than bits to us older plantation owners who just want to figure out capitalize on the 12.8 TB native and 32 TB compressed
Toigo: Storage
how to keep the farm going as the underlying economics capacity of a cartridge and the 472 Mbps native and 1,180
industry’s long, of everything changes. Innovations like liquid SAN may Mbps compressed transfer rates of the technology. While
hot summer
combine well with another enterprise storage technology, demand for smaller, sub-petabyte-capacity libraries has
Dell EMC a year magnetic tape, especially as LTO-8 comes to market, ac- fallen off, Grainger contended that the market for massive
later cording to Spectra Logic’s Brian Grainger. libraries to meet exabyte- and zettabyte-sized repository
requirements is poised to explode.
NAS trifecta:
Price, features, The good news for Spectra Logic is that proprietary
performance MAGNETIC TAPE SET TO TAKE OFF enterprise tape formats are now less appealing as stan-
Multicloud storage
Tape is one of those technologies that has seen interest dards-based LTO-8 provides equivalent capacities and
mitigates lock-in swell and subside over the years. Certain industries—such speeds.
as media and entertainment, oil and gas exploration, ge- Bottom line: The old plantation model for IT may have
important to NAS
nomic analysis and basic sciences research conducted by become as enfeebled as Welles’ Will Varner in the movie.
buyers national government labs—have kept the technology from But there are still some aggressive and clever operators,
disappearing during lean times. However, cloud providers like Newman’s Ben Quick, who may find ways to rejuve-
New open source
options for storage
recently have jumped on tape in a big way, using it for the nate the enterprise storage market with a mix of old and
mass storage of backup and archive data from millions of new technologies that can keep the business on a paying
Crump: Data small and medium-sized businesses and billions of con- basis. The long, hot summer just might give way to a tem-
data protection sumers. Even with this market, Spectra Logic, a well-es- perate and rich harvest. n
tablished tape technology vendor, has found it necessary
Matchett:
to diversify into other forms of storage, including disk and JON WILLIAM TOIGO is a 30-year IT veteran, CEO and managing
Secondary storage
now comes first flash devices, to keep its coffers healthy. principal of Toigo Partners International, and chairman of the Data
However, tape is about to garner more attention from Management Institute.
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MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS
DELL BOUGHT EMC more than 12 months ago in the largest

corporate transaction in IT history. The dust has started
to settle, giving us a clearer—if still somewhat murky—
picture of how the deal from which the behemoth Dell
Technologies emerged will pan out.
Here, we offer two different takes on how it went during
the past year. TechTarget Storage Media Group Editorial
Director Dave Raffo takes the pro position, looking at the
positive aspects of the Dell and EMC merger. Senior News
Writer Gary Kranz plays devil’s advocate, laying out a more
negative view of the combined company.
What effect has the deal had on Dell and EMC prod-
ucts? How about the present and future of VMware? What
are the consequences for the storage market in general?
Let’s find out.
Dell EMC PRO: RIGHT DEAL FOR
a year later THE WRONG REASONS
Did Dell acquire the world’s largest storage company a

Our experts sort out the pros and cons of the year ago? Or did EMC pick up a server vendor to round
storage and technology merger of the century. out its infrastructure strategy?
BY DAVE RAFFO AND GARRY KRANZ It doesn’t matter: Either way, the timing was perfect.
The $60 billion-plus deal came as convergence of dis-
crete servers and storage was giving way to hyper-
KASAHASA/ADOBE STOCK
HOME
Home convergence, and the new Dell Technologies put all the they increasingly found that organizations buying servers
Castagna: Storage
right pieces together. Dell EMC—the combined compa- often bought storage to go with them. When IBM and HP
pros more business ny’s enterprise IT division—has software-defined storage pitched themselves as one-stop shops, server-only Dell
than bits and servers. It also contains EMC’s VMware with its virtu- and storage-only EMC got pushed aside. So they banded
Toigo: Storage
alization, the other major piece of the hyper-convergence together. Tucci and Dell CEO Kevin Rollins became fast
industry’s long, puzzle. friends, and the relationship worked, for a while.
hot summer
While the technology part of the Dell-EMC merger Things changed soon after Michael Dell stepped back
Dell EMC a year makes sense, the deal itself happened for the wrong rea- into the CEO role in 2007. He decided that selling storage
later son. It was driven by shareholders and stock prices rather was such a good idea that he didn’t want to split his profits
than IT customer demand. EMC’s share price was stalled with EMC. So Dell bought its own storage vendors, Equal-
NAS trifecta:
Price, features, despite its dominance in the storage market, and investors Logic and Compellent—after HP outbid Dell for 3PAR
performance weren’t buying CEO Joe Tucci’s federation strategy. Mean- storage—and the EMC OEM deal ended in 2011.
Multicloud storage
while, Dell chairman and CEO Michael Dell had taken his But the EqualLogic and Compellent platforms never
mitigates lock-in company private in 2013, giving him the chance to run added up to a complete storage picture for Dell. And EMC
up a huge pile of debt without worrying about what that missed having server hardware, even if its ownership of
important to NAS
would do to his stock price. VMware’s hypervisors made it a player in the virtual server
buyers Owning EMC will likely lead Dell to take his company world. With x86 servers replacing custom-built ASICs as
public again and dig his way out of that debt. The Dell and building blocks of storage arrays, customers increasingly
New open source
options for storage
EMC merger came at a time when the storage market was built storage roadmaps around server technology. But if
undergoing rapid change, however, and gave the world’s EMC developed its own server platform, it could have
Crump: Data largest storage vendor a chance to reinvent itself as Dell alienated VMWare’s server partners and risked turning
data protection EMC. them into big fans of VMware competitor Microsoft’s
Hyper-V hypervisor.
Matchett:
So while Dell storage plodded along with EqualLogic
Secondary storage
now comes first A BIT OF HISTORY and Compellent, EMC turned to Cisco as its favored server
The relationship between EMC and Dell over the years partner. EMC, Cisco and VMware formed VCE in 2009,
About us
illustrates where the storage and server world has been a joint selling venture that bundled EMC storage with
and where it’s going. In 2001, the two companies forged Cisco servers and networking and VMware virtualiza-
an OEM deal for Dell to rebrand EMC storage. That made tion. That worked for a while, until VMware’s move into
sense because both were competing with giants IBM and software-defined networking threatened Cisco’s server
Hewlett-Packard in the server and storage markets, and business, putting a strain on the EMC-Cisco relationship.

Home Meanwhile, EMC’s investors became restless. Its board emerging flash technologies run inside servers as well as
Castagna: Storage
first went to HP, which decided to split up rather than storage systems. Dell EMC has both sides covered.
pros more business expand. Then the board approached Dell and found Dell Whatever happens, the next few years will be interest-
than bits wanted storage, which meshed with EMC’s need for a ing. Rapid changes in the IT market put Dell and EMC
Toigo: Storage
server partner. So here we are. in danger of irrelevance if they had stayed apart. Now
industry’s long, Dell positions itself as a one-stop shop for all enterprise
hot summer
IT needs. We’ll soon find out if IT shops want what Dell
Dell EMC a year WILL THE DELL AND EMC MERGER WORK? EMC is selling.
later Success is far from guaranteed. The storage world is mov-
ing faster than ever, and it’s tough for an organization
NAS trifecta:
Price, features, as large as Dell EMC to turn fast enough to adapt. The CON: MORE QUESTIONS
performance cloud is only gaining in popularity, and neither Dell nor THAN ANSWERS
Multicloud storage
EMC nor VMware has quite mastered it yet. Meanwhile,
mitigates lock-in the lion’s share of Dell EMC’s storage revenue still comes It may be hard to imagine now, but in the 1990s, Wall
from legacy SAN, NAS and backup disk platforms. These Street investors viewed both Dell Inc. and EMC as dis-
important to NAS
are areas with little growth and under fire from relative ruptive technology companies. Over time, Dell emerged
buyers newcomers, such as flash, object storage, software-defined as a household name and the No. 1 maker of personal
and hyper-convergence. computers, while EMC blazed a trail in the nascent yet
New open source
options for storage
But Dell EMC has the storage market surrounded. Dell burgeoning market for electronic data storage systems.
gave EMC the one large piece it was missing—servers. Dell and EMC are now considered legacy vendors. After
Crump: Data EMC already had the rest, including all-flash arrays, object closing the record IT deal last year, the merged company
data protection storage and virtual data backup. Figuring out the cloud is had a combined valuation of $74 billion and was spreading
more of a strategic than technological issue. Dell EMC its tentacles into computers, data analytics, information
Matchett:
has the technologies in place, so as traditional SAN and security, networking, servers and storage.
Secondary storage
now comes first NAS arrays fade, the company will push its emerging tech- Symbiosis is the predicate for a successful merger.
nologies—mostly server-based—to fill the void. For the Notwithstanding its combined financial and market clout,
About us
immediate future, there’s hyper-convergence and flash. storage customers are right to wonder: Will Dell Technol-
Dell EMC VxRail—and other hyper-converged platforms ogies, particularly the Dell EMC enterprise IT division,
that will follow—will benefit from having all the main be a limber or lumbering giant? Is having one supersized
components under one roof and one development team. vendor better than two separate competitors? While there
On the flash side, nonvolatlile memory express and other is an acknowledged upside to the deal, questions remain

Home about whether or not this marriage will be a long, happy storage arrays that target similar markets. Indeed, in June
Castagna: Storage
one. 2017, the company reported consolidated revenue of $17.8
pros more business billion for the first quarter of fiscal year 2018, up 46% from
than bits the same period a year earlier.
Toigo: Storage
DIMINISHING TERRITORY Overlap is especially pronounced in midrange systems,
industry’s long, Dell’s traditional PC and server business has flagged for with no fewer than four different flash offerings. EMC’s
hot summer
a few years. And like its competitors, EMC has watched midtier storage includes the Unity, VNX and VNXe arrays.
Dell EMC a year networked storage sales steadily decline as companies
later consume storage as a service to sidestep IT headaches and
NAS trifecta:
the multiyear vendor commitments of hosting physical WILL DELL TECHNOLOGIES,
arrays in a data center.
Price, features,
performance Consequently, with this merger, Dell EMC is deepen-
PARTICULARLY THE DELL
ing its footprint in a gradually diminishing plot of terri- EMC ENTERPRISE IT DIVISION,
Multicloud storage
mitigates lock-in tory: hardware SAN arrays. Converged infrastructure, BE A LIMBER OR LUMBERING
hyper-converged infrastructure and software-defined GIANT?
important to NAS
storage are the hot tickets. Dell EMC said it will continue
buyers selling both VCE converged products that are based on
Cisco servers and hyper-converged gear from Nutanix In addition to EqualLogic—now Dell PS Series—Dell sells
New open source
options for storage
under separate OEM deals. But even those markets face the SC Series (formerly Dell Compellent) family of SAN
contraction as cost-conscious customers more frequently arrays.
Crump: Data opt to lease hybrid flash capacity in a multi-tenant cloud Offering customers multiple options is one of Dell
data protection data center. EMC’s strengths. Even so, it could complicate refresh
planning and decision-making for IT shops with limited
Matchett:
resources.
Secondary storage
now comes first COMPLICATIONS FROM INTEGRATION Dell SC Series is one of the main historical competitors
Even before the merger, EMC execs repeated the mantra: to EMC VNX and VNXe unified arrays. Dell has indicated
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“When it comes to our product portfolio, better to have plans to consolidate its scale-out PS Series and modular
overlap than have a gap.” In that sense, product redun- SC Series block arrays, which means EqualLogic adher-
dancy created by the Dell and EMC merger may not be ents should be prepared to migrate to a new storage plat-
an impediment for end users, even if it does create a bit form at end of life. Michael Dell has kept his pre-merger
of confusion. Dell EMC has multiple all-flash and hybrid word that he would keep Compellent arrays for those

Home customers, but the market will determine how long that as a student at the University of Texas. After more than two
Castagna: Storage
platform survives. decades as a publicly traded Fortune 500 company, Dell
pros more business One area to watch closely concerns the features in- exited Nasdaq in 2013 in a widely chronicled $25 billion
than bits cluded in software upgrades. Most of Dell’s software privatization. Going private dovetailed with Dell’s cultural
Toigo: Storage
portfolio competes against legacy EMC projects, such as roots as a startup and freed up liquidity for it to expand.
industry’s long, Pivotal Cloud Foundry, RSA and VMware. End of support Not to be overlooked in all this is the retirement of
hot summer
will be phased in gradually, but it pays to have a contin- longtime EMC CEO Joe Tucci, who had postponed retire-
Dell EMC a year gency plan to migrate data from any applications you’re ment several times. Activist investors at EMC had for years
later using. pressured Tucci, to no avail, to break up EMC Federation
companies as a way to increase shareholder value. The
NAS trifecta:
Price, features, Dell acquisition has kept EMC Federation companies
performance MERGERS ARE HARD together, but will it be permanent?
Multicloud storage
Aside from maintaining different product lines, Dell EMC Cost-cutting is inevitable in a deal of this magnitude, as
mitigates lock-in faces the task of integrating two employee cultures. Not illustrated by Dell EMC’s reported firing of about 3,000
as easy as it sounds. employees last October. Therein lies part of the cultural
important to NAS
Hailed at the time as a “merger of equals,” the $165 bil- dilemma: how to cohesively knit Dell’s college-town en-
buyers lion Time-Warner and AOL transaction in 2000 remains trepreneurial roots and EMC’s buttoned-down approach
the largest corporate merger in U.S. history. Despite prom- as a mainstay of Boston’s Route 128 technology corridor.
New open source
options for storage
ises of corporate bliss, it ended in a rocky divorce nine
years later, when Time Warner spun AOL back out as an
Crump: Data independent company. Time Warner-AOL made headlines BARRIERS TO STORAGE STARTUPS
data protection not just for its price tag, but for the rancor and infighting When two large vendors compete head to head, startups
of top executives and irreconcilable differences between wedge their way into the market by exploiting innovation
Matchett:
the two different employee cultures. Further hastening gaps. They create breakthrough features that evolve into
Secondary storage
now comes first the demise was a rapid and largely unforeseen erosion baseline product specifications, such as data deduplication
of AOL’s market share to upstart high-speed broadband and integrated backup in the storage market. When this
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providers. happens, larger vendors pay big bucks for those compa-
Those types of cultural and executive differences ha- nies, giving investors incentive to back new startups. So
ven’t beset Dell EMC—at least not yet. Michael Dell is while Dell EMC will continue to explore strategic acqui-
noted for running Dell Technologies with the same lean sitions—that’s how Compellent and EqualLogic became
management style he developed while bootstrapping Dell part of Dell and how Isilon and Data Domain products

Home got absorbed into the EMC brand—it’s unlikely to spend of faster-than-expected cost increases for componentry
Castagna: Storage
as much on acquisitions as the two companies spent in- and flash memory chips. Dell has had to absorb the dif-
pros more business dependently. That means if you have a vision to launch ference between its price quotes to customers and the
than bits a storage company that will be “the next big thing,” your market costs. That’s a market anomaly beyond its control,
Toigo: Storage
route to market just got a little tougher. but it further underscores the difficulties in trying to sell
industry’s long, traditional gear in a hybrid IT world.
hot summer
To pay down the debt, Dell EMC will have to accept a
Dell EMC a year HOW SUSTAINABLE IS THE MERGER DEBT? declining market share for computer gear while signifi-
later Dell acquired EMC using a complicated leveraging cantly juicing up revenue from sales of IT services and
scheme that spread $57 billion of debt across a number of software. How successful it is in doing that could play
NAS trifecta:
Price, features, investment vehicles. For instance, creditors allowed Dell a large role in determining whether the Dell and EMC
performance EMC to turn VMware, the virtualization giant spawned by merger will be viewed as a boon or bust over the long
Multicloud storage
EMC, into a tracking stock to be used as collateral. That term. n
mitigates lock-in move let the vendors woo a broader range of investors. So
far, the company said it has paid down about $7 billion of DAVE RAFFO is editorial director of TechTarget’s Storage Media Group.
important to NAS
the debt. GARRY KRANZ is a senior news writer with TechTarget’s Storage Me-
buyers Challenges loom on the horizon, however, in the form dia Group.
New open source

options for storage
Crump: Data
data protection
Matchett:
Secondary storage
now comes first
About us

Home
Snapshot 1
NAS trifecta: Price, features and performance
Castagna: Storage
pros more business
than bits
Toigo: Storage
industry’s long, hat vendors are you considering
DW D What main factors are you looking
hot summer
for your new NAS purchase?* for in your NAS system vendor?*
Dell EMC a year
later
57% Dell EMC 81% Price
NAS trifecta:
Price, features,
performance 31% NetApp 61% Product features and performance
Multicloud storage 27% Hewlett Packard Enterprise 39% Maintenance and support agreements
mitigates lock-in
Scalability, capacity 13% IBM 24% Market leadership

important to NAS
buyers
10% Hitachi Data Systems 14% Technology preassembled (plug-and-play)
New open source

options for storage 07% Oracle-Sun 10% Customizable technology
Crump: Data
05% Nimble 07% Migration support
center’s integrated i
data protection More than half of *UP TO THREE SELECTIONS ALLOWED
05% Fujitsu respondents chose
Matchett: Dell EMC.
Secondary storage
17+33+50A
8+42+50A
now comes first 04% Pure Storage
About us 03% DataDirect Networks
*MULTIPLE SELECTIONS ALLOWED 34% 15%

of enterprises have plan to buy a new
NAS arrays installed. one in the next year.
SOURCE: TECHTARGET RESEARCH; ILLUSTRATION: TAWATDCHAI MUELAE/GETTY IMAGES

CLOUD
Multicloud storage
mitigates lock-in PUBLIC CLOUD UTILIZATION continues to grow at a phenome-
New storage products are being designed nal rate. Public and private cloud infrastructure spending
for cross-public cloud data portability. is increasing at double digit rates while spending on tra-
BY JEFF KATO AND JEFF BYRNE ditional, non-cloud, IT infrastructure is declining. Within
a few years, non-cloud spending will be less than half
the entire infrastructure market. Amazon Web Services
alone, as the gorilla of the public cloud market, continues
to grow at over 40% year over year and has an annualized
run rate of around $15 billion. Microsoft boasts similar
revenue when its Office 365 software-as-a-service offer-
ings are included.
This trend has been widely predicted for years. The sur-
prise is how strong the inertia toward public cloud adop-
tion has become. So much so that it’s an open question
as to when we will hit the long-term equilibrium point
between public clouds and on-premises infrastructure.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) pioneered public cloud
storage when it introduced Simple Storage Service (S3)
more than 10 years ago. The public cloud vendors’ ap-
proach has been to offer storage services at cut-rate pricing
in what we call the “Hotel California” strategy: Once they
have your data, it can never leave.
And once they have your data, they then offer a wide
variety of higher-priced services, such as global content
distribution, data analytics and a variety of compute capa-
bilities, to complement access to it. Recently, we’ve heard
RAWPIXEL.COM/ADOBE STOCK
HOME
Home increased grumbling from public cloud storage customers
Castagna: Storage
concerned about losing the option to change vendors and FIGURE 1
pros more business the resulting reduction in competition.
than bits What are your main concerns
To gather data and develop insights regarding plans
around moving to cloud services?
Toigo: Storage
for public cloud and multicloud storage use, Taneja
industry’s long, Group earlier this year surveyed more than 400 IT deci-
hot summer
sion-makers and practitioners from businesses of all sizes 68% Security of data stored in the cloud
Dell EMC a year and industries. The results of that survey are helping us
later understand current and planned deployments of applica- 38% Costs will become too high
tions to the public cloud.

NAS trifecta: 35% Cloud vendor lock-in
Price, features, Specifically, we wanted to assess the need for an
performance emerging set of storage products that we call multicloud 29% Loss of control of IT operations
Multicloud storage
primary storage. Essentially, multicloud storage products
mitigates lock-in provide data services across more than one public cloud 28% Potential for extended downtime
simultaneously.
27% Inconsistency of the user experience
important to NAS
buyers
OBSTACLES TO PUBLIC CLOUD ADOPTION 12% We have no concerns
New open source
options for storage
Increasing costs and vendor lock-in are top concerns with
SOURCE: TANEJA GROUP, JULY 2017; N=429.
cloud services, just behind the ever-present need for data *MULTIPLE SELECTIONS ALLOWED
Crump: Data security (see Figure 1). One could argue increased costs
data protection and vendor lock-in concerns are related, as a lack of ven-
dor choice often leads to higher prices.
Matchett:
Multicloud storage can help address vendor lock-in and is a sizeable opportunity for providers to offer products
Secondary storage
now comes first data security concerns. Many of the ones we evaluated that address the multicloud environment concerns of the
offer full control of encryption from cradle to grave and remainder of respondents.
About us
across the multiple clouds. Look for end-to-end security to
be a major differentiator in the multicloud storage market
going forward. MULTICLOUD BENEFITS
Only 12% of respondents said they had no apprehen- The key benefits of multicloud storage products and ser-
sions about moving to cloud services, indicating that there vices include the following:

Home n Data portability among heterogeneous clouds. This
Castagna: Storage
involves the ability to shift data among public clouds as FIGURE 2
pros more business business needs change. It mitigates vendor lock-in and
than bits
For the applications planned
lets customers more easily meet regulatory compliance
or deployed in the cloud, what
demands.
Toigo: Storage primary data access method do
industry’s long,
hot summer you use?
n Ease of lifting and shifting applications between multi-
Dell EMC a year cloud environments. Certifying applications against a Object

later common set of data services makes shifting an application
24+14+12A
to a new environment easier to manage. Most multicloud File
NAS trifecta:
Price, features, storage enables application testing on premises and in
performance the cloud. 28% Block
47%
Multicloud storage
mitigates lock-in n Control of end-to-end data security. Multicloud storage 25%
should provide better visibility of data location and enable
important to NAS
seamless security with access control and encryption
buyers across disparate cloud environments.
TANEJA GROUP, JULY 2017; N=429
New open source

n Enhanced data availability and disaster recovery options.
options for storage
Although public clouds boast geographically dispersed
Crump: Data availability zones, they often come with increased costs n Bridging data services between private and public clouds.
data protection and occasional outages. The diversity of cloud providers A multicloud strategy enables a more seamless transition
in a multicloud environment can provide both continuous for customers seeking hybrid cloud services.
Matchett:
availability and disaster recovery capabilities.
Secondary storage
now comes first
n Consistent set of enterprise data services collocated with HOW VENDORS MEET MULTICLOUD STORAGE NEEDS
About us
apps and compute resources. Features such as replication, Customers look for a variety of storage services and capa-
data locality, snapshot and capacity optimization differ bilities when it comes to applications running in a public
among cloud providers. Multicloud storage should offer a cloud. Figure 2 shows survey results when respondents
more consistent quality of service across clouds through were asked what data access method they prefer most for
a common feature set. the applications they plan to move to the public cloud.

Home Multiple vendors are emerging to meet these diverse
customer requirements. The following embrace the mul-
Castagna: Storage
pros more business ticloud primary storage concept as we’ve defined it: Preferred plans
than bits
for public cloud use
Toigo: Storage
n SoftNAS was one of the first born-in-the-cloud primary
WE ASKED RESPONDENTS to our recent survey which
industry’s long, data services vendors. It focuses on companies that want
hot summer public cloud technology they use or plan to use.
to lift and shift predominately file-based applications from
While Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the clear
Dell EMC a year on premises to the cloud. The company offers a consistent
market revenue leader, the future looks bright for
later set of advanced file services based on the popular ZFS
Microsoft. Survey respondents chose Azure as
technology. The SoftNAS software-defined NAS operates
NAS trifecta: frequently as AWS. Azure might have strong mo-
Price, features, across popular public, private and hybrid cloud platforms,
mentum in part because many enterprises have
performance including AWS, Microsoft Azure and VMware vSphere.
adopted Office 365.
Multicloud storage
mitigates lock-in n Hedvig has one of the most comprehensive enterprise
52% Microsoft Azure
multicloud strategies and is the only vendor offering
important to NAS
block, file and object services simultaneously across AWS, 50% Amazon Web Services
buyers Google and Azure. Hedvig’s Distributed Storage Platform
is based on a scale-out software-defined storage architec- 44% Office 365
New open source
options for storage
ture that supports these multiple data access protocols.
20% Google Cloud Platform
The goal is to link the three market-leading public clouds
Crump: Data with on-premises cloud infrastructure. Hedvig’s focus is
center’s integrated 09% VMware vCloud Air
data protection on end-to-end security, data locality control, advanced
capacity optimization and performance tiering. 08% Oracle Cloud
Matchett:
Secondary storage 06% IBM SoftLayer
now comes first n Qumulo provides enterprise-grade, scale-out file services
running between AWS and private clouds. It plans to add 02% Rackspace Public Cloud
About us
other public clouds to enable high-performance, scale-out
file services for popular public cloud workloads, such as 12% We’re not using public cloud services
video rendering. Qumulo Core, based on a modern flash-
SOURCE: TANEJA GROUP, JULY 2017; N=429.
first design, can store many times the number of files *MULTIPLE SELECTIONS ALLOWED
compared to legacy scale-out NAS products.

Home n Scality takes advantage of AWS S3’s popularity by making MULTICLOUD STORAGE DRIVERS
Castagna: Storage
a compatible S3 API available in all public clouds while As the multicloud primary storage market emerges, it will
pros more business still enabling data control and movement of data location. evolve quickly over the next few years. The key question
than bits Scality offers a policy-based data control plane, which dictating the long-term success of this market is whether
Toigo: Storage
centrally orchestrates data services, such as provisioning, customers will value the business benefits that a consis-
industry’s long, replication and migration across the multiple heteroge- tent multicloud data service delivers versus the incremen-
hot summer
neous clouds, largely based on predefined policies. Native tal storage-related costs they might incur.
Dell EMC a year cloud applications can store and access data using either There are various reasons why businesses might want
later the Scality S3 API or the cloud’s own native object API. to use multicloud primary storage technology to shift
data from one cloud to another. In one example, a major
NAS trifecta:
Price, features, n SwiftStack offers multicloud object storage services financial services company was fully utilizing AWS, but
performance and provides a data control plane across the clouds. It wanted to use both AWS and Azure instead. It opted for
Multicloud storage
maintains the public cloud’s native object storage API and multicloud storage technology to keep web-tier applica-
mitigates lock-in provides OpenStack Swift API support. tions on AWS and moved the SQL and analytics tier to
Azure, where SQL runs more efficiently. In the future, the
important to NAS
While evaluating whether these providers can meet financial services provider wants to remain on multicloud
buyers the requirements needed to host your applications in storage and, as applications become containerized, looks
the public cloud, consider the following complementary forward to being able to seamlessly move those applica-
New open source
options for storage
attributes: tions between heterogeneous clouds.
Another driver for multicloud storage is what we see as
Crump: Data
Pi ntegration of public cloud billing and security shifting business alliances. An example would be a major
data protection environments; retailer requiring vendors to shift off what is considered
Pease of deployment to public cloud environments; a competitor’s public cloud infrastructure if they want to
Matchett:
Secondary storage
Pdata control planes that navigate across multiple continue doing business with the retailer. Mergers and
now comes first public clouds; acquisitions could be another form of shifting business
Pecosystem support and integration with other IT or- alliances. New government regulations regarding data
About us
chestration frameworks; privacy and locality can also create a reason to move data
Pefficient use of the underlying public cloud resources from one cloud to another. All of these scenarios would
to deliver data services cost-effectively; and make shifting data from one public cloud provider to an-
Pwhether they offer the same flexible pricing models other a business necessity rather than just a nice-to-have.
as the public cloud. We expect the multicloud primary storage market

Home will grow rapidly over the next few years as public cloud easily among public clouds and act as an accelerant to
Castagna: Storage
providers get bigger and businesses increasingly feel like multicloud market growth. n
pros more business their data is being held hostage. This trend will coincide
than bits with the maturing of container-based applications using JEFF KATO and JEFF BYRNE are senior analysts and consultants at
persistent storage, which should free applications to move Taneja Group.

Toigo: Storage
industry’s long,
hot summer
Dell EMC a year

later Primary multicloud storage defined
NAS trifecta: MULTICLOUD PRIMARY STORAGE is storage technology Spaces Direct and VMware vSAN fall into the homoge-
Price, features,
providing primary data services that operate simulta- neous cloud storage category as well.
performance
neously across multiple heterogeneous cloud environ- The second key concept is the colocation of stor-
Multicloud storage ments, and it’s where compute and applications can be age services with the native compute and analytical
mitigates lock-in
colocated with these data services. The primary data resources that the public cloud also provides. This
Scalability, capacity storage services must support at least one large public capability enables the creation of a full data center
important to NAS cloud vendor, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), environment within the public cloud environment,
buyers
Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. removing the need for any on-premises infrastructure.
New open source The key defining concept is heterogeneous clouds, Another approach to multicloud storage is to use
options for storage meaning the storage service must be able to simulta- private storage as a service physically colocated near
Crump: Data
neously operate in disparate cloud environments, such public cloud data centers via a provider such as Equi-
center’s integrated as native to AWS and native to Azure. This definition nix. The storage provider can use physical connections
data protection
doesn’t include storage services that only work na- enabled by dedicated, high-speed connections, such
Matchett: tively with Azure Stack in one instance and also with as AWS Direct Connect or Azure ExpressRoute, to pro-
Secondary storage Azure-based public clouds, or with VMware cloud on vide low-latency storage services across a subset of
now comes first
premises combined with VMware Cloud on AWS. Those heterogeneous public cloud locations. Hewlett Pack-
About us services would be considered homogeneous cloud ard Enterprise’s Nimble Cloud Volumes are an example
storage services because they use the same underly- of this approach. While they’re serving an important
ing virtualization technology offered as both a private need, we aren’t including these approaches in our
and public consumption alternative. Microsoft Storage definition of multicloud primary storage. n

Home
Castagna: Storage
Snapshot 2
Scalability and capacity important to NAS buyers
pros more business
than bits
Toigo: Storage
industry’s long, D Expected year-over-year storage D What protocols will you use for your
hot summer
capacity increase required of new new NAS system?*
Dell EMC a year NAS system
later
NAS trifecta: 11%-20% 82%

Price, features,
performance
Multicloud storage
mitigates lock-in 45% 46%
Scalability, capacity 10% or
less 35%
important to NAS
buyers
New open source

options for storage
19% Network File Common Server
Crump: Data System Internet File Message
center’s integrated System Block 3.0
data protection
13% 14% 21%-30% *MULTIPLE SELECTIONS ALLOWED

Matchett:
403TB
Secondary storage
now comes first Don’t
know
About us 2% 5%
More than 31%-40%
50%
2%
41%-50%
Average installed storage capacity required
SOURCE: TECHTARGET RESEARCH for upcoming NAS system purchases

OPEN SOURCE
New options
for storage OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE has been a serious force for good
Open source promises to alter the face of storage in driving forward a collaborative, community-based soft-
as it did for file and web application servers. ware development model. The most obvious example of
BY CHRIS EVANS this is the development of Linux, various distributions of
which have been adopted as the cloud operating system
of choice and the go-to platform for modern application
developers.
Higher up the stack, we see the same ethos applied
to containerization in the form of Docker and a host of
database platforms for structured SQL, NoSQL and ana-
lytics uses. But what about storage? Has the evolution of
open software development passed storage by, or are there
options available for those who want to implement open
source in storage?
OPEN SOURCE TECHNOLOGY DEFINED

First, let’s explain what we mean by open source. By defi-
nition, it implies that a product’s source code is freely open
to be accessed and read by anyone. The scope is much
wider than that, however, with most open source technol-
ogy projects making code available under the terms of a
license. The license determines how code can be used or
reused, what attributions must be made, how patents are
covered and what commercial use is permitted.
Typically, licensing schemes such as GNU’s Not Unix
UNDEFINED UNDEFINED/GETTY IMAGES
HOME
Home General Public License (GNU GPL) apply copyright rules operational advantages, such as minimizing the number
Castagna: Storage
to code developed for a project that requires the code be of hardware platforms you must support. Proprietary stor-
pros more business freely distributed and used without the licensee placing age vendors typically put a large markup on the hardware
than bits restrictions on the code they produce, otherwise known as they sell, for instance. When hardware components were
Toigo: Storage
copylefting. Most recent additions in GPL 3.0 ensure this, bespoke, this was understandable. In today’s commodity
industry’s long, and patents developed as a result of a project are made world, however, the markup isn’t so acceptable except to
hot summer
freely available for anyone to use. cover costs of testing and validating configurations.
Dell EMC a year What does this mean for storage software development?
later In reality, developing a storage platform is no different
NAS trifecta:
from any other piece of software. So open source makes OPEN SOURCE STORAGE HAS
Price, features, a lot of sense for storage because it allows large-scale BECOME JUST ONE ASPECT
performance collaboration on a complex issue—maintaining a 100%
guarantee of the accuracy of data in a persistent model.
OF A MARKET COMPOSED OF
Multicloud storage
mitigates lock-in Storage hasn’t been the most obvious choice for open COMMERCIAL SDS PRODUCTS.
source development because most early shared storage
important to NAS
platforms were developed on proprietary hardware. How- Open source storage platforms go a step further, elim-
buyers ever, the commoditization of servers and storage media inating storage software capital expenditure. All that re-
has grown to a point over the last 15 years where the cost mains is to decide whether and how to pay for support. In
New open source
options for storage
is low enough and the reliability is high enough to build fact, getting support from a vendor or value-added reseller
storage platforms from off-the-shelf components. With is the main problem most enterprises have to face when
Crump: Data this rise in software-defined storage, open source storage using open source storage software.
data protection has become just one aspect of a market composed of many Thankfully, support models exist. Red Hat, for example,
commercial SDS products. has a thriving business supporting its own Red Hat Enter-
Matchett:
prise Linux (RHEL), which is available commercially and
Secondary storage
now comes first derived from the Fedora distribution. RHEL is, in turn,
WHY OPEN SOURCE STORAGE available as open source technology in distributions such
About us
As an end user, what reasons do you have for going with as CentOS.
open source storage technology? Because, as with com- Running open source storage provides for the same
mercial SDS, open source storage separates the purchase level of flexibility as standard commercial storage prod-
of hardware from software. This allows you to source, ucts. You can run commercially supported versions of
build and design your hardware in order to gain cost and open source storage systems on production environments.

Home That way, testing and development can run with in-house sells a commercial version of Ceph that provides a more
Castagna: Storage
supported storage deployments. This approach offers robust and enterprise-level implementation.
pros more business significant cost savings, especially with unstructured data
than bits that requires the likes of scale-out object storage. n OpenIO is a French company that’s developing a scale-out
Toigo: Storage
object store to support a range of application uses, from
industry’s long, email to backup and archiving. Parts of the software are
hot summer
CHOOSING A PRODUCT licensed under LGPL, version 3, and others under Affero
Dell EMC a year A range of open source technology on the market cov- General Public License, version 3. Although OpenIO had
later ers object-, file- and block-based storage requirements. been in development since 2006, it only became open
Some products work with one protocol; others support source in 2012. Unlike most open source storage offerings,
NAS trifecta:
Price, features, multiple protocols through either emulation or protocol OpenIO supports both x86 and ARM processor architec-
performance connectors. tures that you also can mix within a single cluster.
Multicloud storage
mitigates lock-in Object stores: The most common open source storage of- n Miniois an object store server licensed under Apache
ferings fall under the category of object storage, typically License, version 2.0. The software is lightweight and can
important to NAS
used to store archive or backup data where the costs must run either as a Docker container; on macOS, using Home-
buyers be low. brew; or under Windows or Linux, both x86 and ARM. Min-
io relies on community rather than commercial support.
New open source
options for storage
n Ceph is an open source technology project started around
2007 and developed from a doctoral dissertation written n S3 Server was released by Scality in 2016 as a Docker con-
Crump: Data by Sage Weil. Like most open source projects, it’s avail- tainer image. The software has been pulled over 600,000
data protection able on GitHub and licensed under Lesser GNU General times since then. It’s licensed under Apache 2.0. As a
Public License (LGPL), version 2.1. Ceph is a scale-out, lightweight single-node object store, S3 Server delivers
Matchett:
distributed object store known as a Reliable Autonomic easy access to an Amazon Web Services Simple Storage
Secondary storage
now comes first Distributed Object Store (RADOS), built from multiple Service API-compatible object store. Instead of S3 Server,
physical or virtual nodes that provide storage, metadata Scality expects customers will move to its commercially
About us
services, API services and cluster monitoring. In addition supported Ring product for object store implementations
to object, Ceph supports block and file data, the former for large-scale production.
through RADOS block device and the latter using a Ceph
FS, a file system gateway. In 2014, Red Hat acquired Ink- n is the object storage component of OpenStack. It
Swift
tank, the company providing support for Ceph, and now provides a scale-out node-based object store that can be

Home run on commodity servers. Swift is also a protocol used
to access data and is supported by a range of other object
Castagna: Storage
pros more business storage vendors. SwiftStack provides commercial support What we love about
than bits and leads Swift development efforts. open source
Toigo: Storage
industry’s long, File storage Community development
hot summer Open source has been used successfully
n Lustreis a parallel file system mainly used for high-
performance computing requirements. It’s licensed under as a model for developing operating systems and
Dell EMC a year
later GPL, version 2, managed by Open Scalable File Systems databases. It makes perfect sense to see the com-
and designed to run on Linux. Until May 2017, Intel community development model applied to shared and
NAS trifecta:
mercially supported software-only Lustre deployments, persistent storage requirements.
Price, features,
performance but it appears to have discontinued support. This has left
companies such as DataDirect Networks to provide sup- Wisdom of the crowd
Multicloud storage
mitigates lock-in port as part of hardware bundles. Using open source storage provides ac-
cess to a wide range of developers testing on
Scalability, capacity many different hardware platforms. In this case,
important to NAS
n FreeNAS is an open source storage appliance that is more
buyers than 10 years old. Its software is based on the highly scal- the “wisdom of the crowd” can help test and de-
able, open source Zettabyte File System (ZFS). IXsystems bug many hardware corner-case problems.
New open source
options for storage
provides commercial support for FreeNAS with a hard-
ware appliance called TrueNAS. Scaling benefits
Crump: Data Scaling storage for high volumes of data
n GlusterFS , or Gluster File System, is a scale-out file sys- can be expensive. With open source storage, IT
data protection
tem that is also available from Red Hat as a commercial organizations get the benefits of commodity stor-
Matchett: age, have no licensing charges and only pay where
storage platform. The company, Gluster, originally devel-
Secondary storage
oped and supported GlusterFS until its acquisition by Red support is really needed. n
now comes first
Hat in 2011. The software is licensed under GPL, version PEOPLE: JACARTOON/ADOBE STOCK
About us
3. GlusterFS consolidates storage resources from multiple
servers or nodes into a single, parallel file system. Con-
tributing servers can either be storage providers, called
storage bricks, or storage consumers. As a storage product, metadata architecture, making it particularly suitable for
GlusterFS is simple to implement. It uses a distributed large-scale file archives.

Home Block storage For large enterprises, it may make sense to have some
Castagna: Storage
n Cinder, as part of the OpenStack project, delivers block- developers involved in writing open source storage soft-
pros more business level access to store persistent data for virtual instances. ware. That way, they get the opportunity to internally sup-
than bits Cinder provides access to local storage by using logical vol- port the software—either fully without vendor support or
Toigo: Storage
ume manager or plug-ins that enable traditional storage for dev-test purposes—and direct the integration of new
industry’s long, to be used with OpenStack. As such, support comes from features. For long-term deployments, such as archives and
hot summer
either the storage vendor or an OpenStack distribution backup, getting involved in maintaining an open source
Dell EMC a year provider. platform helps mitigate the risk of a vendor discontinuing
later a commercial offering.
n OpenEBS is an open source project that’s developing
NAS trifecta:
Price, features, block-based storage for containerized applications. Like
performance many open source storage efforts, OpenEBS is written in BUILD YOUR OWN
Multicloud storage
Go and is licensed under Apache 2.0. Following a trend Rather than use a commercially supported open source
mitigates lock-in we see with many open source storage offerings, OpenEBS product, another option is to build your own from open
is still in beta under active development for production source components, such as the Linux iSCSI Target or
important to NAS
usage. SMB on Linux. You could use these to provide file and
buyers block services to your storage infrastructure, especially
n Portworx is a scale-out storage product based on contain- in conjunction with the ZFS file system. However, you
New open source
options for storage
ers that provide it with storage. The company, Portworx, would be without any support other than the developer
offers a commercial edition, PX-Enterprise, and a free community. It’s not for the faint of heart.
Crump: Data developer version, called PX-Developer. The developer The open source storage market offers a wide range of
data protection edition offers limited scalability and no GUI, but it can products and tools covering the main storage data types
be used in development environments in lieu of the com- and many different use cases. Typically, one company de-
Matchett:
mercial product. An added benefit: The software can be velops an open source product and provides support for
Secondary storage
now comes first deployed in the public cloud. it while keeping the code open to the community. Larger
enterprises may find it difficult to get the level of support
About us
they have with commercial storage providers. Neverthe-
CONTRIBUTORS GIVE BACK less, over time, open source could well become a major
Of course, open source technology is all about giving back contributor to the storage landscape. n
to the community. So everyone is free to contribute to the
development of the platforms we have discussed. CHRIS EVANS is an independent consultant with Langton Blue.

HOT SPOTS
GEORGE CRUMP
Home
Castagna: Storage
pros more business
Integrated data
than bits
Toigo: Storage
among the many options available. First, there’s the inte-
protection in
industry’s long, grated backup appliance where the backup software is in-
hot summer
tegrated with a physical server. “Integration,” in this case,
the data center

Dell EMC a year means the software is preinstalled, and there might be
later some rudimentary integration with the specific hardware.
Another type of integration is when the vendor of data
NAS trifecta: What to consider when choosing among
Price, features, protection hardware—also known as a disk backup appli-
four approaches to protecting data.
performance ance—optimizes its hardware with another vendor’s soft-
Multicloud storage
ware. For instance, if the software has a boot-from-backup
mitigates lock-in feature, the backup hardware vendor keeps the latest
version of the data on a higher-performance storage tier,
important to NAS
even flash, so that when a volume is booted from backup,
buyers DATA PROTECTION AT times can look like it was built from an performance is acceptable.
Erector Set with mismatched components. At most orga- A third type of integration, and one of the newer ones,
New open source
options for storage
nizations, the problem is that the data protection software comes from hardware vendors that have created second-
and even the data protection hardware have been in place ary storage systems designed to be cost-effective and scal-
Crump: Data for a while. As new technologies like virtualization and the able. Instead of interfacing with data protection products,
data protection cloud are added to the IT tool belt, integrating them into these vendors are working with the environments those
the existing data protection process takes work. Some ven- products exist in, backing up hypervisors like VMware and
Matchett:
dors are suggesting a new strategy: Wipe the slate clean Hyper-V or applications like Microsoft SQL Server and
Secondary storage
now comes first and start over with a new, integrated technology, designed Oracle. In some cases, they’re partnering with primary
for today’s data center. storage hardware vendors, letting them copy snapshot
About us
data directly to their secondary storage systems.
A fourth type of integration is integration to the cloud.
INTEGRATED DATA PROTECTION’S MANY FACES In some cases, this approach is more of a connector, where
One of the first challenges IT professionals face when they the cloud becomes another storage target for the backup
consider an integrated data protection process is choosing vendor, and older backup sets are archived there.

Home A different form of cloud integration is where the Cloud data protection also limits flexibility to varying
Castagna: Storage
backup software keeps primary and possibly all copies of degrees. There are cloud providers that offer a complete
pros more business data in the cloud, but caches a copy of the latest backup turnkey approach. They provide the software, and that
than bits on premises. This approach requires a limited amount of software backs up data to their on-premises cache and
Toigo: Storage
storage in the data center, and most of these vendors are replicates it to their cloud. The customer is 100% depen-
industry’s long, able to start virtual machines in the cloud, providing an dent on the turnkey cloud data protection vendor in this
hot summer
excellent disaster recovery capability. approach.
Dell EMC a year Other options present greater flexibility. The most
later common is software that allows data to be protected in
THE SACRIFICE OF FLEXIBILITY the cloud of the customer’s choice.
NAS trifecta:
Price, features, With all of this integration, flexibility is sacrificed. The
performance one constant in the data center is change, and today’s data
Multicloud storage
center will have little in common with the data center of IS IT WORTH IT?
mitigates lock-in the future. The data protection process, though, is some- An integrated data protection process promises ease of
thing that will always be there, no matter how modernized use. Ease of use can be broken down into two areas: initial
important to NAS
the data center becomes. The protected data set may need implementation and long-term operations. Integrated
buyers to be accessible for years, if not decades, after the applica- offerings—either a turnkey on-premises appliance or
tion that created it is retired. turnkey cloud—make implementation a breeze. The other
New open source
options for storage
Integrated systems tend to be use-case specific, pro- approaches may be more difficult to implement but do
tecting a specific environment or offering one compelling provide greater flexibility as the organization grows and
Crump: Data feature, like recovery in the cloud. Integration methods the data center evolves.
data protection have varying degrees of inflexibility. Potentially the most A key factor is rate of change. If the data center is
limiting is the first method, the integrated appliance. In relatively static and, other than growth in capacity re-
Matchett:
this case, both the hardware and software serve a single quirements, tends to be stable with no new applications
Secondary storage
now comes first purpose. Adding new hardware is difficult, and switching or initiatives, then a turnkey approach may be ideal. But
software is almost impossible. if the data center is changing rapidly to keep up with the
About us
The other two on-premises use cases provide more flex- demands of the organization, then a combination with
ibility. The organization is choosing a software approach more flexibility makes sense. n
that can support a variety of data protection hardware
or data protection hardware that can receive data from a GEORGE CRUMP is president of Storage Switzerland, an IT analyst firm
variety of data protection process software. focused on storage and virtualization.

READ / WRITE
MIKE MATCHETT
Home
Castagna: Storage
pros more business
Secondary
than bits
Toigo: Storage
is less differentiation among those flashy designs. At some
storage now
industry’s long, point, “really fast” is fast enough for now, assuming you
hot summer
aren’t in financial trading.
comes first
Dell EMC a year Rather than argue whose flash is faster, more reliable,
later more scalable or even cheaper, the major enterprise IT
storage concern is shifting toward getting the most out of
NAS trifecta: Capitalize on flash investments
Price, features, whatever high-performance primary storage investment
with interactive, online secondary
performance gets made. Chasing ever-greater performance can be
storage architectures.
Multicloud storage
competitively lucrative, but universally, we see business
mitigates lock-in demand for larger operational data sets growing quickly.
Flash or not, primary storage still presents an ever-present
important to NAS
capacity-planning challenge.
buyers
WE ALL KNOW flash storage is fast, increasingly affordable
New open source
options for storage
and quickly beating out traditional spinning disk for pri- A NEW ‘BIG DATA’ OPPORTUNITY
mary storage needs. It’s like all our key business applica- The drive to optimize shiny new primary storage pushes
Crump: Data tions have been magically upgraded to perform 10 times IT folks to use it as much as possible with suitable support-
data protection faster! ing secondary data storage. As this is literally a new “big
In the data center, modern primary storage arrays now data” opportunity, there is a correspondingly big change
Matchett:
come with massive flash caching, large flash tiers or are happening in the secondary storage market. Old-school
Secondary storage
now comes first all flash through and through. Old worries about flash backup storage designed solely as an offline data protec-
wearing out have been largely forgotten. And there are tion target doesn’t provide the scale, speed and interactive
About us
some new takes on storage designs, such as Datrium’s, that storage services increasingly demanded by today’s self-ser-
make great use of less-expensive server-side flash. Clearly, vice-oriented users.
spending money on some kind of flash, if not all flash, can We’re seeing a massive trend toward interactive, on-
be a great IT investment. line, secondary storage architectures. Instead of dumping
Yet, as everyone builds primary storage with flash, there backups, snapshots and archives into slow, near-online

Home or essentially offline deep storage tiers, organizations are remains immediately available online, albeit not as high
Castagna: Storage
finding it’s worthwhile to keep large volumes of second- performing as top-tier flash. For big primary flash shops,
pros more business tier data in active use. With this shift to online secondary this online archive capability translates into significant
than bits data storage, end users can quickly find and recover their flash capacity savings. Essentially, the organization’s global
Toigo: Storage
own data like they do with Apple’s Time Machine. And online data space becomes the sum of primary and sec-
industry’s long, organizations can profitably mine and derive valuable in- ondary storage capacities.
hot summer
sights from older, colder, larger data sets, such as big data
Dell EMC a year analytics, machine learning and deep historical search.
later FIRST-CLASS SECONDARY STORAGE
Several vendors, including Cohesity, Hedvig, Igneous
NAS trifecta:
Price, features,
IF THE STORAGE IS RESILIENT Systems, Qumulo, Rubrik and Scality are positioning their
performance ENOUGH THROUGH DATA massively scalable storage as this new type of secondary
Multicloud storage PROTECTION ALGORITHMS, storage for data centers. Some of their products might
have initially been designed for web-scale applications,
mitigates lock-in
YOU CAN ALSO RELIABLY next-generation hybrid cloud storage, big data lakes and
Scalability, capacity ARCHIVE INTO IT. other uses, but all of them are finding big opportunities
important to NAS
buyers with organizations tired of their aging, complex and nar-
If that sounds like a handy convergence of backup rowly featured data protection stacks.
New open source
options for storage
and archive, you’re right. There’s increasingly less differ- These modern secondary storage vendors aren’t trying
ence between data protection backup and recovery and to replace the primary storage footprint or compete with
Crump: Data retention archiving. Backing up with these approaches direct flash performance. They’re actually encouraging
data protection can mean copying versions of changed data, such as file back-end use of public cloud vendors—for example, Clev-
changes and incremental snapshots, from primary storage ersafe became IBM Cloud Object Storage. However, they
Matchett:
into the online secondary data storage. Recovery is then are in some cases also offloading traditional primary stor-
Secondary storage
now comes first a matter of copying out—also online and interactively— age workloads, such as file services, onto their so-called
instant, complete virtual images of the desired historical secondary data storage.
About us
version that are maintained transparently to the end user. Many of these newer secondary storage offerings are
If the storage is resilient enough through data pro- built around core object storage platforms, such as Ig-
tection algorithms—such as N-way replication, erasure neous, or massively scale-out parallel file systems, think
coding and high availability metadata services—you can Cohesity. Some are positioned as software-defined, and
also reliably archive into it. The resulting archived data others are sold as appliances with optimizing hardware

Home designs. While their implementation, constraints, net as in-flight and at-rest encryption, sync and async N-way
Castagna: Storage
performance, scalability and other intended uses may vary replication, distributed RAID and erasure coding, and
pros more business widely, for secondary storage, they tend to offer similar high-availability metadata services; and
than bits capabilities, including the following:
Toigo: Storage
n igh cost-efficiency even as the storage infrastructure
h
industry’s long, n o nline high performance for both large file ingest and grows, through linearly performing scale-out clustering,
hot summer
read IO; global inline dedupe, intelligent compression, and thin
Dell EMC a year and virtual clones.
later n massive scalability to billions of files and objects;
NAS trifecta:
Price, features, n ybrid tiering to other, even colder storage systems,
h THINK LIKE A CLOUD PROVIDER
performance such as Amazon Web Services’ Simple Storage Service If making a flash investment go much farther isn’t com-
Multicloud storage
and Glacier; pelling enough, IT should consider the opportunity to
mitigates lock-in become more like a cloud provider. We’ve been advising
n g lobal, online metadata indexing; end-to-end global our IT clients to start thinking like internal service pro-
important to NAS
namespace; and distributed access across the full storage viders instead of just reacting to business demands as a
buyers capacity; cost center. Despite the secondary in the use case name,
these new storage designs really bring cloud-like storage
New open source
options for storage
n b uilt-in storage analytics to help with capacity planning, to the data center. Calling them secondary might even be
usage and more; a bit insulting.
Crump: Data While upgrading primary storage to flash speeds can
data protection
n policy-based automation engines for fine-grained, in- alleviate a lot of IT pain—for example, by eliminating
cremental backup, archive, retention, and security and poor storage performance support calls—primary flash by
Matchett:
access policy control; itself doesn’t transform IT’s relationship with end users.
Secondary storage
now comes first However, these new secondary data storage designs are
n d irect online storage protocols for end-user access and turning IT into business heroes because they transform
About us
supporting next-generation web-scale applications, in- how end users interact with storage, make a lot more
cluding storage object protocols such as representational data available online for business use and push that flash
state transfer APIs, direct SMB share and NFS mount; investment to the max. n
MIKE MATCHETT is a senior analyst at Taneja Group.
n superior data protection that could include features such (@smworldbigdata)

Home TechTarget Storage Media Group
Castagna: Storage
pros more business
than bits
STORAGE MAGAZINE STORAGE DECISIONS TECHTARGET CONFERENCES
Toigo: Storage VP EDITORIAL Rich Castagna EDITORIAL EXPERT COMMUNITY COORDINATOR Kaitlin Herbert
industry’s long,
EXECUTIVE EDITOR James Alan Miller
hot summer
MANAGING EDITOR Stacey Peterson SUBSCRIPTIONS
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Jeff Byrnes, George Crump, Chris Evans, www.SearchStorage.com
Dell EMC a year
Jeff Kato, Mike Matchett, Steve Ricketts, Scott Sinclair,
later
Arun Taneja, Jon Toigo STORAGE MAGAZINE
DIRECTOR OF ONLINE DESIGN Linda Koury 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466
NAS trifecta:
Price, features, ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR, E-PRODUCTS Nick Arena editor@storagemagazine.com
performance
SEARCHSTORAGE.COM TECHTARGET INC.
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in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher.
important to NAS SENIOR NEWS WRITER Garry Kranz TechTarget reprints are available through The YGS Group.
buyers SENIOR SITE EDITOR Rodney Brown
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New open source professionals. More than 100 focused websites enable quick access to a deep store
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options for storage
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Secondary storage
now comes first
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STORAGE

Toigo: Storage SNAPSHOT 1 EDITOR’S NOTE / CASTAGNA

Multicloud storage Multicloud storage The storage industry’s

New open source SNAPSHOT 2 HOT SPOTS / CRUMP

Dell EMC a year later

OCTOBER 2017, VOL. 16, NO. 8

than bytes for

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 2

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 3

New open source

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 4

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 5

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 6

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 7

DELL BOUGHT EMC more than 12 months ago in the largest

Dell EMC PRO: RIGHT DEAL FOR

a year later THE WRONG REASONS

Did Dell acquire the world’s largest storage company a

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 9

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 10

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 11

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 12

New open source

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 13

Scalability, capacity 13% IBM 24% Market leadership

New open source

About us 03% DataDirect Networks

*MULTIPLE SELECTIONS ALLOWED 34% 15%

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 14

tions to the public cloud.

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 16

Dell EMC a year cloud environments. Certifying applications against a Object

New open source

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 17

compared to legacy scale-out NAS products.

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 18

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 19

persistent storage, which should free applications to move Taneja Group.

Dell EMC a year

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 20

NAS trifecta: 11%-20% 82%

New open source

13% 14% 21%-30% *MULTIPLE SELECTIONS ALLOWED

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 21

OPEN SOURCE TECHNOLOGY DEFINED

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 23

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 24

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 25

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 26

the data center

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 27

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 28

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 29

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 30

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 31

Stay connected! Follow @SearchStorageTT today.

STORAGE • OCTOBER 2017 32

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