Hey J,
thanks again for the posts. i finally spoke last week with an EMC sales engineer. He had helped set-up up a SAN (4 servers, 1 storage array, 1 tape library, 2 brcd switches) at a friend of mine’s company. Much of this post may be old news to many here, but it helped me understand a few more things better with regards to EMC – so read on if you are bored- ;-)
++ I asked about the slowdown in IT spending and he would only say that they had a great year last year and agrees with the CEO that storage will continue to be strong. He didn’t see a slowdown, yet. He reminded me that he was at the lower end of the totem pole. ;-) He mentioned that in IT, NAS is The hottest thing right now and that SANs were next and on their way in getting there with a ramp (dare I say, we are still in the beginning of this move?). And, as all know here, he said that NAS and SAN were complimentary. He mentioned that most customers actually have ‘requirements’ for both NAS and SAN operations; NAS for how the data is accessed, how file systems are shared and how file servers are used over the LAN, and SANs for how servers attach to storage.
++ I asked how the SUN and EMC approaches differ going forward. He said that EMC was not exactly serverless (as I implied to him) but that it was server agnostic, and that they wanted to work with everyone. He reminded me that EMC spent 1 Billion on their Interoperability Lab last year and they were planning on spending 2.5 BILLION (I believe this is what he said) this year on the lab in trying to make Every Storage Vendors stuff work with theirs (ie. BRCD, QLGC, McData equipment as Well as Every major storage vendor like CPQ, HP, SUNWs, etc…). When I asked further on SUNW and EMC approaches and how software was important, he replied that it depends on the core products. I believe he stated that with EMC, the software runs on the Storage Arrays. He mentioned two important pieces of the EMC puzzle—
1. TimeFinder software—this resides on the Storage Arrays and allows multiple mirrors. In fact, up to 8 extra copies –point in time—copy of live data. This is great for back up and it basically allows a company to have their data mirrored and backed up so if it goes down in a few places, its still fine and ALSO, this is software invisible to servers….so it doesn’t matter what is going on with the servers, this mirroring is being done in the dark background shadows, making sure data is quietly safe and constantly refreshed regardless of what is going on in the server world (my opinion here).
2. SRDF – or, Symantic Remote Data Facility. This replicates data from different cities (for example). You can have 3 or more data centers replicating symaltaneously. They are working more with ORCL and MSFT here. Currently, he says that all competition is only at point of doing 1 replication symaltaneously. What that means exactly, I have no clue. Would love to hear more opinions on this here?????
++ Said that EMC is in their 4th Generation software. He mentioned again that only HDS have a similar model and that their competition is only at their (EMC’s) 1st generation in functionality.
I didn’t know if he meant TimeFinder or SRDF or both or what here…sorry.
++ He said SUNW software was server based, as opposed to on the Storage Array, and that it ate up CPU power and gave the server more jobs to do and implied that you’d need pretty big servers to keep doing storage. This is the implicit difference in the two’s approach, imo (well, I believe everyone here knows this). He didn’t seem to have anything bad to say on Sun or any competition to be honest, but he seemed to just point out what they did differently…
++ He seemed to imply that most people don’t understand what a “Director” is when I asked about them. He said that EMC came out with McData in association with IBM to make a “data class, high end “ switch, which is pretty much all what the definition implies. He thought that some of CSCO’s high end stuff could even be called ‘Directors’ bc they were data class and high end, I believe.
++ I got the feeling that Directors were not so much the next great thing as people will want SANs for many reasons, and right now demand will be across the board ---not specifically moving to the high end just yet but demand will continue to grow at all ends (from midrange like the Clarrion stuff to the high end). So, I took this to believe that yes, directors will explode in growth, but not at the expense of the midrange. I may be off in my thinking here.
++ When I kept bringing up switching references, he kept saying Ancor, Brocade, etc… I asked about the Ancor references since they are no longer Ancor, and he sounded like that was the first time he had thought about it. Like I have heard from other posters, people out there still refer to those switches as Ancors out of pure habit. Following a certain name out of pure habit? What a freak!!! ;-)
++ I asked if EMC basically joined into the SAN world by acquiring DataGeneral as Ive heard and thought. He said, No. He said that they were already in that direction before they acquired DG (which EMC now doesn’t use, of course, and still uses Clarrion for their Midrange offerings) and that 2 years ago, he was a system engineer for Connectrix FC switching by McData and they released that higher end stuff in March 99 (customers first had 6 months beforehand). I got the feeling that this March 99 launch was the first Official Beginning of the SAN world…
++ I asked if EMC wanted to be agnostic with their switch vendors, he said, “Yes, absolutely.” When I asked further on Qlgc and if they could hot swap in a qlgc switch for a brcd one in the company my friend works for, he said, most probably, yes. He also described the FIRST qlgc director as “strange” and that it had 8 independent 8 port switches inside. I was confused by this…
++ I asked about competition. He stated the box makers of of course, and mentioned that HDS is actually really the only company that has a system that is similar to EMCs approach (ie. Most like Symmetrix). He stated that HDS is fairly server agnostic and HDS is finally just doing storage now. Although, he also stated they have 7% of the biz and are Not profitable. He did not mean that all the other companies are not competition, but just mentioned HDs was closest to what they (EMC) were doing…he thought IBM, SUNW, HP, HDS, CPQ, NTAP were all competition going forward…He also mentioned NTAP and that their direction was to move up into the data center, while EMC has to approach of mostly moving down to outside of the data center. Whether one is better to be right now….ya got me?
++ He reiterated what EMC’s CEO has said before—1. The biggest challenge for competitors is that storage isn’t/hasn’t been their core business. Any company can do a couple things well, but many of the ‘box’ makers might be spreading themselves trying to compete here. An interesting point too imo….
All in all a good chap and fairly easy to talk to…he said to call back if I had any further questions, so let me know if you guys have any?
all imho,
pigboy aka TR |
