Around the Storage Block

HP StorageWorks outpaces EMC and IBM

CalvinZ — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:13:00 GMT

In case you missed it, HP announced our fiscal Q3 results yesterday. You can learn the details by looking at the official press release, read the transcript of the earnings call, or watching a replay of the earnings call.

Here are a few of the storage highlights:

Storage revenue growth accelerated to 16% driven by 19% growth in both our MSA and EVA products.
Note that this is 15 consecutive quarters of double digit growth of our EVA family - its a very strong offering in the market.
Over the last few quarters we have launched new products across the portfolio and enhanced our go-to-market model, both of which are helping to fuel our storage growth.

None of us at HP StorageWorks are running a victory lap waving an HP banner and taunting the competition like a chest thumping 100 meter sprint world record holder. We know we're in a grueling marathon and the fact is we don't know where the finish line is (is there ever a finish line). We are running with the lead pack and are running the race to win. So when storage only vendors like EMC try to convince you that HP isn't serious about storage, don't believe them!

Calvin

Where is EMC's Maui? Did it get whacked?

CalvinZ — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:03:00 GMT

Last November, the CEO of EMC gave a glimpse of products code named Hulk and Maui. He told the EMC Innovation Day audience that his company would deliver these to the market by May. Then came EMC World in late May. There was little to no public mention of Maui (the software component of a cloud-based storage product) but by some accounts that I heard, the EMC CEO again promised to deliver Maui by this summer. Well, here we are and it's the end of summer and still no Maui.

So why am I writing about it today? Because an EMC employee's blog had a curious disappearance today. There was a post on the Storagezilla blog site with a link to demonstrate Maui. The blogger, named Mark Twomey, had a post earlier today complaining a bit about his CEO talking about code names in public but then went on to include a link where one could download a Flash video titled "CloudFellas" -- playing off of the movie title "Good Fellas" -- presumably from some Maui-based storage. The blog entry has mysteriously disappeared and even the cached version on Google is gone.

In addition, SearchStorage reported Hulk/Maui aren't what they thought or will it be? Who knows? Hopefully Mark Twomey hasn't been whacked. I don't know him personally but compared to some of the other EMC bloggers we've interacted with, he seems like a nice guy.

As for HP, we announced our Extreme Data Storage System in May and committed to deliver it this fall. You won't find any disappearing web pages or waffling from HP on what we said we'd deliver and when. Bada Bing.

I think I'll make some pasta sauce for dinner tonight!

Calvin

Deduplication, online storage, and cannibals

CalvinZ — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:06:00 GMT

By Warren Smith, StorageWorks Competitive Intelligence Manager

"Every fight is a food fight when you're a cannibal."

That's an amusing quote by Demetri Martin, an American comedian. But it could be the motto of NetApp. Last week, NetApp announced that customers could use their V-series storage to dedupe primary storage of other storage manufacturers, including EMC, HDS, and yours truly, HP StorageWorks. Customers should ask themselves, "Is this a dinner invite from a cannibal?"

Without further NetApp explanation of how this deduplication facility would be realized in other vendor storage, what configuration constraints apply or any other substantive details, NetApp made the unilateral claim. The cynic in me wants to think that NetApp made this announcement because the advanced single instance storage (ASIS) deduplication in their storage works sub-par in their storage and they honestly wanted to offer customers the advice to try to use ASIS in someone else's storage, on the chance that it might perform better. But seriously, the cannibal instinct of some storage vendors typically seeks to propagate their technology problems across all possible systems and eat into sound working technology.

Can I share the reason that this offer from NetApp is not a good idea? And it is not because it comes from NetApp. This idea is not a good idea because applying deduplication in primary storage is injecting an invasive process and performance impacting process into the heart of your business operations. The ASIS deduplication process necessarily takes valuable compute cycles from the high priority business application processing that drives many businesses. NetApp appropriately warns customers about the performance impacting effect of ASIS.

The following quotes are taken directly from NetApp's Deduplication Best Practices section in the text referenced below:

"If there is very little new data, run deduplication infrequently, because it doesn't make sense to unnecessarily consume CPU resources."
"Use the auto mode so that deduplication only runs when significant additional data has been written to each particular flexible volume"
"Stagger deduplication schedules for the flexible volumes so it runs on alternative days."

Source: Technical Report: NetApp Deduplication for FAS Deployment and Implementation Guide, TR-3505. Network Appliance, Inc. 16 April 2008.

And for sure, NetApp wants customers to know that there are limitations to the ASIS deduplication functionality. In an article on the ChannelWeb website, Chris Cummings, senior director of data protection solutions for NetApp, is quoted:

"In order to activate the dedupe license, which is free, customers do need to spend about 10 minutes filling out a form that states that they know there is a chance of performance degradation when implementing the technology, depending on data type and other factors", Cummings said.

Source: http://www.crn.com/storage/209901632

Despite these vendor advisories to be careful with the use of ASIS, some customers may think, "That's OK, I can just run my dedupes at midnight." But we have seen testing data that the performance impacting effects of ASIS can also be experienced even later when the deduped volume is used in the normal applications operations. And for the many storage customers desperately seeking to reduce their data duplication, there is good news.

The intelligent place to perform data reduction is in secondary and lower tier storage and during backup operations, and away from primary storage. HP's Deduplication Strategy provides for just that, intelligent data reduction in the backup regime. Our Deduplication Strategy, which offers "Accelerated" Deduplication for enterprise customers and "Dynamic" Deduplication for smaller businesses, is also complimented by storage space efficiency designs in the HP StorageWorks EVA that include Dynamic Capacity Management, implemented via EVA Software.

And so, it is clear that the marketplace has a keen interest in data reduction methods and technologies that hold the possibility of reducing the volume of data under management in customer storage systems. It is also clear that some vendors have sought advantage for themselves with this marketplace phenomena and will continue to seek to capitalize on their untested hype and promises that are made with regard to their products. And remember, never accept an invitation from a cannibal for dinner.

Data Placement: Who’s Architecture is Really Broken?

craig simpson — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:17:00 GMT

I just read a blog where Chuck Hollis (http://chucksblog.typepad.com/chucks_blog/2008/07/the-great-data.html) of EMC launched an attack on storage virtualization. Called us all “spindle randomizers.” He based this attack on the idea that you can’t mange performance on virtualized arrays. Chuck seems to believe that you can’t make an array perform without manually placing every byte on every platter. That’s a misguided idea that’s got to be challenged. Unfortunately Chuck seems to be missing the bigger issues. Labor has become the largest cost in an IT organization. Not software. Not hardware. Not even power & cooling. Labor! The cost to manage all of that IT infrastructure. We recently asked storage managers what they need most. Did they say capacity? No. Did they say performance? Certainly not! Their top concern is administrative costs. With the amount of digital data doubling every 18 months the top issue is managing all of that data and the infrastructure that stores it. That kind of data growth drives complexity in a big, big hurry. We’ve got to fight that complexity with simplicity at every opportunity. Storage array virtualization is a critical foundation for fighting that complexity. With it 90%+ of the storage needs can be met with a simple create, present, and let it run. You don’t have to make a bunch of extra decisions that the machine could have made just as well. And you don’t have to come back and handle simple issues that the machine can manage just fine. You’re freed up to spend your time on the hard problems, be they performance, capacity utilization, or other, where a person really adds value. Without array virtualization the mind numbing details suck up the time and keep you from the interesting and important problems. There just aren’t enough hours in the day! But what about the cases where you do need to manage the performance? Go ahead! That’s why the EVA has disk groups and performance tools. There’s nothing in a virtualized array that prevents you from doing the tuning you need. You just don’t have to when you don’t need to. That’s critical. There aren’t enough hours in the day to be tuning every LUN!

Chuck tries to paint a vision where SSD’s make manually managing all the details a requirement. A wave of the future. But that’s a productivity killing tsunami. Nobody can afford all of that time! Virtualized arrays have been handling multiple drive speeds for years. We’ll do just fine with SSD’s. The issue Chuck’s trying to hide is that EMC’s CX architecture doesn’t include storage virtualization. They’ve got an inherent limiter that’s going to be very hard to overcome. We “spindle randomizers” aren’t going to be the ones that have to live with the consequences of our architecture. It’s Chuck and company. Good luck guys!

The Real Story on tape storage

regisalumni — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:26:00 GMT

The Real Story on tape storage

FCoE On your mark...get set...Go! (Part 2)

sean fitzpatrick — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 20:52:00 GMT

-by Sean Fitzpatrick

Now that we are on the roller coaster of hype, what is the next cycle for FCoE?

I would argue that we are still in the first cycle of its adoption.

If you’re a student of Geoffrey Moore’s Technology-Adoption Life Cycle model; the first logical event is to create and gain market interest or early market. For the sake of argument, I’m calling it ‘hype’ or the same feeling you get when you see a new shinny new penny. After the penny is passed around and the shine wares off, the next logical cycle is early adopters.

But how can you adopt a technology when the products are close to production ready, but not customer ready?

In my opinion, production ready is something that can be consistently duplicated through a defined manufacturing process. At this stage, not all the kinks have been worked out, it doesn’t have to be automated, the products are generation one (Gen 1), alpha or beta versions. Components and labor costs are high, economies of scale are not a concern and quality isn’t the most important output process.

Most of the products available today are not what I would call ‘customer ready.’ I define customer ready as a product that has been tested and qualified, supported by a minimum of one operating system, has a set configuration minimum/maximum parameters, can sustain a light to medium work load, and has an errata list of non-supported features / capabilities. Depending on your own criteria’s it may fall into an Alpha or Beta candidates.

So just where is FCoE and how should I be planning?

I’m going to go out on a limb and try to group the adoption phases of FCoE over the next 3-5 years. As a reference, look back at the history of iSCSI and its life cycle from late 90’s to today. If we learned anything over the years, nothing moves as fast as we would like it to.

From my perspective, 2008 through mid-2009 is about understanding the benefits, limitations, expectations and time will be spent exploring use case scenarios. This is an excellent time to look at Gen 1 product and do some planning for your next data center refresh or new installations.

Late 2009 through 2010, second generation products start to take shape and economies of scale start to show up, Geoffrey More said; ‘Innovation is valuable only if it helps us achieve economic advantage.’ If FCoE is going to become mainstream, there are two hurdles that have to become reality; 1) Lower customer TCO and 2) IT resources (Network, Server, Storage) teams have to learn new ways of working across functions.

Beyond 2011 really depends on how the first couple of years unfold. These first years will set the stage for market acceptance, use case scenarios and follow on technology innovations.

Don’t believe a word I say

brad.parks — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 22:53:00 GMT

OK… that may be a little harsh. How about don’t take my word for it… listen to what a respected industry publication had to say. The good folks over at Network World recently completed a review of a wide range of iSCSI storage devices and in the process uncovered a fact that does not come as a surprise to those of us who consistently interact with small and midsize IT managers. There are a wide range of iSCSI arrays tested in this comparison and many of the vendors scored well on one axis or another; however one area of particular interest to this blog is that of management.

As a former IT manager at a small company I can appreciate the challenge that comes with wearing every hat at once and trying to cover all of the IT bases at once… server administrator, database administrator, webmaster,… adding storage administrator to that list of titles can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and honestly is one of the reasons that smaller organizations are hesitant to move from direct attached to network storage.

The Network World review gave the NetApp FAS2050 decent marks as a storage device with enterprise capabilities in terms of performance and snapshots but what stood out consistently in the review was how poorly it scored relative to management and customer experience. “At the same time, a storage manager will have to get hired if your company buys a NetApp SAN Server, because this product has the worst management interface of any of the devices we tested.” [read more] This is another case of enterprise technology being driven down into the SMB rather than acknowledging that midsize customers have unique needs that come with walking the line between enterprise size aspirations and small business resources.

HP’s MSA2012i also scored quite well in the review and as a product is example of how having a strong heritage in servers, PC’s, and other facets of IT infrastructure can help when it comes to product design. Customer Experience Design is an important part of the product lifecycle; by acknowledging that different classes of business have unique needs we can tailor products to those needs. In the case of HP we have the StorageWorks All-in-One Storage System designed for small IT environments up through the MSA2000 and into the Enterprise Virtual Array family for larger customers. We also acknowledge that customer needs can vary by connectivity and as a server vendor our options range from direct attached shared SAS storage to iSCSI and Fibre Channel. I doubt you’ll see any dedicated storage vender discussing the advantages of SAS arrays anytime soon.

The takeaway is that a one size fits all approach does not work and we as technologists need to work hard to understand the inflection points at which customer needs demand a different approach.

Best Practices for Tape Strategy

regisalumni — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 22:10:00 GMT

By Jim Hankins

Customer's often ask us what's the role of tape today and where is it going in the future?

I was alerted to an excellent blog post titled "Tape - Is its Time Up?" by Jay Wallace at Sun and in it is an excellent white paper titled "Tape - The Digital Curator of the Information Age" by Fred Moore, President of Horison Inc.

Within Fred's white paper he has a chart that nicely outlines what customers should be thinking regarding best practices for tape today.

Best Practices for Tape Strategy

Select the right data for tape storage – fixed content, compliance, archive and backup.
Use automation whenever possible from small-scale autoloaders to robotic libraries.
Implement virtual tape concepts to reduce CAPEX & OPEX while improving performance and availability.
Take advantage of tape’s much longer media life and drive reliability improvements.
Consider encryption for all tape and mobile media including PCs and personal appliances
Clearly understand the vendor’s future commitment to tape development and innovation.

Please take a few minutes to read both the blog and white paper for more detail. They are very informative if you've been wondering about the application and benefits of using tape in your data protection architecture.

Do SMBs Really Need Tape? Good Question!

jasontreu — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:27:00 GMT

By Bob Conway. I recently saw an article in InformationWeek after the our recent DAT announcement. I wanted to share my thoughts on the subject.

DAT/DDS The Tape Format That Will Not Die

Posted by Howard Marks, Jul 23, 2008 11:07 PM
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/07/datdds_the_tape.html
After an absence of five or six years, and two generations, DDS trademark owner Sony (NYSE: SNE) is rejoining HP (NYSE: HPQ) in supporting the seventh generation of DDS/DAT drives, DAT320, targeted at the SMB market. DAT320, like HP’s DAT160s abandons the Digital Auto Tape cartridge, and its 4mm wide tape, using 8mm tape in a two reel cartridge instead. My biggest problem with DAT320 is that I don’t think the SMB customer with one server should be backing up to tape. I’ve seen too many SMBs fail at making a good backup every day, and getting one offsite occasionally, with a tape drive. They don’t change tapes, don’t notice with the backup program fails, don’t take tapes offsite and, since they’re not IT professionals, generally don’t understand how backups work and don’t care to know till something goes wrong. A combination of a local backup to a USB hard drive and an online backup makes more sense to me for these folks.

The real question to me is do we need a tape format specifically for low end use. Even if you disagree with me and think SMBs can handle tapes effectively why have tape formats specifically for the low end. Why can’t SMBs use earlier generations of LTO? I just opened the CDW site to see what the street prices for SMB backup devices really are and right there on the front page are an HP DAT160 drive for $849 and a Tandberg LTO-2 drive for $760. Paying more for a drive that has less capacity (200 native GB/tape vs. 80 for DAT160) and no automation upgrade doesn’t make any sense to me. Unlike DAT160 drives which can mount and read DDS-4 tapes the new DAT320 drives are only backwards compatible with DAT160 so there aren’t many organizations that will get any real benefit from backwards compatibility.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Howard offers some interesting views, and no doubt they do reflect real life experiences for some people. We at HP have a different take on this issue. Also, while I can empathize with the comments on people not changing tapes, not noticing when the backups do occasionally fail etc., we should not conclude that the technology solution is at fault when it is generally poor operating processes or practices which are actually to blame. After all, automobiles crash every day because of poor drivers, that doesn't necessarily make the motor car a poor solution?

We feel we need to continue to offer choice to our customers so that they can work in a way that feels right for them and that mitigates their risk at an acceptable cost. Online backup may be viable for some people, but if the data set is big the bandwidth needed can be prohibitive, or the local infrastructure may not always be reliable enough to depend upon for the time it takes to complete the data transfer. And yes, a USB hard drive can be used in many environments to meet the basic needs of data protection. That is why HP supports the use of both these methodologies within our product lines. We also offer RDX based removable hard drives as another cost effective backup and disaster recovery solution for people who want even lower cost, but can manage with fewer pieces of removable media in their rotation scheme.

So, why continue with the DAT product line which is targeted directly at SMB customers? Our DAT 160 drive has been shipping successfully for just over a year now and in the first twelve months of shipment we have sold an average of 6 data cartridges on each drive. This suggests that thousands of customers continue to see a need for removable backup using multiple copies or versions of their data in a structured media rotation scheme at a relatively low cost.

We also need to respect the investment protection imperative of the many current DDS/DAT users who are still out there in the installed base. After all, since the first DDS drives were shipped in 1989 over 18-million DDS/DAT drives and over 400-million cartridges have been shipped. Of the total number of drives shipped 7.4-million have been sold since the year 2000, and that supports the notion that there is still a very healthy body of very satisfied DDS/DAT users, who like what the core technology offers. And while DAT 320 may be seen by some to offer somewhat limited backwards compatibility, it is still one generation more than switching to any different technology presents.

These are the major factors compelling us to continue to support this very successful tape format for SMBs.

Examples of Data Deduplication Ratios for File Serving, SQL and Exchange

regisalumni — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 20:46:00 GMT

By Jim Hankins

If you remember back in my HP Deduplication - Part 1 post when we announced our new deduplication products back in June, I said that the deduplication ratio you can expect from a product can vary based on a number of factors. We now can share with you deduplication test results from our D2D4000 Backup System conducted by a 3rd party, Binary Testing Ltd.

Binary Testing conducted testing that backed up and deduplicated data for file serving, SQL and Exchange environments with various data change rates over a simulated three month backup period. The results can be found here: http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/downloads/4AA2-0799ENW.pdf

Again, your mileage may vary but this report should give you some idea of what's possible if your business runs these types of applications.

EMC: HP's Whac-A-Mole VTL (& HP Reponse Part 1)

jasontreu — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:55:00 GMT

I wanted to share a response I made on an EMC blog called, "The Backup Blog."

We will also be sharing a response for our VLS product as well. There was too much to respond to in one post! Stay tuned!

__________________________________

As a Product Manager for the HP StorageWorks D2D Backup System product line, I wanted to respond to your blog entry on July 16th, 2008, entitled "HP's Whac-A-Mole VTL".

First, I would like to agree with you that our D2D Backup Systems may be limited in scalability and capacity - that is, depending on one's perspective. For a large Enterprise or data center, this is certainly true. However, these products are positioned for small and mid-range businesses (SMB), as well as for remote/branch office sites (ROBO), that require improved backup and restore capabilities over traditional backup to tape (disk-to-tape) data protection schemes.

Rather than take the approach of many other storage vendors, including EMC, which try to "tweak" higher-end solutions to meet the needs of smaller customers (think square peg, round hole), HP has designed a portfolio of disk-based data protection solutions specifically for customers that have smaller budgets and storage requirements.

Our new D2D Backup Systems, which you reference, range from 3TB to 9TB, offer comparable (if not better) performance than other solutions within the same class of disk-based storage products, and are priced starting at $6500 for a complete system (including the deduplication software).

Additionally, by using inline, hash-based deduplication (which you fail to mention), we are compatible with a wide range of backup applications that customers already have installed - unlike the EMC Avamar solution which requires customers to "rip and replace" their current backup applications.

HP's D2D Backup Systems are easy to install (typically, in less than an hour) and are just as easy to manage, requiring little, if any, need for expensive installation/service/support contracts (ala EMC, IBM, Data Domain). Also, HP's D2D Backup Systems utilize target-based deduplication (again, which you fail to mention) which is far less dependent on client resources and much less likely to impact the availability and performance of client applications - unlike source-based deduplication solutions such as EMC Avamar.

For years, I have seen press releases and heard EMC executives tout their dedication to providing SMB solutions. EMC purchased Dantz Retrospect, partnered with Dell, and created the Insignia product line - all in the name of garnering market share in the fastest growing IT customer segment - the SMB segment. Yet, EMC continues to build Enterprise solutions, then remove a few hard drives, take away a bit software, and then claim it has solutions for the SMB segment. Sorry folks, that's not how it's done. You can't claim to cater to small businesses when your pricing starts at $20K to $50K for a low-end data protection solution. While EMC may sell some volume in the mid-range segment (everybody and their brother competes there!), I think you have missed the boat on smaller businesses which comprise 80% to 85% of worldwide businesses. Probably time to check your market research...

Lastly, on the topic of product names, as you so thoughtfully pointed out how bad "D2D" was, I think the uninformed IT customer would find EMC's product names quite amusing - Avamar, DL 3D, Centera, Clariion, and Celerra. My bet is that the uninformed IT customer would think that your either selling pharmaceuticals to middle-aged men (if you get my point) or selling props from an episode of Battlestar Galactica.

Thanks and look forward to our future conversations.

Mike Ewell
Product Manager for the HP StorageWorks D2D Backup System product line

Green Storage #5 – Drive type and speed choices affect your power requirements

DGarrels — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:08:00 GMT

- by David Garrels

We're working on updating our power calculator tools so that when you're considering HP disk arrays, you can identify the power trade-offs of selecting different drive types. Of course, which drive type you choose depends on a lot of different factors - access time requirements, file/block size needs, etc. and your solution architect or channel partner can help you through that. But power draw is something you should also consider.

In general, slower spinning drives use less power. For example**, a 400GB 10K RPM drive pulls ~8 watts while spinning idle. A 450GB 15K RPM drive pulls ~12 watts. That's a significant difference that gets multiplied over the number of drives in the cabinet. An EVA4400 fully loaded with the 10K drive uses ~770 watts for drive power while the same EVA full of 15K drives will use ~1100 watts.

Again, you need to build the system that will support your application and enable your business goals. As part of that, you may want to consider the power requirements of the drives you select.

We'd be interested in your feedback - is power draw something you think about when configuring your systems?

**Note: all power measures are estimates and reference drive power only. Controllers, fans, etc also consume power and need to be calculated in the overall system requirements. Our updated power calculators on hp.com will include this.

Storage Just got SASsy! VMware set free of the SAN.

jasontreu — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 02:24:00 GMT

By Lee Johns, director of marketing, StorageWorks Entry Storage and Storage Blades, HP

Serial Attached SCSI (SAS). Does not sound very exciting really does it? Many of you will know SAS as a class of disk drives found in servers and arrays but how many have ever though of using SAS as an interconnect for storage instead of Fibre Channel or iSCSI? Probably not many and with good reason. SAS is a point to point protocal that can not compete today with the sophistication of network storage toploogies like Fibre Channel and iSCSI for Enterprise Arrays.

But what if you just want to deliver a simple solution for shared boot, or a VMware infrastructure that enables Vmotion without a SAN, or you have an application that performs best with a direct attached storage architecture but you want better storage utilization. Now the cost and complexity of a SAN seems somewhat redundant. Why is there no way to provide the performance you need with the consolidation and utilization of a SAN without the overhead of an expensive fibre channel network infrastructure or leaving things as they are with existing direct attached storage (DAS)?

There is an answer. It is using SAS as a shared storage interconnect and with it you can build much simpler shared storage environments that can be managed by a server administrator. This saves you time, money and enables you to build the best architecture for any application. It is not a replacement for the traditional SAN but it is an enhancement to DAS that places the data and control where it should be and does not force fit a SAN as the answer to all storage problems.

Shared SAS solutions are available today and I encourage you to think where they could help you improve your Direct Attached Storage architectures and augment the SAN. SAS began as an internal server interconnect so maybe it is no surprise that dedicated storage vendors like EMC and NetApp are ignoring SAS as an interconnect. They feel it is threatening to them and that is exactly why you should be taking a serious look!

Frank Sinatra and blogging

CalvinZ — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 07:24:00 GMT

By Calvin Zito

From my title of this post, you're probably starting to get the idea that I like music. In a recent post, I talked about Miley Cyrus and storage. Earlier this week, I was flying home and turned on my MP3 player (no, it's not an iPOD - I was hooked on another vendor's player a few years ago and have not bought into the iPOD hype). I was in the mood for one of my favorite artists, Frank Sinatra. I've loved his music for many years and I was lucky enough to see him in concert in the late 80's with my good friend and now retired HP colleague Dean Cashen. While listening to "A Man and His Music", I was thinking about this blog and how it's been doing over the last several months since we turned it into a "team" blog.

Our "Around the Storage Block" blog is one of the most popular blogs on hp.com. We're doing a pretty good job of regular, frequent posts and a lot of you stop by to read what we have to say. But something doesn't feel right to me - we are missing the mark. We don't get very many comments on our posts. And as I look across many of the other hp.com bloggers, not too many people are commenting on their blogs either. But one of the main reasons for our blog is to engage with you our customers and others interested in storage and to hear what you have to say. So far, it's been a lot of one-way discussions. I'd really like to hear from you. What do you see as important topics to discuss? What are the big issues you are facing that you don't think are being adequately addressed?

So to steal a melody from one of Sinatra's greatest songs, and put it to the words I was thinking while flying home the other day, "Come blog with us, come blog let's blog away. Weather wise its such a lovely day. You just type the words, and well reply to what you say. Come blog with us, come blog away."

Now I'm in the mood for more Frank! I'll be seeing you.

IDC suggests SSD not quite baked for the Enterprise

regisalumni — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:32:00 GMT

by Jim Hankins

Saw this article "Enterprise systems may need redesign to benefit from solid state disks" at SearchStorage.com.

This paragraph from the article echos what I said in the Bottom Line on my previous Part 2 post on our position on SSD:

"...All of this suggests SSDs are at least a generation away from full usability, especially in the enterprise. However, IDC is sticking with its earlier forecast that deployment of SSDs in enterprise computing will pick up by 2010 and that enterprise computing applications will grow from 12% of SSD revenue in 2007 to more than 50% by 2011, Reinsel said. ..."