Off The Grid

I've been on holiday for the last week (sunning myself and the family in Cyprus). I had no Internet access - not even TV! Although I had no laptop (or Blackberry this time) I did take my iPod Touch, now configured with the mobile version of NewsGator. As I've mentioned previously, I have a 100+ RSS feeds (which I'll publish once I get around to it) on storage and others. My backlog was about 2500 entries, so I decided to challenge myself to get up to date and read as much as possible. Clearly I didn't read them all (there were plenty that could be skipped) but I read most and it provides for an interesting cross section...

EMC - blogs are run like a military machine; co-ordinating the news relating to new product releases and mercilessly hammering the competition. EMC have more storage bloggers than any other storage company and there are some good ones out there - one of my favourites is Information Playground by Steve Todd, where he discusses the design of Clariion.

Netapp - follows a close second to EMC with lots of bloggers and lots of competitor bashing. I particularly like Alex McDonald's postings.

IBM - doing a great job running the "resistance", fighting back against the continual onslaught of Barry (A Burke). Check out Barry (Whyte) and Tony Pearson. I'd like to see more from IBM though, especially their product developers working on DS arrays and XIV.

HDS - A jolly good bloke, but not really a player in the blogosphere. Only Hu contributes regularly, but doesn't engage in any serious debate.

Sun - quite literally on another planet with their storage strategy!

Dell - bought some toys, but doesn't know how to play with them. Unfortunately the older boy who could help them play with them has left...

Now there are more companies out there and I don't think I have any blog links from Brocade, 3Par, Compellent, Emulex, Qlogic, Pillar and others although I may be wrong (it is getting late). Any RSS link offerings gladly welcome - although I might not get around to reading them before my next holiday!

The Rise of SSDs

Sun recently announced that they will be putting solid state disks into all of their server and storage range of hardware. EMC already have solid state drives for DMX-4, which was announced in January this year. EMC have also stated that they think SSDs will reach a price parity with high end FC drives by 2010.

All of a sudden (and I'm sure plenty of people will claim it isn't sudden) solid state disks are all the rage. For servers, I can see the logic. It's another step in keeping the power and cooling demands of servers down; it also extends primary memory further and will definitely increase performance.

But what about storage arrays? I can see the benefit of putting a tier of SSD drives into DMX arrays, especially in the way EMC have chosen to implement it. It allows those targeted applications to get the performance they require at a manageable price point without a drastic reconfiguration of the array. But an entire array of SSD? That's just the same as existing products like Tera-RamSan.

If SSD prices are driven down, then surely so will the price of standard hard drives. HDD manufacturers aren't going to lie down and let solid state take away their business. We've seen their response already with Seagate taking STEC to court over patent infringements.

So where will it end? Well, tape didn't go away as many forecast it would. I don't see spinning drives going away any time soon either. What I'd like to see is the rise of intelligent storage systems that learn the busy and quiet blocks and move the data between SSD and HDD to keep optimal performance. Meantime, HDD prices will continue to fall and the battle will be between cheap (but fast) HDDs and balancing their cost against the power/cooling they need.