On September 14, 2006 aweeks on VI411.org responded to my SMP clusters and virtualization post by stating that Don Becker’s statement is “ignorant”, a word I intentionally avoided in my original post due to the harsh tone. Let me further clarify my original post by stating that I believe most pioneers like Don Becker need to be arrogant! They are blazing the trail and in my opinion arrogance begets fortitude. Don Becker’s idealism causes him to ignore the fact that Microsoft owns a large portion of the market and x86 virtualization solves inadequacies in the Micro$haft Windows operating system. Again his ability to disregard this truth can only be viewed as an attribute when trying to develop a superior emerging technology. There is a place for x86 virtualization today but who knows what the future will hold. After reading aweeks’ post I realized that I was the “ignorant” one to not understand and commend Don Becker’s hard line aggressive view. In a world of David and Goliath where marketing spin suppresses innovation and stifles technological advances, I am glad there are people like Don Becker.

-RJB

I was recently forwarded an article by a co-worker entitled “Virtualization doesn’t solve any problems”. First let me say that I think the title should maybe be revised to “Virtualization doesn’t solve all problems”, but did anyone ever claim that it did? To say virtualization doesn’t solve any problems is a bit arrogant and I think uninformed. The intelligent virtualization user / implementer is aware of the current limitations such as I/O bandwidth constraints. Virtualization is not a one size fits all but it is a size today that fits a much larger market segment than SMP cluster ting. While there is a segment of the market such as life sciences that is dealing with the need for massive parallel processing and incredible I/O requirements a much larger market segment is struggling with aging infrastructure, massive under utilization, server sprawl, growing environmental costs (hvac, energy, floor space, etch..), and the need to simplify recovery. While SMP clusters are near and dear to my heart (I worked in the life sciences field tweaking code to streamline molecular modeling computational operations, we used SGI at the time Linux HPC and products like Beowulf were just not there) they still have a way to go before they become mainstream, one of the great things about virtualization is the plug-and-play befits, the ability to move from the physical to the virtual and realize benefit immediately. Often in the SMP world applications need to be modified to take advantage of the new compute power. Virtualization players VMware, XenSource, VirtualIron and others are working on hypervisors that hold the promise of the simplicity and functionality that more complex SMP clustering applications provide.

On a final note there is another interesting quote “Virtualization addresses the same problems, such as server glut and management complexity, as clustering does — and it doesn’t necessarily do a better job of solving them” I don’t think that I agree with this statement. There are soft benefits that are just as important as the hard benefits such as server consolidation, environmental cost savings, etc… VMware emerged as the early player in the mainstream visualization market as an offshoot of a Stanford project called the Hive OS, today the Hive OS project is part of a larger project at Stanford called FLASH (FLexible Architecture for Shared memory). I recommend reading about the Hive OS to understand the befits such as isolation that virtualization provides.

Anyway I think I am done for now. I would enjoy hearing your thoughts and/or comments.

-RJB

So I have been reading other storage industry pundits’ opinions on the uses for LC-FC (Low Cost Fibre Channel Disk) and ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) disk drives.? The? use of ATA disks in mid-tier storage devices and virtual tape libraries as a primary disk-to-disk backup (D2D) and/or archiving target has become quite pervasive.? While the drives lack some fibre channel (FC) features like tagged command queuing and the mean-time-between-failure (MTBF) is not as high as a fibre channel drives they work well in applications like backup-to-disk (B2D) due to their ability to achieve tolerable sequential read and write speeds.? The industry as a whole has now begun to leverage LC-FC disks in enterprise class storage subsystems, while fundamentally this is a great idea, the marketing and packaging of these solutions needs a bit of work.? Most enterprise class subsystems leverage platform software for functions like snapshots and replication, many vendors price these platform software applications by capacity.? Why would anyone install 500GB LC-FC drives in an enterprise class subsystem and push their platform software licensing through the roof.? It would more cost effectively purchase a mid-tier storage device with 15K rpm fibre channel drives to use as a tier 2 or 3 storage platform, this solution would also most likely be higher performing.? This is a fundamental problem, if a storage device can truly accommodate multi-tier storage requirements why should the addition of tier 2 or tier 3 storage capacity where functionality like synchronous or asynchronous replication are typically not required raise the cost of my platform software licensing?? Until this is resolved it will be difficult to realize the vision of a single multi-tier platform.

-RJB

Not sure how many of you have seen the press on Cisco taking a 80% stake in stealth startup Nuova Systems.? Nuova System is a reincarnation of the Andiamo group which spun back into Cisco and today is what we all know as the Cisco MDS (SAN switching) product line.? There is little out there on Nuova Systems but the buzz is that they are working on a virtualization technology.? I guess the question is with all the money and power Cisco wields, does Brocade/McData stand a chance?? Does Brocade/McData have what it takes to innovate, or will the market goliath (Cisco) out innovate the smaller more nimble competitor?? With alliances like this it certainly looks that way.? One has to question the time that will be spent on the integration of the Brocade and McData product lines and positioning, and how much time this will leave for technology innovation.? It will be interesting to watch how this one unfolds.

-RJB