Storagezilla

One poll result and three T-shirts

Old business:

Out of 670 votes cast in my totally unscientific poll 34.3% of respondents believe that the DS8000 is "Alive like Rock" while 65.7% say it's "Dead like Disco".

Someone somewhere for some reason has spoken.

New business:

Earlier today..errrrmmm yesterday...I promised Val a T-shirt if there wasn't any flimflammery going on with SPC results but to be honest that wasn't really a fair bet when I wrote it since this could go down any number of ways and with both sides declaring victory.

As I'm living high on the hog right now (It's a mixture of sleep deprivation and a tiny tax refund I got in the post earlier from my thieving government) I've decided to send him, Tony Pearson and Barry Whyte a T-shirt since they're all working so hard spraying the SPC manure together.

Or at least they are until NetApp submit V-Series numbers and then all bets are off as the East Coast/West Coast SVC/V-Series cold war turns hot.

Gents, leave me a shipping address (Work or Home) and a size in a comment (It won't be made visible) and I'll see what I can do about getting something out to you.

S: 19"x27.5" M: 20"x28.5" L: 21.5"x29.5" XL: 22.5"x30.5"

EMC World 2008

It's now four months to the largest show in our industry, EMC World.

Something I look forward to and dread in equal measure.

I look forward to it as I run into countless customers and co-workers I've met from all over. There's nothing like catching some engineering godhead in the crowded halls or finding them sprawled out on a bean bag and asking him/her how some unannounced super secret project is coming along. Those who don't suffer an immediate brain freeze due to where we are and what we're talking about want to know how I found out about it and want me to stop talking about it at the exact same time.

I dread the bloody thing as I always end up having to work through it. By the end of the day I've feet which feel like water melons and have blown out my voice hours ago. While I tend to miss some of the worthwhile events I always keep an eye open to see which resident of Mount Olympus has joined an ease of use challenge queue while they were passing through on their way to somewhere else. Last year someone who shall remain nameless took the Symmetrix Management Console Challenge while eating an ice cream. They clocked up a good time too!

This year they're looking at embracing Social Networking tools to allow people to connect before they even touch down in Vegas and it looks like people will be able to join specialist communities.

The Goo Goo Dolls open the show and Billy Crystal provides the entertainment. See you there. Unless I get a better offer. :)

When deletion is just too tough

I thought this email exchange on the Toasters list last Friday was interesting.

A customer running their production email system on a FAS960c decided to do some clean up and hit some mailbox files with rm. Once the command completed the FAS had a nervous breakdown slowed to a crawl and took down all the email servers connected to it.

We're told that this is a known OnTap issue with large file deletions or many small file deletions. Allegedly there's no ETA on a fix..

And best of luck with that since nearly all of current OnTap development involves super gluing Classic & GX together as quickly as possible. It's been what? More than four years since they bought Spinnaker, they could have written it themselves from the ground up by now.

..so one should be careful how and what you delete.

But here's the thing, you read deeper into the thread and you find that it's a bug that's been around for a while.

No wonder they're pushing de-duplication of primary storage, it appears to be far easier than getting OnTap to behave the way it should when you hit the delete key.

The Death of Hardware?

Interesting article on Forbes discussing the effects the expanding cloud May hAve on sales of the Usual IT hardware.

Storage-hardware giant EMC (nyse: EMC - news - people ) in October paid $75 million for the consumer online storage service Mozy, which it plans to expand into an industrial-strength business, possibly cannibalizing its own hardware sales.

Well since right now we're talking online backup with Mozy I wouldn't agree with that, as Fortress powered applications roll out things might change, but Here I will say that the cloUd in generaL is going to tie some vendors in Knots.

Much more so those who jump on the train later rather than sooner.

Pass the salt... (Gossip)

Since I collect information in the same fashion that Syler from Heroes collects powers I sometimes stumble across some rumours which should be taken with a pinch of salt.

The following is pure hearsay and is in no way presented as fact.

1: The bleeding continues at HDS.

Hot on the heels of EVP and Sales Chief Genereux fleeing the building rumour has it that one of his top Capos resigned and promptly made for the Fire Exit just moments later.

I think we're seeing the effect of an internal strategy shake up here which means we're not done yet.

The question now is if the HDS sales organisation has been decapitated?

It certainly looks that way.

2: Symantec can CDP (Revivio) development

Having bought the remains for half a ham sandwich and now faced with selling off under performing divisions I've heard that someone has put what was left of Revivio to the sword.

This showed up late last year from feet on the street but I heard it again just recently.

John Thompson appears to be operating under don't ask don't tell while hyping the latest version of Backup Exec so no help there, but then another rumour says he favours Backup Exec over stodgy NetBackup as it's a growing business aimed at a market segment where Symantec typically does well.

NBU smells too much like old Veritas for Symantec's liking (Well that's what Symantec folks told me anyway.) and it's losing market share.

3: HP...

Oh never mind that's just too dull to even write about. If those wild and crazy guys at HP were anymore relaxed they'd be declared clinically dead.

---

Right, that's the rumours handled. Maybe more gossip unfit to print in future Pass the salt entries.

Or not. It'll depend on my mood.

HDS: The Hammer Falls.

First their CEO up stumps and heads off to deal with the blandness which is HP's storage portfolio (Roberson's first 100 days are about up. Expect the HP circus to roll back into town soon as he tries to prove he's worth his signing bonus) and now HDS EVP and head of sales Scott Genereux has run screaming from the company.

Would the last HDS executive to flee the building please turn out the lights?

Creative Camp

I'm considering going to Creative Camp in March.

The thing about going to such conferences in Ireland is that sometimes they're held in venues dating back to the 12th Century. Which to be honest is a lot different than the Valley norm but it does make things a bit more interesting.

Now I just have to decide if I plan on speaking. Which of course depends on if I can come up with something worth speaking about.

What's up with Retrospect?

While mistaking Cloud Storage for Clustered Storage Beth P asks what's up with Retrospect?

Good question with a good answer.

The all new Retrospect X for Macintosh (Brand new code base and designed from top to bottom as a Universal Binary) was shown off at Steve Jobs worshipfest Macworld just last week.

Join the mailing list if you want in on the public beta.

(And in that article on Fortress what you saw Roy do when talking about unannounced products is what's commonly called "a nice dodge".)

EMC Fortress

Codename: Project Fortress

Name: EMC Fortress

Status: Announced in Xconomy, Computerworld, others

Notes: While EMC Fortress is the brand name which EMC SaaS offerings will be marketed under, Project Fortress powers security, access management, billing services and so on for those SaaS offerings.

The first EMC Fortress offering is Mozy Enterprise. More to be announced later.

Codename Tracker page updated

Poll time: Is the DS8000 dead?

Barry W. over at IBM raises some questions about Tiering In A Box. No comment since I always know more than people expect me to (That's why my head is so big, it's filled with other peoples secrets), but I did like this line.

I also don't want to hear any FUD in response to this about DS8000 being dead, its healthy, was running out the door in the 4th Quarter and continues to be heavily invested in.

Fair enough but it's a sentiment that's out there and found echoing around the industry message boards. (Note Barry W. points out that this thread was started by an EMC dude. Something I didn't know when I posted this.) So with that in mind it's time for everyone to vote. There's a poll on the left hand side of this blog which is totally unscientific and open to massive abuse.

In that way it's just like any election you've ever voted in so hop to it.