vStorage, PowerPath and a few random thoughts.

PowerPath gets VMware vStorage integration. It took a while but it wasn't the fault of the PowerPath team since they have to queue up with everybody else to request changes from VMware but it's there now and talking to vStorage today. Replication Manager support was announced last week.

Interesting couple of things flying around about the Virtual Data Center OS. Paul M's finger prints clearly on some of the stuff I read. I've never underestimated how much of a technologist he is, you should see the cloud of big brains who follow him around the place...and I'm being careful here as I know they're reading...but some people underestimate him at their great peril.

He has this weird habit of standing in the exact spot where his competitors will need to be later on and I'm told his review of EMC strategy while he was working here had people scrambling for writing material and recording devices.

Which brings us back to vStorage and an unpopular view of things.

We now live in a world of thick LUNs and thin LUNs and there is a growing trend towards what I call Anorexic provisioning (Lie about size and provision waaayyy too little) and Bulimic provisioning (Over/fully provision but remove some/a lot of it later without telling the OS/FS) and maybe I'm out of practice but I thought the idea was to manage and classify data, not manage and classify blocks?

Now if you've ever worked in a glass room you soon find out that there are no absolute truths in this game. Just circumstances, problems, budgets and solutions. Every situation like every customer environment is in someway unique. So my view is just my view from my previous experience and my particular needs. I don't expect it to be the view of anyone reading or even the person in the cube next to me where I'm writing this.

Anyone who tells you there's just one perfect answer has either never run cables in their life/dealt with boxes in sickness and in health/actually worked in IT for a living or is just trying to put one over on you.

I'll admit it could be condescending UNIX user syndrome as I'll take hard over easy if hard is the right way of doing it. Data Classification can be a pain in the backside but if it were easy it wouldn't be worth doing. Any analysis I've done in the field has always had at least one "What the hell?!" moment where a customer sees something which they missed in the giant data whiteout. You look at this stuff long enough and you go snow blind but ultimately you have to understand your data, how it's created how it moves and how it dies. It's one of those exercises you always feel better after doing as you're bringing order to data generation/data retention/data destruction chaos.

To conclude this aside never forget that capacity optimization and data classification are in no way mutually exclusive and should always be used in conjunction and with the same thoughtfulness.

But that's just an aside.

VMFS appears to be getting a slew of new storage related features and it's about time since they were treating arrays about as dumb as a lot of the brand name OS vendors do. I'm actually glad there's now a set of vStorage APIs which will add value and insight to Virtual Center and can leverage advanced array based functionality. It'll take time to get the most out of this stuff. What we have right now is a start. But it'll be worthwhile for everybody when we do.

And it might even spur the brand name OS vendors into treating storage arrays as something more than just LUNs and Mount Points.

--Updated--

I (rightfully) received complaints that I glossed over the PowerPath hotness. My issue here is I've been using PowerPath for as long as there has been a PowerPath so it's only jarring when I have to deal with other path management frameworks.

Some are better than others. A lot of them are worse and shouldn't even be given away free.

To see how much of a big deal vStorage is I'd advise you look at Chad's blog post. The sneaky so and so managed to keep all this under his hat. I looked at those videos and about 60 light bulbs all lit up all at once around unannounced EMC array functionality. I/O de-duplication? I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter please!

EMC Storage Division is clearly going all in on VDC-OS which means everyone in the storage market is going to have to go all in on VDC-OS to keep competitive. This in turn builds an even larger eco-system for the VMware platform. 

Net result: More third party resources dedicated to VMware and less to it's competitors.