Storagezilla

Who drives Java?

"The question raised by most," added Johnson, "is how will Oracle continue to innovate the Java language? Java leadership has fortunately (for SpringSource) gradually moved away from Sun. The Java world does not have the dependence on Sun that it had five to 10 years ago. We are optimistic about the future of Java...but we don't see Sun/Oracle doing much to advance it in any way."

via adtmag.com

I suppose the sign of a healthy ecosystem is that it can go in directions you wouldn't have expected.

The Oracle-NetApp War

There's blowback and then there's blowback.

After an event which was torturously boring in places but hysterical in others and I'm thinking of Edward Screven getting up on stage and saying "VMware integrates with nothing" while he was trying to apply lipstick to the pig that is Oracle VM, Larry gets up on stage focuses on the Sun 7000 series calls it the ZFS Storage Appliance. Then he says it's..

"a more advanced NetApps box"

(Spelling his)

And "if you're a NetApps customer you should look at it" as it "does more snapshots" and a whole host of other things.

When you consider IBM was the only other company he mentioned in those remarks and he did so disparagingly I think we know who's ass Larry plans on breaking his foot off of in the storage market.

Suing Sun could go down as one of the biggest mistakes NetApp made in the past decade. They're now suing Oracle and the legal team at Redwood Shores aren't going to throw their hands up and walk off the field in defeat after 9 months of fighting global competition authorities.

If NetApp takeouts are on Oracle's road to hardware profitability I'd imagine the Oracle-NetApp joint customer list was divvied up amongst Oracle's regional sales teams first thing this morning.

But on the upside If you're around the Austin area soon you might be able to pick up a lot of second hand NetApp gear sitting by the side of the road.

The Sun also sets

Sun Microsystems is now no more and has been consigned to the dust bin of history.

Watch Larry later tonight when he's talking about Oracle's plans for hardware/software integration. If it sounds like he's pitching a warmed over version of the AS/400, which was IBMs largest wholly developed hardware/software architectural gamble in decades, it's probably because he is.

On the software side the interesting thing about buying Java is that Oracle owns the least interesting part of that ecosystem what with the bulk of Java development being done by writing to Frameworks.

Usually the Spring Framework.

So at the Enterprise Framework level we have two Frameworks of note. Spring and .NET. Below those one wonders what it is you're buying when it comes to programming languages?

Geronimo!

I'd like to thank everyone who voted for me in the Storage Monkeys Top 10 Vendor Blog poll. It is gratifying to be recognised by the readership for any reason they see fit. 

As is the way with such things the nomination alone is 90% of the enjoyment. Coming second added an extra 10%.

I thank you all. 

Getting back to it, come what may with remarks or lack of on tomorrows results call I make this promise to constant readers, the opposition and to co-workers. From wandering around near empty corridors in strange places at odd hours and speaking to the people with real juice inside the company it appears to me that the next two years here inside of EMC Information Infrastructure Products (IIP) are going to be busier than the last six.

Once a decade the company transforms itself and sets the tone for the coming years. It's about to transform itself once again. 

I'd ask you to forgive lighter than usual posting schedules when they occur. Even I with my "unique" sleep patterns sometimes run out of hours in a day.

There's going to be a lot of technology to talk about. Enjoy the quiet time while it's there.

Sun-Oracle brings new opportunities

The Sun-Oracle deal is now done but for the shouting. Of which there's still a lot of right now but one thinks militant MySQL fans would be better off directing that energy into a competitive offering rather than re-fighting a battle they lose every time another competition authority says they have no objections to the deal.

If you're an Oracle competitor who tied the deal into knots over the past year chances are you got your legal fee worth. Oracle acquires a company which has diminished significantly in the market place even further while legal teams jousted behind closed doors.

Now, when I look at something like Oracle Exadata do I see a competitor? Yes. But I also see an opportunity. If you're running big databases on big tin you need to protect them. You need to back them up. You need to archive data out of them.

What are you going to back these up to? Tape from STK?

There's copying the Mainframe with integrated hardware and software and then there's copying the worst of Mainframe. Adding tape into the Exadata mix strikes me as carrying the worst of Mainframe computing forward when so many Mainframe shops are trying to get off of tape and free up floor tiles.

It strikes me that what those large database systems need is a high speed multi-protocol deduplication storage system with the option of high performance OpenStorage integration and the ability to act not only as a backup target but also an archival device.

Something like that will deduplicate, store, protect and replicate database backups, database dumps and archived database information incredibly quickly while keeping the lowest spindle count possible.

That's the opportunity I see as Oracle moves towards integration.

You can read more over at Dedup Central.

Kickoff in review

Busy week this week hence the first blog post of the week comes near the end while I'm waiting for my flight home. This week was Kickoff and members of Backup Recovery Systems (EMC BRS), RSA and EMC were all in Boston to get their marching orders for the year.

It was so cold here that when I got off the plane my extremities nearly turned black and dropped off.

As tends to be the way at these things usually it's the corridor meetings, dinner meetings, lunch meetings and ad-hoc meetings I arrange around the sessions is where I get the most information but there are a couple of interesting changes going on.

Without getting into specifics the couple of things which stood out to me were: Joe informing us of his thinking as to where customer priorities are and what he sees as jointly being EMC's greatest threat and largest opportunity, EMC CFO David Goulden making pie charts and balance sheets fun and Pat Gelsinger doing a presentation I want to see again. 

In slow motion.

Pat does everything with his foot on the accelerator and even during the Executive Q&A session he looked mere milliseconds away from leaping to his feet when asked a question.  

While I knew about every product he covered in his presentation already hundreds upon hundreds in that room didn't and wouldn't have until later this year. It's refreshing to see that those who think we need to over communicate instead of keeping everything under a black cloth in a sealed room somewhere are hanging out in the executive suite.

That makes life a bit easier for those of us deeper into the organization who have to move like Road Runner to ensure information disseminates far and wide.

USB 3.0

We're to believe in 2010 USB 3.0 will have finished it's 3 year journey to market.

Nearly but not. 

Right now there simply aren't enough initiator/host ports deployed to support the announcements coming out of CES as there isn't any mainstream chipset support and won't be until 2011. You can add 3.0 support but you do so at extra cost in PCI Express cards for desktops/servers and ExpressCard modules for laptops.

Iomega will be supporting USB 3.0 this year in specific larger capacity devices, but right now such an interface is targeted at people who are willing to go out and spend the extra money to get access to that increased bandwidth.

You won't be seeing a balloon popup on your desktop saying this device can perform faster if you plug it into a SuperSpeed port for a year or two yet.

Iomega v.Clone: Desktop Virtualization for you, your friends and your family.

Mark the date. This is when your friends and family can virtualize their home computers and they'll do it without knowing.

This is when the virtual desktop comes out of the data center and moves into your den, living room, kitchen, study or where ever else you keep a computer.

Today at CES Iomega announces v.Clone for Iomega USB connected drives. The ability with a few clicks to clone your PC desktop to a virtual image, store it on an Iomega drive, use that image elsewhere and then synchronize changes between the physical computer and it's v.Clone copy when the drive is reattached.

v.Clone your home PC or laptop to a slim line eGo Drive, take it on the road with you access your apps, data, music, photos and movies on a Netbook or on a PC at your destination. When your done shut it down unplug the drive and take it home with you. No data left behind, it's stateless and password protected.

 

If you're worried about losing your environment if you lose the drive then store it on an eGo Encrypt or the upcoming eGo Encrypt Plus for AES secured drive level encryption.

Use it on the road, use it during software or operating system upgrades, use it if your physical machine suffers a catastrophic failure.

Just use it.

It's going to come pre-installed on Iomega USB drives and will be available as a free download for Iomega customers from iomega.com later this month.

Iomega iConnect: Connecting the unconnected.

I have a bunch of USB drives of varying capacities I've picked up over the years. Unfortunately they become orphans as my data growth outstrip their capacity, all while the inevitable march of storage economics gives me twice the capacity in half the packaging at regular intervals.

But those drives don't have to go to waste you can run on EMC LifeLine on them with the Iomega iConnect and convert them into networked storage.

 

So, you can make previously DAS attached devices wired or wireless Networked Storage. Access your files locally or across the Internet. Use built in Torrent support for peer to peer downloads. stream your media to compliant devices such as video game consoles, Iomega ScreenPlay systems, networked TVs and other media players. Replicate data locally or to remote storage devices out on the Network and add wireless capability to up to two USB attached printers.

 

So basically it takes offline storage online. You bring the disk, it adds the intelligence.

Iomega ScreenPlay Director: It does media.

I've covered the ScreenPlay Director when it was released in Europe but it arrives on shelves in the US later this month along with it's siblings.

The 1TB Director HD acquires the ability to buy or rent movies from CinemaNow after jumping across the pond while the diskless ScreenPlay Director TV Link allows you to use your own USB connected disk and FLASH devices as storage.

  
 

Both support 1080p playback and are wireless ready with the use of the Iomega 802.11N adapter.

The ScreenPlay Plus HD supports up to 1080i playback doesn't support wireless but like the Director HD it does come with Iomega Protection Suite featuring Retrospect and Mozy Backup Software a 12 month subscription to Trend Micro Anti-Virus and of course v.Clone.