Comments on: File Virtualization … remember then? http://www.interpres.net/blog/2010/01/24/file-virtualization-remember-then/ Ramblings of an IT infrastructure & storage consultant Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:57:42 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: tlin http://www.interpres.net/blog/2010/01/24/file-virtualization-remember-then/comment-page-1/#comment-19 tlin Tue, 26 Jan 2010 12:11:51 +0000 http://www.interpres.net/blog/?p=52#comment-19 Tiering is good, but to make a huge difference, moving between FC and SATA is not enough. Seeing a good number of my clients going toward SATA-only NAS, the only way to make NAS tiering work would be allowing data to move between FC and SATA and Cloud. It's good to hear about the upcoming Acopia cloud gateway. it's a lonely world to be the only viable vendor in a market, I hope you guys do well. (ps. please figure out a way to do global quota control. If I have to give up quota control (or having to do it form the backend per physical volume), my user's growth of mp3 collection will soon eclipse any meaningful saving from tiering.) (pps. what I am hoping for here is more than a mere cloud gateway. the file virtualization technology itself has a great potential as a cloud building device.) Tiering is good, but to make a huge difference, moving between FC and SATA is not enough. Seeing a good number of my clients going toward SATA-only NAS, the only way to make NAS tiering work would be allowing data to move between FC and SATA and Cloud. It’s good to hear about the upcoming Acopia cloud gateway. it’s a lonely world to be the only viable vendor in a market, I hope you guys do well.

(ps. please figure out a way to do global quota control. If I have to give up quota control (or having to do it form the backend per physical volume), my user’s growth of mp3 collection will soon eclipse any meaningful saving from tiering.)

(pps. what I am hoping for here is more than a mere cloud gateway. the file virtualization technology itself has a great potential as a cloud building device.)

]]> By: AceSage http://www.interpres.net/blog/2010/01/24/file-virtualization-remember-then/comment-page-1/#comment-18 AceSage Tue, 26 Jan 2010 06:23:50 +0000 http://www.interpres.net/blog/?p=52#comment-18 I ghost authored the intro to the dummies book - have distributed about 30,000 of them - just ordered another 10,000 - so much for deflation. So I speak as a bit of an expert on this subject. The fact that some vendors solutions failed or were acquired is not indicative of issues with the solution. If that was true the acquistion of Arrowpoint by Cisco, and the failure of Nortel in the L4-7 business would mean the ADC market was doomed - just dumb. The reason other vendor's attempts at file virtualization failed is because the approach they took was flawed. Instead of building a solution appropriate for the real estate this solution occupies, they cobbled together PC software that was neither effective or resilient. Their solutions were disruptive to users, presented steep performance and availability risks, and simply did not provide business benefit. ARX (ex-Acopia) was built from the ground up to live in the data path - like most any effective storage networking component. It has a range of uses - from consolidating name spaces across diseperate vendors and protocols (which is minor frankly)to fully automated and transparent storage tiering - between same or competing storage vendor (which is huge). The business benefits of tiering are by now so completely ratified that I am not going to expound upon them again here, but urge you and your readers to explore the 3rd party validated responses of actual customers at http://www.techvalidate.com/product-research/f5-arx Also note the partnership announced last week with Netapp, and similar cooperation with DataDomain and many other storage vendors. Clearly the industry and customers see value in File Virtualization. And yes - acting as a gateway to cloud storage is a very, very good use for file virtualization - stay tuned I ghost authored the intro to the dummies book – have distributed about 30,000 of them – just ordered another 10,000 – so much for deflation. So I speak as a bit of an expert on this subject.

The fact that some vendors solutions failed or were acquired is not indicative of issues with the solution. If that was true the acquistion of Arrowpoint by Cisco, and the failure of Nortel in the L4-7 business would mean the ADC market was doomed – just dumb.

The reason other vendor’s attempts at file virtualization failed is because the approach they took was flawed. Instead of building a solution appropriate for the real estate this solution occupies, they cobbled together PC software that was neither effective or resilient. Their solutions were disruptive to users, presented steep performance and availability risks, and simply did not provide business benefit.

ARX (ex-Acopia) was built from the ground up to live in the data path – like most any effective storage networking component. It has a range of uses – from consolidating name spaces across diseperate vendors and protocols (which is minor frankly)to fully automated and transparent storage tiering – between same or competing storage vendor (which is huge).

The business benefits of tiering are by now so completely ratified that I am not going to expound upon them again here, but urge you and your readers to explore the 3rd party validated responses of actual customers at http://www.techvalidate.com/product-research/f5-arx

Also note the partnership announced last week with Netapp, and similar cooperation with DataDomain and many other storage vendors. Clearly the industry and customers see value in File Virtualization.

And yes – acting as a gateway to cloud storage is a very, very good use for file virtualization – stay tuned

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