Atmos, Dead or not dead? Innovative or repetitive?

The storage software formerly known as Maui  is now called Atmos. (Thanks Storagebod for the photo idea).

In a nutshell, Atmos looks like its a new wrapper for your uncle's old WAFS , but with an object-based access method and policies that apparently are applied at the object level.  Whether its object-ness is deeply embedded or a higher level application layer remains to be seen.  In other words, it might have a more familiar file system under the cover with a translation layer providing the object mechanisms.

Until more information is available, I'll put Atmos in WAFS storage windmill jousting camp that has attempted to add value by making multiple copies of data objects and storing them at multiple sites around the globe.  It follows a time-tested business model of EMC's that works by convincing customers to fill up multiple storage products at multiple locations with the same data.  Its good business when you can get it.

Wide area file systems have been attempted many times before and have gone into the dark cold night alone or have been folded into WAN offerings of networking companies. Is it a feature or a product? - only your local soothsayer knows for sure.  As most previous WAFS technologies have ended up being bought up to become features of networking products, this announcement from EMC could even restart the rumor mill about a Cisco acquisition. 

So storage bloggers, the question is whether or not Atmos is innovative.  I'd say the wide area stuff is not innovative, the object stuff is not innovative and the policy stuff is not innovative - but the combination of the three together might be - and there could still be key parts missing - such as network components. 

Sometimes it helps to understand a new technology by looking at what it competes with. Here's what I think Atmos competes with:

The now defunct Cisco WAFS

Globalscape WAFS

Expand Networks WAFS

Packeteer WAFS WAN Optimization

XtreemFS

Riverbed Wide Area Data Services

F5 WANjet

Feel free to add your own past or present Atmos competitors to this list or to offer adjustments to this opinon.

Comments

[Chuck Hollis]

Marc -- you read like you're sucking on a lemon!

C'mon, what fun would it be to re-do the whole WAFS thing?

Besides, once you take a closer look at Atmos, you'll realize that the two are very different animals indeed.

http://chucksblog.emc.com/chucks_blog/2008/11/emc-atmos-maui-is-here.html

[Martin G]

Hmm, you see we in the digital media world are already fairly familar with policy driven storage. See things like front porch.

http://www.fpdigital.com/

Remember this is not a 'man in the street' product; this is a product aimed a service providers, digital content providers, huge Web 2.0 providers.

Now do I think it will be a huge success, I'm not sure yet..

[Greg Ferro]

Blue Coat have a very successful offering in this space. And they bought Packeteer so the QoS capability is very strong.

[marc farley]

Greg, if I left Blue Coat out of my links please don't take that as a slight. I wasn't trying to give a complete listing.

Martin, Front Porch looks like they have a very good service going, thanks for the link. I agree that it will be interesting to watch how Atmos develops and how EMC develops the business model for it. Storage companies have not done very well in this area, although networking companies seem to have figured it out. EMC is not your average storage company, however.

Chuck, Thanks for commenting, as always. Atmos looks like it has a few more tricks than wide area file sharing. The EMC marketing machine is quite good at turning toast into a banquet, though, so I thought I'd post a little counterpoint to the gush fest. In its favor, Atmos looks like it has a few more automation features than your mainline storage arrays. Is there any information about how the storage configuration and setup behind Atmos is done?

[Martin G]

EMC will tell you the hardware isn't important. In the package that they will be offering, it is basically JBOD. It should be able to support any disk you want to put behind it. But as it handles the protection etc, it'll just be JBOD..so no RAID etc..