Copan's MAID fades away: forget about disk for archiving applications

The rumor is that Copan is shuttindg down.  If so, I suspect MAID storage will quickly become an afterthought now, except for a small number of customers and applications that will keep the technology on life support.  The problem with MAID is that there aren't enough applications for selectively-spinning disks.  Selectively spinning disk drives are more expensive than tape for archiving and are more problematic than standard disk systems for backup.  That leaves applications such as video on demand, which is not a large enough market to float a serious startup these days. Thin provisioning for primary storage and dedupe for backup have become the technologies of choice for customers looking to increase the efficiency of storage. 

The outcome of Copan's failure means that tape will continue to be the most prevalent technology for archiving. In turn, that means archiving software will continue to be tied to tape for some time, including all the problems inherent in maintaining metadata for it. If you are in the legal industry and hoping to see leapfrog improvements in digital discovery processes, don't hold your breath.  Discovery from data on tape will continue to be a laborious task.  SSDs for archiving would appear to be a slam-dunk at some distant time in the future, but the cost has to come down a long, long way first.

Comments

[Chuck Hollis]

Marc

Always appreciate your point of view, but I think you're off-base on this one.

Spin-down is a standard feature of many EMC storage products -- CLARiiON and Atmos to name just a few. And it's more popular than you think. We'd like to implement it universally.

Just because the 3Par guys don't have an offering in this space doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and customers don't want it.

The challenge, as you point out, is segregating low-usage data from the rest of the pile so it can be treated appropriately.

I think Copan failed the same way many other storage startups fail -- confusing a "feature" with a "platform".

-- Chuck

[marc farley]

Thanks Chuck, I expect that EMC, Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC, and Nexsan Technologies will continue to include spin down as a feature.

[Steven Schwartz - The SAN Technologist]

I think the naming of MAID, vs. the idea of spin down is what was in question. Agreed, once file systems have a better ability to know about a spindown enabled volume, this will continue to be popular. Just my 2 cents.

[nate]

Copan went over to IBM..

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2009/10/15/copan_dias/

"Word is that Copan, the troubled MAID system supplier, is going to become a developer of archival storage technology for IBM, IBM DIAS specifically."

At least according to the reg.

[marc farley]

I suppose that a move into IBM may be in the works, but I don't think it's happened yet. There isn't a lot to go on.

[nate]

One thing though, a fully loaded copan array(3,000 pounds) is the only array I know of that weighs more than a fully loaded 3PAR(2,000 pounds)! Though with COPAN of course 75% of the disks are spun down at any given point in time to conserve power.

When your data center says HEY You can't put that array here it's too heavy, you can say well AT LEAST IT'S NOT A COPAN.

[DrDedupe]

MAID is far from dead, just a little ahead of its time. Two things need to happen first:

1)Maturity of hybrid disk drives (Flash onboard)
2)Drives designed mechanically for spin-up/spin down environments

Both items are just a matter of time. I discuss this topic in Chapter One of my upcoming book "The Evolution of the Storage Brain"

http://blogs.netapp.com/drdedupe/2009/12/evolution-of-the-storage-brain-chapter-1-and-then-there-was-disk.html