Symantec beats FAST out the door with SSD support in Dynamic Storage Tiering

While some have wondered whether or not EMC was going to be able to get their FAST product announced this year, others have been keeping their heads down getting work done.  For instance, Symantec, who today announced their Dynamic Storage Tiering feature for SSDs in their Storage Foundation products.

Of course, many probably wonder why the heck I'm writing about this seeing how 3PAR doesn't have support for SSDs in it's products yet.  That's easy. A v-Max with FAST is going to be more of a science project than a production system that actually gets work done.  I'm more concerned about customers buying somebody else's SSD-enabled array and using it with Symantec's Dynamic Storage Tiering than I am about FAST on v-Max.

But I'm not that concerned because the SSD market has been slow to develop - even by EMC, the company that has been leading the charge (and inventory buildup).  And even though they like to point to the check boxes in the feature checklist, big wide striping (the kind that flattens disk contention problems) with a v-Max is still an exercise in storage contortionism, unlike on a 3PAR, where its the default behavior.

But all this will change over time and the cost of deploying SSDs is going to come down as enabling software for SSDs becomes available and is refined. Even EMC's software will slowly get better. Despite the performance of the SSD devices - and EMC's wishes, the race for best of breed SSD functionality is going to be much more of a marathon than a sprint.

So where's 3PAR?  We've been shipping DO (Dynamic Optimization) for 4 years and today we announced the policy advisor for automating most of the tasks that used to take admins time to work through.  Changing service levels for volumes just got a lot easier. Drive speed, RAID levels, additional drives - if you want to change them, you can - and it doesn't take weeks or months and piles of spreadsheets to figure it out.

Comments

[Chuck Hollis]

Hi Marc

FAST is GA today on Symmetrix, CLARiiON and Celerra. Very successful list of beta customers. Economic benefits compelling. Performance benefits compelling as well. Very easy to install, very easy to manage.

The future is here, Marc. Time to update your schtick.

-- Chuck

[marc farley]

Chuck, You were doing so well until the schtick comment. FAST is a good concept on paper and I think EMC's phased approach is smart. Congrats to EMC for delivering a feature that ups the ante a little bit in the storage world. It's one thing when a company like Compellent offers a feature and its something else when EMC does it. The difference is that it becomes part of the mainstream. Like thin provisioning, online data movement is here to stay and as an EMC combatant, I hope Compellent is remembered as the company that made the big breakthrough. :)

Of course to make FAST work really well, there needs to be a flexible, underlying resource structure, and that's not something EMC storage is known for. I'm sure that will come at some point, but for now, your FAST trannies and cumbersome engines don't match up very well.

The thing that's always interesting about any EMC announcement is the incredible attention and excitement it generates in the industry, followed by weeks and months of level-setting. How long will it take for the flash powder to clear around FAST? A few days to a few weeks is my guess. But it's your day today. Enjoy it.

[Chuck Hollis]

Hi Marc

I was with you, almost, until you attempted the technobabble.

Would you care to elaborate on the "underlying resource structure" and "cumbersome engines" comment?

Modern designs throughout -- V-Max refreshed this year, CX4 is recent, etc. -- what are you talking about?

I"m hoping for something with some technical merit, rather than the empty FUD.

Can you help?

-- Chuck

[marc farley]

No, you'd have to pay me as a consultant, but it would be a conflict of interest, so I can't. :)

Here's a hint - managing storage resources by spreadsheets. (I hope the use of the word resources here was not too vague.)