SAS drives are thriving outside the data center, despite SATA’s cost advantage
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) was created to replace SCSI, the long-standing enterprise hard drive interface. It has done that, but there have been sightings far from the datacenter. Places like Ravelry, a seemingly home-hosted knitting website:
Rather than shrink in the face of lower priced SATA drives, SAS drives are expanding into SATA’s domain. What’s going on here?
SATA compatibility. SATA drives interoperate with SAS, so many entry server backplanes and PC motherboards are switching to SAS to cover both interfaces. This has created a virtual “Storage Foreign Exchange Program” as SATA drives are adopted in the enterprise, and SAS drives are tried in homes and small businesses.
Cost. New1 TB 7200 RPM SAS drives like the Seagate Barracuda ES.2 cost about $50 more than their SATA equivalents.
Capacity. The newest SAS enterprise-class drives like Seagate’s 450GB Cheetah 15K.6 offer more capacity than past enterprise drives. This makes them more affordable on a cost-per-GB basis.
Physical size. The server market has adopted 2.5″ SAS drives en masse, and the storage system market will follow. These drives use a lot less power and space than conventional enterprise drives without sacrificing performance. There are no reasonable SATA 2.5″ alternatives today.
If you’re still stuck in a SCSI/SATA mindset, consider a crash course on SAS.
Seagate is a Top Five technology brand for a surprising number of IT end users
An end user IT survey by Everything Channel on CRN.com shows that disk drives aren’t as much a commodity as one might think.
When asked what five vendors are most important for their technology provider to have a relationship with, Seagate was mentioned by a surprising number of IT folks. All the more impressive given that Microsoft, HP and Dell take up 3 of the 5 spots for over 40% of the respondents.
For small businesses, Seagate was mentioned more than EMC, Sun, CA, SAP, Toshiba, Hitachi Data Systems and NetApp. No other pure storage vendor (device or system) was on the list.
Seagate had an even higher ranking on the list for medium-sized businesses. (more…)
Copying a page from their PC strategy for x86 servers and storage
Newsweek’s Roger Kay makes a convincing case for Dell as a serious contender in the server space. And they’re doing it Dell Style - coming up from below, more direct in many ways than HP.
They’ve got a lot of momentum:
Strong success supplying Microsoft’s datacenters
A filled-out server line up
Services that help customers adapt Dell servers to their applications
Data Center Services (DCS) - a cloud-building unit with Yahoo, Facebook and Baidu as customers
Why is this important to a historically PC-centric company? Roger sees it:
Desktops tend to yield gross margins in the 8% to 12% range, and notebooks hit 12% to 18%; servers come in at a much fatter 18% to 26%.
iosafe disk drives keep data safe in a fire or flood.
How good of a bank vault is your solution?
It’s a new way to think about what you do for your customers. You are processing and storing your customer’s liquid assets. Your solutions need to reflect that reality, or you may end up having to help them recover from a nasty surprise.
An alternative to “Old School” bank vaults and security guards for data is encryption. Seagate’s Maxtor BlackArmor drives are better than a loaded gun in keep thieves out of your stuff. Without the password, NO ONE can get to your data. Period.
Who’s had data irretrievably lost or stolen? How did you recover?
I had the opportunity to tour Boston Scientific’s internal media center last week. It’s yet another example of digital content inserting itself in the mainstream business process.
Craig Davies and Tom Torborg showed me around their sound stage, editing workstations and storage systems that produce the surprising amount of video and audio content needed to market and sell medical products.
For example, instructional videos that are critical to users of their products. Video and audio pieces that are key teaching tools for doctors as well as their sales force. They’ve produced two programs that have been broadcast on television - one a documentary on heart failure that’s appearing nationally on cable TV. They’ve even been nominated for an Emmy!
The facility is state of the art, buried in the basement of their corporate facility. That makes it ultra quiet - great for filming without interference from rumbling trucks or thunderstorms.
Their setup:
2 video editing workstations using Avid technology
A 3.2 TB array for each workstation with 10K 300GB FC Cheetah drives in a RAID 0 configuration.
An additional 10K FC storage array for an encoding station (to convert video for distribution)
Extensive use of external drives for “nearline” storage - their archive of past projects. They have a 2 TB storage device at each video station and at their audio station.
Sony AIT tape for long-term backup.
Lessons learned for their business:
HD adds a lot of time and cost. Tom says that going to HD processing slows video processing (rendering, etc) down by about 10 years, and quadruples the storage needed per minute of video.
Legal requirements are an integral part of their production process. Due to the life-and-death nature of their products, the legal team has a say in what they produce, and stringent archiving requirements.
Audio content is a productive and practical way to communicate with their time-starved sales force.
What’s most interesting to me about Boston Scientific’s media center is that it exists. In-house, full-fledged, professional video production, a necessary part of Boston Scientific doing business. Look in the basement of a surprising number of even smaller companies and you’ll find the same thing.
Video production isn’t just for Hollywood anymore!
Security breaches of sensitive customer information don’t follow logic
Steve Duplessie is concerned for Hannaford, a Maine retailer suffering from bad press related to credit card data theft from their customers.
He points out that they followed Visa security guidelines perfectly, yet are getting as much or more grief than TJMaxx, who he thinks did “everything wrong.”
You’re right Steve, it’s not fair. And that’s the point! Information has gotten to be so valuable to people and businesses that it’s no longer good enough to reactively “follow the process” in keeping it safe. Businesses need to get in front of the curve or risk subjecting themselves to the unpredictable wrath of society.
Data security needs to rise to the top of IT priorities. Companies of all sizes need guidance and solutions that let them be proactive in protecting their customers.
There are 3 ways to integrate flash in your customers’ solutions today
Option 3: Build your own hybrid solutions
Today hybrid HDD-SSD flash drives are on the market for notebook applications. Future versions are in the works for other applications.
While the world waits, system builders can add the value themselves by combining flash and disk drives in their solutions. In particular, business applications can benefit from flash and disk tiers within a server or storage system. It’s not that difficult, now that SSDs that look just like disks to your OS are generally available. Mark Ferelli at InfoStor wrote on this a while ago.
Just a little flash goes a long way to juice your system’s performance, without adding exhorbitant costs. Not to mention adding some serious differentiation for the right customer.
Anybody out there doing this today? What’s your application?
There are 3 ways to integrate flash in your customers’ solutions today.
Option 1: just do it.
Buy off-the-shelf solid state drives (SSDs) and substitute for disk drives
Or, incorporate thumb drives in your solution or process to solve a problem (security codes or data, for example)
Identify high-end applications where SSDs will make a real difference in user experience or performance
Flash storage means a 5X to 10X cost multiplier per gigabyte for you. This is justifiable and even profitable if you can find applications that justify a commensurate price increase or savings in your development/support costs.
Not a lot of market for this today, but it will grow fast. This is a great chance to get up the learning curve early.
Let’s hear how you’re doing this today. What’s the best current application for flash?
The right product at the right time for Dell’s SMB customers
Dell has launched a storage solution for virtualized servers. The Equallogic iSCSI-based PS5000 includes up to 196 TB (16 TB per chassis) and the ease-of-use you expect from Equallogic. Choose SATA or SAS drives, depending on performance needs.
This product reflects the timeliness and fit of Dell’s aquisition of Equallogic. Virtualization is a hot topic for Dell’s SMB customer base, and easily managed storage to enable it is just what the doctor ordered.
Removable disk drives create unique value and profitable business
Jon Johnson of CRU-Dataport described some of the new, high-growth applications for removable storage. We’re not talking about thumb drives. He sees removable storage re-inventing surveillance, education, and professional services applications in less-than-obvious ways.
Sound familiar? Nortech and Cor Digital both called out these markets as fertile ground for their businesses.
Consider enhancing your solution with technology that makes things easier and more productive for your customer - and sets you apart from your competitors.
