Online Storage Optimization

I’ve noticed a few blog posts recently about speed of deduplication in the modern data center. I agree that speed is an important factor, but keep in mind that not all dedupe is created equal. That is to say, fast is good, but only if you are also effective. One of the tricky things has been that the easiest data to compress is also usually the most carefully performance tuned. A great example of this is a database. This is because databases are comprised of simple alphanumeric fields and sparse tables. All of that is easy to reduce in size.

However, a company’s core transactional database is the most conservative asset in the data center. Introducing compression would save space, for sure, but you could only use very fast, simple compressors there. At the same time, customers will be hesitant to deploy a new layer of processing in their most sensitive application.

So, where is most data growth? In fact, it’s being driven by unstructured data – Office documents, rich media, email with attachments, PDFs, Flash videos, and so forth. This complex data does not lend itself to fast simple compressors. But perhaps we should back up for a moment and think about how customers have been behaving all along.

Throughout the history of storage, there have always been tradeoffs available between fast expensive storage, and slower but cheaper alternatives. This is not a bad thing. It gives users alternatives based on their priorities and budgets. Back in the old mainframe days, these choices were between very expensive mainframe memory and “offline” storage like drums, cards, and tapes. Today the technology is all much bigger, faster, cheaper and sexier. But really, the tradeoffs are the same.

Data reduction technology adds another layer of choice above and beyond the traditional hardware choices. Now in addition to choosing whether you want fast, expensive solid state disk (SSD) or slower but very cost-effective SATA, you can also choose whether you want to compress and/or deduplicate the data that is stored on those disks.

Just like physical disks, compression and dedupe come in a range of speeds and capabilities. There are simple and very fast compressors that are essentially invisible in terms of their impact on storage performance. There are more complex compressors that get better results, but which may take longer, either to compress or to decompress the data. Deduplication, done well, should always be pretty fast, and streaming dedupe rates of well of 300MB/sec are now available from many vendors (including Data Domain and Ocarina).

The emergence of tools to automatically tier data to its appropriate place help make the use of all of these technologies more feasible. That applies as much to solid state disks as it does to dedupe and compression. When data tiering can be made invisible to end-users and applications, then implementing multiple physical and logical tiers of storage becomes practical.  Good examples would include EMC’s new FAST tools, Compellent’s “Fluid Data Storage”, and HDS’s Data Migrator. When users or administrators have to move data by hand to get it to a compressed tier or a solid state disk, then the operational costs offset the capital savings.

You might want to be wary when someone’s biggest claim to fame is fast dedupe. Just as the old mainframe admin had to decide whether something was important enough to live in RAM, or could be stored on cheaper tapes instead, today’s IT shops have to decide where it is most important to try to get data reduction, and what tool will get the most bang for the buck for that kind of data. You need the whole story, and then you can decide based on your own priorities.

So much talk about dedupe these days it’s hard to keep up. The industry is waking up to the reality that dedupe is one of the best ways to reduce data, thus saving on power, cooling, space and other crippling storage costs.

Some of the more thought provoking posts of late:

DCIG - How SSDs can be leveraged to Deliver Inline Deduplication for Primary Storage
Jerome Wendt responds to a comment from someone about Hifn’s Bitwackr inline dedupe. I don’t necessarily agree with Jerome’s take on this. In general, inline solutions are extremely limited, as the original commenter pointed out. But the post provides interesting food for thought.

Storagebod - Where is OnTap 8 with a bit of a rant!
Martin Glassborow isn’t talking specifically about NetApp dedupe here, but the delay on shipping OnTap8 is of interest to anyone who is concerned about data reduction products. As he puts it, the elephant in the room is that A-SIS dedupe as it now stands has limited scalability.

Recovery Monkey - More FUD busting: Deduplication - is variable-block better than fixed-block, and should you care?
This post, by Dmitris Krekoukias, argues that major distinction some vendors make about variable and fixed block deduplication is a way of distracting customers from the real issues. The post served to defend NetApp against its detractors and competitors who say fixed block dedupe is limiting. The comments field is in some ways the most interesting part, with EMC heavy Chuck Hollis raising questions about his connections with NetApp. Also, our own Mike Davis weighed in, and the numbers he cited were so notable that further commenters questioned how this could be lossless compression. At this point, we’re used to it–the industry at large has become accustomed to less than spectacular results. More on all of this in a later post.

And here’s another interesting trend. The word “dedupe” is starting to creep into the lingo in a more general way. Among storage tweeps there is a greater tendency to throw “dedupe” into their conversations about everything from their record collections to what they eat. It reminds me a little bit of the “hepcat” slang I used to hear when hanging around jazz musicians. If something was ordinary, they’d call it “B Flat,” since that’s the most common key in jazz. For example, “Oh, I just had a B Flat lunch today of a burger and fries.”

The often Twit-witty Greg Schulz recently tweeted: “ I can have dvr record on disk NBC tape delay (thats probably on disk) then dedupe da commercials.” Good plan, Greg.

This post by Steve Gillmor at TechCrunch also uses the term–in a way that I’ve never heard anyway. In this case, he’s referring to the fact that there is duplication of content across what are now becoming overlapping social networks–FriendFeed, Twitter, and the new Google Buzz.

OK that’s all for now. Keep on deduping friends!

Bleary-eyed, the storage industry has begun to wake up from its holiday stupor. VMware has decided to go into the email business. EMC continues to vacuum up talent like a Roomba on a tear through the world’s biggest living room. Meanwhile, the jokers over at Gestalt IT are picking up the “Fake Steve Jobs” meme and running with it. Their version is actually funnier than the original — at least to this blogger, perhaps because I know the players and situations.

The increasingly crowded and competitive Storage Monkeys Top Vendor Blogs contest is about to screech to its exciting conclusion. Voting ends Friday. Front runners are EMC bloggers Chuck Hollis and Storagezilla. Third place at the moment is the HP Storageworks blog, helmed by fearless blogger Calvin Zito. This puts early front runner Marc Farley, founder of the vaunted Steering Wheel Camera Society of America in fourth place. Step on it, Marc! In fifth right now is the Storage Anarchist, Barry Burke, who is just barely edging out NetApp’s Val Bercovici. Well, it ain’t over till it’s over–these things can change fast.

So before the week is out–why not VOTE?

Speaking of which, blogger extraordinaire Stephen Foskett has started a series that delves into the whole vendor blogging question. He has two posts up on the topic, “Vendor Bloggers 1: Why Does It Matter?” and “The Spectrum of Vendor Blogs.” Mr. F cites none other than Online Storage Op as an example of a hybrid “independent-seeming official” blog, but credits us for being transparent about the fact that our parent is a company. No doubt Stephen and I will hash this out further when we give a talk on social media to a group of storage industry pros at The BD Event in Palo Alto next Wednesday.

But wait… there’s yet more news, and this is actual news:

Nexsan and FalconStor are teaming up to try to defeat rival Data Domain. It can get really interesting when two vendors come up with a combination product that serves a larger purpose than they would’ve had if they acted alone. Two pieces on the topic caught my eye this week:

Beth Pariseau, SearchDataBackup - Nexsan and FalconStor gun for EMC Data Domain with Dedupe SG 2 data deduplication backup device

Writes Beth: “Analysts say a series of updates to Dedupe SG — comprised of FalconStor’s dedupe software and Nexsan enterprise data storage systems — put it into closer competition with the 800-pound gorilla Data Domain.”

She quotes ESG’s Lauren Whitehouse, who says that the high-availability config on this combo is a poke in Data Domain’s eye. And Dave Vellante of Wikibon calls the bundle the “best of both worlds” due to the fact that it’s compatible with existing home office systems and reduces data over the WAN–though he questions how it will do in real world deployments.

Joseph Kovar, ChannelWeb - Nexsan, FalconStor Join Forces On Newest Backup Appliance

Joe, for his part talked to Greg Knieriemen at Chi Corp., which partners with both Nexsan and FalconStor who is impressed with among other things the potential inherent in its 10-GB-ethernet option. Hmm, where have I heard that name Greg Knieriemen before?

Well, that’s all for now folks. Maybe next time I talk to you I’ll be checking my zMail.

If you haven’t yet tuned into the weekly podcast known as Infosmack on community site Storage Monkeys, you’re missing out. Every Monday, hosts Greg Knieriemen and Marc Farley bring on guests to dish about the latest storage industry news–and they do so in a very entertaining and informative way. This week’s show was particularly enjoyable, as they moved on from the usual format and turned the mirror around, so to speak–discussing social media such as blogging and Twitter, and how well big companies like EMC, HDS, IBM and HP are doing on that front.

The guests this week were Louis Gray and Mark Twomey–two guys who have made a serious mark on the social media landscape. Louis, who blogs daily at LouisGray.com is a recognized social media expert whose reputation extends far beyond the storage and networking industries. He is the co-founder of social media consulting firm Paladin Advisors and was at BlueArc for many years. He now advises such diverse clients as Emulex, My6Sense, Brazen Careerist, and Simler on social media strategy. I interviewed Louis on video recently–check out Part 1 and Part 2 to get his views on the latest social media debates.

Mark, who goes by the moniker Storagezilla, is a trailblazer at EMC with his controversial blog and Twitter persona. His blog, he explains on this week’s podcast, was originally written anonymously. He was then “outed” by someone at HDS. Meanwhile, within EMC there were forces that tried to suppress him. But nothing seems to stop this saurian storage monster from terrorizing anyone who shows the slightest sign of hypocrisy, ignorance or self-inflation. (Yes, even this blogger has been a target, but no worries, we’ll get ours back…)

Nowadays, EMC has embraced the new social landscape with a vengeance — in fact, the panelists agreed it’s doing social media better than almost any other big storage company. The secret: go ahead and let your employees blog and tweet to their heart’s content. Though they can be a liability, they’re also the best evangelists for your products and services. Storagezilla has had had his wrist slapped more than once for his NDA-breaking, irreverent blog posts. But he’s also a popular and well-known figure who brings the word of EMC to the masses. Other EMC bloggers like “The Storage Anarchist” Barry Burke are also controversial. And that, in many ways is a good thing. This is no blank, corporate face, but rather one that’s full of lively (sometimes, some might say too lively) discussion and debate.

As it happens, my own podcast TechnoGirlTalk takes up a similar topic on this week’s show. My guests and I discuss the fact that storage titan EMC may well have set the tone for the entire industry–one that is marked by aggressive, intense competitiveness. The Twitter smackdowns that are common among storage folks are easily found as they are rare in other communities. As ESG analyst and EMC alum Terri McClure explained, this is really the history of the storage industry. EMC started out as a tiny David taking on the Goliath known as IBM–a gamble that required it be tough as nails and not pull any punches. Another of the guests, Christina LeBlanc, elaborated on this. She’s on the front lines as an account executive at EMC, and gets “beaten up” out there every day.

When she first attended the EMC tour, she and the other new hires were told that EMC’s original gambit was to hire football players as salesmen. They figured that these guys would be too tough to back down, and wouldn’t know enough to realize how impossible it is to beat IBM. Christina explained that nowadays, sales folks have to know their stuff or they’ll be laughed out of the office. And while it’s still a tough, competitive job, she puts a greater emphasis on being sensitive to the customer’s needs and seeking to serve them.

Even though EMC has come a long way from its bull-headed beginnings, that reputation still hangs over the company like a miasma. As blogger Stephen Foskett writes in a post on Gestalt IT (and his own blog) this week,  “I’ve known literally dozens of IT shops who refused to buy from EMC, even though the sleazy sales tactics that turned them off (and indeed the sales reps themselves) are reportedly long gone from the company.” But, he argues, today’s competitive landscape is so tough that EMC now just seems like one of the crowd. “With the market getting tougher, the tough guy doesn’t look so bad anymore,” he writes.

As Storagezilla and the others on the podcast noted, there’s been something of a detente among storage bloggers of late. The winds of peace might be blowing through the industry. Or, maybe everyone’s just tired from the holidays and will be back out in no time with guns blazing.

And speaking of healthy competition, if you like this blog, why not vote for it on Storage Monkeys this week? They’re once again running their contest for the Top 10 Storage Vendor Blogs and Online Storage Op is one of the finalists. You must be a member of Storage Monkeys to vote–so now’s your chance to sign up and join the conversation there if you haven’t already.

An earthquake shook up San Jose (not mention Twitter) today. But that didn’t stop the storage industry’s movers and shakers from making all kinds of interesting news. Here’s a quick roundup from where we sit.

A game of musical chairs…

EMC lost storage tech consultant and blogger Steve Kenniston to inline dedupe player Storwize, where he will be Vice President of Technology Strategy. Steve continues to blog avidly and well at The Storage Alchemist. We may find ourselves crossing swords with him occasionally over here at Online Storage Op, but we always read his posts with interest.

And EMC has been no slouch in scooping up major talent:

Gestalt IT contributor Ed Saipetch (known to many of us edsai) started this week at EMC as Senior VCE Specialist. Prior to that, he was a systems engineer at Network Storage.

And Scott Lowe set tongues wagging when he announced last week on his blog that he’ll also be joining EMC, as a VMware-Cisco Solutions Principal. This seems a very shrewd move on their part, as Scott is well-known for his Cisco expertise and virtualization knowhow–both of which no doubt will be extremely handy as UCS takes off.

Nice going, EMC.

And in other news…acquisition fever!

Disk drive array subsystem provider Dot Hill has bagged Israeli storage virtualization company Cloverleaf for $12M in cash and stock, the Register reports. Clearly, they’re locking onto the virtualization and cloud storage trends with a vengeance. This may also give them a new edge in their battles with competitors like LSI and Xyratex.

Plenty of takeover rumors swirling around 3Par, although for now no one’s confirming anything. Whatever happens, it seems that everyone’s impressed by 3Par, the little thin provisioning engine that could. Over here at this blog, we’re consistently impressed and amused by their creative blogger Marc Farley. Financial pub Barron’s, in addition to initiating the speculation, called 3Par a “small but scrappy” possible takeover target. But who will be the suitor? Feel free to add in any and all rumors and speculation in our comments field below.

And don’t let us forget EMC, which in addition to snagging talent has picked up Archer Technologies, an IT governance software company that will be rolled into its overall security offerings for its RSA division. As Beth Pariseau reports on Storage Soup, the acqui could affect some others in the industry.

Writes Beth, “Archer brings with it a business continuity software module, which could affect those who manage disaster recovery in the storage environment. It also extends EMC’s move to inject automation into its software offerings, which we’ve seen in the storage market with last month’s first release of FAST, and is a part of EMC’s vision for archiving and e-Discovery.”

Well, that’s all for now. No doubt we’ll be seeing all manner of intrigue, rumor, speculation and other fascinating stuff now that 2010 is upon us.

This past year, we at Online Storage Op gathered all manner of images to illustrate our posts. So as a way of looking back at 2009, here are some of the ones we liked the best–and the stories that went with them:

Holodeck fun:

In February, Robin Harris at StorageMojo wrote about a potential breakthrough in storage technology that could change the landscape forever: quantum holographic storage. Online Storage Op was on the scene. It also gave us a chance to upload a pic of a Geordi La Forge doll. Admit it… this is one cool toy.

Squeezing into your Genes:

This blog’s parent Ocarina had quite a year–inking partnerships with a number of major storage vendors and becoming a noted player in the hot dedupe space. It was also the year that genomics labs woke up to the need for better data reduction to deal with the coming onslaught of genetic data. In short, compression can be a matter of life and death. We reported on it here, and our readers got to relive their 10th grade biology class by looking at images like the one above.

Racing for Dedupe

As many pundits are now opining, dedupe really was one of the biggest stories of 2009, not least because of the high profile battle for Data Domain between storage titans EMC and NetApp. In the end, EMC nabbed the dedupe specialist for an eye-popping $2.1 billion.

Booth Babe Mania:

We know our readers are sophisticated types who come here only to absorb information and opinion, and to better themselves for the benefit of all humankind. But for some odd reason we saw a major traffic spike the day we ran our post on the great Booth Babe Controversy. When we asked, everyone quickly told us, “I read the articles.” Mmmhmm!

VMworld a hit

And speaking of images that make storage folks drool, one of the most mesmerizing sights of the year was at VMworld, held in August in San Francisco. Participants descended the escalator to be greeted by gleaming rack of servers and storage–which we later learned was the result of a plan drawn on a napkin by the VMware GETO team. In any case, this year’s VMworld was a major event–and as we rightly noted, it foretold more economic activity in storage and virtualization.

Industry puts aside differences to try to save a life

This is one of the saddest stories of 2009, and one that demonstrates an activist and caring streak in the storage community. When word got out in May 2009 that EMC employee Nick Glasgow was in need of a bone marrow transplant, folks within the storage industry put aside competitive differences and pulled together to find him a match. Sadly, Nick passed away in October. The degree to which he inspired others will not be forgotten.

And, finally…

We never did have an egg and spoon race, but…
In November, Ocarina participated in the first ever Gestalt IT Tech Field Day, which brought independent bloggers from around the world to Silicon Valley for two days of tech deep dives. Our “bring out your data” challenge started tongues wagging well before the event began. Participants brought us their toughest data sets, and aside from those who used archaic encryption software to stump our algorithms, the results were impressive–an average of about 30% reduction on these tougher-than-tough data sets. Plus, the whole event was just a ton of fun. And it didn’t even require that we slog around the mud clapping coconut shells together.

It’s been a tough year — a worldwide recession, a sluggish housing market, rising unemployment … and on top of all that, the tarnished image of one of sports’ most squeaky clean players. Well, actually, there have been some bright spots. As DCIG blogger and storage analyst Jerome Wendt notes while looking back at the past year, “Deduplication is the Big Success Story of 2009.”

Wendt writes: “Deduplication is arguably one of the most notable trends of 2009 as it has been widely adopted by users after bursting onto the scene just a few years ago and has grown to be included in both software and hardware products.”

Wendt focuses on dedupe for backups, where there has been much publicized activity over the past year. The big storage story of 2009 was of course the battle between storage titans EMC and NetApp over backup dedupe specialist Data Domain. He cites an industry survey from SearchDataBackup that indicates that 41% of enterprises either are or are seriously considering dedupe to control data growth and costs. He also notes that the despite the predicted demise of Quantum, that dedupe company remains strong.

Dedupe for backups is one part of the cost reduction puzzle. Another part is to reduce data at the source, in primary storage. This is of course the specialty of this blog’s parent Ocarina, which implements a unique combination of content-aware dedupe and compression to achieve startling results. It focuses on the very types of unstructured data that are driving storage growth today–emails, images, documents, and so on. The company has been partnering with almost every leading storage provider, including HP, EMC, HDS, BlueArc, and Isilon. Another  leader in this space is NetApp, which has a strong dedupe for primary offering that has also garnered a great deal of attention.

Here’s the thing, the economy might be slowing down, but data growth continues apace. This is one reason that the storage industry has been thriving this year. But rather than standing still, what is spells is a concerted effort to keep that data under control. As Wendt notes, another of the year’s big trends is cloud storage, which offers companies more flexibility for storing some percentage of their data. I would also add that virtualization has taken a huge leap forward, not only in terms of the technology itself, but also in terms of adoption over the past year. Yet another way to attack the problem.

So if 2009 was all about dedupe for backups, I’m going to guess that 2010 will be very much about data reduction at all points on the data life cycle. What do you predict?

Image: Gizmodo

In today’s UK Register, Chris Mellor talked with Brian Biles of Data Domain about its plans for global dedupe. In it, Brian says that Ocarina is not “synergistic” with Data Domain. Writes Chris: “Data Domain set out to solve a data protection problem whereas Ocarina set out to solve a media management problem.” He then quotes Brian, “‘I think it [Ocarina] is in a different market that’s not that synergistic. It’s a different choice from how to optimise data protection.’”

Chris’s final comment? Even if Ocarina offered an OEM deal, Data Domain wouldn’t be “enthusiastic.” Well, that remains to be seen, and actually, it isn’t the important question. Ocarina agrees that, for now, the right place for its functionality is not in the backup tier where Data Domain lives. There is no reason to believe that Data Domain’s acquisition by EMC in any way diminishes the strength of the technology partnership that already exists between Ocarina and EMC.

Ocarina is the Rolls Royce solution for online data reduction, and in that sense, we compete with NetApp Dedupe, not Data Domain. The reality is that right now, as a member of the EMC Celerra Velocity program, Ocarina has been a point of synergy for them, and we don’t see that ending any time soon. The synergy is that if you do online dedupe right on your NAS platform, including EMC’s Celerra, then it plays right in to the strengths of Data Domain when it comes time to back up.

In the Data Domain product, you have a product that’s optimized for the backup world – fast sequential throughput in support of backup windows driven by standard backup applications. In the NetApp case, you have an OK implementation of simple block dedupe, designed to give some data reduction results without sacrificing too much performance in support of random I/O by end users.

There is no right or wrong answer here – both products take the correct approach for the problem that they solve. What’s misleading is the positioning of Ocarina as a solution for media accounts. While Ocarina does have many successful installs in rich media accounts, our core dedupe engine is intended to give multiple storage vendors the same kind of fast, embedded dedupe solution that NetApp has for all online file types. Just to clear any misconceptions, Ocarina has a diverse - and fast growing - customer base, with existing customers in publishing, semiconductor, bio-informatics, energy, film-making, eDiscovery, and Web 2.0.

Because Ocarina’s solution combines dedupe with content-aware compression, Ocarina can address a much broader set of data types and customers than any dedupe-only product, including NetApp. With Ocarina, you can use policies to configure Ocarina for simple dedupe only, giving Ocarina storage partners like BlueArc, EMC, HDS, HP and Isilon equivalent data reduction and primary storage performance as NetApp dedupe.

Alternatively, you can set the policies to be more aggressive, to use all the content-aware compressors, and get much much better data reduction than NetApp while still supporting reasonably fast random I/O for end-users. Since dedupe in general does not get good results on already-compressed files – especially images, video,  Zip and other compressed data – having content-aware compressors allows Ocarina to address all those files in addition to providing great dedupe performance for corporate and enterprise file types. Finally, Ocarina works across multiple types of storage, so a customer can have a single dedupe “language” across all their NAS and primary storage vendors.

Ocarina is, therefore a better technology than NetApp dedupe that also has the advantage of being vendor agnostic. At the same time, it’s complementary to Data Domain. That synergy comes from a fundamental difference in how a customer backs up data that has been deduplicated by Ocarina versus data that has been deduplicated by NetApp. With NetApp, when you go to backup a deduped volume, NetApp will rehydate that volume, expanding the data back to its original full size. With Ocarina, we have a dedupe-aware implementation of NDMP – the backup protocol standard – that allows us to keep data in its deduplicated and compressed state as it is backed up, while still allowing single file restores.

This actually raises an interesting question: Do you still need Data Domain in that case? After all, you’re backing up already deduped data?

Well, yes, actually. Backups are repetitive. So even if you perfectly dedupe the live online volume, if you back it up every day, that process is going to create more dupes in the backup target. Data Domain will find those and eliminate them. The data reduction is additive. The combination of Ocarina for live volumes and Data Domain as a backup target has a big advantage for backups, because it shrinks the backup window. Because the first pass of dedupe has already been done on the filer, there is less data that has to move from storage to backup. If you have 100TB on a set of NAS filers, and Ocarina shrinks that to 40TB, then you’ve reduced the amount of data that needs to be sent across a network to the Data Domain by 60%, making your backup window smaller and faster. Data Domain, in turn, will shrink that data further with every subsequent backup.

Great news–Ocarina has announced that its solution for EMC Celerra is available immediately, offering its advanced, content-aware dedupe and compression to EMC NAS customers. While Ocarina already had a solution for EMC Celerra, this announcement means that has been admitted to the EMC Velocity Technology and ISV Program. A major step forward.

EMC has other dedupe options available for Celerra, but Ocarina gives them a distinct competitive edge against NetApp and NetApp dedupe. This EMC-specific release is also one of the more elegant implementations of Ocarina.  We use EMC’s mature FileMover interface to be able to insert Ocarina completely transparently on the Celerra. Users access their files on the Celerra through all supported protocols – including both CIFS and NFS. Like our BlueArc and HDS releases, we are called from within the file system, rather than intercepting calls on their way in to it.

Ocarina optimizes files out of band, and is only called on reads and writes when an optimized file is accessed. This means we are not in the path at all for accesses to hot files. EMC has a rigorous set of tests you have to pass to work with FileMover, and getting through those tests was a good validation exercise for Ocarina. I think EMC customers can feel very comfortable about how solid this solution is.

One technical feature worth noting is that using Ocarina to optimize a Celerra volume means that it is possible to greatly increase the logical size of that volume. Like NetApp, the current release of EMC Celerra has a 16TB volume size limit. FileMover – as the name implies – lets you move the contents of a file somewhere other than the original volume. The FileMover stub that is left behind makes it appear to applications and users that the file is still in the original volume. The way Ocarina works, we read the file from the original volume, optimize it, and store it in another volume on the same Celerra.  We’re not really moving it off the filer at all, but we are using FileMover to allow you to spread files out across multiple volumes on your Celerra.

A FileMover stub is left behind in the original volume. The stub does not take much physical space. So if you had a 16TB volume called volume A, and Ocarina started optimizing files and storing them in volumes B, C, and D, you could keep creating new files in volume A using the free space we just created. As you create those new files in volume A, we could keep optimizing and moving them. We can also simply move them, without optimizing them. This is completely policy-based.

The net effect, over time, is that a user could mount a single share, Volume A, and have direct access to much much more storage than 16TB. Let’s say we get 75% optimization on average across a set of files. That means you could store 64TB in one volume. With FileMover and the example above where we are using 3 volumes as targets, you could store 192TB in Volume A (though the file contents would actually be distributed across Volumes B, C, and D). This works extremely well for all typical NAS file data. The Celerra also supports unified storage, where Celerra volumes are used for iSCSI and for databases. And while Ocarina is not targeting our solution for those use cases yet, please do stay tuned.

And here’s a quick note that may interest those of you who are already Ocarina EMC shops–or who have a customer or client that is. If your company or client has benefited from the groundbreaking Ocarina solution, we are initiating a special program that may be of great interest to you. For more information about this new opportunity for a data reduction package at an exceptional price, contact: info@ocarinanetworks.com.

Friday’s CNBC segment is worth a watch if you’re wondering where the greatest growth will be over the next decade in the technology sector.

“Everything that we are using now–videos on YouTube. Everything we’re doing on our phone. On and on. It’s all about storage and putting stuff on the net,” opines Roger Nusbaum of Your Source Financial, who adds, “Cloud computing comes into play here.”