Nigel’s analysis is excellent and will give viewers real insight to this capability.  Some highlights from Nigel’s blog and video:

“On the topic of HDP being chubby. While I accept that the HDP extent (page) size of 42MB is by far the largest of all the major vendors, I do not think this is necessarily all bad. For a start it maps perfectly with the internal workings of the USP V and VM. Secondly I think there is more metadata overhead the smaller your extent size – internal tables need to be larger and then there’s metadata for replication, snapshots and the likes. The smaller your extent size, the more metatada required.”

“I’m pretty sure that Hitachi is the only vendor to offer it as GA (Zero Page Reclaim). I’ve seen it and know that it works.  ZPR is a really great feature that allows you to reclaim unused capacity that can be used to offset future capacity purchases. Pretty good during times like these where purse strings are tightly controlled.”

“In the video I don’t even mention things like dynamic volume expansion or automatic dynamic relevelling etc. But put all of these together and Hitachi has a well stocked Dynamic Provisioning portfolio that stands up against any other vendors.”

“Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning is not ‘chubby’ because you can take the fat and let someone else live off of it.  I suggest if your vendor’s implementation of thin provisioning doesn’t offer Zero Page Reclaim then it’s the ‘chubby’ one.”

“Right now HItachi has got the best, in my opinion - and anyone can challenge it - they’ve got the best Dynamic Provisioning or thin provisioning solution on the market.”

1.  They haven’t figured out a good way to determine what should be moved and what should remain on tier one.  

2. They need something that is going to move data transparently, non-distruptively and online.  And they would prefer it was one solution and not two or three or four different ones. 

3. They aren’t sure what storage system they should move it to.  

4. They still want the data to be online and want assurance that there won’t be a performance impact when an application access it.  

 There are a number of ways to address all four of the above issues:

1.  The best way to approach this is by focusing on the biggest problem areas first. Identify what application or data type that is consuming the most capacity but is used infrequently.  We have all been told that unstructured data is growing the fastest in terms of the number of files and their corresponding size.  Further, we’ve been told that most of these files are never accessed 90 days after their creation.  If these conditions are close to what you have - then it is a good place to focus on.

2. If you focus on unstructured content than there are a number of options for moving files.  You can isolate what tools you use for file content versus database or email applications.  

3. There are a number of lower tiered storage systems.  In addition to Capex, you should also evaluate how easy the system is to manage.  HDS has HCAP - an object-based storage system that is a great active archive storage system.  HCAP can scale to a PB and is very easy to manage. Additionally, it has dedupe which creates even greater levels of economic value.  

4. It is important that your archive tier is online and “active”.  But you should also have policies that not only demote content but also promote it if the level of usage increases.  

There is a domino effect of efficiency that will significantly reduce Capex, create more efficiencies in your Tier One storage systems, reduce power and cooling and floor space - which also will help you with your Green initiatives.  With the economy being what it is - intelligent tiering should be a top priority initiative in the data center for 2009 and 2010.  

A few observations I wanted to share with you that came out of this forum:

1. Power and cooling was a major issue.  One guy pointed out that power, cooling and floor space cost them three times what they spend on capital.  That was an eye opener and others in the room agreed they had the same problem.

2. There were probably 15 companies in the room and over half of them had Green IT initiatives.  This is a major shift from even just a year ago when IT was focused on power, cooling and floor space but not directly because of the environment.  Interestingly, Green IT can also result in saving green dollars (this play on words doesn’t work internationally ;).

3. None of the people in that room were considering using Hyper-V but were all focused on VMware.

4. None of them implemented or are considering iSCSI however they were all interested in what is going to happen with FCoE and are open to adopting it.  They all agreed that the internal political issues as to who owns the FCoE network will slow down the progress but no one had insight on what that impact will be yet.

5. There was real interested in SSD or EFD and yet there wasn’t a great deal of implementation yet.  Again, it is an issue of price/performance and the majority felt that there is a place for these drives but it isn’t clear that it will soon replace spinning hard disk drives.  However, this was an important topic to them all.  I pointed out that disk drives do three things - read, write and break - and that ultimately completely removing a mechanical device in the data center was a good thing.  We just aren’t there yet.

6. No one was using cloud services.  There was an interest obviously but at this stage there was nothing in the budget.  You have to remember that the industry is always thinking about the “new” thing while the folks that actually implement this stuff for their businesses are more conservative about adopting new technologies and services.  There is an eye on cloud but no commitment from this crowd.  They all agreed that cloud services have existed for some time and that it will continue to manifest in obvious and non-obvious ways.

1. Hitachi Enterprise-class storage system customers that utilize Hitachi High Availability Manager never have to do another data migration again.  Think of the impact of that from a cost and operational perspective.  It reduces planning, implementation, application downtime and risk associated with traditional migrations.

2. This solution enables customers - if they plan correctly - never having to pay extended maintenance fees.  This is one of the biggest money wasters in the data center that impacts productivity and budgets.   In this economy eliminating extended maintenance fees is critical to optimizing the data center.

3. What other Enterprise-class storage system offers a solution that ensures your applications never have to be brought offline?  This is extremely compelling, unique and valuable to customers.  Hitachi High Availability Manager redefines high availability in the data center and no other storage system can offer this capability.

A true network should enable communication and sharing across all of its devices - peers communicating to one another in order to get the most value out of your IT infrastructure.  True storage networking can be achieved using external storage virtualization. External storage virtualization enables data mobility across the entire storage complex.  External storage virtualization provides the extension of intelligence from the highest order storage system to any storage system on the network.  External storage virtualization connects all of your storage systems that are otherwise isolated.  

Most of the discussions around external storage virtualization concern the nuts and bolts of this as a technology and very little attention has been paid to the vision.  It is the vision that drives the momentum.  It is the vision that raises the consciousness to a wider audience.  It is the vision that creates inspiration.  

External storage virtualization enables true storage networking.  

I recommend that IT professionals begin to look at storage networking differently - to consider what it means today and for the long term - the value of having a true storage network.  We are still in the early stages of this but the path towards true storage networking is inevitable within the Enterprise.  I believe the economy will drive further adoption of external storage virtualization and thus true storage networking.  It is important to ask two questions: What are the practical uses of external storage virtualization that address the immediate needs of the Enterprise - and - how should it be shaped in order to improve true storage networking going forward?

Tony Asaro: Brian - please give us a quick overview of the Switch IT On program.

Brian Householder: We’ve created a program, it’s called Switch IT On and it’s really focused on helping customers save money. The program itself allows customers to virtualize and manage their heterogeneous storage environment for free. We’re getting great and tremendous success with our customers in terms of being able to do more with less, help them reduce their Capex and their Opex savings. And the big thing that we’re finding is even though everyone’s been talking about utilization rates being so low for the last 10 years, they still are pretty low and so what we’ve found is actually partnering with our customers that typically have maybe 20 to 40 percent utilization rates, we can actually enable them to maybe double that and so we’ve gotten a lot of good traction with our customers to go do that and we’re actually creating a program now to make that easier for our customers to manage their heterogeneous  storage environment.

Tony Asaro: This is a new kind of program for Hitachi Data Systems - is this part of a new marketing DNA?

Brian Householder: We’re definitely trying to change things up. I think, you know, what I’ve found for Hitachi over time is basically we’re one of the better kept secrets in the storage industry. We are taking market share in almost every category that we compete in. We’ve got thousands and thousands of customers that love what we do and we’re just basically trying to get the word out so marketing that’s not that hard. It’s just a matter of going out there and letting people know the success we’re having. And the big thing here is basically the downturn in the economy, we actually think is to our advantage because, really, people are looking at alternatives to save money and heterogeneous storage virtualization is getting great, great traction. 

Tony Asaro: Brian - you have been with Hitachi now for several years - please give us an overview of the business today and going forward.

Brian Householder:   Our business model has significantly shifted here over the last few years and  most people don’t realize that over 40% of our revenue today comes from software and services. I’ve been here 5 or 6 years and that’s significantly increased. We’re talking about the low teens when I first started with Hitachi.  We’re a significantly more balanced systems and software company than we were before. And if you look at it, we’re offering some great solutions around being a pure play storage infrastructure provider. We help people do things around block storage, around file storage and around content storage. That’s pretty much what we do. We’re focused on these areas. We actually think being focused is a big advantage for us.

Tony Asaro: The channel has been a big success story for Hitachi and yet the world might not be aware of this.  Please give us a view of what Hitachi has accomplished in the channel specifically.

Brian Householder: Our channel business has been growing tremendously over the last few years. It’s been a big growth driver for us overall and this is just the VAR channels, the resellers, the integrators. This is not just specific geographies. We’re actually seeing it across the board. And I think people really embrace what we do. I think we have a very differentiated, unique set of products and solutions and people are looking to go out and offer significant value to their customers. And, I think, when you have solutions that prove how they save customers money, a lot of the channel partners want to be involved in that and obviously add their value added services on top of that.

Tony Asaro: What’s the big plan for Hitachi - at a high level? 

Brian Householder: We’re going to continue with our strategy around being a pure play storage infrastructure provider. We’re going to be focused on getting the maximum out of your heterogeneous storage environment. We’re also going to be focused on helping you get control over your unstructured data environment. The big thing for us is, we have a very integrated strategy and that’s the plan that we’ve been executed on and we will continue to execute on. We’re looking at how do you actually get control over your overall storage environment.

The following is the transcription from our discussion:

Tony Asaro:  Chris - Hitachi is has a new program they call - Switch it On, providing the UVM license for the USP V for free until December 31st of this year.  Can you give us some insights based on your real world experiences as a storage consultant - what the impact of this to customers and to the market place?

Chris Evans: I think it’s pretty clear that UVM is a great tool however, not surprisingly, HDS do charge for its usage. This means customers have to do a cost benefit analysis on how they should use that technology. There’s always been a tradeoff between the cost and the benefit. Some of those costs are intangible and aren’t easy to justify against the hard costs of a software license. The UVM license becoming free removes those barriers and now customers have got a real opportunity to make full use of those benefits.

Tony Asaro: Can you expand on any use cases that this program can enable?  

Chris Evans: I’ve got a great example. I recently worked with a customer who was doing 2 sets of migrations, One which involved a USP and one which didn’t and used some other technology. The work that involved the USP did migrations using UVM and we were able to achieve that at very short space of time over a small number of weekends compared to the non USP migrations. In addition, by using UVM, we actually managed to do migrations a lot quicker because there was no volume manager or any other way of migrating data at the host level so UVM was a perfect solution for that and clearly when you look at the costs and the time and effort of getting people involved in doing migrations, it was a big saving for the customer.

Tony Asaro:  Chris, external storage virtualization has it proponents and opponents.   Arguably, the Hitachi USP V is unique because it is the only Enterprise-class storage system that supports internal storage and external storage virtualization.  Give us your view of the value you believe the USP V and its approach to external storage virtualization provides.  

Chris Evans: I think the key word there is flexibility. External storage virtualization provides the ability to achieve things that couldn’t be done with a traditional array. Everybody seems to focus on the idea of migrating into the USP, but obviously it’s more than that. UVM lets customers improve the mobility of the data, for instance, so USP could in data center consolidation for isolated arrays where those arrays couldn’t be replicated any other way. If a USP was available, that could be used as the migration tool to get that data into a central data center. There are lots of possibilities customers could use and taking that technology which is now free, gives all sorts of opportunities to open up new techniques using this technology.

 Tony Asaro: Certainly the economy is driving IT decisions - leveraging what is already on the data center floor is becoming a priority.  Do you believe that this harsh economy will not only change behavior for the short term but there will be a long term impact for IT and the data center?

Chris Evans: Yes. I think it’s all about service and less necessarily about the technology. People are looking to reduce cost and improve the quality of the service they’re offering their customers. Obviously optimizing the use of that technology and making better uses of resources will become increasingly important and I think UVM is one of those technologies that can help achieve that.

Tony Asaro: As a follow up to that question - do you believe that solutions that enable optimization and greater utilization will be more of a priority going forward for the short and long term in the data center?

Chris Evans: Absolutely. I think you can see that other parts of technology that are in the data center are being moved towards commoditized offering so we see that in the server environment already. Storage isn’t going to be any different to that and will be looking to maximize the value added to those resources. So clearly anything customers can do to increase the value and the amount of usage they’re getting out of that technology is going to be pushed to the front.

Tony Asaro: Chris, so, in summary, please give us your view of the free UVM license and the implications.

Chris Evans: By offering a free license, HDS has provided businesses the opportunity to leverage their technology during this downturn. I don’t think there’s any excuse anymore not to use UVM or at least look at it and see where it could be used in your environment to reduce costs and to improve the flexibility of your service.

Tony Asaro: Chris, great discussion. I appreciate it - always good talking to you.

Some important things to point out:

1.  A major priority in the data center is great optimization and utilization of current IT assets.

2. The Hitachi USP V with UVM - through external storage virtualization replication, tiered storage, data migrations, wide stripping and thin provisioning all drive greater optimization and utilization of existing storage infrastructure in a unique and valuable way.  There are examples of Hitachi saving their customers hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars via the above solutions.

3. The Switch IT On program offers UVM license for free using third-party storage regardless of how much external storage you virtualize; tiered storage manager license for third party storage for transparent migrations between internal and external storage tiers; and Dynamic Provisioning for wide stripping and thin provisioning for up to 10 TB of capacity.

4.  By providing these capabilities for free - IT professionals have a “no-brainer” proposition in front of them.  You can throw out your ROI calculators because the math is very simple.

5. Switch IT On benefits the following:

• Customers that have USP Vs but are not using UVM, Tiered Storage Manager or HDP - these folks should absolutely “switch it on”.
• Customers that have the USP V and are using all of these capabilities - these guys should switch it on some more and expand their usage.
• Customers that evaluated the USP V and really liked the capabilities but couldn’t make the math work for them because of the license fees.
• Customers that are evaluating the USP V at this moment versus their competitors - the evaluation process has become that much more interesting.
• Those of you that have contemplated external storage virtualization but for some reason have put it lower on the priority list - now is the time to reconsider and raise the level of priority.
• System integrators and consultants that recognize the power of this program and how to better enable their customers to experience greater optimization and utilization of storage - one of the most valuable and expensive assets on the data center floor.

Make no mistake - this is a very smart move for Hitachi.  The USP V is the only Enterprise-class storage system that can offer these capabilities and the resulting value.  Launching the Switch IT On program in a time when customers need it most will drive greater adoption.  That is the best kind of marketing - creative and at the same time - substantive.

1.  V-Max has some new capabilities  - but what about all of the investment that customers have made in the DMX?  Do DMX customers get any of these features or do they have to buy the V-Max to get them? 

2. If they have to buy the V-Max to get the new features -  does EMC have a service for doing the data migrations and application switch over?  How much does it cost?  How long will it take?  What impact will there be to operations?

3. What about all of the scripts that have been developed for older Symms?  Will they work with the new V-Max?  And if yes, will some of new functionality provided by the V-Max by using older Symm scripts be lost?

4. Will the DMX have these new capabilities at some point or is it being obsoleted? 

5. If the DMX is being obsoleted - then isn’t the V-Max really a new product - a disruptive “evolution” - requiring customers to spend new dollars and implement new infrastructure to get the new value?  In these economic times - that can be pretty challenging for IT budgets.

6.  It will be interesting to see how the reality compares to the rhetoric - there is a big difference between concept and execution.  What are customers saying about the new capabilities of the V-Max?  Not just in comparison to the DMX but to other vendor solutions? 

7.  This is a big deal to EMC - the Symmetrix seemed stuck for a few years without any real innovation and this announcement breaks that trend.  But when will all of the capabilities be available? 

8. It is one thing to say that performance is X% faster but that is just a bunch of hyperbole in the real world.  Since EMC doesn’t have a published baseline of performance for the DMX - what is the comparison based on?

9.  There are a number of performance issues to consider with this new 1.0 architecture.  What is the impact of performance when tiering?  Has anyone tested the impact of performance with wide stripping - it should be faster but has it been measured?  What is  the impact on primary I/O performance when remote mirroring is taking place?  The impact of primary I/O performance during a RAID rebuild?  Since this is a new architecture - what is the performance impact when a controller is unavailable?  How does performance scale as more storage and I/O is added?  We don’t know the answer to any of these questions. 

10. Many of the new capabilities on the V-Max  are 1.0 features and more importantly the fundamental architecture is 1.0!   Think about that for a second - an entirely new architecture that has no track record of success.  It is a 1.0 solution that carries with it the encumbrances of an older solution with millions of lines of code.   What are the detailed best practices for customers wanting to switch from DMX to V-Max?  

These are important questions that no one seems to be asking or answering.  There are probably other questions that need to be raised as well - and I will ponder these - and please weigh in if you think of any.