Dell's FlexAddress announcement on Tuesday drew this response by Gary Thome of HP.  So what's a poor system admin to do if they want to manage SAN and LAN addresses for their blade systems?  I'd suggest they let their accountants make the decision for them. 

Here's the deal.  HP apparently had this elegant old technology from Tandem that used specialized switches to map network IDs to hot-swappable compute modules. They re-introduced this technology as Virtual Connect for their blade servers because they figured it solved the problem of maintaining consistent network IDs when swapping out compute blades. In fact, Virtual Connect works pretty well - all you need to do is buy fault-tolerant pairs of specialized chassis-insertable switches to provide the ID mappings.  That doesn't really force customers to change their network infrastructures, as some would suggest, but it does add a lot of cost to the blade solution.

Over the years Dell has been criticized for copying the technologies created by other companies.  Brad Anderson, Dell's Senior VP of Business Products said as much last November after Dell announced its acquisition of EqualLogic:

“It’s fair historically, if you go back a year or so, that you would have thought of Dell as more of a fast follower,” said Brad Anderson, senior vice president of Dell’s business product group. “But we recognize that if we want to solve our customers’ problems and provide leadership, we’re going to need to jump in very early.”  “With Michael coming back, things are a little bit different,” Anderson, said. “Company-wide, we are driving IT simplification very hard. It is our strategy; it is our mission. It’s also driving a cultural change within Dell.”

In other words, when we see a good idea now, we don't just try to imitate it, but try to figure out how to make it as simple to use and efficient as possible.  And that's what FlexAddress is all about.  HP had done a pretty good job providing a solution, but it was originally designed for mainframe environments and not today's X86-based blade servers.  As a result, Virtual Connect is over-engineered and expensive - there is no need for the specialized switches it uses.

Dell engineers figured out a much simpler way to provide persistent network IDs for blades as they are swapped or upgraded.  The network IDs for each blade are mapped to another set of network IDs in the chassis according to slot the blade is inserted into. In other words, when a blade is removed and another blade is inserted in the same slot, it automatically is mapped to the same chassis-based network IDs - which means all LAN and SAN network functions work exactly the same as before. That includes VLANs and zoning and anything else you can think of.  HP would have you think that all this has to be redone with FlexAddress, but it doesn't.

Maybe there are a few corner case advantages for Virtual Connect, such as lab environments where changes to blade configurations are more random and have less serious consequences. But in production environments where the rule of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" applies, the types of changes made to blade modules tends to be one to one replacements and upgrades.  FlexAddress is perfect for this. 

And one other thing.  HP says that Virtual Connect was designed to enable the system admin to function independently of the network and SAN people.  Oh really?  And how are the proper tie-ins made from the Virtual Connect switching modules to the LAN and SAN switches anyway  - by divination?  C'mon guys - there is no free lunch. 

So let's see now.... should I buy one SD card or a pair of expensive switches that cost approximately 10X as much?  Hmmmm.....

Here's a post on new blade technology from Chad Fenner in our sever group....Take it away Chad...

Having launched the M-Series blades earlier this year, today we’ve introduced Flex Address which is designed as a low cost way to simplify blade server changes - servicing, upgrading or replacing a blade.

What makes this very different from other blade vendors – is that you don’t have to switch your switch. Unlike some similar implementations from competitors, FlexAddress works with any switch, such as Cisco and Brocade, as well as with any pass through module. 

It works by locking a server's World Wide Name (WWN for Fibre Channel Fabrics) and Media Access Control (MAC for Ethernet Fabrics) to a blade slot instead of on the blade itself.

Normally if a server is removed, it loses its storage and ethernet connections, which then have to be re-mapped. That's like being forced to change your phone number because you lost your phone. Point being is that it takes time and effort to get done.

FlexAddress virtualizes the connection, so if a blade is replaced or upgraded it still maintains the exact same connection. Imagine a boot from SAN implementation – one server could be removed and another inserted and nothing else would need to be done to connect to the same storage LUN!

Pretty much all network administrators I talk to have been thrilled about this. It saves them time and money. The great thing about Dell's implementation is also how simple it is to implement. All a customer has to do is choose via a single click if they want FlexAddress active in the management software. It's implemented as an SD card on the Chassis Management Controller (CMC).

NerdBlog, eWeek, and Network World have weighed in…

A video showing the process of expanding a volume on a Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SAN. 

Its amazingly simple:  First, you expand the volume in the management console, which automatically takes unused capacity from the free pool - including additional space you will need for snapshots. Then you go to the system side and expand the size of the file system. In this case, it shows using DISKPART in Windows.

And without further ado......

There's been a lot written about flash SSDs lately, starting with EMC following their announcement of the technology, and followed by other companies wanting a market position in relationship to flash.  From a strictly marketing perspective, EMC pulled off an excellent move, forcing other companies in the industry to respond.  That's what industry leadership looks like. 

Of course, SSDs have been around for a long time, but the big deal this time is flash memory - as opposed to dynamic RAM.  There have been attempts and thoughts about flash for enterprise storage for many years. I was at Convergenet when they attempted to make it work a decade ago.  They couldn't.  I recall speaking with Joan Wrabetz (Ex CEO of Tricord) several years ago and she was telling me about how the development of flash memory for consumer goods was going to have an inverse "trickle up"  impact in enterprise storage.  That's not to say that iPod flash is the same as enterprise flash, but it does help to have money flowing into an industry to stimulate technology advancements.

Barry Burke, the Storage Anarchist blogger from EMC has written a couple of good pieces recently.  But he wrote something today that caught my attention and made me pause and wonder: 

"And judging by the applications I've seen flash targeted for by customers, the early adopters are going to have a pretty big competitive advantage on their competitors."

Really?  Like all the technology advantages that Nicholas Carr was discussing a few years ago in his book Does IT Matter?  Even if EMC's customers can extend some advantages from EMC's flash products, how long will it take the rest of the industry to gain sufficient competency with flash technology and how much cheaper will it be for everybody to implement afterwards? I'm sure EMC has a road map, but road maps don't necessarily predict where the roads get bulldozed. Believe me, I'm not hinting at anything here, but I do think EMC will have its work cut out making its first mover advantage stand up over time and it could turn out to be one of those deals where being a first mover is actually a disadvantage because the technology is already so widely available.  It's a risky business for EMC - leading the way with a technology that is already sliding towards the great plateau of commoditization.

Millions of business users-and their laptops-travel through busy transportation hubs worldwide each year.  With summer gearing up, it's the perfect time to travel, relax-and have sensitive business data lost or stolen.  

According to the Ponemon Institute, every year a staggering number of laptops are lost or stolen, most of which contain valuable-and highly sensitive-business data.  Today we're expanding our Dell ProSupport commercial offerings to protect business assets and data with Dell ProSupport Mobility Services, a new group of services aimed directly at tackling this for our customers to help them stay protected while connected.   

Some of the new options include:

• Laptop Tracking and Recovery
• Remote Data Delete
• Hard Drive Data Recovery
• Certified Data Destruction
• CompleteCare Accidental Damage
• Extended Battery Service

 
Also released today is the latest research from the Ponemon Institute.  Sponsored by Dell, the Notebook Lost & Found Study surveyed more than 800 business travelers, with some sobering results that might keep an IT manager or two up at night.

• 630,000 laptops are lost each year, most of which are lost at airport security checkpoints-between 65-70% of these are never reclaimed
• 53 % of business travelers carry customer or employee data on their laptops
• 65% of business travelers have not taken steps to protect sensitive corporation information on their laptops
• 42% of people say they do not back up their data 
• 16% of people would do nothing if they lost their laptop while traveling on business
• 77% of people say there is "no chance" or less than a 10% chance they would recover their laptop if lost in an airport
• 99% say they have never lost a laptop but 84% say they know someone who has
• 70% of respondents agree or strongly agree that they rush from the time they arrive at the airport to the time they board the flight
• 61% of people worry that security checkpoints will cause them to miss their flight

For a full copy of the report, more statistics, and tips and tricks for staying protected and connected, visit http://www.dell.com/getprotectedandconnected. 

Dell ProSupport Mobility Services are available to customers in the U.S. and Canada through Dell sales representatives or through Dell Registered Channel Partners.   Mobility services will be available in Latin America, Europe and Asia in July and August.

I just got back from being out for a couple weeks.  Believe me I didn't miss the meetings and most of the other work related stuff while I was gone, but I did miss out on the launch of the PowerVault MD1120 disk enclosure with 2.5" drives.  Some of you know how much I like small, compact storage.  My buddy, David Graves got to have the honors on this one.  I suppose if I had been here, we would have had an arm wrestling match or something.

So the first thing I saw when I fired up my daily Google search regimen today was Mario Apicella @ Infoworld writing about how much he likes the  PowerEdgeT300 Server. Another cool, small system with 2.5" SAS drives - and they are definitely special devices:  fast and lean. 

There's a lot of good stuff going on with Dell Storage - more than just the EqualLogic part of it - although I am biased in that direction, of course.  That's why we are leading the market in Windows and Linux external storage.  Lots of excellent, market leading storage and server products.

WSJ reporter Justin Schreck wrote a post "Dell Looks For Money in Storage." Check it out.

Money quote:

"...Dell Inc. has focused on the flashy consumer products, including its “Studio” line of laptops that was formally introduced Thursday and has been a topic of earlier Web leaks. But the company seems to also have high hopes in an area that seems more boring: data storage for small and medium businesses."

Personally - I don't find storage boring but I'll let it go. I'm winding up the propeller-head hat right now...

Did you know that The Wharton School at the Univ of Pennsylvania was the world's first collegiate business school - founded in 1881? I didn't - not the first time that's happened.

They've just opened a new data center - replacing IBM BladeCenter gear with PowerEdge M600 blades and Dell EqualLogic PS5000X storage arrays.

Their goals were to run a Linux cluster (for research) with the blades and expand mailbox quotas for students and faculty - from 300MB to 1GB.

Interesting notes:

• Wharton Computing IT professionals were able to unload and set up one of the Dell M1000e blade enclosures in four hours, compared with a 24-hour process using the previous hardware. Wharton's Joe Cruz blogged about it.  "the new hotness" - love that.
• The Dell enclosure was delivered in one box, replacing technology that previously arrived in about 60 boxes, a reduction of approximately 45 cubic feet of packaging material. With that in mind - check out this video.
• They've also implemented PowerEdge R900 servers that are providing a small hardware footprint and intended to deliver stronger performance than the previous generation of servers, with the goal of quintupling the computing power per node in Wharton’s Microsoft® Exchange 2007 environment.

According to Dan Alig, senior IT director of Wharton Computing. “Dell blade servers and Dell EqualLogic storage will allow us to do more with less and manage our budget as effectively as we manage our technology resources.”

That's good business. And I don't even have an MBA - yet...

Great news from the server team today:

First, Albert Esser, our VP, Power and Infrastructure Solutions, posted on Direct2Dell that we are the first in the industry to achieve 80 PLUS Gold-certification for a server power supply. The cool part is that it meets July 2009 Climate Savers targets for servers more than a year ahead of schedule, which require 92 percent minimum efficiency for the power supply unit at 50 percent of rated output.

Up next…Dell’s PowerEdge™ 2900 III server now tops all competitors with a new number one ranking for price/performance on the TPC-C benchmark.

· The leading price-per-transaction (price/tpmC) TPC-C result achieved 97,083 transactions per minute with a price/performance of $.68/tpmC.¹

· The PowerEdge 2900 III achieved the new TPC-C price/performance world record benchmark result with Oracle® Database 11g Standard Edition One running on Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003, and utilizing one Intel® Quad-Core Xeon® 2.83 GHz processor.

· Dell’s two-socket tower or 5U PowerEdge 2900 III server provides customers with a versatile platform designed for handling the most demanding workloads and application requirements. The 2900 III can be used for a variety of purposes including database, messaging and virtualization.

Wired has a fascinating series of articles on its site describing what it calls the Petabyte Age.

According to Wired, “Infinite storage. Clouds of processors. Our ability to capture, warehouse, and understand massive amounts of data is changing science, medicine, business, and technology. As our collection of facts and figures grows, so will the opportunity to find answers to fundamental questions. Because in the era of big data, more isn't just more. More is different.”

Our related version of this concept is the Connected Era. The way people connect and communicate is changing, and changing the world. A truly globalized information technology infrastructure and those who build, run and use it are creating this new connected era.

Bottomline – storage plays a critical part in this ever expanding infrastructure. I’ve seen reports predicting that the amount of information created this year will surpass available storage capacity. I’ve also seen estimates that medium and large orgs can expect a 55% CAGR for file storage over the coming years.

To help customers plan, manage and protect their petabytes, we’ve just announced a series of storage consulting services. We also announced a partnership with GlassHouse Technologies to plan and implement DR plans.

Let’s get connected – just don’t forget the storage.