Storage @ Work

Dell's acquisition of EqualLogic has completed. This is a real big deal for a lot of obvious reasons: Dell is a powerful company and they (we) now own one of the most dynamic storage technologies to come along in years. I joined EqualLogic back in October 2006 because I couldn't stand to be on the sidelines watching this new iSCSI storage company that I know was going to make a big play in the industry. I suppose I could jack myself up and say I had the talent to see it coming, but the fact is, the talent was and still is inside EqualLogic - and now Dell too. The thing I didn't know before joining the company was how talented it was. Yeah, so I think Dell got themselves a real jewel.

And what of the price paid? $1.4 Billion is a lot and I think it was an excellent mutual decision. I had my greedy IPO-bound doubts for a while, but it was definitely the right thing to do - just look at the tight rope wire new companies have to walk ( how can VMware's stock price get hammered so badly yesterday for posting great growth - just not enough to meet investment expectations?)

The dynamics of the storage industry are going to start changing much faster over the next year as Dell figures out how to make the most of their EqualLogic purchase. This is as clear to me as EqualLogic's success was to me two years ago. The biggest splashes are yet to come.

A big thanks to everybody who made this happen - especially the EqualLogic SAN customers who helped us every step of the way, by taking risks on purchasing mission critical infrastructure equipment from a startup. As of yesterday, Dell is selling superb EqualLogic iSCSI SAN products without the new company risks. That is very cool for our new customers. We look forward to working together with all of our customers.

Intensity isn't always pleasant, but it can be real effective. Just ask the New England Patriots who found their heartache Sunday at the hands of the incredibly intense NY Giants.

There something amazingly powerful about having something to prove and putting the bit between your teeth. That's what's still going on with the EqualLogic people who are now working for Dell. I don't know why, but I didn't expect the Dell team to have the same level of intensity, but they do. How else could they have put together a product roll out of new Dell EqualLogic products mere a week after the acquisition closed?

To net it out, all of EqualLogic's existing SATA products are being superceded by the new Dell EqualLogic PS5000 series products, which have a new form factor and expanded capacity. All old and new products can be used together in an interoperable iSCSI SAN. The same world beating ease of installation and scalability. The same no-charge, fully-featured software model. The same super-competent support organization. The same underdog intensity with something to prove to the world. Just a lot more people with the affliction sharing a common goal.

Here's a link to a transcript of yesterday's chat that followed the PS5000 webcast. It seemed like a reasonable way to open up the discussion to lots of people. Please don't hesitate to ask more - either through comments here or you can send me an email too.

My new email at Dell is Marc_Farley@Dell.com.

John Joseph, all around good guy and friend of mine was interviewed for a Dell Video Blog on the Direct2Dell website. I thought I would just glom onto his visage and post it here.

FWIW, I probably wouldn't have decided to stay on with Dell if it weren't for John's lobbying and support. I'm not much of a big company person and there were other things I was looking at doing. John really helped me understand how committed Dell was to making the future of EqualLogic as spectacular as the last couple years have been. John speaks quietly but not lightly.

Thought I'd post links to comments on yesterday's announcement.

ComputerWorld
Network World
SearchStorage
ITPro (UK)
Infostor
Internetnews
Techtaxi
Informationweek
The Register (UK)
eWeek
scaledatacom blog
bmighty.com blog
Computer Cosmos blog
infiniteadmin blog
itbusiness (Canada)

One of the biggest challenges people see in the integration of EqualLogic's business inside Dell is how the EqualLogic VAR channel and business model is handled. In a nutshell, there is a solid commitment to our channel and it is a primary concern in many internal discussions and plans.

There will continue to be discussions and doubts for a long time, I'm sure. Here is a link to a recent post discussing the matter on SearchITChannel.com.

Joe Kovar at CRN had this to say today about iSCSI's growth.

I was intrigued when I saw the news about Dell acquiring MessageOne. Here was Dell buying a company that was started by Michael Dell's brother. That relationship has a certain tabloid factor that I shamefully admit to copping to. What I found out after reading the links in Lionel's post (above) made me feel pretty good about being at Dell.

So then I went to MessageOne's web site to see what they do and I discovered it is very cool stuff. In an environment that includes litigation and regulatory risks, using an email archiving service can remove culpability from the IT organization and its operations. This could be particularly beneficial for IT organizations that can't afford to dedicate resources to archiving systems.

This article, written by Ron Robbins and Stephen Foskett has several good ideas to help people understand the business processes that go along with using an email archiving service.

There's a lot of speculation and analysis about what's going on at Dell, considering the company's acquisitions and movements in software, storage, services and its channel programs. I think it will help people interpret these actions better if they understand that Dell is actually very serious about simplifying IT.

It's not really about being in the software industry. It's not really about being in the storage industry. It's not really about being in the services industry. It's all about simplifying information technology. If you think that Nicholas Carr might be right about IT not being a winning differentiator for most companies, then it's extremely important to reduce the cost of IT. Organizations have unique needs and will achieve different benefits from a selection of technology options. The goal in our industry is to provide the best options.

Here are a couple more blogs that I think have a handle as to what is going on here at Dell.

from Illuminata

from ZDnet

A few postings in reaction to Dell's acquisition of MessageOne:

Beth Pariseau from Search Storage

Stephanie Balaouras from Forrester Reseach (Beth's blog references Stephanie's blog)

Howard Marks at Information Week writing about MessageOne's service offerings.

Terry Sweeney - also of Information Week on the trend for storage vendors to sell services.

Betsy Schiffman at Wired with a somewhat skeptical view based on the relationships of the players.

There will always be skeptics about M&A deals involving family members - it comes with the territory. However, where this one is concerned there are many opinions from people outside of Dell that understand why it makes sense. I've pointed out a few in my last post here.

We've been working hard to get our channel programs off the ground at Dell and we'll continue to expand Dell's channel business with the Dell Equallogic brand of iSCSI storage products.

Ever since our acquisition was announced I've been told by others that it would be difficult to compete for channel mind share against HP. They are certainly a great competitor and its always good to have competition to spur you on.

But like all companies, they aren't perfect, as this article written by Joe Kovar at CRN indicates.

To quote from Joe's article:

That solution provider said that changes at HP are causing many of its solution providers to look at whether or not to expand relationships with other vendors, including IBM Corp., Armonk, N.Y., Network Appliance Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif., and even Dell Inc., Round Rock, Texas, which recently closed a deal to acquire storage vendor EqualLogic.

"Dell (NSDQ:Dell) at least is saying the right things," the solution provider said.

We have terrific products that "walk the walk" for ease of use and value. If you are a solution provider looking to expand your product and service offerings, we want to hear from you.

Lots of people have questions about the networking elements needed for iSCSI SANs. We are hosting a webinar on Tuesdsay Feb 26th at 12 noon Eastern to discuss network issues surrounding iSCSI.

Covered topics include:

• Key criteria in selecting an appropriate network switch
  
• Flow control, a definition and the benefits for iSCSI networks
  
• Pros and cons of jumbo frames
  
• Application of trunking and stacking of multiple switches
  
• Connection of servers and arrays for maximum network fault tolerance
  

Click here to register.

Big news from VMworld Europe yesterday - VMware will be embedded in Dell and other vendor's servers.

Virtual storage is a terrific match for virtual server environments. This announcement about embedded VMware is great news, especially for our channel partners who will have more opportunities to help their customers engage/expand their virtual IT environments.

Here is a Youtube video with short customer interviews talking about embedded VMware.

Jerome Wendt posted an excellent synposis of Double Take Software's latest release of their Double Take for VMware Environments.

There are a number of ways to remotely replicate data. Dell EqualLogic arrays have built-in software that customers use, but they can also choose to use Double Take's software if its a better fit. to learn more, download this white paper.

Marc Farley is working on some new things and some old things in a new environment. He shares a little of his experience with blog viewers here.

Click To Play

In an interview with Uberpulse earlier this month following the announcement of the Dell EqualLogic PS5000 storage arrays, Eric Schott our Director of Product Management talked about the differences between server and storage virtualization. He does an excellent job here explaining why the virtualization in Dell EqualLogic arrays is complimentary - not competitive with server virtualization.

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Tim Sherbak has always been one of my faves at EqualLogic. A true beast of burden in the marketing department and our VMware champion.

Here he is commenting from VMworld Europe 2008 with John "Homey" Joseph on server and storage virtualization.

The camera angle adds interest. Tim's right hand gets gigantic in a couple places. Yo!, Tim! We always knew you had it in you!

Storage pain is often symptomatic and finding the root cause of the problem can be very difficult. I spoke with Paul Kaeley today who runs Dell's global storage services business about the new storage assessment services that were announced earlier this month.

These are short-term engagements that involve installing software that measures the relevant elements of data storage and collects it for analysis. The analytics show pressure points and areas of weakness that need to be addressed. Storage professionals/engineers then make hardware and software recommendations directly targeted at solving the customer's problems. The key is that these are not long term engagements. As my friend Joel Harrison says, it's not a milkman type of business.

There are three practice areas: data management, backup and archiving and storage for virtual servers.

The services team was working on these services when Dell's acquisition of EqualLogic was announced. With lots of things going on everywhere, there wasn't a chance to integrate their efforts with the EqualLogic team and reseller channel. Paul assured me that there is a big interest in getting this done. Not only that, but Dell EqualLogic channel partners will be able to perform these services for their customers too. Its not a traditional consulting business - it has the Dell philosophy of simplifying IT and lowering costs.

Dan Kusnetzky, in his VIRTUALLY SPEAKING blog wrote about EqualLogic's approach to storage virtualization.

He was talking to JJ and they had a senior moment discussing the technology legacy that started many years ago at Digital Equipment Corporation. FWIW, that really is the mojo of the development team and it's nice to see a nod in that direction, so thanks Dan.

But it reminds me, I think it's time to make a short video on how the storage paging works.

One of my upper level managers at Dell is Mark Jarvis, Chief Marketing Officer. He blogs some of the time sends emails about cutting expenses some of the time and probably wishes I would write about something else most of the time.

Then there's his day job, which recently included some guerrilla channel partner recruitment activities.

Here's what VAR GUY thought of the whole thing Hey VAR GUY, did anybody tell you you look like Chris Mullin?

Things change. Change brings growth, for Dell it means that we are growing our business by creating a real VAR channel and programs to support them.

Like Acumen I T from Greenville, South Carolina. Here's a link to their web site. I hope to get to Greenville to meet you sometime David and thanks for coming on board to sell Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SAN arrays.

John Joseph, our fearless marketing leader at Dell EqualLogic, was interviewed by Carryl Roy at Virtual Strategy Magazine. They talk about the history of the company, its acquisition and integration by Dell, product architecture and features of the PS5000 product line, the customer experience, pooled storage, business plans and a glimpse into our technology futures.

Click To Play

There are competitors that sell on their strengths and merits.

There are competitors that exploit their products advantages over disadvantages in competitive products.

Then there are competitors that make up any story as long as they think they can get away with it.

Here are some of the stories that have been circulated about Dell EqualLogic recently.

1. New Dell storage products have lower performance - that's why the price is reduced


2. The firmware was overhauled, resulting in unproven reliability


3. Recent price drop was due to a drop in functionality on the new models


4. Software is no longer all-inclusive


5. EqualLogic screwed their customers dropping the price of the product after customers loaded up on "original" products before the acquisition

1. Nope - the new products have the same great performance that outperforms their stuff


2. Nope, the new products use the same old software, with minor modifications for new array configurations


3. Nope, the new products have the same old deal - all software embedded with no loss in functionality


4. Nope, same all inclusive priceless software


5. We periodically reduce the costs of our products so we can continue to deliver the best value in the storage business. We don't have the customer loyalty we have by being unfair to our customers.

Greg Davis, VP of Dells' Americas Channel Group was interviewed recently. In short, Dell continues to add VARs to sell its products. The lead technology we are using to build the channel is EqualLogic's and the channel programs are based on EqualLogic's. EqualLogic lives on! (inside Dell). Maybe we should have a graphic or something at Dell that says: "EqualLogic Inside"

One of the cool things about being at Dell is the number of ways they have to reach out and engage customers. Next week Darren Miller (EQ product manager) and I are going to be on Dell's TechCenter online chat. The general topic is going to be data protection with EqualLogic iSCSI SAN arrays.

Heres the link for the chat page. If you want to chat or lurk, I don't care. If you have a question about something, please feel free to bring it up in this informal environment.

In the video below, Scott Reynolds, an attendee at the Data Protection Summit tells Storage @ Work that the sessions at the conference were awesone. Too bad the conference was sparsely attended because the content was top-notch, great stuff. Even if the cake was B-grade. I don't know why, but conference interviews often involve chow.

FWIW, this is the first of three discussions with Tom Coughlin, an expert on storage devices technologies who covers the gamut, from consumer to enterprise applications. In this video he sagely reveals that "they can't smell your breath on a video". Thanks Tom for the confidence builder.

One of our VARs, Scale Datacom just posted on the transition to becoming a Dell Channel partner after establishing a successful storage practice as an EqualLogic channel partner.

Here's a quote from their post - something they didn't anticipate writing a couple months ago:
Turns out they are doing exactly what they said they would. We have been welcomed with open arms and are actively engaged with the Dell Sales folks at all levels working as a united team to make sure all our customers are taken care of and prospective customers get the technical information and great pricing they deserve.

So, it's not just us saying it. It's not just the press saying it. It's also our VARs. We are looking forward to a long prosperous partnership with our channel selling Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SAN storage products and other Dell products too.

If you are curious about what makes our Dell EqualLogic PS series storage products so popular, you might want to check out one of our online demos. If you have time on Tuesday this week, we have one scheduled for 12:00 noon (Eastern).

I've had a lot of people ask me why EqualLogic sold itself to Dell. Yes, the money mattered a lot, but it was more than the money. We didn't want to just take the money. If we were going to be sold, it needed to be someplace with a passion for what we were doing.

Matt Baker posted today on Direct2Dell about Dell's passion for iSCSI.

We are singing out of the same songbook - to quote Matt: So, when considering the economic benefits, the innovative storage models it facilitates, and the unrivaled flexibility, it is hard not to be hot on iSCSI

The blogosphere buzz about problems with Dell SSDs appears to be overblown, if it's not a case of mistaken identity. Avi Cohen of Avian Securities wrote a report about quality problems with solid state disk drives (SSDs) in laptops where he claims failure rates between 10-20% and a return rate on laptops with SSDs between 20-30%. I've read reports that said he did not name the company, while other reports name Dell in quotes. There's something wrong with that. Whatever, people just assumed from all this that Dell has a quality problem with its SSDs.

So I checked into the situation with the SSD team in Round Rock Texas and asked about our ORT (ongoing reliability testing), pre-installation testing and failure tracking. What I found out made me feel a lot better. Our SSDs are very good products and are showing the kind of reliability that everyone expected of storage with no moving parts. They are just as reliable as rotating disk drives, if not more so.

A lot of things have been written and people have suggested a number of things that don't accurately reflect Dell's implementations. For example, some have written about the reliability of the state of the technology. Our SSDs do not use low cost, consumer multi-layer flash. They use high quality single level flash that has better reliability and performance (that's part of the reason for the perceived high cost). They don't have disastrous end of life failures from wear-out - instead they are designed to convert to read-only devices. As I mentioned, each device is tested for early failure tendencies to weed out weaker devices.

A word about performance: Our flash SSDs continue to get better with each generation and our next generation SSD products will have performance levels that could exceed those of 7200 rpm disk drives.

I don't know how I missed this one, but a couple days ago, Dell entered into a strategic relationship with Glasshouse Technologies. This is another example of how Dell is continuing to make moves to be a serious player in both the storage and services sector.

Chris, the blogger at FreeGarble has written a few good posts about his experience working with EqualLoggic iSCSI SANs. This one has a list of things to think about before installing your first SAN.

His experience with our product has not been entirely sweetness and light, but it's been pretty good, as his other post on a SQL Server migration attests. Our support team has smart, hard working people. He twice mentions the importance of asking questions and I'd like to add that our customers should always feel free to call our support team any time to ask questions. We like helping our customers plan their moves.

Yesterday, Dell and Egenera announced that Dell would be selling Egenera's PAN software to manage Dell's PowerEdge servers. I've been hearing about Egenera for years (all positive) - and so I'm excited to find out more in the months to come.

Partnering with excellent software companies makes a lot of sense. The Register seems to think it's a good idea too.

A customer of ours, John Wilder, talks about his experiences working with our iSCSI SAN products. Besides liking the ease of use and installation features of his PS series array, he is using thin provisioning and snapshots too. Here is a quote from his post:

Here’s a real life example- currently we have a thin provisioned volume which is taking up 96 GB of actual disk space (the host OS sees it as a 500 GB volume), and we have taken 10 daily differential snapshots of this volume which are currently utilizing 1.36 GB of space.

Inside IT is a new blog at Dell for discussing everything about corporate computing. I'm the lead blogger over there, but there are lots of other folks who will be contributing and commenting.

I'll continue to talk about storage, but will be expanding my scope to other things such as power and cooling, the subject of my first post on Inside IT. I hope to hear from you soon over there.

This post first appeared on the Inside IT blog (at Dell).

One of my favorite bloggers in Bob Plankers, the Lone Sysadmin. With all the excitement of getting this blog launched on Friday, I missed his post on the OpenManage Server Update Utility (version 5.4.0), which now works on ESX Server 3.5. Bob is always churning up interesting info that I think people that come to this blog would appreciate.

Thanks for passing this along, Bob. (and u haf 2 lik hiz lolkatz tagglin)

This entry was first posted here at Inside IT.

I see evidence every week that Dell's channel business for IT products is growing.  Today there was an article by Patrick Seitz in Investor's Business Daily on the progress we've been making with our channel programs.  

But even more importantly (to me anyway), are the internal discussions and the willingness for people to engage channel priorities - even though the culture at Dell historically has been for direct sales.   People here are sincere about learning new approaches to their traditional, comfortable direct ways of working. They are taking risks.

I haven't been at Dell very long, but I'm finding a culture of people who are smart, care a lot and are willing to change.  I'll be honest with you, it's not what I expected.  I expected to find inertia and bureaucracy, but its nothing like other large companies I've worked for. This company is a lot more nimble than I thought.  

If you think you need more help figuring out how to get your IT projects done, we'd love to help you connect with one of our channel partners who can give you the service level you are looking for.  We'll be supporting them as best we can. 

This post first appeared on Inside IT, a Dell blog.

HP got an early jump on April Fool’s day yesterday when they announced their new blade server, the Proliant BL260c G5, with the claim that it has 64% better energy efficiency than the Dell PowerEdge M600 blade server. The details of this Internet Vaudeville act can be found here: http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/downloads/HP_ProLiant_BL260_SPECjbb2005_032808a.pdf

Normally, vendors try to establish comparisons using similar configurations, such as those done by Principled Technologies here:

http://www.principledtechnologies.com/Clients/Reports/Dell/Win2K8_blades0208.pdf

Yes, Dell commissioned this work, but if you look at Appendix B of that report, you'll notice that a professional rigor was applied to making sure there was a level playing field. By contrast, the HP report published yesterday makes no attempt at comparing similar configurations. Different processors, running in different power modes with different memory and disk configurations, etc.

If HP had substituted one of their own servers in place of the M600 – one that was actually comparable to the M600, such as the BladeSystem c-Class tested by Principled Technologies, the power savings would probably have been over 75%, instead of the 64% they reported. But they couldn't very well come out and say that their high mileage lab experiment was so much better than an HP product that many of their customers already own.

This entry was first posted on the Inside IT blog.

Eric Schott is