Storage @ Work

Stephen Foskett, one of the sharpest storage thinkers I know has a data management practice with Contoural - and he just started a blog called 'Stephen Fosekett, Pack Rat', with a subtitle of "Understanding the Accumulation of Data'. One of his first posts discusses his opinion of Microsoft's Simple SAN initiative, which he feels is one of the best kept secrets in the storage world. I would agree with him, Microsoft has done a number of things very well to create "Microsoft Standards" for storage interoperability. In a nutshell, Microsoft has made it easy for their operating and application systems to work with storage vendor products through a common set of APIs across their server software products. Is simple SAN a "true" standard? - no. Is it a workable standard for Microsoft shops? - definitely.

Without any preparation, Stephen got a chance to see how simple an iSCSI SAN configuration can be, although he did say that the Microsoft iSCSI software initiator config slowed him up a bit. I would agree with that too, because I had the same experience the first time I set one up (I seldom RTFM). But the fact is, the time it took was almost nothing. It only seemed noticeable because the rest of the configuration process was so freaking easy. Here is a 2-page "Coffee Break" (PDF file) from EqualLogic that discusses how simple it is.

Microsoft just released a document written by Dennis Martin of Demartek showing a variety of iSCSI storage configurations. Here is a link to the PDF from Microsoft's web site:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx? FamilyID=da150335-2d76-4cc7-9e3b-a95ed688fd2a&DisplayLang=en

Here is a link to a page on Demartek's website where you can download it as a Word file or as a PDF:
http://www.demartek.com/Demarte k_Deploying_iSCSI_Storage_Solutions_2007-06.html

An EqualLogic solution is featured in this document along with solutions from other vendors. I may have some comments about this document in the days to come after I get a chance to look it over.

I'm extremely happy to see Microsoft getting behind all of us, helping to grow the entire iSCSI industry.

Thanks Claude, SW, Suzanne, and all the rest of you in Redmond that are supporting iSCSI!

This story says most of it:
http://www.crn.com/storage/199905754

Once upon a time Netapp was an Ankle Biter too. How does the saying go, "If you can't beat 'em...."?

So all you Netapp resellers out there wondering how to keep us at bay, I've got this to say - Doing business with a growing ankle biter might be the best decision you make this year.

Here is a callout to my storage homey, Pai, at Riverbed - I saw the press release you issued with John Rhon at the Lifelink Foundation. He is a terrific guy and excellent customer. Moreover, the time critical nature of their business showcases the value of Riverbed's Steelhead appliances. BTW, Pai if you see this - do you think anybody can beat RF at Wimbledon?

Kirk Goodwin the IT Manager at Unicity - and James Rupprecht, the Storage SE at Valcom in Salt Lake City talk about their success working together on the installation of an EqualLogic iSCSI SAN.

Click To Play

Here is our schedule for VMworld. Many have asked me about the BOF (birds of a feather) meeting. It's going to be at Terra on Wednesday the 12th from 4:00 to 5:00 followed by a customer appreciation party from 5:00 - 7:00. For those that recall last year's party it was a pretty good time. Definitely a lot of energy and excitement around VMware, consolidation and virtualization. I know - it sounds geeky, but if you are into it, there is nothing better. See You there.

Tony Pearson wrote a post recalling IBM's role in the development of iSCSI. There is no question that IBM has served the industry well over the years as an R&D innovator of new technologies. EqualLogic owes a debt of gratitude to IBM and Cisco and many other companies who worked on the iSCSI standard, paving the way for today's iSCSI opportunities.

FWIW, as a little bit of history, I was very keen on exploring storage over Ethernet (less so about using IP) in the late 90's. The first person I knew who was serious about it was Larry Boucher, the CEO of EqualLogic's technology partner Alacritech, who was running Adaptec at the time. The discussions I had with Larry led to my writing about the potential of using Ethernet for storage in the first edition of my book, Building Storage Networks, which was written during 1999. It is truly gratifying to be here in 2007 seeing the amazing progress that has been made over the last 7 years in storage networking.

I'm pretty stoked about VMworld this week in San Francisco. Going to see lots of interesting stuff and meet with customers and friends from around the industry. I thought VMworld was one of the big highlights of 2006 and expect it will be even bigger this year.

EqualLogic fans might be interested in a few things of note we are doing at the show. The main thing that a lot of people will be interested in is that we are giving away a Harley. Not a stuffed doll of a Harley or a Spinal Tap version of a Harley, but an actual Harley Davidson motorcycle. Next year, you can be in Sturgis in August too!

I am actually a bit torn about this kind of give away. I mean, lot's of our customers tell us that they think our iSCSI SAN products are pretty terrific and I think we should just try to have an event for them (which we are doing - a Birds of Feather and a customer appreciation cocktail party on Wednesday). But I guess if you are going to go beyond the basic feelgood stuff at a major trade show, giving away a Harley isn't so bad. OK, the real problem - truth be told - is that I'm not eligible. Farley on a Harley? The Farley Harley? Farley's gnarly Harley? Videos from the Hogmeister? All these sound pretty good to me, but its not going to come to pass unless I shell out my own money for them. Maybe I'll turn in expense reports for the last year and go get one.

There are a couple Webinars going on this week. I'm doing one tomorrow (Tuesday) AM at 9:00 PDT with VMware and a customer using both technologies. We'll be talking about the synergy of VMware and EqualLogic iSCSI SANs in SMB accounts. Its very powerful stuff with important cost and uptime benefits. Then on Wednesday (also at 9:00 PDT), Eric Schott, our Director of Product management is doing another live webcast with VMware discussing some of the newest technology for Disaster Recovery in VMware environments. This is incredibly important technology that is going to change the IT landscape for many customers so you will want to check it out if you get a chance.

There are a number of breakout sessions with EqualLogic employees or customers participating: There is a listing of them here:

Come see what all the excitement is about at the EqualLogic booth this year, here is where we are in Moscone Center. On this map look for the blue rectangle (#1021) to the right of VMware's booth, which is the big one in the middle.

I led a webcast last Tuesday at VMworld about using VMware and EqualLogic storage in SMB environments. Ben Matheson from VMware and Arell Chapman - a customer from United Bank and Trust joined me. I had suggested that VMware and EqualLogic were like peaches and cream, but then Ben said he thought it was more like a hamburger with fries. Either way, I'll take it. The best part of all was Arell's discussion of his implementation. People will want to listen to what he has to say. Click this link to view and listen to the webinar recording. (requires Real Player)

Then on Wednesday our director of product management Eric Schott and Vivek Chhabria from VMware presented on DR technologies and techniques on a webcast that has relevance to just about everybody. Click here to view the webinar.

The big news this morning is that Dell has struck an agreement to acquire EqualLogic. This is certainly a surprise as we have been hunkering down in preparation for an initial public offering, so it gives the future a much different look than it had over the weekend. The deal will probably complete in three to four months. Let’s get on with it, I say – full speed ahead.

Acquisitions raise lots of questions – most of them I don’t have answers to, such as how will this impact EqualLogic’s business and its customers. People that know me, know that I tend to be skeptical because there are many more ways for things to go wrong than right, but I am fairly bullish on this acquisition. Michael Dell has been making bold moves at Dell since his return to the helm last January and seems to have changed his primary focus from streamlining internal operations to improving the customer experience with Dell products. His vision to Simplify IT is right on course, but difficult to accomplish. The decision to spend $1.4 Billion on EqualLogic shows a very real commitment to executing on that vision. As far as I can tell, Dell has entered this agreement with a vision of building upon EqualLogic’s early successes and plans to grow EqualLogic both as a storage provider and as a channel business entity. If so, that will be a very good thing for EqualLogic’s business, its customers and its channel partners. In doing so, Dell will be making a large number of customers’ IT experiences much simpler.

I’ve received a couple emails already from customers and friends. Most were congratulatory, but one was from one of my favorite customers who suggested that Dell will “now ruin an otherwise good product.” I really don’t think so. I think Dell understands the talent and creativity we have and believes that supporting EqualLogic will be better than extracting the technology and dumping the talent, as sometimes happens with storage acquisitions. Among other things that were discussed in a conference call this morning, Dell representatives told us that nobody will be asked to move to Texas. That's probably a bit premature, but it's also a very good sign of their intentions to increase EqualLogic's capabilities.

Steve Duplessie referred to EqualLogic employees this week as "flannel clad folks", Say that 5 times in a row. The funny thing is, its not that far off. He has a previously unseen photo of our dignified founders on his site here.

There has been a lot of speculation about the future of our channel business when the acquisition completes in a few months and I thought I'd post links to what I'm reading in the bloglands.

Robin Harris, Storagemojo: The Bastards Say Welcome
Barbara Darrow, Tech Target's Channel Market: Dell Seeks Partner Progress in EqualLogic Buy
The Var Guy, TechIQ: Will Dell Push Storage Through Partners?
Joseph Kovar, CMP: VARs say Dell's EqualLogic Acquisition Could Backfire
Edward F. Moltzen, CMP: Dell Bags EqualLogic for $1.4 Billion, Says Deal Will be Channel 'Catalyst'
Dan Bricklin, Theirway.net: Congratulations Don Bulens and Equallogic
Sharon Lisenbach, Eweek: Dell: EqualLogic Buy Validates Channel Commitment
Brad Anderson, Direct2Dell: Dell to Acquire EqualLogic

Lucas Mearian at Computerworld wrote about Dell's acquisition of EqualLogic and concludes that it will force a split in the Dell/EMC partnership.

I think Lucas is an astute observer of the industry, but my previous opinion posted on the VMTN forums and my agreement with Chuck Hollis' blog posting yesterday weren't swayed by what Lucas had to say.

Dell and EMC both have a lot more at stake here than the iSCSI business that EqualLogic brings to the table. They do business with a much broader set of products than iSCSI storage - such as VMware. Dell is a very valuable sales channel for EMC and EMC is a very important technology provider for Dell. There will always be some level of competition among the largest companies in the technology sector. It creates a bit of a mess sometimes, but having interdependencies between companies provides stability and efficiencies that ultimately result in broader solutions at lower costs.

I suspect this deal will actually end up creating additional opportunities to expand the business between Dell and EMC. I'm not always right about these things, but that's what my intuition is telling me.

Chris Preimesberger wrote about the Dell EqualLogic news @ Channelinsider.com.

Tony Pearson, storage blogger for IBM, wrote about the impact on the rest of the industry from the Dell EqualLogic aquisition. As Tony likes to do (and what he's paid to do), he turned it into a platform for talking about IBM's storage products.

I want to correct him on his EqualLogic history. Apparently after surfing or talking to IBM market researchers he came across news that we had signed an agreement with Sun several years ago. Figuring that such a deal must have been an important part of our rapid growth he pieced together an odd collection of Jabberwocky on the topic. What he didn't surmise was that the Sun EqualLogic agreement turned out to be one of those worthless pieces of paper that mostly wasted human and natural resources.

The real story is that we have been 100% focussed on selling through our VAR channel for a couple years now since our fearless leader, Don Bulens, came aboard. FWIW, Don doesn't really care for the spotlight much but he needs to be given credit for making this business transition - without our committed channel business model, I don't think Dell would have paid $1.4B in cash for us. These types of transitions sound easy when you read about them, but they aren't that easy when you are the one steering the boat through the rapids.

Here we go again on a new transition - one that will be much more visible to industry observers than our apparently mysterious past.

I talk to a fair number of customers and have difficulties sometimes remembering who's who. It tends to make every day an adventure. Anyway, I checked out the latest case study to appear on our corporate site and sure enough, it was Chris Formes - a customer I've communicated with via email and the telephone a few times. I knew we were going to publish this case study with Brookfield Homes, but I didn't put 2 and 2 together and think - Hey That's Going to be Chris!

The other thing that gave me a small surprise was that Chris was also using Mimosa's Nearpoint product for Microsoft Exchange archiving. Its great to see the Mimosa part of the story too. Years before joining EqualLogic, I set up meetings between EqualLogic and Mimosa to initiate a solution-relationship because there is a terrific synergy there. I'm always happy to hear when a customer is using both of our products.

Chris is doing a number of smart things to get the most out of Brookfield's storage budget. First, he's using Mimosa's software to reduce the amount of Exchange data on his iSCSI SAN. Second, he's using thin provisioning on our systems so he can pay as he grows and not over commit on storage resources that he doesn't need yet. Smart. We probably didn't sell Chris as much storage capacity as we would have a year ago, but its smarter storage than it was a year ago and that makes us all smile.

Our channel partner working with us at Brookfield is VL Systems in Irvine, CA. I'm looking forward to meeting Lee Green from VL Systems in the next couple weeks so I can get a complete picture of how the solution came together. Thanks Lee for your help in making all this come together!

After attending several User Group meetings in the last few weeks it has become obvious to me that we haven't done a very good job telling our customers about our AutoSnapshot Manager for SQL Server software.

One problem is our no-charge software model. Once you own an EqualLogic product you get all software updates through free downloads, even if the software updates are something people are used to spending lots of money for. There are no beat-the-drum new product announcements, no new SKUs, no new licenses to figure out and no big marketing splash to draw interest to it and sell it. There is no revenue coming to us and so there is no big push attempting to increase sales. Analysts and the trade press tend to ignore it because its not a new product, just an upgrade. It's weird; we come out with something valuable at the best deal possible (free) that a lot of people are interested in, and we have a hard time telling people about it.

Another problem appears to be how we make information like this available on our web site. In writing this blog post, I went to find a link on our site for our SQL AutoSnapshot Manager and couldn't really find one. There were a couple links that I needed to register for and I didn't want to use one of those for the blog. I don't want you to have to register to get information linked to from the blog. It shouldn't be like this.

Our Host Integration Toolkit includes VSS-based SQL Server snapshots. It significantly improves data protection for SQL Server. SQL Server backups go faster and restores are much simpler. If you are interested in finding out more send me an email or comment here.

Jason Kwiatkowski, our SE manager on the west coast is talking about how to demonstrate our EqualLogic iSCSI SAN products. It was created for our channel team it occurs to me that others might be interested in seeing what our product's interface looks like, so I'm posting it here on the blog.

Click To Play

Jason Powell at Granger Community Church in Northern Indiana is hosting a lunch and demo/seminar at his site on Feb 22nd. Jason and GCC are excellent customers of ours and Jason is an active blogger about all the technology they use at GCC. I encourage you to check out their website at the link above.

Alan Hunt from VR6 Systems will be there too. Alan is an excellent resource having been a customer of ours for a couple years prior to joining VR6, an EqualLogic and Data Domain business partner. Alan and Jason both have extensive experience with our products and our company and will give you the straight scoop on what it is like to be an EqualLogic customer. Better to hear it directly from people who actually use our iSCSI SAN storage, than to take our word for it.

Thanks a ton Jason! and Thanks to you too Alan, you guys are the greatest.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

Jerome Wendt posted an interview with Randy DeMeno, chief evangelist at Commvault about their relationship with Microsoft.

I'll never forget a meeting I had with Bob Hammer, Commvault CEO at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose in the same time frame. I questioned him on his sanity for going to Commvault - a 2nd or 3rd tier company in the backup industry at that time when there were big gorillas wandering the forest (Veritas, Legato, CA and Seagate Software). He explained that he thought there was an opening for his company to work very closely with Microsoft and to grow their business along with Microsoft's business. I asked how this decision went over at a company that had been mostly a Unix shop and he replied that there was simply no looking back. People that weren't with the program weren't with the company. He flatly stated that good business decisions needed to be backed up with unanimous conviction. It's interesting to read about how DeMeno and his team engaged Microsoft with the kind of single purpose conviction at a time when many other storage software companies viewed Microsoft as a potential threat - just as some might view VMware today with Storage Vmotion

Anyway, Commvault was on its way to being a very successful turnaround when Don Bulens asked me for help landing the job as CEO at EqualLogic. Some of the board at EqualLogic thought that they needed a storage industry insider and Don definitely wasn't one. I told him he needed to lean very heavily on the example of Hammer at Commvault, another "outsider" who knew how to make good business decisions and left the technology work to people like DeMeno. What Don and I didn't know was how good Paula Long was at the technology end of things. In retrospect, it should have been clear to the board - Paula was brilliant and she just needed somebody who was her equal working on the business end. But its not clear to me that the board would have hired Don had Bob Hammer not been such an obvious standout as a non-storage person running a successful storage company.

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 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.

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.

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 entry was first posted on the Inside IT blog.

Eric Schott is Dell EqualLogic's brilliant Director of Product Management. In this interview snippet, conducted by Uberpulse earlier this year, he talks about the synergy of Dell's business direction and EqualLogic's history as an exclusive channel business.

Eric, my apologies for the photo cap on the video - I couldn't resist.

There's a few excellent live online events in the next couple days you might want to check out.

April 30 (Today) 12:30 PM Eastern: De-dupe for Dell EqualLogic iSCSI arrays - featuring Exagrid's new iSCSI De-dupe gateway product.

April 30 (Today) 1:00 PM Eastern: VMware's Site Recovery Manager and Dell EqualLogic storage. I know a lot of people are going to be interested in this one - integrating intelligence into the recovery side of VMware DR!

May 1st 3:00 PM Eastern: Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SAN array live demonstration

May 2nd 10:00 AM Central European Time: In German: Live Dell EqualLogic PS Series array product demonstration

May 2nd 1:00 PM Eastern: VI3 (VMware Infrastructure 3) and Dell EqualLogic demonstration.

Our online events calendar

We shot this video during a birds of feather during VMworld in San Francisco last September. Eric Schott (Director of Product Management, EqualLogic) and Kiran Ranabhor (Technical Product Manager for DR, VMware) has presented SRM and were asked what kinds of storage provisioning (or access modes) SRM would support.

In short, the answer is VMFS. Raw device maps and iSCSI software initiators running in virtual systems were not slated for the first release. I assume nothing changed there since September.