thinking sysadmin

Chuck’s got another, uh, thought-provoking blog post up, More Examples Of Why Server Vendors Just Don’t Get Storage, surely intended to ruffle a few feathers. And he does raise some really good points: Most server vendors need more of an SSD strategy than just making a flash drive an option (it’s how you use it, not that you have it!). And as big a fan as I am of ZFS and Sun’s storage options in general, to win in the “enterprise” (and not just, say, HPC) Sun needs to pull everything together into Solaris (from OpenSolaris) and make it less of a DIY operation.

But here’s where I think EMC’s missing something - their flash blind spot, if you will: Price-performance. Sure, I recognize that EMC has chosen to enter the market from where they compete best - the high end. And I realize it’s inevitable that flash will move down-market in EMC’s arrays (really: flash in the CLARiiON line is a “when,” not an “if”). But EMC’s flash options are right now way too expensive for most shops, while, on the other hand, there’s a good probability I’ll have servers with SSDs in them by then end of this year. I’ll just need a strategy on how best to use them with my operating systems and applications to maximize their benefit. Unfortunately for HP and Dell, they’re not offering a strategy that I know of, they’re just offering the drives. Sun, on the other hand, has a good use case: ZIL and L2ARC on flash - now it just needs to get back-ported from OpenSolaris into Solaris.