Cisco Systems took some heat in the blogosphere about their Unified Computing System (UCS) vision. Many sites, including Gestalt IT, suggested that the admittedly impressive combination of hardware might not be all that welcome in corporate data centers. We at Gestalt IT applaud Cisco, and especially Wendy Mars, for their straightforward responses to our concerns, but we remain unconvinced.
Windows Storage Server is one of the most interesting products from Redmond, a specialized version of Windows Server with integrated storage target capabilities, including iSCSI, NFS, SMB, and single-instance storage (file-level deduplication). Although Windows Server 2008, with its many storage feature updates, was released last year, the updated version of Windows Storage Server was still under construction until last month. But Windows Storage Server 2008 is available to manufacturers today.
Hiding in the shadow of the huge VMware vSphere 4 announcement was a very interesting introduction by EMC: PowerPath/VE. As I mentioned in my post on storage changes in vSphere 4, PowerPath/VE plugs into the new pluggable storage architecture (PSA) found in vSphere 4 versions of ESX and takes over the decision-making and heavy-lifting tasks related to communicating with storage systems.D
VMware officially launched their next-generation (version 4) enterprise family of products today under the “vSphere 4″ name. As I’ve been doing for the last few major ESX releases, I’m focusing this post on the storage changes present in vSphere 4.
EMC today announced a new generation of the flagship Symmetrix enterprise storage array by EMC: Initial reactions have compared it to the CLARiiON (with which it shares hardware), the DMX-4 (with which it shares software), the new 3PAR F-Class, the Compellent Storage Center, the HDS USP, and NetApp’s next-generation clustered filers. In every case, the V-Max is different enough to be compellingly new – it’s a true hybrid of monolithic (tiger) and modular (lion), thus its codename, “tigon”!
VMware has cranked out another update to their flagship enterprise product, ESX 3.5. The last update came out in early November, 2008, and included some major new functionality. What’s in store this time to intrigue storage folks? Not much.
Reuven Cohen of Enomaly has penned an Open Cloud Manifesto. This might not have been news but for a curious backlash when two big cloud vendors, Microsoft and Amazon, refused to sign on, although IBM, Sun, and many others have endorsed it. In my opinion, the Open Cloud Manifesto is interesting, forward-thinking, provocative, and a bit naive.
While the bulk of Sun-related news this week relates to reported talks of a buyout by IBM, the company took a break from negotiations to introduce their own cloud computing and storage infrastructure, challenging Amazon, Google, Rackspace, and perhaps VMware, Microsoft, and Nirvanix.
Despite months of hyperbolic warnings, Cisco’s release today of their Unified Computing System blade servers (code named Project California) is gentle and evolutionary. The networking giant is challenging HP, IBM, and Dell, to be sure, but not with a slap in the face. Cisco is easing into the server pool with their UCS servers.
Although there is no word on a Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) initiator in the vein of their wildly successful iSCSI offering, Microsoft announced today that they are will be creating a logo program with test requirements for the new protocol. This certification program will likely follow the company’s similar work with iSCSI, Fibre Channel, and other products to ensure functionality and perhaps interoperability in the Windows market.
