software defined

I have been reading many articles over the last weeks on Software Defined Storage and wrote an article on this topic a couple of weeks ago. While reading up one thing that stood out was that every single storage/flash vendor out there  has jumped on the bandwagon and (ab)uses this term where ever and when ever possible. In most of those cases however the term isn’t backed by SDS enabling technology or even a strategy, but lets not get in to the finger pointing contest as I think my friends who work for storage vendors are more effective at that.

The article which triggered me to write this article was released a week and a half a go by CRN. The article was a good read, so don’t expect me to tear it down. The article just had me thinking about various things, and what better way to clear your head then to write an article about it. Lets start with the following quote:

While startups and smaller software-focused vendors are quick to define software-defined storage as a way to replace legacy storage hardware with commodity servers, disk drives and flash storage, large storage vendors are not giving ground in terms of the value their hardware offers as storage functionality moves toward the software layer.

Let me also pull out this comment by Keith Norbie in the same article, as I think Keith hit the nail on the head:

Norbie said to think of the software-defined data center as a Logitech Harmony remote which, when used with a home theater system, controls everything with the press of a button.

If you take a look at how Keith’s quote relates to Software Defined Storage it would mean that you should be able to define EVERYTHING via software. Just like you can simply program the Logitech Harmony remote to work with all your devices; you should be able to configure your platform in such a way that spinning up new storage objects can be done by the touch of one button! Now getting back to the first quote, whether functionality moves out of a storage system to a management tool or even to the platform is irrelevant if you ask me. If your storage system has an API and it is allows you to do everything programmatically you are half way there.

I understand that many of the startups like to make potential customers believe different, but the opportunity is there for everyone if you ask me. Yes that includes old-timers like EMC / NetApp / IBM (etc) and their “legacy” arrays. (As some of the startups like to label them.) Again, don’t get me wrong… playing in the SDS space will require significant changes to most storage platforms as most were never architected for this usecase. Most are currently not capable of creating thousands of new objects programmatically. Many don’t even have a public API.

However, what is missing today is not just a public API on most storage systems, it is also the platform which doesn’t allow you to efficiently manage these storage systems through those APIs. When I say platform I refer to vSphere, but I guess the same applies to Hyper-V, KVM, Xen etc. Although various sub-components are already there like the vSphere APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) and the vSphere APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA), there are also still a lot capabilities missing. A good example would be defining and setting specific data-services on a virtual disk level granularity, or end to end Quality of Service for virtual disks or virtual machines, or automatic instantiation of storage objects during virtual machine provisioning without manual action required from your storage admin. Of course, all of this from a single management console…

If you look at VMware vSphere and what is being worked on in the future you know those capabilities will come at some point, in this case I am referring to what was previewed at VMworld as “virtual volumes” (sometime also referred to as VVOLs), but this will take time… Yes I know some storage vendors already offer some of this granularity (primarily the startups out there), but can you define/set this from your favorite virtual infrastructure management solution during the provisioning of a new workload? Or do you need to use various tools to get the job done? If you can define QoS on a per VM basis, is this end-to-end? What about availability / disaster recovery, do they offer a full solution for that? If so, is it possible to simply integrate this with other solutions like for instance Site Recovery Manager?

I think exciting times are ahead of us; but lets all be realistic… they are ahead of us. There is no “Logitech Harmony” experience yet, but I am sure we will get there in the (near) future.