The Storage Architect http://thestoragearchitect.com Storage, Virtualisation & Cloud Wed, 16 May 2012 17:39:11 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Storage Old, New and Past Due? http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/05/16/storage-old-new-and-past-due/ http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/05/16/storage-old-new-and-past-due/#comments Wed, 16 May 2012 17:39:11 +0000 Chris M Evans http://thestoragearchitect.com/?p=3453 It’s been an interesting day of contrasts in the world of storage, one that shows storage is a diverse and wide ranging segment of IT.

The Old

Tape has been part of the discussion on the twitterverse and despite everyone’s best attempts, is not dead yet.  Tape and backup may not be seen as cool [...] ]]> It’s been an interesting day of contrasts in the world of storage, one that shows storage is a diverse and wide ranging segment of IT.

The Old

Tape has been part of the discussion on the twitterverse and despite everyone’s best attempts, is not dead yet.  Tape and backup may not be seen as cool  - but data protection is an essential requirement of sustainable data management and tape still provides the one of the most cost effective methods of data protection and of course archive.  This has happened because tape continues to innovate.  Tape drive speeds and media capacities continue to push upwards to meet demand, driving the effective cost per GB down and so keeping tape a player in the long term data retention market.  Tape will be around for a long time to come.

The New

Flash storage is all the rage and today Pure Storage announced they have finally gone GA with their all-flash storage arrays.  They have also produced pretty funny video, taking a side swipe at traditional storage arrays using spinning disk.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Whilst this was a clever piece of marketing, it’s more useful to understand how this technology is implemented and why flash in a traditional array was only a stopgap.  At the recent Storage Field Day, Pure Storage presented a technical deep dive of their architecture, explaining some of the thoughts that led to their second generation array – available from today.  There was some pretty amazing detail presented, including a discussion on maintaining I/O latency when an SSD decides to falter.  The Pure Storage array can choose to recreate the data from parity rather than wait for the I/O to complete and so maintain low latency.  This is how solid state should be designed into storage arrays.  Hopefully the videos that were recorded at that event will be available soon.  As soon as they are, I will update this post with the details.

 

Past Due

The Register carried two articles today discussing EMC VMAX, which is due for a refresh and expected to be announced at EMC World next week.  The first talks about EMC scaling VMAX to 4PB of storage and/or 3,200 drives.  This is a huge capacity to store in a single platform and represents a massive amount of information to keep in a single chassis.  Symmetrix will probably go down as one of the most successful and pivotal storage arrays in history, however I think it is coming close to the end of it’s useful life because:

  • flash will be the dominant technology for high performance applications
  • bulk capacity can be done cheaper and easier
  • vendors are building technology towers, not centralising storage in the way they did 10 years ago
  • intelligence is being pushed up to the hypervisor
One of the issues with placing such a large quantity of data into a single chassis is the ability to migrate to and from the array, especially when the device is due to be decommissioned.  Perhaps this is one of the reasons why EMC has also chosen to implement storage virtualisation, which was the subject of The Register’s other article today.  Yes, it’s true, EMC are finally admitting Storage Virtualisation is cool and HDS and IBM were right all along.  One of the easiest ways to migrate data in and out of large arrays is to virtualise.  What’s ironic is the way EMC (and their Symmetrix strategist Barry Burke) have parodied the idea of storage virtualisation in so many blog posts.  Here’s just a few to savour:
The fact is, EMC had to have some technology built into VMAX to enable migration.  Otherwise, building 4PB arrays creates the customer a world of pain.
I have no details, but if the technology EMC is using here is RecoverPoint, then it’s hardly a native solution, but will be a sticking plaster before the arrival of XtremIO finally puts Symmetrix out to pasture.

 

 

]]> http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/05/16/storage-old-new-and-past-due/feed/ 1 HP Cloud – Now Available In Beta http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/05/15/hp-cloud-now-available-in-beta/ http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/05/15/hp-cloud-now-available-in-beta/#comments Tue, 15 May 2012 20:08:26 +0000 Chris M Evans http://thestoragearchitect.com/?p=3434 HP have joined the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) market and released their HP Cloud service in public beta.  Here’s the announcement press release.  The services on offer are:

Available Now as Public Beta Compute – on-demand server instances. Cloud Object Storage – object-based storage using RESTful APIs. Content Delivery Network – [...] ]]> HP have joined the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) market and released their HP Cloud service in public beta.  Here’s the announcement press release.  The services on offer are:

Available Now as Public Beta

  • Compute – on-demand server instances.
  • Cloud Object Storage – object-based storage using RESTful APIs.
  • Content Delivery Network – local distribution of web content.

Still in Private Beta

  • Cloud Block Storage – persistent data for compute images
  • Relational Database for MySQL – managed cloud databases
There’s also the HP Identity Service for managing key & token access management to HP Cloud services.  If you want to try any of the public beta products out then unfortunately you have to pay (currently with a 50% discount) using a standard usage model.  All of the standard features you would expect are available – REST API and CLI access; token-based security access model – multiple availability zones.
However, none of these services are things that couldn’t be found anywhere else and looking at the competition from the likes of AWS (Amazon Web Services), then HP have a long way to go.  Here are a couple of initial issues:

 

  • I can’t find any reference to where the regions are located.  This doesn’t appear in the documentation in any place I can find and the region names are a little cryptic.  It seems pretty reasonable to expect the locations to be documented.
  • Available compute instances seem heavily biased towards Ubuntu.  There are only a couple of CentOS builds and no Windows builds at this time.

 

Pricing

Comparing prices between IaaS services is no mean feat.  The available instances from each provider are subtly different.  HP’s smallest offering is 1GB of memory, 1 CPU and 30GB of disk space for $0.04 per hour.  The nearest Rackspace offering is priced at $0.06 and from AWS the lowest priced offering is $0.08, but offers significantly more disk space and memory.  At this stage HP appear to be competitive, but more work is needed on pricing to see how things compare across the range of offerings.

 

The Storage Architect Take

It’s early days for HP Cloud and to be fair the service is still in public beta (which should be free, folks).  However the competition is way ahead in the features HP are offering today.  Making comparisons to AWS (which is the easy option) is bound to happen and AWS release new features almost weekly.

 

So how do HP differentiate themselves?  So far they’re not doing it on price or features.  What else is left?  Well, HP did announce partnerships with 40 companies who are supporting HP Cloud from the day of release.  Perhaps this is where they are looking to  be different, by offering an entire ecosystem, including on-premise and hybrid solutions.  It will be worth looking back in 6 months and see how things have evolved.
]]> http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/05/15/hp-cloud-now-available-in-beta/feed/ 0 Dell Allegedly Bid for Fusion-IO http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/05/14/dell-allegedly-bid-for-fusion-io/ http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/05/14/dell-allegedly-bid-for-fusion-io/#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 16:34:52 +0000 Chris M Evans http://thestoragearchitect.com/?p=3404 Last Friday Eric Savitz over at Forbes reported that Dell may have put in a speculative bid for Fusion-IO (thanks to Don Jennings for spotting the article).  The rumoured price was $33 a share, which is approximately a 50% markup on the share price at [...] ]]> Last Friday Eric Savitz over at Forbes reported that Dell may have put in a speculative bid for Fusion-IO (thanks to Don Jennings for spotting the article).  The rumoured price was $33 a share, which is approximately a 50% markup on the share price at the time – we can only assume the offer was rejected.

As Chris Mellor recently reported, Fusion-IO have been increasing revenue but making a loss and Eric Savitz also noted that 55% of their revenue comes from just two companies – Apple and Facebook.  From what I understand there are also other storage companies that also contributed heavily to Fusion-IO’s revenue numbers.

Remember STEC?  They rode high on the back of the SSD boom until their major supplier, EMC, decided they had a stockpile and didn’t need to keep on buying.  Fusion-IO revenue for Q4 is anticpated to be flat.  Does that mean Apple and Facebook and slowing their purchases?

The Storage Architect Take

During a limo journey with Howard Marks and Stephen Foskett at SFD#1, the subject of Fusion-IO was raised; the consensus was Fusion-IO will live or die depending whether application developers decide to write to their SDK.  I happen to agree with this sentiment.  Application integration is the secret sauce that makes server side flash (SSF) disruptive, BUT there needs to be more.  We also need the ability to deliver cache consistency outside and therefore between servers.  Dell’s acquisition would make perfect sense as it would enable SSF to be placed in the server or shared and expanded between servers with something like Infiniband; a process that needs to be driven by the server vendors themselves as part of their architecture.

Fusion-IO need the SDK to work but they also need server inter-connect for scale and availability.  At $33/share and with increased competition, Dell’s offer may end up looking a pretty good one.

 

]]> http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/05/14/dell-allegedly-bid-for-fusion-io/feed/ 0 EMC Acquire XtremIO http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/05/10/emc-acquire-xtremio/ http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/05/10/emc-acquire-xtremio/#comments Thu, 10 May 2012 20:16:22 +0000 Chris M Evans http://thestoragearchitect.com/?p=3359 One of the worst kept secrets in the storage world is finally out.  EMC are acquiring XtremIO for a reported $430 million, as documented in a previous post.

The EMC press release talks about XtremIO as “one of the world’s widely regarded Flash storage architecture pioneers”, yet they have [...] ]]> One of the worst kept secrets in the storage world is finally out.  EMC are acquiring XtremIO for a reported $430 million, as documented in a previous post.

The EMC press release talks about XtremIO as “one of the world’s widely regarded Flash storage architecture pioneers”, yet they have no revenue or paying customers to reference.  Although I speculated that EMC may have been acquiring IP to develop for Project Thunder, perhaps the actual reason was to acquire the talent within the company to help bring Thunder (and new products) to market.  Regardless, two things are for sure:

  1. EMC are acknowledging that all-flash arrays are a new market segment
  2. EMC are confirming that all-flash traditional arrays simply can’t cut the mustard
Expect a land grab to acquire other flash array vendors.  That will undoubtedly result in a Darwinian cull with many new entrants falling by the wayside.  This is when things get interesting, as we see who has the technology genes to survive.
Ironically, this morning I caught up with Dan Crain from Whiptail, another flash array vendor that is shipping product -with plenty of customer references.  Expect to see a review of this technology in the future.  Storage is interesting again.

Related Posts

 

]]> http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/05/10/emc-acquire-xtremio/feed/ 2 Is Google Drive Too Late To The Party? http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/05/08/is-google-drive-to-late-to-the-party/ http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/05/08/is-google-drive-to-late-to-the-party/#comments Tue, 08 May 2012 21:40:49 +0000 Chris M Evans http://thestoragearchitect.com/?p=3314 Like many people, the other week I downloaded and installed Google Drive.  This is the long-awaited competitor to services like Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive, offering free online storage with the ability to upgrade to higher capacity at a cost.  Dropbox and the various other lookalikes have been around for some time, so is Google coming [...] ]]> Like many people, the other week I downloaded and installed Google Drive.  This is the long-awaited competitor to services like Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive, offering free online storage with the ability to upgrade to higher capacity at a cost.  Dropbox and the various other lookalikes have been around for some time, so is Google coming to this market too late and is the party already over?

Cloud Storage

The concept of Cloud Storage is pretty simple.  Services like Dropbox allow you to share a local folder on your PC or Mac and have that data replicated into “the cloud”.  From there it can be accessed by other devices, including smartphones, web browsers and tablets.  The great benefit of cloud storage offerings is that they allow all copies of data to be kept in sync, while retaining a backup copy that can be used if any or all of the local device copies are lost or corrupted.

My Data?

You’d think that because you were uploading your files, that you own them.  Whilst that’s true, what you can’t tell is whether your data is being used by your cloud provider for something else.  As I highlighted when Google’s service was announced, their terms and conditions state the following:

Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.

Great, but read on and the Terms of Service also say:

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide licence to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.

This amount of freedom with my data seems a little generous;  effectively Google (or any company they choose) can redistribute my content, including modifying it, for their purposes.  Now it could be argued that Google are providing this service for free and somehow they need to recover their costs, but as others have done, when you offer a “free” service you rather hope to upsell the customer to a paid offering, either by giving enhanced features or capacity and cover the cost of offering the service to some for free.

Encrypt

So far I’ve chosen not to write any content into the Google Drive while I work out the best way to encrypt my data and still have it accessible across all platforms.  Ultimately if you’re not happy with what Google are doing, then encryption is the way forward.  The trouble with encryption though, is it restricts the use of plugin apps (like Google Docs) and reduces the effectiveness of sharing, when keys have to be shared around those accessing the shared data.

Shared Metadata Local Content

There is another way this problem could be solved and that’s to develop a hybrid solution.  Content can be separated from the metadata and access method, allowing users to retain data on their equipment, using a provider to store metadata and provide the shared access API.  This is what OxygenCloud now offer and VMware will offer with Project Octopus.  These kinds of solutions allow customers to retain control over their data whilst having the benefit of Dropbox-like functionality and eventually (as these service providers hope) to store only their critical information locally, pushing more into the Cloud (and their partner service providers) as they trust security and service levels.

The Storage Architect Take

Google will do well with Drive simply because they have a critical mass of users who like “free” and don’t care about the security and data access issues.  Pushing Drive into corporate territory will require a different approach; charging a fee and offering encryption and/or better terms of service may be one way forward.  However, in the meantime, there are plenty of others out there already eating Google’s lunch.  The hybrid on/offsite model will develop and mature.  The hybrid solution is something I can’t see Google engaging in; they like to own everything, so perhaps Drive will not be as successful as Google would like it to be after all.

 

 

]]> http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/05/08/is-google-drive-to-late-to-the-party/feed/ 0 Solid State Storage Symposium – Cache or Tier Panel Discussion http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/04/30/solid-state-storage-symposium-cache-or-tier-panel-discussion/ http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/04/30/solid-state-storage-symposium-cache-or-tier-panel-discussion/#comments Mon, 30 Apr 2012 07:18:31 +0000 Chris M Evans http://thestoragearchitect.com/?p=3320 As part of last week’s Storage Field Day event, at the Solid State Storage Symposium I moderated a panel entitled “Solid State – Simply a big cache or a real storage tier?”  The full brief was as follows:

Solid state disks blur the boundary between cache and storage, with a foot in both [...] ]]> As part of last week’s Storage Field Day event, at the Solid State Storage Symposium I moderated a panel entitled “Solid State – Simply a big cache or a real storage tier?”  The full brief was as follows:

Solid state disks blur the boundary between cache and storage, with a foot in both camps. Can solid state drives really be treated as a new tier of storage or simply as a way to add more performance enhancing cache to existing arrays? This panel will discuss whether data should permanently reside on solid state media or whether the optimum and most cost effective solution is to simply use SSD to hold the working set of data in the array.

I was lucky to have some great panelists and the discussion is both technical and philosophical in nature as to how SSDs should be used when building storage arrays.

The video is embedded below and well worth watching.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Related Links

]]> http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/04/30/solid-state-storage-symposium-cache-or-tier-panel-discussion/feed/ 3 Two New Podcast Appearances – Speaking in Tech and Violin http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/04/27/two-new-podcast-appearances-speaking-in-tech-and-violin/ http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/04/27/two-new-podcast-appearances-speaking-in-tech-and-violin/#comments Fri, 27 Apr 2012 23:09:38 +0000 Chris M Evans http://thestoragearchitect.com/?p=3317 This week I managed to fit in two podcasts.  First was episode 5 of Speaking in Tech with Greg Knieriemen and co.  Second was the first of a new series of podcasts from Violin Memory, which I recorded while in California for Tech Field Day.  You can find both podcasts from the links below.  Enjoy!

[...] ]]> This week I managed to fit in two podcasts.  First was episode 5 of Speaking in Tech with Greg Knieriemen and co.  Second was the first of a new series of podcasts from Violin Memory, which I recorded while in California for Tech Field Day.  You can find both podcasts from the links below.  Enjoy!

]]> http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/04/27/two-new-podcast-appearances-speaking-in-tech-and-violin/feed/ 0 Unified Storage – A Genuine Product Category? http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/04/25/unified-storage-a-genuine-product-category/ http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/04/25/unified-storage-a-genuine-product-category/#comments Wed, 25 Apr 2012 17:23:08 +0000 Chris M Evans http://thestoragearchitect.com/?p=3287 This week Hitachi launched their entry into the Unified storage array marketplace (press release).  Hitachi Unified Storage (or HUS) as it will be known, takes AMS2xxx arrays and BlueArc NAS gateway/heads, combining them together to produce a unified platform.  We’ll come back to Hitachi in a later post, but in the meantime, I [...] ]]> This week Hitachi launched their entry into the Unified storage array marketplace (press release).  Hitachi Unified Storage (or HUS) as it will be known, takes AMS2xxx arrays and BlueArc NAS gateway/heads, combining them together to produce a unified platform.  We’ll come back to Hitachi in a later post, but in the meantime, I think it is worth questioning whether Unified is a genuine category or not.

Defining Unified

The word “unified” in Unified Storage is meant to mean a unification of the common access protocols; block and file. Typically, many arrays cover only a subset of available storage access methods – CIFS/NFS, iSCSI and/or Fibre Channel. However, take a look “under the hood” and you will see that many of these products – from a physical perspective – are not unified at all.  EMC’s VNX is a marketing triumph, bringing the CLARiiON and unloved Celerra platforms together into what is sold as a magical single product.  In truth it’s far from that, with the two separate products still existing in physically separate shelves, albeit with a shiny new bezel.  Having a single management interface, of course does help to complete the illusion.

Probably the only big vendor selling a true unified platform is Netapp.  They have pretty much always offered the standard range of protocols, including iSCSI at no extra cost.  However, even this platform isn’t a perfect solution; in previous years I’ve done performance and capacity comparisions of Netapp versus the competition for block storage and found it significantly lacking in horsepower, something I know they’ve worked on in recent years.

Should we care if the hardware isn’t fully integrated?  Does it matter that we’re putting components together like a 1970′s hi-fi system?  Well, like everything, it depends.  Building a hi-fi system out of individual components is pretty straightforward; the standards and links between each piece are well defined and consistent.  Pulling together NAS gateways and storage from different vendors is fraught with support issues and taking a single “unified” product guarantees support is from a “single throat to choke”, even if each piece isn’t best of breed.  It also means simplified management too.

Market Positioning

Unified storage products are great for smaller organisations, especially those without dedicated storage teams.  However where performance and scale are important, unified arrays are probably not the optimum solution.  As with everything in IT, there’s no right or wrong way, just many shades of grey.

]]> http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/04/25/unified-storage-a-genuine-product-category/feed/ 4 Could XtremIO Steal EMC’s Thunder? http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/04/24/could-xtremio-steal-emcs-thunder/ http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/04/24/could-xtremio-steal-emcs-thunder/#comments Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:26:40 +0000 Chris M Evans http://thestoragearchitect.com/?p=3300 If the weekend IT press is to be believed, EMC are on the verge of acquiring solid-state array vendor XtremIO in a deal worth around $450 million.  This would be a remarkable outcome for a company that is still technically “in stealth mode” and has no obvious revenue or customers.

Why would EMC [...] ]]> If the weekend IT press is to be believed, EMC are on the verge of acquiring solid-state array vendor XtremIO in a deal worth around $450 million.  This would be a remarkable outcome for a company that is still technically “in stealth mode” and has no obvious revenue or customers.

Why would EMC do this?  Their normal acquisition process is to look for targets that have well established customer bases, such as Isilon or Greenplum.  XtremIO’s technology is unvalidated in the marketplace and there are already many other competitors out there; Violin Memory and Pure Storage to name only two.

In February EMC announced two new products, codenamed Lightning and Thunder (details).  Lightning became VFCache, a PCIe SSD card and was due to ship pretty much immediately.  However, Thunder was described in more ephemeral terms, with no real substance.  Did Thunder really exist at the time, or was the announcement more of an aspirational statement?  Did Thunder exist and have EMC had issues bringing the product to market?  In either scenario, the acquisition of XtremIO could be the basis of Thunder, explaining why EMC has chosen to bid on a product with no validation or history.

Let’s assume that this theory is wrong and XtremIO would be added to the existing hardware portfolio.  This would mean EMC has four main product lines that provide all-flash storage – VNX, VMAX, Thunder and XtremIO.  How would they all be differentiated and how would EMC avoid considerable confusion when selling to end customers?

The Netapp Mix

What’s more interesting in this discussion is the mention of Netapp in all of this.  It’s no secret that EMC and Netapp see each other as mortal enemies and Netapp would love the opportunity to put EMC off track.  Would Netapp have either the nerve or deep enough pockets to take EMC on?  Probably not, but it could make them pay even more to acquire XtremIO in the first place.

How did all this information get out?  Well, if you were looking to be acquired, wouldn’t it be helpful if a bidding war started?  That’s all I will say.

Solid State storage is a hot topic at the moment and after seeing many of the players in the market, I was curious to know who would be first acquired.  It seems that the first company could be one we’ve never heard of.

Related Articles

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]]> http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/04/24/could-xtremio-steal-emcs-thunder/feed/ 2 Primary Storage De-duplication: Only for SSD Arrays? http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/04/23/primary-storage-de-duplication-only-for-ssd-arrays/ http://thestoragearchitect.com/2012/04/23/primary-storage-de-duplication-only-for-ssd-arrays/#comments Mon, 23 Apr 2012 08:00:20 +0000 Chris M Evans http://thestoragearchitect.com/?p=3238 I recently wrote an article for TechTarget that looked at the implementations of data de-duplication in primary storage arrays.  One of the things that stood out for me was the lack of de-duplication support in traditional (and some might say legacy) storage arrays.

The cynical amongst us would say that the big 5 storage vendors [...] ]]> I recently wrote an article for TechTarget that looked at the implementations of data de-duplication in primary storage arrays.  One of the things that stood out for me was the lack of de-duplication support in traditional (and some might say legacy) storage arrays.

The cynical amongst us would say that the big 5 storage vendors have no vested interest in introducing a technology such as de-duplication.  If dedupe rates can reach those of secondary storage products (i.e. 90% or more) then storage vendors are going to be selling way less storage than they do today – not the most desirable scenario.  However I wonder if technology plays more of a role here than pure financial considerations.

The Netapp Effect

Netapp introduced A-SIS (advanced single instance storage) into their filer product range in 2007.  Although continually berated by other vendors as performance afflicted, A-SIS does work and does produce savings.  Again, the cynical may say that Netapp needs to have some space saving technology in place, bearing in mind the inefficiency of WAFL, however it was still a bold move by the company and five years on, none of the other top 5 have followed their lead (EMC have talked the talk but failed to deliver as yet).

Perhaps through serendipity, Netapp have implemented an architecture that works well with de-duplication.  The 4KB block structure, write-new style of WAFL makes technologies such as thin provisioning and de-duplication relatively easy to implement (although it also causes headaches in delivering other functionality such as decent tiering).

On the other hand, other array architectures would find it very difficult to implement de-duplication.  EMC VMAX, and Hitachi VSP (aka HP XP24000) still retain their legacy LUN structure, onto which they layer wide striping pools and thin provisioning.  The block size in these architectures will be a limiting factor.

Design in Mind

That brings us to the SSD-based array vendors.  These companies have a vested interest in implementing de-duplication as it is one of the features they need to help make the TCO for all SSD arrays to work.  Out of necessity dedupe is a required feature, forcing it to be part of the array design.

Solid state is also a perfect technology for deduplicated storage.  Whether using inline or post-processing, de-duplication causes subsequent read requests to be more random in nature as the pattern of deduplicated data is unpredicable.  With fixed latency, SSDs are great at delivering this type of read request that may be tricker for other array types.

Mainstream or Not?

Will de-duplication become a standard mainstream feature?  Probably not in current array platforms but definitely for the new ones where legacy history isn’t an issue.  There will come a time when those legacy platforms should be put out to pasture and by then de-duplication will be a standard feature.  When that will happen will have to be the subject of another post.

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