Users Want Scale-Out NAS Solutions

With unstructured data growth far outpacing that of databases and e-mail, it is no surprise that vendors are paying a lot of attention to the NAS market.  In the NAS segment, scale-out NAS is a on a growth vector.  The buzz is not just vendor driven; there is market pull from users looking for more efficiency in their storage architectures.  In fact, recent ESG research found that 75% of the users surveyed are either planning to deploy scale-out NAS solutions within 12 months or are at least interested in the technology (see Figure 1).[1]

With cost containment a top of mind issue for almost every business, IT staffs must spend their allotted budgets more judiciously than ever.  It follows, therefore, that organizations still in the process of evaluating scale-out NAS would be more aware of and attracted to its total potential financial impact, which may result in both capital and operational savings.  Specifically, the cost-related benefits that scale-out NAS technology offers include:

• Low entry cost. The entry cost for scale-out systems varies depending on the minimum configurations supported, with most systems starting at as few as two nodes and scaling out from there.
• Just-in-time scalability. With clustered scale-out systems, capacity and/or performance resources can be added as needed.  Because of their modular nature, there is no requirement to buy (and subsequently power and cool) frames, power supplies, and mostly empty cabinets in advance of storage capacity.
• Riding the commodity curve. As users defer purchases of frames, processors, or disks, they can benefit from the ongoing decline in component prices over time.
• Higher utilization rates. Better utilization means deferred purchases of new capacity.  Since all of the NAS heads in scale-out systems can address the entire pool of usable capacity in a given cluster, there is no stranded capacity.
• Operational savings. A single point of management allows scale-out NAS deployments to increase capacity without adding IT headcount.  The attractiveness of this benefit is evident in the percentage of both current and planned users surveyed by ESG that cite ease of management as a key driver of scale-out NAS usage or plans.[2]

The potential for overall operational savings with scale-out NAS solutions is a compelling driver for adoption.  Where users were once focused on reducing CAPEX, respondents in ESG’s spring 2009 Data Center Spending Intentions Survey indicated that operational savings are far more important than CAPEX reduction during the economic crunch businesses have been facing for the past year-plus by a ratio of almost 2 to 1.[3]

HP’s New IBRIX Fusion-Based X9000 Series

HP closed the acquisition of IBRIX on August 5, 2009.  On November 4, it announced a full product family based on the IBRIX Fusion file system, the X9000 series.  The StorageWorks X9000 series is comprised of three new appliances:

• X9320 – Billed by HP as “performance storage,” this scale-out clustered appliance ships in models that can be either performance or capacity optimized and support up to 21 TB with SAS drives or 48 TB with SATA drives. HP claims that each appliance provides over 500 MB/sec write and over 1 GB/sec read performance, scaling linearly as more appliances are added to the cluster.
• X9720 – HP calls this one “extreme storage.” This actually replaces the PolyServe-based ExDS9100 HP introduced last year.  It features a very dense architecture with up to 656 TB (raw) per cabinet.
• X9300 – This is a gateway solution that allows users to drop a clustered NAS gateway in front of legacy storage (either DAS or SAN) and bring it into the NAS single namespace.  It includes out-of-the gate support for HP StorageWorks MSA, EVA, P4000, and third-party storage.  Customers can also use gateways to deploy in traditional parallel file system architecture for high-performance applications requiring high-bandwidth and scale-out NFS.

All three appliances can coexist within a single namespace, giving users the ability to manage various types of storage, with different performance profiles, in a single file system image that scales to 16 PB.  The X9000 series has built-in policy management and automated file migration, which reduces cost by moving less active data from higher cost storage to more affordable, higher density storage to lower operational costs and improve overall storage efficiency.

Unlike a number of competitive clustered file system solutions which are tuned exclusively for bandwidth intensive workloads, the X9000 performs well with a wide variety of workloads, including response time sensitive small random workloads (e.g., general purpose file sharing) and bandwidth intensive large sequential workloads (e.g., high definition video editing).   This competitive advantage for HP has been validated by ESG Lab.^[4] In terms of workloads, most systems ESG has encountered are optimized for one or the other; very few file systems perform equally well in both scenarios.

HP announced a number of features available with the X9000 series:

• Data Tiering allows a single file system to have storage of different characteristics and files to move across them based on file attributes, access history, etc.
• Continuous Remote Replication replicates data from one file system to another, local or remote, for disaster recovery protection. It was designed for very low RPO and RTO using a continuous replication approach.
• Rebalancer redistributes data across the physical storage elements, balancing IO across nodes and improving performance.

These features give the HP X9000 series an edge against other next-generation file servers that have seen success in vertical markets that didn’t require such a robust feature set.  As a result, most either lack these capabilities, are just starting to roll them out, or rely on storage array functionality, which presents a whole new set of challenges.  By incorporating these features into the file system, all functions are performed at the file, directory, or file system level—without depending on array functionality that typically operates at the storage volume level.

HP’s Converged Infrastructure Play

The umbrella theme of the HP launch was converged infrastructure that leverages the entire breadth of the HP industry standard components portfolio.  The X9000 series benefits from the converged infrastructure play in a couple of ways:

• Reduced time to market. By deploying scale-out NAS software on industry-standard servers, networks and block storage arrays, HP can accelerate development of new products and features.   The X9000 series gets quick access to the newest technology because of the modular architecture of the platform., i.e. servers->blades, traditional disks ->SSD/Flash, GbE->10GbE networking, NFS/CIFS -> Cloud/REST protocols.  This architecture gives HP the tools to continually evolve the platform quickly and cost-effectively
• Future-Proof Architectures. Users have limited benefit from HP’s reduced time to market unless there is a clear and non-disruptive migration path.  Retiring storage platforms can be a long and costly data migration effort because of fork-lift hardware and software upgrades.  The X9000 provides a set of utilities within the solution empowering the systems administrator to off-load data within the namespace from older block disk technologies to new storage subsystems within the cluster. This seamless migration of individual files, directories or segments of the namespace provides an operational framework for retiring physical storage assets. The same suite of tools also allows for the dynamic migration of network infrastructure, virtual IP addresses and the retiring of X9000 file-serving nodes. Every component of an X9000 system can be upgraded, migrated and retired, resulting in a clear upgrade path for customers looking to seamlessly grow their infrastructure over time, while keeping their administrative costs for platform upgrades at a minimum.

Analysis

Oftentimes, when a company is acquired, there is a hiccup in development as the acquisition is digested and the portfolio is rationalized.  Some companies overcome the challenge of disrupting the acquired company’s momentum by allowing it to continue as a standalone business and integrate back office operations fairly quickly and technology operations over time.  HP did not take this route with IBRIX; instead, it immediately embraced the technology, allocated new resources, and accelerated both development and integration of the IBRIX Fusion file system with HP’s server and storage portfolios to introduce a fully integrated product family in only two months.

The new portfolio fits well with what users are looking for from their storage vendors.  ESG research indicates that users want both dedicated appliances and gateways—in fact, 81% of users surveyed by ESG indicate that gateways will play a role in integrating SAN and NAS infrastructures (see Figure 2), indicating a gateway in the X9000 product family is a good move for HP.

With the new X-series product line, HP has the NAS and unified storage environments covered, providing users with choice and flexibility in deployment models that can be employed in different combinations while still residing under a single namespace for management efficiencies.

Perhaps even more interesting about this announcement, HP rolled it out as part of its “converged infrastructure” initiative.  The initiative is all about creating shared, flexible resource pools that deliver IT services to support the business.  And while, to some vendors, convergence means creating stove-piped appliances with server virtualization built in, HP’s X9000 series is a set of specialty, fully virtualized appliances that stretch to and span physical systems leveraging the IBRIX file system technology, creating a scalable, tiered file storage resource pool.

HP’s To-Do List

PolyServe has been repositioned to target SQL consolidation and mainstream, midrange NAS.  But many PolyServe users find it complex to set up and use.  HP solved the usability issues with the ExDS9100, offering a simple command set (only about 20 commands) and integration with the Blade Matrix management system.  Now the ExDS has been replaced by the IBRIX-based X9720.  And while HP is saying PolyServe will live on for general purpose NAS, ESG does not consider it a strong fit.  It is a strong fit, however, for SQL server consolidation.  PolyServe has some benefits when deployed in SQL Server environments with its shared data architecture and the HP PolyServe infrastructure has been certified with Microsoft SQL Server’s Always On program.  PolyServe’s strong CIFS support and AD integration make it a strong fit for Windows consolidation.  Polyserve is great for consolidating structured data applications like SQL and other database and transactional applications that benefit from a clustered filesystem.  But for general purpose NAS supporting both CIFS and NFS for user home directories, PolyServe’s complexity will make it a bit hard to swallow when competing against NetApp’s stronghold.  Considering that it is expensive to keep up development work on two clustered file systems and there enough overlap between PolyServe and Fusion, it is probably a safe bet that development efforts will be combined over time.  ESG would not be surprised to see HP converge the best of PolyServe with the best of IBRIX and standardize on a single platform.

It would also be helpful to add iSCSI support.  Users want unified storage—the gateway approach brings that and, as we’ve seen, gateways will play a big role in unified storage environments.  But users also want one fluid pool of storage that can be allocated to meet needs, whether they are block or file.  When using a gateway combined with a SAN, users still have to perform capacity planning and management for both file and block data separately.  While gateways are an attractive path to redeploy legacy storage and extend the investment of block-based systems, users will be looking for even more convergence of the infrastructure to offer both block and file data services over time.  HP has the foundational technology to build a compelling unified storage offering; it provides scale-out block storage with the LeftHand Networks-based P4000.  ESG sees a side-by-side approach providing block and file from the same management framework that manages a virtual pool of servers, networking and disks as a potential first step.  Offering an integrated stack is the next logical progression.

The Bigger Truth

Featuring “pay-as-you grow” scalable architectures and improved manageability, scale-out NAS solutions enable rapid, on-the-fly expansion of storage systems in support of fast-growing applications.  The fact that the current single economic crisis is re-focusing customers’ attention on financial considerations gives users another powerful set of reasons to consider scale-out NAS.  Unlike most technologies that require organizations to “spend money to save money,” scale-out NAS does not require a large upfront capital investment, allowing users to start small and grow as their storage needs expand. This should appeal to cost-conscious IT staffs looking to both maximize their storage investments and support key business and IT initiatives.

One of the challenges for IBRIX as a standalone company was getting to market—factors exacerbated by the macroeconomic climate over the past fifteen months.  Users are actively reducing the number of vendors they do business with and they want integrated systems rather than piece parts they need to assemble.  It was never a product issue with IBRIX; it was a go-to-market issue.  With HP, that problem is solved.  HP’s blade matrix technology has had strong reviews and user feedback, its StorageWorks is well known and widely deployed—now HP has another arrow in its quiver with Fusion and is armed to go after the NAS market and pose a serious threat to the incumbents.

What is most impressive about the HP announcement is the speed with which HP integrated IBRIX into a full product line.  Sure, the two companies worked together before the acquisition, but HP was riding the PolyServe horse for scale-out.  IBRIX was second fiddle, a solution of last resort—vendors always give preference to their own gear.  IBRIX did not have HP engineering’s attention and had to claw and scratch for sales attention.  And yet, two months later, voilà: a complete high end scale-out NAS portfolio.  That is a testament to both the ease-of-integration of the IBRIX software and the HP culture.  There is no way this could have happened with a “not invented here” attitude; it required a “do what is right for the business” attitude, which the November 4 announcement clearly displays.

[2] Source: ESG Research Brief: Scale-Out NAS Adoption & Market Drivers, February 2009.

[3] Source: ESG Research Report: 2009 Data Center Spending Intentions Survey, March 2009.

[4] See the ESG Lab Validation Report: IBRIX Fusion – Simple Scalable File System, April 2008.