In computing, the transition from mainframes to blades is
well established. What about storage? There is exactly one choice: the Xiotech
ISE.
We throw words around like crazy in computing. Once a word
starts to become associated with something good, every person in marketing in
the universe latches on to that word, and finds a way to associate it with
their product. Most of the analysts aren’t much help here.
The opposite applies, too. Once a word is no longer in fashion,
no vendor admits to selling it, and no buyer admits to owning one. A case in
point is “mainframe.” Some time ago, you had to have a mainframe to be in the
big leagues of computing; otherwise, you were in the minor leagues, dealing
with unimportant problems. Now, even though mainframes are alive and well and
broadly used, it’s hard to get anyone to admit it. “Everyone” knows that
mainframes are old-fashioned.
In spite of their un-cool-i-tude, let’s talk mainframes for
a quick minute. What’s a mainframe? In computing, it’s a big single thing that
gets all of many big jobs done at the same time. It is your central computing
resource. It’s valuable. It takes lots of time and attention to manage, but
rewards the attention by being the work-horse of your data center. As your
workload grows, your mainframe can start to get overloaded; no problem.
Capacity measurement and planning is a key skill with mainframes, and even
better, mainframes are built to be expanded. That’s why they’re called “main
frame.” It isn’t the CPU – it’s the frame (the main one!) that structures your
computing engines. Sometimes your mainframe needs more compute-power; no
problem, you can add it in. Sometimes your mainframe needs more I/O channels
or local memory; no problem.
What’s cool today, if not mainframes? We all know the
answer: it’s racks and racks of servers or blades. Each one is powerful but
inexpensive. You increase capacity by buying more of them. That’s why
virtualization is such a powerful trend in the data center: VM-Ware (and
similar products) helps you use all those servers more efficiently. Everyone
has lots and lots of servers; therefore, the need to use them as effectively as
possible is ubiquitous; therefore, Hyper-V and its brethren are hot.
What’s going on in the world of storage? Do we have storage
mainframes? Of course not! Heaven forfend! “Mainframes” are the bad old,
un-cool thing, so there’s no way my storage is a mainframe – it’s a SAN, a
storage area network! It’s a network, see, it’s cool!
Now let’s cut through the verbiage, and apply the criteria
of mainframe to storage. A mainframe (see above) is:
- A big single thing that gets all of many big storage jobs
done at the same time; check.
- Your central storage resource; check.
- It’s valuable; check.
- It takes lots of time and attention to manage; check.
- Capacity measurement and planning is a critical function;
check.
- You expand capacity by augmenting it, adding things into it;
check.
There’s a simple rule here. Suppose you buy a “small, simple”
mainframe. When you’ve added huge amounts of capacity to it, how many do you
have? If the answer is “one,” you’ve got a mainframe. If you’ve got a small,
simple server/blade collection, you’ve already got a bunch of them. When you’ve
added loads of capacity, you’ve got loads more of them. You’ve never got just
one. You start with some, you grow to lots, and expand to lots and lots.
Applying our rule to storage, it is undeniable that while vendors
will avoid the “m-word” like crazy, what they’ve all got is storage mainframes.
They are single things, just like a railroad train is a single thing regardless
of the number of engines at the front or freight cars at the back. Even if they
choose to call it “cloud storage,” the brutal fact is that it is still a
monolithic, single, unbroken entity – a mainframe, in short!
There is exactly one vendor in the market who has created for storage what blades are for computing, and that is Xiotech, with its ISE product. You do not expand an ISE; you buy another one. Each ISE is a separate, free-standing, inexpensive but powerful resource, directly connected to a switch – just like a server.
The Xiotech ISE is the anti-mainframe, and is the natural choice for server-farm data center storage.
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