As I furiously cancel meetings and push off any work not life-threatening to finish demos, voiceovers, blog posts, and STO5420, STO5464 and STO5638 content… This just crossed my path…
Earlier this week, Wikibon published their study of virtualization and also one of the only (?) large scale studies of storage and virtualization and storage intersection. Here were some of their key findings, and you can see the full report in gory detail here:
- server virtualization is not hitting a wall and is continuing to grow from 69% of servers virtualized today to an expected 84% in eighteen months time.
- the experimentation phase of multi-hypervisor is coming to an end, and consolidation of the number of hypervisors is expected over the next few years.
- 48% of the sample said they were willing to trade the risk of lock-in for simplification and expect to focus on a single hypervisor approach.
- VMware is dominant, both in market share (76%) and functionality. The Wikibon survey found that all workload types were now being run on VMware.
- Microsoft Hyper-V is second in the marketplace survey with 14% share. The perception of many smaller installations with mainly Microsoft business software is that Hyper-V is now "good-enough" and that the Windows 2012 System Management functionality has seen major improvements in functionality.
- There is a specific fast-growing niche for KVM in Cloud Service Providers, ISVs and cloud platforms such as OpenStack. It has strong support from hyperscale users such as Google. (This is the only study finding that doesn’t jive with my personal anecdotal experience – I find Openstack explorative work in many enterprises I talk to)
- OVM is a small and fast growing niche for large Oracle implementations. (VERY small niche)
Also (and a much-watched study in EMC, where most of our product teams have dedicate product management focused on virtualization and associated workloads/functions/features), Wikibon refreshed their study of “storage and virtualization”. While there’s a lot of change that we’ll see here in the future (vSAN, vVols, etc), some of the key findings where:
- EMC VNX had the most VMware integration of all the storage arrays analyzed and led in the overall group, the block-only group, and the file-only group. Yeah! – and that’s with our OLD platform, hint, hint – and people will suggest that the new one is just hardware, nothing could be further from the truth – come to VMworld STO5464 to learn more! BTW – I think we could do WAY more here (I’m not happy with our XCOPY; VAAI-NAS snap-on-snap depth; delay in the Web client VSI plugin - stay tuned on all three – again STO5464). Staying on top means never accepting less than perfect.
- NetApp was in second place overall in the file-only group; EMC VNX and NetApp were significantly ahead of the rest of the arrays (no surprise from a respected competitor – come to VMworld STO5638 to see Vaughn and I go back and forth!)
- EMC had a clean sweep of the block-only group, with the VNX, VMAX 10K and VMAX 20-40K in first, second, and third place.
- Hitachi was the most improved from 2012, with solid improvement both in the VSP and the HUS lines. (I’m finally seeing HDS actually seem to focus on this space)
- HP 3PAR scored well in the block-only group.
- Dell storage arrays were solid, with appropriate integration for the lower end of the market.
- IBM did not add any significant improvement over 2012.
The key functionality improvements for 2014 for storage arrays will include support for new VMware vVols, vFlash, vSAN, support for Microsoft APIs such as ODX, and support for migration between different hypervisor environments. Wikibon notes that many of these will be a “reset” that will give new players (all the AFA players) to leapfrog up. That is true, but presumes that we aren’t all over it :-)
Wikibon also note that we (EMC) might try to “close access” to the APIs to retain our current lead. NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH. First of all – if people haven’t gotten the memo, we simply don’t have that option. Joe Tucci’s model of the “Federation” of VMware/EMC/Pivotal with each party having freedom of motion in their space – ergo independence – has been the case, and as far as I see it will keep being the case. It’s just too good to change – when evaluated through the eyes of the customer. Second of all – that’s not how we roll. We accept competition. We accept innovation. We know we need to fight continuously on our own merits/demerits.
It’s an interesting study. Don’t just read my extracts - you can read the whole thing here! Feedback, as always welcome… Do you agree with the survey results?
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