Virtual Geek

Dell EMC World 2017: RedHat Ready Bundle Update!

The week before Dell EMC World we released a critical update to the Dell EMC RedHat Ready Bundle – and while many eyes are on Las Vegas, it will figure prominently at the OpenStack Summit occuring in Boston.

First – I don’t want to bury the lead: if you’re deploying the RedHat Cloud stack – with ever bit of goodness, from CloudForms (an IaaS CMP), OpenShift (the Redhat PaaS based on Kubernetes), you should evaluate consuming it rather than building it…  Because the Dell EMC Redhat OpenStack Platform Ready Bundle = the easy button.

As a reminder:

Ready Nodes, Ready Bundles, Ready Systems is the taxonomy we use for our prog(ram where we bring multiple technology pieces together at Dell EMC.   Ready Nodes = software + server; Ready Bundles = software + servers/network/storage; Ready Systems = software + CI/HCI.   

In each case – Ready = more than a simple combo of products.  Ready = designed to provide all the end-to-end assists for simplified configuration, sizing, quoting, deployment, financial packaging.   BTW – IDC calls this category of “thing” Certified Reference Systems.  

The Ready Node/Bundle/System program is also how we bring our open technology partner ecosystem (SAP, Microsoft, RedHat, VMware, Pivotal, Cloudera, Splunk, Hortonworks, the HPC ecosystem and many others) to life – and strive to make things SIMPLER for people who are more on the “build” end of the “build-to-buy” continuum.

This is the 10th generation of this package and we’ve never been able to take the simplicity as far as we can now.

What’s new in the latest revision?

A ton.  The latest RedHat releases, but also two big additions from Dell EMC.

• The first is JetPack.   The Dell EMC team (and thank you team!) have done a TON of work around full stack deployment from the lowest level all the way to the top of the stack.   This is something that goes far beyond what I have seen anywhere else (would love customer feedback to validate/dispute – please comment!)  This can represent an order of magnitude greater simplification of getting up and running.
• Dell EMC PowerEdge FX2.   This was by customer popular demand.  FX2 is a pretty cool platform – very flexible, and enables a broad set of configurations at a ton of scales.   The innovations in FX2 are an interesting hint to where we could go next on next generation modular disaggregated systems – we’re working on some cool stuff.

It’s SO the “easy button” for customers going down this path that it powered the live demonstration at the Boston OpenStack summit showing full “from bare metal” standup including Ironic, Neutron setup and more.     Look closely at the picture :-)

A picture of what is in the stack is shown below. 

Note: while we have made this solution ridiculously turnkey relative to “build it yourself” it’s been my experience that the RedHat OpenStack Ready Bundle (and OpenStack, Kubernetes, CloudForms in general) are best directed towards and used by customers who have a cloud operations team that has software development expertise and experience.

How serious are we about this?   There are a lot of #1s we’ve been delivering together with RedHat – from being the first to co-engineer a stack solution, the only OpenStack config with full support with multiple concurrent storage backends, the first to publish the SPEC Cloud IaaS benchmark results.

This is just the latest of years of collaboration.

Like all Ready Bundles – there’s more than just packaging together things – Dell EMC takes L1/L2 support, can transact the full solution (with OEM SKUs), we have an Automated Design and Sizing tool. 

Note: one area that I’m pushing the team to add in future releases is the ability to augment Ceph with our SDS portfolio.   I know that for continued alignment with RedHat, we will keep Ceph (their SDS) as part of the stack for as long as it’s core to RedHat (the foreseeable future).   I think it’s very defensible that ScaleIO can be a superior transactional SDS, and Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) can be a superior S3 compliant object store – with the necessary Glance/Keystone integration.   In the end, the customer would chose what they deploy.   To be clear – these are not in scope of the Ready Bundle yet, but customers can absolutely use them together (along with the entirety of the Dell EMC Portfolio – with broad Cinder, Manila support).

The Ready Bundle also includes CloudForms support – the RedHat CMP (which has integration with multiple public cloud stacks – like Azure, AWS, and others).

… and also includes OpenShift – which is the RedHat PaaS built around Docker and Kubernetes.

BTW – I noticed on Twitter that some pointed out that there’s a “multiple stacking” effect here – with kernel mode VMs (KVM in this case) hosting containers and container managers (Docker/Swarm), which in turn support cluster managers (Kubernetes) and all the elements of a PaaS.

It does seem a little silly (and the picture is funny) – but I would warn people about being holier-then-thou about this.   It’s not dissimilar to our approach in the Dell Technologies aligned Developer-Ready Infrastructure (which has ESXi/NSX at it’s base, BOSH, Diego, persistence and data fabrics in the middle, and PCF and Kubo at the top.  

It’s our job (and RedHat’s) to make the complete stack as compelling as possible – and know that we’re working like crazy on it.

What about the physical build?   The minimal configuration looks like the below.   It’s notable that the controller nodes and admin host create, in effect management domain and tenant domain isolation (VMware VCF team, please take note).

Dear technical VMware readers - this is a similar model to what we do with the Enterprise Hybrid Cloud (where all the elements in the management stack run on a management cluster – currently a small VxRail) – that in turn points at VxRail, or VxRack or VxBlock for the workload/tenant domain itselves.   This element of EHC is the peer of the CloudForms – and is the turnkey instantiation of the vRealize stack.  pay attention VMware field – this is why VCF is the core of VxRack SDDC, but EHC > VCF/VxRack SDDC.   It’s why EHC/NHC is the peer to this RedHat offer, not VCF.  I’ve heard people say “VCF is a turnkey cloud” – it may be in the future as it incorporates the lifecycle management of vRealize (at which point EHC and VCF merge), but that’s not the case today.  If a customer wants a turnkey VMware stack today – the answer is EHC. 

This model is also something that enables the RedHat OpenStack Ready Bundle to scale from the minimal 16U config up to a 90U monster for ~10,000 VM instances (of course the # of VMs is totally dependent on config).

So where do we see the most success?   Here I’ll say something that will make my OpenStack friends get angry with me – but I have to always be honest and transparent.   I’m NOT seeing a ton of success in the enterprise at large.    Most enterprises I see (I’m sure I have my own “sample bias”) tend to struggle with the comment I made at the start:

While we have made this solution ridiculously turnkey relative to “build it yourself” it’s been my experience that the RedHat OpenStack Ready Bundle (and OpenStack, Kubernetes, CloudForms in general) are best directed towards and used by customers who have a cloud operations team that has software development expertise and experience.

I’m personally involved in very notable Enterprise customers that need acknowledgement.   Most, however find that their preference is to leverage their existing VMware stack – and the VMware Integrated OpenStack is seeing much more pickup than I anticipated. 

However, in the telco/SP space, I’m seeing a lot of OpenStack that I see being deployed today is in the NFV use case.

Look – just because I say something doesn’t make it correct – or that it’s a hard and fast rule ;-)

Beyond the offer itself – there’s a strategic statement in here a “meta point” if you will…

You’ll note that I make a similar comment on the Microsoft Azure Stack post here.   It’s because while they are two different stacks (though peers and analagous) the “meta point” applies equally to both.

The Dell EMC RedHat OpenStack Ready Bundle is a vivid illustration of the Dell historical partnership with RedHat continuing in the new Dell Technologies era.

Yes, of course there is an element of “co-opetition” here – we have completely “Dell Technologies” family offers:

• The Enterprise Hybrid Cloud – which is the turnkey instantiation of the VMware and Dell EMC stack up to the IaaS layer deployed on CI (VxBlock) and HCI (VxRail and VxRack)
• The Native Hybrid Cloud – which is the turnkey instantiation of the Pivotal, VMware and Dell EMC stack up to the PaaS layer, Developer-Ready Infrastructure with all of the 4 abstraction models develoeprs need (Cloud Foundry structured PaaS + containers and Kubernetes via Kubo + the best VMs on ESXi – all with rich NSX integration, and the data platform layer including  a rich data fabrics and an object store).

As much as I believe we’re entering an era of “stack consolidation” (where the only players left standing will need to have “stack completeness” for things that are becoming “fundamental” infrastructure commodities to consume)…   I also believe that customers want opinionated partners – but will reject partners whose opinions are dogmatic, who don’t offer choice. 

Dell Technologies stands for choice – and our embrace of the RedHat OpenStack platform (along with our awesome Microsoft offer)  and others means that it’s not just words – it’s action.

Put it this way – if you agree with the following 3 obvious statements:

• Hybrids with a mix of on- and off-premises clouds are the winning operating cloud model.
• …that there won’t be one that rules them all – but multiple (each federating with the hyperscale public clouds)
• … and the most value is in focusing “above the value line” – making the infrastructure fade away more and more as something to be consumed, not built/maintained, so you can focus your money, talent, and efforts on building new apps and new analytics in new ways…

… Then Dell Technologies is the answer for you.   We have a strong opinion and capabilities in family, and together with our friends, the industries only full complement of choice.

Congrats to the RedHat and Dell EMC team that work so hard, and have worked so hard for many years, together on this latest industrialized, curated, simplification for our joint customers: the Dell EMC RedHat OpenStack Ready Bundle!

So… are you running RedHat OpenStack?   What has your experience been?   Do you want an easy button?

Dell EMC World 2017: Azure Stack Update!

I’m really interested to see what Microsoft and Dell EMC can do together around Azure Stack.

I won’t bury the lead: the Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack is the the easy button for customers looking for the on-premise peer to Azure.   It has common APIs, common semantics, common data services.   It even has aligned common consumption economic models.

But there are two other things “beneath the headline” on this one that I think are of strategic import:

1. Like the RedHat OpenStack Ready Bundle – our commitment to Microsoft Azure shows that while Dell Technologies is opinionated, and we have a complete stack “in family” (Enterprise Hybrid cloud, Native Hybrid Cloud), our partnership with key “friends” (Microsoft certainly!) is real, and something we will continue to double-down on.   I can be quite stubborn.   I refuse to lose.   The same goes for all my Dell brothers and sisters.  The Dell EMC Stack for Microsoft Azure Stack will be the best – and for customers that chose to go this route, we are determined to be their choice – count on it.
2. That we are a new company.   Dell’s collaboration with Microsoft has been long and massive – starting on the client business, Windows Server, and the full compliment of the Microsoft server platforms.   There was an era of tight partnership between Microsoft and EMC about a decade ago – EMC CLARiiON ran on something a lot like Windows Server Core, and there was a boom around Exchange Server 2000 and 2003 and SANs.    But then things changed between EMC and Microsoft with the acquisition of VMware, and Exchange and DAG.   It’s not that we became enemies, but there was less to partner around.   Weird aside not everyone knows (many know me primarily during the time where I was focused on VMware – the startup I was part of that EMC acquired was very centered around Exchange, my first EMC gig was leading the Microsoft practice in the field and I spent years living on and beside the Microsoft Redmond campus.

Dell started collaboration around Microsoft’s cloud efforts early, and it was the first partnership to deliver a Microsoft on-premises cloud stack – the Cloud Platform System – in 2015.   It was the first attempt, and they learnt a lot together.   The efforts around Azure Stack built on this baseline.

I remember the first “post Dell EMC acquisition meeting with my Microsoft counterparts on this project, Mike Neil who leads the Azure Stack and Azure operations) –a cool gig and a cool dude, his leader Scott Guthrie, and his leader, Satya Nadella (who I have a bit of a fanboi thing for – amazing to see Microsoft change under his leadership). 

The meeting was interesting.  I got the sense that they were genuinely curious – would the great Microsoft/Dell partnership continue?   We were like wise genuinely curious on the same topic!

Answer: hell ya – our partnership will continue.  In fact, we’re going to hit the gas pedal.

EMC brought something new to the party – we have more experience with maintaining turnkey stacks on premises in “full lifecycle” – a business we invented with VCE and Vblock/VxBlock – and the fundamental capabilities to support that business at scale.

In fact, as the meeting went on, we pointed out how over the future of Azure Stack – we wanted more.  We want to innovate together.   Dell Technologies is more than the sum of the parts – and stands as a giant in a new way, a new strategic dimension.   We can build offers by just putting the hardware under a stack someone else has locked down – but there’s no fun in that :-)

• In the same way that there is overwhelming demand for Pivotal Cloud Foundry on Azure (you would be SHOCKED to hear the number of Azure cores that are running PCF), if we want Azure Stack to keep it’s promise of “common API, common semantics, common data services” – then surely we need to make PCF on Azure Stack part of the offer!
• Like with RedHat – we think we can improve the platform with stronger data persistence layers.   Storage Spaces Direct is fine.   We think ScaleIO is better.   Unlike RedHat where ECS can be a better object store – it’s not the case here, because the Azure Blob store doesn’t use the S3 APIs, and Azure Stack must have consistent API, semantics, and data surfaces.
• We think that just like we’ve learnt with the Enterprise Hybrid Cloud – Azure Stack will need more data protection services than native capabilities.   We will need to evolve Azure Stack to include more of this over time – without breaking the lifecycle and stack experience.
• Even with VMware – there’s a dynamic of partnership that is possible.   Hybrid Cloud models really benefit from NSX – and as VMware is showing with NSX-T, it is open – and can benefit non vSphere stacks.   VMware customers are also asking for something that doesn’t exist yet, but could which is Azure stack on top of the investment in the vSphere platform they have already made, in the same vein as VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO)

Microsoft saw our commitment to openness, to choice.   They saw how we were going to structure the program for success.    And here we are.  That’s one of the “stories behind the story”.

I’m a big believer that you build teams around a shared purpose – structure and alignment matter.  The Dell EMC teams that work on the VMware-aligned stacks are 100% focused on that purpose.  Conversely, the Dell EMC team working on Azure Stack led by Paul Galjan are 100% focused on making the Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack overwhelmingly successful.

So – what’s in the offer?

The first release (you may have heard the codename “Sacramento”) will include the full Azure Stack software release, which includes the full set of IaaS and PaaS services, Azure Resource Manager, various developer tools, and runs on what Microsoft refers to “cloud inspired infrastructure” (in essence, HCI powered by Storage Spaces Direct as the SDS).

The hardware expands in 4 node scaling increments – and has as small management/admin domain for isolation of those functions (similar to how we do for EHC – where the vRealize and NSX components are isolated from the tenant/workload domain).

We will be including Avamar and Data Domain for back, Cloudlink for cloud portable encryption services, and Pivotal Cloud Foundry.

 

Some of you may have noticed the red “Developer’s Edition” on the left.   We’ve found overwhelming demand for Azure Stack – and so have built an early adopter program along with Microsoft.   It’s a single node that lets customers learn, play, and get an understanding of what to expect.

A really big part of a Hybrid Cloud is a consistent management experience for the off- and on-premises instantiation.   Frankly, I’m not sure if calling a CMP that points at and consumes a public cloud IaaS is really a hybrid.  There’s so much more to a cloud stack, including all of its’ APIs and services.

Microsoft has done a good job of making this very common – in fact, the Azure Resource Manager is at the core of both Azure Stack and Azure – and you can take Azure Resource Management (ARM) templates and use them exactly the same way in both cases.   It’s pretty simple, and pretty cool – check it out below!

I want to reiterate a “meta point” that matters a LOT.    You’ll note that I make a similar comment on the RedHat OpenStack Ready Bundle post here.   It’s because while they are two different stacks (though peers and analagous) the “meta point” applies equally to both.

The Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack is a vivid illustration of the Dell historical partnership with Microsoft continuing in the new Dell Technologies era.

Yes, of course there is an element of “co-opetition” here – we have completely “Dell Technologies” family offers:

• The Enterprise Hybrid Cloud – which is the turnkey instantiation of the VMware and Dell EMC stack up to the IaaS layer deployed on CI (VxBlock) and HCI (VxRail and VxRack)
• The Native Hybrid Cloud – which is the turnkey instantiation of the Pivotal, VMware and Dell EMC stack up to the PaaS layer, Developer-Ready Infrastructure with all of the 4 abstraction models develoeprs need (Cloud Foundry structured PaaS + containers and Kubernetes via Kubo + the best VMs on ESXi – all with rich NSX integration, and the data platform layer including  a rich data fabrics and an object store).

As much as I believe we’re entering an era of “stack consolidation” (where the only players left standing will need to have “stack completeness” for things that are becoming “fundamental” infrastructure commodities to consume)…   I also believe that customers want opinionated partners – but will reject partners whose opinions are dogmatic, who don’t offer choice. 

Dell Technologies stands for choice – and our embrace of the Microsoft Azure platform (along with our awesome RedHat offer) means that it’s not just words – it’s action.

Put it this way – if you agree with the following 3 obvious statements:

• Hybrids with a mix of on- and off-premises clouds are the winning operating cloud model.
• …that there won’t be one that rules them all – but multiple (each federating with the hyperscale public clouds)
• … and the most value is in focusing “above the value line” – making the infrastructure fade away more and more as something to be consumed, not built/maintained, so you can focus your money, talent, and efforts on building new apps and new analytics in new ways…

… Then Dell Technologies is the answer for you.   We have a strong opinion and capabilities in family, and together with our friends, the industries only full complement of choice.

It’s been FASCINATING.   Tech Preview 3 is out, and we have amazingly (at least to me), sold many of them.   It highlights that the demand for Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack is off the charts – far, far outstripping what we saw with “v1.0” – the Cloud Platform System.   This customer demand coupled with our double down, our experiences – they guide the path forward.

A huge “congrats!” to the Dell EMC and Microsoft team who have worked so hard – and the platform General Availability is right around the corner!!!

Dell EMC World 2017: VxRack FLEX Updates!

We’re seeing a ton of growth and demand around VxRack FLEX. 

As a reminder – VxRack FLEX can be described in a single sentence: “If you want an insanely scalable and flexible HCI Rack-Scale system, with hypervisor of choice or bare metal… one that can start small and scale out - VxRack FLEX is for you.”

The “keyword” with VxRack FLEX is in the name: FLEXIBILITY.   Broad configurability, broad workload choice.  With an underpinning of ScaleIO – it’s performance and scaling is like nothing else out there.  And, like all VxRack Rack-Scale systems – it includes the physical network and the SDN as part of the system domain.

We’re working furiously on expanding the automation and management and orchestration domain – with Project Symphony building on top of iDRAC, PowerTools for full HCI management.   

VxRack FLEX is a CRITICAL strategic platform for Dell EMC.  Why?   Let me explain with a paragraph and a picture.

First – a picture!

 

This picture illustrates two very, very different ARCHITECTURAL approaches.   I use the words “vertical” and “horizontal” to group them.  

• In the case of a “vertical” stack – you start with a single stack, and ALL your infrastructure choices then flow from that.   Those choices are fixed, but make sense – for that particular stack.   Want an example?  It’s not a coincidence on how Azure Stack scales right now (units of 4) – because it’s base of scaling is linked to the use of Storage Spaces Direct.   Want another example?  Why does VxRack SDDC and VMware Cloud Foundation have a particular switch fabric, or scale in the way it scales?  Because we know that each and every host will be in a vSphere ESXi cluster – and that those clusters have sweet spots.     This very tight coupling up and down the stack makes this approach result in the SIMPLEST stacks to deploy, to operationalize, and to lifecyle.   The flip side is that they are “rigid” in a sense, and also of course – they are for that stack only.
• In the case of a “horizontal” stack – you are building an infrastructure platform that supports a multitude of stacks and use cases.   By DEFINITION that means it can never be as automated, as a simple as the “vertical” stacks – it means that their programmability becomes really important.   The flip side is that they are more “flexible”. 

Second – a paragraph.

“Composability” is another word for what we are doing today with VxRack FLEX – programmatic infrastructure with a clear, consistent API surface, and that can scale compute, network, storage in very independent ways.   Frankly, I think the way that we’re doing it is better than HPE – our focus is NOT on very proprietary hardware and binding the software management layer tightly, but rather making it a loose coupling of open micro services.   Our ingredients will always be based on our massive supply chain and PowerEdge innovation engine.  Why?   Because frankly otherwise you never get the scale economics that customers demand.  Time (and customers and the market!) will tell.

There’s a lot going on in VxRack FLEX land…

But the most important thing for me are customers.   I love getting pictures from customers that are choosing the wise path of buying what they shouldn’t build themselves :-)

See below!

 

Thanks for sharing, and thanks for being our customers!   

What about YOU – do you think you’re biased towards “vertical stacks” or “horizontal stacks” – or a blend of both?   What do you think the market is going to prefer over time?   Share your opinion and experiences – go ahead and comment!

Dell EMC World 2017: Cloud FLEX–I can’t believe we’re doing this!

Seriously, there’s a part of me that doesn’t believe what we’re doing here.   I think it’s ballsy, but I also think it’s awesome.   We could seriously disrupt our business, the industry – that could be good, bad… or GREAT.  I like that we’re playing for all the marbles :-)

Michael Dell challenged the team with a simple crystal clear challenge based on some strategic observations. 

1. We are the leader in HCI – outgrowing everyone else, and pulling out even further.
2. HCI has an intrinsic architectural benefit vs. traditional stacks (including CI) – it’s easy to start small, to grow in small increments, and SDS approaches eliminate big “migration events”.
3. Unlike some of the HCI players – we have leading server platforms, leading software IP of our own, as well as leading partnerships.
4. Customers like the new economic choice that the public clouds are providing – 100% OPEX (pay as you go).  It’s not always the right choice, the lower cost model by any means (sometimes CAPEX models that depreciate over time are better) – but the choice opens up whole new thinking, de-risks moving fast and starting, learning, changing. 
5. We are uniquely a private entity – not beholden to short term thinking.    Our main debt holders are playing the long game, and Michael name is on the building.

Michael Dell’s challenge was this: 1+2+3 = we should disrupt ourselves and the industry with a simple, ridiculously compelling operational expense model for HCI.   Team: do it fast, and lean in, and do it in a way that is simple enough to scale globally for all customers – not just some.

We did.   World, say hello to Cloud Flex for HCI!

Cloud Flex for HCI, provided by Dell Financial Services is ridiculously simple:

• 100% OPEX model.   Customers can choose to consume Dell EMC VxRail and XC customers can chose the traditional capital expense or leasing models – or with Cloud Flex for HC – they can go with a 100% opex route, paying monthly per appliance.
• No obligation.  The customer can return any or all of the equipment after the first year.
• No up-front costs on the product.   None.  This is not a lease, and doesn’t require lease terms.
• Built-in price decreases over time.  Wow – while public cloud costs tend to decline over time, they don’t commit to it in advance.   Cloud FLEX for HCI decreases the monthly payment up to 30% each year.

As an example – if the HCI appliance cost was $50K, in the first year, you would pay $1500 per month, in the second year, you would pay $1125/month, in the third year $850/month and so on.   

Here’s another example, this time visually.

BTW – 9 VxRail P series appliances can run thousands of beefy VMs.

Customers can do some quick math and see that on VxRail and XC (each appliance capable of running many VMs) – the per VM cost per month is VERY price competitive with the public clouds.   Now they have the 100% opex option to make that economic comparison clear.  

Let us help you get started.  Here’s our math – what’s yours?

I want to be clear - it’s not that “public cloud bad”, rather – “hybrid cloud good”.   We are just completely making a point very clear…  

MYTH: public cloud is intrinsically cheaper than on-premises choices due to their scale.  This is FALSE.

FACT: people go cloud for agility and operational simplicity - not economics.  

FACT: Hybrid cloud is the way to go.   There are workloads that are best for off and on-premises clouds for economic reasons, for governance reasons, for data gravity reasons.

FACT: HCI underpins the on-premises part of hybrid cloud – because only HCI with “cloud inspired” architectural models can have the architectural underpinnings for the economic and operational agility to pair with public clouds.

Yes, there are lots of other examples of things that SEEM like this, but when you double-click, they aren’t in the same league.   Go ahead – double click.  They are always some form of a lease, and the vendor goes there kicking and screaming.  

When you do the math over a multi year period – you’ll find that Cloud Flex for HCI, unlike other offers or leases, while there is some premium over just buying the capital outright for a depreciation period – the delta is small.

I’m not aware of anyone doing this as aggressively as we are.   There is nothing like Dell EMC Cloud FLEX for HCI.  Period.

Now, consider and reflect… The industry response here is going to be interesting.  

IT pros like many of my readers often don’t spend a lot of time thinking about another business/finance dimension to things.   It’s important as IT professionals to have awareness and comprehension – it creates a lot of “aha moments”. 

Let me explain.

AWS was born in a massive retailer with huge cash flows and internal IT demands and could take the balance sheet hit as AWS grew.  Azure was born in a massive company with huge ELA revenues to offset the massive investments as their business transitioned to consumption models.   Google Cloud Platform was born inside a company with massive infrastructure spends to support Google search and YouTube.

For public companies that are in the business of on-premises infrastructures – whether it’s big players (like Cisco, HPE and others), or startups (like Nutanix, Pure and the bevvy of new players that come and go like fireflies)… for them, if their customer base demanded consumption models like Cloud Flex for HCI – it would crush their cash flows, revenues and earnings.   They would only recover in time-frames that are measured in years.   Doing models like Cloud Flex can be great in the LONG game (customers love it), but in the short to mid timeframes, their shareholders would kill them.

Heck, it’s hard as Dell EMC.   But it is POSSIBLE.   Why?   Because we’re private – and we’re in it for the long haul.  

If it turns out that customers LOVE Cloud FLEX for HCI – yes, it absolutely causes near term bookings problems for us.   After all – as pointed out in the example, in the first year, the customer pays 61% LESS than with traditional models capex models.  I want to make it stark by stating something patently obvious: with traditional capex models, 100% of the revenue comes in all at once.  

If you are vendor who is customer focused vs. quarterly earnings focused, then you’re calm cool and collected about giving the customers the OPEX/CAPEX choice – if your stuff is good (if it’s bad, all customers will return it :-).  

If you are quarterly earnings focused – well, it’s a different story.

If our competitors want to compete with this model, they better warm up on their responses to their shareholders and be prepared for massive share price compression.  

Dell EMC competitors – BRING IT ON.

It also highlights something interesting at the macro level view for those who think big, and stretch their minds – because it reveals a deeper, more broad truth.  Public markets and shareholder interests are not always aligned with customer interests – particularly during times of technology and economic disruption.

For all of these reasons, most importantly because we think our HCI offers are great, and as customers use them, they will love them – we are also making sure our salesforce “leans in”.  

HERE IS WHAT LEAN-IN LOOKS LIKE.  Our field teams are compensated the SAME for a Cloud FLEX HCI as a traditional CAPEX model.  PERIOD.   So simple, it’s stupid :-)

We’re going to pause for a bit, see customer/market reaction, and then we will continue to evolve and refine.  What are we dreaming up?

• We are thinking to expand this to all HCI (including the VxRack Family)
• expanding the idea to our Cloud offers (Enterprise Hybrid Cloud for VMware, Native Hybrid Cloud for Pivotal+VMware, Azure Stack, RedHat OpenStack Ready Bundle)
• Doing creative things to make sure the customer is not only economically protected, but technologically protected (automatically getting new goodies over time).

… But first, we want to see what YOU our customers think.  So… What do you think?

Dell EMC World 2017: XC Series Updates!

There are a lot of eyeballs on this topic – within Dell EMC, within Nutanix, within our partner community, and most importantly – within our customer base.

So – let me speak plainly: “Dell EMC XC Series and our Nutanix partnership is here to stay”.

Now, I don’t want people to read in too much, or conversely too little into that statement.    There’s a tendency to see ghosts, to presume and assume where no assumption is needed, and of course, there’s no way I (or anyone at Dell EMC) can or will constrain the choices our partners make.

But there are market facts that are material.

• In 2016 Dell EMC’s share of the HCI market skyrocketed, we were the fastest growing player of any significance in the fastest growing segment of IT infrastructure – that’s a fact.
• A large part of that growth came from Dell EMC XC – that’s great. Our XC business is bigger now then it was a year ago, and remains a very material concern for the overall Nutanix business.
• An even larger part of the Dell EMC HCI growth came from the explosion in the rest of the Dell EMC HCI portfolio (VxRail, VxRack FLEX, VxRack SDDC) – that’s great too. VxRail alone grew at north of 208% (and on big numbers – outgrowing the HCI market itself) – ending 2016 at north of a $400M run-rate…. And we’re not slowing down.   Our organic VxRail business is larger than our XC business, and when you add VxRack business it is now materially larger – the majority of our HCI revenues are organic.
• We think winning in the marketplace and being in the strongest position comes from having VxRail, VxRack and XC – and we now have many thousands of customers across the portfolio that depend on us.  

There is a very large re-buy rate amongst our HCI customers – and this is very true of the XC Series business.   Rule #1 for me in business “don’t punch your customers in the face”.

In the first meeting with Nutanix post merger (blog post here – note the consistency) I made a comment to the Nutanix leadership that our strategic posture was simple:

1. We think that for the foreseeable future, the HCI market is not a zero-sum game – that the primary competition is “business as usual”.
2. We think that there are many customers who want a proudly, unabashedly 100% VMware aligned stack.   For them, a singular roadmap and total commitment to be the best answer for a VMware-focused customer is a strong feature.   We are determined to lead that market with HCI offers that take their VMware standard and run with the ball.   This means VxRail for HCI appliances, and if you’re ready for network transformation and NSX, VxRack SDDC for HCI Rack-Scale systems. BUT there are other customers that want HCI that is not deeply bound/deeply integrated with a given stack (XC series for appliances, and if you’re ready for network transformations VxRack FLEX for Rack-Scale systems).
3. We acknowledge that things are a little more funky than before (where for Dell – HCI = XC Series) than now (where for Dell EMC – HCI = Leading Portfolio). I asked: “We are cool with that – are you?”

We continue to put our money where our mouth is – we’re investing into the XC business, even as we continue to grow the rocket ship that is VxRail and VxRack.  

I was listening to a podcast speculating about the end-games for Nutanix.   That’s not for me to comment as a general statement – but I will make one comment: with all that said above, why would we buy them?

And to be clear – while we think that CI and HCI are important, they are really just a foundation for the longer game, the more important game: making the IaaS/PaaS/Data stacks  cloud stacks that run on them simple.  

This is critical for anyone who wants to be the infrastructure leader going forward… and we’re determined that leader is and will be Dell Technologies.

Today’s news is proof positive of continued commitment to Dell EMC XC:

• Dell EMC XC430 Xpress – new lower entry point for the XC Series as low as $25K for a 3 node cluster.
• Integration with the Dell EMC Data Protection portfolio
• Pivotal Cloud Foundry integration for Dell EMC XC using vSphere
• Dell EMC XC Series will be part of Cloud Flex (more to come on that in another post).

Read on for more details!

Dell EMC World 2017: VxRail and VxRack SDDC Updates!

The team that works on VxRail and VxRack SDDC have a simple mission – to be the ultimate, most turnkey manifestation of the VMware SDDC stack – including the SDS layer for VxRail, and the SDS and SDN layer for VxRack SDDC.

They aren’t just “VMware aligned” – they are one team, led by a single clearly accountable individual, and built up with a great team that is built of VMware and Dell EMC employees. 

The roadmaps for the VMware software stack and their HCI manifestation in VxRail and VxRack SDDC – they are one. 

The dates don’t always match up (the appliances take a little time to qualify, and since they bring together multiple moving parts) – there can be a little lag.   But the question of “will vSAN 6.6 come into VxRail?” or “will VMware Cloud Foundation 2.1.2 and 2.2 and NSX 6.3 show up in VxRack SDDC?”… the answer to those questions is always “YES”.

And the answer to “when will ____ be in” is “as soon as is possible, and as soon as customers who are serious about a turnkey experience should adopt the ingredient technologies – if you REALLY want to be on the bleeding edge – you are a builder, not someone who wants to buy an outcome”.

Do we get it perfect?  Nope – although we’re always striving for that.   But if you want the “easy button” for the VMware stack – VxRail and VxRack SDDC are it.

Does this mean that VMware and more “horizontal” infrastructure stacks (like VxBlock and VxRack FLEX) are not for VMware?  Of course not, silly.   But – by defintion, since they need to support non-VMware use cases, they will never be as simple, as integrated, as “roadmap aligned” as VxRail and VxRack SDDC.   I’ve talked about the the use cases for VxRack FLEX here (which I think becomes – over time – the “go to” HCI rack-scale system for people who have a horizontal, multi-stack orientation to infrastructure).   If you want to understand more – also read my post this week on VxRack FLEX updates.

So… What’s the latest on VxRail?

Reminder – VxRail in a sentence: “VxRail is the simplest, most powerful, most integrated HCI appliance for customers standardized on VMware”

So, subjectively, how is it going?  VxRail is at rocketship “hang on to the tiger by the tail” stage.   We are well on our way to our plan from the start of 2016 to be the #1 marketshare, revenue share, and customer count leader by the end of 2017 – with VxRail alone.   To our customers, our partners, and the VMware/Dell EMC team behind VxRail – THANK YOU. 

Lots of updates this week!

This week we’re talking about what’s coming soon – with the next generation PowerEdge platforms based on the Intel Purley platform, with all sorts of new goodies.   We are also tipping our hat a bit towards the next major VxRail 4.5 release train that will bring in vSphere 6.5 and resynchronize with the vSAN release train.

But – there’s also important updates that are here and now:

First – let’s talk about the software updates – and there are lots.   We’re mid-life of the 4.0 release train – and the team is correctly focused on serviceability, ease-of-deployment and management.   We crossed a milestone with 4.0 where VxRail hit the “critical feature requirements to take off”.  We’re not resting on our laurels – but for a little bit, new features are not the priority – servicing thousands and thousands of customers is the name of the game.

So what’s new?

• Flexible object renaming for large data center deployments (previously quite rigid – this was a popular feature request)
• Guided upgrade for vSphere Standard Edition customers
• Improved first run status reporting
• Migrations from internal to external vCenters (very important for our earlier customers who started with the internal vCenter deployment model).
• External ESRS gateway support (we will keep expanding the ESRS reporting – an area where we can do more)
• vAPI and PowerCLI support for lifecycle management (programmability is key for all CI/HCI…)
• Batch Mode expansion (another one of these classic “when you get more than 10 customers, this one comes up a lot…)
• Expanded iDRAC support

Second, more networking options are important.   Every VxRail appliance comes with pretty potent connectivity – but the max expandability was one NIC per node, for a max of 2 extra ports.    That’s been upped by 3x, and that includes an option for the Intel X550 with a VxLAN offload.    This extra choice is powerful because there are cases where you want to be able to segregate certain traffic and cannot simply do it logically… and that’s in addition to the raw bandwidth question.

Thirdly, we are adding more host types.   The continuously broadening platform support gives some important choices – there are cases where you are not CPU bound, and single CPU options can reduce licensing costs – and give even lower entry points (below $25K for a 3-node configuration).

But – the biggest news on VxRail is the new Cloud Flex offer – though that warrants a post of it’s own.

Beyond updates this week, how about in general?

• 4.0.132 (see the post here) is an important update for all VxRail customers.   We’re doing a Field Change Order (FCO) which is a process used to make sure all customers do critical updates – a normal, but very important process whn you are in the data persistence business.   A few weeks in, and as of May 3rd, we have 41.8% of the install base updated – a fascinating real-world case of how easy it is to update/lifecycle HCI when it’s done right.   Normally an FCO goes slowly.  Here, customers can do it themselves (just auto update – it’s like updating your iPhone) and we’re getting through the installed base at a record clip.
• More global availability.   This is currently the biggest single challenge.  We worked through the spike in demand/component supply (thank you to the greatest supply chain team on earth) – and right now we’re plowing through the stuff that comes with the largest high tech merger ever – namely system/process stuff.   I can’t thank the teams working through this enough – I know it’s really, really challenging, but as one of the first fully integrated products that has to flow through common systems and process – VxRail is plowing through the barriers first.   For people where the PowerEdge-based vRail systems are not yet shipping – know we’re working very fast, and expect updates in days when VxRail will be available in your country.

What’s the latest on VxRack SDDC? 

Reminder – VxRack SDDC in a sentence: “If you’re considering VxRail – but are also ready for network and SDN transformation with NSX – VxRack SDDC is for you.”

VxRack SDDC builds on the VMware Cloud Foundation software release – and is currently using the vCF 2.1.1 release.     Like VxRail – VxRack SDDC the roadmaps are tight (not 100% synchronous, but we aim to be close).   There will be late summer vCF update that becomes a fall release of VxRack SDDC using the vCF 2.2.x + vSphere 6.5 (and associated NSX/vSAN version) release train.

At Dell EMC World, we talked about not only how (of course), we will be adding the next generation of Dell EMC PowerEdge platforms – but how already we’re broadening out VxRack SDDC use cases and hardware platforms:

So, subjectively - how is it going?   VxRack SDDC is ramping.  It’s ahead of our plan for Q1.   The “feeling” for VxRack SDDC is a lot like it was for VxRail in 2016.   We’re not aiming for a ton of customers – we’re looking for customers who will operate very close to engineering/product management, share feedback (positive, neutral, and negative), who will be references if they are happy.   We do this not because VxRack SDDC isn’t ready – but because in the early days of any product – it’s important to stay close.   We’re about to finish our Directed Availability exit criteria and move into a more accelerated rollout in the 2H of this year.

It is deploying?   Yup.  And so far, so good!

These are pictures of a VxRack SDDC as we finished up the deployment at a large service provider:

 

.. and you’ve got to love seeing stuff like this cross your twitter stream :-)

Are you a VxRail or VxRack SDDC customer?  How’s it going?  Give me feedback and comment! 

Dell EMC World 2017: Get Ready for Blog-a-palooza.

There are a barrage of Virtual Geek posts that will come out today, Tuesday and Wednesday – and as usual, they will be long, detailed, meandering with lots of sidebars and detours – but hopefully interesting, my dear readers ;-)

That said – I did a post on Direct 2 Dell today that because unlike Virtual Geek – which is my blog, my opinion, and no one edits me (for better and for worse) – they have a word count maximum!

Check it out – it covers some of the biggest pieces of news that you’ll see in gory detail from me through the week:

• What’s the latest in HCI/CI
• our Hybrid Cloud platforms including what we’re doing with EHC and NHC – but also Azure Stack and RedHat
• A barrage of Ready Nodes – node-a-palooza.
• … perhaps most interestingly - how we are tackling making the question of cost of acquisition vs. the cost of ownership – making the argument moot in one of the most bold things I’ve seen in a while…

https://blog.dellemc.com/en-us/dell-emc-world-perspectives-announcements-time-to-put-an-end-the-tco-versus-tca-debate-once-and-for-all/

I think that SEs are IT HEROES.

It’s not a title reserved for SEs – there are all sorts of heroes (and when I think of people that serve their society and other people, they are the ultimate heroes in my books)… But I have a special spot in my heart for Systems Engineers everywhere.

• A great SE always is thinking about their customers first – and not what they have in the quota.
• A great SE has a furious passion for learning – never stopping, ever.
• A great SE dives into problems when things go bump in the night.   They know that our Customer Service and Professional Services brothers and sisters are on point, but as the trusted advisor to the customer – SEs never say “not my job”
• A great SE has an intense desire to win – but for a reason that isn’t their comp plan, they believe they can really help the customer.
• A great SE is always a student not only of their own technologies and solutions, but of the marketplace.
• A great SE never goes negative, but competes furiously.

Add that up – and you end up with a job description that is heroic.

I’ve said it once, I’ll say it over and over – regardless of where you work, whether it’s at Dell EMC, VMware, Pivotal – or at technology partners or competitors, SEs share a bond.   Once an SE, always an SE.

A team of SE leaders here want to start something special at Dell EMC World – the Dell EMC Heroes program.

This program will help our global partner ecosystem – bringing their front-line SE heroes closer to us.

We want to share knowledge, roadmap, connective tissue across the company and our partners and much more.

They asked me (and I’m honored!) to open up, share a little about my personal journey as a career SE, now part of the senior leadership and learning hand over fist about what it means to be a general manager of a multi-billion dollar business.  

That said – I’m no hero.  You know who is?  Carey Lohrenz.   What a story – first female F-14 Tomcat pilot in the navy.   Now THAT’S a story.

Click on the below, join us.  Who is invited?  Simple - anyone who is an SE who is at Dell EMC World.

See you there!

Dell EMC World 2017–here we come!

We are 6 days away from getting together at #DellEMCWorld 2017 with 12,000+ of our closest friends, customers, and partners.   I love that I can say “don’t just listen to me, here’s what attendees say” (click on the below for a LOT more)!

So what should you expect?   Product announcements, 3 general sessions keynotes (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday), and more than 500 sessions.

The General Sessions (more info here) – with Michael Dell, David Goulden, Diane Byrant (Intel) and… David Blaine (!!) sharing Monday.   Jeff Clarke and Pat Gelsinger headline day 2 (Tuesday).  With Jeff, expect all sorts of awesome around IoT, and VR/AR – and as the happy owner of an Alienware Aurora R5 + Oculus + HTC Vive system which is my go-to VR system, he’s got the toys :-)   Pat is always interesting – and the amount of stuff we’re working on together is immense.   Wednesday is the most ridiculous General Session – fun and demotime galore. 

Wednesday night is the customer appreciation event – and let’s just say that the female performer – I have no doubt she will be awesome ;-)

What about details on the product announcements?   I can’t tell you – but it will be awesome.  Tune in that week via #DellEMCWorld, visiting www.dellemc.com, and I will have a blog barrage next week.

The breakout sessions are perhaps the highlight (along with the hands-on-labs) if you ask me – dive in deep.   So – what to pick?

What sessions am I super into?   The Converged Platform and Solutions is powering a ton of content.   If you’re going – and you want to know more, you can find more details for each session at the links below.  

Also, notice that there are 5 Hands-on-Labs available – where customers can play with VxRail, with XC – and with our Hybrid Cloud offers.

Session ID	Title (Link)
CPSD01	Hyper-Converged Infrastructure: Learn the Basics
CPSD02	VxRack FLEX Powered by ScaleIO: HCI Rack-Scale Technical Deep Dive
CPSD03	VxBlock Systems: Looking into the Future of Converged
CPSD04	Introducing Project Symphony! An Open Source Management Strategy For CI & HCI
CPSD05	Vscale: Real-World Deployments of Next-Gen Data Center Architecture
CPSD06	Vblock and VxBlock Systems: Technical Deep Dive
CPSD07	Converged & Hyper-Converged: Factory-Integrated Data Protection For Simplicity & Lifecycle Assurance
CPSD08	VxRail: Ensure your Cluster is Firing on all Cylinders with Under the Hood Performance Tuning
CPSD09	VxRail: Shields Up! Confidently Protecting your Mission-Critical Workloads with Data Services
CPSD10	VxRail: A Customer's Journey To Hyper-Converged Awesome Sauce
CPSD11	VxRail: Level Up with New Capabilities and Powers
CPSD12	VxRack SDDC: VIP Access Deep Dive
CPSD13	SAP HANA Made Simple with Validated Solutions and Converged Systems
CPSD14	What You Need to Know on Database Licensing for Converged and Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
CPSD15	Dell EMC XC Series: Expanding the XC Series Ecosystem to Empower your Virtualized Applications
CPSD16	Dell EMC XC Series: Architectural Overview of XC Series Hyper-Converged Infrastructure
CPSD17	HPC Geekfest! Meet Venith The Supercomputer & How To Bring HPC Into The Enterprise
CPSD19	Architecture Best Practices For Big Data Deployment
SOLUTIONS01	Go Native: Your Platform For Cloud Innovation
SOLUTIONS02	Next Generation Security: How We Learned to Stop Worrying & Love The Cloud
SOLUTIONS03	Turnkey DevOps: Connecting Developers & Operators In The Digital World
SOLUTIONS04	Secure IT's Seat At The Table: Deliver The Business Self-Service Data Analytics
SOLUTIONS05	Got Data Silos? Automate Data Ingestion Into Isilon In Support Of Analytics
SOLUTIONS06	IoT Analytics: A Modern Manufacturing Surveillance Use Case
SOLUTIONS07	From Zero To Cloud: How A Turnkey Hybrid Cloud Platform Reduces Costs, Complexity & Risk
SOLUTIONS08	Anatomy of A Hybrid Cloud: Breaking Down the Barriers to IT as a Service
SOLUTIONS09	Case Study: A Hybrid Cloud for Today and Tomorrow
SOLUTIONS10	Keeping your Workloads Secure in a Hybrid Cloud World
SOLUTIONS11	What Is Dell EMC's Hybrid Cloud For Microsoft Azure Stack
SOLUTIONS12	Microsoft & Dell EMC: A Partnership For A Fast Track To Microsoft Azure Stack Hybrid Cloud Adoption
SOLUTIONS13	How Microsoft Azure Stack Streamlines Bi-Modal IT
SOLUTIONS14	A Closer Look At Microsoft Azure Stack
HOL02 (vLab)	Enterprise Hybrid Cloud
HOL03 (Vlab)	Dell EMC VxRail 4.0 The New Standard in Hyperconverged Appliances
HOL03 (Guided Lab)	Dell EMC VxRail 4.0 The New Standard in Hyperconverged Appliances
HOL07 (Vlab)	Explore Dell EMC XC Series HCI Appliance
HOL29 (Vlab)	Native Hybrid Cloud

Beyond the Converged Platform and Solutions team – there’s a ton going on.   My Primary Storage, Server, Networking, Data Protection brothers and sisters have a ton going on.

Same goes with the DellEMC{code} team.

Click on the picture to the left for a ton of Cloud Native App and DevOps oriented sessions.

If you want a cure to “powerpointitis” (happens sometimes at conferences), and rollup your sleeves and start to play with some code, some new new toys and learn stuff, I would highly recommend

• HOL01 Use REX-Ray & ScaleIO with Docker, Mesos, and Kubernetes
• Monday 8:30am – 9:00 pm
• Tuesday 7:00am – 5:30pm
• Wednesday 7:00am – 5:30pm

Thursday 7:00am – 1:00pm

What about the booth?   The question is what WON’T we have in the CPSD booth (#Booth872)?   You will see:

• 1) Enterprise Hybrid Cloud powered by VMware and Dell EMC
• 2) Developer-Ready Infrastructure in Turnkey fashion with the Native Hybrid Cloud powered by Pivotal, VMware and Dell EMC

3) Analytic Insights Module – powered by Dell EMC - reveal business insights faster with self-service analytics

4) The Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack

5) Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (VxRail, VxRack, XC Series)

6) Converged Infrastructure (VxBlock: #1 For a Reason)

7) Blueprints – Ready Nodes, Ready Bundles, Ready Systems (HPC, SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, Data Analytics, Software Defined stacks)

There will be every ounce of hardware people want to touch, and every software stack people want to play with…

Our key partners (VMware, Microsoft, Cloudera, Splunk) will all have sessions in the booth, and there will be a Tech Connect area where the whole partner ecosystem will be there, sharing what we are doing together.

The best part of the booth are the customers.    They will be sharing their own journeys – and will include the Federal Government, Cianbro, College of the Ozarks and City of Virginia Beach.

There will be a bunch of fun strange experiences in the booth – including the de-rigeur conference fun of a VR experience

 

You’ll be able to experience the Converged Platforms and Solutions Virtual Showcase (Kaon) with Oculus Rift which enables people to dive into the elements of our stacks.

For people who want more of a game/theatrical experience, they can play Data Center Defender on the HTC Vive.

Beyond that – we’re trying something new – “the Great Xscape!”…  This could go sideways, not because it’s bad, but because it’s a small “flow” thing where groups of people work to get themselves out of a locked room with the knowledge they have learnt at the show.

•15’ x 15’ Room

•Escape Challenge

•Groups of approximately 3-6

•10-15 minute experience

•Customer time slots for pre-registration

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What about yours truly?   It’s going to a busy week!   I have a packed calendar with customers, with partners – but if you see me, please say hello!

I’m also doing a couple of specific things:

1. Monday at 6:45pm PT at the booth – there will be an open session where you can ask me any question you want.  Stump the chump – or at least try :-)   See you there – and you can follow, and ask your questions via Twitter using #AskChad.
2. Tuesday at 12:00 PT – I’ll be doing a session with everything but the kitchen sink.   Murano 3203 – please come by, I’m working on the content now, and I think it will be… different :-)
3. Wednesday at 10am PT – I’ll be in the General Session: Episode 2: The Dark Knight Rises… and yes, Captain Canada will make an appearance (if we can get the indemnification done – and yes, I’m serious, people are worried about hurting part of the exec team :-)

A… Fascinatingly frustrating ScaleIO update :-)

Five things I experienced last week triggered this post for me – which I have to confess, I’m writing a bit short tempered.

ONE: Tweet #1 (here) – a customer with a ScaleIO SDS cluster has a 2TB SSD fail…. And it rebuilds in 98 seconds. 98 seconds! It was a loud reminder of the incredible parallelism of ScaleIO – not only does it result in even relatively small numbers of ScaleIO SDS nodes using NAND being able to outperform (in bandwidth and in throughput) every storage array on the planet, but it also equals insanely fast rebuilds and rebalancing across the cluster… and with large numbers of nodes, the performance and rebuild/rebalance operations scale linearly.

TWO: Tweet #2 (here) – someone build a home-brew ScaleIO cluster with 3 server nodes… that could deliver north of 300K IOps (and this isn’t a maximum by any means – it’s possible to have a single SDS node (given enough SSDs/NVMe devices) do more than 300K – all by itself.

THREE: There’s a “people update” in ScaleIO land… We have a new ScaleIO Specialty SE leader – Joshua Petty, who wrote a great blog post series. His perspective having been at VMware for many years about the functional analogies of abstraction, pooling, consolidation, and agility/automation are particularly resonant with me because I remember the same “whammo” effect of ESX/vCenter so many years ago – where the only mistake people made was not getting started sooner.

FOUR: There’s a “product update” in ScaleIO land… We have updated the ScaleIO Ready Nodes with the latest ScaleIO software, and Automated Management Services (AMS) which makes discovery, deployment, configuration, monitoring/operations, and update/maintain functions with ScaleIO Ready Nodes simple and easy. AMS can be best thought of as an extension of the element management and orchestration layer for ScaleIO. AMS is included for free.

Sidebar: In HCI Rack Scale systems that build on top of ScaleIO (VxRack FLEX), we are expanding the HCI/Composable infrastructure layer M&O layer (which leverages AMS lower down in the stack) via something codenamed “Project Symphony” – a very cool open HCI-level M&O capability which looks at the whole system – inclusive of network, servers, nodes, storage, software, and system-level contextual relationships. Totally open, everything via REST APIs, goal is to make it the ultimate in programmable infrastructure and deepen integration with iDRAC, Open Manage Essentials, the Dell EMC and Cisco networking ecosytsems, and future goodness we are developing…. Lots to come on this front over this year.

In AMS, you can easily see the lower-level infrastructure (see example below), and faults are detected, reported (and can connect to ESRS).

Also – because while many customers love the full vSphere stack integration of VxRail and VxRack SDDC using vSAN, other customers love being able to have their SDS to be able to pool across vSphere clusters, direct performance/capacity independent of node capacities, or because they want a heterogeneous approach. Of course – the majority of the use cases with ScaleIO in enterprises remain supporting vSphere… So AMS has extended its capabilities to automate both the ScaleIO and ESX level operations during automated non-disruptive updates (screenshot below).

We’ve made all our Ready Nodes easy to order:

• Foolproof, configurable platforms, limited to validated and supported hardware
• A ton (600+) hardware configruations (up to 40 cores per server, from 64GB to 1.5TB of RAM, SSD options of all shapes/sizes).
• An easy-to-use, online sizing tool to help choose the right configuration (https://scaleio-sizer.emc.com/)
• Simple Online Solution Configurator templates ensure quick and accurate quoting

… and we’ve also made our Ready Nodes easy to deploy:

• Customer-downloadable deployment package for BIOS and firmware settings ensures the system is ready for the ScaleIO application
• Customers can get it here at the Dell EMC support portal.
• Solution implementation services are available from Dell EMC (MyQuotes p/n: PS-BAS-SIOIMP) and I would highly recommend ScaleIO: Design (MyQuotes p/n: PS-BAS-SIOADDES)There’s a “product update” in ScaleIO land… We have updated the ScaleIO Ready Nodes with the latest ScaleIO software, and Automated Management Services (AMS) which makes discovery, deployment, configuration, monitoring/operations, and update/maintain functions with ScaleIO Ready Nodes simple and easy. AMS can be best thought of as an extension of the element management and orchestration layer for ScaleIO. AMS is included for free.

FIVE: with all that great news, the last trigger – I got a punch in the face from a friendly customer :-)

I met with a customer who asked me: “how should I determine what architectural model for storage I should use?”

I said: “it’s actually pretty simple:

1. “Start by assuming that the majority of your x86 workloads can be supported by SDS/HCI models. Yes, there are things that aren’t good at/capable of – but that increasingly, those the workloads that demand those capabilities are the exceptions (by COUNT not VALUE). Start by solving for the rule, not the exception”. They looked shocked – and asked if the stance of the company leaning into SDS/HCI was “secret”. I pointed out that NOPE – we are loud and proud on this (read this post here).
2. Then they asked “how do I pick which transactional SDS is the way to go?” Answer, again, is SIMPLE. “Choose which (or both) of ScaleIO and vSAN are the best fit based on: a) SDS for a VMware only focus – and always HCI operational model” (vSAN); and/or b) an SDS that replaces a multipurpose SAN (including vSphere) where pooling, capacity/IOPS scaling, and sharing needs to be independent of clusters, operating systems and other factors (ScaleIO)”. Again – they were shocked that we are so clear. They had heard two very different stories from the teams they interact with. VMware team said “vSphere always = vSAN” (not accurate – there are absolutely vSphere use cases where ScaleIO can be the right chocie). The Dell EMC ScaleIO specialist team said “Enterprise = ScaleIO” (not accurate – there are absolutely enterprise use cases where vSAN is the right choice). Smack (facepalm). The Dell Technologies position is public (here).
3. Then they asked: “But why are there 3 ways to get these SDS models – and which one is right?” Answer, again, is SIMPLE. “Choose how you like to consume – for people who like tinkering and the most flexibility, they tend to go software only. For people who like that flexibility but with a little simplification and de-risking of the project, they tend to go software + hardware bundles (vSAN Ready Nodes and ScaleIO Ready Nodes). For customers who want turnkey outcomes and understand and accept that comes with letting go of ‘I can chose anything’ – they tend to go full HCI Appliances and Rack-Scale systems (VxRail, VxRack SDDC, VxRack FLEX).”
4. Then they asked: “… But then what should stay on external storage (VMAX, XtremIO, Unity, SC and the like) along with Converged Infrastructure (VxBlocks)?” Answer again, is simple: “Most customers have some workloads that need specific data services (SRDF-like requirements; very, very high performance snapshots/replicas/dedupe); have very dense capacity needs; or very dense IOps/bandwidth needs; or very, very tight latency jitter requirements (100’s of microseconds) – this is the domain of traditional storage”. This by the way is a large set of workloads – and as importantly – workloads that are incredibly high value and important to our customers – and we have the industries #1 portfolio there.”

That’s four simple bits of dialog that are a simple (but relatively complete) answer to a complex question – the only thing simpler are the words from a single product company :-).

It may look like a lot of words – it’s not. Read it out – it’s about a minute of dialog.

The punch in the face was that the customer said next: “That’s good, and that’s clear… but it is not what your sales teams are saying.  They are pushing traditional approaches, array refreshes, and trying to marginalize SDS models, and the people talking about SDS choices are fighting about which one is right.

Look – SDS (vSAN/ScaleIO as examples) are NOT a panacea – and they aren’t always lower capital cost than external storage, though they are almost always simpler to operate, scale, automate, and ALWAYS simpler to upgrade and automate. BTW – the same applies to their HCI consumption options.

..And, of course the “right answer” to “what storage is right” for a given workload or customer can absolutely be the external storage arrays that people know and love (for all the reasons I stated above).

So – why am I frustrated?

I’m frustrated because change takes time, and like all waves of change (technological or otherwise) – it is people’s own fears that tend to hold us all back.

The biggest barrier of SDS and HCI adoption at this point is people’s fear, lag to adopt new approaches – and sales people who feel threatened (but shouldn’t).

Between ScaleIO and vSAN (and the HCI Appliances and Rack-Scale – we have a very compelling SDS portfolio for transactional workloads – and Dell EMC and VMware are neutral about whether the answer is one, the other, or as is pretty common – BOTH. Likewise, while we have a point of view – we know that every customer is a little different, and for most, they will be using SDS and traditional storage models together for years to come.

Advice from the heart: when things are changing, the most dangerous move is to stay still, to “stick with what you know”.

Remember – you can always put ScaleIO through its paces and come to your own conclusions. The bits are available for download here: http://www.dellemc.com/getscaleio

Are you a ScaleIO customer (software only, ScaleIO Ready Nodes, or VxRack FLEX) – and if so, how is it going?