by Bob Fine, Director of Product Marketing, Dell Compellent — April 22, 2009
There has been a lot of discussion on EMC’s FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering) feature, which was arguably the most talked-about portion of the V-Max announcement. In fact, the news prompted folks like Wikibon’s Dave Vellante and Network World’s Jon Brodkin to compare EMC’s latest offering to Compellent’s well-established tiered storage technology, Data Progression)—the first in the industry to automate ILM.
However, Compellent’s automated tiered storage is a proven, integrated solution which our customers have been using successfully since 2005. But being first with a technology doesn’t really mean anything unless vendors continue to extend the value proposition for end-users. Our automated tiered storage is an integrated part of a solution that is modular and scalable, which can be expanded easily without requiring customers to rip out hardware or software to continue getting a return on an investment over time. It’s pretty common for a Compellent user to add an additional tier of storage after initial purchase, such as SATA or FC. And already some end users are testing SSD without impacting their current tiered storage environment using enclosures they’ve had for years.
With Compellent’s automated, sub-LUN level bi-directional data tracking, movement and classification between solid state, Fibre Channel and SATA drives, end-users reduce disk expenditures and administrative time—resulting in lower TCO. In contrast, the high cost of V-Max rears its head in software licensing, forced upgrades and add-ons that result in high prices for even the smallest V-Max configurations.
With its announcement, EMC validated the need for automated tiering, yet will not ship the feature with these first systems. It will be interesting to continue to watch our industry’s reaction to this, and we assume others will continue to follow our lead. Thoughts?