IBM Plays With Self (Virtually)

IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) is almost ready to ship storage virtualization devices it claims will vault it ahead of competitors in terms of price and performance -- but, at least initially, the products work only with Big Blue's own storage systems (see IBM Sets Virtualization Ship Date).

IBM's TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller and SAN Integration Server, both slated to be available to customers on July 25, are designed to improve storage utilization, provide centralized volume management, and provide network-based storage services like copy services and security (see IBM Virtually in the Game).

Primarily, IBM is eager to get a storage virtualization product out the door so it can counter Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), which has demonstrated some success with its Continuous Access Storage Appliance (CASA). (See HP, IBM Make Virtual Motions and HP Opens Doors to CASA.)

"The only competitor IBM customers would consider is HP," says Jeff Barnett, manager of market strategy for IBM Storage Software. "Many IBM customers certainly look at technology like this, but if they're betting their data on it they're not going to go with some startup's technology... Customers have been beating us up for these types of solutions."

Besides HP, though, Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) is offering the N1 Data Platform (the virtualization switch from the Pirus Networks acquisition); and SAN switch vendors Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD), Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), and McData Corp. (Nasdaq: MCDTA) are also developing fabric-based storage virtualization technologies. The aforementioned startups working on products in this space include Candera Inc. and Troika Networks (see V-Switch Alliances Take Shape, Sun Thickens Up in the Middle, Candera in the Wind, Can Troika Triumph on Take Two?, and Brocade Loads Code, Signs EMC).Out of the gate, the appeal of IBM's virtualization products will be limited to IBM shops: Initially they will support Enterprise Storage Server (a.k.a. Shark) and FastT storage systems. Sometime later in 2003, IBM plans to expand support for third-party storage systems, and the company says customers will be entitled to a "simple nondisruptive upgrade" as this support becomes available.

Barnett adds that IBM will start with "some of the more popular vendors." While he declines to name which ones those are, it seems a sure bet that HP and EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) will be on the short list.

Pricing for the SAN Volume Controller, which is delivered as two Linux-based IBM servers, is $60,000 for the ability to handle up to 2 Tbytes of storage. At the entry-level configuration, optional software includes FlashCopy, which is an additional $20,000, and Peer-to-Peer Remote Copy (PPRC), which is $30,000. "The pricing of the software scales with tiers of storage you're managing," Barnett notes. For example, a SAN Volume Controller for 5 Tbytes is $95,000.

The SAN integration Server, meanwhile, is a turnkey system that includes two SAN Volume Controllers, a FastT storage array, and two 16-port Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD) switches. It is priced starting at $140,000, which includes 500 Gbytes of raw storage and installation services.

IBM is also touting the performance and scaleability of the SAN Volume Controller, which the company claims can pool up to 2 petabytes of storage. A two-node entry-level system provides up to 140,000 I/O operations per second (IOPS) and up to 890 MByte/s throughput, according to IBM. With four nodes, those performance metrics double, Barnett says."There's this incorrect fear that in-band will impact performance," he says. "A lot of people have a misnomer [sic] about virtualization performance, because the early products weren't as mature."

Adds Barnett: "If we had taken our customers a Windows-based solution, they would have laughed at us." Presumably, then, that means customers did laugh at IBM, since the company previously resold the Windows virtualization software developed by DataCore Software Corp., a partnership that has fallen by the wayside at this point (see IBM Signs Sneaky DataCore Deal).

As far as customer adoption, though, the technology is still definitely in the "show-me" phase. To illustrate: IBM has shipped the SAN Volume Controller to nearly 60 locations where it can demonstrate the technology, whereas it has signed up only seven customer beta sites.

One beta customer, National City Corp., an Ohio financial holding company and lender, is using the SAN Volume Controller to improve the utilization of its 20 TBytes of storage that's split among about a half-dozen subsystems in several IBM Sharks and Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) Lightning arrays. Unfortunately, National City refused to comment on how it's testing the technology, citing a nondisclosure agreement with IBM.

Todd Spangler, US Editor, Byte and Switch