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OEM Data Optimization Solutions |
In a short few years deduplication technologies have become commonplace, and in not too much longer will become a requirement for any new storage purchase. When everyone offers deduplication, are they all the same? Definitely not! Most of the deduplication technologies out there only perform in very specific use cases like backup, and cannot handle general purpose data storage. 390...
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Since we released our 4010 model last week at a list price of $250K for 144TB ($1.92/GB) of storage including dedupe, replication, advanced data protection, retention policies/WORM, and thin provisioning, I've been asked how we are able to provide our value tier storage at such a screaming deal to enterprise customers. Today I'll outline five ways we drive down storage costs and compare the relative cost savings to primary storage costs.
1) We reduce costs by advancing down the commodity component cost curve. And we pass the savings on to the enterprise. In Figure 1, the commodity cost curve is the green line and by proxy the proprietary cost curve is in red. Hundreds of millions in marketing dollars (represented in aggregate by the shaded green area) are spent by three-letter vendors to keep customers on the gently sloping proprietary cost curve. In contrast, we require no API, adhere to standards based interfaces like NFS and CIFS and enable customers to ride down the rapidly declining commodity cost curve for savings. When comparing the cost of Permabit at $1.92/GB, this is up to 10X less than primary storage price points.
Savings: 3-10X investment reduction.
2) We apply file aware, in-line dedupe for all information ingested by Permabit storage. In combination with compression, this reduces the footprint of information so you invest less, manage a smaller environment, lower energy costs and reduce space costs. Mileage can vary widely in this area, but customers often see 50-75% (2-4X) reductions for file shares to > 99% (>100X) for VMware images. This is how we lower the effective cost of storage below a $1/GB.
Savings: >2X investment reduction and operational efficiencies.
3) We've implemented the most advanced data protection in the market - our RAIN-EC patent pending scheme is more than 250X effective than RAID 6. That means lightning fast rebuilds and greater safety, but also 50% lower overhead than similar mirrored systems and less rebuild space required.
Savings: 2X investment reduction.
4) You'll never need to provision or allocate a LUN with Permabit storage. We take care of that with thin provisioning by virtualizing the storage space. Our customers tell us this enables them to gain 50% storage utilization improvements and savings of one headcount per 200TB managed.
Savings: 2X investment reduction and operational efficiencies.
5) Permabit has eliminated migration as a cost of storage. As requirements grow, new storage is added. As nodes reach the end of their useful life, they are simply replaced with updated and more efficient technology. Fork-lift upgrades every 3-5 years effectively double the cost of your storage. Permabit future proofs your storage and eliminates the need for migration and associated risk and overhead.
Savings: 2X investment reduction and operational efficiencies.
There you have it. All totaled, we deliver a minimum of 12-20X+ hard cost reduction and typical 2-month ROI to our customers. It isn't rocket science. But it is cost efficient by design. Our goal is to drive the marginal cost of storing one more byte of information to near $0. At an effective cost of <$1/GB with the 4010, we are moving toward our goal. Try our ROI calculator out and see for yourself! I look forward to driving down the cost of storage for your organization.Yesterday was a holiday for some folks. Many people weren't aware that Monday was Patriot's Day which also coincides with the running of the Boston Marathon. So if you are with a company headquartered or have a remote office in New England, you more than likely had yesterday as a day off! The Boston Marathon had me thinking about the grueling task of running mile after mile, hour after hour. It's definitely not a race where you lace up, do 30...
Enterprises have been super sized with primary disk for too long. It's like buying a 64 oz. Cherry Coke at the local 7-Eleven day after day when you really aren't that thirsty. Enterprises continue to buy more primary capacity than they need or can afford.
I've visited a lot of companies over the last several months and I have yet to meet one employed IT leader who was looking to spend more than they had to for their company's storage infrastructure.
Just like 7-Eleven with Cherry Coke, the largest storage vendors have a vested interest in continuing to super size customers. EMC, HDS and IBM generate over half of their storage revenue from high performance (primary) storage. Yet less than 20% of information in a typical enterprise is transactional. Just like the mere pennies a serving of Cherry Coke costs 7-Eleven, the cost of disk drives is a small component of primary storage price, the three-letter guys make more money if the enterprise buys more of the high-margin primary storage.
We are seeing three significant market movements which enable companies to stop buying primary disk and save huge dollars while satisfying all service level and data protection requirements.
Squeeze # 1 - information movement and archiving software is advancing, becoming more friction free and less costly and it is being used not only for email, but for file shares, database and other information required for regulatory, strategic or legal reasons. A host of companies make great products in this area like Atempo, CommVault, IBM, Symantec, and ZL Technologies not to mention simple scripting employed by many companies. Also, file virtualization is coming of age with the F5 ARX product. In short, there are many tools to help the enterprise to classify, move, access and retain information.
These products make it cheaper, easier and safer for enterprises to move information to lower cost tiers of storage while providing high levels of accessibility.
Squeeze # 2 - the storage "target" tier is now very low cost. By employing data deduplication, compression, thin provisioning, and advanced data protection we are producing the most scalable, most cost effective storage in the market today. In fact, the effective cost of Permabit Archive storage is less than $1/GB, a fraction of JBOD and often lower than tape, yet Permabit storage provides greater data safety, accessibility and resiliency.
Squeeze # 3 - new Tier 0 storage offers higher performance and is more cost effective than old-style primary storage. An example of this is BlueArc's Titan product (Permabit is certified with it). Notably BlueArc ships with a feature rich information mover which can automatically tier information based upon rules or usage patterns. That makes Titan a natural to deploy with a Permabit Archive and the result is higher performance, scalability and resiliency all at a fraction of the cost of primary storage.
When I say the squeeze is on primary storage, the pressure is coming from two directions.1. Below - Many enterprises simply adopt a simple tiering strategy and move fixed information off of primary to a Permabit disk based archive. That means 60-80% of primary capacity is freed up and no further investment is required. The savings range greatly depending on what an organization pays for storage, but I've walked into organizations where customers stand to save 70% on storage costs. In a multi-hundred terabyte environment and with fixed information growing at 40% per year, that translates to tens of millions of dollars in annual savings.
2. Above - Companies are beginning to move to Tier 0 solutions ala BlueArc today and looking forward, the adoption of Solid State Disk drives will further increase the pressure. These are high performing (better, faster, cheaper) than old-style primary and when combined with automatic tiering of fixed or inactive information to a Permabit Enterprise Archive, the enterprise gains efficiency, data resiliency, performance and massive cost savings.
So, when you are thinking about managing storage growth, resist ordering the 64 oz. Cherry Coke, reach for the double espresso instead.
Tom Cook, Permabit CEO Hello. I'm Tom Cook, CEO & President of Permabit Technology Corporation. Jered Floyd has been doing many blog posts regarding technology trends for the storage industry. I’m jumping in now to provide a bit of a different perspective. I’ll write about topics and issues I hear about when talking with enterprise IT and storage leaders. Despite the increasing pressures of managing the explosive growth of digital inform...