Company Overview:
EMC’s $165m purchase of Avamar Technologies in 2006 provided the company with valuable de‐duplication technologies that were proven in the remote office/branch  office (ROBO) data protection space. EMC then repackaged the technology into an easy‐to‐deploy hardware appliance (Avamar Data Store) that can back up data at remote offices and funnel it into centralized repositories at the data center.

• Launched Avamar 4.1 in December 2008
• Launched Avamar Data Store Gen 2 in May 2008

Key Products/ Services:
Software: Avamar 4.1

In late 2008, EMC introduced Avamar 4.1. This software‐only product deduplicates data globally and at the source for fast, secure backup and recovery across your enterprise—including VMware environments, remote offices, and data center LANs.

Software: Avamar Virtual Edition for VMware This product is an Avamar server deployed as a virtual
appliance—the industry’s first fully virtualized de‐duplication backup and recovery solution.
Hardware/Software: Avamar Data Store Avamar Data Store Gen 2 is a complete backup and recovery package — including de‐duplication software agents, backup software, (EMC‐certified) physical servers and disk storage, and high availability.

Avamar backup and recovery solutions utilize patented global data deduplication technology to identify redundant data at the source, minimizing backup data before it is sent over the LAN/WAN. With Avamar, you can achieve new levels of data reduction and enable fast, secure backup for your VMware environments, remote offices, and data center LANs. In the process, you’ll reduce backup time, growth of secondary storage, and network utilization.

Supported Platforms:

Client Operating Systems
Supported Application Modules
1) Windows Server 2003: Standard and Enterprise Microsoft Exchange 2000, 2003, 2007 Windows 2000 Server and Advanced Server
2) Microsoft SQL Server 7.0, 2000, 2005 Windows XP, XP Professional, Vista

3) Oracle 9i, 10g, 10gR2
4) Red Hat Linux 9.0
5) IBM DB2 8.2.x, 9.5
6) Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 3.0, 4.0, 5.0
7) NDMP (EMC Celerra) DART 5.5, 5.6 NDMP

8)  (NetApp) Data ONTAP 6.5, 7.0.4, 7.0.5, 7.0.6, 7.1x. 7.2

9)Solaris 8, 9, 10
10) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8.2, 9, 10

11) VMware Infrastructure  VMware ESX Server versions 3.0.x, 3.5, 3i

12) IBM 5.2, 5.3, 6.1
13) HP‐UX 11.0, 11iV1, 11iV2, 11iV3
14) Mac OS X 10.4x, 10.5x
15) NetWare 6.5
16) Free BSD 6.2
17) Novell Storage Services (NSS) OES 2

Strengths

• Global deduplication at the source and the target minimizes storage footprint
• Granular — Small, variable‐length sub‐file segments guarantee effective de‐duplication
• Broad platform and application support
• High availability and reliability – Fault tolerance across nodes with RAIN architecture improves reliability
• Centralized management allowing users to control multisite backups from a single location and automate policy based management Weaknesses
• Avamar software agents can negatively impact application and server performance (Up to 15%)

Weaknesses

• Must use Avamar branded or EMC‐certified hardware
• The technology was not designed to meet the high performance requirements of enterprises
• Difficult to restore an entire RAIN architecture after a disaster. (lots of deduplicated data scattered)
• Dependent of the node: before backing up / restoring a check is made to verify the deduplicated blocks available.  This can lengthen the time for backup and restores
• Permanent activity on Nodes: Data is permanently moved from node to other

Need help.. I am looking to hire an Sr Systems Engineer that knows the following technologies inside and out:

1) EMC – Clariion, Celerra, Avamar, and ideally knows SYM

2) VMware – ESX, View and SRM

If you know of anyone that has at least 5 years of experience and willing to join a growing company please have them send a cover letter and resume to careers@contourds.com

Thanks

Rocco

I was reading the wall street journal this morning and came across an article i thought was interesting.  Its talked about virtual desktop and where most organizations are headed.

Happy Reading

“Businesses Take Another Look at Virtual Desktops”  written by William M. Bulkeley at WSJ

As companies look for new ways to squeeze costs out of their technology budgets, some are deciding that the next PC they purchase need not be a PC at all.

Instead, they are rolling out virtual desktops — a set-up consisting of a screen, keyboard and small connector box that ties into a powerful server in the computer room that has all the software, storage and processing capabilities that each desktop user needs.

Wyse Technology

Wyse Technology virtual desktops are installed across the campus of Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Maryland Auto Insurance Fund, an insurance company in Annapolis, Md., says it plans to replace at least two-thirds of its 600 user desktops within 18 months with virtual PCs.

Cindy Warkentin, the company’s chief information officer, estimates that the move will save costs by allowing the company to replace fewer PCs every year.

The virtual PCs also allow her IT staff to centrally install software updates in a few minutes instead of working for several hours over the weekend.

The so-called thin-client revolution has been touted before, but has so far failed to arrive. At last count about 633 million desktop PCs were humming in offices around the globe, according to technology watchers at Gartner.

Gartner and other analysts say improved virtualization software for the desktop, the rising cost of maintaining PCs and demands for more security and regulatory accountability are all making conditions ripe for virtual PCs.

Gartner says the number of virtual desktops doubled in the last year to about 600,000. It predicts that over the next five years, 15% of current PCs will be replaced by virtual desktops.

Virtual desktops, which cost from $200 to $1,000 per user, lower the cost of operating and supporting PC networks by eliminating most deskside visits by technicians, while reducing viruses and security violations, vendors and analysts say.

They also help companies restrain unruly users who install rogue programs on their office computers, copy sensitive corporate information to thumb drives or prodigiously print out emails.

"This is the hottest trend out there among our customers," says Brian Gammage, a Gartner analyst.

Wyse Technology

Virtual desktops from Wyse Technology, which use a box to connect to servers, replaced PCs at Wheldon School and Sports College in England.

Makers of virtualization software, such as VMware Inc., Citrix Systems Inc. and Wyse Technology Co., have also worked on ways to reduce delays that prevented videos and complex graphics from displaying reliably on thin clients in the past.

Many companies postponed their normal replacement of their desktop PCs this year because of tight recession-year budgets and reluctance to buy Microsoft Corp.’s Vista operating system, which would have required more-powerful machines. But the upcoming Windows 7 is getting good reviews, leading some to consider replacing their current hardware.

"Windows 7 and the PC refresh cycle are two big reasons CIOs are evaluating virtual desktops today," says Sumit Dhawan, vice president of Citrix.

Most of them are doing pilot tests with 1,000 or fewer users, but Citrix says earlier this year one customer that it declined to name signed up to install 230,000 virtual desktops.

Vendors say customers won’t save much initially buying thin clients instead of PCs because they still have to buy just as many software licenses and need to spend more for servers and storage. The biggest savings for most companies come in ongoing operating costs.

International Business Machines Corp., whose service arm installs virtual networks for customers, estimates customers get at least 95% savings in the cost of desktop-technology support because technicians need to be sent out less frequently.

Thin clients don’t have a hard drive, which is a common source of trouble, and because most problems can be solved at the server site. IBM also says desktop virtualization can mean a 40% drop in electricity use.

One cost-conscious user, the Pike County School System in Kentucky, kept its old PCs in a recent tech realignment that IBM worked on, but it turned off their hard drives and ran them as virtual PCs.

Write to William M. Bulkeley at bill.bulkeley@wsj.com

EMC CLARiiON AX4-5 Competitive Analysis

Strengths

•  Strong FC SAN vendor partnerships
• Resells through Dell as a channel (30% of revenues)
• Virtual LUN capability; ability to non-disruptively migrate LUNs internally (Virtual LUN) and externally (SANcopy)
• Cache de-staging
• Support for consistency groups with remote mirroring function
• PowerPath host multipath software for path and workload management

Positioning

• Aimed at small to medium businesses (SMBs)

• AX4-5 key claims:

• Performance, scalabilty, ease of use

• 4Gb/s end-to-end architecture
• Connectivity with iSCSI or FC

Simplify the IT environment and support VMware infrastructure

• High Scalability
• EMC claims high raw capacity utilization
• I/O optimization via PowerPath MPIO host application
• Virtual LUN Technology
• Data movement between FC & SATA
• Resiliency & Availability
• fully redundant with cache des-stage to disk
• Dual controller option to provide HA
• Snap & Mirror Consistency
• Supports both sync and async replication, as well as consistency groups

Weaknesses

• legacy design, requires disruption to scale up (CLARiiON CX range)
• SAN only; FC (Fiber Channel) or iSCSI, not both
• Management gaps; limited integration of management software
• No single operational workflow for managing both the system and its data.
• Limited product breadth and scalability
• Double-parity RAID-6 protection not available
• No multi-protocol support in a single array; NAS support for file data requires expensive, add-on gateway controllers  requiring  other mgmt
• No thin-provisioning, no data deduplication
• Snapshots copies – copy-on-write / performance penalties (see SPC-1)
• No support for SnapView clones
• Limited number of Snapshots (1 per LUN); limited number of Snap Sessions per LUN (1) and per system (16)
• No SnapSuite-like benefits; EMC Replication Manager provides an integrated environment for managing point-in-time copies, remote mirroring, and data migration services; but no Operations Manager.
• No Oracle HARD support (vs. NetApp SnapValidator)
• No integrated compliance solution (SnapVault, SnapLock, LockVault)
• Requires 4 pre-allocated drives for OS; using for data impacts performance
• External battery backup to destage cache is weak link

Why NetApp FAS2020 vs. EMC CLARiiON AX4-5

• Higher performance under snapshot (SPC-1), capacity utilization (RAID-DP, Thin Provisioning & Deduplication) & data protection (SnapSuite)
• lower total cost of ownership

• NetApp easier to install, configure, deploy, and manage

• Flex and Snap-suite dramatically simplify administration and allocation of storage

• Staff only needs to be trained in one technology for the complete storage infrastructure, reducing training costs and skill levels required

• NetApp enables Business Agility with:

• Greater versatility with multiprotocol support and upgrade paths in a single storage system
• Cascade original investment into new technologies as released by NetApp; for example, deduplication
• Common compatible architecture across the entire product range

• Gaps in functionality require customers to use disparate pieces of non-integrated software to address key areas of management, including…
• Files, Archives, Disk backup (D2D), Security, SRM
• Challenges in provisioning and re-provisioning capacity
• AX offers poor volume mgmt and limited disk pooling
• MetaLUNs must be configured based on strict guidelines — a labor-intensive and inflexible process.
• Performance impact can be negative as LUN count increases and existing LUNs are re-provisioned.

A week go or so Pillar announced a “Cash For Storage Clunkers” program.  I haven’t seen any news since.  I am curious to see if anyone has an opinion on this.  I cut and paste the article from the CEO blog so that you can read it. 

Thoughts?

Interesting data here.

Google Labs has a research paper describing disk failure rates (ignoring manufacturer)

http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf

Here are the results summarized:

No Manufactures are mentioned in the paper:

"Failure rates are known to be highly correlated with drive models, manufacturers and vintages [18]. Our results do not contradict this fact. For example, Figure 2 changes significantly when we normalize failure rates per each drive model. Most age-related results are impacted by drive intages. However, in this paper, we do not show a breakdown of drives per manufacturer, model, or vintage due to the proprietary nature of these data."

Yesterday at Lehigh University we hosted a group of 30 IT professionals to learn about some of the latest technologies around green IT and virtualization. Following the presentations we lunched on Italian steak, chicken romano, and cappuccino cake while attendees had the opportunity to network with one another along with representatives from Contour, EMC, VMware, and newly acquired EMC partner Data Domain.

Following the lunch we made our way down into the scorching sun where we watched the special teams practice. The most exciting part of the practice was watching second-year man Desean Jackson returning kicks. You have no idea how fast these guys are until you see them in person. The temperature was 93 degrees and after several hours of direct sunlight most of the guests retired to their cars for the trip back home.

Upcoming on the 20th is the Recoverpoint event at the Camden Rivershark game. I have heard that the Camden ball park is one of the nicest in minor league baseball due to it’s sprawling view of the Philadelphia skyline.