EMC
Announces Several New and Updated Solutions
By Clay Ryder
EMC Corporation has
announced a new line-up of storage systems and software that seek to help
customers store information more cost-effectively, securely, and intelligently.
Among the products announced are the new EMC
Symmetrix DMX-4 series of high-end storage arrays featuring an end-to-end 4GBps
architecture, Fibre Channel point-to-point back-end, support for both FC and new low-cost 750 GB SATA II disk
drives, double the replication distance when using EMC
SRDF, and overall performance improvement of up to 30%. EMC
Celerra NS20 and NS40 multi-protocol storage systems
feature NAS and SAN connectivity through iSCSI or Fibre Channel, new Celerra Startup Assistant software, and support for 750GB
SATA II disk drives, which reduce power consumption by up to 33%. The new Centera Generation 4 LP nodes offers 50% more capacity per
node, reduces power and cooling requirements by 67% per TB by using new 750GB
SATA disk drives, and provides new security features in the EMC
CentraStar storage operating environment. New EMC
CLARiiON CX3 storage system features a new CLARiiON FLARE operating environment
with expanded compliance and audit features, new native iSCSI
remote replication, RAID 6 protection, active/active failover, and support for
750GB SATA II disk drives. The company also introduced the Rainfinity
File Management Appliance (FMA) that enables organizations to cost-effectively
implement policy-based file management and automatically move and retrieve
files across the entire NAS infrastructure including EMC
Celerra, other NAS, and EMC
Centera. In addition, customers can upgrade from the
FMA to the full Rainfinity Global File Virtualization
solution. Centera Generation 4 LP Nodes and the Rainfinity File Management Appliance are now available. The
new Symmetrix DMX-4 series, new Celerra NS20 systems,
Celerra multi-protocol NS40 systems, and CLARiiON
enhancements will be available in August 2007. The updated CentraStar
software and latest version of FLARE are available as
a free upgrade to customers with maintenance contracts.
These announcements are impressive by sheer number alone;
however, despite the broad range of capability and storage agility illustrated
by EMC, there are a couple of overriding
themes evident in these releases that to us epitomize the current state of the
industry. These are the seemingly ubiquitous SATA II drive, and energy
efficiency. The 750GB SATA II drive is one of the more interesting disk
technologies in recent memory. This is not to say that it is a new and
revolutionary technology in and of itself, but rather one that through its
price/performance profile has altered some of the fundamental assumptions about
“the right place” for storage technologies within the enterprise. Not that long
ago, the mention of Symmetrix to most IT professionals would trigger visions of
the essence of high-performance, mission-critical, some would even argue
gold-plated (in the best sense of the words) storage solutions. The thought
that the more modest SATA technology would ever take up residence in such a
revered platform would be unthinkable. How rapidly times have changed.
Small SATA drives are affecting assumptions about the cost
and performance of not just entry-level solutions, but the higher end as well.
The combination of their high capacity and lower price points for drives and
interconnects has resulted in a more cost-effective building block for storage
solutions. Granted the absolute performance of these drives is surpassed by
other technologies, but for many, the performance is more than good enough. It
is clear that EMC recognizes this, as these
new drives are supported across the range of EMC
solutions, from CLARiiON and Celerra, through Centerra and Symmetrix. This should provide the company not
only flexibility in its product offerings to meet customer needs, but also some
price competitiveness given reduced component costs and their ability to offer
more storage within a single rack space.
The other aspect of SATA that is noteworthy is the 33%
reduction in power consumption EMC is
claiming for these drives. As organizations struggle to keep up with internal
demand for storage while seeking to limit their exposure to escalating power
costs, the ability to keep the number of drives in a storage array constant
while gaining higher capacity should be welcome news. Multiply this across the
multiple arrays common in larger organizations, and the potential for savings
is considerable. Although much of the energy efficiency discussion in the
datacenter has been focused on servers, the reality is that storage arrays also
have a part to play in making the data center more eco friendly, especially
considering these assets sometimes remain active long after servers of the same
vintage have been retired/refreshed.
Overall, these announcements serve notice that the folks in
Hopkinton remain focused not only on driving the market for their products, but
also incorporating the best of what the market has to offer into their
solutions. Whether this is through internal innovation, M&A activity, or
incorporating state-of-the-art building blocks, it is clear that EMC
is ready and willing to bring its competitive strengths to bear in its quest to
be the assumed leader in delivering Information Infrastructure technology.
SonicWALL
Reinforces HP ProCurve’s ProActive
Defense Strategy
By Lawrence D. Dietz
SonicWALL, Inc., a provider of
network security, email security, secure remote access, and backup and recovery
solutions, has announced an agreement to align with ProCurve
Networking by HP to provide new levels of security price performance to
enterprises worldwide. SonicWALL has joined the ProCurve Alliance, a recently announced program designed to
offer customers security, mobility, and convergence solutions that have been
tested and qualified for interoperability with ProCurve offerings. Through this alliance, SonicWALL will extend its award-winning Unified Threat
Management technology into the ProCurve
network environment, taking part in ProCurve’s ProActive Defense strategy to secure networks against
internal and external threats. In order to join the ProCurve alliance, SonicWALL
completed a rigorous application process that includes technology certification
to ensure solution interoperability, simplified deployment, and optimized performance.
ProCurve and SonicWALL
are currently engaged on product certification, undertaking extensive testing
to help ensure solution interoperability. The fundamentals of security call for
dynamic, layered security as a requirement for all networks. Since many
security threats originate within the LAN,
deep packet inspection across every interface within the network is essential.
Additionally, as networks become more dispersed, security needs to be armed at
the edge as well as from the inside out. Through this collaboration, SonicWALL and its channel partners intend to support ProCurve’s strategy of enabling customers to maintain the
highest levels of security on every network segment without imposing a price
penalty for premium performance. ProCurve’s offerings
provide network management solutions for network access control and threat
detection and response, and SonicWALL’s portfolio
complements that of ProCurve by providing UTM
features for WAN perimeter defense and deep packet inspection for internal threat
defense. SonicWALL’s UTM firewalls include the
acclaimed PRO Series for mid-range deployments and the recently unveiled NSA
E7500 multi-core UTM security platform, designed to provide network and data
technology to larger networks, distributed enterprises, and data centers. The
NSA E7500 is the flagship of SonicWALL’s new E Class
line of premium performance solutions, which also includes Email Security
offerings and, through its acquisition of Aventail, a
range of high-end SSL VPN solutions.
HP has been aggressively trying to expand into the middle
market with its ProCurve
line. The middle market is the most difficult of all segments because much of
it defies description. On the lower end of this market where entities have
between 100 and 200 employees, they exhibit the same buying patterns and
concerns as small business. Furthermore, since these organizations may have
only one or two people dedicated to the IT function, it is very unlikely that
there is an inhouse information security specialist. As the organizations grow
in size, their IT staff grows as well, but their propensity to be heavily
involved in remedial security measures does not. Middle market companies tend
to be more concerned with avoiding problems than fixing them.
The key to success for this alliance is “a rigorous
application process that includes technology certification to ensure solution
interoperability, simplified deployment and optimized
performance.” Buyers will likely feel that they can rely on the integrity of HP
to ensure that these two families of products will interoperate as marketed and
sold. In effect HP has taken the single point of contact responsibility through
its certification of SonicWALL. Given the competitive
and margin challenging market of UTM products, this is a way for SonicWALL to rise above the noise level as well. We believe
this is a solid combination offering buyers a positive option for combining
security and networking in an efficient manner.
Security Information Management
Simplified by Foundry/Lancope Linkup
By Lawrence D. Dietz
Lancope, Inc., the provider of the
StealthWatch System, a widely used Network Behavior
Analysis and response solution, has announced that Foundry Networks, Inc., a
performance and total solutions vendor for end-to-end switching and routing,
has deployed the StealthWatch System to transform sFlow from Foundry’s routers and switches into actionable
network intelligence to optimize security and network operations. Unifying
flow-based anomaly detection and network performance monitoring, StealthWatch provides detailed views of anomalies and
network utilization to benefit Foundry’s security analysts, network engineers,
and network planners. Before deploying StealthWatch,
Foundry already possessed networking expertise and high quality equipment, but
its IT resources had the arduous and time-consuming task of reviewing log files
to identify and remediate security and performance problems across its large,
complex network. Foundry deployed StealthWatch to
streamline network optimization and security into one process, without taxing
internal resources or the network itself. The arrangement has reduced time
required for problem resolution from four or five hours to one. The combination
also has the secondary benefit of being able to monitor large data transfers
and the users performing them. It is also possible to monitor who is accessing
particular services and to identify, track, and report on end users responsible
for suspicious activity, including the files they accessed and when they gained
access.
Leveraging the existing network infrastructure, StealthWatch collects and analyzes Foundry’s sFlow traffic statistics against more than 130 proprietary
behavioral algorithms. The raw sFlow data is
transformed into actionable network intelligence that governs blocking
mechanisms within Foundry routers and switches. Foundry has deployed StealthWatch Xe for sFlow collector appliances, which aggregate high-speed
network behavior data from multiple networks or network segments to extend
protection across Foundry’s geographically dispersed IT environment, and the StealthWatch IDentity-1000 appliance, which directly links
individual users with specific network events. With StealthWatch
to more easily identify the source of network issues, Foundry’s IT staff is
less dependent upon remedial tools to try to match users with the network
services they utilize and the periodic, unexpected events they may cause. A
member of Foundry’s Security Alliance Program, Lancope
previously collaborated with Foundry on StealthWatch Xe for sFlow, one of the
industry’s first sFlow-enabled anomaly detection
systems. The appliance combines Lancope’s
award-winning StealthWatch security platform with
Foundry’s sFlow packet sampling technology to deliver
a network-wide solution for anomaly detection without the costly deployment of
sensors throughout the network. This approach provides a scalable and
cost-effective method to provide total network visibility for IT Security
managers and is complementary to security solutions such as firewalls,
intrusion prevention systems, and other signature-based security appliances.
High-performance networks imply high levels of security and
reliability. Network Operations
Center personnel are often compared
to FAA Air Traffic Controllers in the nature and pressure of their jobs. The NOC
is charged not only with overseeing network operations, but with the overall
security of the network and safeguarding organizational information assets as
well. There is no question that networks generate an enormous amount of data
and that it would be very useful to be able to sort through those mounds of
data to see what can be done to optimize performance, and to determine whether
there are nefarious activities afoot.
By employing specialized network behavior analysis
capabilities, network owners are better able to detect potential problems than
they would be relying solely on typical networking hardware and software. The
ability to streamline network operations and security into a single process is
the type of optimized process flow that large end users in particular are
looking for. If this can be accomplished with interoperable hardware and
software in a single flow, organizations will likely benefit. Of course there
is still the need for security specialists to analyze anomalous behavior and
work with the NOC to reduce any potential
negative impact; however, it would appear that this combination has simplified
the overall process giving the end user organization an operational advantage.
IBM
Reorganizes System i into Two New Business Units
By Clay Ryder
IBM has announced the
reorganization of its System i product and management
team into two new organizations, the Business Systems unit, and the Power
Systems unit. The company stated that its System i
business has split into two distinct client segments—large enterprise and small
and medium business—each with its own set of requirements, and that it is
undertaking this reorganization to better address the needs of the two
communities. The new Business Systems unit will be led by Marc Dupaquier, and will be responsible for SMB integrated
systems including the low-end System i products and
will focus on the SMB client segment. This new unit will be work toward
extending the System i capabilities to ensure
continued relevance to small and medium businesses, and will build on the
integrated, easy-to-use value proposition of i5/OS. The enterprise-focused
Power Systems unit will be led by Ross Mauri, and
will include all of the existing System p product line as well as the high-end
System i 570 and 595 products. This unit will be
focused on delivering leadership for POWER-based systems, including the value
of the i5/OS operating environment and applications for larger enterprise
clients. In addition, the company indicated that nearly half of its systems
customers have i5/OS installed in their organization and that it believes the
reorganization will help secure the investments that customers and partners
have made in i5/OS applications by keeping i5/OS in the mainstream of IBM’s
future systems investments.
To the System i faithful, this
announcement will likely be subject to considerable scrutiny and reexamination,
in a fervent attempt to ascertain whether indeed the sky is falling. While
organizational realignment is generally just a fact of corporate life, in the
case of the System i, it is a closely watched and
debated affair. To our way of thinking, the System i
was overdue for some kind of change given the platform’s overall market
performance as of late. This is not to lay blame on the platform, but rather
acknowledge the marketplace reality that the customer base has bifurcated into
two separate and rather different camps. As such, the historic marketing
approach for the platform was no longer in alignment with market realities and
stymied attempts to grow the customer base. With this announcement, we do not
see a diminishing role for the System i going
forward, but rather the potential for the opposite, as the two customer
constituencies can be now addressed in a more focused and relevant manner.
IBM’s assertion that it
wants to broaden the number of platforms where i5/OS reside makes a great deal
of sense to us. From a hardware perspective there is scant different between
the System p and System i, the OS and application
support is what truly differentiates the System i.
Bringing i5/OS to more platforms is not a harbinger of the death of the System i, but rather a reflection of the importance of the
software stack to IBM, its ecosystem, and
the customer base. If Big Blue was considering eliminating the System i, it could have simply relegated i5/OS as an option to the
models 570 and 595 where its margins are considerably higher, and leave the lower
end of the market with a migration decision. This is not evident in the
reorganization announcement. Although one could postulate on the potential for
this to happen in the future, the future is not yet written and the forces that
shape the future are the decisions taken today. Therefore, it behooves all of
us with an interest in this unique platform to accept that IBM
is taking action with the hope of growing, not burying, the System i, and act and think accordingly. Inaction on the part of
Big Blue would have led to only one possible outcome, and that outcome would
have been far more onerous than learning to adapt to the changing waters of the
marketplace.
