Sun Microsystems Inc. has announced availability of a
newvirtual tape library (VTL)product
that combines FalconStor Software VTL software ported to its
Solaris operating system with its SunFire X4500 server (aka
Thumper).The product, dubbed VTL Value, is the first pure storage product
Sun has ported to the Thumper platform, which CEO Jonathan Schwartz
said in
Sun's earnings call last week will be the
centerpiece of Sun's disk storage strategy going forward.
VTL Value joins the existing VTL Plus, another OEM of FalconStor
aimed at midsized customers in Sun's product line. VTL Value comes
with 24 terabytes (TB) of 500 GB
SATA drives, and Sun said support for 250 GB and 750 GB drives
is coming sometime next quarter. It also includes the Sun ZFS
128-bit file system and software-based RAID 5 write checksums,
which the company claims can offer dual parity data protection
similar to RAID 6 without the performance penalty. It connects to
hosts via Fibre Channel and also has 4 Gigabit Ethernet (GigE)
ports for replication and management. List price is $84, 995.
" 'Bargain,' might be a strong word for $85,000," said Stephanie
Balaouras, senior analyst with the Forrester Research Group, saying
that Sun's positioning of the product as a low-cost system for
small and midsized businesses (SMB) might be a tough sell. However,
"I do believe they have a compelling argument for large enterprises
that need to protect distributed sites, and reliability and
performance are still important."
Despite the fact that VTL is largely last year's news,
especially as backup applications grow more aware of disk,
Balaouras said larger enterprises would probably stick with VTL for
longer than their small and midsized counterparts. "[At] global
enterprises and very large enterprises, tape is still hugely
important. They have significant investment in tape and given all
the emphasis on power and cooling requirements, tape will be around
for a long time in these customer segments."
But there are some caveats with the tape integration in this
product, chief among them that it won't be available for another 30
days. Nor will remote replication, another feature key to managing
storage at remote offices. These features are still being tested
with the the FalconStor software on Thumper, according to Dan
Albright, group manager for the VTL Value product line at Sun. A
license key will open the features to users once they are
certified. "We're wrapping up the final stages of testing with
these features right now. We've just given ourselves 30 days on
those features to get them rolled out after that," according to
Albright.
Users will have an even longer wait for data deduplication,
despite the fact that FalconStor offers it with a feature called
Single Instance Repository (SIR). (Other FalconStor OEMs, including
EMC Corp. and IBM, have also not yet offered data deduplication in
their VTLs.) Sun said the feature will be available in the first
calendar quarter of 2008. "Dedupe is almost like a totally
different product," Albright said. He also echoed IBM officials in
citing data integrity concerns as the reason
for delays in adding dedupe.
When and if the full set of features becomes available, backup
applications will only be able to see physical copies of tape
written through the VTL if they are integrated with StorageTek's
ACSLS tape management software. Some users have identified this as
a
drawback of VTLs that integrate with tape,
though Sun and FalconStor argue that the value of virtual tape
is its ability to abstract management of physical tape from the
user, and that giving backup applications control of the process
defeats the purpose of virtualization.
The beginnings of a turnaround, or more of the same?
Another potential issue is what this product is not -- the
long-promised
VTL Enterprise, which was preannounced last
year at Sun Forum by Dr. David Yen, at the time the head of the
storage group. VTL Enterprise itself was the latest incarnation
of a high-end open systems VTL that has been in the works in one
form or another since before Sun acquired StorageTek. This year,
Dr. Yen has moved to the microelectronics group within Sun as
part of the repeated upheavals that the company has gone through
in recent months, and VTL Enterprise is still nowhere to be
seen.
"We are not prepared to comment on VTL Enterprise at this time,"
Albright said, though he said the company still plans to deliver a
high-end "flagship-type product." He added that the strategy for
VTL within the company has shifted to injecting as much Sun IP as
possible into products, as has been done in this release. This new
strategy follows on the reorganization of disk storage groups at
the company under the server and software groups.
Meanwhile, some users are skeptical in response to this latest
news. "You can get a Thumper for $40,000," said one storage
administrator for a large national telecom who asked not to be
named. The user said he is currently evaluating using Thumper's
cheap, dense disk unit as a repository for disk-based backup
through Symantec Corp.'s NetBackup version 6.5, and said he also
has FalconStor VTLs in-house branded by a couple of different OEMs.
"I don't see how FalconStor's software adds $35,000 of value to
[the product], and on top of that, you have to pay for your backup
software to write to it anyway."
He added, "We're moving away from VTL now that the backup
software is getting good at writing to disk. I really don't see
where VTL fits in anymore."
However, analysts are cautiously optimistic that this
announcement could mark the start of better days for Sun, pointing
to the integration of Sun's operating system, file system, and DAS
box, as well as the more cohesive storage strategy around Thumper,
as signs of progress.
"Thumper can seep out into lots of places [within Sun's product
lines]," said Arun Taneja, founder and analyst with the Taneja
Group, identifying the red-hot archiving market as another place
the product could find a home. "They've also simplified what had
been a potpourri of haphazard product offerings, and the VTL is
looking like a more consistent product line.
"It's far too soon to declare any success, but I'm seeing some
signs of energy from Sun I haven't seen in a while," he added. "The
next six months will tell, but it seems like somebody is thinking
over there."