I recently received a reply from Marvel Jones to one of my previous blog posts that warrants a post of its own. First, thanks for your question/comment Mr. Jones. It read:

“This sounds great with a platform like the Axiom mixed storage with a single interface and 80% utilization of usable storage there has to be a catch. Is there a disadvantage at all to this system? Can you tell me that there is no technical disadvantage to going with an Axiom platform? I don’t mean to sound skeptical but well I am a bit skeptical, if you can explain how a system so great hasn’t hit the market with greater force in the time this has been on the market or give me some technical deep-dive as to how a system like this gets 80% utilization with no degradation in performance and why more companies have not adapted to the Pillar way of storage. I know quite a bit about the architecture and just want some of the gaps filled in.”

My response:

Yes there is a catch… if by “catch” you mean there is something that may not be obvious or deserves clarification. Let me explain:

1)    As I have said before, if you are spindle IO limited in all your applications, then reducing the number of spindles by consolidation makes things worse. In other words, if you are capacity underutilized because you are IO/spindle limited, then storing more data on those spindles further overtaxes the IO you were counting on for other applications. You can’t get blood from a turnip.

2)    If all your applications need the same level of service, and you do not want any contention whatsoever, you need to dedicate spindles and arrays to those applications. In this case, consider DAS, because sharing always risks contention. Just ask any parent with children who are “sharing” just about anything. Servers aren’t any better, but you don’t have to send them to college.
Now on to the good news:  Most IT shops have a wide variety of apps with disparate requirements for IO, bandwidth and capacity. Rather than dedicating spindles to your applications, you can consolidate your storage onto a Pillar Axiom, and let it manage the performance and contention among those applications. It does this with our patented QoS.

Even on a single application, differentiable QoS extracts far more performance from a spindle than the unmanaged FIFO queuing of most storage systems.

See these previous blog posts for more details:

•    Simple overview of QoS: Apr 2 - QoS - The Simple View
Policy-based selection of File system and LUN attributes determine how Network, Cache, RAID, and Disk are used to meet Application workload requirements.

•    Big Picture view of Axiom & Pillar Mar 9 - Changing the Industry
Axiom is an Enterprise-class machine. Available, Reliable, and Serviceable, the Axiom is a Tier 1 networked storage machine built on a virtualized pool.

•    Reducing Contention for Controller and RAID resources: Mar 21 - Distributed RAID

Nearly all storage controllers employ centralized RAID controllers with FC Loops connecting Storage shelves; not Axiom. The Axiom employs RAID controllers in the Storage shelves themselves. Why? Because RAID controllers are the bottleneck in spindle expansion on standard systems. Furthermore, centralized RAID controllers use system bandwidth for sparing, parity, and rebuild, which is wasteful and hinders performance under fault and scalability.

•    Utilization Regardless of QoS: Aug 29 - I Love a Parade

Regarding hitting the market with great force…Well, we are the youngest in-the-market for any of the “new” storage companies (by years). We have won more than 400 enterprise customers of all sizes with a first-class product in our first 3 years in the market. Comparably, this is a great achievement. We have competitors that don’t have as many customers after 6 years in the market. Others sell low-end systems to more customers with a lot lower average selling price. I say good for them! The storage market has plenty of room for more than one alternative to the big legacy providers.

I think your point is: if we offer better performance and utilization, why aren’t people adopting our technology even faster than they already are? I think that to take full advantage of our utilization superiority, you have to understand QoS and be willing to use it. Even for customers not using QoS, Pillar Axiom offers many advantages over standard arrays from our competitors. Regarding QoS use, it takes a long time to change old ways of doing business. Let’s face it – what we advocate is a bad idea with old-fashioned arrays using FIFO queuing. Our customers have found it simple, easy, and extremely effective. It takes time to break our old habits, but as is often the case in life, it is well worth it.

Economically, our technology saves money big-time, and we guarantee it.

Mike