Last week RisingTide Systems, a stealth startup with no web site, spoke to StorageMojo. This week Avere Systems, a quiet but not stealthy startup with a website wouldn’t. Rebecca Thompson, Avere’s marketing veep, wrote
Hi, Robin. Thanks for the interest, but we’re not ready to talk just yet.
But they will talk at Storage Networking World.
What they do
The title of their SNW talk SSD or HDD? How to Get the Benefits of Both with Dynamic Tiering offers some clues.
At the web site they have a picture of what might be a 2-3u rackmount box. So they aren’t a strict software play, although “tin-wrapped” software is something many customers find appealing.
They are also showing at SC09, the supercomputing show. That suggests a focus on bandwidth rather than IOPS as well as the less lucrative research markets.
Or maybe CMU PhD and Avere founder Ron Bianchini wants to hang out with some scientists. Can’t blame him.
Here’s Ron’s bio from SNW:
Ronald P Bianchini, PhD, Chief Executive Officer, Avere Systems
Ron Bianchini is CEO of Avere Systems, Inc. Prior to co-founding Avere Systems, Bianchini was an SVP of NetApp, where he served as the leader of the NetApp Pittsburgh Technology Center. Prior to NetApp, Bianchini was CEO and co-founder of Spinnaker Networks, which developed the Storage Grid architecture acquired by Network Appliance. He also served as VP of Product Architecture at FORE Systems, where he was responsible for ATM products. In addition, Bianchini founded Scalable Networks, which designed a large-scale Gigabit Ethernet switch, and before that was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University.Bianchini received a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. He also holds numerous patents in fault-tolerant distributed systems and high-speed network design.
The StorageMojo take
Ron is a smart guy and it will be interesting to see what new wrinkles he’s got on integrating fast/expensive with slow/cheap. “Dynamic tiering” is not unlike virtual memory.
This seems to be well-trod ground. I’m hoping for a “wow” idea.
Courteous comments welcome, of course.
Robin,
I worked with Rebecca at her last org, the enterprise search company where I’m a systems admin/architect. It’s neat to see that you reached out to her, because I actually pointed her to your blog before she left (I knew she was moving to storage). Knowing Rebecca, and based on our conversations before she moved on, I expect pretty cool stuff when Avere *is* ready to talk.
I gave up any hope of getting hybrid SSD + “rotating rust” devices about a year ago. In the last 6 months things have really been changing for the better in the SSD + “rotating rust” world. I am not sure that tiering or even “dynamic tiering” will be the final answer. It will be a good incremental step. “Clouds” are driving some interesting changes. One of those is the move away from managing at the “spindle” level, which is where we have been for too long.
The next move needs to be away from the lack of leadership from the ROI, ROCE, ??? area (management) that is needed by the local “care and feeding” personnel in the TCO, CAPEX, OPEX, ??? area. You must have income growth to survive. Controlling expenses is necessary but not as important as income growth. “Clouds” are expensive but they stimulate income growth by delivering “Value Add” Services within the defined TCO. We now get “fries” and possibly a “Pepsi” with our “cheeseburger” (Unit of Information).
The “Cloud” management tools are still missing. Perhaps because there is no leadership from vendors. That leadership would come in the form of a definable Strategy.
Joni Mitchell said it well in her song…
Rows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I’ve looked at clouds that way
But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way
I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now,
from up and down, and still somehow
it’s cloud illusions I recall.
I really don’t know clouds at all.
Dynamic tiering…. it sound like another einsteinian metaphore; relative to the user’s expectations. Dynamic ?? or chaotic tiering ??
If your data life-cycle matures your assets in 30 days and you have a migration job executing daily, that a very dynamic system over the course of a year..
“Image” a data system that can manage your migrations 30x faster than your needs, it.. its.. its… just incredible !!!! Yes, now our lives are forever changed.. We don’t have words to describe these feelings of amazement with such scale and impact.
Where is Pablo Neruda when the data storage world needs him ?