Irreverence

posted on 12 February 2008 16:36

 It’s beginning to look as if VMware integration is becoming a sine qua non for storage suppliers.

Customers buying networked storage buy on several parameters: blocks or files; FC or iSCSI; functionality; data protection; supplier reputation; and, of course, price. Now VMware integration is shooting up the list.

It seems to be becoming the case that unless your product can be provisioned by, and work very well with, VMware then you haven’t a prayer of selling into VMware shops. That simple, huh? Yes, that simple and that clear.

For 3PAR, Copan, Dell, EMC. F5, HDS, HP, IBM, LeftHand Networks, Nexsan, Pillar Data, Sun and any other storage suppliers to the great mass of medium-sized enterprises and organisations moving to VMware they are all made equal in one respect.

Whatever else they do they must work well with VMware. They must get certified by VMware, work with VMotion and the Acceleration kits, and appear on the VMware’s HCL (Hardware Compatibility List). They must make life easy and fast for VMware administrators.

Take flies or blocks. With an iSCSI SAN you can stick a Windows server front end on it and have file access to your block data through it. That’s powerful. NAS-only products need to know how to deal with that.

With a FC SAN the adding of a NAS head is more complex and the scales just got weighted a little in favour of iSCSI. But Emulex HBAs work very well with virtual machines whereas a heavily virtualised server could put quite a load on its Ethernet NICs as the storage is accessed. Suppliers need to understand the pros and cons, ifs and buts, and ins and outs of this stuff. It could mean sales life or death.

Any storage product which has an API usable by VMware administrators has an advantage; there’s only one pane of management and that makes life simpler. Any storage product packaged as a VMware virtual machine would appear to have a ready-made advantage. Step forward LeftHand Networks and DataCore. Step back every other supplier unless you have a great response to that issue.

VMware is becoming the gate through which every supplier of storage to the great mass of mid-sized businesses and organisations must pass and present their credentials. No credentials? Then access is denied.