Interesting article, and you make some good points. I don't disagree with what you're saying, but your analogies fall down - the markup in restaurants and on wines and spirits in bars is absolutely HUGE :-)
sfoskett
· 2 months ago
Hahaha yeah this is so true. I had a $19 Martini the other day. While it was indeed delicious, it probably contained just $2 of gin, vermouth, and lime. Oops I just gave out my secret Martini recipe!
Anyway, why would I spend $19 for $2 worth of booze? Because the total package was worth it: I was with my friends after all. That's why we buy EMC, NetApp, and even Apple, isn't it? The total package must be worth it or folks wouldn't be buying...
johnmartinoz
· 2 months ago
Another problem solved by a storage array is that, when well implemented, it can dramatically reduce the amount of effort to manage the storage environment. One of the most compelling arguments for this can be found in an interesting (though little known) pair of papers written by John Tyrrell which can be found here http://media.netapp.com/documents/Ditch_the_LUN.... In it he states.
"The hundreds of studies done by the IBM Corporation in the 1980s showed that there was a one-to-one correspondence between the number of islands of storage to manage and the number of space failures, performance bottlenecks, job restarts/reruns, and the number of people to manage the storage."
Well managed storage array implementations can significantly reduce the number of management tasks, and provides levarage points for policy automation tools. Given the intense focus on operational expenditure that Cloud services brings, the value of an enterprise storage framework (including the arrays, software and services), that drives down overall expenditure should not be underestimated.
Mark Davis
· 2 months ago
Stephen, yes, you speak a truth. Great post, as usual.
But I suggest your argument could be interpreted as a bit of a straw man.
I haven't heard anyone who understands anything about the topic suggest that enterprise storage should cost the same as a raw disk drives. But that isn't the argument that the Nexentas of the world make.
Your analogy to restaurant prices is somewhat apropos. But a better analogy is to an adjacent market, servers. The question people ask, which I don't think can be glibly answered, is why markups from raw material cost are so much higher in the storage industry than they are in servers. I don't think there is any technology justification for this anomaly. I believe a forensic economist would conclude the structure of the industry, not the nature of the technology, fully explains this stark difference between the storage and server industries.
petesteege
· 2 months ago
Great post Stephen! There's a corollary at the component level: "The premium for an enterprise disk drive is more than the sum of its hardware differences."
Have you ever looked at what % disk drives - or other hardware components - make up of a storage system's cost? I wonder if it has changed over time, or if it's one of those fixed constants.
Might be different for each of your above classes of storage.
All Comments
Anyway, why would I spend $19 for $2 worth of booze? Because the total package was worth it: I was with my friends after all. That's why we buy EMC, NetApp, and even Apple, isn't it? The total package must be worth it or folks wouldn't be buying...
"The hundreds of studies done by the IBM Corporation in the 1980s showed that there was a one-to-one correspondence between the number of islands of storage to manage and the number of space failures, performance bottlenecks, job restarts/reruns, and the number of people to manage the storage."
Well managed storage array implementations can significantly reduce the number of management tasks, and provides levarage points for policy automation tools. Given the intense focus on operational expenditure that Cloud services brings, the value of an enterprise storage framework (including the arrays, software and services), that drives down overall expenditure should not be underestimated.
But I suggest your argument could be interpreted as a bit of a straw man.
I haven't heard anyone who understands anything about the topic suggest that enterprise storage should cost the same as a raw disk drives. But that isn't the argument that the Nexentas of the world make.
Your analogy to restaurant prices is somewhat apropos. But a better analogy is to an adjacent market, servers. The question people ask, which I don't think can be glibly answered, is why markups from raw material cost are so much higher in the storage industry than they are in servers. I don't think there is any technology justification for this anomaly. I believe a forensic economist would conclude the structure of the industry, not the nature of the technology, fully explains this stark difference between the storage and server industries.
Have you ever looked at what % disk drives - or other hardware components - make up of a storage system's cost? I wonder if it has changed over time, or if it's one of those fixed constants.
Might be different for each of your above classes of storage.