ORIGINALLY POSTED 10th May 2013

11,584 views on developerworks

Just a quick one – while having a scan through IBM’s new(ish) ability to review products on its main website, I found this :

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/software/virtualization/svc/reviews.html

It did make me chukkle… its cetainly no Invista either – and all this talk of “software defined storage” – come on… we’ve been doing it for years – we don’t need to make up new terms, or make out like its the next big thing – its been here and a reality for over ten years with SVC – why do you think we can run SVC on so many platforms now, because its basically software…

All this new ViPR stuff, very much sounds like Invista without the need for the expensive “intelligent switch” and meta-data servers… but the key point being “it maintains backend storage functionality” – i.e. protects EMC’s cash cows. The WHOLE POINT of virtualizing something is that you spread the workload around the disks, so a controller LUN isn’t a LUN anymore, its just a bit of storage. The only place that can truely perform the function is the virtualizer. Without caching and advanced functions, it may have a funky new (made up) label, being “software defined” – but at the end of the day a “software-pig-in-lipstick” is still a “pig-in-lipstick” – or otherwise known as “Invista”…