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When Terrified Vendors Attack: The Dell PowerStore Edition

Dell is at it again. This time, they paid Principled Technologies to do some tests in order to produce a ridiculous report trying to compare the high-end HPE Primera to the midrange Dell EMC PowerStore.

I’ll expose some of the more egregious errors in their methodology and overall thinking, but first I want to direct readers to an easy way to impartially compare for themselves, without having to read a FUD document sponsored by anyone at all.

Executive Summary: A Primera 670 is multiple times faster than a PowerStore 9000T, has stronger data protection, and much higher uptime.

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The Harsh Realities of PCIe Lane Shortage in Storage Systems

There are a lot of myths and misinformation, plus more than a modicum of misunderstanding, regarding how storage systems can use available bandwidth, especially with certain newer kinds of media.

I wanted to explain some of the harsh facts of storage system design in the real world, and why one shouldn’t just add up drive speeds to estimate performance.

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HCI Failure Modes and Maintenance

I got the idea for this blog after speaking with multiple customers that were contemplating switching to certain kinds of grid computing/storage (like HCI) without fully understanding the ramifications of doing so.

You see, they were (rightly so) enamored by concepts such as automation, ease of consumption and scaling. But they forgot to ask some very important questions. See here for the dangers of getting too carried away with something new and taking things for granted.

This isn’t a post claiming HCI and grid-type storage constructs are bad. Like any tool, they can be used in various ways, some of them aggressively ill-advised. The point of this post is to help customers ask for the right configuration so they don’t get stuck with a sub-optimal and risky design.

I tried to make this post as short as possible but as someone once said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”. Which, ironically, is a simplification of what Einstein actually said 🙂

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The Loss of Important Knowledge and Acumen Through Perceived Commoditization

I posit that we now have a whole new class of consumer that is completely oblivious to certain hitherto fundamental concepts – and this can lead to poor business decisions and overall sub-optimal execution and results.

I got the idea after a discussion with an ex colleague (that’s now working for a cloud vendor) where he proudly proclaimed that infrastructure is unimportant and uninteresting.

I’ll start generically and shift to IT. The generic aspect of this problem is very interesting, since it’s lowering quality in all sorts of fields.

And never forget: Just because something is widely and easily available doesn’t mean it’s better. It simply means that more people have access to it.

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