Hi there all.

First, i would like to thank everybody who put a lot of effort into writing their motivation for the Lenovo m90z unit. My apologies for the delay in presenting you guys with the winner.

There were a lot of compelling stories posted, showing me there is a lot of folks out there caring for someone in their family or school, who in some form is dependent on help. This just shows how great the need for supporting tools and also understanding is. Unfortunately many institutions that help disabled people suffer from budget cuts and government funding cuts. Everybody does, but it is my opinion that people with disabilities are off worse than people who can take care of themselves.

It was very hard for me to judge the entries based on the content, because all the motivations are compelling in some way. I feel like I wanted to give you all a touch screen unit,  but that simply isn’t possible.

But with some help from this “Random Name Picker” tool, I managed to pick a winner.

I apologize to all of you who didn’t win this unit, but you should try your luck at one of the other participating promotion websites below.

Thanks for playing.

Congratulations go out Frank Zeijen.

He won the price drawing for their school and the Lenovo computer will come their way in the next few weeks.

I hope your school can benefit greatly from this equipment, and you will show us some pictures or video when you have received it.

Thanks to Lenovo and Ivy Worldwide for making this possible.

Lenovo M90z Participants

I am very sorry, but new entries can no longer be accepted

Well my friends,

today starts a 5-day period in which you can enter a contest to win a brand new “Lenovo M90z all-in-one Multitouch Windows 7 PC“. I have been given the opportunity by Lenovo/Intel via Ivy Worldwide (along with a list of other Phase II participants) to review such a unit, and now we all have another unit standing by, ready to be shipped to the contest price winners.

Who can enter?

We are all free in how we set up our contest, and believe me, we all have very different motivations and drawings. I have been included in the review crowd partly because I have a son with certain disabilities. He is slow in development and has been diagnosed with a form of autism. He cannot read or write and has limited (fine) motor skills. In his school, the therapists have limited access to a touch screen computer to help in his development through custom software programs tailored specifically to “mentally of physically challenged  kids”. These touch screen programs have been very successful in helping development and he can now navigate a computer without a mouse, just by touch screen, very well.

Due to the possibilities this Lenovo unit offers to special schools for disabled children as well as for home situations in which a family has the care over a “mentally of physically challenged child” I have decided try to help them out and therefore limit this contest to this specific audience. So if you represent a school for disabled children or a family with care for a “mentally of physically challenged child” you should enter.

What is expected of you?

I would like you to tell me in an elaborate way how you would use the Lenovo unit in your school or family. Just two lines will not be sufficient, because you really need to convince me that this Lenovo unit would enrich your the school experience or family life. I will be studying all entries and will make a decision on who wins the contest based on their motivation.
You can enter by posting a comment (please login or sign-up to do so, so I also have your email address to get in touch with you in case you win) or drop me a note at “lenovo at iljacoolen dot nl”.
All email entries will be posted in the comments by me.

You are free to include videos or photos in the entry. Just enter the hyperlinks and I will embed them in the approved posts.
I do preserve the right to do some final moderation over the entry to make sure all entries are legally valid and no offending language is present, before publishing it on the site, so you might not see your entry right away. But rest assured, I will be quick on this.

• Entries committed beyond April 19th are too late and will not be included.
• The winner will be announced soon after April 19th. How soon depends on the number of entries I have to judge.
• If you are a Dutch reader, you can post your entry in Dutch as I will be judging on content, not language, but English would be better for most of my readers.

Lenovo M90z Specs

Below you will find a list of other Phase II promotion participants. All have a contest of their own, all on separate dates. Make sure you check them out.
Lenovo M90z Participants

Heads-up everybody.
As you might have read in one of my earlier posts, I have received an evaluation unit from Lenovo/Intel. 

Now, me and 25 others in the same evaluation batch have been given word that in the next few weeks we all get a change to give away the same unit to a lucky price winner.

We can make up our own type of contest with our own requirements. Each evaluation participant will have a 5-day window in which site visitors can enter the drawing.

So, stay tuned, as it will be my turn from April 15th to April 19th. I will be posting the schedule for the whole evaluation group as well as how to enter the drawing on the 15th

Looking forward to your entries and participation.

In the meantime, follow the twitter search feed on the M90z which will also show the other participants.

Last year HDS had a Blogger Day in Japan. This must have been a good experience for HDS to have another event like this planned on March 23rd and 24th.

Usually, blogger events are tough on the presenters and their respective companies, because analysts and bloggers tend to ask questions usually not asked by prospects, although prospects should also be asking these questions. HDS already had an event like the HDS Bloggers Day 2011, so they know what to expect. I guess HDS will be very prepared for the attending crowd’s avalanche of questions.

The attending delegation of bloggers is quite impressive, and like I tweeted a couple of days back, I do feel honored to be mentioned among them.
If you at all care about the storage industry, you should be reading their blogs, and certainly follow them on twitter if you don’t do so already.

Below is the list of attendees in random order.

Make sure you follow the tweets using the twitter hashtag #HDSday and keep updated throug http://www.hds.com/go/geekday/

Looing forward to it….

About a week ago I received a Lenovo M90z long term evaluation unit through Ivy Worldwide. I am part of a second wave of promotional reviews. The first wave also had a series of M90z price drawings or give-aways, so stay tuned. You might just be able to win one through this site. But more importantly, my findings will of course be a candid and unbiased.

It has taken me a couple of days to set it up because I am doing like a milion things at the same time. I am supposed to integrate the M90z into my normal computer based work routine as much as possible, so I can provide my readers (that’s you) with a lot of detailed background information based on normal day to day work.

I will be posting several parts on this because I think there is more to tell than would reasonably fit on one page, and usage experience takes some time to develop. First I will post some general usage and usability information pages, and later on the focus will shift into having the M90z act as tool to help physically and mentally challenged children develop by means of purpose build touch screen aware software.

Setting it up

Setting it up actually isn’t such a big deal. It is an all-in-one computer, so freeing it from it’s carboard prison is actually all the work that needs to be done.

In the box, there is a power cable and a Lenovo (USB wired) keyboard. Getting the device out of the box actually was a bit more work than I expected it to be, because of the weight of the device. You will need someone to hold the box when you use the woven Lenovo bag to lift the M90z out of the box. The bag the device is shipped in will make you think you can carry the device with you to wherever you are going, but the devices weight is going to get you an appointment with a chiropractor. I think you will find a decent place in your home or office to put it and keep it there.

If you think about it, it is an all-in-one device (computer, powersupply, monitor and what not), which also means you will get all the weight-in-one. Makes sense.

First Impressions

My first impressions were like I am used to with Lenovo gear. It feels and looks very solid and well build. Although it is more a personal taste thing, I don’t think Lenovo would win any design contest with their gear, but this M90z actually has very nice design from its overall case to the metal footing.

Powering on the device is like all preinstalled computers. You will have to respond to a couple of questions for the preinstalled Windows 7 professional (default is 32bit, but 64bit is also available) to complete the installation. After that, you are good to go. I usally make sure all available software updates are installed before doing anything else. This machine downloaded about 600MB of updates after the first boot. Then just a couple of more reboots for all the Microsoft Windows  updates to be installed, which obviously still isn’t possible in one go.

A problem with an all-in-one devices is keeping it cool. While running idle, you can clearly hear the fans inside the machine producing quite some noise. It is a bit too loud for my taste, but in an busy office environment, nobody will notice. For my home office, I do think it would need to be quiter. Maybe there is some tweaking to be done to have the cooling fans speed up or slow down based on internal temperatures.

Multitouch Screen

The 23″ Widescreen (16:9) has a 1920×1080 resolution, enabling a ton of information on screen and at your fingertips. The touch precision is actually quite amazing. The screen quality is very good and I have absolutely no complaints here. It wil take some getting used to when you have been weelding a mouse for a long time. My oldest son has been operating the touchscreen with the back of a pen or his Nintento DS stylus, which also seems to work great.

There is a small problem for me when trying to scroll through full screen windows where the scrollbar is to the most righthand side of the screen. The screens edge is quite thick, which seem to prevent my fingertip to reach far enough into the corners and edges to operate the scrollbar slider. The same is true for the default on-screen keyboard widget which is on the lefthand side. And no, I don’t have fat fingers

The shiny glass surface could be anoying some times when you have a lot of reflection. But this is not unlike all other devices with glossy screens. Make sure you find a good spot to put your screen without to much hinderance from light sources.

I did some tests on the multitouch pinch and zoom functions on a couple of pictures and webpages. The response was very sluggish here. In many cases the CTRL+ or CTRL- key combinations worked a lot faster. But I have just been at it for about an hour. I will put up a post later on when I have been doing a lot more tweaking and have been “simulating” real work for a couple of weeks.

Please stay tuned for more later on….

Disclaimer: Everything you read below is my own opinion and is based on my own personal experience. Your view or experience may differ. Facts are supported by public documentation published by Archos.

As an Android smart phone fan, I was really looking forward to my recently purchased Archos 10.1″ Android based internet tablet. I have found little to no blogs or experiences shared on the internet, so I kinda went in there blindly. Archos is a fairly well known company with quite the number of hand held media players in it’s portfolio. The 10.1″ tablet is not their first Android based device, so I reckon they have gained some experience in developing and supporting the Android devices.

One thing that is quite surprising is that their Android products are not connected with Google  at all. It is just a stand alone Android based device with no Google integration at all. The reason might be that Archos is not a member of the “Open Handset Alliance“. There is no Google Android Market and the Gmail, Google Calendar, Maps and the works are all missing. Archos has a market place of their own called “AppsLib“. Archos selects and tests Android apps themselves and places them in the Archos AppLib when they pass the Archos criteria. I expected the AppsLib to be very limited, but I was very wrong. The Archos AppLib is a decent app, working similar to the Android Market app. It has quite the number of apps available for installation. I did not count them, but I guess the Android Market has more apps. Nevertheless you will probably find most apps you are looking for. Contrary to the Android Market, the Archos AppsLib allows you to pay for your apps through PayPal. I have read somewhere that the Toshiba are taking the same approach with their Android Tablet, the “Folio 100″ although they are on the Open Handset Alliance manufacturers member list.

Package

The package is nothing spectacular. The tablet is decently wrapped in the normal protective foils and styrofoam protection. It has a chunky power adapter with a couple (three to be exact) of click-on wall plug adapters for the various different socket types in use. It ships with a USB-microUSB cable and some booklets with the standard legal notices and a small manual.

For me it lacks the mini-HDMI cable and a protective sleeve for the tablet. But since the pricing is very low compared to other Android tablets, this is understandable.

Specifications

Archos specifications:

Screen

The 10.1″ tablet and therefore so is the screen, is landscape oriented by default. Rotating the tablet will also rotate the screen orientation from landscape to portrait, in a full 360 degrees fashion. You can hold the tablet upside down to show a picture to a friend and he or she will be able to see the picture.
Quality wise I do have some remarks to make; When I saw the iPhone 3 for the first time, I thought its screen was awesome. But when I saw the screen of the HTC Desire (pre-HD and HD of course) or iPhone 4, I was astound by the screen quality and vivid colours of those new phones. The Archos tablet’s screen would fall in the iPhone 3 category. It’s a very decent screen, but we know there are way better screens out there. So, to continue the comparison with an Apple product, the Archos screen compares to an iPad screen like the iPhone 3 screen compares to an iPhone 4 screen.

The ratio of the screen is a bit different to what I am used to as well. It has an aspect ratio of 16:9 in stead of 4:3. As I said the default orientation is landscape.  When rotated to portrait orientation, the tablet stands fairly tall. While reading an ebook in portrait orientation, I found myself holding the tablet at the bottom end. Due to it’s height, it is leaning over to the back a bit and feeling quite heavy, putting strain on the wrists. You will need to support the tablet on your lap to relieve your wrists or read in landscape orientation.

The capacitive touch screen does do a good job though. It’s sensitive and accurate. The on-screen keyboard is easy to use, and like all Android based products, you are free to install add-ons or replacing keyboard apps.

Hardware wise, the tablet and screen feel robust and solid. It does not give me the impression it would torque and break easily. You should still handle these products with care of course. The back has two removable metal plate covers with (tiny) screws. I haven’t removed them because I do not (yet) want to void my warranty, but my best bet is they give you access to the battery for one. In the middle is a retractable metal deskstand which allows you to put the tablet in an upright position in landscape orientation on your desk or tray so you can watch your multimedia content.
Your neighbour in the train or air plane will not be able to watch it along with you. The viewing angle isn’t all that great. You will need to have the device directly in front of you to have the best viewing experience. Depending on your privacy wishes you will think this is a positive thing. But when showing your content to someone, this might just as well be a bad thing. I myself would not consider this a reason not to buy.

Performance

The Archos tablet is very responsive but shows an occasional lag. Especially when installing apps. I’ve had several occasions where I was installing not more then two apps at a time, and I had to wait for the device to finish installing. It did not respond to swiping the screen at all. The problem could be that the internal memory is slow (unconfirmed). I don’t think it is a processing power issue. Everyting I have been able to do within an app, felt responsive and worked quite well.

Currently, the tablet runs Android 2.1, and 2.2 (Froyo) is announced for release in November.

Multimedia

Multimedia capabilities sourced from the Archos website.

• Audio Playback¹ • MP3 CBR & VBR
  • WMA, WMA-Pro 5.1
  • WAV (PCM/ADPCM)
  • AAC, AAC+ 5.1³
  • OGG Vorbis
  • FLAC
  With optional software plug-ins (downloadable on www.archos.com):⁴
  • AC3 5.1
  -
• Video Playback¹ • MPEG-4² HD (up to 720p, 30 fps@6Mbps)
  • MPEG-4² (ASP@L5 AVI, up to DVD resolution, 30 fps@8Mbps)
  • H.264 HD (HP@L3.1 up to 720p, 30 fps@5Mbps)
  • WMV9/VC1 (AP up to 720p 30 fps@10Mbps)
  • M-JPEG (Motion JPEG Video) in VGA resolution

  With optional plug-in (downloadable on www.archos.com):⁴
  • Cinema: MPEG-2 (up to DVD resolution MP/D1, 30 fps@10 Mbps)
  With the above codecs, the device can play video files with the following extensions: AVI, MP4, MKV, MOV, WMV, MPG, PS, TS, VOB, FLV, RM, RMVB, ASF, 3GP

1/ Certain bitrates, resolutions, and/or file variations may not be compatible.
2/ MPEG-4 ASP@L5 AVI (MPEG-4: ISO standard by Moving Picture Experts Group; AVI: audio/video file container by Microsoft) without GMC and Quarter pixel.
3/ Does not read AAC protected files.
4/ Will require additional €15,- through purchase options at the Archos store. (UPDATE)

The device supports a range of common codecs and is able to play 1280 x 720 video on the mini-HDMI out. A number of apps come pre-installed that offer a very nice multimedia experience. The Archos also comes with a DLNA/uPnP client to play video and audio content from your DLNA/uPnP enabled media server. The Archos even has a SMB client on board that lets you connect to your CIFS shares (in case you have any).

Connectivity

• Wifi
  Wifi works like you would expect from any modern appliance. Nothing new or bad here.
  -
• Power connector
  The Archos tablet has a separate power adapter which connects with the old-fashioned pin-like power connector. I would have expected the tablet to charge using the USB connector like most devices do nowadays. The USB connectors however, will not enable you to charge the tablet. Therefore you will always have to drag along the chunky power-cord and wall-plug. Very disappointing.
  -
• mini-HDMI
  The Archos tablet has a mini-HDMI port which allows you to connect you tablet to you TV set. A mini-HDMI cable is not something everybody has laying around at home I think. It would be very complimentary if they would have added a mini-HDMI to normal-HDMI cable in the package. I have no such cable, so I have not been able to test the device on my TV set. I myself see no real usage for this option, because I have my home media players all set up. For someone who has no home media players it could be a nice feature. I doubt the tablet has the horsepower to play HD (ready) content on a TV set. I hope to prove myself wrong once I have a mini-HDMI cable to test this.
  -
• micro USB
  Used for connecting slave USB devices. It can power and charge my phone, but you cannot charge the tablet with any USB connection.  [update] You can also connect your tablet to another computer and use the tablet as an external storage device. You can transfer your multimedia content to the tablet that way. I forgot to put this in the original post, but updated it here because this usage is kind of obvious. Dumb of me to forget about it. [/update] Had no other purpose of using it so far.
  -
• Normal size USB host port
  Using the USB host port you can connect more external storage, a keyboard or mouse. I have been using my Android phone as an external disk drive to the tablet for tests. I have tested a keyboard, and it worked absolutely fine. I have tested two bluetooth keyboards but was unable to detect them with bluetooth. Might be my own lack of bluetooth knowledge I have also connected a mouse to the USB port, and presto, a mouse pointer appeared on the screen. Very funny to see a mouse pointer on a (multi)touch screen. What was remarkable though was the fact the mouse clicks did not work on the 4 default home keys at the right hand side of the screen.
  As for USB storage, the tablet is unable to read NTFS filesystems on an USB stick. FAT formatted USB sticks worked fine and were detected as external storage.
  -
• Micro SD card slot
  The Archos 10.1″ tablet  comes in two models. A 8GB model and a 16GB model. Due to shipment problems with th 16GB tablets, I have ordered an 8GB model. I would use the microSD slot to expand the capacity if needed. The microSD slot supports all recent high capacity microSD cards. I have tested my 32GB card, and it could read from and write to the card like expected.

This tablet has no 3G on board, nor does it have a GPS. All which is not something I was requiring for my tablet. I am very satisfied with the tablet with the current connectivity options. If I would require network connection while on the road, I could use USB-Phone tethering or Bluetooth PAN networking. For both these methods, a wizard helps you configure the tablet.

A third option is enabling a Wifi Access Point on your smartphone if it supports it. I have tested this on my Android 2.2 based HTC Desire phone, and this works perfectly. With these three connectivity options, I can use the data plan I have on my phone instead of having to subscribe to yet another 3G data plan.

Battery life

I have no experience with other tablets and their battery life so I can hardly compare it to competing tablets. I have charged the Archos tablet on a Friday evening, and myself and my family members have been playing with the device quite a lot over the weekend. I recharged it Sunday night because I wanted to do some field testing on my way to and from work on Monday. There was still 40% capacity remaining. I guess this is not to bad at all. Like I said, if I would like to charge the device while away from home, I would need to bring along the chunky wall plug. The Archos does not charge on USB connection.

Google Integration

Like mentioned in the intro, there is no Google integration on the Archos tablet at all. You cannot use the Android Market place, nor all the popular Google apps. Archos has alternatives for all the common apps, and email accounts are based on POP3 or IMAP.

There is quite an easy method of enabling the Google integration yourself, but neither Google nor Archos will support this. If you decide to download and install this “fix” you are on your own. If you want, lookup “gApps4Archos.apk” using your favorite search engine. I have installed the apk and rebooted the device. Afterwards I had most Google apps on the Archos device, and the Market place at my fingertips. I was able to install from both the AppsLib and the Market Place. The automatic synchronisation of my Google accounts (Mail, Calendar, Contacts) worked, but wasn’t as frequent as I expected it to be. Turns out, that when I switch off the devices screen, background tasks are also paused. When I think about it, I think this is not really bad for a tablet, the way I use it. You might have a very different opinion.
I did find it inconvenient when I (test-) imported several ebooks into the pre-installed application Aldiko. Importing paused when the screen switched of automatically.

Pricing and shipping

I paid €299,- for the 8GB model without shipping. Archos shipped using FedEx and the package was delivered the next (business) day. Including shipping I paid €313,- so that is a fair price. The 16GB model is €50,- more.

If you compare this price to the other tablets out there like the Apple iPad or the Samsung Galaxy S tablet, it is quite cheap. Will it compete with the iPad or Samsung Galaxy tablet? I think not by quality, but if the buyer is not as demanding as I am and is willing to live with the quirks  described before, it could. There is quite definitely an audience for this tablet, but it will be a different audience as the one for the iPad. But that is nothing new.

Does this tablet live up to my expectations? Well, not exactly, but I have to be honest. For said price you should expect exactly what the Archos tablet offers. From a price perspective, Archos definitely offers a good product.

When not to buy

I couldn’t possibly tell when or why you should buy this tablet, but I can tell when you should not buy it based on my experience so far. You have to make your own decision of course. Make it based on budget and requirements. Use this review to determine whether or not the shortcomings are showstoppers for you.

You should not buy the Archos 10.1″ Internet tablet when;

• An immaculate screen quality is a requirement. If you think the iPhone 3 had a good screen and you are satisfied with it, you’d not feel cheated out of your money.
• Need 3G/UMTS and you do not want to use your phone with tethering.
• Do not want to drag along a chunky wall plug for charging.
• Need full Google integration with support from Google (Android) and the tablet vendor.

If you feel you have anything to add or comment about, please feel free to do so.

This morning, I saw a tweet about a x86 blade being shoved into a zSeries frame.
It appeared to be an IBM Press release introducing new developments in IBM zSeries land. Like tape, mainframe is dead for years (so they say). There are not many analysts that believe this statement, and mainframe is long from being dead. I do see fewer of them however. Only the very large (mostly financial) companies seem to be able to run zSeries workloads because of the expertise and cost involved with running zSeries.

Over the last years, IBM has done a lot of development in mainframe equipment and really has brought down cost of running mainframe gear. For most IT folks, the mainframe has lost its sexiness (if it ever was sexy), and it has gotten really hard to find decent staff to operate mainframe gear and workloads. So in a technical and financial sense, the mainframe might be long from dead, but without good staff, who can run mainframe gear in their shops? I have been seeing a lot of new faces in the IT industry, none of which seem to be developing skills in the mainframe arena.

The open systems world seems to be more exciting because the development is done much faster and cheaper (although I myself might not agree with the cheaper part). Many new developments in the various IT stacks like networking, storage, systems and software are solely targeted at open systems worlds, completely ignoring the mainframe world. The vendors we spoke last week at Tech Field Day also have no plans on developing for mainframe. Part of which is the mainframe vendors own fault, since they have really closed down access to mainframe development resources for everyone.

zEnterprise (z196)

The new zEnterpise will be available later this year, and will hold 96 of the worlds fastest CPU’s running at 5.2 Ghz. It has water-cooling enablement. Funny, because water-cooling was removed around the time I was introduced to the mainframe world, back in 1996. This system is going to have 60% more capacity then its predecessor “System z10″, while consuming about the same amount of energy.

Introducing the BladeCenter Extension.

IBM is also developing gear which is supposed to simplify the data-center. The’d be stupid not to obviously. The BladeCenter extension is a frame that can be attached to the new IBM zEnterprise “main”-frame which will be able to hold a number of “open systems” blades.

” The IBM zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension allows supports purpose IBM POWER7 and System x BladeCenter systems as well as blades optimized for specific workloads, such as analytics and managing Web infrastructure.”

• Later this year IBM will be introducing the Power7 blades to run IBM AIX
• Next year, xSeries blades will be running Linux OS in this extension.

Using the new Unified Resource Management software, IBM claims to be able to run over a 100,000 virtual machines on a fully configured zEnterprise system.

The mainframe software has a very well deserved reputation of being extremely manageable and configurable and is well known for its stability and predictability. My life in IT once started as a MVS operator, so I always have had a weakness for mainframe environments.

What this will hold for us in the future, who knows, but if IBM manages to gets the virtualization part of the ground including Microsoft Windows workloads, this might be another player in the UCS and VCE arena worth watching, although I sure hope there is a way to run this zEnterprise system without the need of mainframe system engineering skills. If these skills are required to operate this system, I think the market is limited to the current mainframe shops and will pose no threat to the UCS and VCE solutions.

My opinion on this is, unless IBM manages to run this system with the server virtualization features a la VMware or Microsoft Hyper-V they will have a hard time selling this. Even in the shops that already deploy mainframe gear.

The data center convergence question I have for IBM is; when will you join in convergence with “Ficon over Ethernet (FioE)” or in accordance with recent Tech Field Day developments FCoTR?

But I love to be educated on the markets IBM is targeting and how they would be doing that.

The TechFieldDay success must be huge, when a company decides to use TFD as a platform to announce it’s launch. The delegates are all witnessing this launch. It is a great experience to be able to be part of an event like TFD, especially when you also get to be part of a new companies launch.

The introduction

The new company is called NimbleStorage, was founded in 2008 and is based in San Jose.  Nimble Storage offers a hybrid of flash and SATA storage array. The 3U high box services iSCSI storage and has a fixed size, no scale-up. Nimble Storage claims to achieve 60% cost reduction than existing solutions. Nimble’s storage architecture is “log-structured file system” which was created by Mendel Rosenblum (VMware founder).

• Varun Mentha (CEO & Co-Founder) kicks off by introducing his crew.
• Umesh Maheshwari (CTO & Co-Founder and filesystem expert)
• Dan Leary (VP Marketing)
• Ajay (Former Netapp)

Nimble Storage will be selling through VAR channels exclusively. At first they will be selling in the US only, but expansion to Europe will be in the works for 2011.

The technology

• (MLC) Flash and Low-cost High-capacity SATA disks iSCSI based storage targeted at the mid-sized enterprises.
• Point in time snapshot primary Replication based DR
• Capacity optimized snapshots in stead of traditional backup to eliminate backup windows.
• Listpricing < $3/GB
• Cache Accelerated Sequential Layout (CASL Highlists)
  • LZ-ish based inline compression reduces data 2-4x (no dedupe)
  • Flash caters to high-performance for all active data
  • SATA disk cost-effectively stores all primary data and 90 days worth of snapshots
  • WAN efficient offsite replication
• Application aware snapshots/backups (Microsoft VSS and VMware integration)
• Nimble Storage says they are 35x time more space efficient than leading vendors in this market (eg:Dell/Equalogic)
• Different retentions periods for local and remote data
• Bi-directional replication
  • System many-to-one replication.
  • Volume is one-to-one replication. This means many systems can replicate to one, but a single volume only has a single replication relationship.
• Rapid fail-over between sites (including flexible iqn identities)
• Version 1.0 is not cascaded replication, but it will be there in future releases
• Application templates
  • Predifined application aware storage and data protection configuration
  • LUN Blocksizes are matched to the application
  • LUN Caching is matched to the application
• Zero-copy hypervisor integrated cloning (included in the package)
• Web based GUI, and SSH based full featured CLI interface
• Full autosupport feature built-in (Real-Time Phone Home Support)
• MPIO is used for fail-over, no network based LACP

The flash storage is used as an intelligent cache that holds all the active data. What is active data is determined by the use frequency (and more). The cache is indexed. All data is written to SATA disks, so the flash disks are really only used as cache. All incoming data is compressed inline. Due to compression, the actual blocksize of the written data can vary. Because all the data is written sequentially to the SATA disks, the various blocksizes pose no real issue, and they are all supported. This also enables an application specific blocksize. By using templates in the definition for volumes, you can match the blocksize to match the blocksize to for example an Microsoft Exchange database volume, and another volume for it’s logs where both have different blocksizes.

All volumes can have their own snapshot schedules, or they can be grouped together in Protection Sets, which can be considered consistency groups (volume groups, not hosts groups).

You might be affraid that the SATA disk would provide bad performance, but the sequential reads and writes are actually something SATA disks can do pretty well. So this performance risk is mitigated by the compression-sequential-write (full blocks) part of the array’s code.

The flash cache is made up out of SSD’s, and are hot-replaceable and are shared between the controllers. All data is already on disk and therefore there is no need for any means of protection for these cache disks.

Products

• 3RU Units, large flash layer, multicore Intel Xeon processors
• Comes with 2 x quad GbE NICs
• Everything is redundant (controllers are active/passive)
• All drives are hot swapable
• peer-to-peer clustering
  • CS220: 9TB primary + 108TB backup
  • CS240: 18TB primary + 216TB backup ($99.900.-)
    • 1.3TB flash capacity based on 2x compression
    • 12 x 2TB disks (1x hot-spare/2x parity)
• Annual maintenance between $4000 and $6000 .

Roadmap

Although NimbleStorage wasn’t going to give us any formal roadmap intel at the moment, the following features are surely being introduced in upcoming upgrades/updates.

• Cascaded replication                        
• VMware SRM integration
• 10GbE NICs
• V1.1 Scale out, LUN’s can be striped across arrays.
• Role based access.
• QoS for replication sessions (including time of day based policies)
• SNMP alerting
• FCoE

Overall impression

Curtis W. Preston asked (and I was pondering on it) “why not NAS?”. The midsize customer segment doesn’t use a lot of NFS and for CIFS, the tend to use a regular Windows file server with (iSCSI) block storage from the SAN. The context to me was actually that it was not a need-to-have feature for the product launch. There might be a different view on the file services option in the future.

I am very impressed by these guys. They bring a ton of experience into the company which is transfered into their products. It is clear the products are functional and quite complete, but a couple of relevant features are still missing. The relevance is dependent on the size and level of operations of the client looking into this product. Smaller customer might not be depending on SNMP alerting or 10GbE interfaces. These features and the aforementioned features are sure to be introduced shortly after this launch.

The Nimble Storage guys presenting at Tech Field Day are brave in my book. They come in to present a new company and new products to a group of tech guys that could give them a really hard time, but they stood tall, and gave us a very great presentation. They definitely believe in their product, and at the same time respect their competition.

I will be watching them closely.

Resources

• Nimble Storage
• In The News (Gestalt IT)
• Twitter @NimbleStorage
• Facebook

Yep, it is now 23:00 (11pm for those who have trouble deciphering 23:00 ) and I am sitting in my hotel room. Quickly jotting down some words to keep a record of my TechFieldDay Seattle 2010 adventure, start to finish.

Started my journey at 19:53 saying goodbye to my loved ones. Spend a couple of hours in the train, twittering and reading and working my way to a backlog of personal documents. The train didn’t  go at its regular speed, due to planned maintenance work on the railroad tracks and some new tracks being laid out, so my trip didn’t start of a full speed. The flight will probably make up by going supersonic (zzzZZzzzzzZZZzz, oh darn, I am already dreaming, must be tired)…

I checked in to the citizenM (@citizenM) hotel and was kinda surprised by the funkiness of the rooms. Coming through the door, you’ll immediately notice the two large circles in the floor. One is the shower floor, and the other is the toilet area. So no separate bathroom here (budget part of the citizenM mantra). It looks like I have two Star Trek transporter pads in my room. I can transport from shower to toilet, and back.

In the far end of the room there is a huge bed. It’s not made, but the pillows and covers are “somewhat” folded on the bed. What more do you want for a short stay, during which all you want is get some sleep.

Another eye catcher is the Philips Pronto TSU9300 remote control sitting on the nightstand.
This would probably be the luxury part of the citizenM mantra.

It’s programmed to control the alarmclock, lights (adjust room lighting colors to match your mood), music, TV set and the room temperature setting.

All this, just to be able to catch your plane in time tomorrow morning. See, the fun starts now

I think I’ll go and see how funky the bar is.

Just like Derek Schauland I recently got the final invitation to Tech Field Day, Seattle 2010 edition.
I am looking forward to being a delegate since it’s first start, back in November 2009. Back then I had arranged for Stephen Foskett to present a session at the annual Dutch Storage Expo, but unfortunately he could not make it because of delayed flights. (note: I am so hoping this doesn’t happen to me while flying to Seattle).

Being a professional like he is, we somehow managed to still get him to present, through Skype. It didn’t work out the way we intended it to, but nonetheless it was a great session. We still got some very good reviews afterwards. Stephen afterwards told me about the TFD events and I really wanted to join. Due to the short notice, I wasn’t able to make it.  But yay, here’s a new chance to join the impressive list of TFD delegates.

I am not a blogger like most on the list, but I do have my own opinion on things and as an independent storage consultant I do want to know all I can on whatever storage related news is out there. I never have had an urge to express my opinions, but in the more recent years this has changed. I haven’t found much I thought was worth mentioning however, considering everything was already talked about on the internet. My perspective on this is changing.

Tech Field Day is a great opportunity to meet peers and get some insight in products from well known vendors and the not-so-well-known (to me) vendors. I will also use this event to crank up my blogging a nudge, willingly.

Like Derek said, it has the appearance of a conference. But the invitation and free-of-charge part is not something that defines a conference. I consider it an intimate/private tech update, with the intention to create buzz and some great exposure in the online community. Considering the previous TFD’s popularity, creating exposure should not be a problem.

For the international delegates, this will be a couple of tough days. Long flights, long days, intense discussions and presentations, and of course a party or two will not make these couple of days a walk in the park. But then again, its not intended to be.

I am looking forward to meeting all other delegates in real life. Check out this Twitter list.

Disclosure:

I am invited to this event, and all is paid for. Travel expenses, meals and such are all sponsored. As consideration I will be venting my (candid and independent) opinion on what is presented through blogging and probably Twitter.