The topic of Software-Defined Storage (SDS) got hotter this week with vendor announcements and claims of “World’s First SDS” product. World’s first, really? In order to claim anything a product must be code complete, known to work and at the very least have aknown GA date. I think all the other vendors out there will agree that software-based storage products have actually been shipping for many years and most of those fit into the new category of Software-Defined Storage. But I have a question. Does this new product actually fit the mold of software-defined storage?

I’m talking about EMC’s ViPR product and what doesn’t appear to be a storage product but actually a storage orchestration and management tool. Correct me if I’m wrong, but from what I’ve read and the demo videos I’ve watched this is a software product that needs a fully functioning storage product already in the data center. It’s touting of virtual storage arrays are nothing but a grouping of physical arrays to create a shared storage resource for a service catalog. Does it follow the VMware standard of Abstract, Pool and Automate…it seems so, but what else does it do? If you have orchestration software that connects to in-place storage hardware doesn’t that make it software-managed storage?

By Kate Davis, @KateAtHP, WW Product Marketing Manager, HP StoreVirtual Storage

In my last post, I posed a question: How do you define software-defined storage? I offered up a base definition of what software-defined storage means to HP. Since then IDC has released a new taxonomy on software-defined storage which includes its definition. You’ll see that our definitions are very similar: industry-standard hardware layered with feature-rich storage software. This naturally turns the conversation to VSA—and 4 reasons VSA is the future.

Last week I was in Boston for a meeting with colleagues from HP Storage. While at the airport, I got a few minutes with Kate Davis. Kate is our product marketing manager for HP StoreVirtual  (formerly HP LeftHand) and is now focused on software-defined storage.

Kate has been my most active guest blogger on ATSB and I'm really happy to hear she'll be leading software-defined storage at HP.  This is an important emerging topic and I think the source of a lot of confusion.  Since we both had a bit of time waiting for our flight, so I grabbed my audio recorder and did a podcast.  We briefly discussed software-defined storage and Kate committed to future blog posts on ATSB.

(NOTE: The image is the Old State House in Boston, site of the Boston Massacre and the Declaration of Independence was read for the first time from that balcony).  

I've wanted to do a live Around the Storage Block podcast for a long and finally decided to give it a go.  With VMworld around the corner, I thought an interesting topic to cover would be our HP LeftHand VSA.  My guests will include  HP LeftHand product marketing manager Kate Davis, a couple of long time HP LeftHand experts, Tim Doering and Dale Degen and a special guest (hint: he's known as @VMDoug). 

Here are the specific details you'll need to join:

• Day and time: We'll have our live ATSB podcast on Tuesday August 14 at noon EDT, 9 AM PDT.  For those of you outside of the U.S., I'm sure you can do time zone translation. 
• Phone number: U.S. toll number only: (724) 444-7444 Call ID 69339
• URL: You can listen online at http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=69339&cmd=tc.  Even if you plan to dial in, you might consider joining online as there is a chat feature. 

I hope you can join my first live ATSB podcast!

Yesterday I had a screen capture video of me using our new Zero to VSA feature to create six HP LeftHand VSA nodes.  Today, I have more video of me using the P4000 Centralized Management Console (CMC) to do a few things with those six VSA's.  By the way, what I show today would be the same thing you'd do if you were using a hardware based P4000 (like a P4300 or P4500).

One of the things I like to do is play with our gear and show you.  Those blog post and videos tend to be pretty popular.  With the help of our Technical Marketing guys (thanks Chris!), I was able to get a hold of everything I needed to play around with our HP LeftHand P4000.  I have a number of videos that I'll show you over the next week or so. Whether you have a P4000 or not, I think you'll find what I have got interesting.

Can you really build your own cloud in a 17 inch box?  Lee Johns talks about how to cook up your own cloud in a box using a little HP storage, BladeSystem, networking and software.

Time for another VMware podcast.  Man, I am earning my 2011 vExpert this week!  The subject of this blog and podcast is VSA.  Unfortunately, VSA now has multiple meanings.  VMware introduced their vSphere Storage Appliance at their event yesterday and of course HP has had our HP P4000 LeftHand Virtual SAN Appliance for some time now - it's been shipping for over four years. 

Vaughn Stewart, my storage industry colleague over at NetApp, posted an article yesterday about its new Virtual Storage Array or VSA.  We have a product also called VSA. To avoid any confusion, I thought it would be worth doing a high-level comparison.