back to article Storage vendors: You're next over the cliff after the server salesmen

You have storage so your servers can work on the data in them. If servers go to the cloud then storage will go there as well, as sure as eggs is eggs. And what is happening to the server market will happen to the storage market. So if enterprise server sales go down, enterprise storage sales will go down as well. Or will they …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Believe a forecast?

    Let's let the NSA fallout settle for a while in people's minds and THEN we will come back to discuss server sales vs cloud migration numbers. Especially when discussing American-based cloud providers, such as Amazon.

    Pundits always think they are correct when they open their mouths and spew a few words out...

    1. dan1980

      Re: Believe a forecast?

      So close to an upvote (we all crave them, surely . . .) until that last sentence.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Once upon a time storage was internal to servers, then storage grew, and lots of servers had lots of storage which would never be used. Industry came up with a plan to optimise storage use by making it shared between servers, thus removing the large amounts of DAS storage that was inside of servers.

    Now we hear 'flash, flash, flash' and how that'll revert everything back to storage being back inside the servers... but what happen when the flash capacities exceed that required by the server?

    And that's completely ignoring all of the other advantages of having a centalised storage pool.

    1. Roo
      Pirate

      @ obnoxiousGit

      It's not just a matter of fashion, it's a matter of bandwidth and latency. Typically people use flash because they want higher bandwidth and/or lower latency. You can achieve higher bandwidth and lower latency using DAS. While "Cloud Storage" may well supercede lots of NAS boxes, some applications still require DAS to achieve acceptable performance.

      I suspect that in many cases folks are stuffing their arrays with flash because it's the only way a large array can keep up with a large number of clients hitting it with lots of seeks... . In practice they may well get the same or better performance using spinning rust DAS.

      1. apleszko

        Re: @ obnoxiousGit

        And what about the several clusters every company has that relies on centralized storage? A synchronous replication between 2 servers with Flash DAS may not be good for latency...

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: @ obnoxiousGit

        It's not just a matter of fashion, it's a matter of bandwidth and latency.

        Maybe you should address that to the article author whos telling us all about how all the storage vendors are going to be pushed off of the cliff as everyone moves all their systems to internal flash.

        1. Roo

          Re: @ obnoxiousGit

          "Maybe you should address that to the article author whos telling us all about how all the storage vendors are going to be pushed off of the cliff as everyone moves all their systems to internal flash."

          The comment was directed at the article's author as well, although I doubt the author will pay much attention because he seems to operate in the world of salesmen selling (expensive) grand schemes with little regard for the details on the ground.

          That said fair play to the author, he's doing what he wants to, meanwhile one of the many things that I do that I don't want to do is work around the consequences of those folks who impose remote centralised storage on applications that don't need it, perform badly with it and are less reliable as a result of it. I would rather be in his shoes, at least he isn't cleaning up someone else's mess. :)

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    we are beginning to see a shift ... to move from drive arrays

    Thats like me saying, "we are beginning to see a shift to electric and hydrogen powered cars".. Which is crap., yes there is some demand for it, after all it is "fashionable". But its definitely not a game changer.

    1. jonathanb Silver badge

      Re: we are beginning to see a shift ... to move from drive arrays

      More importantly, if you are a car dealer, it doesn't matter if people are moving towards cars with a different type of fuel, they still need someone to sell them.

  4. Yet Another Commentard

    Who sells storage to the cloud storage providers?

    As title.

    1. Paul Shirley

      Re: Who sells storage to the cloud storage providers?

      People forced to negotiate steeper bulk discounts ;)

  5. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Repeat after me please

    Clouds may come and clouds may go but the storage I control on my own premises is here to stay.

    NSA/GCHQ/FIS permitting that is but at least they have to show me a warrant to get at the data, don't they?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Repeat after me please

      > at least they have to show me a warrant to get at the data, don't they?

      Depends how valuable your data is. Maybe it would be more desirable for some sneaky beaky govt outfit to engineer some malware* to send your data back to them without alerting you to their interest? If it sounds paranoid, consider the effort put into stuxnet.

      *assuming this is necessary and there isn't already a covert interface engineered into your OS/router/firewall etc for the purposes of allowing monitoring by state sponsored security functions.

      1. Pascal Monett Silver badge
        Big Brother

        Re: If it sounds paranoid

        Unfortunately, since Snowden absolutely every tin-foil-hat wearer considers himself vindicated in his beliefs.

        Even more unfortunately, what was once considered ludicrous and over-the-top as far as government surveillance is concerned is now a baseline for realistic expectations.

        So, to be paranoid today requires even worse expectations than the worst-case scenario of just a year ago.

  6. RonWheeler

    Logic flaw and margins

    Curious what 'cloud' provider store their data on - punchcard?

    Suspect margins are nosediving as mainstream SANs move to being commodity items. Doesn't mean SANs aren't popular, just that vendors can't command insane markups any more.

  7. Volker Hett

    With at 34Mbit/s pipe at some 5000 Euros a month

    I see a lot more storage in my server room!

  8. Justicesays
    Unhappy

    Wonder what inter-cloud provider bandwidth

    would be required to transfer your 100's of TB's of data to another provider, should your existing cloud provider fail to live up to their SLAs. Or raise their prices. Or put in place a bulk data transfer cost...

    What happens if you can't pay your bills due to cash flow issues, and your cloud provider flushes your data down the digital plughole?

    What if a court case freezes your assets, and all the evidence is in "the cloud". Who pays the cloud provider to keep the evidence while the court case runs?

    Or in a less severe case, a court order tells you to keep all the data from a certain time due to patent litigation, do you have to pull that back locally, and where are you storing that? If the cloud is storing legally required documents for you , do they have all the logging and audit and so on for that, and does your SLA cover you for legal fines and such imposed if your cloud provider e.g. loses all your tax records for the last 6 years.

    "Sorry about the huge fine Mr. CEO, but at least you don't have to pay us for last months cloud services"

    Then there is the danger of social engineering against your cloud provider to get access to your "stuff". Happens with DNS registrars all the time, so why are cloud vendors going to be any different?

    Once they have your cloud, even for a short time, easy enough to copy all data of interest to *their* cloud on the same provider and then offload it at leisure. Or delete, deface etc. Potentially even move you to the "Backups, we don't need no stinkin' backups" plan, and then where are you?

    And if hackers can't delete your data off the cloud totally, can you? Any NDA's, IP agreements etc. that you aren't meeting because your provider automatically backs stuff up for X days/weeks/months, and once its in the backup system its there until it rolls off the end (and is it gone even then?). Assuming storing this NDA/IP data on the cloud doesn't violate the agreement to start with ofc.

    Looks like a huge morass of legal and regulatory issues that must make negotiating a comprehensive cloud storage agreement a total nightmare.

  9. bpfh
    Trollface

    so this magic cloud and the magical cloud providers...

    ... Do not use or need servers and storage? Capacity just magically appears?

  10. Dave Hilling

    Sweet I have been looking to get my company to get a multiple GB/s internet pipe to match our storage transfer rates vs our 45Mb internet connection now. The "cloud" is not some magical all fixing thing. Just like most technology it has its place in the world but does not solve every problem.

  11. W. Anderson

    Strictly American viewpoint on a Global issue

    It is possible that a great deal of Cloud Services in USA , servicing clients from other continents will see a decrease in business - $ income - due to NSA illegal and unfounded activities. Whether these European, Asian and South American clients will continue Cloud Services based else where (outside USA) or re-implement greater internal storage and servers is another question.

    Speculation of USA IDC and Gartner will never fully account for and truly understand technology issues outside the popular models here in America, and therefore could be completely wrong - again.

    1. dan1980

      Re: Strictly American viewpoint on a Global issue

      Amen.

      Man, every time I hear people going on about stuff like this, all I hear/see in my head is some stereotypical bro with his shirt off chanting "U-S-A, U-S-A!".

      (Though I've got to say - the recent launch of an Australian Amazon presence is very cool.)

  12. Tacitus

    I post anonymously because I don't want to be on a spy-site, simple as that. Register wants to mock

    people like me but then it's really a compliment.Avoiding being a stooge for what is transparently the demise of freedom and substituting perrmission to imagine we have 'democracy' to safeguard us is cowardice?...I am a coward then. If not already as soon as I send this I am queued into a keyword check. For me it seems worthwhile to break free of IT myopia and see how you are being manipulated through your trust and skills and perhap dismissiveness of others as 'less intelligent' than yourselves and therefor that YOU are 'incontrol"

    Intelligent comments have been made above, I agree with most of them but my concern is the behind the scenes politics and the acceleration of data gathering for the assassinations and invasions of nations after they have been provoked and armed for profit by the masters and stooges of the new order. In a nutshell, we are well over the 50% point of the globalised, totalitarian serfdom new order control implimented via USA and Israel.

    Both of them are esionage masters with Israel measurably ahead and laughing at gullible USA as it blunders around albeit with success and feeds Israel money ($30bill./year), weapons and data whilst Israel screws it with espionage, fraud and dud return data.Mossad and CIA have organised the Syria Egypt uprisings and thrown up another peurility for the mantra zombies "Arab Spring". "will we save them???...cheer us on, call for the Messiah"

    Syria gassings?...what a convenient machination of public opinion by powers that care nothing about a million, a hundred million dead under their hand. Who gassed the kurds?..how did Hussein have such gas?...why would USA leave him with helicopter gunships AND gass which he could have used on them or might in futire. Hogwash and humbug for the human sunflowers which turn their heads to the "sunshine" of the New Order.The canisters were all made in USA and Israel supplied the GPS co-ordinates....

    Hussein said he didn't do it and I think it likely that as with WMD's he told the truth. Israel wipes all reference to it off false flag devices and I imagine this time USA has done the same, they will be in there somewhere there's no doubt on it on experiences to date. When it came to lies, Bush and his criminal gang and the CIA led Hussein by a country mile. Data planting and media demonisation again was used in the progress of the evil new order.These are the extrapolations of your phone call tap, your street cameras, google earth, being discussed without permission on some 'social network' and made accessible to government "front" and other data collectors who pay cash or pay in 'kind'.

    Assassination is rife, tens of thousands, Mossad's Ari ben Menashe reported as his personal victims through spy sites he sold and that was between mid 70's and 1980 alone. ...genocide, torture centres , 'rendiiton deceit, false flagging crimes of vast magnitue as well as cunning manipulations on a small scale, mass murder throughout the middle east and the americas and africa and....and everywhere those two countries are involved and the Central banker families underwrite it. Today it is simply TV enetertainment for minds dulled to violence, brutality, horror and sexual perversion by hollywood's part in it all.Operation paperclip and MK Ultra are just two of the alive and well hyenas which feed off your susceptability and willingness to not apply due diligence to your life and those around you...and to be involved with spy sites.

    Everywhere data collection is used to decide will you be allowed to live or will you meet the fate of dissenters? Entire families are turnd to mincemeat and viscera by 'behaviour correction' forces and remote control assassination. "terrorism' has become a 'manchurian candidate' order to react on cue. Bombs and mines are left scattered knowing children and livestock will dominate the victims. Provoke, profit, encourage mayhem, send in the 'saviours" hear the people cheers for America...'let it control the world"...what a horror, "Armaggedon" arrives like Caligula cheered.

    Every electronic transaction every one does is recorded and trapdoored to Israel and lesser to USA. Every electronic communication is monitored for key words. Every computer has its locatable IP and it is becoming new order prohibited to alter it. You know that Facebook Twitter Google and Yahoo are spy for profit sites which hold data on the unwilling and unwitting given by garrulous and spaghetti brained friends and relatives and even employers which have succumbed to 'trust us' if they even think at all. They have been fed the drug of id surplanting the super-ego without an ego in existance.

    Every satellite device recorded to you locates you, mobile 'phone ipod etc.Now the "present-ultimate" .."IT Nirvana" has arrived for those who's heads are in the clouds...a one stop data collection service for evil doers.. You and I are billions in number and controlled by less than 1000 political powerbrokers who are controlled by the central bankers and their satellite, pilot fish of which Kuhn Loebe has been historically the master of treachery.

    Not for me.

    Will my server tell me if using 'Cloud"?...I doubt it...so now I have to be alert and trusting...vainly

    Oh!!

    Cloud is the manifestation of the espionage dream and with that very narrow bandwidth of intellect exhibited by people which have become the IT's walking dead they will just turn on cue and offer to the new order a breeze of an access into "cloud". deRothschildes, Rockefellers and the Bilderbergers have succeeded in what was put in the sual suspects this way "the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he doesn't exist".

    1. gazthejourno (Written by Reg staff)

      Dear Sir/Madam

      Thank you for reading El Reg and commenting. Please may I suggest you post your comments in Reg Forums as a new discussion topic, rather than as comments below unrelated articles? You may find they are more likely to be published - and read - that way.

      Regards,

      GTJ.

    2. dan1980

      This reads like a suicide note from Alex Jones.

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