Article FAILS to launch

Chris, this is a hack job of an article and it reflects poorly on you.

"IBM - nothing, zip, nada except maybe vague hints of GPFS having object connections " - REALLY?? You couldn't have googled "IBM Object Storage" and looked at the copious Product, Research and information? Let's have some basic research completed before putting mis-truths out there.

The net of the problem is simple: Object storage, when properly used will require application (re-)design changes. I'm fond of the phrase: "the only human that likes change is a baby with a dirty diaper". 99% of software developers are used to working with a file system and don't know how to design an app using object storage or better.. don't care to get off that really comfy broken (in) file system. This creates a natural barrier for mass adoption (which according to this article is a failure on vendors part to put out object storage). Instead, developers would rather go to great lengths to do things like write algorithms to generate long, random file names for uniqueness (so there's no collisions and over-writing failures) for things like log files. Dealing with OS and file system differences generates bloated and brittle code. Why wouldn't someone want to reference storage via a URI?

Object storage is a fine technology (/religion?) with the promise of something great. I find it odd and interesting that OpenStack and Swift aren't called out in this article.

Come on El Reg... if you're going to take on a topic, do it right and stop the vendor bashing and focus in on the problem.

You're kidding me right? April fools was the day BEFORE!

I had to stop reading after the first paragraph. There's too many issues that are well represented in the comments. What's apparent is the absolute lack of respect for those in the IT profession that have to keep up with a very rapidly changing (and accelerating) technology landscape at the same time they do their day jobs and provide 24/7/365 coverage. Do you see the same rate & pace of 'learning and doing' in other professional fields?

Let's get some respect for the individual and balance, yes?

Really? Wow!.... so what?

it's an x86 server. I fail to see any innovation worth mentioning. They package a hypervisor with some flash and claim massive over-committed VMs, which I'm calling Raspberries on.

With hyper-threading turned on that's 32 HW threads - or simple arithmetic shows 1 VM: 0.08 HW threads (or 0.04 without).

Memory: (256GB - ~24 Hypervisor overhead) / 400 = 580MB avg.. Tell me what modern OS or app can run in that?

Storage? Presuming 100% raw space available (5.7TB) which would be absolute lunacy to run JBOD, that's ~14GB per VM on average.

So what's the innovation here, and why should we care? You could get a jr. admin to put this together.

Cute .. but

"if the promise of FCoE is realised, will have a limited future, possibly, as an in-Fibre Channel fabric SAN virtualisation device."

What exactly *is* the promise of FCoE? Higher latency access than traditional FC? lower bandwidth reservation vs FC in a 10Gb CEE fabric? This is the exact opposite of the performance curve that client applications demand of today's storage.

I'm not sure why Chris would couple the notion that an access and transport change would spell the demise of block storage virtualization.

These tests are (of course) bogus

EX & EP is a ridiculous comparison. Cache structures, cores, just about everything is different and integer sensitive workloads will fly on EP and do worse on EX. Where's the compare to the other 4 Socket E5-4600 EP's? Like the IBM x440 (http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=AN&subtype=CA&htmlfid=897/ENUS112-099&appname=USN). So the net result is that HP is using an exceptionally defective method of comparison. Huh... where's the Itanium compares? <crickets>

Tim - did you mean "Exalogic" servers? Best of my knowledge, Exadata is not virtualized.

Palmeter also says that it was always Oracle's intent to virtualize the underlying Exadata servers, and that was one of the reasons why it was called the Exalogic Elastic Cloud, to use the product's full name

Makes sense

It's like watching two awkward teens making out. Of course the two struggling Titans of Tech <sic> would find each other good company. However, there's little to be had by this great announcement, no innovation, just simply 1+1=2.

You did see the IBM V7000 Unified Disk System (filer) announcement?

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/disk/storwize_v7000/

Realizing that it's a big industry, the Reg can't follow it all :)

Of course Watson is about commercialization

Sure - showing the world what's happening in research labs is best done with glam and flair.

Watson wasn't just a well timed expo of incredible technology toppling meager humans. Nor is it the start of the end of humanity.

Technology companies will always paint the 'art of the possible' in the public mind because it gets folks excited. When the first caveman invented knife technology, you can imagine the excitement around the cave fire, unless you were the first test case of course.

IBM has always pushed the boundaries of material science and continued to drive innovation. Their patent records year on year speak to that. The fact that they have the largest dedicated math department in any private company means they are dedicated to solving problems.

Let's be pragmatic however - IBM's a company that is in business to make money. They have stock holders that want a good return on their investment. Clients of IBM enjoy a trust relationship and value assurances that what happens in the Research and Development Labs will make it's way into commercial applications that will give them an edge in their market.

Think of IBM's leading thought campaign with "Smarter Planet". It's not rocket science to associate the demo of Watson's incredible data crunching and accuracy that could very well lead to the next generation of medical diagnosis tooling, better decision support systems for critical infrastructure (emergency services, energy and water management systems, etc).

I for one am excited about the possibility of potential new applications of the technology developed during the creation of Watson.