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back to article Pillar Data - Larry Ellison's other storage company

Oracle buying Sun Microsystems has caused people to wonder about the future of Pillar Data, Larry's other storage company. Pillar Data is backed by Larry Ellison's personal investment vehicle, Tako Ventures, possibly to the tune of half a billion dollars. Founded in 2001 the Silicon Valley-based firm has developed the Axiom …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Sun Storage 7000: software lego blocks?

    "now build the storage array hardware and software system yourself."

    Sorry Chris.

    Did you ever look at the Sun Storage 7000? It's an appliance, just like any NetApp etc. device.

    It's true, depending on your skills, you can build the same box with OpenSolaris, but Sun Storage 7000 requires no fiddling around with bag-of-bits.

    Chris, maybe you should download the free Virtualbox/Vmware demo-image, to get a clue.

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  2. Steven Jones

    It's an appliance...

    "The Sun 7000 business model, with its commodity hardware aspects, is good news in Oracle-land, but its open source software is not. Not to Oracle, any way. Neither is the bag-of-bits aspect of the 7000's software environment particularly attractive to many customers. Here are the software lego blocks; now build the storage array hardware and software system yourself. No thank you. I want to have an easier time implementing my storage array. Again, this is Pillar talk from the Pillar camp.)"

    Oh dear Chris - did you fall asleep during the SUN presentation, or haven't you had an invitation to one yet? The Sun 7000 Unified Storage Device is very much an appliance. Think of it as a cut-price NetApp lacking a few features (but with much faster processors), using relatively slow, large SATA drives boosted (if you are wise) by some flash SSDs, and you aren't too far off the mark (apart from the bottom-of-the-range 7110 which uses 2.5" SAS drives and doesn't have the SSD option). All the hardware, software and so on is supplied by SUN. The software is a carefully controlled, bolted down version of Open Solaris and ZFS, but that doesn't mean that it is anything else but an appliance.

    Of course, if your are brave enough, then you can build your own device using the software set, as, indeed, can other vendors. But the SUN 7000 is not a brew-your-own configuration, and if you go round adding your disks to such a config then expect your support from SUN to evaporate.

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  3. Victor
    Stop

    SUS 7000

    Chris, you obviously didn't research into the Unified Storage past the hardware bits.

    The software on the SUS 7000 is based on OpenSolaris, yes. But the interface that makes it relevant and powerfull is not. Oracle loves that stuff.

    Also, as stated by the previous commenters, the Fishworks' developed interface turns these servers into an storage appliance that can fully compete against NetApps' offerings, without much effort.

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  4. David Halko
    Thumb Down

    Rather odd statements by Chris Mellor without substantiation

    Chris Mellor writes, "The Sun 7000 business model, with its commodity hardware aspects, is good news in Oracle-land, but its open source software is not."

    Open source software is not good to Oracle? Why not? I thought Oracle was into their own open source version of Linux before starting the purchase of Sun, which they indicated Solaris was "the leading platform for the Oracle database"?

    http://www.oracle.com/sun/letter.html

    Chris Mellor writes, "Not to Oracle, any way. Neither is the bag-of-bits aspect of the 7000's software environment particularly attractive to many customers

    That seems like another very odd statement, considering that customers are replacing their storage systems with the new Open Source system. Customers deploying substantial storage (motion video) seem to love it.

    http://www.sun.com/storage/disk_systems/unified_storage/customers.jsp

    Unsubstantiated statements should be qualified instead of the FUD just being tossed around. I would like to know WHY Chris Mellor writes opinions instead of merely reading opinions.

    Architects need to know why media writers hold opinions concerning systems.

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