Re: With EMC leadership team effectively out, storage is just a commodity for Dell
I don't think you can argue that traditional SANs are a commodity. There are multiple places where that architecture will survive - and thrive - for several more refresh cycles, even outside of unix and mainframe.
This is not to say that HCI doesn't have its place - as does commodity server-resident storage.
3 examples:
Do I build an infrastructure from traditional 3-tier, or do I roll out a VSAN?
VSAN wins hands down in many cases, but what if I have legacy applications that don't migrate, nor sit well on next gen kit? What if my storage is mucho petabytos?
If I'm standing up a Hadoop data warehouse, do I build compute and data nodes from x86 boxen or do I put an Isilon or a NetApp on the back as the data lake? All-x86 is cheaper, no doubts, but a dedicated data lake brings certain capabilities to the table for specific use cases.
Do I want to host my Splunk environment in HCI or should it stand alone?
Nice to have the bare metal pure play and I save on capital costs, but containing inside HCI removes a lot of operational headaches (and costs there).
A lot of these questions are going to depend upon the preferences of they that will maintain the gear, their biases, their budgets and the outcomes they are looking for.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
