In keeping with some traditions I have learned while working for a company who is based in Israel - today, Saturday is the day of Shabbat (Shabbat (Hebrew: שַׁבָּת, Modern Shabbat href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberian_vocalization">Tiberian Šabbāṯ, Ashkenazi pronunciation: Shabbos, Yiddish: Shabes, "rest" or "cessation") is the seventh day of the Jewish week and a day of rest in Judaism. Shabbat is observed from sundown Friday until the appearance of three stars in the sky on Saturday night. The exact time, therefore, differs from week to week and from place to place, depending on the time of sunset at each location. In polar areas where there is no sunrise or sunset at certain points of the year, a different set of rules apply.
Shabbat recalls the Biblical Creation account in the Genesis, describing God creating the Heavens and the Earth in six days, and resting on and sanctifying the seventh (Genesis 1:1-2:3).
Shabbat is considered a festive day, when a person is freed from the regular labors of everyday life, can contemplate the spiritual aspects of life, and can spend time with family. Traditionally, on that day three festive meals are eaten—on shabbat eve, at lunch, and as an end-of-shabbat evening meal. The day is also noted for those activities which are prohibited on shabbat prescribed by Rabbinic Judaism. - from Wikipedia)
So while my Jewish colleagues are 'resting' I will blog.
Now, first I want to start this post with a ‘shout out’ to Mark Farley. In his last post he was headed to the hospital. I just want to say all the best to Mark. He is a good friend and has done a great deal for the storage blogging community.
Second I want to address the responsibility of the ‘blogger’, something that I think the Blog with Integrity folks should adopt. I have left no less than one comment on the last 3 Ocarina blogs. However, for some reason, they choose not to approve them. None of them were antagonistic. They were all professionally stated and meant to inspire a community of people to have real conversations around a technology topic to help drive thought leadership (from both parties) in the community. I know Carter and we have corresponded. He tells me they are in the midst of changing PR agencies and they run their blog and this is why they haven’t been approved. However, they seem to have time to get new posts up. I guess I wouldn’t necessarily call this censorship but, it certainly only allows for a one sided story and, in my opinion, rude when it comes to blogging. Look, I get people don’t want spam on their blog sites and they have an approval process and I get that people are busy. I myself have been on the road and in the air for the last 8 weeks but that doesn’t stop me from approving people who want to debate issues on my blog. I guess it is easier to spread FUD when you don’t have to defend it. It is for this reason I will use up more of my blog space (since Ocarina won’t approve comments to their blog) to discuss the merits of CORE as I see them and hopefully inspire some healthy conversation. (Also, Carter you should learn to spell the name of your competition – Storwize doesn’t have an ‘e’ in the middle – we gave it to Wikibon to use for the E in CORE.)
So, third, and the real point of the piece. E. its that simple. The E in CORE is for Effectiveness. As I stated in my response on the Wikibon blog – if you have two solutions, one that saves you 50% or more of your storage capacity, is transparent to your application, is transparent to your backups, and increases your storage performance – OR – one that requires you to perhaps only save you a small fraction of your storage space, is not transparent to your application, makes your backup environment more complex (which is what I am going to comment on next) and requires more storage management overhead than you had before? I can’t make it any simpler. I choose the first one.
Now obviously I am a fan of CORE because it Storwize is positioned as the leader in the primary storage optimization space. I also believe that doing compression real-time (as long as there is no additional expense and has no negative impact to process or the end user) than it’s the only way to go so it should have a high CORE value compared to post-process. But that said, and with all the debate, it does look like Dave and the guys at Wikibon are open to looking at all the variables that are associated with primary storage compression and augmenting CORE so it provide users additional things to think about. I applaud Wikibon for their approach and attempts to measure optimization and its effectiveness.
So really, E is for Effectiveness and that’s good enough for me.