Rayno16
Okay. Heard a lot about #cost and #webscale. Lots talk about other #storage benefits. Analytics? Automation?
Coho Data
thats exactly what @andywarfield and team are aiming for. Predicting hot spots, knowing issues that may arise due to IO before they start.
Christopher Wells
Any new webscale offering worth its salt is designed from the ground up for automation, i.e. via REST APIs
KoolioKev
Performance automation. With NetApp We would have to create tiers of storage and move data around to hopefully get better performance. Or over engineer it so we wouldn't hit it at all.
Christopher Wells
As for analytics, I think gathering information into the use cases from key customers is paramount to figuring out decisions that can be made from the data.
Coho Data
many storage vendors mention analytics and automation. But bigger concern is what does the storage do with it, how does it handle this information and put it to work. Most can't and wont touch that aspect.
Andrew Warfield
The performance tools that people use for storage today are unbelievably primitive.
Eric Shanks
Automation is super cool, but it must be easy enough for a storage admin to build quickly. REST APIs require a new skill set for these folks usually.
Christopher Wells
@KoolioKev Been there man! Glad you've come over from the dark side. As a former #NetApp customer and employee I saw it from both sides of the fence...
Andrew Warfield
Understanding and diagnosing a workloads performance problems demand a lot more than IOPS and latency numbers.
Ramana Jonnala
@KoolioKev or over provision to avoid hitting perf problems ... smart analytics should let you provision exactly what you need and use it best
KoolioKev
@vsamurai_com Dark side had cookies... but now I have time to make my own cookies!
Christopher Wells
@eric_shanks True. REST APIs are a starting point. Developing examples using PowerShell and other scripting tools propel it into the mainstream
Andrew Warfield
@eric_shanks Completely agree. REST is like ioctl(). But it's a great substrate for simple libraries/CLis.
Coho Data
the fact that @KoolioKev or any of @eric_shanks customers have to provision or move storage around means more work and #webscalestorage isn't about more work.
Forbes Guthrie
@eric_shanks Yep, I'd rather have intelligent tools that do the right thing, rather than build custom scripts myself if possible.
Geoff Wilmington
Automation is great, but I shouldn't have to automate something because the UI is tough to navigate or cludgy to use. It should be an extension of a system that's already well thought out and easy to use.
Eric Shanks
@andywarfield REST is a great start, but something should be on top of it for easier use by administrators
Coho Data
@eric_shanks What would you suggest on top of REST?
Forbes Guthrie
@eric_shanks What's your preference: native CLI, powershell, python, ...?
Christopher Wells
@eric_shanks REST helps us figure out how customers want to automate and orchestrate. The most popular or useful stuff will undoubtedly live on in other forms
Coho Data
@kellandamm would love to hear your thoughts on this!
Eric Shanks
@forbesguthrie PoSH would be cool, but how about a simple GUI that allows you to perform something once, and when done copy the REST API to do the same thing?
Forbes Guthrie
@eric_shanks You mean like a Project Onyx type thing? Reminds me of the "reveal codes" window in WordPerfect.