Therapist: I appreciate you coming in for your first session. I wanted to reassure you that this is a safe space for infrastructure architects seeking solace. The only way I can help you is if you’re completely open to sharing what’s gotten you here.
Storage Architect: I appreciate that. It’s hard, but I’ll be as open as I can. After a year of traveling and being immersed in AI, I’m getting back to my core and wanting to do some self-analysis. I realized that I’m missing a partner who has the substance to bear the burden with me of building a new block storage platform. Since I made the hard decision to move on from SAN, I just haven’t found anyone to fill that void. I’m ready to move on, and hey; I’m not getting any younger…
Therapist: So, you indicated that you’ve moved away from a long-term relationship; can you share what caused you to make this big change?
Storage Architect: Well, it was a really good run with SAN. We reached our silver anniversary: From the late 90’s until just a few years ago. SAN was a great partner, and she faithfully accommodated every workload we had tackled together. Life was simple when we were hyper-focused on the task of creating, nurturing and growing VMs. Eventually, though, the bad outweighed the good. SAN had a really expensive brand-name identity and sense of entitlement. She also insisted on doing this forced and repetitive three-year cycle refresh cycle to renew our vows. I mean: who does that? Those things, plus the constant attention required from our operations staff to maintain her gentrified lifestyle left us broke and, frankly, left me exhausted. Plus, she was so conservative: I mean; she saw open source as a threat rather than an exciting new opportunity to grow together. There was only one hypervisor she felt comfortable with, and that old school dual controller way of addressing things was stifling and prevented her from growing and adapting as the world around us got more complicated and nuanced.
Therapist: I got the impression that you’ve taken some steps to “get back out there”, as they say, and to join the dating pool. How has that been?
Storage Architect: Yeah, well; I’m not perfect. This isn’t something I’m proud of, but back in 2020, things had gotten so estranged with SAN that I had a brief dalliance with HCI. I mean, she was perfect for what I was focused on at the time. She met all of my needs for VDI and middling utility workloads to a tee. I realized quickly, though, that she lacked depth and I couldn’t trust her with the workloads that really mattered. Man; at one point, I was so desperate and adrift that I ended up back with DAS, who I had dated in high school. What a disaster. You can’t go back in time. She was wasteful, shallow and completely detached: An island unto herself. So, I kept ending up back with SAN and trying to make things work. Can we move on? This is really a really painful period of time to talk about.
Therapist: OK. Thanks for sharing that. I think it’s really important that you’ve made peace with HCI and that you can still be friends while being fully aware of her limitations. It sounds like you should avoid DAS, if at all possible, given the destructive nature of that relationship. Since you’ve now made the split and decided to move on from SAN, what other experiences have you had?
Storage Architect: Well, first of all, it’s important to end up with a partner who shares my core convictions. I don’t want to go back to a partner that’s rigid, proprietary and exclusive. I know for sure that Software Defined Storage (SDS) is where I want to end up. So far, I’ve dated a few SDS partners who were pretty interesting but not really candidates for anything long-term: I mean, Ceph storage was popular with everyone: She had all kinds of different experiences and workloads and was very worldly. Ultimately, though, if I ended up with Ceph, it was like marrying all her friends, too. Relying on her community for support was just too much change for me and I needed more focus and a more traditional support structure. Powerflex was pretty flashy, but after a while, I realized she was really just a poser masquerading as SDS. She ended up being as exclusive as SAN and trying to hem me in and limit my choices, which was pretty disingenuous and manipulative. At the end of the day, I guess the biggest shortcoming of both Ceph and Powerflex was their depth, though. They could only accommodate half my needs. I needed to split with SAN and really move on, and could only do that with a block storage partner who could deal with all my workload baggage gracefully and empathetically.
Therapist: OK. We’ve made progress here. Our session is almost up. You mentioned that you were recently introduced to Lightbits. Tell me about that. Does she have what you’re looking for? What’s different about her? What’s your confidence level that this one will work for you?
Storage Architect: Am I smiling? It’s been a revelation so far. I mean, Lightbits is the first SDS in my life to have real consistency and predictability. I didn’t think there was any SDS out there who I could trust with my most important workloads and who would gracefully accept all of the baggage I’m bringing along from those years with SAN. We’re starting slowly, which is fine for both of us, but I have to say that, so far, Lightbits is able to tackle those really tough workload challenges as a real partner. She doesn’t have to be the center of attention, I mean she’s fine just blending in under Openshift and OpenStack like she’s lived there from day one. I see the potential of a partner with all of the substance and depth but without all of the cost and complexity that caused me to look elsewhere after all those years with SAN.
