Nutanix: Yup, OK, we gobbled PernixData, Calm.io. What you gonna do about it? At long last Nutanix has come clean and revealed it is buying PernixData (VMware's hypervisor memory caching software biz), and confirmed it also slurped devops software company Calm.io. No prices have been disclosed but we understand the Calm.io deal was the one referred to in a Nutanix S1 amended filing, which involved 528, …
Well holy shit, Pernix couldn't make it work, and for the very reasons I told them it wouldn't work. Who'd have thunk it? All them haughty elites with their in-crowd cliques, fancy learnings and A-list experience couldn't prove a nobody like me wrong.
I am fucking marinating in schadenfreude right now.
And yes, I realize that makes me a bad person, but being a good person never got me anything and right now, just this moment, I would like to like to raise a galactic middle finger and bellow an "I told you so" that will embed itself in the cosmic microwave background to preserve a record of my childish pique for all time.
For all those that experienced job loss (voluntary or otherwise) because of this - with the one exception, you know who you are - I am truly, truly sorry. My schadenfreude does not at all extend to the enjoyment of misery for the minions. If there is any way I can help you guys out, you know where and how to find me. Engineers, sales folks...it wasn't your fault. You did your best with what you had, and in my estimation you did damned well. You did not fail the brass, the bass failed you.
As I said: I realize it makes me a bad person to take enjoyment in the discomfiture of others. That said, I feel I'm in good company as the discomfiture I'm enjoying is that of bullies. Enjoying watching bullies get their comeuppance isn't something that makes one a good person. I acknowledged that and do so again.
But it is a very human reaction, and I am as flawed as any human. Perhaps even more than most. However sad, upsetting, immoral or unethical it may be, it is natural for one who is perpetually on the receiving end of bullying to take a dark and even unwelcome pleasure in seeing bullies brought low.
Am I proud of myself for feeling such schadenfreude? No. I am, in fact, more than a little disconcerted that I am capable of such depth of disquieting emotion.
That said, it says something about those who drove the organization that this is the depth of emotion they inspired. Positive and negative; I'm sure there are multiple interpretations that we could haggle over for hours.
As for my irredeemability...I don't deny that. Seems to me everyone who ever had a soapbox to stand is one form of sonofabitch or another. I'm not a great person. I'm probably not even a good person. But I take comfort in knowing that whatever my flaws, however horrible and hateful, spiteful and miserable a pathetic nobody I truly am...
...I'm not quite as irredeemable a shit as bullies from Pernix.
And unlike them, I'm willing to admit I'm an ass and slowly, awkwardly, perhaps ultimately unsuccessfully, at least try to make myself a better person. If nothing else, I like to delude myself into thinking that self awareness of my own flaws and a willingness to address them makes less awful than those who honestly believe they're beyond reproach even as they behave in a despicable fashion.
Shot version: Pernix sold two product: FVP and Architect
FVP is server-side-caching. You buy an SSD (or multiple) and put them into the server. FVP then copies frequently read data blocks into the SSD to your apps can read them faster. It also buffers writes to the SSD so your writes happen faster and then slowly drains them back to disk. If clusters this across multiple servers so that if one server goes splork all your writes waiting to be drained are still stored elsewhere.
Architect is the thing that looks at your workload and makes sure that all your writes will fit onto the SSDs without causing a flush cascade and crippling your entire infrastructure. (I.E. your writes don't fill the SSDs up faster than they can drain over the course of an arbitrary period defined in part by the size of the SSDs and the speed of the storage you're trying to accelerate.)
To make FVP work you need to buy expensive SSDs + hella expensive software + OTHER expensive software (Architect). This is because it is way - way - easier to cause a flush cascade than Pernix people will admit.
The end result is that Pernix, while not a bad idea and actually decent software, simply cost too much. Why would you pay more to accelerate your servers' access to their storage than it cost to simply buy new storage in the first place, or to move to a hyperconveged infrastructure?
In many - but not all - cases it would have been cheaper to simply toss some SSDs into existing systems and enable VSAN (or Maxta) as an all-flash setup for demanding applications than to use Pernix. (Remembering that I could still use my slow storage for non-demanding applications in a VSAN setup.) By segmenting the workloads in such a manner I also eliminate the risk of flush cascades entirely.
And on, and on, and on, and on. The arguments can go up one wall, down another, 'round and 'round and 'round and 'round. Suffice it to say that while Pernix software works, and works well, you absolutely need to know what you're doing with it, you need to be pretty good at architecting solutions based on some pretty in depth understanding of storage and, well....
...along the way a bunch of easier solutions with lower knowledge requirements came along at the same or lower prices. Pernix as a product couldn't survive as it was positioned or priced.
But Pernix as a pair of features will be a powerful and enticing addition to Nutanix's offerings.
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