EMC is making its Isilon OneFS 7.0 operating system, code-named “Mavericks,” generally available Friday. Previewed at EMC World in May, OneFS 7.0 has data protection, performance, security and interoperability features more suited to mainstream NAS products than the traditional clustered NAS Isilon capabilities.

Isilon is used largely in media and entertainment, life sciences, oil and gas exploration, healthcare and other high-performance applications. Sam Grocott, VP of marketing for EMC Isilon, said the large capacity files used in those industries now increasingly show up in enterprises.

“Isilon has been used in a world of massive capacity and extreme I/O performance environments that can grow quickly,” Grocott said. “Now we’re seeing those types of data sets show up in enterprise data centers. For instance, we’ve seen much more rapid adoption of enterprise customers dealing with extremely large home directories. We’re seeing up to hundreds of terabytes for a home directory.”

EMC claims the new OneFS version increases single file system throughput by 25% over the former version and new caching capabilities reduce latency by up to 50%. OneFS 7.0 reduces latency by giving each storage node its own nonvolatile random access memory (NVRAM) with cache built in, mirroring writes to cache to other nodes’ caches via InfiniBand across clusters, and confirming the write after the mirror. Previous versions of OneFS would write data to disk after caching it before confirming the write was complete.

Data protection improvements include the ability to use an active snapshot as a writeable snapshot, so a snap no longer has to be copied into an active file system to replace a lost file. Copying the snap could require a lengthy wait in a big data environment. EMC also added one-click failover and fail back to Isilon’s SyncIQ replication software for disaster recovery.

New security features include compliance with SEC 17a-4 requirements for tamper-proof data protection, roles-based administration to prevent unauthorized change to files, and the creation of isolated storage pools with authentication zones.

“We’re not physically creating separate storage silos, but we are logically separating access and directories,” Grocott said of the authentication zones. “Service providers are big proponents of this.”

Interoperability improvements include a REST-based API for third-party vendors to write to, and support for VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) and vStorage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA).

While casting Isilon as a more mainstream storage system, EMC is stopping short of pushing its iSCSI support for block storage. The midrange VNX platform is EMC’s main unified storage product, even though Isilon does support iSCSI.

“The way customers use our storage, it’s predominantly file today and will continue to be that way,” Grocott said. “We’re going to be focusing on file-based storage.”

During a week in which the Democratic party worked to convince U.S. voters to give Barack Obama four more years as president, EMC decided to extend Tucci’s contract by nearly as long.

According to a statement EMC filed with the Security and Exchange Commission Thursday, it extended Tucci’s contract through February of 2015. That gives Tucci another two-and-a-half years on the job. Last year he said 2012 would be his last year as EMC CEO, but in January he said he would stay on through the end of 2013 at the request of the board.

After he gives up the CEO job, Tucci plans to remain chairman of EMC and VMware. In July, Tucci said he expected his replacement to come from inside EMC. Two of the main candidates to succeed Tucci were recently promoted. Pat Gelsinger moved from COO of EMC to CEO of its majority-owned VMware, and Dave Goulden added EMC president and COO to his CFO title. Tucci’s extension gives them more time to gain experience in roles that could be seen as try-outs for the EMC CEO job.

Dell’s storage revenue was lower than expected last quarter, coming in at $435 million. That was down 13.3% from last year and 2% from the previous quarter. Dell executives point out that Dell branded (non-EMC) storage revenue of $416 million was up 6% from last year, but even that figure was down from the previous quarter this year.

Dell executives admit they were disappointed with the storage results, but said the product line and strategy is strong. They blame market conditions as much as any failings on Dell’s part for the company’s failure to do better since breaking up with EMC in October 2011.

“I think we can definitely do more there,” CEO Michael Dell said of storage on the earnings report conference call Tuesday. “Storage was not as strong as we’d like, and there’s definitely room to grow that faster.”

CFO Brian Gladden added that storage revenue was “below where we would have liked it, we believe this is roughly in line with the market.”

Dell did not break down revenue from its individual platforms, lumping revenue from EqualLogic, Compellent, PowerVault and DX Object Storage together.

Fusion-io calls this technology software-defined storage, a play on the software-defined networking (SDN) term being commonly used these days. The software turns Fusion-io’s PCIe-based flash cards into competition for EMC’s yet-released “Project Thunder” flash-based shared storage appliance. Project Thunder builds on EMC’s VFCache, which places PCIe cards in a single server and competes with Fusion-io’s current products. ION’s ability to turn servers with flash into networked storage systems also makes Fusion-io more competitive with all-flash storage arrays.

According to Fusion-io, ION lets customers move entire mission-critical databases to shared ioMemory for better and more reliable performance.

We won’t know for sure how the software performs until its general availability release in October, but Fusion-io is promising impressive numbers: more than one million IOPS with up to 6 GBps throughput and 56 microsecond latency from one 1U server.

ION also allows administrators to create RAID sets and LUNs and monitor performance. It handles high availability by synchronously replicating data between ION systems and has a Power Cut Safety feature that protects data in a power failure without requiring UPS systems or battery backups.

The ION software supports Fusion-io’s ioMemory flash technology in its ioDrive, ioDrive Duo, ioDrive2 Duo and ioDrive Octal flash cards. ION works with Fusion-io’s ioTurbine and directCache caching software and can be managed through the vendor’s ioSphere GUI or command line interface. ION supports 8 Gbps Fibre Channel, quad data rate (QDR) InfiniBand, and 10-Gigabit Ethernet iSCSI block storage protocols.

Out of the gate, ION software will be available bundled with Hewlett-Packard ProLiant DL370G6 and SuperMicro 1026GT-TRF servers with ioDrive 2 Duo multi-level cell (MLC) flash cards. Fusion-io said the software has been tested with other HP ProLiant servers as well as Dell PowerEdge and Cisco UCS servers.

Fusion-io said it has more than 12 early access customers for the ION software, which will have a suggested retail price of $3,900.

Fusion-io also this week said it is working with NetApp on ways to use its flash technology and caching software with NetApp’s Flash Cache and Flash Pool flash tiers.

Gelsinger and EMC CFO David Goulden were considered the top candidates to replace Joe Tucci when he steps down as CEO. The moves that EMC made today included a promotion for Goulden, who adds COO and president to his CFO titles. EMC also kept Gelsinger in the family, because EMC is the majority owner of VMware.

Tucci already changed the timing of his retirement last January when he said he would stay on past the end of this year into 2013. During a conference call today to discuss the executive changes, Tucci said he would stick around for at least 17 more months.

“I am incredibly energized,” Tucci said. “I truly love EMC and VMware. I do believe I add value, and I am fully committed to staying on as chairman of EMC and VMware and CEO of EMC at least through the end of 2013. I am convinced my successor will come from within.”

Goulden becomes the clear No. 2 to Tucci in his new role. Goulden will remain CFO while also heading EMC’s business units, sales, customer operations, services and marketing.

But that doesn’t mean Goulden is a lock to become the next CEO. EMC can still bring back Gelsinger, who will have more than a year as CEO under his belt by then. Maritz, who remains on the VMware board and will help drive EMC’s “big data” strategy, also has to be considered a candidate. EMC has other well respected executives. High-ranking executives Howard Elias and Jeremy Burton have been given more responsibilities to help replace Gelsinger, and Bill Scannell was promoted to president of global sales and customer operations last week.

When asked if he would stay on beyond 2013, Tucci said: “I will not overextend my welcome by any means. As long as I’m providing value and the board wants me … I’m not putting any firm end date in the sand. Now key executives are getting increased experience. Dave Goulden hasn’t been a COO of a company of this size, and Pat hasn’t been a CEO.”

The executive changes take effect Sept. 1, days after VMWorld 2012 ends.

“It will be an honor to take the baton from Paul at VMworld for the next lap of the journey,” Gelsinger said.

Gelsinger joined EMC in 2009 after spending 30 years at Intel. He led EMC’s product strategy as president and chief operating officer of EMC information infrastructure products.

Maritz served as VMware CEO since 2008, when he replaced VMware founder Diane Green more than four years after EMC acquired VMware. Maritz described his new role as a full-time position, but said he would remain on the west coast rather than move nearer to Hopkinton, Mass.

Tucci said Maritz suggested turning over the VMware reigns to Gelsinger as both vendors prepare for a major IT transition to cloud computing. Tucci said the timing was good because both EMC and VMware have been doing well. He said he believed customers will be happy with the changes.

“The time to make these kinds of changes is off the position of strength when you are performing well and have customer permission to play in new markets,” he said. “VMware is moving to the next phase of cloud computing.”

The executive swapping also can be taken as a sign that EMC is considering spinning VMware back in instead of running it as a separate company. The way Tucci and the EMC board move execs back and forth suggests they already see VMware more as a division of EMC rather than an independent company.

Watch4net describes its APG software as “a carrier-class performance management application that provides real-time, historical and projected visibility into the performance of the network, data centers and cloud infrastructures.”

EMC resold Watch4net software, and the software is already integrated into the EMC IT Operations Intelligence (ITOI) Suite. ITOI provides availability management, correlation and root-cause analysis for storage, networks and compute resources. Watch4net merges performance metrics from ITOI into custom reports and provides ITOI with alert information when performance thresholds are exceeded.

The acquisition gives EMC greater control over Watch4net’s intellectual property. Watch4net CEO Michel Foix and most of the company’s 70 employees will join EMC as part of its Infrastructure Management Group. EMC considers an expansion of its infrastructure management software a key part of its move to provide cloud services.

EMC has a VFCache server-side PCIe card, and its roadmap includes a PCIe-based shared storage appliance and all-flash array — all pieces NetApp lacks. And while EMC predicts a hybrid implementation of SSD and hard drives in the same system will be the most popular, NetApp maintains Flash Cache is the best way to go. NetApp is also more guarded about its flash roadmap than EMC.

“We have consistently said that flash will be deployed throughout the hardware stack, and our flash offerings will be aggressive and multi-faceted,” NetApp CEO Tom Georgens said on the vendor’s earnings call this week. “Our belief is that offering flash primarily in the form of the cache is the most efficient and effective way to deploy this technology in storage arrays, and most of the industry is now following this approach.”

Georgens said all NetApp FAS6000 systems have 500 GB of flash embedded, and most FAS3240 and3270 arrays ship with flash. “Our R&D pipeline contains projects to further the use of flash on other layers of the stack, and our next release of OnTap [NetApp’s operating system] will contain additional flash-related offerings,” he said.

NetApp executives visited XtremIO’s Israeli headquarters before EMC grabbed the all-flash array startup for $430 million. An analyst on the call suggested EMC outbid NetApp for XtremIO as it did for Data Domain three years ago, but Georgens would not confirm that NetApp wanted XtremIO.

“Obviously, we spend time with a lot of people and visit a lot of people, talk to a lot of people about potential engagements,” he said. “As far as flash goes, I see that as an innovation and a way to promulgate our data management capability. And that’s going to be the key part of our strategy. So I think you’ll see NetApp participating in flash on multiple dimensions, and primarily, it is to expand our data management footprint.”

That’s a steep price for a company that is not even shipping products yet, but it underscores EMC’s serious push into flash. EMC said it will reveal details about its plans for XtremIo at EMC World later this month. EMC is also expected to flesh out details about its PCIe-based “Project Thunder” shared storage appliance at the show.

According to the XtremIO website, it’s product is a clustered flash array that scales out for capacity and performance. XtremIO claims the system can be rapidly deployed with simple steps for creating volumes, defining hosts, and mapping volumes to host. The arrays support thin provisioning and global deduplication for primary storage, and XtremIO said it would be cost competitive with performance spinning disk storage.

Now it appears that EMC may add one of those product types by acquiring all-flash storage array startup XtremIO. Israeli business newspaper Globes today reports that EMC is discussing a buyout of the Tel Aviv-based startup for $400 million to $450 million.

While EMC can offer its traditional arrays with all solid-state drives (SSDs) in place of hard drives, XtremIO is part of a rapidly growing group of startups that engineered their systems from the ground up to take advantage of flash. The XtremIO Flash Array is still in customer trials. The vendor positions it as a way to lift I/O constraints for applications such as Oracle or SQL databases, ERP systems, and virtual desktop infrastructures or other heavily virtualized environments.

One of XtremIO’s founders, Shuki Bruck, also founded file virtualization vendor Rainfinity and sold it to EMC in 2005.

An EMC-XtremIO acquisition could start off a feeding frenzy for traditional storage vendors looking to accelerate their ability to take all-flash arrays to market. Globes reported NetApp executives have also visited Israel to talk to XtremIO (Wall Street rumors also say NetApp is looking at buying Fusion-io). Other all-flash vendors that might make acquisition targets include Violin Memory, Nimbus Data, SolidFire, Texas Memory Systems, Kaminario, GreenBytes, Pure Storage and Whiptail.

Despite a seven percent revenue growth to $3.7 billion for information storage products last quarter, EMC CFO Dave Goulden said during the vendor’s earnings call that it struggled to meet demand for high-capacity hard drives. Goulden said the drive shortage caused by Thailand floods last year is improving, but EMC will keep its 5 percent to 15 percent price increases at least into late 2012.

“There were and still are constraints in nearline drives,” he said. “We got the drives we needed to make our numbers, but nearline drives came in late and we had to do some balancing to meet supply and demand. There will be constraints in certain classes of drives the entire year.”

Goulden said he doesn’t think the drive shortage cost EMC any customers because “everbyody’s in the same boat when it comes to drive availability.”

His comments were in line with Seagate’s claims during its earnings call earlier in the week that the shortage has eased for some drive types, but high-capacity nearline drives are still restricted.

Despite its revenue growth last quarter, EMC’s high-end storage declined 10 percent from last year. EMC execs said that was largely due to an unusually strong first quarter in 2011, but EMC CEO Joe Tucci agreed with an analyst who asked if it might also be caused by customers waiting for a VMAX product refresh.

Pointing out the current VMAX platform launched three years ago, Tucci said, “our customers are expecting a new high-end product. We don’t want to ruin our announcement, but customers expecting that will not be disappointed. It’s coming soon.”

Tucci also said more details on Project Thunder will be disclosed at EMC World next month, and it will go into beta over the next few months. EMC COO Pat Gelsinger added that he considers the Project Thunder shared storage appliance more lucrative then the VFCache “Project Lightning” host-based PCIe flash card launched earlier this year, because Project Thunder is more in line with EMC’s storage background.

“A Thunder-like appliance is an easier product for the EMC sales force,” he said. “There is a lot of interest for the Thunder appliance in many use cases. We’ve accelerated our internal activities for VFCache, Thunder, the use of MLC [multi-level cache], and hybrid arrays. A large majority of the industry will be hybrid arrays for the long term.”

Tucci added that EMC is committed to all types of flash – including solid-state drives (SSDs) in storage arrays, 100 percent flash arrays, and hybrid arrays – as well as Fibre Channel and SATA hard drives. “For sure, information storage is not a one-size-fits-all world,” he said.

Tucci also addressed another favorite EMC topic, the cloud. He said private clouds will be the most popular type of cloud for a long time, but “we believe the world [eventually] is going to be hybrid. Customers are working on virtualizing and private cloudizing tier one applications in significant numbers. That’s where the action is. But when customers get to peak times they’ll push some apps out to the public cloud so they don’t have to buy capacity for peak times.”

Other tidbits from the EMC call:

• Isilon revenue nearly doubled from last year, with the help of a 28 PB purchase from a web company.
• VNX unified storage systems has brought EMC nearly 6,000 new customers since it launched in early 2011.
• Revenue from midrange products (VNX, Data Domain, Avamar, Isilon) grew 26% year over year.