April 2015 Server StorageIO Update Newsletter

Volume 15, Issue IV

Hello and welcome to this April 2015 Server and StorageIO update newsletter.

This months newsletter has a focus on cloud and object storage for bulk data, unstructured data, big data, archiving among other scenarios.

Enjoy this edition of the Server and StorageIO update newsletter and watch for new tips, articles, StorageIO lab report reviews, blog posts, videos and Podcasts along with in the news commentary appearing soon.

Storage I/O trends

StorageIOblog posts

April StorageIOblog posts include:

View other recent as well as past blog posts here

April Newsletter Feature Theme
Cloud and Object Storage Fundamentals

There are many facets to object storage including technology implementation, products, services, access and architectures for various applications and use scenarios. The following is a short synopsis of some basic terms and concepts associated with cloud and object storage.

Common cloud and object storage terms

  • Account or project – Top of the hierarchy that represent owner or billing information for a service that where buckets are also attached.
  • Availability Zone (AZ) can be rack of servers and storage or data center where data is spread across for storage and durability.
  • AWS regions and availability zones (AZ)
    Example of some AWS Regions and AZ’s

  • Bucket or Container – Where objects or sub-folders containing objects are attached and accessed. Note in some environments such as AWS S3 you can have sub-folders in a bucket.
  • Connector or how your applications access the cloud or object storage such as via an API, S3, Swift, Rest, CDMI, Torrent, JSON, NAS file, block of other access gateway or software.
  • Durability – Data dispersed with copies in multiple locations to survive failure of storage or server hardware, software, zone or even region. Availability = Access + Durability.
  • End-point – Where or what your software, application or tool and utilities or gateways attach to for accessing buckets and objects.
  • Ephemeral – Temporary or non-persistent
  • Eventual consistency – Data is eventually made consistency, think in terms of asynchronous or deferred writes where there is a time lag vs. synchronous or real-time updates.
  • Immutable – Persistent, non-altered or write once read many copy of data. Objects generally are not updated, rather new objects created.
  • Object storage and cloud
    Via Cloud Virtual Data Storage (CRC)

  • Object – Byte (or bit) stream that can be as small as one byte to as large as several TBytes (some solutions and services support up to 5TByte sized objects). The object contains what ever data in any organization along with meta data. Different solutions and services support from a couple hundred KBytes of meta-data to MBytes worth of meta-data. In terms of what can be stored in an object, anything from files, videos, images, virtual disks (VMDK’s, VHDX), ZIP or tar files, backup and archive save sets, executable images or ISO’s, anything you want.
  • OPS – Objects per second or how many objects accessed similar to a IOP. Access includes gets, puts, list, head, deletes for a CRUD interface e.g. Created, Read, Update, Delete.
  • Region – Location where data is stored that can include one or more data centers also known as Availability Zones.
  • Sub-folder – While object storage can be accessed in a flat name space for commonality and organization some solutions and service support the notion of sub-folder that resemble traditional directory hierarchy.

Learn more in Cloud Virtual Storage Networking (CRC) and www.objectstoragecenter.com

Storage I/O trends

OpenStack Manila (e.g. Folders and Files)

AWS recently announced their new cloud based Elastic File Storage (EFS) to compliment their existing Elastic Block Storage (EBS) offerings. However are you aware of what is going on with cloud files within OpenStack?

For those who are familiar with OpenStack or simply talk about it and Swift object storage, or perhaps Cinder block storage, are you aware that there is also a file (NAS or Network Attached Storage) component called Manila?

In concept Manila should provide a similar capability to what AWS has recently announce with their Elastic File Service (EFS), or depending on your perspective, perhaps the other way around. If you are familiar and have done anything with Manila what are your initial thoughts and perspectives.

What this all means

People routinely tell me this is the most exciting and interesting times ever in servers, storage, I/O networking, hardware, software, backup or data protection, performance, cloud and virtual or take your pick too which I would not disagree.

However, for the past several years (no, make that decade), there is new and more interesting things including in adjacent areas.

I predict that at least for the next few years (no, make that decades), we will continue to see plenty of new and interesting things, questions include.

However, what’s applicable to you and your environment vs. simply fun and interesting to watch?

Ok, nuff said, for now

Cheers gs

 

In This Issue

  • Industry Trends Perspectives News
  • Commentary in the news
  • Tips and Articles
  • StorageIOblog posts
  • Events and Webinars
  • StorageIOblog posts
  • Server StorageIO Lab reports
  • Resources and Links
  • Industry News and Activity

    Recent Industry news and activity

    View other recent industry activity here

    StorageIO Commentary in the news

    StorageIO news (image licensed for use from Shutterstock by StorageIO)
    Recent Server StorageIO commentary and industry trends perspectives about news, activities and announcements.

    CyberTrend: Comments on Software Defined Data Center and Virtualization

    View more trends comments here

    StorageIO Tips and Articles

    Check out these resources and links on server storage I/O performance and benchmarking tools. View more tips and articles here

    Various Industry Events

    EMCworld – May 4-6 2015 (Las Vegas)

    Interop – April 29 2015 (Las Vegas)
    Presenting
    Smart Shopping for Your Enterprise Storage Strategy

    View other recent and upcoming events here

    Webinars


    BrightTalk Webinar – June 23 2015
    Server Storage I/O Innovation Update

    View other webinars here

    Videos and Podcasts

    Data Protection Gumbo Podcast
    Protect Preserve and Serve Data

    In this episode, Greg Schulz is a guest on Data Protection Gumbo hosted by Demetrius Malbrough(@dmalbrough). The conversation covers various aspects of data protection which has a focus of protect preserve and serve information, applications and data across different environments and customer segments.

    While we discuss enterprise and SMB data protection, we also talk about trends from Mobile to the cloud among many others tools, technologies and techniques. Check out the podcast here.

    Springtime in Kentucky
    With Kendrick Coleman of EMCcode
    Cloud Object Storage S3motion and more

    In this episode, @EMCcode (Part of EMC) developer advocate Kendrick Coleman (@KendrickColeman) joins me (e.g. Greg Schulz) for a conversation.

    Conversation covers what is EMCcode, EMC Federation, Cloud Foundryclouds, object storage, buckets, containers, objects, node.jsDocker, OpenStack, AWS S3, micro services, and the S3motion tool Kendrick developed.

    S3motion is a good tool to have in your server storage I/O tool box for working with cloud and object storage along with others such as Cloudberry, S3fs, Cyberduck, S3 browser among many others. You can get S3motion for free from git hub here Check out the companion blog post for this podcast here.

    StorageIO podcast’s are also available via Server Storage I/O audio podcastServer Storage I/O video & at StorageIO.tv

    From StorageIO Labs

    Research, Reviews and Reports

    AWS S3 Cross-Region Replication

    AWS S3 Cross region replication
    Moving and Replicating Buckets/Containers, Sub folders and Objects (Click on Image to read about AWS Cross-Region Replication)

    View other StorageIO lab review reports here

    Resources and Links

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

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