August 2014 Server and StorageIO Update newsletter

Welcome to the August 2014 edition of the StorageIO Update (newsletter) containing trends perspectives on cloud, virtualization, software defined and data infrastructure topics. This past week I along with around 22,000 others attended VMworld 2014 in San Francisco. For those of you in Europe, VMworld Barcelona is October 14-16 2014 with registration and more information found here. Watch for more post VMworld coverage in upcoming newsletters, articles, posts along with other industry trend topics. Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO Update newsletter and look forward to catching up with you live or online while out and about this fall.

Greg Schulz @StorageIO

August 2014 Industry trend and perspectives

The following is a synopsis of some StorageIOblog posts, articles and comments in different venues on various industry trends, perspectives and related themes about clouds, virtualization, data and storage infrastructure topics among related themes.

StorageIO comments and perspectives in the news

Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDI) remains a popular industry and IT customer topic, not to mention being one of the favorite themes of Solid State Device (SSD) vendors. SSD component and system solution vendors along with their supporters love VDI as the by-product of aggregation (e.g. consolidation) which applies to VDI is aggravation. Aggravation is the result of increased storage I/O performance (IOP’s, bandwidth, response time) from consolidating the various desktops. It should not be a surprise that some of the biggest fans encouraging organizations to adopt VDI are the SSD vendors. Read some of my comments and perspectives on VDI here at FedTech Magazine.

Speaking of virtualizing the data center, software defined data centers (SDDC) along with software defined networking (SDN) and software defined storage (SDS) remain popular including some software defined marketing (SDM). Here are some of my comments and perspectives moving beyond the hype of SDDC.

Recently the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) who works with the T11 standards body of both legacy or classic Fibre Channel (FC) as well as newer FC over Ethernet (FCoE) made some announcements. These announcements including enhancements such as Fibre Channel Back Bone version 6 (FC-BB-6) among others. Both FC and FCoE are alive and doing well, granted one has been around longer (FC) and can be seen at its plateau while the other (FCoE) continues to evolve and grow in adoption. In some ways, FCoE is in a similar role today to where FC was in the late 90s and early 2000s ironically facing some common fud. You can read my comments here as part of a quote in support of the announcement , along with my more industry trend perspectives in this blog post here.

Buyers guides are popular with both vendors, VAR’s as well as IT organizations (e.g. customers) following are some of my comments and industry trend perspectives appearing in Enterprise Storage Forum. Here are perspectives on buyers guides for Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS), Unified Data Storage and Object Storage. EMC has come under pressure as mentioned in earlier StorageIO update newsletters to increase its shareholder benefit including spin-off of VMware. Here are some of my comments and perspectives that appeared in CruxialCIO. Read more industry trends perspectives comments on the StorageIO news page.

StorageIO video and audio pod casts

StorageIO audio podcasts are also available via
and at StorageIO.tv

StorageIOblog posts and perspectives

Despite being declared dead, traditional or classic Fibre Channel (FC) along with FC over Ethernet (FCoE) continues to evolve with FC-BB-6, read more here.

VMworld 2014 took place this past week and included announcements about EVO:Rack and Rail (more on this in a future edition). You can get started learning about EVO:Rack and RAIL at Duncan Epping (aka @DuncanYB) Yellow Bricks site. VMware Virtual SAN (VSAN) is at the heart of EVO which you can read an overview here in this earlier StorageIO update newsletter (March 2014).

VMware VSAN example

Also watch for some extra content that I’m working on including some video podcasts articles and blog posts from my trip to VMworld 2014. However one of the themes in the background of VMworld 2014 is the current beta of VMware vSphere V6 along with Virtual Volumes aka VVOL’s. The following are a couple of my recent posts including primer overview of VVOL’s along with a poll you can cast your vote. Check out Are VMware VVOL’s in your virtual server and storage I/O future? and VMware VVOL’s and storage I/O fundamentals (Part 1) along with (Part 2).

StorageIO events and activities

The StorageIO calendar continues to evolve including several new events being added for September and well into the fall with more in the works including upcoming Dutch European sessions the week of October 6th in Nijkerk Holland (learn more here). The following are some upcoming September events. These include live in-person seminars, conferences, keynote and speaking activities as well as on-line webinars, twitter chats, Google+ hangouts among others.

Sep 25 2014	MSP CMG	Server and StorageIO SSD industry trends perspectives and tips	TBA 9:30AM CT
Sep 18 2014	InfoWorld	Hybrid Storage In Government	Webinar 2:30PM ET
Sep 18 2014		Converged Storage and Storage Convergence	Webinar 9AM PT
Sep 17 2014		Data Center Convergence	Webinar 1PM PT
Sep 16 2014		Critical Infrastructure and Disaster Recovery	Webinar Noon PT
Sep 16 2014	Starwind Software	Software Defined Storage and Virtual SAN for Microsoft environments	Webinar 1PM CT
Sep 16 2014	Dell BackupU	Exploring the Data Protection Toolbox – Data and Application Replication	Google+ 9AM PT
Sep 2 2014	Dell BackupU	Exploring the Data Protection Toolbox – Data and Application Replication	Online Webinar 11AM PT

Note: Dates, times, venues and subject contents subject to change, refer to events page for current status

Click here to view other upcoming along with earlier event activities. Watch for more 2014 events to be added soon to the StorageIO events calendar page. Topics include data protection modernization (backup/restore, HA, BC, DR, archive), data footprint reduction (archive, compression, dedupe), storage optimization, SSD, object storage, server and storage virtualization, software defined, big data, little data, cloud and object storage, performance and management trends among others.

Vendors, VAR’s and event organizers, give us a call or send an email to discuss having us involved in your upcoming pod cast, web cast, virtual seminar, conference or other events.

Server and StorageIO Technology Tips and Tools

In addition to the industry trends and perspectives comments in the news mentioned above, along with the StorageIO blog posts, the following are some of my recent articles and tips that have appeared in various industry venues.

Over at the new Storage Acceleration site I have a couple of pieces, the first is What, When, Why & How to Accelerate Storage and the other is Tips for Measuring Your Storage Acceleration.
Meanwhile over at Search Storage I have a piece covering What is the difference between a storage snapshot and a clone? and at Search Cloud Storage some tips about What’s most important to know about my cloud privacy policy?. Also with Software Defined in the news and a popular industry topic, I have a piece over at Enterprise Storage Forum looking at Has Software Defined Jumped the Shark? Check out these and others on the StorageIO tips and articles page.

StorageIO Update Newsletter Archives

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Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers gs

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