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VCE revisited, now & zen

StorageIO Industry trends and perspectives image

Yesterday VCE and their proud parents announced revenues had reached an annual run rate of a billion dollars. Today VCE announced some new products along with enhancements to others.

Before going forward though, lets take go back for a moment to help set the stage to see where things might be going in the future. A little over a three years ago, back in November 2009 VCE was born and initially named ACADIA by its proud parents (Cisco, EMC, Intel and VMware). Here is a post that I did back then.

Btw the reference to Zen might cause some to think that I don’t how to properly refer to the Xen hypervisor. It is really a play from Robert Plants album Now & Zen and its song Tall Cool One. For those not familiar, click on the link and listen (some will have DejaVu, others might think its new and cool) as it takes a look back as well as present, similar to VCE.

Robert plant now & zen vs. Xen hypervisor

On the other hand, this might prompt the question of when will Xen be available on a Vblock? For that I defer you to VCE CTO Trey Layton (@treylayton).

VCE stands for Virtual Computing Environment and was launched as a joint initiative including products and a company (since renamed from Acadia to VCE) to bring all the pieces together. As a company, VCE is based in Plano (Richardson) Texas just north of downtown Dallas and down the road from EDS or what is now left of it after the HP acquisition  The primary product of VCE has been the Vblock. The Vblock is a converged solution comprising components from their parents such as VMware virtualization and management software tools, Cisco servers, EMC storage and software tools and Intel processors.

Not surprisingly there are many ex-EDS personal at VCE along with some Cisco, EMC, VMware and many other people from other organizations in Plano as well as other cites. Also interesting to note that unlike other youngsters that grow up and stay in touch with their parents via technology or social media tools, VCE is also more than a few miles (try hundreds to thousands) from the proud parent headquarters on the San Jose California and Boston areas.

As part of a momentum update, VCE and their parents (Cisco, EMC, VMware and Intel) announced annual revenue run rate of a billion dollars in just three years. In addition the proud parents and VCE announced that they have over 1,000 revenue shipped and installed Vblock systems (also here) based on Cisco compute servers, and EMC storage solutions.

The VCE announcement consists of:

  • SAP HANA database application optimized Vblocks (two modes, 4 node and 8 node)
  • VCE Vision management tools and middleware or what I have refered to as Valueware
  • Entry level Vblock (100 and 200) with Cisco C servers and EMC (VNXe and VNX) storage
  • Performance and functionality enhancements to existing Vblock models 300 and 700
  • Statement of direction for more specialized Vblocks besides SAP HANA


Images courtesy with permission of VCE.com

While VCE is known for their Vblock converged, stack, integrated, data center in a box, private cloud or among other descriptors, there is more to the story. VCE is addressing convergence of common IT building blocks for cloud, virtual, and traditional physical environments. Common core building blocks include servers (compute or processors), networking (IO and connectivity), storage, hardware, software, management tools along with people, processes, metrics, policies and protocols.

Storage I/O image of cloud and virtual IT building blocks

I like the visual image that VCE is using (see below) as it aligns with and has themes common to what I have discussing in the past.


Images courtesy with permission of VCE.com

VCE Vision is software with APIs that collects information about Vblock hardware and software components to give insight to other tools and management frameworks. For example VMware vCenter plug-in and vCenter Operations Manager Adapter which should not be a surprise. Customers will also be able to write to the Vision API to meet their custom needs. Let us watch and see what VCE does to add support for other software and management tools, along with gain support from others.


Images courtesy with permission of VCE.com

Vision is more than just an information source feed for VMware vCenter or VASA or tools and frameworks from others. Vision is software developed by VCE that will enable insight and awareness into the Vblock and applications, however also confirm and give status of physical and logical component configuration. This means the basis for setting up automated or programmatic remediation such as determining what software or firmware to update based on different guidelines.


Images courtesy with permission of VCE.com

Initially VCE Vision provides (information) inventory and perspective of how those components are in compliance with firmware or software releases, so stay tuned. VCE is indicating that Vision will continue to evolve after all this is the V1.0 release with future enhancements targeted towards taking action, controlling or active management.

StorageIO Industry trends and perspectives image

Some trends, thoughts and perspectives

The industry adoption buzz is around software defined X where X can be data center (SDDC), or storage (SDS) or networking (SDN), or marketing (SDM) or other things. The hype and noise around software defined which in the case of some technologies is good. On the marketing hype side, this has led to some Software Defined BS (SDBS).

Thus, it was refreshing at least in the briefing session I was involved in to hear a minimum focus around software defined and more around customer and IT business enablement with technology that is shipping today.

VCE Vision is a good example of adding value hence what I refer to as Valueware around converged components. For those vendors who have similar solutions, I urge them to streamline, simplify and more clearly articulate their value proposition if they have valueware.

Vendors including VCE continue to evolve their platform based converged solutions by adding more valueware, management tools, interfaces, APIs, interoperability and support for more applications. The support for applications is also moving beyond simple line item ordering or part number skews to ease acquisition and purchasing. Some solutions include VCE Vblock, NetApp FlexPod that also uses Cisco compute servers, IBM PureSystems (PureFlex etc) and Dell vStart among others are extending their support and optimization for various software solutions. These software solutions range from SAP (including HANA), Microsoft (Exchange, SQLserver, Sharepoint), Citrix desktop (VDI), Oracle, OpenStack, Hadoop map reduce along with other little-data, big-data and big-bandwidth applications to name a few.

Additional and related reading:
Acadia VCE: VMware + Cisco + EMC = Virtual Computing Environment
Cloud conversations: Public, Private, Hybrid what about Community Clouds?
Cloud, virtualization, Storage I/O trends for 2013 and beyond
Convergence: People, Processes, Policies and Products
Hard product vs. soft product
Hardware, Software, what about Valueware?
Industry adoption vs. industry deployment, is there a difference?
Many faces of storage hypervisor, virtual storage or storage virtualization
The Human Face of Big Data, a Book Review
Why VASA is important to have in your VMware CASA

Congratulations to VCE, along with their proud parents, family, friends and partners, now how long will it take to reach your next billion dollars in annual run rate revenue. Hopefully it wont be three years until the next VCE revisited now and Zen ;).

Disclosure: EMC and Cisco have been StorageIO clients, I am a VMware vExpert that gets me a free beer after I pay for VMworld and Intel has named two of my books listed on their Recommended Reading List for Developers.

Ok, nuff said, time to head off to vBeers over in Minneapolis.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

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All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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NetApp EF540, something familiar, something new

StorageIO Industry trends and perspectives image

NetApp announced the other day a new all nand flash solid-state devices (SSD) storage system called the EF540 that is available now. The EF540 has something’s new and cool, along with some things familiar, tried, true and proven.

What is new is that the EF540 is an all nand flash multi-level cell (MLC) SSD storage system. What is old is that the EF540 is based on the NetApp E-Series (read more here and here) and SANtricity software with hundreds of thousands installed systems. As a refresher, the E-Series are the storage system technologies and solutions obtained via the Engenio acquisition from LSI in 2011.

Image of NetApp EF540 via ntapgeek.com
Image via www.ntapgeek.com

The EF540 expands the NetApp SSD flash portfolio which includes products such as FlashCache (read cache aka PAM) for controllers in ONTAP based storage systems. Other NetApp items in the NetApp flash portfolio include FlashPool SSD drives for persistent read and write storage in ONTAP based systems. Complimenting FlashCache and FlashPool is the server-side PCIe caching card and software FlashAccel. NetApp is claiming to have revenue shipped 36PB of flash complimenting over 3 Exabytes (EB) of storage while continuing to ship a large amount of SAS and SATA HDD’s.

NetApp also previewed its future FlashRay storage system that should appear in beta later in 2013 and general availability in 2014.

In addition to SSD and flash related announcements, NetApp also announced enhancements to its ONTAP FAS/V6200 series including the FAS/V6220, FAS/V6250 and FAS/V6290.

Some characteristics of the NetApp EF540 and SANtricity include:

  • Two models with 12 or 24 x 6Gbs SAS 800GB MLC SSD devices
  • Up to 9.6TB or 19.2TB physical storage in a 2U (3.5 inch) tall enclosure
  • Dual controllers for redundancy, load-balancing and availability
  • IOP performance of over 300,000 4Kbyte random 100% reads under 1ms
  • 6GByte/sec performance of 512Kbyte sequential reads, 5.5Gbyte/sec random reads
  • Multiple RAID levels (0, 1, 10, 3, 5, 6) and flexible group sizes
  • 12GB of DRAM cache memory in each controller (mirrored)
  • 4 x 8GFC host server-side ports per controller
  • Optional expansion host ports (6Gb SAS, 8GFC, 10Gb iSCSI, 40Gb IBA/SRP)
  • Snapshots and replication (synchronous and asynchronous) including to HDD systems
  • Can be used for traditional IOP intensive little-data, or bandwidth for big-data
  • Proactive SSD wear monitoring and notification alerts
  • Utilizes SANtricity version 10.84

Poll, Are large storage arrays day’s numbered?

EMC and NetApp (along with other vendors) continue to sell large numbers of HDD’s as well as large amounts of SSD. Both EMC and NetApp are taking similar approaches of leveraging PCIe flash cards as cache adding software functionality to compliment underlying storage systems. The benefit is that the cache approach is less disruptive for many environments while allowing improved return on investment (ROI) of existing assets.

EMC

NetApp

Storage systems with HDD and SSD

VMAX, VNX

FAS/V, E-Series

Storage systems with SSD cache

FastCache,

FlashCache

All SSD based storage

VMAX, VNX

EF540

All new SSD system in development

Project X

FlashRay

Server side PCIe SSD cache

VFCache

FlashAcell

Partner ecosystems

Yes

Yes

The best IO is the one that you do not have to do, however the next best are those that have the least cost or affect which is where SSD comes into play. SSD is like real estate in that location matters in terms of providing benefit, as well as how much space or capacity is needed.

What does this all mean?
The NetApp EF540 based on the E-Series storage system architecture is like one of its primary competitors (e.g. EMC VNX also available as an all-flash model). The similarity is that both have been competitors, as well as have been around for over a decade with hundreds of thousands of installed systems. The similarities are also that both continue to evolve their code base leveraging new hardware and software functionality. These improvements have resulted in improved performance, availability, capacity, energy effectiveness and cost reduction.

Whats your take on RAID still being relevant?

From a performance perspective, there are plenty of public workloads and benchmarks including Microsoft ESRP and SPC among others to confirm its performance. Watch for NetApp to release EF540 SPC results given their history of doing so with other E-Series based systems. With those or other results, compare and contrast to other solutions looking not just at IOPS or MB/sec (bandwidth), also latency, functionality and cost.

What does the EF540 compete with?
The EF540 competes with all flash-based SSD solutions (Violin, Solidfire, Purestorage, Whiptail, Kaminario, IBM/TMS, up-coming EMC Project “X” (aka XtremeIO)) among others. Some of those systems use general-purpose servers combined SSD drives, PCIe cards along with management software where others leverage customized platforms with software. To a lesser extent, competition will also be mixed mode SSD and HDD solutions along with some PCIe target SSD cards for some situations.

What to watch and look for:
It will be interesting to view and contrast public price performance results using SPC or Microsoft ESRP among others to see how the EF540 compares. In addition, it will be interesting to compare other storage based, as well as SSD systems beyond the number of IOPS. What will be interesting is to keep an eye on latency, as well as bandwidth, feature functionality and associated costs.

Given that the NetApp E-Series are OEM or sold by third parties, let’s see if something looking similar or identical to the EF540 appear at any of those or new partners. This includes traditional general purpose and little-data environments, along with cloud, managed service provider, high performance compute and high productivity compute (HPC), super computer (SC), big data and big bandwidth among others.

Poll, Have SSD been successful in traditional storage systems and arrays

The EF540 could also appear as a storage or IO accelerator for large-scale out, clustered, grid and object storage systems for meta data, indices, key value stores among other uses either direct attached to servers, or via shared iSCSI, SAS, FC and InfiniBand (IBA) SCSI Remote Protocol (SRP).

Keep an eye on how the startups that have been primarily Just a Bunch Of SSD (JBOS) in a box start talking about adding new features and functionality such as snapshots, replication or price reductions. Also, keep an eye and ear open to what EMC does with project “X” along with NetApp FlashRay among other improvements.

For NetApp customers, prospects, partners, E-Series OEMs and their customers with the need for IO consolidation, or performance optimization for big-data, little-data and related applications the EF540 opens up new opportunities and should be good news. For EMC competitors, they now have new competition which also signals an expanding market with new opportunities in adjacent areas for growth. This also further signals the need for diverse ssd portfolios and product options to meet different customer application needs, along with increased functionality vs. lowest cost for high capacity fast nand SSD storage.

Some related reading:

Disclosure: NetApp, Engenio (when LSI), EMC and TMS (now IBM) have been clients of StorageIO.

Ok, nuff said

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

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All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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VMware buys virsto, is it about storage hypervisors?

StorageIO Industry trends and perspectives image

Yesterday VMware announced that it is acquiring the IO performance optimization and acceleration software vendor Virsto for an undisclosed amount.

Some may know Virsto due to their latching and jumping onto the Storage Hypervisor bandwagon as part of storage virtualization and virtual storage. On the other hand, some may know Virsto for their software that plugs into server virtualization Hypervisor  such as VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V. Then there are all of those who either did not or still don’t know of Virsto or their solutions yet they need to learn about it.

Unlike virtual storage arrays (VSAa), or virtual storage appliances, or storage virtualization software that aggregates storage, the Virsto software address the IO performance aggravation caused by aggregation.

Keep in mind that the best IO is the IO that you do not have to do. The second best IO is the one that has the least impact and that is cost effective. A common approach, or preached best practice by some vendors server virtualization and virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI) that result in IO bottlenecks is to throw more SSD or HDD hardware at the problem.

server virtualization aggregation causing aggravation

Turns out that the problem with virtual machines (VMs) is not just aggregation (consolidation) causing aggravation, it’s also the mess of mixed applications and IO profiles. That is where IO optimization and acceleration tools come into play that are plugged into applications, file systems, operating systems, hypervisor’s or storage appliances.

In the case of Virsto (read more about their solution here), their technology plugs into the hypervisor  (e.g. VMware vSphere/ESX or Hyper-V) to group and optimize IO operations.

By using SSD as a persistent cache, tools such as Virsto can help make better use of underlying storage systems including HDD and SSD, while also removing the aggravation as a result of aggregation.

What will be interesting to watch is to see if VMware continues to support other hypervisor’s such as Microsoft Hyper-V or close the technology to VMware only.

It will also be interesting to see how VMware and their parent EMC can leverage Virsto technology to complement virtual SANs as well as VSAs and underlying hardware from VFcache to storage arrays with SSD and SSD appliances as opposed to compete with them.

With the Virsto technology now part of VMware, hopefully there will be less time on talking about storage hypervisor’s and more around server IO optimization and enablement to create broader awareness for the technology.

Congratulations to VMware (and EMC) along with Virsto.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

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Cloud, virtualization, Storage I/O trends for 2013 and beyond

StorageIO Industry trends and perspectives image

It is still early in 2013, so I can make some cloud, virtualization, storage and IO related predictions, or more aptly, talk about some trends, in addition to those that I made in late 2012, looking forward and back. Common over-riding themes will continue to include convergence (people and technology), valueware, clouds (public, private, hybrid and community) among others.

cloud virtualization storage I/O data center image

Certainly, solid state drives (SSDs) will remain popular, both in terms of industry adoption, and industry deployment. Big-data (and little data) management tools and purpose-build storage systems or solutions continue to be popular, as are those for supporting little data applications. On the cloud storage front, there are many options for various use cases available. Watch for more emphasis on service-level agreements (SLA), service-level objectives (SLO), security, pricing transparency, and tiers of service.

storage I/O rto rpo dcim image

Cloud and object storage will continue to gain in awareness, functionality, and options from various providers in terms of products, solutions, and services. There will be a mix of large-scale solutions and smaller ones, with a mix of open-source and proprietary pieces. Some of these will be for archiving, some for backup or data protection. Others will be for big-data, high-performance computing, or cloud on a local or wide area basis, while others for general file sharing.

Ceph object storage architecture example

Along with cloud and object storage, watch for more options about how those products or services can be accessed using traditional NAS (NFS, CIFS, HDFS and others) along with block, such as iSCSI object API’s, including Amazon S3, REST, HTTP, JSON, XML, iOS and CDMI along with programmatic bindings.

Data protection modernization, including backup/restore, high-availability, business continuity, disaster recovery, archiving, and related technologies for cloud, virtual, and traditional environments will remain popular themes.

cloud and virtual data center image

Expect more Fibre Channel over Ethernet for networking with your servers and storage, PCIe Gen 3 to move data in and out of servers, and Serial-attached SCSI (SAS) as a means of attaching storage to servers or as the back-end storage for larger storage systems and appliances. For those who like to look out over the horizon, keep an eye and ear open for more discussion around PCI gen 3 deployment and gen 4 definitions, not to mention DDR4 and nand flash moving close to the processors.

With VMware buying Virsto, that should keep software defined marketing (SDM) and Storage hypervisors, storage virtualization, virtual storage, virtual storage arrays (VSA’s) active topic themes. Lets also keep in mind for storage space capacity optimization Data footprint reduction (DFR) including archiving, backup and data protection modernization, compression, consolidation, dedupe and data management.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

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All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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January 2013 Server and StorageIO Update Newsletter

StorageIO News Letter Image
January 2013 News letter

Welcome to the January 2013 edition of the StorageIO Update news letter including a new format and added content.

You can get access to this news letter via various social media venues (some are shown below) in addition to StorageIO web sites and subscriptions.

Click on the following links to view the January 2013 edition as (HTML sent via Email) version, or PDF versions.

Visit the news letter page to view previous editions of the StorageIO Update.

You can subscribe to the news letter by clicking here.

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO Update news letter, let me know your comments and feedback.

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)
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Thanks for viewing StorageIO content and top 2012 viewed posts

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

2012 was a busy year (it was our 7th year in business) along with plenty of activity on StorageIOblog.com as well as on the various syndicate and other sites that pickup our content feed (https://storageioblog.com/RSSfull.xml).

Excluding traditional media venues, columns, articles, web casts and web site visits (StorageIO.com and StorageIO.TV), StorageIO generated content including posts and pod casts have reached over 50,000 views per month (and growing) across StorageIOblog.com and our partner or syndicated sites. Including both public and private, there were about four dozen in-person events and activities not counting attending conferences or vendor briefing sessions, along with plenty of industry commentary. On the twitter front, plenty of activity there as well closing in on 7,000 followers.

Thank you to everyone who have visited the sites where you will find StorageIO generated content, along with industry trends and perspective comments, articles, tips, webinars, live in person events and other activities.

In terms of what was popular on the StorageIOblog.com site, here are the top 20 viewed posts in alphabetical order.

Amazon cloud storage options enhanced with Glacier
Announcing SAS SANs for Dummies book, LSI edition
Are large storage arrays dead at the hands of SSD?
AWS (Amazon) storage gateway, first, second and third impressions
EMC VFCache respinning SSD and intelligent caching
Hard product vs. soft product
How much SSD do you need vs. want?
Oracle, Xsigo, VMware, Nicira, SDN and IOV: IO IO its off to work they go
Is SSD dead? No, however some vendors might be
IT and storage economics 101, supply and demand
More storage and IO metrics that matter
NAD recommends Oracle discontinue certain Exadata performance claims
New Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid drive (SSD and HDD)
PureSystems, something old, something new, something from big blue
Researchers and marketers dont agree on future of nand flash SSD
Should Everything Be Virtualized?
SSD, flash and DRAM, DejaVu or something new?
What is the best kind of IO? The one you do not have to do
Why FC and FCoE vendors get beat up over bandwidth?
Why SSD based arrays and storage appliances can be a good idea

Moving beyond the top twenty read posts on StorageIOblog.com site, the list quickly expands to include more popular posts around clouds, virtualization and data protection modernization (backup/restore, HA, BC, DR, archiving), general IT/ICT industry trends and related themes.

I would like to thank the current StorageIOblog.com site sponsors Solarwinds (management tools including response time monitoring for physical and virtual servers) and Veeam (VMware and Hyper-V virtual server backup and data protection management tools) for their support.

Thanks again to everyone for reading and following these and other posts as well as for your continued support, watch for more content on the above and other related and new topics or themes throughout 2013.

Btw, if you are into Facebook, you can give StorageIO a like at facebook.com/storageio (thanks in advance) along with viewing our newsletter here.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

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All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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Summary, EMC VMAX 10K, high-end storage systems stayin alive

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

This is a follow-up companion post to the larger industry trends and perspectives series from earlier today (Part I, Part II and Part III) pertaining to today’s VMAX 10K enhancement and other announcements by EMC, and the industry myth of if large storage arrays or systems are dead.

The enhanced VMAX 10K scales from a couple of dozen up to 1,560 HDDs (or mix of HDD and SSDs). There can be a mix of 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch devices in different drive enclosures (DAE). There can be 25 SAS based 2.5 inch drives (HDD or SSD) in the 2U enclosure (see figure with cover panels removed), or 15 3.5 inch drives (HDD or SSD) in a 3U enclosure. As mentioned, there can be all 2.5 inch (including for vault drives) for up to 1,200 devices, all 3.5 inch drives for up to 960 devices, or a mix of 2.5 inch (2U DAE) and 3.5 inch (3U DAE) for a total of 1,560 drives.

Image of EMC 2U and 3U DAE for VMAX 10K via EMC
Image courtesy EMC

Note carefully in the figure (courtesy of EMC) that the 2U 2.5 inch DAE and 3U 3.5 inch DAE along with the VMAX 10K are actually mounted in a 3rd cabinet or rack that is part of today’s announcement.

Also note that the DAE’s are still EMC; however as part of today’s announcement, certain third-party cabinets or enclosures such as might be found in a collocation (colo) or other data center environment can be used instead of EMC cabinets.  The VMAX 10K can however like the VMAX 20K and 40K support external storage virtualized similar to what has been available from HDS (VSP/USP) and HP branded Hitachi equivalent storage, or using NetApp V-Series or IBM V7000 in a similar way.

As mentioned in one of the other posts, there are various software functionality bundles available. Note that SRDF is a separate license from the bundles to give customers options including RecoverPoint.

Check out the three post industry trends and perspectives posts here, here and here.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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EMC VMAX 10K, looks like high-end storage systems are still alive (part III)

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

This is the third in a multi-part series of posts (read first post here and second post here) looking at what else EMC announced today in addition to an enhanced VMAX 10K and dispelling the myth that large storage arrays are dead (or at least for now).

In addition to the VMAX 10K specific updates, EMC also announced the release of a new version of their Enginuity storage software (firmware, storage operating system). Enginuity is supported across all VMAX platforms and features the following:

  • Replication enhancements include TimeFinder clone refresh, restore and four site SRDF for the VMAX 10K, along with think or thin support. This capability enables functionality across VMAX 10K, 40K or 20K using synchronous or asynchronous and extends earlier 3 site to 4 site and mix modes. Note that larger VMAX systems had the extended replication feature support with VMAX 10K now on par with those. Note that the VMAX can be enhanced with VPLEX in front of storage systems (local or wide area, in region HA and out of region DR) and RecoverPoint behind the systems supporting bi-synchronous (two-way), synchronous and asynchronous data protection (CDP, replication, snapshots).
  • Unisphere for VMAX 1.5 manages DMX along with VMware VAAI UNMAP and space reclamation, block zero and hardware clone enhancements, IPV6, Microsoft Server 2012 support and VFCache 1.5.
  • Support for mix of 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch DAEs (disk array enclosures) along with new SAS drive support (high-performance and high-capacity, and various flash-based SSD or EFD).
  • The addition of a fourth dynamic tier within FAST for supporting third-party virtualized storage, along with compression of in-active, cold or stale data (manual or automatic) with 2 to 1 data footprint reduction (DFR) ratio. Note that EMC was one of early vendors to put compression into its storage systems on a block LUN basis in the CLARiiON (now VNX) along with NetApp and IBM (via their Storwize acquisition). The new fourth tier also means that third-party storage does not have to be the lowest tier in terms of performance or functionality.
  • Federated Tiered Storage (FTS) is now available on all EMC block storage systems including those with third-party storage attached in virtualization mode (e.g. VMAX). In addition to supporting tiering across its own products, and those of other vendors that have been virtualized when attached to a VMAX, ANSI T10 Data Integrity Field (DIF) is also supported. Read more about T10 DIF here, and here.
  • Front-end performance enhancements with host I/O limits (Quality of Service or QoS) for multi tenant and cloud environments to balance or prioritize IO across ports and users. This feature can balance based on thresholds for IOPS, bandwidth or both from the VMAX. Note that this feature is independent of any operating system based tool, utility, pathing driver or feature such as VMware DRS and Storage I/O control. Storage groups are created and mapped to specific host ports on the VMAX with the QoS performance thresholds applied to meet specific service level requirements or objectives.

For discussion (or entertainment) purpose, how about the question of if Enginuity qualifies or can be considered as a storage hypervisors (or storage virtualization or virtual storage)? After all, the VMAX is now capable of having third-party storage from other vendors attached to it, something that HDS has done for many years now. For those who feel a storage hypervisor, virtual storage or storage virtualization requires software running on Intel or other commodity based processors, guess what the VMAX uses for CPU processors (granted, you can’t simply download Enginuity software and run on a Dell, HP, IBM, Oracle or SuperMicro server).

I am guessing some of EMC competitors and their surrogates or others who like to play the storage hypervisor card game will be quick to tell you it is not based on various reasons or product comparisons, however you be the judge.

 

Back to the question of if, traditional high-end storage arrays are dead or dying (from part one in this series).

IMHO as mentioned not yet.

Granted like other technologies that have been declared dead or dying yet still in use (technology zombies), they continue to be enhanced, finding new customers, or existing customers using them in new ways, their roles are evolving, this still alive.

For some environments as has been the case over the past decade or so, there will be a continued migration from large legacy enterprise class storage systems to midrange or modular storage arrays with a mix of SSD and HDD. Thus, watch out for having a death grip not letting go of the past, while being careful about flying blind into the future. Do not be scared, be ready, do your homework with clouds, virtualization and traditional physical resources.

Likewise, there will be the continued migration for some from traditional mid-range class storage arrays to all flash-based appliances. Yet others will continue to leverage all the above in different roles aligned to where their specific features best serve the applications and needs of an organization.

In the case of high-end storage systems such as EMC VMAX (aka formerly known as DMX and Symmetrix before that) based on its Enginuity software, the hardware platforms will continue to evolve as will the software functionality. This means that these systems will evolve to handling more workloads, as well as moving into new environments from service providers to mid-range organizations where the systems were before out of their reach.

Smaller environments have grown larger as have their needs for storage systems while higher end solutions have scaled down to meet needs in different markets. What this means is a convergence of where smaller environments have bigger data storage needs and can afford the capabilities of scaled down or Right-sized storage systems such as the VMAX 10K.

Thus while some of the high-end systems may fade away faster than others, for those that continue to evolve being able to move into different adjacent markets or usage scenarios, they will be around for some time, at least in some environments.

Avoid confusing what is new and cool falling under industry adoption vs. what is productive and practical for customer deployment. Systems like the VMAX 10K are not for all environments or applications; however, for those who are open to exploring alternative solutions and approaches, it could open new opportunities.

If there is a high-end storage system platform (e.g. Enginuity) that continues to evolve, re-invent itself in terms of moving into or finding new uses and markets the EMC VMAX would be at or near the top of such list. For the other vendors of high-end storage system that are also evolving, you can have an Atta boy or Atta girl as well to make you feel better, loved and not left out or off of such list. ;)

Ok, nuff said for now.

Disclosure: EMC is not a StorageIO client; however, they have been in the past directly and via acquisitions that they have done. I am however a customer of EMC via my Iomega IX4 NAS (I never did get the IX2 that I supposedly won at EMCworld ;) ) that I bought on Amazon.com and indirectly via VMware products that I have, oh, and they did sent me a copy of the new book Human Face of Big Data (read more here).

Ok, nuff said (for now).

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

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EMC VMAX 10K, looks like high-end storage systems are still alive (part II)

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

This is the second in a multi-part series of posts (read first post here) looking at if large enterprise and legacy storage systems are dead, along with what todays EMC VMAX 10K updates mean.

Thus on January 14 2013 it is time for a new EMC Virtual Matrix (VMAX) model 10,000 (10K) storage system. EMC has been promoting their January 14 live virtual event for a while now. January significance is that is when (along with May or June) is when many new systems, solutions or upgrades are made on a staggered basis.

Historically speaking, January and February, along with May and June is when you have seen many of the larger announcements from EMC being made. Case in point, back in February of 2012 VFCache was released, then May (2012) in Las Vegas at EMCworld there were 42 announcements made and others later in the year.

Click here to see images of the car stuffing or click here to watch a video.

Let’s not forget back in February of 2012 VFCache was released, and go back to January 2011 there was the record-setting event in New York City complete with 26 people being compressed, deduped, singled instanced, optimized, stacked and tiered into a mini cooper (Coop) automobile (read and view more here).

Now back to the VMAX 10K enhancements

As an example of a company, product family and specific storage system model, still being alive is the VMAX 10K. Although this announcement by EMC is VMAX 10K centric, there is also a new version of the Enginuity software (firmware, storage operating system, valueware) that runs across all VMAX based systems including VMAX 20K and VMAX 40K. Read here, here and here and here to learn more about VMAX and Enginuity systems in general.

Some main themes of this announcement include Tier 1 reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) storage systems functionality at tier 2 pricing for traditional, virtual and cloud data centers.

Some other themes of this announcement by EMC:

  • Flexible, scalable and resilient with performance to meet dynamic needs
  • Support private, public and hybrid cloud along with federated storage models
  • Simplified decision-making, acquisition, installation and ongoing management
  • Enable traditional, virtual and cloud workloads
  • Complement its siblings VMAX 40K, 20K and SP (Service Provider) models

Note that the VMAX SP is a model configured and optimized for easy self-service and private cloud, storage as a service (SaaS), IT as a Service (ITaaS) and public cloud service providers needing multi-tenant capabilities with service catalogs and associated tools.

So what is new with the VMAX 10K?

It is twice as fast (per EMC performance results) as earlier VMAX 10K by leveraging faster 2.8GHz Intel westmere vs. earlier 2.5GHz westmere processors. In addition to faster cores, there are more, from 4 to 6 on directors, from 8 to 12 on VMAX 10K engines. The PCIe (Gen 2) IO busses remain unchanged as does the RapidIO interconnect.  RapidIO  used for connecting nodes and engines,  while PCIe is used for adapter and device connectivity. Memory stays the same at up to 128GB of global DRAM cache, along with dual virtual matrix interfaces (how the nodes are connected). Note that there is no increase in the amount of DRAM based cache memory in this new VMAX 10K model.

This should prompt the question of for traditional cache centric or dependent for performance storage systems such as VMAX, how much are they now CPU and their associated L1 / L2 cache dependent or effective? Also how much has the Enginuity code under the covers been enhanced to leverage the multiple cores and threads thus shifting from being cache memory dependent processor hungry.

Also new with the updated VMAX 10K include:

  • Support for dense 2.5 inch drives, along with mixed 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch form factor devices with a maximum of 1,560 HDDs. This means support for 2.5 inch 1TB 7,200 RPM SAS HDDs, along with fast SAS HDDs, SLC/MLC and eMLC solid state devices (SSD) also known as electronic flash devices (EFD). Note that with higher density storage configurations, good disk enclosures become more important to counter or prevent the effects of drive vibration, something that leading vendors are paying attention to and so should customers.
  • EMC is also with the VMAX 10K adding support for certain 3rd party racks or cabinets to be used for mounting the product. This means being able to mount the VMAX main system and DAE components into selected cabinets or racks to meet specific customer, colo or other environment needs for increased flexibility.
  • For security, VMAX 10K also supports Data at Rest Encryption or (D@RE) which is implemented within the VMAX platform. All data encrypted on every drive, every drive type (drive independent) within the VMAX platform to avoid performance impacts. AES 256 fixed block encryption with FIPS 140-2 validation (#1610) using embedded or external key management including RSA Key Manager. Note that since the storage system based encryption is done within the VMAX platform or controller, not only is the encrypt / decrypt off-loaded from servers, it also means that any device from SSD to HDD to third-party storage arrays can be encrypted. This is in contrast to drive based approaches such as self encrypting devices (SED) or other full drive encryption approaches. With embedded key management, encryption keys kept and managed within the VMAX system while external mode leverages RSA key management as part of a broader security solution approach.
  • In terms of addressing ease of decision-making and acquisition, EMC has bundled core Enginuity software suite (virtual provisioning, FTS and FLM, DCP (dynamic cache partitioning), host I/O limits, Optimizer/virtual LUN and integrated RecoverPoint splitter). In addition are bundles for optimization (FAST VP, EMC Unisphere for VMAX with heat map and dashboards), availability (TimeFinder for VMAX 10K) and migration (Symmetrix migration suite, Open Replicator, Open Migrator, SRDF/DM, Federated Live Migration). Additional optional software include RecoverPoint CDP, CRR and CLR, Replication Manager, PowerPath, SRDF/S, SRDF/A and SRDF/DM, Storage Configuration Advisor, Open Replicator with Dynamic Mobility and ControlCenter/ProSphere package.

Who needs a VMAX 10K or where can it be used?

As the entry-level model of the VMAX family, certain organizations who are growing and looking for an alternative to traditional mid-range storage systems should be a primary opportunity. Assuming the VMAX 10K can sell at tier-2 prices with a focus of tier-1 reliability, feature functionality, and simplification while allowing their channel partners to make some money, then EMC can have success with this product. The challenge however will be helping their direct and channel partner sales organizations to avoid competing with their own products (e.g. high-end VNX) vs. those of others.

Consolidation of servers with virtualization, along with storage system consolidation to remove complexity in management and costs should be another opportunity with the ability to virtualize third-party storage. I would expect EMC and their channel partners to place the VMAX 10K with its storage virtualization of third-party storage as an alternative to HDS VSP (aka USP/USPV) and the HP XP P9000 (Hitachi based) products, or for block storage needs the NetApp V-Series among others. There could be some scenarios where the VMAX 10K could be positioned as an alternative to the IBM V7000 (SVC based) for virtualizing third-party storage, or for larger environments, some of the software based appliances where there is a scaling with stability (performance, availability, capacity, ease of management, feature functionality) concerns.

Another area where the VMAX 10K could see action which will fly in the face of some industry thinking is for deployment in new and growing managed service providers (MSP), public cloud, and community clouds (private consortiums) looking for an alternative to open source based, or traditional mid-range solutions. Otoh, I cant wait to hear somebody think outside of both the old and new boxes about how a VMAX 10K could be used beyond traditional applications or functionality. For example filling it up with a few SSDs, and then balance with 1TB 2.5 inch SAS HDD and 3.5 inch 3TB (or larger when available) HDDs as an active archive target leveraging the built-in data compression.

How about if EMC were to support cloud optimized HDDs such as the Seagate Constellation Cloud Storage (CS) HDDs that were announced late in 2012 as well as the newer enterprise class HDDs for opening up new markets? Also keep in mind that some of the new 2.5 inch SAS 10,000 (10K) HDDs have the same performance capabilities as traditional 3.5 inch 15,000 (15K) RPM drives in a smaller footprint to help drive and support increased density of performance and capacity with improved energy effectiveness.

How about attaching a VMAX 10K with the right type of cost-effective (aligned to a given scenario) SSD or HDDs or third-party storage to a cluster or grid of servers that are running OpenStack including Swift, CloudStack, Basho Riak CS, Celversafe, Scality, Caringo, Ceph or even EMCs own ATMOS (that supports external storage) for cloud storage or object based storage solutions? Granted that would be thinking outside of the current or new box thinking to move away from RAID based systems in favor or low-cost JBOD storage in servers, however what the heck, let’s think in pragmatic ways.

Will EMC be able to open new markets and opportunities by making the VMAX and its Enginuity software platform and functionality more accessible and affordable leveraging the VMAX 10K as well as the VMAX SP? Time will tell, after all, I recall back in the mid to late 90s, and then again several times during the 2000s similar questions or conversations not to mention the demise of the large traditional storage systems.

Continue reading about what else EMC announced on January 14 2013 in addition to VMAX 10K updates here in the next post in this series. Also check out Chucks EMC blog to see what he has to say.

Ok, nuff said (for now).

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

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EMC VMAX 10K, looks like high-end storage systems are still alive

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

This is the first in a multi-part series of posts looking at if large enterprise and legacy storage systems are dead, along with what todays EMC VMAX 10K updates means.

EMC has announced an upgrade, refresh or new version of their previously announced Virtual matrix (VMAX) 10,000 (10K), part of the VMAX family of enterprise class storage systems formerly known as DMX (Direct Matrix) and Symmetrix. I will get back to more coverage on the VMAX 10K and other EMC enhancements in a few moments in part two and three of this series.

Have you heard the industry myth about the demise or outright death of traditional storage systems? This has been particularly the case for high-end enterprise class systems, which by the way which were first, declared dead back in the mid-1990s then at the hands of emerging mid-range storage systems.

Enterprise class storage systems include EMC VMAX, Fujitsu Eternus DX8700, HDS, HP XP P9000 based on the HDS high-end product (OEM from HDS parent Hitachi Ltd.). Note that some HPers or their fans might argue that the P10000 (formerly known as 3PAR) declared as tier 1.5 should also be on the list; I will leave that up to you to decide.

Let us not forget the IBM DS8000 series (whose predecessors was known as the ESS and VSS before that); although some IBMers will tell you that XIV should also be in this list. High-end enterprise class storage systems such as those mentioned above are not alone in being declared dead at the hands of new all solid-state devices (SSD) and their startup vendors, or mixed and hybrid-based solutions.

Some are even declaring dead due to new SSD appliances or systems, and by storage hypervisor or virtual storage array (VSA) the traditional mid-range storage systems that were supposed to have killed off the enterprise systems a decade ago (hmm, DejaVu?).

The mid-range storage systems include among others block (SAN and DAS) and file (NAS) systems from Data Direct Networks (DDN), Dell Complement, EqualLogic and MD series (Netapp Engenio based), EMC VNX and Isilon, Fujitsu Eternus, and HDS HUS mid-range formerly known as AMS. Let us not forget about HP 3PAR or P2000 (DotHill based) or P6000 (EVA which is probably being put out to rest). Then there are the various IBM products (their own and what they OEM from others), NEC, NetApp (FAS and Engenio), Oracle and Starboard (formerly known as Reldata). Note that there are many startups that could be in the above list as well if they were not considering the above to be considered dead, thus causing themselves to also be extinct as well, how ironic ;).

What are some industry trends that I am seeing?

  • Some vendors and products might be nearing the ends of their useful lives
  • Some vendors, their products and portfolios continue to evolve and expand
  • Some vendors and their products are moving into new or adjacent markets
  • Some vendors are refining where and what to sell when and to who
  • Some vendors are moving up market, some down market
  • Some vendors are moving into new markets, others are moving out of markets
  • Some vendors are declaring others dead to create a new market for their products
  • One size or approach or technology does not fit all needs, avoid treating all the same
  • Leverage multiple tools and technology in creative ways
  • Maximize return on innovation (the new ROI) by using various tools, technologies in ways to boost productivity, effectiveness while removing complexity and cost
  • Realization that cutting cost can result in reduced resiliency, thus look for and remove complexity with benefit of removing costs without compromise
  • Storage arrays are moving into new roles, including as back-end storage for cloud, object and other software stacks running on commodity servers to replace JBOD (DejaVu anyone?).

Keep in mind that there is a difference between industry adoption (what is talked about) and customer deployment (what are actually bought and used). Likewise there is technology based on GQ (looks and image) and G2 (functionality, experience).

There is also an industry myth that SSD cannot or has not been successful in traditional storage systems which in some cases has been true with some products or vendors. Otoh, some vendors such as EMC, NetApp and Oracle (among others) are having good success with SSD in their storage systems. Some SSD startup vendors have been more successful on both the G2 and GQ front, while some focus on the GQ or image may not be as successful (or at least yet) in the industry adoption vs. customer deployment game.

For the above mentioned storage systems vendors and products (among others), or at least for most of them there is still have plenty of life in them, granted their role and usage is changing including in some cases being found as back-end storage systems behind servers running virtualization, cloud, object storage and other storage software stacks. Likewise, some of the new and emerging storage systems (hardware, software, valueware, services) and vendors have bright futures while others may end up on the where are they now list.

Are high-end enterprise class or other storage arrays and systems dead at the hands of new startups, virtual storage appliances (VSA), storage hypervisors, storage virtualization, virtual storage and SSD?

Are large storage arrays dead at the hands of SSD?

Have SSDs been unsuccessful with storage arrays (with poll)?

 

Here are links to two polls where you can cast your vote.

Cast your vote and see results of if large storage arrays and systems are dead here.

Cast your vote and see results of if SSD has not been successful in storage systems.

So what about it, are enterprise or large storage arrays and systems dead?

Perhaps in some tabloids or industry myths (or that some wish for) or in some customer environments, as well as for some vendors or their products that can be the case.

However, IMHO for many other environments (and vendors) the answer is no, granted some will continue to evolve from legacy high-end enterprise class storage systems to mid-range or to appliance or VSA or something else.

There is still life many of the storage systems architectures, platforms and products that have been declared dead for over a decade.

Continue reading about the specifics of the EMC VMAX 10K announcement in the next post in this series here. Also check out Chucks EMC blog to see what he has to say.

Ok, nuff said (for now).

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

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Congratulations Imation and Nexsan, are there any independent storage vendors left?

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Last week Imation, the company that is known for making CDs, DVDs, magnetic tape and in the past floppy disk (diskettes) bought Nexsan, a company known for the SATA and SAS storage products.

Imation is also (or should be) owns the TDK and Memorex names (remember is it real or is it Memorex? If not Google it). They also have had for several years removable hard disk drive (RHDD) products including the Odyssey (I am in the process of retiring mine), as well as partnership with the former ProStor for RDX and having acquired some of the assets of ProStor namely their RDX based InifiVault storage appliance. Imation has also been involved in some other things including USB and other forms of flash-based solid state devices (SSD), as well as a couple of years (2007) they launched cloud backup with DataGuard before cloud backup had become a popular buzzword topic.

Imation has also divested parts of its business over past several years including some medical related (X-ray stuff) to Kodak who occupies part of the headquarter building in Oakdale MN, or at least last time I looked when driving by there on way from the airport. They also divested their SAN lab with some of the staff going to Glasshouse and other pieces going to Lion bridge (an independent test lab company). Beyond traditional of data protection, backup/restore and archiving media or mediums from consumer to large-scale enterprise, Imation has also been involved in other areas involving recording. Imation also has done some other recent acquisitions around dedupe (Nine Technologies).

For its part, Nexsan has extended their portfolio from SATA and SAS products, AutoMaid Intelligent Power Management (IPM) which gives benefits of variable power and performance without the penalties of first generation MAID type products. Read more about IPM and related themes here, here and here. Nexsan also supports NAS and iSCSI solutions in addition to their archive and content or object storage focused Assureon product they bought a few years ago.

This is a good acquisition for both companies as it gives Imation a new set of products to sell into their existing accounts and channels. It also can leverage Nexsan’s channel and solution selling skills giving them (Nexsan) a bigger brand and large parent for credibility (not that they did not have that in the past).

Here are is a link to a piece done by Dave Raffo that includes some comments and perspectives from me. To say that the synergy here is about archiving or selling SSD or storage would be too easy and miss a bigger potential. That potential is Imation has been in the business of selling consumable accessories for protecting and preserving data. Notice I said consumable accessories which in the past has meant manufacturing consumable media (e.g. Floppy disks or discs, CD, DVDs, magnetic tapes) as well as partnering around flash and HDDs.

In many environments from small to large to super-sized cloud and service providers, some types of storage systems including some of those that Nexsan sells can be considered a consumable media or medium taking over the role that tape, CDs or DVDs have been used in the pat. Instead of using tape or CDs or DVDs to protect the HDDs and SSDs based data, HDD based solutions are being used for disk-to-disk (D2D) protection (part of modernizing data protection). D2D is being done as appliances, or in conjunction with cloud and object storage system software stacks such as OpenStack swift, Basho Riak CS, CloudStack, Cleversafe, Ceph, Caringo and a list of others, in addition to appliances such as EMC ATMOS among others than can support 3rd party storage device as consumable mediums. Keep in mind that there is no such thing as a data or information recession, and people and data are living longer and getting larger, both for big data and little data.

The big if in this acquisition which IMHO is a fair price for both parties based on realistic valuations is if they can collective execute on it. This means that Imation and Nexsan need to leverage each other’s strengths, address any weakness, close gaps and expand into each other’s markets, channels and sell the entire portfolio as opposed to becoming singular focused on a particular area tool or technology. If Imation can execute on this and Nexsan leverages their new parent, the result should be moving from the roughly $85M USD sales to $100M+ then $125M then $150M and so forth over the next couple of years.

Even if Imation keeps maintains revenues or a slight increase, which would also be a good deal for them, granted the industry pundits may not agree, so let us see where this is in a few years. However if Imation can grow the Nexsan business, then it would become a very good deal. Thus, IMHO the price valuation for the deal has the risk built into, something like when NetApp bought the Engenio business unit from LSI back in 2011 for about $480M USD. At that time, Engenio was doing about $705M USD in revenue and seen by many industry pundits as being on the decline, thus a lower valuation. For its part, NetApp, has been executing maintaining the revenue of that business unit with some expansion, thus their execution so far is being rewarding for taking the risk.

Let us see if Imation can do the same thing.

Now, does that mean that Nexsan was the last of the independent storage vendors left?

Hardly, after all there is still Xiotech, excuse me, Xio as they changed their name as part of a repackaging, relaunch and downsizing. There is DotHill who supplies partners such HP, or Dothills former partner supplier InfoTrend. If you are an Apple fan then you might know about Promise, if not, you should. Lets not forget about Data Direct Networks (DDN) that is still independent and at around $200M (give or take several million) in revenue, are very much still around.

How about Xyratex, sure they make the enclosures and appliances that many others use in their solutions, however they also have a storage solutions business focused on scale out, clustered and grid NAS based on Lustre. There are some others that I am drawing a blank on now (if you read this and are one of them, chime in) in addition to all the new or current generation of startups (you can chime in as well to let people know who you are to be bought).

There is still consolidation taking place, both of smaller vendors by mid-sized vendors, mid-sized vendors by big vendors, big vendors by mega vendors, and startups by established.

Again congratulations to both Imation and Nexsan, let us see who or what is next on the 2013 mergers and acquisition list, as well as who will join the where are they now club.

Disclosure: Nexsan has been a StorageIO client in the past; however, Imation has not been a client, although they have bought me lunch before here in the Stillwater, MN area.

With Imation having their own brand name and identity, not to mention TDK and Memorex, now I have to wonder will Nexsan be real or Memorex or something else? ;)

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

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The Human Face of Big Data, a Book Review

The Human Face of Big Data, a Book Review

My copy of the new book The Human Face of Big Data created by Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt arrived yesterday compliments of EMC (the lead sponsor). In addition to EMC, the other sponsors of the book are Cisco, VMware, FedEx, Originate and Tableau software.

To say this is a big book would be an understatement, then again, big data is a big topic with a lot of diversity if you open your eyes and think in a pragmatic way, which once you open and see the pages you will see. This is physically a big book (11x 14 inches) with lots of pictures, texts, stories, factoids and thought stimulating information of the many facets and dimensions of big data across 224 pages.

While Big Data as a buzzword and industry topic theme might be new, along with some of the related technologies, techniques and focus areas, other as aspects have been around for some time. Big data means many things to various people depending on their focus or areas of interest ranging from analytics to images, videos and other big files. A common theme is the fact that there is no such thing as an information or data recession, and that people and data are living longer, getting larger, and we are all addicted to information for various reasons.

Big data needs to be protected and preserved as it has value, or its value can increase over time as new ways to leverage it are discovered which also leads to changing data access and life cycle patterns. With many faces, facets and areas of interests applying to various spheres of influence, big data is not limited to programmatic, scientific, analytical or research, yet there are many current and use cases in those areas.

Big data is not limited to videos for security surveillance, entertainment, telemetry, audio, social media, energy exploration, geosciences, seismic, forecasting or simulation, yet those have been areas of focus for years. Some big data files or objects are millions of bytes (MBytes), billion of bytes (GBytes) or trillion of bytes (TBytes) in size that when put into file systems or object repositories, add up to Exabytes (EB – 1000 TBytes) or Zettabytes (ZB – 1000 EBs). Now if you think those numbers are far-fetched, simply look back to when you thought a TByte, GByte let alone a MByte was big or far-fetched future. Remember, there is no such thing as a data or information recession, people and data are living longer and getting larger.

Big data is more than hadoop, map reduce, SAS or other programmatic and analytical focused tool, solution or platform, yet those all have been and will be significant focus areas in the future. This also means big data is more than data warehouse, data mart, data mining, social media and event or activity log processing which also are main parts have continued roles going forward. Just as there are large MByte, GByte or TByte sized files or objects, there are also millions and billions of smaller files, objects or pieces of information that are part of the big data universe.

You can take a narrow, product, platform, tool, process, approach, application, sphere of influence or domain of interest view towards big data, or a pragmatic view of the various faces and facets. Of course you can also spin everything that is not little-data to be big data and that is where some of the BS about big data comes from. Big data is not exclusive to the data scientist, researchers, academia, governments or analysts, yet there are areas of focus where those are important. What this means is that there are other areas of big data that do not need a data science, computer science, mathematical, statistician, Doctoral Phd or other advanced degree or training, in other words big data is for everybody.

Cover image of Human Face of Big Data Book

Back to how big this book is in both physical size, as well as rich content. Note the size of The Human Face of Big Data book in the adjacent image that for comparison purposes has a copy of my last book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC), along with a 2.5 inch hard disk drive (HDD) and a growler. The Growler is from Lift Bridge Brewery (Stillwater, MN), after all, reading a big book about big data can create the need for a big beer to address a big thirst for information ;).

The Human Face of Big Data is more than a coffee table or picture book as it is full of with information, factoids and perspectives how information and data surround us every day. Check out the image below and note the 2.5 inch HDD sitting on the top right hand corner of the page above the text. Open up a copy of The Human Face of Big Data and you will see examples of how data and information are all around us, and our dependence upon it.

A look inside the book The Humand Face of Big Data image

Book Details:
Copyright 2012
Against All Odds Productions
ISBN 978-1-4549-0827-2
Hardcover 224 pages, 11 x 0.9 x 14 inches
4.8 pounds, English

There is also an applet to view related videos and images found in the book at HumanFaceofBigData.com/viewer in addition to other material on the companion site www.HumanFacesofBigData.com.

Get your copy of
The Human Face of Big Data at Amazon.com by clicking here or at other venues including by clicking on the following image (Amazon.com).

Some added and related material:
Little data, big data and very big data (VBD) or big BS?
How many degrees separate you and your information?
Hardware, Software, what about Valueware?
Changing Lifecycles and Data Footprint Reduction (Data doesnt have to lose value over time)
Garbage data in, garbage information out, big data or big garbage?
Industry adoption vs. industry deployment, is there a difference?
Is There a Data and I/O Activity Recession?
Industry trend: People plus data are aging and living longer
Supporting IT growth demand during economic uncertain times
No Such Thing as an Information Recession

For those who can see big data in a broad and pragmatic way, perhaps using the visualization aspect this book brings forth the idea that there are and will be many opportunities. Then again for those who have a narrow or specific view of what is or is not big data, there is so much of it around and various types along with focus areas you too will see some benefits.

Do you want to play in or be part of a big data puddle, pond, or lake, or sail and explore the oceans of big data and all the different aspects found in, under and around those bigger broader bodies of water.

Bottom line, this is a great book and read regardless of if you are involved with data and information related topics or themes, the format and design lend itself to any audience. Broaden your horizons, open your eyes, ears and thinking to the many facets and faces of big data that are all around us by getting your copy of The Human Face of Big Data (Click here to go to Amazon for your copy) book.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

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December 2012 StorageIO Update news letter

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December 2012 News letter

Welcome to the December 2012 year end edition of the StorageIO Update news letter including a new format and added content.

You can get access to this news letter via various social media venues (some are shown below) in addition to StorageIO web sites and subscriptions.

Click on the following links to view the December 2012 edition as brief (short HTML sent via Email) version, or the full HTML or PDF versions.

Visit the news letter page to view previous editions of the StorageIO Update.

You can subscribe to the news letter by clicking here.

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO Update news letter, let me know your comments and feedback.

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

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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HPs big December 3rd storage announcement

HP has been talking and promoting for several weeks (ok, months) their upcoming December 3rd storage announcements from the HP discovery event in Frankfurt Germany.

Well its now afternoon which means the early Monday morning December 3rd embargos have been lifted so I can now talk about what HP shared last Friday about todays announcements. Basically what I received was a series of press releases as well link to their updated web site providing information about todays announcements.

HP has enhanced the 3PAR aka P10000 with new models including for entry-level, as well as for higher performance enterprises needs. This also should beg the question for many longtime EVA (excuse me, P6000) customers, have they hit the end of the line? For scale out storage, HP has the StoreAll solutions (think about products formerly marketed as certain X9000 models based on Ibrix) with enhancements for analytics, bulk and various types of big data. In addition HP has enhanced its backup and recovery capabilities and Dedupe products including integration with Autonomy (here and here) along with capacity on demand services.

New 3PAR (P10000 models)

New StoreAll storage system

From the surface and what I have been able to see so far, looks like a good set of incremental enhancements from HP. Not much else to say until I can get some time to dig around deep to see what can be found on more details, however check out Calvin Zito (aka @hpstorageguy) the HP storage blogger who should have more information from HP.

Ok, nuff said (for now).

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved