Category: BC and DR

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Cloud conversations: AWS EBS Optimized Instances

Storage I/O industry trends image

Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently announced global availability of Elastic Block Storage (EBS) optimized support for four extra Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) instance types. The support enables optimized performance between standard and provisioned IOP EBS volumes and EC2 instances to meet different bandwidth or throughput needs (learn more about AWS EBS, EC2, S3 and Glacier here).

AWS image via Amazon.com

The four EBS optimized instance types are m3.xlarge, m3.2xlarge, m2.2xlarge and c1.xlarge for dedicated bandwidth or throughput between the EC2 instances and EBS volumes. The performance or bandwidth ranges from 500 Mbits (500 / 8 = 62.5 MBytes) per second, to 1,000 Mbits (1,000 / 8 = 125MBytes) per second depending on the type of instance. As a refresher, EC2 instances (why by time you read this could change) vary in size and functionality with different amounts of EC2 Unit of Compute (ECU), number of virtual cores, amount of storage space included, 32 or 64 bit, storage and networking IO performance, and EBS Optimized or not. In addition to instances, different operating system images can be installed using those licensed from AWS such as various Windows and Unix or supply your own.

Image of EC2 instance

There are also different generations of instances such as M1 (first generation where one ECU = 1.0 to 1.2 Ghz of a 2007 era Opteron or Xeon processor), M3 (second generation with faster processors) along with Micro low-cost options. There are also other optimized instances including high or large amounts of memory, high CPU or compute processing, clustered compute, high memory clustered, clustered GPU (e.g. using Nivida Tesla GPUs), high IO and high storage space capacity needs.

Here is the announcement from AWS:

Dear Amazon Web Services Customer,

We are delighted to announce the global availability of EBS-optimized support for four additional instance types: m3.xlarge, m3.2xlarge, m2.2xlarge, and c1.xlarge. EBS-optimized instances deliver dedicated throughput between Amazon EC2 and Amazon EBS, with options between 500 Megabits per second and 1,000 Megabits per second depending on the instance type used. The dedicated throughput minimizes contention between EBS I/O and other traffic from your Amazon EC2 instance, providing the best performance for your EBS volumes.

EBS-optimized instances are designed for use with both Standard and Provisioned IOPS EBS volumes. Standard volumes deliver 100 IOPS on average with a best effort ability to burst to hundreds of IOPS, making them well-suited for workloads with moderate and bursty I/O needs. When attached to an EBS-optimized instance, Provisioned IOPS volumes are designed to consistently deliver up to 2000 IOPS from a single volume, making them ideal for I/O intensive workloads such as databases. You can attach multiple Amazon EBS volumes to a single instance and stripe your data across them for increased I/O and throughput performance.

Amazon EBS-optimized support is now available for m3.xlarge, m3.2xlarge, m2.2xlarge, m2.4xlarge, m1.large, m1.xlarge, and c1.xlarge instance types, and is currently supported in the US-East (N. Virginia), US-West (N. California), US-West (Oregon), EU-West (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Japan), Asia Pacific (Sydney), and South America (São Paulo) Regions.

You can learn more by visiting the Amazon EC2 detail page.

Sincerely,

The Amazon EC2 Team

What this means is that AWS is enabling customers to size their compute instances and storage volumes with more flexibility to meet different needs. For example, EC2 instances with various compute processing capabilities, amount of memory, network and storage I/O performance to volumes. In addition, storage volumes based on different space capacity size, standard or provisioned IOP’s, bandwidth or throughput performance between the instance and volume, along with data protection such as snapshots.

This means that the cost per space capacity of an EBS volume varies based on which AWS availability zone it is in, standard (lower IOP performance) or provisioned IOP’s (faster), along with instance type. In other words, cloud storage is not just about the cost per GByte, it’s also about the cost for IOPS, bandwidth to use it, where it is located (e.g. with AWS which Availability Zone), type of service, level of availability and durability among other attributes.

Additional reading and related items:

Continue reading part I (closer look at EBS) here, part II (closer look at S3) here and part III (tying it all together) here.

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

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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Welcome to the Cloud Bulk Object Storage Resources Center

Updated 8/31/19

Cloud Bulk Big Data Software Defined Object Storage Resources

server storage I/O trends Object Storage resources

Welcome to the Cloud, Big Data, Software Defined, Bulk and Object Storage Resources Center Page objectstoragecenter.com.

This object storage resources, along with software defined, cloud, bulk, and scale-out storage page is part of the server StorageIOblog microsite collection of resources. Software-defined, Bulk, Cloud and Object Storage exist to support expanding and diverse application data demands.

Other related resources include:

  • Software Defined, Cloud, Bulk and Object Storage Fundamentals
  • Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials book (CRC Press)
  • Cloud, Software Defined, Scale-Out, Object Storage News Trends

    • Object storage SDDC SDDI
    Via Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press 2017)

    Bulk, Cloud, Object Storage Solutions and Services

    There are various types of cloud, bulk, and object storage including public services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3), Backblaze, Google, Microsoft Azure, IBM Softlayer, Rackspace among many others. There are also solutions for hybrid and private deployment from Cisco, Cloudian, CTERA, Cray, DDN, Dell EMC, Elastifile, Fujitsu, Vantera/HDS, HPE, Hedvig, Huawei, IBM, NetApp, Noobaa, OpenIO, OpenStack, Quantum, Rackspace, Rozo, Scality, Spectra, Storpool, StorageCraft, Suse, Swift, Virtuozzo, WekaIO, WD, among many others.

    Bulk Cloud Object storage SDDC SDDI
    Via Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press 2017)

    Cloud products and services among others, along with associated data infrastructures including object storage, file systems, repositories and access methods are at the center of bulk, big data, big bandwidth and little data initiatives on a public, private, hybrid and community basis. After all, not everything is the same in cloud, virtual and traditional data centers or information factories from active data to in-active deep digital archiving.

    Object Context Matters

    Before discussing Object Storage lets take a step back and look at some context that can clarify some confusion around the term object. The word object has many different meanings and context, both inside of the IT world as well as outside. Context matters with the term object such as a verb being a thing that can be seen or touched as well as a person or thing of action or feeling directed towards.

    Besides a person, place or physical thing, an object can be a software-defined data structure that describes something. For example, a database record describing somebody’s contact or banking information, or a file descriptor with name, index ID, date and time stamps, permissions and access control lists along with other attributes or metadata. Another example is an object or blob stored in a cloud or object storage system repository, as well as an item in a hypervisor, operating system, container image or other application.

    Besides being a verb, an object can also be a noun such as disapproval or disagreement with something or someone. From an IT context perspective, an object can also refer to a programming method (e.g. object-oriented programming [oop], or Java [among other environments] objects and classes) and systems development in addition to describing entities with data structures.

    In other words, a data structure describes an object that can be a simple variable, constant, complex descriptor of something being processed by a program, as well as a function or unit of work. There are also objects unique or with context to specific environments besides Java or databases, operating systems, hypervisors, file systems, cloud and other things.

    The Need For Bulk, Cloud and Object Storage

    There is no such thing as an information recession with more data being generated, moved, processed, stored, preserved and served, granted there are economic realities. Likewise as a society our dependence on information being available for work or entertainment, from medical healthcare to social media and all points in between continues to increase (check out the Human Face of Big Data).

    In addition, people and data are living longer, as well as getting larger (hence little data, big data and very big data). Cloud products and services along with associated object storage, file systems, repositories and access methods are at the center of big data, big bandwidth and little data initiatives on a public, private, hybrid and community basis. After all, not everything is the same in cloud, virtual and traditional data centers or information factories from active data to in-active deep digital archiving.

    Click here to view (and hear) more content including cloud and object storage fundamentals

    Click here to view software defined, bulk, cloud and object storage trend news

    cloud object storage

    Where to learn more

    The following resources provide additional information about big data, bulk, software defined, cloud and object storage.



    Via InfoStor: Object Storage Is In Your Future
    Via FujiFilm IT Summit: Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI) and Hybrid Clouds
    Via MultiChannel: After ditching cloud business, Verizon inks Virtual Network Services deal with Amazon
    Via MultiChannel: Verizon Digital Media Services now offers integrated Microsoft Azure Storage
    Via StorageIOblog: AWS EFS Elastic File System (Cloud NAS) First Preview Look
    Via InfoStor: Cloud Storage Concerns, Considerations and Trends
    Via InfoStor: Object Storage Is In Your Future
    Via Server StorageIO: April 2015 Newsletter Focus on Cloud and Object storage
    Via StorageIOblog: AWS S3 Cross Region Replication storage enhancements
    Cloud conversations: AWS EBS, Glacier and S3 overview
    AWS (Amazon) storage gateway, first, second and third impressions
    Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Book)

    View more news, trends and related cloud object storage activity here.

    Videos and podcasts at storageio.tv also available via Applie iTunes.

    Human Face of Big Data
    Human Face of Big Data (Book review)

    Seven Databases in Seven weeks Seven Databases in Seven Weeks (Book review)

    Additional learning experiences along with common questions (and answers), as well as tips can be found in Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials book.

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

    What This All Means

    Object and cloud storage are in your future, the questions are when, where, with what and how among others.

    Watch for more content and links to be added here soon to this object storage center page including posts, presentations, pod casts, polls, perspectives along with services and product solutions profiles.

    Ok, nuff said, for now.

    Gs

    Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert 2010-2017 (vSAN and vCloud). Author of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press), as well as Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com any reproduction in whole, in part, with changes to content, without source attribution under title or without permission is forbidden.

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved. StorageIO is a registered Trade Mark (TM) of Server StorageIO.

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    Are your analyst, blogger, media or press requests being read?

    Storage I/O cloud virtual and big data perspectives

    Are you a marketing or public relations, press or analyst relations or social media expert and your email messages, notes, updates or requests get overlooked? Are you in the first paragraph or couple of sentences indicating who you are representing, what the info or request is about as well as what call to action you are looking for? If you are doing what is done in many of the requests for coverage or meetings or even announcements, you may be getting overlooked resulting in a missed opportunity, that is unless your goal is to simply gauge how many requests you send out.

    Now do I have your attention?

    Time for some tough love.

    Almost every day (not as much on weekends) my email inbox gets filled up with notes from vendor marketing and public relations (PR) firms organizations telling about an announcement, requesting a briefing, giving heads up for something that will be occurring, pitching a story, idea or looking for coverage.

    Being an analyst, author, advisory consultant, blogger among other roles, getting all of those emails as well as phone calls or other messages comes with the territory. However to get to the point or, the point of this post, most of those notes or messages I receive do not get to the point. More importantly I’m noticing on an increasing basis that many of the request for meetings, coverage, or introductions to announcements are not passing the quick scan test.

    Storage I/O cloud virtual and big data perspectives

    The trend that I have noticed for a couple of years now is that what is being announced or what the topic is or worse, who it is about gets lost in the paragraph or two or three or more of content. Thus for those who get lots of messages a day, get to the point, save the prose and sample article or content for later, unless that is what you are sending.

    In other words, tell the reader who you are representing (e.g. the company), product or focus area, what the news is about, why relevant, and call to action. Skip the long intro citing marketing research or testimonials and what read like mini articles, not to mention mentioning other vendors that might cause a quick scan to confuse the message about them vs. you or your client.

    The other day I received one of many announcements or briefing and meeting requests and this one stood out. In fact it stood out so much not for what was actually being announced or by whom or what it pertained to (all of which are relevant btw). It stood out because it did what most are not doing these days. It got to the point and in about the time required for a sip of coffee, I new what I needed to know as opposed to a trip to the coffee pot to refill to read the piece.

    The note impressed me so much that I asked Melissa Kolodziej who sent it to me if I could repost her note here as an example of how to do it.

    Subject: News: Attunity Enhances Big Data Replication Solution for Data Warehousing & Cloud Initiatives

    Dear Greg,
    Good morning. I wanted to share with you the exciting product news we announced regarding  Attunity Replicate 2.1. This latest release of our high-performance data delivery solution now features several new enhancements for data warehousing and the cloud. One key optimization is the addition of Attunity  TurboStream CDC, an innovative feature designed to significantly enhance delivery performance of changed data. This proprietary technology stages source data, consolidates changes, and delivers data in parallel to the target, optimizing change data capture (CDC) for high-volume and low-bandwidth scenarios. The enhanced Attunity Replicate solution is ideal for strategic initiatives including Big Data analytics and business intelligence typically seen in data warehouse and cloud environments.

    Please review the release below and contact me at your earliest convenience (Tel. 781-730-4073) to set up a time to interview Matt Benati, Attunity’s VP of Global Marketing. He is available for briefings this week and next.  I would also appreciate hearing back from you if you plan to cover this news.

    Thank you for your time and best regards,

    Melissa Kolodziej
    Director of Marketing Communications, Attunity
    Tel. 781-730-4073
    melissa.kolodziej@attunity.com

    I thought about showing an example of what not to do, however for now, lets leave sleeping dogs lay where the rest. Although I will say make sure you put a name in the name field for your email blasts vs. receiving Dear <Name_Goes_Here> or using the wrong name. The wrong name I’m used to however I may respond and have some fun at your expense so that you don’t forget ;).

    Kudos and nice job Melissa for doing what should be common knowledge or basic best practices however what I now see as the exception vs. the norm from many public relations firms or vendors.

    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

    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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    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)

    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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    Cloud conversations: Public, Private, Hybrid and Community Clouds? (Part II)

    StorageIO Industry trends and perspectives image

    This is the second of a two part series, read part I here.

    Common community cloud conversation questions include among others:

    Who defines the standards for community clouds?
    The members or participants, or whoever they hire or get to volunteer to do it.

    Who pays for the community cloud?
    The members or participants do, think about a co-op or other resource sharing consortium with multi-tenant (shared) capabilities to isolate and keep members along with what they are doing separate.

    cloud image

    Who are community clouds for, when to use them?
    If you cannot justify a private cloud for yourself, or, if you need more resiliency than what can be provided by your site and you know of a peer, partner, member or other with common needs, those could be a fit. Another variation is you are in an industry or agency or district where pooling of resources, yet operating separate has advantages or already being done. These range from medical and healthcare to education along with various small medium businesses (SMBs) that do not want to or cannot use a public facility for various reasons.

    What technology is needed for building a community cloud?
    Similar to deploying a public or private cloud, you will need various hard products including servers, storage, networking, management software tools for provisioning, orchestration, show back or charge back, multi-tenancy, security and authentication, data protection (backup, bc, dr, ha) along with various middleware and applications.

    Storage I/O cloud building block image

    What are community clouds used for?
    Almost anything, granted there are limits and boundaries based tools, technologies, security and access controls among other constraints. Applications can range from big-data to little-data on all if not most points in between. On the other hand, if they are not safe or secure enough for your needs, then use a private cloud or whatever it is that you are currently using.

    What about community cloud security, privacy and compliance regulations?
    Those are topics and reasons why like-minded or affected groups might be able to leverage a community cloud. By being like-minded or affected groups, labs, schools, business, entities, agencies, districts, or other organizations that are under common mandates for security, compliance, privacy or other regulations can work together, yet keep their interests separate. What tools or techniques for achieving those goals and objectives would be dependent on those who offer services to those entities now?

    data centers, information factories and clouds

    Where can you get a community cloud?
    Look around using Google or your favorite search tool; also watch the comments section to see how long it takes someone to jump in to say how he or she can help. Also talk with solution providers, business partners and VARs. Note that they may not know the term or phrases per say, so here is what to tell them. Tell them that you would like to deploy a private cloud at some place that will then be used in a multi-tenant way to safely and securely support different members of your consortium.

    For those who have been around long enough, you can also just tell them that you want to do something like the co-op or consortium time-sharing type systems from past generations and they may know what you are looking for. If although they look at you with a blank deer in the head-light stare eyes glazed over, just tell them it’s a new lead-edge, software defined new and revolutionary (add some superlatives if you feel inclined) and then they might get excited.  If they still don’t know what to do or help you with, have them get in touch with me and I will explain it to them, or, I’ll put you in touch with those can help.

    data centers, information factories and clouds

    Where do you put a community cloud?
    You could deploy them in your own facility, other member’s locations or both for resiliency. You could also use a safe secure co-lo facility already being used for other purposes.

    Do community clouds have organizers?
    Perhaps, however they are probably more along the lines of a coordinator, administrator, manager, controller as opposed to a community organizer per say. In other words, do not confuse a community cloud with a cloud community organized, aligned and activated for some particular cause. On the other hand, maybe there is value prop for some cloud activist to be  organized and take up the cause for community clouds in your area of interest ;).

    data centers, information factories and clouds

    Are community clouds more of a concept vs. a product?
    If you have figured out that a community or peer cloud is nothing more than a different way of deploying, using and managing a combination of private, public and hybrid and putting a marketing name on them, congratulations, you are now thinking outside of the box, or outside of the usual cloud conversations.

    What about public cloud services for selected audiences such as Amazons GovCloud? On one hand, I guess you could call or think of that as a semi-private public cloud, or a semi-public private cloud, or if you like superlatives an uber gallistic hybrid community cloud.

    How you go about building, deploying and managing your community, coop, consortium, and agency, district or peer cloud will be how you leverage various hard and software products. The results of which will be your return on innovation (the new ROI) to address various needs and concerns or also known as valueware. Those results should be able to address or help close gaps and leverage clouds in general as a resource vs. simply as a tool, technology or technique.

    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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    Cloud conversations: Public, Private, Hybrid what about Community Clouds?

    StorageIO Industry trends and perspectives image

    Have you heard of a community clouds?

    Cloud computing including cloud storage and services as products, solutions and services offer different functionality and enable benefits for various types of organizations, entities or individuals.

    various types of clouds image

    Public clouds, private clouds and hybrids leveraging public and private continue to evolve in technology, reliability, security and functionality along with the awareness around them.

    IT professionals tell me they are interested in clouds however they have concerns.

    Cloud concerns range from security, compliance, industry or government regulations, privacy and budgets among others with private, public or hybrid clouds. Peer, cooperative (co-op), consortium or community clouds can be a solution for those that traditional public, private, hybrid, AaaS, SaaS, PaaS or IaaS do not meet their needs.

    various types, layers and services of clouds image

    From a technology standpoint, there should have to be much if any difference between a community cloud and a public, private or hybrid. Instead, they community clouds are more about thinking outside of the box, or outside of common cloud thinking per say. This means thinking beyond what others are talking about or doing and looking at how cloud products, services and practices can be used in different ways to meet your concerns or requirements.

    cloud image

    What’s your take on clouds, click here to cast your vote and see results

    Read more about community clouds including common questions in part II 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)

    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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    Tape is still alive, or at least in conversations and discussions

    StorageIO Industry trends and perspectives image

    Depending on whom you talk to or ask, you will get different views and opinions, some of them stronger than others on if magnetic tape is dead or alive as a data storage medium. However an aspect of tape that is alive are the discussions by those for, against or that simply see it as one of many data storage mediums and technologies whose role is changing.

    Here is a link to an a ongoing discussion over in one of the Linked In group forums (Backup & Recovery Professionals) titled About Tape and disk drives. Rest assured, there is plenty of fud and hype on both sides of the tape is dead (or alive) arguments, not very different from the disk is dead vs. SSD or cloud arguments. After all, not everything is the same in data centers, clouds and information factories.

    Fwiw, I removed tape from my environment about 8 years ago, or I should say directly as some of my cloud providers may in fact be using tape in various ways that I do not see, nor do I care one way or the other as long as my data is safe, secure, protected and SLA’s are meet. Likewise, I consult and advice for organizations where tape still exists yet its role is changing, same with those using disk and cloud.

    Storage I/O data center image

    I am not ready to adopt the singular view that tape is dead yet as I know too many environments that are still using it, however agree that its role is changing, thus I am not part of the tape cheerleading camp.

    On the other hand, I am a fan of using disk based data protection along with cloud in new and creative (including for my use) as part of modernizing data protection. Although I see disk as having a very bright and important future beyond what it is being used for now, at least today, I am not ready to join the chants of tape is dead either.

    StorageIO Industry trends and perspectives image

    Does that mean I can’t decide or don’t want to pick a side? NO

    It means that I do not have to nor should anyone have to choose a side, instead look at your options, what are you trying to do, how can you leverage different things, techniques and tools to maximize your return on innovation. If that means that tape is, being phased out of your organization good for you. If that means there is a new or different role for tape in your organization co-existing with disk, then good for you.

    If somebody tells you that tape sucks and that you are dumb and stupid for using it without giving any informed basis for those comments then call them dumb and stupid requesting they come back when then can learn more about your environment, needs, and requirements ready to have an informed discussion on how to move forward.

    Likewise, if you can make an informed value proposition on why and how to migrate to new ways of modernizing data protection without having to stoop to the tape is dead argument, or cite some research or whatever, good for you and start telling others about it.

    StorageIO Industry trends and perspectives image

    Otoh, if you need to use fud and hype on why tape is dead, why it sucks or is bad, at least come up with some new and relevant facts, third-party research, arguments or value propositions.

    You can read more about tape and its changing role at tapeisalive.com or Tapesummit.com.

    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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    In the data center or information factory, not everything is the same

    StorageIO Industry trends and perspectives image

    Sometimes what should be understood, or that is common sense or that you think everybody should know needs to be stated. After all, there could be somebody who does not know what some assume as common sense or what others know for various reasons. At times, there is simply the need to restate or have a reminder of what should be known.

    Storage I/O data center image

    Consequently, in the data center or information factory, either traditional, virtual, converged, private, hybrid or public cloud, everything is not the same. When I say not everything is the same, is that different applications with various service level objectives (SLO’s) and service level agreements (SLA’s). These are based on different characteristics from performance, availability, reliability, responsiveness, cost, security, privacy among others. Likewise, there are different size and types of organizations with various requirements from enterprise to SMB, ROBO and SOHO, business or government, education or research.

    Various levels of HA, BC and DR

    There are also different threat risks for various applications or information services within in an organization, or across different industry sectors. Thus various needs for meeting availability SLA’s, recovery time objectives (RTO’s) and recovery point objectives (RPO’s) for data protection ranging from backup/restore, to high-availability (HA), business continuance (BC), disaster recovery (DR) and archiving. Let us not forget about logical and physical security of information, assets and people, processes and intellectual property.

    Storage IO RTO and RPO image

    Some data centers or information factories are compute intensive while others are data centric, some are IO or activity intensive with a mix of compute and storage. On the other hand, some data centers such as a communications hub may be network centric with very little data sticking or being stored.

    SLA and SLO image

    Even within in a data center or information factory, various applications will have different profiles, protection requirements for big data and little data. There can also be a mix of old legacy applications and new systems developed in-house, purchased, open-source based or accessed as a service. The servers and storage may be software defined (a new buzzword that has already jumped the shark), virtualized or operated in a private, hybrid or community cloud if not using a public service.

    Here are some related posts tied to everything is not the same:
    Optimize Data Storage for Performance and Capacity
    Is SSD only for performance?
    Cloud conversations: Gaining cloud confidence from insights into AWS outages
    Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) and IRM
    Saving Money with Green IT: Time To Invest In Information Factories
    Everything Is Not Equal in the Datacenter, Part 1
    Everything Is Not Equal in the Datacenter, Part 2
    Everything Is Not Equal in the Datacenter, Part 3

    Storage I/O data center image

    Thus, not all things are the same in the data center, or information factories, both those under traditional management paradigms, as well as those supporting public, private, hybrid or community clouds.

    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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    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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    Putting some VMware ESX storage tips together: (Part II)

    In the first part of this post I showed how to use a tip from Dunacn Epping to fake VMware into thinking that a HHDD (Hybrid Hard Disk Drive) was a SSD.

    Now lets look at using a tip from Dave Warburton to make an internal SATA HDD into an RDM for one of my Windows-based VMs.

    My challenge was that I have a VM with a guest that I wanted to have a Raw Device Mapping (RDM) internal SATA HDD accessible to it, expect the device was an internal SATA device. Given that using the standard tools and reading some of the material available, it would have been easy to give up and quit since the SATA device was not attached to an FC or iSCSI SAN (such as my Iomega IX4 I bought from Amazon.com).

    Image of internal RDM with vMware
    Image of internal SATA drive being added as a RDM with vClient

    Thanks to Dave’s great post that I found, I was able to create a RDM of an internal SATA drive, present it to the existing VM running Windows 7 ultimate and it is now happy, as am I.

    Pay close attention to make sure that you get the correct device name for the steps in Dave’s post (link is here).

    For the device that I wanted to use, the device name was:

    From the ESX command line I found the device I wanted to use which is:

    t10.ATA_____ST1500LM0032D9YH148_____Z110S6M5

    Then I used the following ESX shell command per Dave’s tip to create an RDM of an internal SATA HDD:

    vmkfstools -z /vmfs/devices/disks/ t10.ATA_____ST1500LM0032D9YH148_____Z110S6M5
     /vmfs/volumes/dat1/rdm_ST1500L.vmdk

    Then the next steps were to update an existing VM using vSphere client to use the newly created RDM.

    Hint, Pay very close attention to your device naming, along with what you name the RDM and where you find it. Also, recommend trying or practicing on a spare or scratch device first, if something is messed up. I practiced on a HDD used for moving files around and after doing the steps in Dave’s post, added the RDM to an existing VM, started the VM and accessed the HDD to verify all was fine (it was). After shutting down the VM, I removed the RDM from it as well as from ESX, and then created the real RDM.

    As per Dave’s tip, vSphere Client did not recognize the RDM per say, however telling it to look at existing virtual disks, select browse the data stores, and low and behold, the RDM I was looking for was there. The following shows an example of using vSphere to add the new RDM to one of my existing VMs.

    In case you are wondering, why I want to make a non SAN HDD as a RDM vs. doing something else? Simple, the HDD in question is a 1.5TB HDD that has backups on that I want to use as is. The HDD is also bit locker protected and I want the flexibility to remove the device if I have to being accessible via a non-VM based Windows system.


    Image of my VMware server with internal RDM and other items

    Could I have had accomplished the same thing using a USB attached device accessible to the VM?

    Yes, and in fact that is how I do periodic updates to removable media (HDD using Seagate Goflex drives) where I am not as concerned about performance.

    While I back up off-site to Rackspace and AWS clouds, I also have a local disk based backup, along with creating periodic full Gold or master off-site copies. The off-site copies are made to removable Seagate Goflex SATA drives using a USB to SATA Goflex cable. I also have the Goflex eSATA to SATA cable that comes in handy to quickly attach a SATA device to anything with an eSATA port including my Lenovo X1.

    As a precaution, I used a different HDD that contained data I was not concerned about if something went wrong to test to the process before doing it with the drive containing backup data. Also as a precaution, the data on the backup drive is also backed up to removable media and to my cloud provider.

    Thanks again to both Dave and Duncan for their great tips; I hope that you find these and other material on their sites as useful as I do.

    Meanwhile, time to get some other things done, as well as continue looking for and finding good work a rounds and tricks to use in my various projects, drop me a note if you see something interesting.

    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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    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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    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)

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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)

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    Many faces of storage hypervisor, virtual storage or storage virtualization

    StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

    Storage hypervisors were a 2012 popular buzzword bingo topic with plenty of industry adoption and some customer deployment. Separating the hype around storage hypervisors reveals conversations around backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving.

    backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving
    Cloud and virtualization components

    Storage virtualization along with virtual storage and storage hypervisors have a theme of abstracting underlying physical hardware resources like server virtualization. The abstraction can be for consolidation and aggregation, or for enabling agility, flexibility, emulation and other functionality.

    backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving

    Storage virtualization can be implemented in different locations, in many ways with various functionality and focus. For example the abstraction can occur on a server, in an virtual or physical appliance (e.g. tin wrapped software), in a network switch or router, as well as in a storage system. The focus can be for aggregation, or data protection (HA, BC, DR, backup, replication, snapshot) on a homogeneous (all one vendor) or mixed vendor basis (heterogeneous).

    backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving

    Here is a link to a guest post that I recently did over at The Virtualization Practice looking at storage hypervisors, virtual storage and storage virtualization. As is the case with virtual storage, storage virtualization, storage for virtual environments, depending on your views, spheres of influence, preferences among other factors what you call a storage hypervisor will probably vary.

    Additional related material:

  • Are you using or considering implementation of a storage hypervisor?
  • Cloud, virtualization, storage and networking in an election year
  • EMC VPLEX: Virtual Storage Redefined or Respun?
  • Server and Storage Virtualization – Life beyond Consolidation
  • Should Everything Be Virtualized?
  • How many degrees separate you and your information?
  • Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
  • The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC)
  • Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
  • backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving

    • Btw, as a special offer for viewers, I have some copies of Resilient Storage Networking: Designing Flexible Scalable Data Infrastructures (Elsevier) available for $19.95, shipping and handling included. Send me an email or tweet (@storageio) to learn more and get your copy (Major credit cards and Pay pal accepted).

    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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